Woman under socialism Part 34

[In the United States, the concentration of population in large cities has been marked. In 1790 only 3.4 per cent. of the total population lived in cities. The proportion of urban to the total population then grew from census year to census year (decade to decade) as follows: 4.0 in 1800; 4.9 in 1810; 4.9 in 1820; 6.7 in 1830; 8.5 in 1840; 12.5 in 1850; 16.1 in 1860; 20.9 in 1870; 22.6 in 1880; 29.2 in 1890; and 33.1 in 1900. According to the census of 1900 there live 14,208,347 of the population in cities of at least 100,000 inhabitants; 5,549,271 in cities of 25,000 to 100,000 inhabitants; 5,286,375 in cities of 8,000 to 25,000 inhabitants; 3,380,193 in cities of 4,000 to 8,000 inhabitants; and 2,214,136 in cities of 2,500 to 4,000 inhabitants. In country districts there live 45,573,846 of a total population of 76,212,168, including Alaska and Hawaii.--THE TRANSLATOR.]

[205] Prof. Adolf Wagner says in his work "Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie von Rau": "Small private holdings in land const.i.tute an economic basis, that can be subst.i.tuted by no other inst.i.tution for a most important part of the population--an independent, self-sustaining peasantry, together with its peculiar socio-political position and function." Where, for the sake of his conservative friends, the author does not enthuse _a tout prix_ for the small farmer, he is bound to regard this cla.s.s as one of the poorest. Under existing circ.u.mstances, the small farmer is downright inaccessible to higher culture: he toils at hard labor from early dawn till late, and lives often worse than a dog. Meat, b.u.t.ter, eggs, milk, which he produces, he does not enjoy: he produces them for others: under present circ.u.mstances he can not raise himself into better conditions: he thus becomes an element that clogs civilization. He who loves retrogression, seeing he finds his account therein, may also find satisfaction in the continuance of such a social stratum. Human progress demands its disappearance.

[206] At the Erfurt "Union Parliament" of 1850, Prince Bismarck thundered against the large cities as "the hot-beds of revolution," that should be razed to the ground. He was quite right: capitalist society produces its own "grave-diggers" in the modern proletariat.

[207] Frederick Engels, "The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science."

[208] ["Religion" In English is not quite the same as "Die Religion" in German. For all their etymology is identical, custom and social inst.i.tutions have imparted to the German term a meaning, or a shade of a meaning, that it lacks in English. "Die Religion" is in Germany a State inst.i.tution; it is part of the curriculum of colleges; and it is there so utterly creedy, churchianic, and dogmatic that it is a positive abomination even to the students who mean to devote themselves to theology. That, however, even in the German language the word has a varying meaning may be gathered from the epigram of Schiller: "To what religion I belong? To none. Why? Out of religiousness"--literally in German, "out of religion." The reproduction in this translation of the idea conveyed by the term "Die Religion" presented its difficulties. As none could be found in English to convey its varying sense, the word "religion" has been preserved throughout as the nearest equivalent.--THE TRANSLATOR.]

[209] Karl Marx: "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechts-Philosophie."

[210] How the ancients thought upon the subject appears from the following utterance of Aristotle: "A tyrant (the term applied to autocrats in Old Greece) must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider G.o.d-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do not easily move against him, believing that he has the G.o.ds on his side."--Aristotle's "Politics." Aristotle was born 384 B. C. at Stagira, whence he is frequently called "the Stagirite."

"A prince, then, is to have particular care that nothing falls from his mouth but what is full of the five qualities aforesaid, and that to see and to hear him, he appears all goodness, integrity, humanity and religion, which last he ought to pretend to more than ordinarily because more men do judge by the eye than by the touch; for everybody sees, but few understand; everybody sees how you appear, but few know what in reality you are, and those few dare not oppose the opinion of the mult.i.tude who have the majesty of their prince to defend them; and in the actions of all men, especially princes, where no man has power to judge, every one looks to the end. Let a prince, therefore, do what he can to preserve his life, and continue his supremacy, the means which he uses shall be thought honorable, and be commended by everybody; because the people are always taken with the appearance and event of things, and, the greatest part of the world consists of the people; those few who are wise taking place when the mult.i.tude has nothing else to rely upon."--Macchiavelli in his celebrated work, "The Prince." Macchiavelli was born in Florence, 1469.

