Revolutionary & Feminist Thinkers

STUDY BLOCKS: PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY

STUDY MATERIALS

CLAUDIA JONES

Claudia Jones was an Afro-Caribbean radical communist, intellectual, feminist, political leader, and journalist. She was an active member of the American Communist Party and organized in defense of the nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a train in the Scottsboro case. Jones was exiled to the UK in 1955 as a result of McCarthy-era repression. In 1958, Jones founded the West Indian Gazette (WIG), an anti-racist newspaper campaigning for social equality. WIG sought to unite West Indians in diaspora and to foster dialogue with Black internationalist freedom movements. After escalated racist violence against Black and Caribbean communities in the UK, Jones organized the first London Caribbean Carnival, known today as the Notting Hill Carnival and for the slogan "A people's art is the genesis of their freedom."

Recommended readings:

An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman! (1949 ) • GO TO LINK

Women in the Struggle for Peace and Security (1950) • GO TO LINK

NELA MARTÍNEZ

Nela  Martínez was a leader in the Ecuadorian left-wing movement, participating in the foundation and consolidation of the first trade unions and indigenous organizations. She was the director of the Communist Party of Ecuador, founder of the Ecuadorian Female Alliance, and founder of the Revolutionary Union of Women of Ecuador. In 1944, she took an active role in the Glorious May Revolution, which toppled the dictatorship of Carlos Arroyo del Río. She orchestrated the takeover of the Government Palace, and for two days, chosen by the people, she was in charge of the Ecuadorian government, thereby becoming the second female leader in its history.

Recommended Reading:

Yo siempre he sido Nela Martínez Espinosa • GO TO LINK

CLARA ZETKIN

Clara Zetkin was a leader in early socialist and feminist movements, often known as the "grandmother of German communism." Zetkin co-organized the International Socialist Women’s Congress, the Spartacist League, International Women’s Day, and opposition to World War I, fascism, and the Nazi party. In 1919, she became a founding member of the German Communist Party. Her feminist analysis was rooted in and with the exploited class; socialism was the only movement that "could truly serve the needs of working-class women. 

Recommended Reading:

Only in Conjunction With the Proletarian Woman Will Socialism Be Victorious (1896) • GO TO LINK

Report on Communist Work among Women (1922) • GO TO LINK

HELEIETH SAFFIOTI

Heleieth Saffioti was a Brazilian sociologist, professor, and feminist activist. In Brazil in the 1960s, she was one of the first to write about power, domination, and women’s conditions from a class perspective. Her research highlights and elaborates how the capitalist mode of production appropriates and reproduces inequalities faced by women, and requires us to confront the reality that capital is not blind to gender. Furthermore, she analyzed contemporary feminist movements with a Marxist approach, arguing clearly  that "petty-bourgeois feminism is not feminism at all; indeed it has helped to consolidate class society by giving camouflage to its internal contradictions. (1978)“

Recommended reading:

“The Social Position of Women,” Chapter 6 of Women in Class Society • GO TO LINK