The politics of the ‘Third Period’ saw the international Communist movement and its sections begin laying a much greater emphasis on work among women, including creating for the first time specific bodies, though largely not of women but to orient to and win women to the movement. International Red Aid was a defense organization supporting class war prisoners and their dependents; International Labor Defense was its U.S. affiliate.
‘Women Workers and International Red Aid’ by A.K. from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 9 No. 11. March 1, 1929.
The present developments of capitalism on the one hand, and of the revolutionary movement on the other, are undoubtedly leading to an enhanced importance of the working woman in the great class war being waged by the proletariat for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the socialist state of society. Capitalist rationalisation increases the total number of unemployed, and at the same time draws more and more women into the process of production (as cheap labour). The working and peasant woman represent a force which the capitalists must take into account in the coming imperialist war.
The bourgeoisie, which is fully aware of the increasing importance of the part played by the woman worker in the class war of today, and observes very well the growing contradictions of the capitalist system, is making every possible endeavour to ward off any revolutionary influence from the women and to hold them entirely under its own ideological influence. For this purpose it employs every means, including those of Terror and police persecution, and exerts every effort to destroy all revolutionary roots among the working women; the bourgeoisie makes use of the schools, of religion, of the press, and of every available bourgeois organisation. Finally, Fascism too attempts to conduct active work among the working women, and hopes to win adherents among them.
At the same time the role played by the working and peasant women in the international labour movement, in the struggle against the war danger, increases greatly in importance. In the course of the colossal class struggle which has developed since the great war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the revolutionary woman has taken sides with the steadfast revolutionary worker. In order to extend and deepen the influence of this revolutionary role of the working woman, and in order to create a reliable red base behind the front for the fighting proletariat, it is imperative that all revolutionary workers and peasants should devote especial attention to the intense development of Red Aid activities among the women, and exert all efforts to draw women into the Red Aid.
This task is one which must be fined in connection with the 8th March. In view of the increasing intensification of the class struggle, the Red Aid must become an ever more powerful support for the revolutionists torn from the class struggle, and the greater the number of toiling women in the ranks of the Red Aid, the more definite and effectual will be the work of this organisation.
The Red Aid is a powerful factor in international proletarian education, and is not only able to combat successfully the ideological slavery to which the bourgeoisie is anxious to condemn the backward strata of the working women, but is in a position, by means of its active and propagandist work, to group ever new cadres of class conscious proletarian women around the champions of revolution.
Everywhere the revolutionary woman stands side by side with her fellow fighter, the revolutionary worker. Apart from the well known leader of the German working class, Rosa Luxemburg, we see that in other countries too, where the revolutionary movement has already greatly extended, there are a great number of women who have distinguished themselves by their self-sacrificing revolutionary activities, who have fallen in the fight against the class enemy, or are pining in the dungeons of the bourgeoisie. In the Balkans, in Fascist Italy, in Poland, in China, everywhere where the battle raged most obstinately, women have taken their place in the foremost ranks, and have shared with the other revolutionists all the dangers and sacrifices of the struggle. And not alone in the immediate fights in the capitalist countries and colonies do the working and peasant women prove their readiness for self-sacrifice; often they must suffer hunger, must suffer as the mother, wife, or sister of the revolutionist who falls a victim of White Terror or bourgeois class justice.
The revolutionary women who give their forces, their health, and their whole lives to the cause of revolution, are to be counted by hundreds and thousands; and by dozens and hundreds the women and children whose homes have been destroyed by the White Terror, their breadwinners murdered. The working women of all countries must hasten first of all to the aid of these innumerable persecuted and tortured victims of class justice and White Terror. Every women worker, and every peasant woman, must be made aware that at any moment she may fall a victim to that White Terror and Fascism which is gaining ground in the capitalist countries, and that then the mighty organisation of the Red Aid will come to her help and defend her.
These elementary truths of daily class struggle, and the unselfish and heroic struggle of the revolutionary women, must be made clear by the Red Aid, at International Women’s Day to the great masses of still unenlightened working women. On this Day there must be no working woman who does not know what the Red Aid is; on this Day tens of thousands of women must reinforce the ranks of the Red Aid. The percentage oi women members in the Red Aid organisations (29 per cent in the Soviet Union and 15 percent in other countries) is quite insufficient. And the Red Aid will only be able to cope with its task when the backward strata of working women too have recognised the importance of this great mass organisation.
Therefore the campaign for 8th March must accomplish the execution of the following definite measures:
1. An extensive recruitment campaign inducing working women to join the Red Aid.
2. Collective affiliation of proletarian women’s organisations.
3. Detailed discussion in the whole proletarian press (Party, trade union, Red Aid, women’s organisations, sport organisations) of the part played by women in the Red Aid and its struggles.
4. Organisation of patronage for women inmates of prisons for political prisoners, and for the wives and children of revolutionists murdered or imprisoned.
5. Organisation of evening lectures and entertainments showing the work of women revolutionaries, and the role played by the woman worker in the revolutionary movement and in the Red Aid.
6. Organisation of joint meetings with the political emigrees.
7. Organisation of money collections for the victims of White Terror, of Fascism, of class justice, etc.
May the 8th of March be at the same time a great recruiting day for the Red Aid. No class conscious working or peasant woman shall remain outside of its ranks!
The women workers must reply to advancing Fascism and White Terror, to the furious attacks of bourgeois class justice, by joining in masses the Red Aid, and by strengthening and reinforcing this organisation of proletarian solidarity.
International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1929/v09n11-mar-01-1929-inprecor.pdf
