Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

78V. I. LENINtheir campaign for universal suffrage the Austrians tendedto play down the demand for equal rights of men and women;on practical grounds they placed the main emphasis onmale suffrage. Clara Zetkin and other German Social-Democratsrightly pointed out to the Austrians that they wereacting incorrectly, and that by failing to press the demandthat the vote be granted to women as well as men, theywere weakening the mass movement. The concluding wordsof the Stuttgart resolution (“the demand for universalsuffrage should be put forward simultaneously for bothmen and women”) undoubtedly relate to this episode ofexcessive “practicalism” in the history of the Austrian labourmovement.The resolution on the relations between the socialistparties and the trade unions is of especial importance tous Russians. The Stockholm R.S.D.L.P. Congress went onrecord for non-Party unions, thus endorsing the neutralitystandpoint, which has always been upheld by our non-Party democrats, Bernsteinians and Socialist-Revolutionaries.The London Congress, on the other hand, put forwarda different principle, namely, closer alignment ofthe unions with the Party, even including, under certainconditions, their recognition as Party unions. At Stuttgartin the Social-Democratic subsection of the Russian section(the socialists of each country form a separate section atinternational congresses) opinion was divided on this issue(there was no split on other issues). Plekhanov upheldthe neutrality principle. Voinov, 43 a Bolshevik, defendedthe anti-neutralist viewpoint of the London Congress andof the Belgian resolution (published in the Congress materialswith de Brouckère’s report, which will soon appearin Russian). Clara Zetkin rightly remarked in her journalDie Gleichheit 44 that Plekhanov’s arguments for neutralitywere just as lame as those of the French. And the Stuttgartresolution—as Kautsky rightly observed and as anyonewho takes the trouble to read it carefully will see—putsan end to recognition of the “neutrality” principle. Thereis not a word in it about neutrality or non-party principles.On the contrary, it definitely recognises the need for closerand stronger connections between the unions and the socialistparties.