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SOCIALISM AND SEX,

BY K. P.

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ERNST UND DIE STRENGE DES LEBENS, DIE HEILIGE SITTE.

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WILLIAM REEVES, I85, FLEET STREET, E.C

 

 

 

 

 

   

    

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The right of all to labour involves a limitation of population. We hope
more fully on another occasion to treat of the relation of socialism to
the problem of population, and to point out how the acceptance of the
law discovered by Malthus is an essential ofi any socialistic theory which
pretends to be scientific. Meanwhile we would recommend to the reader
the following passages from John Stuart Mills’s PoliticalEconomy (People’s
Edition, pp. 220, 226) 2—“ Everyone has a right to live. We will suppose
this granted. But no one has aright to bring creatures into life, to be sup-
ported by other people. Whoever means to stand upon the first of these
rights must renounce all pretensions to the last. Ifa man cannot support
even himself unless others help him, those others are entitled to say that
they do not also undertake the support of any offspring which it is physically
possible for him to bring into the world. . . . It would be possible for
the state to guarantee employment at ample wages to all who are born. But
if it does this, it is bound in self-protection, and for the sake of every
purpose for which government exists, to provide that no person shall be
born without its consent. . . One cannot wonder that silence on this
great department of human duty should produce unconsciousness of moral
obligations, when it produces oblivion of physical facts. That it is
poss1ble to delay marriage, and to live in abstinence while unmarried,
most people are willing to allow; but when persons are once married the
idea, in this country, never seems to enter anyone’s mind that having or
not having a family, or the number of which it shall consist, is amenable
to their own control. One would imagine that children were rained
down upon married people direct from heaven, without their being art or
part in the matter; that it was really, as the common phrases have it
God’s will, and not their own, which decided the numbers of their,
offspring.”

* * * * *
To page 13.

This fact lies at the basis of much of the elzzployment of female labour under
01W [5765th system. Examples of it are common enough; we will only cite
the followingr striking instance recently brought to our notice. A firm
of lemonade manufacturers a few weeks ago discharged twelve men to
whom they had paid 45. a day per head, and replaced them by sixteen
women who could do the same work, but to whom they only paid IS. 8d. a
day. The firm thus saved, by employing in greater numbers less efficient
workers at starvation wages, I 13. 4d. a day ! This was Ofcourse only an act
of self—preservation on the part of the manufacturers, the real sources of the
evil lie much deeper, namely, in competitive production and unchecked
population. Owing to these influences more and more men in London
are being supported by women’s labour. This fact taken in conjunction
with the great disproportion of the sexes in the metropolis points indeed
to a painful form of return to the matriarchate. Were the capitalistic
phase of society enduring, we might expect to find ultimately the male
of the working classes reduced to the sole function of drone, to the mere
procreator of workers !

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At last they came to where Reflection sits , that strange old woman, who
has always one elbow on her knee, and her chin in her hands, and who
steals light out of thepast to shed it on thefuture.

And Life and Love cried out “ 0h! wise one, tell us, when first we met,
a lovely radiant thing belonged to tls-gladness without a tear, sunshine
without a shade. Oh ! how did we sin that we lost it P Where shall we go
that we mayfind it P ”—RALPH IRON.

 

HERE is; a principle lying at the basis of all growth, which
was first made manifest by the naturalist, but will one

day receive its most striking corroboration from the scientific
historian. This principle is somewhat misleadingly termed
‘the survival of the fittest.’ A slight Change for the better
would be made were we to term it the ‘ survival of the fitter.’
In all forms of existence—animal and human life, animal and
human habits, human institutions, religions and philosophies—
the fittest is never reached, has never come into existence, and
cannot therefore survive. When it does, evolution will cease,
-—a final epoch that may for the present be classed with a
certain catastrophe termed the ‘day of judgment,’ which
formerly played a conspicuous part in mediaeval cosmogony;
we may leave them both to that storehouse of unintelligible
lumber whence paradoxers and supernaturalists draw their
material. We, the more matter-of—fact sensationalists,*
content ourselves with recognising that every form of life,
every human institution and mode of thought is ever under-
going change, not change by hap incalculable, but to a great
and ever wider extent foreseeable and capable of measure-
ment both as to magnitude and direction. There is no
absolute code of morality, no absolute philosophy nor absolute
religion; each phase of society has had its special morality, its
peculiar religion, and its own form of sex-relationship. Its
morality and its religion have been stamped as immorality and
superstition by later generations. Promiscuity, brother-sister
marriage, infanticide, the subjection of women, the serfdom
of labour have all in their turn been moral and again immoral.
No property, group-property, tribe-property, chief—property,
individual property in both land and moveables have all had

