Woman in the Future.
This chapter may be brief. It merely contains the conclusions that
may be drawn in regard to the position of woman in future society,
from all that has been said so far; conclusions that every reader
can easily draw for himself.
In the new society woman will be entirely independent, both socially
and economically. She will not be subjected to even a trace of
domination and exploitation, but will be free and man’s equal, and
mistress of her own lot. Her education will be the same as man’s,
with the exception of those deviations that are necessitated by
the differences of sex and sexual functions. Living under normal
conditions of life, she may fully develop and employ her physical and
mental faculties. She chooses an occupation suited to her wishes,
inclinations and abilities, and works under the same conditions as
man. Engaged as a practical working woman in some field of industrial
activity, she may, during a second part of the day, be educator,
teacher or nurse, during a third she may practice a science or an art,
and during a fourth she may perform some administrative function. She
studies, works, enjoys pleasures and recreation with other women or
with men, as she may choose or as occasions may present themselves.
In the choice of love she is as free and unhampered as man. She
woos or is wooed, and enters into a union prompted by no other
considerations but her own feelings. This union is a private agreement,
without the interference of a functionary, just as marriage has been
a private agreement until far into the middle ages. Here Socialism
will create nothing new, it will merely reinstate, on a higher level
of civilization and under a different social form, ~what generally
prevailed before private property dominated society~.
Man shall dispose of his own person, provided that the gratification
of his impulses is not harmful or detrimental to others. The
satisfaction of the sexual impulse is as much the private concern of
each individual, as the satisfaction of any other natural impulse.
No one is accountable to any one else, and no third person has a
right to interfere. What I eat and drink, how I sleep and dress is
my private affair, and my private affair also is my intercourse with
a person of the opposite sex. Intelligence and culture, personal
independence,--qualities that will become natural, owing to the
education and conditions prevailing in the new society,--will prevent
persons from committing actions that will prove detrimental to
themselves. Men and women of future society will possess far more
self-control and a better knowledge of their own natures, than men
and women of to-day. The one fact alone, that the foolish prudery
and secrecy connected with sexual matters will disappear, will make
the relation of the sexes a far more natural and healthful one. If
between a man and woman who have entered into a union, incompatibility,
disappointment or revulsion should appear, morality commands a
dissolution of the union which has become unnatural, and therefore
immoral. As all those circumstances will have vanished that have
so far compelled a great many women either to chose celibacy or
prostitution, men can no longer dominate over women. On the other
hand, the completely changed social conditions will have removed
the many hindrances and harmful influences that affect married life
to-day and frequently prevent its full development or make it quite
impossible.
The impediments, contradictions and unnatural features in the present
position of woman are being recognized by ever wider circles, and
find expression in our modern literature on social questions, as
well as in modern fiction; only the form in which it is expressed
sometimes fails to answer the purpose. That present day marriage
is not suited to its purpose, is no longer denied by any thinking
person. So it is not surprising that even such persons favor a free
choice of love and a free dissolution of the marriage relation, who
are not inclined to draw the resulting conclusions that point to a
change of the entire social system. They believe that freedom in
sexual intercourse is justifiable among members of the privileged
classes only. In a controversy,[271] in which she opposes the
emancipation of women as set forth by the writer, Fanny Lewald,
Matilde Reichhardt-Stromberg says the following:
“If you (F. L.), demand complete equality for women in social and
political life, ~George Sand~ must also be justified in her struggles
for emancipation, that strove for nothing else but to possess what
has long since been man’s undisputed possession. ~For no good reason
is to be found why only woman’s head, and not also her heart, shall
participate in this equality, why she shall not give and take as
freely as man.~ On the contrary: if nature gives woman the right,
and thereby also the duty,--for we shall not bury a talent bestowed
upon us,--to exert her brain to the utmost in competition with the
intellectual Titans of the opposite sex, it must also give her the
right ~to preserve her equilibrium, just as they do, by quickening
the circulation of her heart in whatever manner she may see fit~.
