Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) was one of the most significant Russian revolutionaries and feminists. Through her engagement with class struggles in the wake of the Russian Revolutions of 1917, she came to the conclusion that the working class could not be successful in realizing its program without the active participation of women or without adopting the issue of women’s rights. She spoke up for equal rights for women, free love, and an end to the bourgeois structures of marriage and family. The social scientist Gisela Notz shows how Kollontai fought for these throughout her life. In her essay contribution to the current cooperation between the HKW and HAU Hebbel am Ufer – Utopian Realities – 100 Years of Now with Alexandra Kollontai – she points to how these struggles continue today. To article in German...
The so called “refugee crisis” is not a crisis of the refugee, it’s a “crisis of society.” Starting from that simple insight Andrew Herscher connects the “housing question” (Friedrich Engels) of the 19th century to the “refugee crisis” of the 21st. The “humanity-mongers” of the 19th century addressed the working class’s housing problem rather than the underlying social problem itself. Today’s humanitarian endeavors of “digital shelter,” on the other hand, provide refugees with debit cards to seek a dwelling rather than supplying housing in the form of architectural efforts. To article...