 

* We use this word to exclude on the one side the absurdities of
materialism of the Biichner type, and on the other the muddle-headed
mysticism of some of our neo-Hegelian friends. A sensationalist is one
who does not attempt to get beyond his sensations and their laws.

 

4 SOCIALISM AND SEX,

their day, and foolish indeed is the man who would term one
absolutely good and another absolutely bad. One thing only
is fixed, the direction and rate of change of human society
at a particular epoch. It may be difficult to measure, but it is
none the less real and definite. The moral or good action is
that which tends in the direction of growth of a particular
society in a particular land at a particular time. In this sense
to avoid all preconceptions of the absolute, we shall use the
word social for moral, and mzti-socz‘al for immoral. An action
which is social (or moral) may have arisen from custom, from
feeling, or from faith, but to understand why it is social (or
moral) requires knowledge. It requires knowledge of the
historical growth and the consequent present tendency of a
particular phase of society. Hence we see why it is that many
actions arising from feeling, custom, or faith are anti-social; if
custom could dictate a moral code, I fear socialism would at
present have little basis of support; it must throw itself back on
rational judgment based on historical study. For this reason I
cannot look upon socialism as a cut-and-dried scheme of
political change: it is essentially a new morality—the subjection
of individual action to the welfare of society—such welfare
depending on the ascertained direction of social growth. Our
socialists must claim to be, and act as preachers of a new
morality, if they would stir that enthusiasm which only
human love, not human hatred, can raise. Therein lies the
only excuse for the absurd title of ‘Christian Socialist.”e
Socialism as a polity can only become possible when socialism
as a morality has become general ; as a polity it will then only
be a matter of police, a law restraining a small anti-social
minority.

In all social problems there are two questions which need
investigation : (i.) What is the ideal we place before ourselves P
(ii.) How shall we act so as best to forward the realization of
our ideal?

Before we attempt to consider these questions in their
relation to the problem of sex, it is needful to explain what we
understand by the term ‘ideal.’ By ‘ideal’ we do not
denote some glorious poet-dreamed Utopia, the outcome of
individual wishes, inspiration or prejudice, but solely the
direction wherein it seems to us from the history of the past
that the history of the immediate future must surely
progress. Our ideal is the outcome of our reading of the past,

‘ the due weighing, so far as lies in our power, of the tendencies
and forces at present developing humanity in a definite
direction. It is the one absolute we have got upon which to
form a judgment, and so the test of moral or social action.

 

.31
* It reminds me 01 a well-known lady doctor who terms herself 3:.

Christianphysiologist, as if socialism and physiology were not groups of ,‘A ‘

facts associated by laws independent of any form of faith! -- A ’ . V -,

 

SOCIALISM AND SEX. 5

We are students of history, not because we are socialists,
but socialists because we have studied history.*

\Ve have now to ask the following questions with regard to
sex-relationship. \Vhat is its ideal form? How can we best
work towards its attainment ?—that is—What is the true type of
social (moral) action in matters of sex? It is because we believe
that the present sexual relationship is far removed from the ideal
(the relationship of the future), and that the present marriage
law tends to hinder our approach to the ideal, that we have
put together the present paper.

Briefly let us state here, for it is impossible at present to
enter on the lengthy historical investigation, that we believe
the forces and tendencies of the present as evidenced in the
history of the past are working strongly against our present
relationship of sex, and not unlikely in the near future to sweep
it as completely, and, as roughly, out of existence as rational
knowledge is sweeping away metaphysic, freethought Christian
theology, and socialistic doctrines orthodox political economy.
\Ve will try to enumerate shortly the tendencies we have found
at work, and point out how they must ultimately come into
conflict, and entirely modify our present legal and customary
Views on the relations of sex.