We all read without being shocked in the least how, for instance,
~Goethe~,--to choose the greatest as an example,--again and again
wasted the warmth of his heart and the enthusiasm of his great soul
upon some other woman. Intelligent people consider this perfectly
natural, and only narrow-minded moralists condemn it. Why, then, deride
the “great souls” among women? Let us assume that the entire female
sex consisted of great souls like George Sand; let us assume that
every woman were a Lucretia Florini, whose children are all children
of love, but who brings up these children with true motherly love and
devotion, as well as in a rational and intelligent manner. How would
the world fare? ~There is no doubt that the world could continue
to exist and develop as to-day, and might even fare exceptionally
well.~”
But why should only “great souls” lay claim to this right, and not
also the others who are no great souls? If a Goethe and a George
Sand,--to select only these two from among the many who have done
and are doing likewise,--could follow the inclinations of their
hearts, if on Goethe’s love affairs, especially, entire libraries
are published that are devoured in a sort of reverend ecstacy by his
admirers, why should we condemn in others what becomes an object of
admiration in the case of a Goethe, or a George Sand?
Of course, it is impossible to assert the free choice of love in
bourgeois society, as we have shown by our entire line of argument,
but if the community were placed under similar social conditions
as are enjoyed to-day only by the few who are materially and
intellectually favored, all would have the possibility of a similar
freedom. In “Jacques,” George Sand depicts a husband who judges
the illicit relation of his wife with another man in the following
manner: “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
constitutes the adultery is not the hour she grants to her lover,
but the night that she thereupon spends with her husband.” As a
result of this conception, Jacques feels it to be his duty to make
way for his rival (Borel), and philosophizes accordingly: “Borel,
in my place, would have calmly beaten his wife, and would not have
blushed to receive her into his arms afterwards, degraded by his
blows and his kisses. There are men who would not hesitate, according
to oriental custom, to kill their faithless wife, because they
regard her as their lawful property. Others fight a duel with their
rival, kill or remove him, and then beg the woman, whom they claim
to love, for kisses or caresses, while she either withdraws full of
horror or yields in despair. These, in cases of conjugal love, are
the most common ways of acting, and it seems to me that the love of
hogs is less vile and debasing, than the love of such men.” To these
sentences, Brandes observes:[272] “These truths, that are elemental
ones to ~educated~ persons to-day, were atrocious sophisms fifty
years ago.” But the propertied and cultured classes do not venture
even to-day, openly to avow the principles of George Sand, altho
they actually live in accordance with them. They are hypocrites in
marriage, as they are hypocrites in morals and religion.
What was done by Goethe and George Sand, is being done by thousands
of others to-day, who cannot bear comparison with Goethe or Sand,
without suffering a loss of social esteem. Everything can be done
if people hold a respected position. Nevertheless the liberties
of a Goethe and a George Sand are immoral from the standpoint of
bourgeois morality, for they are in opposition to the moral laws
laid down by society, and are in contradiction to the nature of
our social system. Compulsory marriage is the normal marriage to
bourgeois society. It is the only “moral” union of the sexes; any
other sexual union is “immoral.” Bourgeois marriage is,--this we
have irrefutably proved,--the result of bourgeois relations. Closely
connected with private property and the right of inheritance, it
is contracted to obtain “legitimate” children. Under the pressure
of social conditions it is forced also upon those who have nothing
to bequeath. It becomes a social law, the violation of which is
punished by the state, by imprisonment of the men or women who have
committed adultery and have become divorced.
But in Socialistic society there will be nothing to bequeath, unless
house furnishings and personal belongings should be regarded as
hereditary portions; so the modern form of marriage becomes untenable
from this point of view also. This also settles the question of
inheritance, which Socialism will not need to abolish. Where there
is no private property, there can be no right of inheritance. So
woman will be ~free~, and the children she may have will not impair
her freedom, they will only increase her pleasure in life. Nurses,
teachers, women friends, the rising female generation, all these
will stand by her when she is in need of assistance.
It is possible that there will be some men, even in the future, who
will say, like A. Humboldt: “I am not built to become the father
of a family. Moreover, I consider marriage a sin, the begetting of
children a crime.” What does it matter? The force of the natural
impulse will establish the equilibrium with others. We are not alarmed
either by Humboldt’s hostility to marriage, or by the philosophic
pessimism of Schopenhauer, Mainlander or v. Hartmann, who hold out
to man the prospect of self-destruction in the “ideal state.” We
are fully agreed with Dr. Ratzel, who writes on this subject:
~Man should no longer regard himself an exception to natural laws.
