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

90V. I. LENINstruggle not for full women’s suffrage but for one limitedto those possessing property. The Congress rejected thisunconditionally and declared in favour of women workerscampaigning for the franchise, not in conjunction with thebourgeois supporters of women’s rights, but in conjunctionwith the class parties of the proletariat. The Congressrecognised that in the campaign for women’s suffrage itwas necessary to uphold fully the principles of socialismand equal rights for men and women without distortingthose principles for the sake of expediency.In this connection an interesting difference of opinionarose in the Commission. The Austrians (Viktor Adler,Adelheid Popp) justified their tactics in the struggle foruniversal manhood suffrage: for the sake of winning thissuffrage, they thought it expedient in their campaign notto put the demand for women’s suffrage, too, in the foreground.The German Social-Democrats, and especially ClaraZetkin, had protested against this when the Austrians werecampaigning for universal suffrage. Zetkin declared in thepress that they should not under any circumstances haveneglected the demand for women’s suffrage, that the Austrianshad opportunistically sacrificed principle to expediency,and that they would not have narrowed the scopeof their agitation, but would have widened it and increasedthe force of the popular movement had they fought forwomen’s suffrage with the same energy. In the CommissionZetkin was supported whole-heartedly by another prominentGerman woman Social-Democrat, Zietz . Adler’s amendment,which indirectly justified the Austrian tactics, wasrejected by 12 votes to 9 (this amendment stated only thatthere should be no abatement of the struggle for a suffragethat would really extend to all citizens, instead of statingthat the struggle for the suffrage should always include thedemand for equal rights for men and women). The pointof view of the Commission and of the Congress may be mostaccurately expressed in the following words of the abovementionedZietz in her speech at the International SocialistWomen’s Conference (this Conference took place inStuttgart at the same time as the Congress):“In principle we must demand all that we consider tobe correct,” said Zietz, “and only when our strength is in