Patriarchal realism: an examination of socialist attitudes towards feminist thought at the turn of the twentieth century

The start of the twentieth century saw a massive growth in socialist organization across Europe. Despite women not having the vote, these mainstream socialist parties attracted a large female membership who advocated for the rights of women workers within the larger party apparatus. Influential figures within these various socialist parties across Europe dictated the praxis and methodology of the socialist women's movement, directing the parties to sever connections with the concurrent liberal feminist movement which had immerged in the United States and the United Kingdom before quickly disseminating across continental Europe. The socialist women argued that the liberal feminists were reactionary due to their lack of explicitly class-oriented political posturing, and the stark animosity emanating from within the socialist movement pushed them to completely isolate from the liberal feminists, even when tackling shared goals such as women's suffrage and labor protections for mothers and young women. I posit that the mutual hostility which emerged from the two groups, rather than rooted in strict class politics, originated from a cultural restriction on conceptions of gender; specifically, what women's role in society should be after socialist revolution. Rather than address the cult of domesticity which dominated political thought at the time and reimagine what it might mean to be a woman beyond the role of worker, wife, and mother, socialist women sought to marginalize women's issues and demonize the liberal feminists to curry favor with working class men.

ABSTRACT The start of the twentieth century saw a massive growth in socialist organization across Europe. Despite women not having the vote, these mainstream socialist parties attracted a large female membership who advocated for the rights of women workers within the larger party apparatus. Influential figures within these various socialist parties across Europe dictated the praxis and methodology of the socialist women’s movement, directing the parties to sever connections with the concurrent liberal feminist movement which had immerged in the United States and the United Kingdom before quickly disseminating across continental Europe. The socialist women argued that the liberal feminists were reactionary due to their lack of explicitly class-oriented political posturing, and the stark animosity emanating from within the socialist movement pushed them to completely isolate from the liberal feminists, even when tackling shared goals such as women’s suffrage and labor protections for mothers and young women. I posit that the mutual hostility which emerged from the two groups, rather than rooted in strict class politics, originated from a cultural restriction on conceptions of gender; specifically, what women’s role in society should be after socialist revolution. Rather than address the cult of domesticity which dominated political thought at the time and reimagine what it might mean to be a woman beyond the role of worker, wife, and mother, socialist women sought to marginalize women’s issues and demonize the liberal feminists to curry favor with working class men. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii INTRODUCTION 1 ORIGINS OF SOCIALIST FEMINISM 6 CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUES 18 THE ORIGINS OF LIBERAL FEMINISM 27 RECEDING TO TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES 33 CONCLUSION 36 REFERENCES 38 iii 1 INTRODUCTION The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from a Marxist perspective, was quite possibly the most important step towards socialist revolution, as the technological advances of the era completely redefined both the base and consequently superstructure of European society. Among the many aspects of society altered by industrial revolution, two key changes in the formation of the labor force greatly altered the proletariat’s relationship to capital. Firstly, the locus of labor shifting from the domestic sphere into the factory facilitated mass mobilization of workers into unions and political parties which could stand as a militant force against exploitation by capitalists. Secondly, the introduction of women into the labor force offered the potential of liberating women from the oppression of the patriarchy and to join their male comrades in the fight for total liberation of the proletariat. The turn of the century saw tremendous leaps and bounds for both socialist and feminist causes, as newly formed socialist parties across Europe, in tandem with unions, were able to secure new labor protections, higher wages, and better working conditions. In the feminist camp, this period saw many countries in Europe and North America begin to consider women’s suffrage for the first time, and laws protecting bodily autonomy and rights to abortion as well as relaxation of divorce laws promised a new era of equality for women. But, by the 1930’s, most of this progress had been wiped away in continental Europe, as the rise of fascism outlawed communist and socialist parties, and reinstated oppressive patriarchal laws to force women back into domesticity. While this paper is not intended to act as a comprehensive examination of the dramatic rise of fascism in the West in the interwar period, my intent is to look into the 2 fissures that existed between various mechanisms of social reform, ask why they formed, and how, if at all, their division facilitated the rise of far-right nationalism and anticommunist rhetoric. Specifically, I will look at the division in feminist political-economic thinking that emerged in Europe in the early twentieth century between the left-wing socialist women’s movement and the less radical “bourgeois” feminist movement. Both movements had broad popular support as well as an international network of collaborators who fought to improve the lives of women in Europe and America, yet the two remained at odds with each other up until their eventual extinction at the hands of fascism. I posit that, rather than based in any concrete class politics, much of the division between the two groups originated from an inability to conceptualize gender beyond established European aristocratic ideals, insofar as that both movements did little to critique the ways in which patriarchy coexists with and is not purely dominated by capitalism. Rather than true liberation from patriarchy, both groups imagined an economic or social revolution which acted to ‘purify’ womanhood, to free them from moral degeneracy in the form of prostitution, labor exploitation, and spinsterhood. The established role of women, primarily as a mother and wife, was largely taken for granted; it was assumed that women’s liberation was encompassed by a larger social revolution and did not require independent revolutionary action. Doing so left many of the foundational pillars of patriarchy, namely the cult of domesticity, as impenetrable ideas to be taken as natural hierarchy, rather than social subjugation. It should be noted that I will use the terms “bourgeois feminist”, “liberal feminist” and “nonsocialist feminist” interchangeably throughout this paper to mean feminists who did not align with various socialist party causes. It is not, as will be discussed later, an 3 indicator of capital ownership, as Marx defined the term, nor an ideologically coherent movement in the way of the French bourgeoisie under King Louis-Philippe. (Maza, 2003, 161-193) Rather than a centralized movement, these women represented a broad variety of groups advocating for the expansion of women’s political, economic, and civil rights, often funded by the philanthropic work of aristocratic women sympathetic to their cause. Similarly, “socialist feminist” or “socialist women” simply refers to women whose primary alliance was with socialist party politics. On the one hand, socialist feminists were interested to at least some degree in the intersection of class and gender. These women fought explicitly for women’s rights in conjunction with worker’s rights, though many prioritized the latter. Socialist women, on the other hand, were women who existed within the socialist party infrastructure, but where not interested in women’s liberation as a separate but related issue and instead worked to sublimate women’s issues into broader class-based ones. While the efficacy of both socialist and nonsocialist women’s movements varied between countries, a general pattern emerged across Europe between 1890 and 1930 in which socialist feminists aligned themselves with the agenda of increasingly institutionalist socialist parties, jettisoning women’s issues-specific platforms like that of the liberal feminists. While socialist women argued that their choice to sever from the nonsocialist feminists originated from irreconcilable differences in goals and motivations between the two groups, the supposed class differences of the rank-and-file of the two camps were greatly exaggerated by the socialist women. The bourgeois feminists emerged