[211] Whenever the modern bourgeois is at a loss for reasons to justify some enormity with, a thousand to one he falls back upon "morality." In the spring of 1894, it went so far that, at a meeting of the Evangelical Synod, a "liberal" member of the Berlin Chamber of the Exchequer p.r.o.nounced it "moral" that only taxpayers should have the right to vote at Church meetings (!)

[212] "A certain degree of well-being and culture is a necessary external condition for the development of the philosophic spirit....

Thence we find that people began to philosophize only in those nations, that had raised themselves to a considerable height of well-being and culture."--Tennemann, quoted by Buckle in a foot note, _ubi supra_.

"Material and intellectual interests go hand in hand. The one can not exist without the other. Between the two there is the same connection as between body and soul: to separate them is to bring on death."--v.

Thuenen's "Der Isolirte Staat."

"The best life, as well for the individual in particular, as for the State in general, is that life in which virtue is decked out with _external_ goods also, sufficient to make possible an active indulgence in beautiful and good actions."--Aristotle's "Politics."

[213] When Eugene Richter in his "Irrelehren" (False Doctrines) repeats the old wornout phrase about the Socialists aiming at a "Penitentiary State"--that the question is no longer about a "State" will have by this time become clear to our readers--he presupposes the existence of a "State" or social order _that will violate its own interests_. A new State or social order radically different from the preceding one can not possibly be produced at will; to imagine such a thing would be to ignore and deny all the laws of development, obedient to which State and Society have hitherto risen and developed. Eugen Richter and those who share his views may take comfort: if Socialism really implies the silly and unnatural aims imputed to it by them, it will go to pieces, and without the aid of the "Irrelehren" of Richter. But it happens that there is no political party that stands as squarely and logically upon the evolutionary field as the Social Democratic.

Quite as unfounded as all the other objections are the remarks of Eugene Richter: "For a social condition, such as the Socialists want, the people must be angels." As is well known, there are no angels, nor do we need any. Partly are men influenced by conditions, and partly are conditions influenced by men, and the latter will be increasingly the case in the measure that men learn to know the nature of the social system that they themselves rear, and in the measure that the experience thus gathered is consciously applied by them by corresponding changes in their social organization,--and that is Socialism. What we need is not other people, but wiser and more intelligent people than most of them are to-day. It is with the end in view of making people wiser and more intelligent that we agitate, Herr Richter, and that we publish works like this one.

[214] It is surprising that, considering the fathomless blockishness of our adversaries, none has yet claimed that in Socialist society everyone would receive an equal portion of food and an equal quant.i.ty of linen and clothing so as to "crown the work of uniformity." Such a claim is quite stupid enough to expect its being made by our opponents.

[215] Fourier made this the subject of a brilliant argument, although he ran into utopianism in the elaboration of his ideas.

[216] Condorcet demands in his plan of education: "Education must be free, equal, general, bodily, mental, industrial and political, and it must aim at real and actual equality."

Likewise Rousseau in his "Political Economy": "Above all, education must be public, equal and mixed, for the purpose of raising men and citizens."

Aristotle also demands: "Seeing the State has but one object, it must also provide one and the same education for all its members. The care hereof must be the concern of the State and not a private affair."

[217] Eugene Richter among them, in his "Irrelehren."

[218] "America's Bildungswesen," by Prof. Emil Hausknecht.