\Ve have spoken of one principle of the law of evolution—
the survival of the fitter. According to the Darwinian theory,
this survival is chiefly brought about by sexual selection and
the struggle for food. All-mastering as these factors are easily
seen to be upon the development of the brute-world, they
appear at first sight insufficient to explain the growth of
man and the changes in human institutions. The scientific
student of history, however, will find them just as forcibly at
work in directing the course of man’s progress from barbarism
to Civilization. The future Darwin of the history of civiliza-
tion will see at once that his subject falls into two great
divisions—the history of sex and the history of possession,into
the Changes in seX—relationship and the changes in the owner-
ship of wealth. The explanation for the most part of these
two main groups of changes lies in sexual-selection and
in the struggle for f00d.+ One by one various forms of sex-

 

*A leader of the ‘Anarchist Group ’ recently read a paper in our hear-
ing which deduced anarchy as a necessity of the coming ages by a
metaphysical process quite unintelligible to us since the ideal days of
German student life! We ventured to ask him if he thought the same
conclusion would be reached by the historical method. He had not

applied it, he said, but he was certain that that method could not
contradict his process !

tHerder attempted a philosophy of history on the basis of metaphysic
and naturally failed. The phllosophy of history is only possible since
Darwin, and the rationalisation of history by the ‘future Darwin ’ will
consist in the explanation of human growth by the action of physical and
physiologicallaws in varying human institutions, '

 

 

6 SOCIALISM AND SEX.

relationship have succeeded each other, there has been no
permanent type, and the historical growth of the relationship
has at each stage agreed closely with the state of development
of the other socialand legal institutions of the age. Legalised
life-long monogamy is in human history a thing but of yester-
day, and no unprejudiced person (however much it may suit
his own tastes) can suppose it a final form. Thus it is that
a certain type of sex-relationship and a certain mode of owner-
ship are essential features of the present stage ofhuman growth.
In the past others have marked the successive stages reached
by man in his long course of evolution. To each fresh type of
sex-relationship has corresponded a new mode of ownership—
a peculiar phase of human society. When the sex-relation-
ship was pure promiscuity, then possession was based on
finding and keeping so long as the finder had strength to
retain ; with brother-sister marriage, and with group-marriage,
property was held by the group,——-communism in the group ;
with the matriarchate, at least in its zenith, property could be
held by individuals, but descended only through women; with
the patriarchate property was held only by the men, and
descended through them; woman was a chattel without any
right of ownership. With the centuries as the patriarchate
vanishes, as woman obtains rights as an individual, when a new
form of possession is coming into existence, is it rational to
suppose that history will break its hitherto invariable law, and
that a new seX-relationship will not replace the old?

The two most important movements of our era are without
doubt the socialistic movement and the movement for the
complete emancipation of women. Both of them go to the
very root of the old conception of property, and to the careful
observer connote a corresponding change in the old relation-
ship of sex. To the onlooker the socialist and the advocate
of ‘woman’s rights’ are essentially fighting the same battle,
however much they may disguise the fact to themselves.
Change in the mode of possessing wealth connotes to the scien-
tific historian a change in the sex-relationship. It is because
we hold socialism will ultimately survive as the only tenable
moral code, that we are convinced that our present marriage
customs and our present marital law must alike soon collapse.
It is not a question of lechery, of sensuality or of sexual
experiment, but of indomitable law. Variations are taking
place in our views and actions with regard to sex, which are
but forerunners of the new type; a type which possibly for
many centuries will hold the field. The sexual experiment is
no experiment in the real sense of the word, it is the variation
in the present which is destined to survive as the rule of the
future.

So far as may be possible in a paper of this kind, let
us examine the leading principle of modern socialism as a

SOCIALISM AND SEX. 7

moral code, and its bearing on the current relationship of sex.
We may state this principle as follows :—

A human being, man or woman, unless physically or
mentally disabled—has no moral right to be a member of the
community unless he or she is labouring in some form or other
for the community——that is, contributing to the common
labour-stock.

By no ‘ moral right’ we simply mean that it is Lmtzlsocz'al, and
therefore deserving of the strongest social censure or punish-
ment, if any person lives in, and therefore on the labour of,
the community without contributing to the labour-stock.