He should finally strive to recognize the laws underlying his own
thoughts and actions, and should endeavor to live in accordance with
these laws. He will eventually learn to arrange his life with his
fellow-beings, that is, the family and the state, not according to
the precepts laid down in centuries gone by, but according to the
rational principles derived from an understanding of nature. Politics,
morals, laws, that are at present drawn from various sources, will
be shaped according to natural laws. An existence worthy of human
beings, that mankind has been dreaming of for thousands of years,
will become a reality at last.~[273]
This time is rapidly approaching. For thousands of years human
society has passed thru all phases of development, only to return to
its starting point: communistic property and complete liberty and
fraternity; but no longer only for the members of the gens, ~but for
all human beings~. That is what the great progress consists of. What
bourgeois society has striven for in vain, in what it failed and was
bound to fail,--to establish liberty, equality and fraternity for
all,--will be realized by Socialism. Bourgeois society could merely
advance the theory, but here, as in many other things, practice was
contrary to the theories. Socialism will unite theory and practice.
But as mankind returns to the starting point of its development,
it will do so on an infinitely higher level of civilization. If
primitive society had common ownership in the gens and the clan,
it was but in a coarse form and an undeveloped stage. The course
of development that man has since undergone, has reduced common
property to small and insignificant remnants, has shattered the gens
and has finally atomized society; but in its various phases it has
also greatly heightened the productive forces of society and the
extensiveness of its demands; it has transformed the gentes and the
tribes into nations, and has thereby again created a condition that
is in glaring contradiction to the requirements of society. It is the
task of the future to remove this contradiction by re-establishing
the common ownership of property and the means of production on the
broadest basis.
Society takes back what it has at one time possessed and has itself
created, but it enables all to live in accordance with the newly
created conditions of life on ~the highest level of civilization~. In
other words, ~it grants to all what under more primitive conditions
has been the privilege of single individuals or classes~. Now ~woman~,
too, is restored to the active position maintained by her in primitive
society; only she no longer is mistress, but man’s equal.
“The end of the development of the state resembles the beginnings
of human existence. Primitive equality is reinstated. The maternal
material existence opens and closes the cycle of human affairs.”
Thus Backofen, in his book on The Matriarchate; and Morgan says:
“Since the advent of civilization, the increase of wealth has been
so enormous, its forms so varied, its application so extensive, ~and
its administration so skillful in the interest of the owners, that
this wealth has become an invincible power against the people~.
The human mind is helpless and bewildered in the face of its own
creation. And yet the time will come, when human intelligence will
be sufficiently strong to master wealth, when it will determine both
the relation of the state to the property that it protects, and the
limit of the rights of individual owners. The ~interests of society
are absolutely paramount to individual interests, and both must be
placed into a just and harmonious relation~. Pursuit of wealth is
not the ultimate aim of man, if progress is to remain the law of
the future as it has been the law of the past. The time that has
elapsed since the advent of civilization is only a small fraction of
the past existence of humanity; it is only a small fraction of its
coming existence. ~We are threatened by the dissolution of society as
the termination of a historic career, whose sole aim is wealth; for
a career of this sort contains the elements of its own destruction.
Democracy in administration, fraternity in social relations, general
education,--these will initiate the next, higher stage of society,
toward which experience, reason and science are constantly leading
us. It will be a resurrection, only in a higher form, of the liberty,
equality and fraternity of the old gens.~”[274]
So men, proceeding from the most varied standpoints, arrive at the
same conclusions, as a result of their scientific investigations.
The complete emancipation of woman, and her establishment of equal
rights with man is one of the aims of our cultured development, whose
realization no power on earth can prevent. But it can be accomplished
only by means of a transformation that will abolish the rule of man
over man, including the rule of the capitalist over the laborer.
Then only can humanity attain its fullest development. The “golden
age” of which men have been dreaming, and for which they have been
yearning for thousands of years, will come at last. ~Class rule will
forever be at an end, and with it the rule of man over woman.~
[271] “Rights of Women and Duties of Women.” A Reply to Fanny Lewald’s
Epistles: “For and against Women.”
[272] George Brandes: The literature of the Nineteenth Century.
Leipsic, 1883.
[273] Quoted by Ernst Haeckel in his “Natural Story of Creation.”
[274] Morgan: Ancient History.