as a scapegoat that some socialist women capitalized on to gain a place in the new world of socialist party politics. “Bourgeois feminism” became an outgroup, 4 distinguished by its status within the oppressor class of the bourgeoisie, from which socialist women could distinguish their own pro-labor agenda. But by resorting to ostracization of “bourgeois feminists” and romanticization of an imagined unified proletarian cause, socialist women fomented a divide in the women’s movement which lasted well into the twentieth century. (Boxer, 2007) This is not to say that the nonsocialist feminists were wholly working class or did not, at times, explicitly collaborate with anti-communist parties. In fact, many in positions of power within the various bourgeois feminist movements were directly tied to the old European aristocracy, which still clung to power even as it was subsumed by the emerging capitalist class. The socialist women’s movements and their associated political parties in Germany, France, Italy and Austria will be taken as case studies throughout this paper to examine a variety of approaches taken by socialist women across Europe. Attitudes and behavior towards nonsocialist feminists varied between these between countries and movements, yet similarities deriving from common philosophical and ideological beliefs, as well as direct interaction and exchange of ideas between parties led to a congruence of action in the period leading up to and immediately after World War I, when socialist organization in Western, Southern, and Central Europe reached its apex. Underpinning all these parties was an inability to escape socially established gender norms, particularly as it equates to the cult of domesticity and the morality of the modern woman. Nonsocialist feminists became a patsy for the unease within the socialist movement regarding “The Woman Question,” which historian Maralyn Boxer defines as “The role of women in [a] society undergoing radical change, where the domestic economy was giving way to the factory system and the amateur healer and teacher had been replaced by the trained and 5 certified professional.” (Boxer & Quataert, 1978, p. 1) While the socialists imagined the liberal feminists as a barrier to women’s revolution, both groups were inhibited by a cultural zeitgeist which refused to imagine a role for women which did not in some capacity restrict their existence to the role of mother, wife, and caregiver. 6 ORIGINS OF SOCIALIST FEMINISM: FEMINIST ECONOMIC IDEAS IN FRENCH, GERMAN, ITALIAN, AND AUSTRIAN GROUPS While socialist feminist ideals have their beginnings in France during the eighteenth and nineteenth century (Moon, 1978), it was the work of German women, such as Clara Zetkin, which brought attention to women’s issues into the realm of party politics through involvement with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD). Zetkin’s work in the political sphere helped draw women into mainstream socialist politics, resulting in an outsized German presence in the international women’s movement, as shown by Germany’s dominating presence at the early Women’s International meetings where delegates from across the world would propose policy and adopt resolutions towards the end goal of an international socialist women’s movement. Other countries and figures important in shaping European socialist women’s approach towards The Woman Question include Anna Kuliscioff, co-founder and leader of the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano or PSI), who remained cautious about directly addressing women’s issues yet quietly worked to secure rights for Italian women. In France, Louise Saumoneau and her compatriots in the French Workers Party (Parti Ouvrier Français or POF) had inconsistent views on feminism, leading to marginalization of women’s issues within the POF. Finally, due to the strong presence of the Catholic Church within Austrian women’s movements, Therese Schlesinger and others within the Social Democratic Party of Austria (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs or SPÖ) took a more lenient stance with their liberal sisters. While remaining at distance from the bourgeois feminists, Schlesinger and others in the SPÖ saw any form of organizing for women’s liberation as 7 inherently revolutionary in their attempt to further women’s equality and resist oppression from the Catholic Church. Clara Zetkin helped establish many foundational ideas and tactics of the socialist women’s movement. Drawing from earlier socialist writers on The Woman Question, such as August Babel and Fredrich Engels, Zetkin determined that socialist revolution was necessary for the total emancipation of women. In orthodox Marxian thought, women’s subservience to men was a result of their economic dependence on them, as women were relegated to the domestic sphere due to their inferior legal rights and restricted access to selling their labor for wages. (Engels, 1884) Women were then dependent on men to sell their labor to provide for their wives, while women were expected to perform labor without compensation inside the house, namely, cooking, cleaning, and childrearing. Men are in turn enslaved under the wage-labor system of capitalism, which extracts their surplus labor value in the form of profits. Therefore, liberation from men without liberation from capitalism makes women “economically dependent on capitalists” instead of men, “turning [a woman] from a domestic into a wage slave” who is chained to her value as a worker rather than a wife. (Gaido & Frencia, 2018, p. 280) Without dignity for working class people of any gender under capitalism, feminism alone, Zetkin and other Marxists insisted, only serves to alter the form of women’s oppression, not abolish it. Due to her sway within the SPD and the International Conference of Socialist Women, Zetkin’s policies and theories were influential in how socialist parties delt with The Women Question, as other women applied her guidelines for Germany to their own counties. For example, Zetkin’s infamous “clean break” doctrine, which advised socialist 8 women to completely divest from the bourgeois feminist movement, became core to the identity of the women’s branch of the SPD as well as a pivotal point of discussion at early meetings of the International Socialist Women’s Conferences. (Gaido & Frencia, p. 282-285, 2018) The ‘clean break’ reversed previous party lines on the issue, which had been established by Marxist and feminist thinker August Babel. In his 1883 work Women Under Socialism, Babel argued that "the hostile [feindliche] sisters have . . . a number of points of contact, on which they can, although marching separately, strike jointly [with socialists]." (Boxer, 2007, p. 133) To reiterate, Babel’s position on the nonsocialist feminists states that, while the end goals and means of the two women’s movements differ, their shared goals of advancing women’s rights meant that on certain issues it would be mutually beneficial for the groups to “strike together,” and that securing liberal reforms towards greater equality for women would form an important stepping stone towards women’s total emancipation through socialism. Zetkin’s reasoning for the clean break sprang from a perceived unbridgeable difference in theoretical framework and approach between the socialist and bourgeois feminists. Researchers Daniel Gaido and Cintia Frencia, who specialize in socialist history, summarize the theoretical grounds for Zetkin’s clean break agenda on a basis of differing struggles, arguing that the feminist camp’s struggle was about political equality with men of the same class with whom they had recently entered competition with for jobs in the labor market. On the other hand, proletarian women’s struggle was against the larger structure of capitalism itself. Gaido and Frencia explain: The struggle of [bourgeois women] for [equal rights] was a struggle of economic interests among the men and women belonging to those social layers. And since 9 every struggle of economic interests is a political struggle, it encouraged those women to demand political equality with men. In the proletariat, the needs of exploitation of capital had already forced women to take up paid employment, destroying the family as an institution based on private property. Thanks to her job, the proletarian woman was economically equal to the man of her class. But this equality meant that she, like the proletarian man, was exploited by the capitalists, only harder than he was. The struggle for the emancipation of the proletarian woman was, therefore, not a struggle against the men of her own class, but a struggle with the men of her class against the capitalist class. (Gaido & Frencia, 2018, p. 285) Gaido and Frencia interpret Zetkin as arguing that, due to their position within the upper classes, the women of the liberal feminist movement are ultimately uninterested in the liberation of proletarian women from their oppression under capitalism. Rather, women of the capitalist class push for political equality that would allow them to join the men of similar rank in their exploitation of the entire proletariat. Zetkin herself stated that she would only come to the table with the bourgeois feminists if they fully devoted themselves to the liberation of proletarian women, expressing that “If the bourgeois women’s movement wants to do something that also benefits the so-called poor sisters, then it should first of all pronounce itself for the full political equality of the sexes, because in that way working women will have the right to struggle economically and politically with their husbands against the bourgeoisie” (Gaido & Frencia, 2018, p. 283). Zetkin believed that without total commitment from the liberal feminists to equality of the sexes, working class women would remain oppressed under the economic system of 10 capitalism even as upper-class women gained access to previously male-only spaces. Due to her strict adherence to what she believed to be Marxist ideology, Zetkin put class allegiance above all other forms of organization. Her adherence to this policy was not despite her feminist beliefs, but a deeply held belief that socialist revolution was necessary for women’s liberation, and that concurrent bourgeois women’s movement were uninterested in liberation for women of all classes and in fact stood to gain from the continued exploitation of the working class. The belief that the interests of nonsocialist women were incompatible with the socialist cause, while popularized by Zetkin and the SPD, was in no way unique to Germany. In France for instance, the French Workers Party turned away from addressing The Woman Question directly, designating it a matter to be dealt with after the overthrow of capitalism, instead they adopted a hostile stance towards the nonsocialist feminists. Like Zetkin and the SPD, the POF postured politically that the socialist revolution completely encompassed the goals of women’s liberation, making nonsocialist women’s movements superfluous at best and dangerous to the greater socialist cause at worst. (Boxer, 1978, p. 79) Earlier in the history of the POF, dissenting voices such as that of Paula Mink offered a path forward for women’s movements without contradicting the necessity of a socialist revolution. Mink, like many socialist feminists, located women’s oppression at the hands of men in the overarching oppression of capitalism. However, Mink was particularly focused on the role child-rearing played in the subjugation of women and mothers. According to Boxer, “The source of the subjugation for Mink lay in the fact that maternity, a form of labor that should bring esteem and reward, instead made woman the 11 ‘servant of the servant... the unhappy whipped dog of the most humble... the victim of the victims themselves.’” And the liberation of men from capitalism and subsequent education of women would be the only path towards women’s freedom. (Boxer, 1978, p. 84) However, despite her deterministic views on women’s liberation, Mink found value in liberal reform as a means of education for proletarian women: “She called for equal education for women, hoping thereby to release them from the influence of priests, to free prostitutes from the sons of the bourgeoisie, and to encourage female proletarians to support revolutionary action by their men.” (Boxer, 1978, p. 85). Mink saw value in liberal reform and liberal feminism as a means of educating working class women and recruiting them to the socialist cause. However, Boxer argues that Mink’s advocacy for women’s liberation backfired when she tried to gain sympathy from reactionary working-class men. She writes: Her descriptions of the suffering endured by working women, low wages, importuning bosses, degradation into prostitution, the double burden of work in the factory followed by work at home, aroused the sympathy of her audiences, but tended to confirm their belief that the immediate solution was total rejection of work outside the home for females. (Boxer & Quataert, 1978, p. 85). The still male-dominated POF’s reasons for opposing women’s rights issues were twofold: firstly, their belief that women’s suffering would be eliminated alongside men’s after the socialist revolution meant they felt that the goals of women’s issues where unnecessary and potentially harmful to the party’s chances at recruiting men to the party. Additionally, many of these men still held essentialist views of gender, asserting that a 12 woman’s natural place was in the domicile, while the man’s was in the factory, and that disruption of this dichotomy was putting women in harm’s way. To maintain their popularity among proletarian men, the POF began to distance themselves from the likes of Mink, opting to elevate the work of women whose ideology complemented the goals of the party leadership. They first achieved this goal through the work of Pierre Bonnier and his disciple Aline Valette, who promoted a pseudo-scientific form of feminism called ‘sexualism,’ which asserted that women’s true value in society was their capacity to produce children, but that capitalism and patriarchy had subverted the “natural hierarchy” of society so that women were not revered for their procreative capabilities, but rather subjugated for it (Boxer & Quataert, 1978, p. 88-89). It was only through a socialist revolution, Bonnier and Valette argued, that women would be restored to their rightful place as mothers. Boxer summarizes that: “couched in terms of historical and biological science, Bonnier and Valette adopted an argument designed to lift woman back onto the pedestal and into the home.” As a result, Valette and sexualism “offer the POF a way to embrace feminism while postponing practical change for women until after the socialist revolution” and without challenging the patriarchal views of men within the party. (Boxer & Quataert, 1978, p. 89-90). In the first decade of the twentieth century, a seamstress named Louise Saumoneau began to rise in popularity within the women’s socialist movement, combining Valette’s indifference towards liberal reforms with Zetkin’s disdain for bourgeois women’s movements. Boxer describes Saumoneau’s “raison d’étre” as opposing solidarity between women of different classes (Boxer, 1978, p. 93). Inspired by the work of Zetkin, Saumoneau and her colleagues directed the POF to draw working 13 class women away from the bourgeois feminist movement, viewing them as her “natural enemies” due both to their lack of commitment to the socialist cause as well as a belief that the bourgeois feminists threatened the institution of gender itself. For example, Saumoneau protested “I personally refuse the right to masculine “liberties,” and I would never help transform young girls into the boys of today. This would in my opinion, constitute a crime against humanity.” (Boxer, 1978, p. 97) Her belief that bourgeois feminists simply wanted individualist freedoms like the men of their class reflected her and many other socialist women’s blind spot when it came to issues pertaining to the oppression of women under patriarchy. Rather than challenge patriarchal thinking, Saumoneau’s gender essentialist rhetoric helped reinforce the notion that women’s natural place was in the home, and that liberation of women meant the destruction of femininity itself. Socialist women in Austria and the SPÖ, like the Germans and French, remained skeptical towards nonsocialist women’s movements throughout the early twentieth century, but the presence of strong conservative and traditional views on gender held by women’s movements affiliated with the Catholic Church in the country gave socialists a unique opportunity to draw in disenfranchised working-class women. Historian Ingrun Lafleur argues that, despite its conflict with the feminists, the SPÖ was able to push forward a progressive campaign on women’s rights since it was in constant opposition to Catholic political activism: “[The SPÖ’s] identity was forged in this conflict [with the Catholic Church]. Women socialists, whether their origins were middle class or working class, frequently pointed out their conflict with the Church and its values when they recounted the process of their politicization.” (Lafleur, 1978, p. 243) The SPÖ, especially 14 after being reprimanded by Zetkin in 1907 for not supporting women’s suffrage, promised and implemented radical feminist reforms to draw proletarian women away from the clergy and into the socialist camp. Founding members of the socialist women’s movement in Austria, like Adelheid Popp, were originally drawn to the socialist movement due to the concern socialists gave to poor urban women’s issues, such as labor protections and birth control, which the contemporary Catholic dominated political scene looked down upon (Lafleur, 1978, p. 224). And while Popp and others felt bourgeois feminists did not sufficiently engage in radical politics that could change the material conditions of proletarian women, she and other early leaders, like Therese Schlesinger, still saw liberal reform as a positive force in the fight for women’s liberation. Lafluer writes: Schlesinger believed that all women’s movements inherently contained revolutionary potential. Even the attempts of women to gain access to higher education and the liberal professions, she noted, everywhere encountered obstinate opposition from men. This opposition originated not only from the fear of female competition, but also from the “habitual clinging to old concepts and dogmas” that restrict women to the narrowness of domestic life, such as the “ideal of true womanhood.” Schlesinger maintained that both male and female opponents of the women’s movement do perceive, however dimly, that “to free woman from her bonds would mean to lay the axe to the roots of the existing order.” (Lafleur, 1978, p. 227) Birthed in the reactionary culture of a Catholic Austria, socialist feminists triangulated themselves into radical feminist positions which questioned the notions of 15 gender roles that many other socialist parties in Europe took for granted (Lafleur, 1978, p. 222). Despite this, not every woman in the movement was a radical feminist; for example, Kaethe Leichter, who adhered to Zetkin’s belief in putting class issues first and foremost and ultimately steered the party away from some of its more radical feminist policies in the interwar period. (Lafleur, 1978, p. 230-231) Despite the deradicalization undertaken by those such as Leichter, the socialist women’s movement continued to expand the rights of women into the 1920’s before finally being halted by Nazi expansion. Anna Kuliscioff, one of the founders of the PSI, chose to prioritize class issues over gender issues, in line with the socialist women in France and Germany, to further the political prominence of her party. Historian Claire Lavigna theorizes that, for Kulisicioff to transform the Italian Socialist Party into the vanguard party of Italy, she deliberately avoided issues which may have been divisive among the Italian working class. She explains: Kuliscioff was involved in the delicate operation of transforming the conservative, trade-unionist-oriented Italian workers’ movement into a Marxist party. Her strategy in that, her major project, was to make the changeover seem as nonradical as possible. Potentially dangerous or divisive issues, such as women’s liberation, which might alarm the leaders of the workers’ movement, whom she was carefully courting, had at least to be postponed. (LaVigna, 1978, p. 156) While Kuliscioff did not disavow feminist reform in theory, she, like many of her compatriots in the Women’s International, was ultimately willing to compromise on delaying women’s equality with the goal of amassing revolutionary Marxist sentiment in 16 the proletariat. Like Kuliscioff and the PSI, Socialist parties across Europe took for granted that a solution to The Woman Question would be inherent in a solution to the greater Social Question of the organization of the economy and permitted sidelining of women’s issues until a vanguard party was successfully built. In other words, recruitment of proletarian men to the socialist cause was given preference over appeal to liberal feminist reform. Given that women’s suffrage was yet to pass at a national level in any of these countries, it is at least understandable, if not historically effective, that Kuliscioff took a “class-first” approach. Though the trajectory of the PSI eventually came to mirror that of the SPD and POF, Kuliscioff remains unique as a figure in the socialist women’s movement due to her role as co-founder and leader of the party, rather than merely contributor to a partyoffshoot directed at women. In Germany, France, and Austria, women were often elevated within socialist parties as tools to mobilize proletarian women and prevent them from going towards nonsocialist women’s movements. When these women became problematic, or when a woman who better aligned with the parties’ goals came along, they were cast out, labeled as bourgeois and counterrevolutionary. Even Zetkin, who pioneered the dominant plan to isolate socialists from other women’s movements and brought the SPD unprecedented female membership, was eventually cast out of the party. The SPD forced Zetkin out of the party in part for her views on women’s rights and demands that the SPD take The Woman Question more seriously, as well as her anti-war advocacy during World War One, which the SPD strongly opposed. (Honeycutt, 139140, 1976) As shown by socialist women’s repeated ousting from established political movements, institutional sexism within these parties is an undeniable fact. However, it is 17 also evident, especially in Italy due to Kuliscioff’s outstanding power within the PSI, that socialist women undoubtably had at least some degree of agency in their posturing towards nonsocialist feminists and women’s liberation in general. These women, while certainly influenced by party politics, believed in, and enacted a separation between the two women’s movements at least partially of their own accord. Providing additional proof of the agency of socialist women in their separation from the bourgeois feminists, more resent research from Boxer suggests that the rigid class divisions imagined by figures like Zetkin were more aesthetic than material in nature. She shows that the term bourgeois as used by figures in the socialist women’s movement had no concrete definition, and who fit within the category's unstable boundaries was not based solely on their class. Before the French Revolution, the term bourgeois designated a specific “residence or legal order” within the hierarchy of the Old Regime (Maza, 2003, p. 22). However, in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the word lost its meaning as a designation of legal class. Boxer summarizes author Sara Maza: “After its prerevolutionary use as a legal category disappeared… the ‘bourgeoisie’ became a negative, a way to describe ‘what someone else was.’ It carried a taint inherited from the old regime, implying both ‘unearned privilege and cultural deficiency.’” (Boxer, 2007, p. 136) Boxer argues that the term “bourgeois” as used by Marxist and socialist writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was much closer to an epithet than a class-based category, paralleling its usage in France during the July Monarchy. Socialist women began to use the term bourgeois feminism to distance themselves from the women of the emerging industrialized intelligentsia, rather than as a means of identifying class differences. 18 19 CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUES: SOCIALIST FEMINIST POLITICAL-ECONOMIC THOUGHT REEVALUATED In the past two decades, new reviews of historic literature have revealed more contradictions within Zetkin and the larger socialist women’s movement’s attitude towards nonsocialist feminists. Boxer cites research from Richard J. Evens showing that many bourgeois feminists worked for pay as members of the proletariat, while many socialist women performed labor solely in the domestic sphere, which significantly undermines Zetkin and other socialist narratives of a rigidly middle-class feminist movement which impeded the grander socialist movement. She explains “Few socialist women worked for pay; they were socialists by sympathy but not ‘proletarian.’ Fewer performed labor that produced ‘surplus value.’ In Bulgaria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden, most were stay-at-home wives of socialist men.” On other hand “Many British feminists came from working-class origins, but typically worked in service occupations, especially as teachers.” (Boxer, 2007, p. 156) Socialist feminists distancing themselves from the nonsocialist feminists by means of class was then largely an illusion, one which mirrors the Romantic ideal in France during the eighteenth and nineteenth century of the farmer as the only true form of labor, an idea which emerged out of physiocracy and French nationalism (Maza, 2003, p. 38). Driven by paranoia of social and moral degradation brought on by the societal changes induced by industrialization, farmers and those who worked the land became a symbol of morality, fertility and national identity which were idolized at large in French society (Maza, 2003, p. 36, 55-56). A parallel emerges between the myth of the yeoman farmer in prerevolutionary France and the proletariat factory worker across Europe during the 20 Industrial Revolution, as the factory worker becomes the new Third Estate—the backbone of the industrialized world—to which all other forms of labor, especially those worked by women in the service sector, become superfluous or even parasitic. To this point, Boxer quotes Virginia Woolf, who remarks that “the glamour of the working class and the emotional relief afforded by adopting its cause" give a shield to those who wield proletarian aesthetics when they attack others on what are otherwise faulty premises. (Boxer, 2007, p. 146). By triangulating their distaste for nonsocialist women’s movements in the language of class war, socialist women avoided confronting their views on gender and its changing relation to industrial capitalism. An incomplete critique of the socialist feminists could place their anger towards other women’s groups at the feet of earlier Marxist authors. As a result