  While Luxemburg did not make this argument directly, her defence of women’s rights was coupled with a harsh critique of the capitalist system which viewed domestic labour, i.e.  the labour traditionally performed by working women as unproductive, and in which proletarian women lacked even the basic political rights to support their calls to end economic exploitation. This is why, when Belgian social democrats agreed to an alliance with the liberal party which led them to abandon the demand to give votes to women, Luxemburg condemned the agreement in the harshest terms. She insisted that women suffrage would not only improve democratic representation in general but also “clear out the suffocating air of the current, philistine, family life that rubs itself off so unmistakably, even on our Party members, workers and leaders alike” (Luxemburg 1902 [RLR: 236]). 