II
All these signs of disaffection under the old order of things and the gropings towards a new, do not imply, of course, any growth of the spirit of freedom, or any new consciousness of its nature. They do indicate, however, the progress of a temper which, when it shall have become more pervasive and more deeply rooted, will be hospitable to the doctrine of freedom. Discontent with the established order must necessarily precede any serious move toward its displacement by a new order; and discontent, while it is by no means dominant at present, is widespread enough to cause Governments a good deal of anxiety. The very tightening of the grip of government which is evident in the present tendency to suppress legislative bodies, and in ruthless persecution of economic dissenters, is, as I have already remarked, a sure indication of the extent and strength of the dissenting forces. When those people who now endure the harassment of governmental waste and industrial exploitation, shall perceive that relief is to be gained not through futile political reforms aimed at amelioration of their lot, but through a radical readjustment of the whole economic system—when, in other words, they realize “what is to be done”—then and not before, will come the real test of the tenacity of the old order and the strength of the forces moving towards the new. On its side the old order will have governmental organization and armed forces, and the enormous influence of the superstitious tendency to regard as right that which is established, supporting the interest of a compact, wealthy, and highly organized exploiting class. The new order will have on its side the newly realized need of the majority without whose acquiescence a highly organized minority can not long maintain itself in power. The issue will depend, obviously, not only on the intelligence, ability and determination of the majority’s leaders, but upon their clear understanding of the issue involved. If they compromise, as the leaders of the French Revolution compromised, the cause of justice will be lost, and the most that will be gained will be a shifting of privilege. The Western world is faced at present with the alternative of establishing an enduring civilization on the sure foundation of economic justice, or of sinking back into barbarism through a long series of civil and international struggles for possession of the power to exploit. If it follow the latter course, its civilization will go the way of the civilization of Egypt, Greece, and Rome; and its vitality, like theirs, will so decrease under the dual drain of exploitation and war that it will eventually fall, as they fell, an easy prey to some strong external force.
The task before those who wish to avert this fate, whose passionate desire is to bring about an enduring civilization based on the solid foundation of economic justice, is the task of educating themselves in the nature of freedom, of learning to face freedom without fear, and of communicating to others their understanding and their courage. The women of today, especially in this country, are in a peculiarly good position to undertake this task. They enjoy unprecedented advantages in the way of social and intellectual autonomy, and of educational opportunity. They have emerged successful from a long struggle for political equality with men, and they are still engaged in an organized effort to secure legal equality. Thus they have their hand in, as it were, with the work of removing the artificial disabilities which organized society imposes on a subject class in order to keep it subject; and this work should have engendered in those who have been active in it a healthy resentment of social injustice and a sense of the value of freedom to the human spirit. They will still have, moreover, even after legal equality is won, a considerable number of discriminations to combat, which should operate against the temptation to regard their fight as won, and to relax the vigilance which is always necessary to preserve individual rights against encroachment by organized society. The organizations through which they have worked remain intact; it is for them to determine whether those organizations shall continue as mere agencies for political lobbying or whether they will carry on the demand for freedom to its logical end.
The fact that women are in a good position to inquire into the nature of freedom offers, of course, no earnest that they will do so. In spite of the reasonableness of such a course, they may content themselves with trying to effect the ultimate equality of the sexes through political measures which in their nature can never effect it—provided, that is, that events do not move too fast for even a serious trial of such inept methods. A good deal of mirth has already been aroused in certain quarters by trivial and futile reform-measures which women politicians have sponsored. If this sort of thing shall prove to be the sum-total of women’s contribution to social problems, it will merely prove that they are quite as incapable of an intelligent understanding of those problems as men have hitherto shown themselves to be. If women are now in a good position to school themselves in the tradition of economic freedom, the men of Europe and America have been in an equally good position to do so since the political revolutions of the eighteenth century, and as yet they have given no very encouraging signs of progress. However much one may hope that women will make a better showing, it would be unfair to expect it of them; for they are but now emerging from the mental and spiritual condition induced by centuries of subjection. If, therefore, they fail to grasp their opportunity to contribute to the process of education which must precede the establishment of economic justice; if they are content to fix their minds upon this or that special aspect of social freedom or of political freedom, instead of looking steadily towards economic freedom—economic freedom for men and women alike—the judicious critic may lament their failure or disparage their tactics, but he can hardly attribute either to any stupidity or incapacity peculiar to their sex, since it is through the same failure and the same tactics that men have brought civilization to the critical state in which it is at present.
The great point, however, is that if they fail they are sure to pay for their failure a higher price than men will pay. As they have more to gain from freedom than men, so they have more to lose than men if the Western world shall fail to establish its civilization on the firm basis of economic justice. In the relapse into barbarism which must attend the ultimate breakdown of economic and social life under the monopolistic system, physical force will be even more strongly ascendant than it is at present; and when physical force dominates, the ideals of justice and liberty are, as I have already remarked, without effective influence—the only right is might. The well-being of women depends in very great measure on the prevalence of those ideals; for when force is dominant, woman’s physical disadvantage as the child-bearing sex places her in a position to be more readily subjected and exploited than man. Because of this disadvantage she was the first victim of exploitation; because of it, she will be the last to escape; and because of it she will be the greater sufferer from exploitation so long as exploitation shall be the basis of the economic and social order. There is potential tragedy in the fact that the Western world has become civilized enough to perceive the injustice involved in women’s subjection only when the economic order which determines its social life has become so corrupt that it threatens the destruction of civilization, with all such gains in humanity as civilization has yielded. Women have equality almost within their grasp; they may lose it if this civilization shall follow the path of its predecessors to ruin and oblivion. There is one way to avert this tragedy, and one only—the way of economic justice. If the women who have been active in the struggle to emancipate their sex shall enlarge their conception of freedom, and with it the scope of their demand, they can help mightily to preserve civilization through the establishment of justice. If they could win their sex away from the exploded formulas of the eighteenth century and bring them to understand that political and social freedom without economic freedom are utterly illusory, that true freedom proceeds from economic justice, and that justice and freedom offer the only hope for the salvaging of this civilization, they would have won half of humanity, and that would be a contribution of no small value. One thing is certain: the question of freedom for women can not proceed much farther as an independent issue. It has reached the point where it must necessarily merge in the greater question of human freedom. Upon the fate of the greater cause, that of the lesser will depend. It is for feminists to choose whether they will merge the feminist in the humanist, or whether they will play at political and social make-believe while the issue is being decided, and either suffer in the event the consequences of a failure which they shall have made no effort to avert, or enjoy the benefits of a success which they shall have done nothing to attain.