[219] "The person who has led an honorable and active life until old age should not then have to live either on the charity of his children or of bourgeois society. An independent old age, free from cares or toil, is the natural reward for continuous exertions in the days of strength and health."--v. Thuenen's "Der Isolirte Staat." But how is it to-day in this bourgeois society? Millions look with dread towards the time when, having grown old, they are thrown upon the street. And our industrial system causes people to age prematurely. The very much boasted about old-age and invalid pensions in the German Empire afford but a very scanty subst.i.tute: even its most zealous defenders admit that. Their aids are still more inadequate than the pensions which the munic.i.p.alities allow to the large majority of the officials whom they provide with pensions.

[220] [It is a feature of theology to be positive, precise and emphatic in descriptions of what the describer knows nothing about. No less theologic, in this sense of the term, are negative a.s.sertions concerning matters that science has not yet illumined. Whether "to be dead means to be ended" or not, is no part either of the general question of Socialism, or the specific question of Woman. Nevertheless, while respecting the author's private opinion in the matter, and leaving his sentence untouched, the following phrasing would seem preferable, as free from the taint of what may be called the "theologic method," and also more in keeping with the mental posture of positive knowledge: "Whether to be dead means to be ended or not, is a matter on which man awaits the fiat of Science."--THE TRANSLATOR.]

[221] [It is otherwise in the United States, where, as a rule, clergymen have to "hustle"--both to curry favor with their parishioners and to countermine the mines laid by their compet.i.tors for fatter "calls," or by their numerous unemployed "brothers of the cloth." According to the census of 1900, clergymen had the very highest death rate (23.5) among the professional occupations for the registration area,--and it was among the highest altogether. It was excelled only by the death rate of the coopers (23.8); of the millers, flour and grist, (26.6); of the sailors, pilots, fishermen and oystermen (27.7); and of the stock raisers, herders and drovers (32.1). The census also shows that the death rate of clergymen is on the increase--18.2 in 1890; now 23.5.--THE TRANSLATOR.]

[222] Herr Eugen Richter in his "Irrelehren" is also raving mad over the idea of abolishing the private kitchen. As far as we know, Herr Richter is a bachelor. Obviously he does not miss his own kitchen: to judge from the rotundity of his body, he does not fare ill. If Herr Richter were a married man and possessed a wife, who had herself to administer the kitchen department and to perform in it the needed work, instead of leaving all that to servants, as is the fashion with the women of the property cla.s.ses, then, a hundred to one his wife would nicely prove to him how happy she would be if she only could be freed from the bondage of the kitchen through the large and thoroughly equipped communal inst.i.tute for meals.

[223] Niemeyer, "Gesundheitslehre."

PART III

WOMAN IN THE FUTURE

WOMAN IN THE FUTURE.

This chapter can be condensed in few words. It only contains the conclusions that flow from what has been said, conclusions that the reader may draw for himself.

The woman of future society is socially and economically independent; she is no longer subject to even a vestige of dominion and exploitation; she is free, the peer of man, mistress of her lot. Her education is the same as that of man, with such exceptions as the difference of s.e.x and s.e.xual functions demand. Living under natural conditions, she is able to unfold and exercise her mental powers and faculties. She chooses her occupation on such field as corresponds with her wishes, inclinations and natural abilities, and she works under conditions identical with man's. Even if engaged as a practical working-woman on some field or other, at other times of the day she may be educator, teacher or nurse, at yet others she may exercise herself in art, or cultivate some branch of science, and at yet others may be filling some administrative function. She joins in studies, enjoyments or social intercourse with either her sisters or with men,--as she may please or occasion may serve.

In the choice of love, she is, like man, free and unhampered. She woos or is wooed, and closes the bond from no considerations other than her own inclinations. This bond is a private contract, celebrated without the intervention of any functionary--just as marriage was a private contract until deep in the Middle Ages. Socialism creates in this nothing new: it merely restores, at a higher level of civilization and under new social forms, that which prevailed at a more primitive social stage, and before private property began to rule society.

Under the proviso that he inflict injury upon none, the individual shall himself oversee the satisfaction of his own instincts. _The satisfaction of the s.e.xual instinct is as much a private concern as the satisfaction of any other natural instinct._ None is therefor accountable to others, and no unsolicited judge may interfere. How I shall eat, how I shall drink, how I shall sleep, how I shall clothe myself, is my private affair,--exactly so my intercourse with a person of the opposite s.e.x.

Intelligence and culture, perfect individual freedom--qualities that become normal through the education and the conditions of future society--will guard everyone against the commission of acts that will redound to his injury. Self-training and the knowledge of their own being are possessions of the men and the women of future society to a degree much above the present. The simple circ.u.mstance that all bashful prudery and affectation of secrecy regarding natural matters will have vanished is a guarantee of a more natural intercourse of the s.e.xes than that which prevails to-day. If incompatibility, disenchantment, or repulsion set in between two persons that have come together, morality commands that the unnatural, and therefore immoral, bond be dissolved.

Seeing, moreover, that all the circ.u.mstances and conditions, which until then condemned large numbers of women to celibacy and to prost.i.tution, will have vanished, man can no longer superimpose himself. On the other hand, the completely changed social conditions will have removed the numerous inconveniences that to-day affect married life, that often prevent its favorable unfolding, or that even render it wholly impossible.

The contradictions in and the unnatural features of the present position of woman are realized with ever increasing force in wide social circles.

The sentiment finds lively utterance in the literature of the Social Question as well as in works of fiction,--often, it must be confessed, in wrongful manner. That the present form of marriage corresponds ever less with its purpose, no thinking person any longer denies. Thus is seen the phenomenon of the demand for freedom in the choice of love, and for the untrammeled dissolution of the marriage bond, when necessary, made by people who refuse to draw the requisite conclusions for the change of the present social system. They believe that the freedom of s.e.xual intercourse must be a.s.serted only in behalf of the privileged cla.s.ses. In a polemic against f.a.n.n.y Lewald's efforts in behalf of the emanc.i.p.ation of woman, Mathilde Reichhardt-Stromberg expresses herself this wise:

"If you (f.a.n.n.y Lewald) claim the complete equality of woman with man in social and political life, George Sand also must be right in her struggles for emanc.i.p.ation, which aim no further than at what man has long been in undisputed possession of. Indeed, there is no reasonable ground for admitting the head and not the heart of woman to this equality, to give and to take as freely as man. On the contrary, if woman has by nature the right, and, consequently, also the duty--for we should not bury the talent bestowed upon us--of exerting her brain tissue to the utmost in the race with the intellectual t.i.tans of the opposite s.e.x, she must then have precisely the same right to preserve her equilibrium by quickening the circulation of her heart's blood in whatever way it may seem good to her. Do we not all read without the slightest moral indignation how Goethe--to begin with the greatest as an ill.u.s.tration--again and again wasted the warmth of his heart and the enthusiasm of his great soul on a different woman? Reasonable people regard this as perfectly natural by the very reason of the greatness of his soul, and the difficulty of satisfying it. Only the narrow-minded moralist stops to condemn his conduct. Why, then, deride the 'great souls' among women!... Let us suppose that the whole female s.e.x consisted of great souls like George Sand, that every woman were a Lucretia Floriani, whose children are all children of love and who brought up all these children with true motherly love and devotion, as well as with intelligence and good sense. What would become of the world? There can be no doubt that it could continue to exist and to progress, just as it does now; it might even feel exceptionally comfortable under the arrangement."[224]

Accordingly, Mathilde Reichhardt-Stromberg is of the opinion that, if every woman were a Lucretia Floriani, that is, a great soul like George Sand, who draws her own picture in Lucretia Floriani, they should be free for the "preservation of their equilibrium to quicken the circulation of their heart's blood in whatever way it may seem good to them." But why should that be the privilege of the "great souls" only, and not of the others also, who are no "great souls," and can be none?