of the patriarchal and gender essentialist views of people like Marx and Engels, one might argue that socialist women were destined to inherit an incomplete understanding of gender dynamics in relation to class. Jean Quataert, a frequent collaborator with Boxer, summarizes the argument succinctly, recounting that “To a certain extent, socialist feminists generally were victims of their Marxist ideology that posited the inevitable evolution of the family to a higher moral unit based on full equality between husband and wife, an evolution that was to begin first in working-class homes.” (Quataert, 1978, p. 137) Brought up under the assumption that a woman’s ultimate place was as a wife and mother, and that women’s liberation would be granted along with proletarian men discouraged socialist women from organizing around issues unique to women. But while Marxist theory goes some way to explain the anger socialists felt towards feminists, it cannot fully explain the policy of the clean break or the rejection of 21 most liberal reforms outside of suffrage that nonsocialist feminists in Germany, Italy and France pushed for. As mentioned earlier, Bebel, while skeptical of the feminists, argued for cooperation to achieve reforms which would ultimately lead to revolution. Rather, it was Zetkin and socialist feminists themselves that decided to cut off the nonsocialist feminists. Boxer quotes authors Anne Lopez and Gary Roth, emphasizing that “Until Zetkin, no one had implied [that to 'cross class'] was unmarxist. The Marxian legacy, as it has come to be known in the subsequent historiography, is largely a fiction created by Zetkin herself." (Boxer, 2007, p. 152) Zetkin reshaped Marxist theoretical canon to prohibit cross-class collaboration, even on issues which socialist and nonsocialist feminists shared. Such a stance invokes the famous quote attributed to Marx: “What is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist.” As the original quote expresses Marx’s frustration with certain French socialists’ unwillingness to engage in reformist politics, Zetkin similarly warps Marxism to fit her own ends, crafting a mythical, moral proletarian factory worker who stands in strong opposition to the supposed degeneracy of the bourgeois feminist movement. Yet Zetkin’s prohibition did not completely halt collaboration on shared issues, and socialist parties’ attempts to categorize and separate the women’s movement was not by any means absolute. Again, from Boxer: “Many women identified as ‘bourgeois feminists’ considered themselves socialist and participated in socialist organizations. Some socialist women, even in Zetkin's own party, rejected her policy of absolute noncooperation.” In addition, “Some working-class women joined bourgeois groups, and many in the latter ranks worked to improve working-class women's employment skills and educational opportunities.” (Boxer, 2007, p. 152) It seems that despite fearmongering 22 over a bourgeois lack of class-consciousness, many bourgeois feminists worked alongside socialists and visa-versa. The divide between the two groups stemmed mostly from political parties themselves and the women in power within them. The label bourgeois became a rhetorical and political tool to draw working class women towards socialism which collapsed a complex and diverse group of women into a simple binary of revolutionary and reactionary. Boxer summarizes the artificial category thusly: “As a political movement, feminism has never been ‘bourgeois’ in the sense that Marxists proposed. ‘Bourgeois feminism’ was invented by socialist women and did not exist as a discrete, identifiable, class-based women's movement.” (Boxer, 2007, p. 152) Much of the animosity the socialists felt towards their liberal counterparts can be traced to socially engrained fears around the radical changes to society caused by the Industrial Revolution. Across Europe, politicians and philosophers in the socialist camp worried about the threat that feminists posed to the “natural” family order. Many socialists, even socialist women, held firmly to the belief that a women’s ultimate place in the world was as a mother and wife, possibly most exemplified by sexualism in France (Lafleur, 1978, 87-90), though Zetkin and Kuliscioff were prone to similar beliefs about women’s natural place in society, or general indifference towards women’s issues relative to the socialist cause. (LaVigna, 1978, p 172-174; Honeycutt, 1978, p. 135-136) Socialists believed capitalism was primarily responsible for the oppression of women, and that the primary reason for liberation from capitalism was a means for women to reach their full potential as social and sexual beings, which they defined to mean that the ideal woman would become a worker in the factory and a mother at home. Even when envisioning a post-capitalist society, socialist women tended to imagine the role of the 23 woman in the domestic sphere as largely unaltered from their current existence, in which the cult of domesticity remained intact even as exploitation in the factory was abolished. (Honeycutt, 1978, p. 135) It is evident from the belief in women’s “natural place” in society as a mother and wife that, by the turn of the twentieth century, gender roles which had emerged out of European aristocratic ideals had become so engrained in society that many socialists took them as natural, just as many today take capitalism to be the “natural” organization of the economy. The fear of the “new woman,” liberated from domesticity by industrialization in fact stems from bourgeois and Christian ideals that would seemingly contradict Zetkin’s socialist leanings. The prominent influence of social Darwinism in the nineteenth century is a constant through Zetkin’s writings on gender, as are many contradictory elements of The Woman Question originally posed by Bebel. Most prominent is the concern over the maintenance of the family, and the morality of the proletarian woman in comparison to the degeneracy of the bourgeois woman. In Bebel’s terms, the emergent ability of bourgeois women to enter the workforce, no longer expected to be homemakers, represented the decline of the bourgeois family. The Frauenüberschuß, or the surplus of single women, which emerged as a mass of unmarried bourgeois women who competed with the proletariat for labor, for Bebel, was a prime example of the excess of capitalism. Historian Catherine Dollard summarizes Bebel, writing “The vanity of idle bourgeois women impoverished the female proletariat, because ‘employers have a predilection for the competition of these ladies, so as to lower the earnings of the poor working woman and squeeze the last drop of blood from her veins: it drives her to exert herself to the point of exhaustion.’” (Dollard, 2018, p. 169) From this understanding of the 24 Frauenüberschuß, hostility towards the bourgeois feminists is logical, as the women fighting to secure reformist policies, while well intentioned, in fact drove a wedge between working class solidarity. No consideration is given for the potential to draw the Frauenüberschuß into the socialist cause, as it is assumed that their bourgeois upbringing makes them inherently hostile to socialists despite their newfound position in the proletariat. Zetkin adopted Bebel’s framing on the issue of the Frauenüberschuß and expanded it to fit her views surrounding family and marriage. Zetkin fixated on morality and marriage as a resolution to the Frauenüberschuß, and to the larger Woman Question. While Bebel and Zetkin were both critical of the existing institution of marriage as a form of women’s oppression, Zetkin’s conceptualization of marriage was still centered in Christian and Eugenicist ideas of purity and morality. Historian Tânia Ünlüdağ theorizes: What the bourgeois marriage was lacking [for Zetkin] and what had nevertheless remained its counter-factual ideal was to be incorporated into the proletarian ‘moral’ marriage, namely morality. The virtue of chastity was to be reinstated among proletarian women in a pure and spiritualized, freely chosen form. This level of morality could not be achieved by the bourgeois woman, it was said, because her body represented material goods. (Ünlüdağ, 2002, p. 53) Zetkin’s Moral marriage was in fact based on the ideals of the bourgeois marriage which she so adamantly criticized. Though she distanced herself from the ‘bourgeois mentality’ rhetorically, her beliefs surrounding childbirth, chastity and abortion dutifully parroted the conception of gender that had arisen out of aristocratic ideology. She even went so far as to chastise other socialist women who argued for sexual liberation of women, arguing 25 that “free sexual morality” was contradictory to the ideal socialist marriage, which promoted unity between proletariat men and women (Ünlüdağ, 2002, p. 53). Zetkin’s moralization of marriage and The Woman Question is incorporated into her beliefs surrounding the “revolutionary potential” of proletarian women, an idea she inherited from thinkers like Bebel and Engels and then infused with her own ideology around the natural place of the woman and the inevitable