The Communist Women's Movement (CWM), virtually unknown today, was the world's first truly international revolutionary organisation of women. Formed in 1920, the CWM mapped out a programme for women's emancipation; participated in struggles for women's rights; and worked to advance women's participation in the Communist movement.
The present volume, part of a series on the Communist International in Lenin's time, contains proceedings and resolutions of CWM conferences, along with reports on its work around the world. Most of the contents here are published in English for the first time, with almost half appearing for the first time in any language.
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“Through The Communist Women’s Movement [...] we witness how communist women developed a revolutionary socialist approach to reproductive rights, marriage-rights, socialisation of housework, the sexual division of labour and women’s liberation in the global South. [This book] will be of interest not just to socialist feminists, but to activists in the Palestine solidarity movement, trade unionists and those organising oppressed groups.”
—Fabian Van Onzen, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books -
“[These] records of the CWM’s first two congresses give an inspiring sense of how women overcame enormous obstacles to demand their liberation.”
—Judy Cox, Socialist Worker -
“The editors have put together the documents of what one could call a foreshortened global women’s communist movement. Foreshortened, that is, mainly because the early spirit of the Bolshevik Revolution as the spark for world revolution faded before the eyes of observers.”
—Paul Buhle, Monthly Review
Other books edited by Daria Dyakonova and Mike Taber
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The Founding of the Red Trade Union International
Edited by Mike Taber -
Reform, Revolution, and Opportunism
Edited by Mike Taber -
Under the Socialist Banner
Edited by Mike Taber -
The Communist Movement at a Crossroads
Edited by Mike Taber -
Fighting Fascism
by Clara Zetkin