One of the first and most important tasks of a rationally organized society must be to remove this detrimental discord and to restore the rights of nature. We begin by making even the little children in school unnatural, firstly, by separating the sexes, and secondly, by failing to instruct our children as to the sex nature of human beings. In every fairly good school natural history is being taught at present. The child learns that birds lay eggs and hatch them. He learns when birds mate and that both the male and female bird build the nest, hatch the eggs and feed the young. He also learns that mammals bring forth their young alive. He hears of the mating season and that the male animals fight one another for possession of the females. Perhaps he even learns how many young one or another species of animal usually brings forth and how long the female is pregnant. But profoundest secrecy is maintained in regard to the origin and development of the human being. When the child seeks to satisfy its natural curiosity by questioning his parents, especially his mother—he rarely ventures to question the teacher—he is told the most ridiculous fairy tales that cannot satisfy his thirst for knowledge and that must exert an all the more harmful influence when, some day, he nevertheless learns the true nature of his origin. There are few children who have not learned of it by the time they are twelve years old. In every small town, and especially in the country, even very young children have occasion to observe the pairing of poultry and domestic animals at close range in the yards, in the streets and on pasture. They hear that the pairing of domestic animals and the birth of the young is discussed without a sense of shame by their parents, their elder brothers and sisters and the servants. All this causes the child to doubt the truth of what his parents told him in regard to his own coming into the world. Finally the child learns the truth, but not in the manner in which he ought to learn it if his education were a natural and rational one. The fact that the child keeps his knowledge a secret leads to an estrangement between him and his parents, especially between him and his mother. The parents have accomplished the opposite of what they sought to accomplish in their ignorance and short-sightedness. Those who recall their own childhood and the childhood of their playmates know to what this may lead.
An American woman[187] tells us that in order to satisfactorily answer the constant questions of her eight-year-old son as to his origin, and because she did not wish to tell him fairy tales, she revealed to him the truth about his birth. The child, she says, listened to her with utmost attention, and from the day upon which he had learned how much suffering he caused his mother, he had treated her with unwonted tenderness and respect and had also transferred these feelings to other women. The writer upholds the correct view that only by means of a natural education men can be led to treat women with more respect and self-control. Every unprejudiced person is bound to agree with her.
Whatever starting-point one may choose in the criticism of present-day conditions, one is bound always to reiterate the following: A thorough reorganization of our social conditions, and thereby a thorough transformation in the relation of the sexes, is needful. Woman, in order to attain her aim more quickly, must look about for allies, and she naturally finds such allies in the proletarian movement. The class-conscious proletariat has long since commenced to storm the fortress of the state that is founded on class rule, which includes the rule of one sex over the other. The fortress must be surrounded on all sides, and, by arms of all calibers, it must be forced to surrender. The beleaguering army finds its officers and suitable arms on all sides. The social sciences, the natural sciences, historical research, pedagogics, hygiene and statistics furnish the movement with arms and munition. Philosophy comes forward, too, and, in Mainlaender’s “Philosophy of Deliverance,” proclaims the early realization of the “ideal state.”
The conquest of the class-state and its transformation is made easier by dissension in the ranks of its defenders, who, notwithstanding their community of interests against the common enemy, fight one another in the struggle for the spoils. The interest of one group is opposed to the interest of another. Another point in our favor is the growing mutiny in the ranks of the enemy. To a great extent their soldiers are blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh, but, owing to ignorance, they, until now, fought against us and against themselves. More and more of these join our ranks. We are, furthermore, helped by the desertion of honest men of intellect, who were hostile to us at first, but whose superior knowledge and profound insight impels them to rise above their narrow class interest, to follow their ideal desire for justice, and to espouse the cause of the masses that are longing for liberation.
Many still fail to recognize that state and society are already in a state of decay. Therefore an exposition of this subject also becomes necessary.
[177] Emma Adler—Famous Women of the French Revolution. Vienna, 1906.
[178] At present suffrage amendments are pending in Washington and Oklahoma. (Tr.)
[179] Clara Zetkin—Woman Suffrage. Berlin, 1907.
[180] A similar bill, known as the “conciliation bill,” drawn up by a committee consisting of members of all parties, passed its second reading in July 1910 by 299 against 189 votes. Prime Minister Asquith prevented the third reading and final vote upon the bill during that session of Parliament. (Tr.)