that thus arises are exceedingly complex. Much depends upon the outcome
of present experiments in _economic independence for women, a matter
which is in turn dependent upon the outcome of the general labor
'question.'_ Much depends upon revelations of physiological science. If
the future brings about the full economic independence of women, if
physiologists will undertake to guarantee society certain immunities
from the sexual excess of the individual,[25] if, and these are the most
important conditions of all, increases in biological, psychological and
social knowledge make parenthood a more enlightened and purposive
function than is even dreamed of at present and if _pari passu_ with
this increase of knowledge a higher standard of parental duty and a
greater capacity for parental devotion develop, then the need of sexual
restraint as we understand it _may_ disappear and different relations
between the sexes before marriage and to a certain extent within
marriage may be expected."
The Socialist materialist leaves idle speculations of this nature to the
bourgeois Utopians; he knows that a revolution in economic conditions
must precede any material changes in sexual relations, and that when
such changes take place they will take place in response to the stimuli
of the transformed economic environment, and not in accordance with any
preconceived notions of Mrs. Parsons or others.
Those, who are horrified at such proposed modifications of marriage as
Mr. George Meredith's marriages for a fixed, limited period, and Mrs.
Parsons' "trial marriages," will do well to ponder this posthumous
aphorism of the clearsighted Norse genius, Ibsen, recently published in
Berlin:
"To talk of 'men born free' is a mere phrase. There are none such.
Marriages, the relations of man and woman, have ruined the whole race
and set on all the brand of slavery."[26]
In the same case is what we may call the stage-setting of the
monogamous family, the home. The home ceases to be regarded as the
sacred and eternal Palladium of society. It, too, is destined to change,
if not to disappear. "With the transformation of the means of production
into collective property," Engels writes, "the private household changes
to a social industry. The care and education of children becomes a
public matter."[27]
This does not deny the splendid role that the Home has played in the
history of the last three centuries. Many an English and American home
to-day still merits even such an offensively pretentious epithet as
"Palladium." What morals our people have known and practised they have
learned and been drilled in in the homes. That these morals should have
been warped by a class-bias was inevitable. A home, itself the product
of a society divided into classes, could not teach anything but a
class-morality. A purely social morality (if morality be the proper name
for the highest conduct in a classless society) is even yet impossible.
But, much as we owe to the home, (I pity the reader who can recall his
or her early home life with dry eyes), the Nihilism of Socialism tells
us the day of the home is drawing to its close. So it may be as well for
us to consider for a moment the bad side of the home as we know it
to-day. It may be that when we have done so, we shall be able to
anticipate its passing with greater equanimity.
At this late day--when seventeen years have rolled by since Ibsen's "The
Doll's House" was first introduced to an English-speaking audience at
the Novelty Theatre in London--it is surely not necessary to dwell upon
the dwarfing and stifling effects upon women of even "happy" homes. In
the brilliant preface to "Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant," Bernard Shaw,
referring to middle-class home life, speaks of "the normal English way
being to sit in separate families in separate rooms in separate houses,
each person silently occupied with a book, a paper, or a game of halma,
cut off equally from the blessings of society and solitude." "The
result," he continues, "is that you may make the acquaintance of a
thousand streets of middle-class English families without coming on a
trace of any consciousness of citizenship, or any artistic cultivation
of the senses."
In the following paragraph he adds:
"In proportion as this horrible domestic institution is broken up by the
active social circulation of the upper classes in their own orbit, or
its stagnant isolation made impossible by the overcrowding of the
working classes, manners improve enormously. In the middle classes
themselves the revolt of a single clever daughter (nobody has yet done
justice to the modern clever Englishwoman's loathing of the very word
'home'), and her insistence on qualifying herself for an independent
working life, humanizes her whole family in an astonishingly short time;
and the formation of a habit of going to the suburban theatre once a
week, or to the Monday Popular Concerts, or both, very perceptibly
ameliorates its manners. But none of these breaches in the Englishman's
castle-house can be made without a cannonade of books and pianoforte
music. The books and music cannot be kept out, because they alone can
make the hideous boredom of the hearth bearable. If its victims may not
live real lives, they may at least read about imaginary ones, and
perhaps learn from them to doubt whether a class that not only submits
to home life, but actually values itself on it, is really a class worth
belonging to. For the sake of the unhappy prisoners of the home, then,
let my plays be printed as well as acted."
A concrete picture may give us a better idea of what Shaw means when he
calls women "the unhappy prisoners of the home." In that magnificent
scene in the third act of "Candida," after Morell has called on Candida
to choose between him and the poet, Marchbanks, Candida gives us a vivid
glimpse of what her home life had been, in this speech, addressed to
Marchbanks, and, in reading it, remember that Morell was "a good
husband" and that Candida loved him.
