Kitabı oku: «Woman under socialism», sayfa 20

In England, the struggle, for woman's political rights has a regular history behind it. According to the old custom of the Middle Ages, women, seized of landed property, were also vested with the suffrage, and, as such also filled judicial functions. In the course of time they lost these rights. In the bill for Parliamentary Reform in 1832, the word "person" was used, a term that, according to English conceptions, includes the members of both sexes, men and women. This notwithstanding, the law was interpreted adversely to women and they were turned back wherever they made the effort to vote. In the electoral reform Act of 1867, the word "man" was substituted for the word "person." John Stuart Mill moved the re-insertion of "person" in place of "man," with the express purpose that women shall be vested with the suffrage under the same conditions as men. The motion was defeated by 196 votes against 83. Sixteen years later, 1883, the attempt was again made in the Lower House to grant women the suffrage. A motion to that effect was defeated by a majority of 16. A further attempt in 1884 was defeated in a fuller House by more than 136 votes. But the minority did not evacuate the field. In 1886 it succeeded in carrying to a second reading a motion to grant women the suffrage; but the dissolution of Parliament prevented a final vote being taken. Again, on April 27, 1892, the Lower House defeated with 175 votes against 152, the second reading of a motion on the subject presented by Sir A. Rollit, and which provided as follows:

"Every woman who in Great Britain is registered or entitled to be registered as an elector for a Town Council or County Council or who in Ireland is a rate payer entitled to vote in the election of Guardians of the Poor, shall be entitled to be registered as a Parliamentary elector, and when registered, to vote at any Parliamentary election for the county, borough, or division wherein the qualifying property is situate."

On November 29, 1888, Lord Salisbury held a speech in Edinburgh, in the course of which he said: "I earnestly hope that the day is not far distant when women also will bear their share in voting for members in the political world and in the determining the policy of the country." And Alfred Russell Wallace, celebrated as a naturalist and follower of Darwin, expressed himself upon the same question this wise: "When men and women shall have freedom to follow their best impulses, when both shall receive the best possible education, when no false restraints shall be imposed upon any human being by the reason of the accident of sex, and when public opinion shall be regulated by the wisest and best and shall be systematically impressed upon youth, then shall we find that a system of human selection will arise that is bound to have a reformed humanity for its result. So long as woman is compelled to regard marriage as a means by which to escape poverty and avoid neglect, she is and remains at a disadvantage with man. Hence, the first step in the emancipation of woman is the removal of all restraints that prevent her from competing with man on all the fields of industry and in all pursuits. But we must go further, and allow woman the exercise of her political rights. Many of the restraints, under which woman has suffered until now, would have been spared to her, had she had direct representation in Parliament."

In most sections of England, married women have the same political rights as men in the elections for the School Boards and Guardians of the Poor, and in many places are themselves qualified for election. At the county elections, unmarried women have the right to vote under the same restrictions as men, but are not themselves qualified for election. Likewise did all independent tax-paying women obtain the right to vote by the Reform Act of 1869, but are not qualified for election. Married women are in virtue of a court decision, rendered in 1872, excluded from the suffrage, because in English law woman loses her independence by marriage– a decided encouragement for women to keep away from the legal formality of legitimate marriage. Seeing that also in other respects unmarried or divorced women in England and Scotland are clothed with rights denied to married women, the temptation is not slight for women to renounce legitimate unions. It is not exactly the part of wisdom for the male representatives of bourgeois society to degrade bourgeois marriage into a sort of slave status for woman.¹⁵⁶

In Austria, women who are landed proprietors, or conduct a business, to which the suffrage is attached, have the right to exercise the privilege by attorney. This holds both for local and Reichstag elections. If the woman is proprietor of a mercantile or industrial establishment, which gives the right to vote for the Chamber of Commerce, her franchise must be exercised by a business manager. In France, on the contrary, a woman who conducts a business, has a right to vote at the election of members for the tribunals of commerce, but she cannot herself be elected. According to the law of 1891 of the old Prussian provinces, women have the suffrage, if the landed property that belongs to them conveys the right to vote, nevertheless they must exercise the privilege through a male representative, neither are they eligible themselves. Likewise according to the laws of Hanover, Brunswick, Schleswig-Holstein, Sachsen-Weimar, Hamburg and Luebeck. In Saxony, the law allows women the suffrage if they are landed proprietors and are unmarried. If married, the woman's vote goes to her husband. In all these cases, accordingly, the right of suffrage does not attach to persons but to property – quite a light upon existing political and legal morality: Man, thou art zero if moneyless or propertyless; knowledge, intellect are secondary matters. Property decides.

We see that the principle of denying woman the suffrage on the theory of her not being "of age" is broken through in fact; and yet objection is raised to granting her the right in full. It is said that to grant woman the suffrage is dangerous because she yields easily to religious prejudices, and is conservative. She is both only because she is ignorant. Let her be educated and taught where her interests lie. For the rest, the influence of religion on elections is exaggerated. Ultramontane agitation has hitherto been so successful in Germany only because it knew how to join social with religious interests. The ultramontane chaplains long vied with the Socialists in uncovering the social foulness. Hence their influence with the masses. With the close of the Kulturkampf, the influence of the Catholic clergymen upon the masses waned. The clergy is forced to discontinue its opposition to the Government; simultaneously therewith, the rising class struggle compels it to consider the Catholic capitalist class and Catholic nobility; it will, accordingly, be compelled to observe greater caution on the social field. Thus the clergy will forfeit its influence with the workingmen, especially at such critical junctures when considerations for the Government and the ruling classes drive it to approve of, or tolerate actions and laws directed against the interests of the working class. The same causes will, in the end, have their influence upon woman. When at public meetings, through newspapers and from personal observation she will have learned where her own interest lies, woman will emancipate herself from the clergy, the same as man has done. The fiercest opponent of female suffrage is the clergy, and it knows the reason why. Its rule and its domains are endangered.

That the movement for the political rights of woman has not been promptly crowned with greater success is no reason to withhold the ballot from her. What would the workingmen say if the Liberals proposed abolishing manhood suffrage – and the same is very inconvenient to them – on the ground that it benefits the Socialists in particular? A good law does not become bad by reason of him who wields it not yet having learned its right use.

Naturally, the right to be elected should go together with the right to elect. "A woman in the tribune of the Reichstag, that would be a spectacle!" we hear people exclaim. Our generation has grown accustomed to the sight of women in the speaker's tribune at their conventions and meetings; in the United States, also in the pulpit and the jury box – why not, then, also in the tribune of the Reichstag? The first woman elected to the Reichstag, would surely know how to impose respect. When the first workingmen entered the Reichstag it was also believed they could be laughed down, and it was claimed that the working class would soon realize the foolishness it had committed in electing such people. Its representatives, however, knew how to make themselves quickly respected; the fear to-day is lest there be too many of them. Frivolous witlings put in: "Just imagine a pregnant woman in the tribune of the Reichstag; how utterly unesthetic!" The identical gentlemen find it, however, quite in order that pregnant women work at the most unesthetic trades, at trades in which female dignity, health and decency are undermined. In the eyes of a Socialist, that man is a wretch who can crack jokes over a woman with child. The mere thought that his own mother once looked like that before she brought him into the world, should cause his cheeks to burn with shame; the thought that he, rude jester, expects from a similar condition on the part of his wife the fulfillment of his dearest wishes should cause him, furthermore, to hold his tongue in shame.

A woman who gives birth to children renders, at least, the same service to the commonwealth as the man who defends his country and his hearth with his life against a foe in search of conquests. Moreover, the life of a woman trembles in the scales at child-birth. All our mothers have looked death in the face at our births, and many succumbed. The number of women who die as a result of child-birth, or who as a consequence pine away in sickness, is greater than that of the men who fall on the field of battle, or are wounded. In Prussia, between 1816-1876, not less than 321,791 women fell a prey to child-birth fever – a yearly average of 5,363. This is by far a larger figure than that of the Prussians, who, during the same period, were killed in war or died of their wounds. Nor must, at the contemplation of this enormous number of women who died of child-birth fever, the still larger number of those be lost sight of, who, as a consequence of child-birth, are permanently crippled in health, and die prematurely.¹⁵⁷ These are additional reasons for woman's equal rights with man – reasons to be held up especially to those, who play man's duty to defend the Fatherland as a decisive circumstance, entitling them to superior consideration to women. For the rest, in virtue of our military institutions, most men do not even fill this duty: to the majority of them it exists upon paper only.

All these superficial objections to the public activity of woman would be unimaginable were the relations of the two sexes a natural one, and were there not an antagonism, artificially raised side by side with the relation of master and servant between the two. From early youth the two are separated in social intercourse and education. Above all, it is the antagonism, for which Christianity is responsible, that keeps the sexes steadily apart and the one in ignorance about the other, and that hinders free social intercourse, mutual confidence, a mutual supplementing of traits of character.

One of the first and most important tasks of a rationally organized society must be to end this unhallowed split, and to reinstate Nature in its rights. The violence done to Nature starts at school: First, the separation of the sexes; next, mistaken, or no instruction whatever, in matters that concern the human being as a sexual entity. True enough, natural history is taught in every tolerably good school. The child learns that birds lay eggs and hatch them out: he also learns when the mating season begins: that males and females are needed: that both jointly assume the building of the nests, the hatching and the care of the young. He also learns that mammals bring forth live young: he learns about the rutting season and about the fights of the males for the females during the same: he learns the usual number of young, perhaps also the period of pregnancy. But on the subject of the origin and development of his own stock he remains in the dark; that is veiled in mystery. When, thereupon, the child seeks to satisfy his natural curiosity with questions addressed to his parents, to his mother in particular – he seldom ventures with them to his teacher – he is saddled with the silliest stories that cannot satisfy him, and that are all the more injurious when he some day does ascertain the truth. There are probably few children who have not made the discovery by the twelfth year of their age. In all small towns, in the country especially, children observe from earliest years the mating of birds, the copulation of domestic animals; they see this in closest proximity, in the yard, on the street, and when the cattle are turned loose. They see that the conditions under which the heat of the cattle is gratified, as well as the act of birth of the several domestic animals are made the subject of serious, thorough and undisguised discussion on the part of their parents, elder brothers and servants. All that awakens doubts in the child's mind on the accounts given him of his own entry into life. Finally the day of knowledge does come; but it comes in a way other than it would have come under a natural and rational education. The secret that the child discovers leads to estrangement between child and parents, particularly between child and mother. The reverse is obtained of that which was aimed at in folly and shortsightedness. He who recalls his own youth and that of his young companions knows what the results frequently are.

An American woman says, among other things in a work written by her, that wishing to answer the repeated questions of her eight-year-old son on his origin, and unwilling to saddle him with nursery tales, she disclosed the truth to him. The child listened to her with great attention, and, from the day that he learned what cares and pains he had caused his mother, he clung to her with a tenderness and reverence not noticed in him before, and showed the same reverence toward other women also.¹⁵⁸ The authoress proceeds from the correct premises that only by means of a natural education can any real improvement – more respect and self-control on the part of the male toward the female sex – be expected. He who reasons free from prejudice will arrive at no other conclusion.

Whatever be the point of departure in the critique of our social conditions, the conclusion is ever the same – their radical transformation; thereby a radical transformation in the position of the sexes is inevitable. Woman, in order to arrive all the quicker at the goal, must look for allies whom, in the very nature of things, the movement of the working class steers in her direction. Since long has the class-conscious proletariat begun the storming of the fortress, the Class-State, which also upholds the present domination of one sex by the other. That fortress must be surrounded on all sides with trenches, and assailed to the point of surrender with artillery of all calibre. The besieging army finds its officers and munitions on all sides. Social and natural science, jointly with historical research, pedagogy, hygiene and statistics are advancing from all directions, and furnish ammunition and weapons to the movement. Nor does philosophy lag behind. In Mainlaender's "The Philosophy of Redemption,"¹⁵⁹ it announces the near-at-hand realization of the "Ideal State."

The ultimate conquest of the Class-State and its transformation is rendered all the easier to us through the divisions in the ranks of its defenders, who, despite the oneness of their interests against the common enemy, are perpetually at war with one another in the strife for plunder. Further aid comes to us from the daily-growing mutiny in the ranks of the enemies, whose forces to a great extent are bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh – elements that, out of misunderstanding and misled, have hitherto fought against us and thus against themselves, but are gradually becoming clearsighted, and pass over to us. Finally we are aided by the desertion of the honorable elements from the ranks of the hitherto hostile men of thought, who have perceived the truth, and whose higher knowledge spurs them to leap their low class interests, and, following their ideal aspirations after justice, join the masses that are thirsting for freedom.

Many do not yet realize the stage of dissolution that State and Society are in. Hence, and although the dark blotches have been frequently pointed out in the preceding chapters, a separate treatment of the subject is requisite.

CHAPTER VI.
THE STATE AND SOCIETY

During the last few decades and in all countries of civilization, the economic life of society has assumed an uncommonly rapid pace of development, a development that every progress on any field of human activity adds swing to. Our social relations have thereby been thrown into a state of unrest, fermentation and dissolution never known before. The ruling classes no longer feel the ground safe under them, nor do existing institutions any longer possess the firmness requisite to breast the storm, that is approaching from all sides. A feeling of uneasiness, of insecurity and of dissatisfaction has seized upon all circles, high and low. The paroxysmal efforts put forth by the ruling classes to end this unbearable state of things by means of tinkering at the body social prove themselves vain and inadequate. The general sense of increasing insecurity, that comes from these failures, increases their uneasiness and discomfort. Hardly have they inserted a beam in the shape of some law into the rickety structure, than they discover ten other places where shoring is still more urgent. All along they are at perpetual strife among themselves and deeply rent by differences of opinion. What one set deems necessary, in order somewhat to calm and reconcile the increasingly discontented masses, the other considers as going too far, and unpardonable weakness and pliancy, only calculated to prick the longing after greater concessions. Striking evidences thereof are the debates in the 1894-5 sessions of the Reichstag, both on the floor of the house and in committee, on the so-called "revolutionary bill," as well as numerous other discussions in all parliaments. Within the ruling classes themselves there exist unbridgeable contrasts, and they sharpen the social conflicts.

Governments – and not in Germany alone – are shaking like reeds in the wind. They must lean on something: without support they cannot exist: they now lean on this side, then on that. In no progressive country of Europe is there a Government with a lasting parliamentary majority, on which it can count with safety. Majorities are breaking up and dissolving; and the ever changing course, in Germany, especially, undermines the last vestige of confidence that the ruling class had in themselves. To-day one set is anvil, the other the hammer; to-morrow it is the other way. The one tears down what the other painfully builds up. The confusion is ever greater; the discontent ever more lasting; the causes of friction multiply and consume in a few months more energies than years did formerly. Along with all that, material sacrifices, called for by manifold taxes, swell beyond all measure.

In the midst of all this, our sapient statesmen are lulling themselves in wondrous illusions. With an eye to sparing property and the rich, forms of taxation are selected that smite the needy classes heaviest, and they are decreed with the belief that, seeing a large portion of the masses have not yet discovered their real nature, neither will they be felt. This is an error. The masses to-day understand fully the nature of indirect imports and taxes upon the necessaries of life. Their growing political education and perspicuity disclose to them the gross injustice of the same; and they are all the more sensitive to these burdens by reason of the wretchedness of their economic conditions, especially where families are large. The rise of prices in the necessaries of life – due to indirect imposts, or to causes that bring on similar results, such as the premiums on brandy and sugar that, to the amount of dozens of millions, a part of the ruling class pockets yearly at the expense of the poor of the kingdom, and that it seeks to raise still higher – are realized to be a gross injustice, a heavy burden, measures that stand in odd contradiction with the nature of the so-called Christian State, the State of Social Reform. These measures extinguish the last spark of faith in the sense of justice of the ruling classes, to a degree that is serious to these. It changes nothing in the final effect of these measures that the draining is done in pennies. The increase in the expenditure is there, and is finally sensible to the feeling and the sight of all. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions cannot be squeezed out of practically empty pockets, without the owners of the pockets becoming aware of the lifting. The strong pressure of direct taxation, directs the dissatisfaction among the poor against the State; the still stronger indirect taxation, directs the discontent against society also, the evil being felt to be of a social as well as political character. In that there is progress. Him whom the gods would destroy, they first make blind.

In the endeavor to do justice to the most opposed interests, laws are heaped upon laws; but no old one is thoroughly repealed, nor new one thoroughly enforced. Everything is done by halves, giving satisfaction in no direction. The requirements of civilization that spring from the life of the people, demand some attention, unless everything is to be risked; even the fractional way they are attended to, demands considerable sacrifice, all the more seeing that our public institutions are overrun by parasites. At the same time, not only are all the unproductive institutions, wholly at variance with the trend of civilization, continued in force, but, due to the existing conflicts of interests, they are rather enlarged, and thus they become all the more burdensome and oppressive in the measure that increasing popular intelligence ever more loudly pronounces them superfluous. Police, armies, courts of law, prisons, the whole administrative apparatus – all are enlarged ever more, and become ever more expensive. And yet neither external nor internal security is obtained. The reverse follows.

A wholly unnatural state of things has gradually arisen in the international relations of the several nations. The relations between nation and nation multiply in the measure that the production of goods increases; that, thanks to improved transportation, the exchange of this mass of merchandise is facilitated; and that the economic and scientific achievements of each become the public possession of all. Treaties of commerce are concluded; expensive routes of traffic – Suez Canals, St. Gotthard Tunnels – are opened with international funds. Individual countries support with heavy subsidies steamship lines that help to promote intercourse between several nations. The Postal Union – a step of first rank in civilization – is established; international conventions are convoked for all imaginable practical and scientific purposes; the literary products of genius of any nation are spread abroad by translations into the leading languages. Thus the tendency is ever more strongly marked toward the internationalizing, the fraternizing of all peoples. Nevertheless, the political, the military state of the nations of Europe stands in strange contrast to this general development. The hatred of nation against nation, Chauvinism, is artificially nourished by all. The ruling classes seek everywhere to keep green the belief that it is the peoples who are hostilely inclined toward one another, and only wait for the moment when one of them may fall upon another and destroy it. The competitive struggle between the capitalists of several countries, together with their jealousy of one another, assume upon the international field the character of a struggle between the capitalists of one country against those of another, and, backed by the political blindness of the large masses, it conjures into existence a contest of military armaments such as the world has never seen before. This contest has brought forth armies of magnitudes that never were known; it produced implements of murder and destruction for land and naval warfare of such perfection as is possible only in an age of such advanced technique as ours. The contest drives these antagonisms to a head, it incites a development of means of destruction that finally destroy themselves. The support of the armies and navies demand sacrifices that yearly become larger, and that finally ruin the richest nation. Germany, for instance, had, according to the imperial budget of 1894-95, a regular army and navy outlay of nearly 700 million marks – inclusive of pensions and of interest on the national debt, which amounts in round figures to two milliards, incurred mainly for purposes of war. Under these war expenses, the appropriations for educational and other purposes of culture suffer severely; the most pressing needs in this direction are neglected; and that side of the State, devoted to so-called external defence, acquires a preponderance that undermines the original purpose of the State itself. The increasing armies absorb the healthiest and most vigorous portion of the nation; for their improvement all mental and physical forces are enlisted in a way as if education in mass-murder were the highest mission of our times. Furthermore, implements of war as of murder are continuously improved: they have attained – in point of swiftness, range and power – a perfection that renders them fearful to friend and foe. If some day this tremendous apparatus is set in operation – when the hostile forces of Europe will take the field with twelve or fourteen million men – the fact will appear that it has become uncontrollable. There is no general who could command such masses; there is no field vast enough to collect and set them up; no administrative apparatus that could nourish them for any length of time. If battles are delivered, hospitals would be lacking to shelter the wounded: the interment of the numerous dead would be an impossibility.

When to all this is added the frightful disturbances and devastations, produced to-day by a European war on the economic-field, there is no exaggeration in the saying: "the next war is the last war." The number of bankruptcies will be unparalleled; export stops – and thereby thousands of factories are condemned to idleness; the supply of food ceases – and thereby the prices of the means of life rise enormously. The number of families whose breadwinner is in the field runs up into the millions, and most of them must be supported. Whence shall the means come for all that?

The political and military state of Europe has taken a development that cannot choose but end in a catastrophe, which will drag capitalist society down to its ruin. Having reached the height of its development, it produces conditions that end with rendering its own existence impossible; it digs its own grave; it slays itself with the identical means that itself, as the most revolutionary of all previous social systems, has called into life.

Gradually a large portion of our municipalities are arriving at a desperate pass: they hardly know how to meet the increasing demands upon themselves. It is more particularly upon our rapidly growing large cities, and upon the localities situated in industrial districts, that the quickened increase of population makes a mass of demands, which the generally poor communities can come up to only by raising taxes and incurring debts. The budgets leap upward from year to year for school buildings, and street paving, for lighting, draining and water works; for sanitary, public and educational purposes; for the police and the administration. At the same time, the favorably situated minority makes the most expensive demands upon the community. It demands higher institutions of education, theatres, the opening of particularly fine city quarters with lighting, pavement, etc., to match. However justly the majority may complain of the preference, it lies in the very nature of modern affairs. The minority has the power and uses it to satisfy its social wants as much as possible at the expense of the collectivity. In and of themselves nothing can be said against these heightened social wants: they denote progress; the fault is only that their satisfaction falls mainly to the lot of the property classes, while all others should share them. A further evil lies in that often the administration is not the best, and yet is expensive. The officials often are inadequate; they are not sufficiently equipped for the many-sided demands made upon them, demands that often presuppose thorough knowledge. The members of Aldermanic Boards have generally so much to do and to attend to in their own private affairs that they are unable to make the sacrifices demanded for the full exercise of these public duties. Often are these posts used for the promotion of private interests, to the serious injury of those of the community. The results fall upon the taxpayers. Modern society cannot think of undertaking a thorough change in these conditions. It is powerless and helpless. It would have to remove itself, and that, of course, it will not. Whatever the manner in which taxes be imposed, dissatisfaction increases steadily. In a few decades, most of our municipalities will be unable to satisfy their needs under their present form of administration and of raising revenues. On the municipal as well as on the national field, the need of a radical change is manifest: it is upon the municipalities that the largest social demands are made: it is society in nuce: it is the kernel from which, so soon as the will and the power shall be there, the social change will radiate. How can justice be done to-day, when private interests dominate and the interests of the commonweal are made subservient?