Woman under socialism

by August Bebel

No such considerations animate Socialistic Society. Human progress and unadulterated science are its device. If any there be who has religious needs, he is free to please himself in the company of those who feel like him. It is a matter that does not concern society. Seeing that the clergyman's own mind will be improved by work, the day will dawn to him also when he will realize that the highest aim is to be man.

Ethics and morality exist without organized religion. The contrary is asserted only by weak-minded people or hypocrites. Ethics and morality are the expression of conceptions that regulate the relations of man to man, and their mutual conduct. Religion embraces the relations of man with supernal beings. And, just as with religion, moral conceptions also are born of existing social conditions at given times. Cannibals regard the eating of human beings as highly moral; Greeks and Romans regarded slavery as moral; the feudal lord of the Middle Ages regarded serfdom as moral; and to-day the modern capitalist considers highly moral the institution of wage-slavery, the flaying of women with night work and the demoralization of children by factory labor.[211] Here we have four different social stages, and as many different conceptions of morality, and yet in none does the highest moral sense prevail. Undoubtedly the highest moral stage is that in which men stand to one another free and equal; that in which the principle: "What you do not wish to be done unto you, do not unto others" is observed inviolate throughout the relations of man to man. In the Middle Ages, the genealogical tree was the standard; to-day it is property; in future society, the standard of man is man. And the future is Socialism in practice.

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The late Reichstag delegate, Dr. Lasker, delivered, in the seventies, an address in Berlin, in which he arrived at the conclusion that an equal level of education for all members of society was possible. Dr. Lasker was an anti-Socialist a rigid upholder of private property and of the capitalist system of production. The question of education is to-day, however, a question of money. Under such conditions, an equal level of education for all is an impossibility. Exceptional persons, situated in relatively favorable conditions, may, by dint of overcoming all difficulties and by the exertion of great energy, not given to everybody, succeed in acquiring a higher education. The masses never, so long as they live in a state of social oppression.[212]

In the new social order, the conditions of existence are equal for all. Wants and inclinations differ, and, differences being grounded in the very nature of man, will continue so to be. Each member, however, can live and develop under the same favorable conditions that obtain for all. The uniformity, generally imputed to Socialism, is, as so many other things, false and nonsensical. Even if Socialism did so wish it, the wish were absurd; it would come in conflict with the nature of man; Socialism would have to give up the idea of seeing society develop according to its principles.[213] Aye, even if Socialism were to succeed in overpowering society and to force upon it unnatural conditions, it would not be long before such conditions, felt to be shackles, would be snapped, and Socialism would be done for. Society develops out of itself, according to laws latent in it, and it acts accordingly.[214]

One of the principal tasks of the new social system will be the education of the rising generation in keeping with its improved opportunities. Every child that is born, be it male or female, is a welcome addition to society. Society sees therein the prospect of its own perpetuity, of its own further development. It, therefore, also realizes the duty of providing for the new being according to its best powers. The first object of its attention must, consequently, be the one that gives birth to the new being—the mother. A comfortable home; agreeable surroundings and provisions of all sorts, requisite to this stage of maternity; a careful nursing—such are the first requirements. The mother's breast must be preserved for the child as long as possible and necessary. This is obvious. Moleschott, Sonderegger, all hygienists and physicians are agreed that nothing can fully substitute the mother's nourishment.

People who, like Eugen Richter, indignate at the idea of a young mother being placed in a lying-in establishment, where she is surrounded by all that to-day is possible only to the very wealthiest, and which even these cannot furnish in the fullness attainable at institutions especially equipped for the purpose—such people we wish to remind of the fact that, to-day, at least four-fifths of the population are born under the most primitive circumstances and conditions, that are a disgrace to our civilization. Of the remaining one-fifth of our mothers, only a minority is able to enjoy the nursing and comforts that should be bestowed upon a woman in that state. The fact is that in cities with excellent provisions for child-birth—Berlin for instance, and all University cities—even to-day not a few women resort to such institutions as soon as they feel their time approaching, and await their delivery. Unfortunately, however, the expenses at such institutions are so high, that but few women can use them, while others are held back by prejudice. Here again we have an instance of how everywhere bourgeois society carries in its own lap the germ of the future order.

For the rest, maternity among the rich has a unique taste; the maternal duties are transferred as soon as possible to a proletarian nurse. As is well known, the Wendt Lausitz (Spreewald) is the region that the women of the Berlin bourgeoisie, who are unwilling or unable to nurse their own babies, draw their wet-nurses from. The "cultivation of nurses" is there carried on as a peculiar trade. It consists in the girls of the district causing themselves to be impregnated, with the end in view of being able, after the birth of their own children, to hire themselves out as nurses to rich Berlin families. Girls who give birth to three or four illegitimate children, so as to be able to go out as nurses, are no rarity; and they are sought after by the males of the Spreewald according to their earnings in this business. Such a system is utterly repellant from the view-point of bourgeois morality; from the view-point of the family interests of the bourgeoisie it is considered praiseworthy and desirable.

So soon as in the society of the future the child has grown up, it falls in with the other children of its own age for play, and under common surveillance. All that can be furnished for its mental and physical culture is at hand, according to the measure of general intelligence. Whosoever has watched children knows that they are brought up best in the company of their equals, their sense of gregariousness and instinct of imitation being generally strong. The smaller are strongly inclined to take the older ones as example, and rather follow them than their own parents. These qualities can be turned to advantage in education.[215] The playgrounds and kindergartens are followed by a playful introduction into the preliminaries of knowledge and of the various manual occupations. This is followed up by agreeable mental and physical work, connected with gymnastic exercises and free play in the skating rink and swimming establishments; drills, wrestling, and exercises for both sexes follow and supplement one another. The aim is to raise a healthy, hardy, physically and mentally developed race. Step by step follows the induction of the youth in the various practical pursuits—manufacturing, horticulture, agriculture, the technique of the process of production, etc.; nor is the development of the mind neglected in the several branches of science.

The same process of "dusting" and improvement observed in the system of production, is pursued in that of education; obsolete, superfluous and harmful methods and subjects are dropped. The knowledge of natural things, introduced in a natural way, will spur the desire for knowledge infinitely more than a system of education in which one subject is at odds with another, and each cancels the other, as, for instance, when "religion" is taught on one hand, and on the other natural sciences and natural history. The equipment of the school rooms and educational establishments is in keeping with the high degree of culture of the new social order. All the means of education and of study, clothing and support are furnished by society; no pupil is at a disadvantage with another.[216] That is another chapter at which our "men of law and order" bristle up indignantly.[217] "The school-house is to be turned into barracks; parents are to be deprived of all influence upon their children!" is the cry of our adversaries. All false! Seeing that in the future society parents will have infinitely more time at their disposal than is the case to-day with the large majority—we need but to call attention to the ten to fifteen hour day of many workingmen in the post office, the railroads, the prisons, the police department, and to the demands made upon the time of the industrial workers, the small farmers, merchants, soldiers, many physicians, etc.—it follows that they will be able to devote themselves to their children in a measure that is impossible to-day. Moreover, the parents themselves have the regulation of education in their hands; it is they who determine the measures that shall be adopted and introduced. We are then living in a thoroughgoing democratic society. The Boards of Education, which will exist, of course, are made up of the parents themselves—men and women—and of those following the educational profession. Does any one imagine they will act against their own interests? That happens only to-day when the State seeks but to enforce its own exclusive interests.