"--You know how strong he (Morell) is--how clever he is--how happy!
Ask James's mother and his three sisters what it cost to save James
the trouble of doing anything but be strong and clever and happy.
Ask me what it costs to be James's mother and three sisters and
wife and mother to his children all in one. Ask Prossy and Maria
how troublesome the house is even when we have no visitors to help
us slice the onions. Ask the tradesmen who want to worry James and
spoil his beautiful sermons who it is that puts them off. When
there is money to give, he gives it: when there is money to refuse,
I refuse it. I build a castle of comfort and indulgence and love
for him, and stand sentinel always to keep little vulgar cares out.
I make him master here, though he does not know it, and could not
tell you a moment ago how it came to be so."
This should make it easy for us to understand why so many women are
ready to sympathize with William Morris in the sentiments he expressed
in the following paragraph in "Signs of Change:"
"As to what extent it may be necessary or desirable for people under
social order to live in common, we may differ pretty much according to
our tendencies toward social life. For my part I can't see why we should
think it a hardship to eat with the people we work with; I am sure that
as to many things, such as valuable books, pictures, and splendor of
surroundings, we shall find it better to club our means together; and I
must say that often when I have been sickened by the stupidity of the
mean, idiotic rabbit warrens that rich men build for themselves in
Bayswater and elsewhere, I console myself with visions of the noble
communal hall of the future, unsparing of materials, generous in worthy
ornament, alive with the noblest thoughts of our time, and the past,
embodied in the best art which a free and manly people could produce;
such an abode of man as no private enterprise could come anywhere near
for beauty and fitness, because only collective thought and collective
life could cherish the aspirations which would give birth to its beauty,
or have the skill and leisure to carry them out. I for my part should
think it much the reverse of a hardship if I had to read my books and
meet my friends in such a place; nor do I think I am better off to live
in a vulgar stuccoed house crowded with upholstery that I despise, in
all respects degrading to the mind and enervating to the body to live
in, simply because I call it my own, or my house."
From the viewpoint of this historical materialism, the State loses its
attribute of permanence and becomes the product of definite economic
conditions--in a word, it is the child of economic inequality. "The
State," in the words of Engels, "is the result of the desire to keep
down class conflicts. But, having arisen amid these conflicts, it is as
a rule the State of the most powerful economic class that by force of
its economic supremacy becomes also the ruling political class, and thus
acquires new means of subduing and exploiting the oppressed masses. The
antique State was, therefore, the State of the slave owners for the
purpose of holding the slaves in check. The feudal State was the organ
of the nobility for the oppression of the serfs and dependent farmers.
The modern representative State is the tool of the capitalist exploiters
of wage labor."[28]
"The State, then," Engels says on another page of the same work, "did
not exist from all eternity. There have been societies without it, that
had no idea of any State or public power.[29] At a certain stage of
economic development, which was of necessity accompanied by a division
of society into classes, the State became the inevitable result of this
division. We are now rapidly approaching a stage of evolution in
production, in which the existence of classes has not only ceased to be
a necessity, but becomes a positive fetter on production. Hence, these
classes must fall as inevitably as they once arose. The State must
irrevocably fall with them. The society that is to reorganize production
on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will
transfer the machinery of the State where it will then belong--into the
Museum of Antiquities by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze
ax."[30]
In another work, he says: "The first act by virtue of which the State
really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of
society--the taking possession of the means of production in the name of
Society--this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State.
State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after
another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of
persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct
of processes of production. The State is not abolished. _It dies
out._"[31]
It is thus seen that, according to the teaching of historical
materialism, the State is destined, when it becomes the State of the
working-class, to remove its own foundation--economic inequality--and
thus, to commit suicide.
Many of those, who have witnessed with mingled consternation and
amusement the strenuous efforts of Mr. Roosevelt and the frantic zeal of
Mr. Hearst to enlarge the scope of governmental action to cover every
conceivable field of human activity from spelling to beef-canning, will
hail with delight Engels' tidings that the State is to "die out."
The thesis, that the realization of the socialist ideal involves the
atrophy of Religion, the metamorphosis of the Family, and the suicide of
the State, would now appear to be sufficiently demonstrated.
One cannot help wondering what proportion of the "educated and
professional" persons, who, Mr. Street testifies, are in growing numbers
yielding to the lure of Socialism, really desire these results. Many of
them, no doubt, are trying on a new field the old experiment of serving
God and Mammon, of putting new wine into old bottles. Ibsen's Nora,
though she had far less learning than is usual in the "educated and
professional classes" of England and America, was, in this matter, far
wiser than are they. When the falsehood and slavery of life in "The
Doll's House" became unbearable to her, she knew that she must choose
between the Old and the New; and that, if she chose the new life of
revolt and freedom, she must leave behind her all the badges of her
doll's life. Had she taken with her the trinkets and gauds that the
master of the Doll's House had given her, she would not have escaped
from the doll's life when she turned her back on the Doll's House. Her
woman's instinct did not fail her, and, when, with a woman's courage she
chose the New and left the Old, she told Torvald, "Whatever belongs to
me I shall take with me. I will have nothing from you either now or
later on."
Many of the young people of education, who have of late come into the
socialist movement, have left--temporarily, at least--the Doll's House
of conservatism; but they have brought with them many of the habits of
thought, many of the conventions of their old doll's life. Some of them,
doubtless, realizing that the Materialist Conception of History involves
the Nihilism of Socialism, and thus calls on them to abandon their
religious, metaphysical, and dualistic habits of thought, to cast aside
their conventional class morality, to cease vaporing about that
impossible monstrosity, "the Socialist State," attempt to cut the
Gordian knot by denying the Materialist Conception of History, while
clinging to their socialist ideal. They thus repeat in inverted form the
curious feat in intellectual acrobatics performed by Professor Seligman,
who believes in historical materialism, but rejects Socialism. "There
is nothing in common," he asserts, "between the economic interpretation
of history and the doctrine of socialism, except the accidental fact
that the originator of both theories happened to be the same man." And a
few pages further on he reiterates: "Socialism and 'historical
materialism' are entirely independent-conceptions."[32]
To the educated socialists, who deny or mutilate the doctrine of
historical materialism, the materialist socialist might well reply by
asserting that these educated socialists are socialists only because of
the artistic, intellectual, ethical, and spiritual changes they expect
the economic revolution of socialism to produce. The fact that they,
lovers of "the things of the spirit," are socialists proves that they
believe, albeit unconsciously, in economic determinism.
But, although this personal argument might Well be deemed sufficient, it
can readily be proven affirmatively that the whole theory of Modern
Socialism rests upon the foundation of historical materialism. This
clearly appears in the' admirable summary of the teachings of Marx that
Gabriel Deville gives in the Preface to his epitome of Marx's "Capital."
"History, Marx has shown, is nothing but the history of class
conflicts. The division of society into classes, which made its
appearance with the social life of man, rests on economic
relations--maintained by force--which enable some to succeed in
shifting on to the shoulders of others the natural necessity of
labor.
"Material interests have always been the inciting motives of the
incessant struggles of the privileged classes, either with, each
other, or against the inferior classes at whose expense they live.
Man is dominated by the material conditions of life, and these
conditions, and therefore the mode of production, have determined
and will determine human customs, ethics, and institutions--social,
economic, political, juridical, etc.
"As soon as one part of society has monopolized the means of
production, the other part, upon whom the burden of labor falls, is
obliged to add to the labor-time necessary for its own support, a
certain surplus-labor-time, for which it receives no
equivalent,--time that is devoted to supporting and enriching the
possessors of the means of production. As an extractor of unpaid
labor, which, by means of the increasing surplus-value whose source
it is, accumulates every day, more and more, in the hands of the
proprietary class the instruments of its dominion, the capitalist
regime surpasses in power all the antecedent regimes founded on
compulsory labor.
"But to-day, the economic conditions begotten by this regime,
trammelled in their natural evolution by this very regime,
inexorably tend to break the capitalist mould which can no longer
contain them, and these destroying principles are the elements of
the new society.
"The historic mission of the class at present exploited, the
proletariat, which is being organized and disciplined by the very
mechanism of capitalist production, is to complete the work of
destruction begun by the development of social antagonisms. It
must, first of all, definitively wrest from its class adversaries
the political power--the command of the force devoted by them to
preserving intact their economic monopolies and privileges.
"Once in control of the political power, it will be able, by
proceeding to the socialization of the means of production through
the expropriation of the usurpers of the fruits of others' toil, to
suppress the present contradiction between collective production
and private capitalist appropriation, and to realize the
universalization of labor, and the abolition of classes."[33]
If the "educated and professional" socialists cannot break the chain of
this logic, they find themselves, as Nora did, face to face with the
necessity of making a choice. Behind them is the old doll's house life
with its manifold conventions--once useful, but through economic
evolution outgrown and thus become false and deadly--a life, easy
enough mayhap, but wholly devoid of idealism; before them is the new
life of freedom, of revolt against outworn beliefs and conventions--a
life of great difficulty, mayhap, but a life cheered by a noble
ideal--an ideal in whose realization the socialist materialists believe
as fully, as passionately as the ancient Hebrews believed in the
fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies.
Theirs is a hard case. Without ideals they cannot, in any worthy sense,
live. The only possible ideal, that even the keen eyes of so shrewd an
observer as Mr. Street can perceive, is the ideal of Socialism. But they
cannot accept this ideal without abandoning much, I do not say that is
dear to them, but much that by habit and tradition has become part and
parcel of their intellectual being.
If they decide to go forward into the New, the old world of dolls'
houses must become a strange land to them. In the difficulties and
trials of the new life, they cannot send back for aid to the old world,
which will have become a world of strangers to them. Nora's woman's
instinct did not fail her here; when Torvald asked if he could send help
to her in case of need, her unhesitating reply was, "No, I say. I take
nothing from strangers."
Far better is the case of the workingman attracted by the socialist
ideal. The Nihilism of Socialism has no deterrent terrors for him, for,
as Karl Marx said long ago, "he has nothing to lose but his chains, and
a whole world to gain." He has long since lost all interest in religion;
the factory by enlisting his wife and children as workers has already
destroyed his home; and to him the State means nothing but the club of
the policeman, the injunction of the judge, and the rifle of the
militiaman.
But for the man of the "educated and professional classes" leaving the
doll's house is indeed a difficult task. For its performance three
things are requisite: a free and open mind, courage, and a vivid
imagination. The Russian genius, Peshkoff (Maxim Gorky), did it, and did
it with relative ease because he was a workingman _before_ he became an
educated man. For the same reason, though in a less degree, Jack London
has also done it successfully, though here and there he still lapses
into the doll's mode of thought. The sex-interest in the latter part of
"The Sea Wolf" is obviously treated from the dolls' point of view; but
it should be remembered that Mr. London necessarily expected the
majority of the purchasers of "The Sea Wolf" to be dolls. But, in spite
of this instance, we may be sure that Jack London brought but little
with him when he left the Doll's House; and I am very sure he never
sends back to have parcels forwarded to him.
When Mr. Upton Sinclair left the Doll's House, he evidently stuffed his
mental pockets with a large assortment of intellectual _lingerie_ and
millinery from the doll wardrobes. In telling us what Life means to him
in a recent magazine, he says that during a certain stress and storm
period of his life he lived in close intimacy with three friends who
"loved" him "very dearly." "Their names are Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley."
Can any one imagine William Morris writing a sentiment so perfectly
satisfying to a doll's sense of beauty? When I read these lines there
rises before me a picture of the author tastefully robed in an exquisite
dress--a doll's dress--of dotted swiss.[34]
Recently he has started a Co-operative Home Colony quite in the spirit
of the bourgeois Utopians who founded Brook Farm more than
half-a-century ago. Colony-founding, historians tell us, was a favorite
amusement of the dolls of that era.
In the "Times Magazine" (for December 1906) he tells us that "the home
has endured for ages, and through all the ages it has stayed about the
same." This belief, I am informed, is almost universal among dolls.
I find myself the prey of a growing suspicion that Mr. Sinclair from
time to time receives express parcels from the "Doll's House."
William Morris was a genius; he had a free and open mind; he had
courage; and he had a vivid imagination. When he left the Doll's House,
he took nothing with him, and he never afterward took anything "from
strangers." It was his poet's imagination that enabled him to write
"News from Nowhere," the only Utopia in whose communal halls the unwary
reader does not stumble over dolls' furniture. Morris is the perfect
type of the man of culture turned revolutionist.[35]
Mr. H. G. Wells has recently written a Utopian romance, "In the Days of
the Comet," which, although it possesses in the fullest measure Mr.
Wells' well known charm of style, is in substance at best a very feeble
echo of "News from Nowhere." One of the modes of thought specially
characteristic of eighteenth century French dolls is strongly to the
fore in Mr. Wells' treatment of war. In the conversations "after the
Change" between Melmount, the famous Cabinet Minister, and the pitiful,
cowardly, inefficient hero (?), Leadford, they both appear to be
inexpressibly shocked at the _unreasonableness_ of war. It is true it is
somewhat difficult to tell just what Melmount did think or feel, for
Melmount is in one particular like Boston's distinguished _litterateur_,
Mr. Lawson,--he appears to be constantly on the point of uttering some
great thought, but never utters it. But so far as light is given us
Melmount after the Change seems to have looked on war much as Carlyle
did long before. Every one remembers Carlyle's two groups of
peasants,[36] living hundreds of miles apart, who never heard of each
other, and had not the slightest quarrel, the one with the other, but
who none-the-less obeyed the orders of their respective kings, and
marched until they met, and at the word of command shot each other into
corpses. Most of us will agree with Carlyle and Melmount that, viewed
from the peasants' standpoint, this was unreasonable to the point of
sheer folly.