revolution of gender roles that would be brought on by the all-encompassing socialist revolution. Ünlüdağ traces Zetkin’s “gender millennialism” to Nietzsche and Darwin, writing: Zetkin…reevaluated the social classes in a biological-genetic sense: she envisioned the proletariat as becoming a class of new, ethically, morally, and physically superior people. The proletarian woman would become the creator of a “physically, mentally, and morally healthy proletarian youth”. In order to raise such a race, mothers were needed who "carry, give birth, and nourish children of strong body, and raise offspring of bright, courageous spirit and strong, true hearts". (Ünlüdağ, 2002, p. 48) By extending previous understandings of gender in relation to capital into the realm of morality and biology, Zetkin’s disdain of the bourgeois feminists becomes a logical strategic move in the reforging of the human race. Such extreme degrees of bioessentialism also validates Zetkin’s distrust of proletarian women who did not believe in her approach to women’s rights, as proletarian women in her view needed to be enlightened on their role in the coming revolution, and any thoughts which existed outside of that scope were inherently products of a reactionary lumpenproletariat who “Left to their own devices, […] would develop petty bourgeois attitudes.” (Ünlüdağ, 26 2002, p. 43) Zetkin’s disagreements with the Austrians, or with other women within the SPD are not merely political for her, but also moral, as she frames their reformist initiatives as corrupted by bourgeois mentality and therefore not worthy of serious consideration. It becomes natural then, to subsume The Woman Question into the The Social Question, as the totally encompassing socialist revolution would necessitate women’s moral evolution and liberation, thereby invalidating any bourgeois reformist action. Dollard comments: Proletarian women simply could not share in the goals of the surplus women who pursued job opportunities and professional training. The organized women’s movement sought to enable bourgeois women to compete with bourgeois men, providing further evidence of the women’s movement as entwined with social class. Because the cause for women’s rights was rooted in the bourgeois capitalist epoch, it could not transcend the historical potentiality of the socialist movement. (Dollard, 2018, p. 174) Reframing the issue of the Frauenüberschuß through the lens of Nietzsche as viewed by Zetkin, collaboration between the socialists and liberals only serves to impede meaningful class radicalization that would lead to the revolution. Here, the necessity of the clean break becomes clear, as Bebel’s tepid cooperation with the bourgeois cedes too much ground to the counterrevolutionary liberal feminist cause. Once again, the cultural imaginary of the bourgeois and the yeoman farmer during July Monarchy resurfaces, interpolated for the Industrial Age as the reactionary Frauenüberschuß and to the moral proletarian factory woman. 27 It is important for me to say that it was not by any means unreasonable for Zetkin to take this approach. Zetkin, like all of humanity, was a product of her material conditions, and at the time in Germany, those conditions strongly leaned toward the very real potential of socialist revolution by means of proletarian solidarity. Marx himself argued that Germany was the most likely candidate for revolution due to its advanced industrialization (Engels and Marx, 1848, p. 36), and in addition, the SPD stood as the shining example of a vanguard party which might lead the world towards communism. It makes some sense for thinkers and activists like Zetkin to double-down on class-first politics in an attempt endow the populace with revolutionary class consciousness. She could not know that the SPD would deradicalize, that her social Darwinist ideas would feed fascism, or that agrarian economies like the USSR and China would see successful revolutions long before any industrialized nation would. In addition, unlike in Austria, where the Catholic Church proved such a powerful foe to the women’s movement that collaboration between the SPÖ and bourgeois feminists seemed like a more reasonable option, German socialists lacked a hyper-polarizing enemy which might have forced their hand into collaboration with the liberal feminists. It is also worth noting that, while many lower ranking members of the bourgeois feminist organizations were sympathetic to the socialist cause or even avid socialist themselves, those in power at these organizations (i.e. those who stood opposite to Zetkin’s position in the SPD) tended to be aristocratic, nationalist, and anti-communist, which made them obvious enemies to the socialist cause. So, to better understand Zetkin’s resentment, as well as why the liberal feminist movement met a similar end as the socialist women’s movement, it is worth looking at a 28 prominent case study of liberal feminist movements: the International Council of Women. 29 THE ORIGINS OF LIBERAL FEMINISM: POLITICAL-ECONOMIC THOUGHT FROM THE ICW The International Council of Women, or ICW, the first and most prominent attempt at building an international organization of liberal feminists, was riddled with aristocratic women at its highest levels. In addition, many of the national chapters of the ICW, to gain political prestige and power, became involved in nationalist and fascist movements across Europe, which eventually went on to dramatically set back both women’s and worker’s rights. Though the ICW purportedly represented all women, the organization’s status as a nonprofit meant that dues could not be collected in the same capacity as the socialist women’s movement which allowed for more participation from poorer party members. Naturally, a barrier of wealth was established for participation in the international council held in 1888 in Seneca Falls. Kathi Kern describes the issue thusly: “The costs of international travel threatened to limit the participation to wealthy women and, at the same time, to narrow the geographical locus to Western countries. ICW meetings were routinely held in Western Europe or the United States, a practice which placed an unfair burden of travel and expense on women from other parts of the world.” (Kern, 1995, p. 1238) The Eurocentrism as well as classism inherently imbedded within such an organization meant that working class women, women from poorer nations, as well as women of color were by and large excluded from the council, though it presented itself as a representation of all womankind. That is not to say that the ICW was entirely white and upper class. As Kern notes, representatives from India, as well as at least two African American women were present 30 at the first ICW (Kern, 1995, p. 1237). However, these individuals proved to be more of an anomaly than a genuine attempt at inclusivity from the higher-ups within the organization. Kern explains: “More often than not, however, white middle and upperclass women simply presumed an ability to ‘represent’ the racial and social diversity of women.” (Kern, 1995, p. 1237) Of course such assumptions by white wealthy women led to many blind spots in terms of the ICW’s approach to women’s liberation, simultaneously ignoring the plights of working-class women, while also inheriting many of the reactionary understandings of gender the socialist women found themselves bogged down in. Of primary concern to early ICW meetings was social purity (for example, upholding the nuclear family and outlawing prostitution) as well as equality of access, while mentions of liberation from the shackles of capitalism was largely swept under the rug. Kerns explains that “The cornerstone was equal access. Whether in the halls of elite educational institutions or on the industrial shop floors, women sought equal access to learning and wages.” (Kern, 1995, p. 1239) Rather than liberationist, such principles of equal access set forth a precedent to maintain the current class structure, only altering inter-class gender relations and not the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy at large. Moreover, the ICW was extremely concerned with morality and social purity, arguing that women’s deviation from their aristocratic definition of womanhood was a corrosive element which must be rooted out of society. Equality, in tandem with accountability, the ICW argued, is what would lead to social progress. While what the ICW defined as the correct model of womanhood varied between local and national chapters, underlying all of them was policing of women’s bodies, 31 particularly regarding sex work. Deriving from Christian ideas surrounding purity as well as Victorian theories of social Darwinism, morality became a central pillar of liberal feminist thought which extended into praxis. Kerns explains that: “Policing morality within their communities was not an abstract goal. Women reformers waged a legislative battle against state regulation of prostitution, or in their words, against state-sanctioned, ‘legalized lust.’” (Kern, 1995, p. 1241) The ICW’s legal actions had significant influence on public