The State would control procreation. Intending couples would apparently have to take out a procreation licence, which would be granted only to those able to pass a searching examination. "Marriage between the mentally weak will not be allowed. Imbeciles, lunatics, and those with dangerous and ineradicable criminal tendencies will not be permitted to reproduce their species at all."[949]
Unfortunately the writer fails to specify how unauthorised reproduction of the species would be prevented, and how contravention of the procreation laws would be punished. These details are furnished by another writer. "All those actually certified as degenerates must be prevented from procreating. Society has not only a right but a duty to protect itself against such by-products, and it can only do this by State control of marriage."[950] "Marriage without a satisfactory medical certificate should be subjected to a penalty which would be in effect prohibitive. In certain cases asexualisation and sterilisation should be applicable under special safeguards and conditions."[951]
Free love has apparently its limitations and its dangers. The procreation inspector might make an irreparable mistake.
There are, of course, Socialists who think that the family ought to be preserved, and who oppose State nurseries. One of them writes: "The State, in its own interests, will do everything it can to develop individuality in its children. The barrack school and State nursery—never much more than the Utopian dreams of amiable people—are condemned by up-to-date psychologists. The personal touch and affection of the mother, the surroundings and ethics of a small community, the sense of continuity which comes to the maturing child's mind from a personal organisation like the family, are all invaluable to a State which must take as much care of its citizens of to-morrow as it does of its citizens of to-day."[952] Mr. Macdonald's views on Socialism are hardly orthodox, and he has been denounced by thorough-going Socialists as an agent of the bourgeoisie.
As women may be the strongest opponents to the dissolution of the family, Socialists addressing themselves to women try to persuade them that they are forced into matrimony by necessity, that marriage is a degradation to them and to their children, and that Socialism will elevate them and make them free and happy. "The average young woman of the working class, who is not herself employed in some well-paid occupation, has nothing but marriage to which to look forward. She gives herself and all she has or is in exchange for such board as her husband's means permit."[953] "For the sake of bread and shelter she marries and becomes the unpaid cook and housekeeper of a husband and the mother of his children."[954] "Woman has been degraded, the mother has been kept down; so the children have been born with slavish instincts, ready to creep for any favour, and only just awakening to the need for self-assertion and independence of action."[955] Socialism will change all that, for "Socialism means freedom for women, just as it does for men."[956]
What is the Socialistic conception of "freedom for women"? What are its privileges and its advantages? "In considering the position of the woman Socialist, one great central fact must be borne constantly in mind. What she will be, what she will do, how she will live—all will depend upon one great fact, the greatest fact in Socialism—a fact which constitutes Socialism—namely, that she will be economically free."[957] "The new order will make husband and wife equals simply by enabling the wife to earn her living by fitting employment."[958] "A living will be assured to every woman."[959] "In the new community woman is entirely independent, a free being, the equal of man. Her education is the same as that of man except where the difference of sex makes a deviation from this rule and special treatment absolutely unavoidable. She works under exactly the same conditions as a man."[960] "Under a Socialist régime every profession will be open to women as to men."[961] "Socialism means enfranchising them, giving them the vote, so that they can lift their voice alongside with men's voice and fight with the same weapon for a better, happier life."[962] "It is only by removing the disabilities and restraints imposed upon woman, and permitting her to enter freely into competition with men in every sphere of human activity, that her true position and function in the economy of life will ultimately be ascertained."[963] "Socialism alone offers woman complete economic emancipation, with all that that implies. It provides her with suitable work, and it pays her exactly as men are paid. It educates her as men are educated, and protects her in pregnancy with tender regard; and, in so doing, Socialism will raise the whole level of society to a height of moral grandeur never yet attained and hardly ever dreamed of by the most optimist of poets and philosophers."[964]
Apparently Socialists will elevate downtrodden woman by compelling her to work for a living, and it is doubtful, as will be seen in Chapter XXXVI., whether she will be allowed to select her task or whether she will have to work under a system of forced labour. She will be given that freedom and liberty which is now called licence by the abolition of all the laws of morality. In the words of an exceedingly straightforward Socialist, "Independence for women will mean a heavy sacrifice for them, for it will mean for them compulsory work."[965] In return for such work they will be given full sexual license and the vote.
There is another aspect to be taken note of with regard to the emancipation of woman. Many Socialists, in giving to woman equality with man as a wage-earner and voter, wish to unsex her completely. They wish to deprive her of those privileges which she possesses at present owing to her sex. The philosopher of British Socialism informs us: "The law nowadays makes no distinction of persons between men. True; but it makes distinctions between men and women, and where law draws no distinction, practice does. 'Benefit of clergy' is superseded by 'benefit of sex.'"[966] "The tendency of the bourgeoisie world, as expressed in its legislation and sentiment, has been towards a factitious exaltation of the woman at the expense of the man—in other words, the cry for 'equality between the sexes' has in the course of its realisation become a sham, masking a de facto inequality. The inequality in question presses, as usual, heaviest upon the working man, whose wife, to all intents and purposes, now has him completely in her power. If dissolute or drunken, she can sell up his goods or break up his home at pleasure and still compel him to keep her and live with her to her life's end. There is no law to protect him. On the other hand, let him but raise a finger in a moment of exasperation against this precious representative of the sacred principle of 'womanhood,' and straightway he is consigned to the treadmill for his six months amid the jubilation of the 'Daily Telegraph' and its kindred, who pronounce him a brute and sing pæans over the power of the 'law' to protect the innocent and helpless female. Thus does bourgeois society offer sacrifice to the idol 'equality between the sexes.' For the law jealously guards the earnings or property of the wife from possible spoliation. She on any colourable pretext can obtain magisterial separation and protection."[967] Bax concludes that if the law is right in flogging men it should flog women too, for "the brutality and cowardice of the proceeding is no greater in the one case than in the other."[968]
The abolition of the marriage tie may mean that general barracks will take the place of private houses. Is the home worth preserving? Most Socialists think it is not. "It may be doubted after all whether it is necessary to regard 'the home' in the sense in which the phrase is here used as the final and immutable form of social organisation. Humanity does not stand or fall by the arrangement whereby families take their food in segregated cubicles."[969] "The entire preparation of food will be undertaken by society in the future. The private kitchen will disappear."[970] "Instead of a hundred kitchens and fires and cooks, we shall have one. Instead of a hundred meals to prepare, we shall have one. Instead of a hundred homes being made to reek of unsavoury dishes, or the detestable odour of bad cooking, the offensive effluvia will be confined to one building. Under Socialism domestic duties will be reduced to a minimum."[971] "We set up one great kitchen, one general dining-hall, and one pleasant tea-garden."[972] Only a few Socialists are in favour of individual houses, believing that "Each house should be self-contained."[973]
The proposals of British Socialists regarding woman, the family, the home, and marriage are not new. They were tried in the French Revolution, and the consequences of the experiments recommended by the philosophers of the Revolution were as follows: