Some fifty years after its inauguration, second-wave feminists celebrated the ‘first’ annual International (Working) Women’s Day, having casually dropped the word ‘working’ as if to efface the ceremony’s origins in the Second International. Whether intentional or not, the omission betrays longstanding tensions between, or the so-called ‘unhappy marriage’ of, feminism and Marxism. Says the feminist…
“…against this collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes; That this constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the…
“It is always somewhat perplexing and sometimes shocking to hear, from respected unionists, a lack of concern for the struggle of brothers and sisters outside their own backyards. Such failure to bear faith and allegiance to real solidarity is what lies at the heart of labor’s inability to coalesce into the force that some of…