This year’s International Women’s Day (or at least, the website international women’s day dot com) is sponsored by MetLife, Amazon, McDonald’s and other companies that have apparently decided that its official slogan is #BalanceforBetter. I’m not sure that’s even proper English — for better what? — but in any case, the buzzword “balance” always makes me reach for the snooze button. The socialist feminist doesn’t want “balance.” She wants to upset this whole rotten applecart of a capitalist system.

That’s always been the animating passion behind International Women’s Day. Capitalists can hashtag all they like, but International Women’s Day has radical roots. In 1909, the Socialist Party in the United States called for a National Women’s Day in honor of the 1908 garment workers’ strike, and the following year, German socialist feminist Clara Zetkin proposed the idea for International Working Women’s Day. In 1913 many left-wing parties recognized March 8 as International Working Women’s Day. But in early March 1917 it got serious: Russian women garment workers walked off their jobs and held mass protests against world war and their starvation-level conditions, demanding “Bread and Peace.” Amid these demonstrations and general mayhem, Tsar Nicholas resigned, all part of the chain of events now known as the Bolshevik Revolution, which brought the Communists into power.

What’s even more inspiring than these storied origins is that women throughout the world — especially in Latin America and Europe — are observing International Women’s Day by going on strike today.