Women's propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are

“Women's propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women's class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle.” So declared Clara Zetkin, the fiery voice of revolution and one of the mothers of international feminism. Her words burn with the light of conviction — not the cold flame of ideology alone, but the living fire of compassion and justice. In this utterance, she did not speak merely to the women of her own time, but to all generations yet to come, calling them to rise from silence and see themselves not as ornaments of history, but as its architects.

In the age of industrial struggle, when the world was divided between the masters of capital and the laboring poor, Zetkin saw clearly that the liberation of women could not be separated from the liberation of all workers. Factories roared, children starved, and women toiled unseen, their voices drowned beneath the machinery of profit. Yet, she understood that the chains of oppression are interwoven — that the subjugation of women was not a separate tragedy, but a pillar upon which the entire edifice of exploitation rested. Therefore, she called for women’s propaganda not as vanity or rebellion, but as awakening — a trumpet to rouse the half of humanity whose power had been long suppressed.

The heart of her message lies in the phrase “to awaken the women's class consciousness.” For Zetkin knew that awareness is the first revolution. A people asleep in servitude cannot rise; only when the veil of ignorance is torn can freedom begin. She did not ask women merely to demand rights for themselves, but to see their struggle as part of the class struggle, the universal battle for justice and dignity. The kitchen, the workshop, the cradle — all were fronts in this greater war of emancipation. To awaken class consciousness was to turn private suffering into collective power, and collective power into change.

History offers many who heeded her call. Think of Rosa Luxemburg, her friend and comrade, who faced prison and death for the dream of a fairer world. Or of the women textile workers of Petrograd, whose strike in February 1917 sparked the Russian Revolution — not through speeches or swords, but through courage born of hunger and injustice. When they refused to labor one more day beneath the yoke of cruelty, they became the voice of millions. In their defiance, Zetkin’s vision took form: the awakening of women as agents of history, no longer spectators but storm-bringers in the struggle for a just world.

Zetkin’s call was not only political — it was profoundly moral. She saw that a society that silences its women cannot be truly human, for it silences its own conscience. To incorporate women into the class struggle was to restore balance to the moral order of the world. It meant recognizing that women’s labor, their suffering, and their wisdom were indispensable to the progress of humanity. Without their participation, the revolution would be half-blind, its victories half-born. Her words echo through time as both challenge and prophecy: no true freedom for the worker without freedom for the woman, no justice for the oppressed while any remain voiceless.

But beware, O listener, of thinking this lesson belongs to the past alone. Even in our modern age — bright with technology yet dark with division — the same truth endures. Inequality changes its mask, but not its essence. Women everywhere still labor longer, earn less, and are too often silenced in the councils of power. To heed Zetkin’s wisdom today is to see beyond slogans and stand for solidarity — the belief that one’s freedom is bound to the freedom of all. Her teaching calls us not to pity, but to unity, not to separate battles, but to shared struggle.

Therefore, take this lesson to heart: the liberation of women is the liberation of mankind. Every act that uplifts the silenced, every effort that joins compassion with courage, is a step in the eternal march toward justice. Let your own propaganda — your speech, your art, your deeds — touch upon all things that matter to the human spirit. Seek not comfort in neutrality, for neutrality is the ally of oppression. Instead, awaken your own consciousness, and help awaken others. For when humanity stands together — woman and man, rich and poor, worker and thinker — then the world shall at last begin to heal.

And so, as Clara Zetkin once urged the women of her age, so must we urge ourselves: rise not as isolated voices, but as a choir of courage. For the struggle for justice, once begun, belongs to all. And when every heart beats with the same rhythm of compassion and defiance, then, and only then, will the dream of equality cease to be a dream — and become the dawn of a new and nobler world.