German Marxist theorist, leader, activist, and organizer of the first International Women's Day in 1911.
TThe rising cost of living intensified by profiteering and high taxes tear the piece of dry bread from her mouth. Her earnings or those of the husband are decreasing and no skilfulness, no ability protects her from unemployment. The working day is growing longer, the burden, the torture and the danger of work is increasing. The employers, insolent and challenging under the protection of the state, are destroying the poor beginnings of legal protection for the wage-earning proletarian woman, for the children, the half-fledged sons and daughters of the producing class. The exploiting capitalist wants to hold his own on the market and demands bigger profits. Unfeelingly he tramples under foot all consideration of the fact that the woman who is continuously employed, the housewife of the factory worker, of the civil service worker, of the hand worker and the small farmer, is a wife, a mother and a person. And, under this sacred gold hunger of the individual capitalist there stands today the consciousness of the whole capitalist class that the existence of its exploiting and ruling power is at stake.
Excerpt from: The International Women's Day (February 1922)
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