health policy throughout the West, as the legal precedent their case set in England regarding prostitution and contagious diseases spread throughout Europe and North America. Rather than any significant increases in public health though, most of these early attempts at reforming women’s sexual health boiled down to the assault and arrest of prostitutes (Kern, 1995). Aristocratic thought and morality went well beyond the policing of women’s bodies, however. In the case of several European chapters of the ICW, nationalist and fascist ideology that ultimately undermined any of their genuine efforts towards women’s liberation proliferated throughout the movement. Where the American, Canadian and English branches of the ICW struggled from an over-reliance on upper-class women to maintain the operation, Continental European chapters where completely dependent on the aristocracy for funding and therefore gave these aristocratic women incredible influence within the party (Cova, 2014, p. 55). Consequently, while other chapters had some Christian moral undertones, those of Western and Southern Europe were much more blatant. Historian Ann Cova explains that “The European aristocracy received a religious education, a fact that highlights the importance of religion in the militancy of these women – despite their councils constantly declaring themselves neutral on the 32 matter.” (Cova, 2014, p. 52) Religiosity within these parties lead to difficulty in passing legislation regarding issues like suffrage and birth control, both of which the Catholics strongly opposed (Cova, 2014, p. 51-52). Moreover, the aristocratic and religious stronghold within these movements made them shy away from more radical and even sometimes violent forms of organizing seen in the socialist women’s movement, or in the suffragette movements in the United States and England. Rooted in fears of being seen as too radical, or as “masculinizing women,” these councils opted for gradual liberal reform, rather than bold demands for equality. From Cova: “The councils followed a pragmatic and gradualist strategy, seeking support from politicians without concerning themselves with their political affiliation – with the goal of influencing legislation and in the knowledge that their margin for manoeuvre was limited since women did not have the right to vote.” (Cova, 2014, p. 56) Rather than a platform of universal suffrage, slow inroads were made for improving the working conditions and living standards of women. Each minor victory reinforced the council’s commitment to a gradualist, pragmatic approach which sought to find allies across the political spectrum who were willing to advance the ICW’s cause. While socialist women engaged at the ground level of the ICW, the leadership of the council’s apolitical gradualist approach remained “largely non-class oriented” due to its lack of revolutionary ambitions (Cova, 2023, p. 214). But such a gradualist liberal approach did not come without serious drawbacks, as their willingness to work with whoever would take them, in conjunction with the aristocratic and religious tendencies in their leadership, made the councils susceptible to growing nationalist and fascist movements across Europe. 33 Nowhere was this willingness to collaborate with fascists more prevalent than in Italy, where the National Council of Italian Women (CNDI—Consiglio Nazionale delle Donne Italiane) suffered from a severe degree of aristocratic reactionary sentiment at its highest levels. The first president of the CNDI, Countess Gabriella Spalletti Rasponi, who held the position from its foundation in 1903 until her death in 1931, was an aristocrat heavily involved in right-wing nationalist politics (Cova, 2023, p. 216-218). Having only recently unified, Italy, as well as other countries in Europe that emerged as modern nation-sates in the nineteenth century, fought hard to craft a national identity that would project social cohesion and strength. With no class solidarity and often outright hostility towards socialist movements, Rasponi, the CNDI, and liberal feminist movements tended towards growing nationalist, imperialist, and anti-socialist tendencies. While many socialist women’s movements where either de-radicalized or extinguished completely after the First World War, liberal feminists, and the CNDI specifically, thrived in the interwar period due to their alignment with the Italian government. As the fascists began to rise to power, council members like Raponi embraced the emerging sentiment of the “new woman” that had been birthed out of the Great War. As socialist women sought to remake the woman through class revolution, the CNDI imagined the nationalist revolution of WWI as reconstructing the Italian woman. Historian Daniela Rossini highlights the unique aspects of Italian liberal feminism, writing: Praise for the crucial contribution made by women to the war effort was similar in most countries, but Italian feminists went a step further, claiming that the war itself had transformed Italian women into potential citizens. In their view, the long 34 conflict had been a vast educational process, which had eventually elevated women to the rights and duties of citizenship. (Rossini, 2014, p. 45) By centering war and violence as the propellant of national evolution, the CNDI actively helped craft the foundational myth of Italian fascism; that the war had been a cleansing force for Italy, remaking the country into a heroic and vibrant one. Rossini explains that “The myth of the regenerating powers of war in general and of the Great War in particular was also a central theme of fascist ideology, according to which the war had been a revolutionary event, a watershed dividing the old Italy—decadent, pacifist, and corrupt—from the new Italy—young, heroic, and dedicated to the cult of the nation.” (Rossini, 2014, p. 48) The drive to actualize the new woman fueled by nationalist rhetoric led liberal feminists to supporting the ideology that would eventually become their undoing. Rossini makes it clear that fascism “was hardly likely either to promote women’s emancipation or foster a more democratic, caring, and internationally minded society.” (Rossini, 2014, p. 50) And so, as the socialist feminists were marginalized and dismantled by the men within their own political parties, the liberal feminists were dismantled in Italy by the rise of Mussolini and fascism. Cova summarizes that “the war had not brought about a feminist victory; rather, the interwar period was a time of backward flow, characterised by the popular slogan, ‘a woman’s place’.” (Cova, 2014, p. 59) By attaching themselves to the fascist myth of rebirth through war, the CNDI doomed itself to backslide, as such an inherently reactionary ideology will inevitably confine women to the role of domesticity, forcing them out of the public sphere and made only to serve the interests of men and—more importantly— the state. 35 RECEDING TO TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES: THE FALL OF BOTH LIBERAL AND SOCIALIST FEMINISM It may seem unusual that purportedly feminist women in both the socialist and bourgeois camps were so willing to abandon the goal of equality of women and fall in line with reactionary sentiment. But upon further examination there appears a degree of similitude between socialists’ worries over collapsing gender roles, the CNDI’s concerns with the moral purity of women in the New Italy, and the general distrust that many working-class people in Germany and France felt towards more hardline socialist and feminist policies. Like how many in France under Louis-Phillipe felt towards the bourgeoise, many women felt immense pressure from the rapid social changes occurring because of industrialization and the First World War. Rather than take a chance on socialist and feminist causes, many receded into traditional gender roles as a means of avoiding the social realignment that had loomed over Europe for the past two centuries. Lafleur summarizes the work of researchers Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz, writing: Women were not rejecting emancipation and clinging mindlessly to tradition. Rather, they were responding to promises of progress and equality that sounded transparent and shallow within the context of patriarchal structures and attitudes. They were reacting to the immediate effects of industrialization that put women in positions of disadvantage and weakness both in the labor force and in the home. Traditionally, the home meant status and a recognized niche that now was exchanged for unskilled labor at very low pay and uncertain status. Simply put, 36 women were affected by economic modernization and politicization in contradictory ways. (Lafleur, 1978, p. 235-236) I propose that some of the reasons behind the split in the women’s movement, especially from the point of view of socialist women working within the established political system, originates from a similar fear of change and uncertainty as experienced by German women in the interwar period. Socialism, as was imagined and later defined by the women discussed in this paper, offers a tidy solution to The Woman Question, which does not place women in the line of precarity that industrial capitalism threatened them with. Distance from the feminists also meant distance from the threat of uprooting the patriarchy in its entirety, which not only meant economic subjugation in the form of wage labor but also necessitated a total reimagining of society. The creation of the bourgeois feminist Other served not only a political goal to draw in support from proletarian women, but also an ideological goal to uphold the patriarchy and avoid the uncertainty and fear that rapidly changing gender roles of the time instilled in many women. Fear of change and the reexamination of gender roles in relation to capitalism put a stop to the socialist feminist movement. As too the fear of socialism doomed the bourgeois feminist movement, who opted to fall in line with the fascist’s “revolution” of gender, which in fact was merely a reversion to the imagined simplicity of gender roles prior to industrialization and the rise of the nation-state. Both the socialist and liberal feminist movements were constrained by the lack of desire within the social imagination to conceptualize gender beyond simply repurposing existing gender roles. Rather than an inability of either party to implement certain strategies or policy, the material conditions of the Industrial Revolution itself imposed severe limitations on 37 what sorts of constructs of gender could manifest. The socialist and bourgeois feminists emerged at a precipice in history, where inconceivable changes to every facet of society were only just beginning to take shape. Both liberal and socialist feminists, while aiming to imagine a better future for women, remained constrained by prior social conceptions of gender which upheld patriarchy and domesticity. While it is tempting to be deterministic and argue not only that the split between the two camps was inevitable, but so too was the backslide of gender equality of the interwar period, such a teleological approach is unhelpful in understanding what this event in history can tell us about our current moment of backslide. As Kuliscioff’s strong leadership in Italy and the SPÖ’s more radical feminist approach to ward off Catholic dominance show, there was likely no one adaptation that the socialist feminists could have made to bring about gender equality, as both Austria and Italy went the way of fascism in the 1930’s. Instead, a reimagined history in which the work of the socialists succeeded would have demanded that Zetkin’s goal to educate proletarian women had allowed them to see past the safety of existing gender roles and envision a post-patriarchal and post-capitalist society. So too the liberal feminists needed to see past the cultural hallucination of nationalism, aristocracy and Christian morality and understand gender not as an isolated construct but as a node in a vast network of interrelated issues including class which, cumulatively, restrained women’s freedoms and liberties. 38 CONCLUSION Gender and its relation to capitalism have radically changed since the time of Zetkin, as globalization, deindustrialization and neoliberalism have once again redefined women’s relationship to work. The past forty years of activism has shown that reformist policy is inadequate to address gender equality, as women’s rights begin to crumble under the current administration in the United States. And, given the prominence of the US in global politics, it seems unfortunately likely that our current political moment in America is a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the West. Certainly, the FDI (Fratelli d'Italia) in Italy, Reform in the UK and the AFD (Alternative für Deutschland) in Germany seem to indicate such. So, as we enter our own interwar “Weimar” moment in America and across the West, we cannot only look back on the methods of organizing that were so successful under the SPD, as the ‘gigification’ of the economy has left unionization and radicalization efforts severely neutered. To look back to the gendercapital dichotomy of the Industrial Revolution, or the domestic fantasy of post-war America, is to be trapped in the same mirage that ultimately doomed the socialists during the Industrial Revolution. In other words, regressing to a division between socialists and liberal feminists would be to fall into the same trap that those under the July Monarchy and those in socialist parties at the turn of the twentieth century fell into. Capitalism has an incredible ability to crush human’s imagination of a better future and of a more equal society, so the desire to look to the past is an easy, though ineffective method of resisting the current stage of global capitalism. While there is an endless well of knowledge to be gained from reading about and analyzing the successes and failures of past socialist and feminist movements, if we fail to imagine more radical societal transformation ourselves, 39 those in power will force their vision of society onto us, by any violent means they deem necessary. 40 REFRENCES Boxer, M, J. (1978) Socialism faces Feminism: The failure of synthesis in France, 1879-1914. In Boxer, M. J., & Quataert, J. H. (Eds.). Socialist Women: European Socialist Feminism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. (pp. 75-112) Elsevier North-Holland. Boxer, M. J. (2007). Rethinking the Socialist Construction and International Career of the Concept “Bourgeois Feminism.” Boxer, M. J., & Quataert, J. H. (1978) The Class and Sex Connection: An introduction. In Boxer, M. J., & Quataert, J. H. (Eds.). Socialist Women: European Socialist Feminism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. (pp. 112-146) Elsevier North-Holland. Cova, A. (2014) The National Councils of Women in France, Italy and Portugal: Comparisons and Entanglements, 1888-1939. In Janz, O., & Schönpflug, D. (Eds.). Gender History in a Transnational Perspective. (pp. 46-76) Berghahn Books. Cova, A. (2023). Women, religion and associativism: the aristocratic origins of the National Council of Italian Women, 1903–1908. Women’s History Review, 32(2), 209–227. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2022.2100567 Dollard, C. L. (2018). Socialism and Singleness: Clara Zetkin. In The Surplus Woman: Unmarried in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918 (pp. 164–175). Berghahn Books. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qcnrp Engels, Frederich. (1884). Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, ElecBook, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utah/detail.action?docID=3008609. 41 Engels, Friedrich., and Karl Marx. (1848) The Communist Manifesto, Lerner Publishing Group, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utah/detail.action?docID=5444456. Gaido, D., & Frencia, C. (2018). “A Clean Break”: Clara Zetkin, the Socialist Women’s Movement, and Feminism. International Critical Thought, 8(2), 277–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2017.1357486 Honeycutt, K. (1976). Clara Zetkin: A Socialist Approach to the Problem of Woman’s Oppression. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3177732 Kern, K. L. (1995). “The Cornerstone of a New Civilization”: The First International Council of Women and the Campaign for “Social Purity.” Kentucky Law Journal, 84(4), 1235– 1248. Lafleur, I. (1978) Five Socialist Women: Traditionalist conflicts and socialist visions in Austria, 1893-1934. In Boxer, M. J., & Quataert, J. H. (Eds.). Socialist Women: European Socialist Feminism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. (pp. 1951) Elsevier North-Holland. LaVigna, C. (1978) The Marxist Ambivalence Toward Women: Between socialism and feminism in the Italian Socialist Party. In Boxer, M. J., & Quataert, J. H. (Eds.). Socialist Women: European Socialist Feminism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. (pp. 146-182) Elsevier North-Holland. Maza, S. C. (2003). The myth of the French bourgeoisie: an essay on the social imaginary, 1750-1850. Harvard University Press. 42 Moon, J, S. (1978) Feminism and Socialism: The utopian synthesis of Flora Tristen. In Boxer, M. J., & Quataert, J. H. (Eds.). Socialist Women: European Socialist Feminism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. (pp. 19-51) Elsevier North-Holland. Quataert, J. H. (1978) Unequal Partners in an Uneasy Alliance: Women and the working class in imperial Germany. In Boxer, M. J., & Quataert, J. H. (Eds.). Socialist Women: European Socialist Feminism in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. (pp. 112146) Elsevier North-Holland. Rossini, D. (2014). Feminism and nationalism: The national council of Italian women, the World War, and the rise of fascism, 1911-1922. Journal of Women’s History, 26(3), 36– 58. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2014.0043 Ünlüdağ, T. (2002). Bourgeois Mentality and Socialist Ideology as Exemplified by Clara Zetkin’s Constructs of Femininity. International Review of Social History, 47(1), 33–58. https://about.jstor.org/terms Name of Candidate: Benton Krueger Date of Submission: [June 11, 2025]