No such difference exists to us. If a Goethe and a George Sand--to take these two from the many who have acted and are acting like them--live according to the inclinations of their hearts--and about Goethe's love affairs whole libraries are published that are devoured by his male and female admirers in wrapt ecstasy--why condemn in others that, which done by a Goethe or a George Sand, becomes the subject of ecstatic admiration?

Indeed, such freedom in the choice of love is an impossibility in bourgeois society. This fact was the objective point in our preceding array of evidence. But place the whole community under social conditions similar to those enjoyed by the material and intellectual elect, and forthwith the opportunity is there of equal rights and freedom for all.

In "Jacques," George Sand depicts a husband who judges the adulterous relations of his wife with another man in these words: "No human being can command love; and none is guilty if he feels, or goes without it.

What degrades the woman is the lie: what const.i.tutes her adultery is not the hour that she grants to her lover, but the night that she thereupon spends with her husband." Thanks to this view of the matter, Jacques feels obliged to yield the place to his rival, Borel, and he proceeds to philosophize: "Borel, in my place, would have quietly beaten his wife, and perhaps would not have blushed to receive her afterwards into his bed, debased by his blows and his kisses. There are men who cut the throat of an unfaithful wife without ceremony, after the fashion of the Orientals, because they consider her as legal property. Others fight with their rival, kill him or drive him away, and again seek the kisses of the woman they pretend to love, and who shrinks from them with horror, or resigns herself in despair. These, in cases of conjugal love, are the most common ways of acting, and I say that the love of the hogs is less vile and less gross than that of these men." Commenting on these pa.s.sages, Brandes observes: "These truths, which are considered elemental with our cultured cla.s.ses, were 'sophisms that cried to heaven' only fifty years ago." But the "property and cultured world"

dare not to this day openly avow the principles of George Sand, although, in point of fact, it lives up to them in the main. As in morality and religion, the bourgeois is a hypocrite in marriage also.

What Goethe and George Sand did, has been done and continues to be done by thousands of others, who are not to be compared with Goethe, yet without in the least losing the esteem and respect of society. All that is needed is a respectable position, the rest comes of itself. All this notwithstanding, the liberties of a Goethe and a George Sand are improper, judged from the standpoint of bourgeois morality, and stand in contradiction with the nature of its social principles. Compulsory marriage is the normal marriage of bourgeois society: it is the only "moral" union of the s.e.xes: all other s.e.xual union, by whomsoever entered into, is immoral. Bourgeois marriage--we have proved the point beyond cavil--is the result of bourgeois property relations. This marriage, which is intimately related with private property and the right of inheritance--demands "legitimate" children as heirs: it is entered into for the purpose of acquiring these: under the pressure of social conditions, it is forced even upon those who have nothing to bequeath:[225] it becomes a social law, the violation of which the State punishes by imprisoning for a term of years the men or women who live in adultery and have been divorced.

In future society there is nothing to bequeath, unless the domestic equipment and personal inventory be regarded as inheritance: the modern form of marriage is thus devoid of foundation and collapses. The question of inheritance is thereby solved, and Socialism need not concern itself about abolishing the same. No right of inheritance can arise where there is no private property.

Woman is, accordingly, free, and her children, where she has any, do not impair her freedom: they can only fill all the fuller the cup of her enjoyments and her pleasure in life. Nurses, teachers, female friends, the rising female generations--all these are ready at hand to help the mother when she needs help.

It is possible that there may be men in the future who will say with Alexander von Humboldt: "I am not built for the father of a family.

Moreover, I consider marriage a sin, and the begetting of children a crime." What of it? The power of natural instincts will restore the equilibrium. We are alarmed neither by a Humboldt's hostility to marriage nor by the philosophic pessimism of a Schopenhauer, a Mainlaender or a v. Hartmann, who raise to man the prospect of self-destruction in the "ideal State," In this matter we hold with Fr.

Ratzel, who justly says: