Woman under socialism

by August Bebel

In the new social Order this contradiction is wiped out. Socialist society produces not "merchandise," in order to "buy" and to "sell;" it produces necessaries of life, that are used, consumed, and otherwise have no object. In Socialist society, accordingly, the capacity to consume is not bounded, as in bourgeois society, by the individual's capacity to buy; it is bounded by the collective capacity to produce. If labor and instruments of labor are in existence, all wants can be satisfied; the social capacity to consume is bounded only by the satisfaction of the consumers.

There being no "merchandise" in Socialist society, neither can there be any "money." Money is the visible contrast of merchandise; yet itself is merchandise! Money, though itself merchandise, is at the same time the social equivalent for all other articles of merchandise. But Socialist society produces no articles of merchandise, only articles of use and necessity, whose production requires a certain measure of social labor. The time, on an average requisite for the production of an article is the only standard by which it is measured for social use. Ten minutes social labor in one article are equal to ten minutes social labor in another—neither more nor less. Society is not "on the make"; it only seeks to effect among its members the exchange of articles of equal quality, equal utility. It need not even set up a standard of use value. It merely produces what it needs. If society finds that a three-hour work day is requisite for the production of all that is needed, it establishes such a term of work.[187] If the methods of production improve in such wise that the supply can be raised in two hours, the two-hour work day is established. If, on the contrary, society demands the gratification of higher wants than, despite the increase of forces and the improved productivity of the process of labor, can be satisfied with two or three hours work, then the four-hour day is introduced. Its will is law.

How much social labor will be requisite for the production of any article is easily computed.[188] The relation of the part to the whole of the working time is measured accordingly. Any voucher—a printed piece of paper, gold or tin—certifies to the time spent in work, and enables its possessor to exchange it for articles of various kinds.[189] If he finds that his wants are smaller than what he receives for his labor, he then works proportionally shorter hours. If he wishes to give away what he does not consume, nothing hinders him. If he is disposed to work for another out of his own free will, so that the latter may revel in the dolce far niente,—if he chooses to be such a blockhead, nothing hinders him. But none can compel him to work for another; none can withhold from him a part of what is due him for labor performed. Everyone can satisfy all his legitimate desires—only not at the expense of others. He receives the equivalent of what he has rendered to society—neither more nor less, and he remains free from all exploitation by third parties.

"But what becomes of the difference between the lazy and the industrious? between the intelligent and the stupid?" That is one of the principal questions from our opponents, and the answer gives them no slight headache. That this distinction between the "lazy" and the "industrious," the "intelligent" and the "stupid" is not made in our civil service hierarchy, but that the term of service decides in the matter of salary and generally of promotion also—these are facts that occur to none of these would-be puzzlers and wiseacres. The teachers, the professors—and as a rule the latter are the silliest questioners—move into their posts, not according to their own qualities, but according to the salaries that these posts bring. That promotions in the army and in the hierarchies of the civil service and the learned professions are often made, not according to worth, but according to birth, friendship and female influence, is a matter of public notoriety. That, however, wealth also is not measured by diligence and intelligence may be judged by the Berlin inn-keepers, bakers and butchers, to whom grammar often is a mystery, and who figure in the first of the three classes of the Prussian electorate, while the intellectuals of Berlin, the men of science, the highest magistrates of the Empire and the State, vote with the second class. There is not now any difference between the "lazy" and the "diligent," the "intelligent" and the "stupid" for the simple reason that what is understood by these terms exists no longer. A "lazy" fellow society only calls him who has been thrown out of work, is compelled to lead a vagabond's life and finally does become a vagabond, or who, grown up under improper training, sinks into vice. But to style "lazy fellow" the man who rolls in money and kills the day with idleness or debauchery, would be an insult: he is a "worthy and good man."

How do matters stand in Socialist society? All develop under equal conditions, and each is active in that to which inclination and skill point him, whence differences in work will be but insignificant.[190] The intellectual and moral atmosphere of society, which stimulates all to excel one another, likewise aids in equalizing such differences. If any person finds that he cannot do as much as others on a certain field, he chooses another that corresponds with his strength and faculties. Whoever has worked with a large number of people in one establishment knows that men who prove themselves unfit and useless in a certain line, do excellent work in another. There is no normally constructed being who fails to meet the highest demands in one line or another, the moment he finds himself in the right place. By what right does any claim precedence over another? If any one has been treated so step-motherly by Nature that with the best will he can not do what others can, Society has no right to punish him for the shortcomings of Nature. If, on the contrary, a person has received from Nature gifts that raise him above others, Society is not obliged to reward what is not his personal desert. In Socialist society all enjoy equal conditions of life and opportunities for education; all are furnished the same opportunities to develop their knowledge and powers according to their respective capacities and inclinations. In this lies a further guarantee that not only will the standard of culture and powers be higher in Socialist than in bourgeois society, but also that both will be more equally distributed and yet be much more manifold.

When, on a journey up the Rhine, Goethe studied the Cathedral of Cologne, he discovered in the archives that the old master-builders paid their workmen equal wages for equal time. They did so because they wished to get good and conscientious work. This looks like an anomaly to modern bourgeois society. It introduced the system of piece-work, that drives the workingmen to out-work one another, and thus aids the employer in underpaying and in reducing wages.

As with manual, so with mental work. Man is the product of the time and circumstances that he lives in. A Goethe, born under equally favorable conditions in the fourth, instead of the eighteenth, century might have become, instead of a distinguished poet and naturalist, a great Father of the Church, who might have thrown St. Augustine into the shade. If, on the other hand, instead of being the son of a rich Frankfort patrician, Goethe had been born the son of a poor shoemaker of the same town, he never would have become the Minister of the Grand Duke of Weimar, but would probably have remained a shoemaker, and died an honorable member of the craft. Goethe himself recognized the advantage he had in being born in a materially and socially favorable station in order to reach his stage of development. It so appears in his "Wilhelm Meister." Were Napoleon I. born ten years later, he never would have been Emperor of France. Without the war of 1870-1871, Gambetta had never become what he did become. Place the naturally gifted child of intelligent parents among savages, and he becomes a savage. Whatever a man is, society has made him. Ideas are not creations that spring from the head of the individual out of nothing, or through inspiration from above; they are products of social life, of the Spirit of the Age, raised in the head of the individual. An Aristotle could not possibly have the ideas of a Darwin, and a Darwin could not choose but think otherwise than an Aristotle. Man thinks according as the Spirit of the Age, i. e., his surroundings and the phenomena that they present to him drive him to think. Hence the experience of different people often thinking simultaneously the same thing, of the same inventions and discoveries being made simultaneously in places far apart from each other. Hence also the fact that an idea, uttered fifty years too early, leaves the world cold; fifty years later, sets it ablaze. Emperor Sigismund could risk breaking his word to Huss in 1415 and order him burned in Constance; Charles V., although a more violent fanatic, was compelled to allow Luther to depart in peace from the Reichstag at Worms in 1521. Ideas are, accordingly, the product of combined social causes and social life. What is true of society in general, is true in particular of the several classes that, at given historic epochs, constitute society. As each class has its special interests, it also has its special ideas and views, that lead to those class struggles of which recorded history is full, and that reach their climax in the class antagonisms and class struggles of modern days. Hence, it depends not merely upon the age in which a man lives, but also upon the social stratum of a certain age in which he lived or lives, and whereby his feelings, thoughts and actions are determined.

Without modern society, no modern ideas. That is obvious. With regard to the future social Order, it must be furthermore added that the means whereby the individual develops are the property of society. Society can, accordingly, not be bound to render special homage to what itself made possible and is its own product.

So much on the qualification of manual and brain work. It follows that there can be no real distinction between "higher" and "lower" manual work, such as not infrequently a mechanic to-day affects towards the day-laborer, who performs work on the street, or the like. Society demands only socially necessary work; hence all work is of equal value to society. If work that is disagreeable and repulsive can not be performed mechanically or chemically and by some process converted into work that is agreeable—a prospect that may not be put in doubt, seeing the progress made on the fields of technique and chemistry—and if the necessary volunteer forces can not be raised, then the obligation lies upon each, as soon as is his turn, to do his part. False ideas of shame, absurd contempt for useful work, become obsolete conceptions. These exist only in our society of drones, where to do nothing is regarded as an enviable lot, and the worker is despised in proportion to the hardness and disagreeableness of his work, and in proportion to its social usefulness. To-day work is badly paid in proportion as it is disagreeable. The reason is that, due to the constant revolutionizing of the process of production, a permanent mass of superfluous labor lies on the street, and, in order to live, sells itself for such vile work, and at such prices that the introduction of machinery in these departments of labor does not "pay." Stone-breaking, for instance, is proverbially one of the worst paid and most disagreeable kinds of work. It were a trifling matter to have the stone-breaking done by machinery, as in the United States; but we have such a mass of cheap labor-power that the machine would not "pay."[191] Street and sewer cleaning, the carting away of refuse, underground work of all sorts, etc., could, with the aid of machinery and technical contrivances, even at our present state of development, be all done in such manner that no longer would any trace of disagreeableness attach to the work. Carefully considered, the workingman who cleans out a sewer and thereby protects people from miasmas, is a very useful member of society; whereas a professor who teaches falsified history in the interest of the ruling classes, or a theologian who seeks to befog the mind with supernatural and transcendental doctrines are highly injurious beings.

The learned fraternity of to-day, clad in offices and dignities, to a large extent represents a guild intended and paid to defend and justify the rule of the leading classes with the authority of science; to make them appear good and necessary; and to prop up existing superstitions. In point of fact this guild is largely engaged in the trade of quackery and brain-poisoning—a work injurious to civilization, intellectual wage-labor in the interest of the capitalist class and its clients.[192] A social condition, that should make impossible the existence of such elements, would perform an act towards the liberation of humanity.