It follows as a necessary result of this our first principle
that it is anti-social: (a) to live on inherited property,
(b) to receive interest on accumulated property. For, in
doing either, the human is in reality taxing the labour of others
for his or her support and is not repaying that taxation by
an equal labour-contribution to the common labour-stock.
We are quite aware that these dictates under our present
social regime are very hard to accept and very hard to act up
to, but we are convinced that they will have to be accepted as
the basis of the moral code of the future. A human may
labour and acquire, but he has no social right to endow
himself or his posterity with that idleness, which merely
connotes a living on the labour of others. There is a point
here which deserves special notice, because it bears on a
remark we shall presently make of the wife and her home-life.
The endowed idler, to a great extent owing to his monopoly of
possession, misdirects the labour of others and gives it an
anti-social direction; he employs labour in creating luxuries
for himself, labour which ought to be employed socially in
improving the dwellings of the people, on the ordering and
beautifying of the public streets, on the building of public
institutions and for the like social purposes.

The society of the future will apply the above principles as
a test of right conduct to all its members, be they men or
women. But that men and women shall be able to live
socially there must be a field of genuine labour freely open
to them. This is only possible under two conditions: (1)
economic independence of the individual, and (2) a limita-
tion of population. Both these conditions go, we think, to the
very root of our present seX-relationship. They denote an entire
change in the position of husband and wife, and a very
possible interference of society (the state) in the heart of the
family—at least in the family of the immoral or anti-social
propagators of unnecessary human beings.

By ‘economic independence of the individual,’ a term likely
to be misunderstood, we denote the maintenance due to the
individual for genuine contributions to the labour-stock of the
community. The moral dignity of the individual is preserved

 

 

8 SOCIALISM AND SEX.

only so far as his or her labour is a genuine contribution,
and not the fulfilment of somebody else’s caprice or of an anti-
social desire for pure luxury.

In order that a woman, to use a theological expression, may
save her own soul, may preserve her moral dignity,—~in order
that she may fulfil the moral code of the future, she must
have economic independence. We think men in this respect
are apt to underrate the feelings of women. A man might
be quite willing'to put half his income at the disposal of a
friend, but how few are the men who (unless such gift would
enable them to perform a recognised public service) would
not feel a loss of moral dignity in accepting it ! They so far
obey the socialistic code, that they refuse to live without
return on the labour of others—their friends; unfortunately
they have rarely any objection to live without return on the
labour of others who are 7202‘ their friends! But it seems to
us that the majority of women under our present social
system are bound to live on man’s labour. A man may be
willing enough to give, but the woman cannot morally afford
to receive. Women must have economic independence,
because they {cannot act truly so long as'they depend for
subsistence on father, brother, husband, or lover, and not on
their own labour. It may be suggested that a woman often
brings property to the husband, and contributes as much, or
more, than he to the joint establishment. This might be
rendered still more frequent were there likely in the future
to be a return, however partial, to the matriarchal system.
Some signs of such a return we do indeed find, but we think
it could only be of a very transitory kind, for it seems opposed
to the fundamental principle of socialism, namely, that the
property of the individual shall not be inherited property, but
the outcome of his own labour. Very few, indeed, are the
cases wherein the property a woman brings to marriage is
the outcome of her own labour; it may render her economi-
cally independent of her husband, but it makes her
economically dependent on the community. The community,
not her husband, will thus be supporting her; this is in
many instances a still graver social offence. Our reader, we
fear, may be impatient to suggest as a further plea for woman’s
idleness,that her home-duties are really her labour-contribution
to the community. So far as such duties have to do with the
rearing of Children, we at once admit, that they may indeed
form an all-important contribution to the social stock. But
the possibility of this depends entirely on the social right of
the particular man and woman to propagate under the present
pressure of population. By physique and mental power a
particular man and woman may be fitted to carry on the race,
or they may not. If they are fitted, it does not follow that
they have a social right to an unlimited family. Indeed the men

SOCIALISM AND SEX. 9

and women who are socially fitted to be parents of the future
race, and at the same time rearers and educators of that race
are not nearly so frequent as current habits might lead us to
imagine. The birth of children is a responsibility, the moral
gravity of which is far from being properly weighed by the
average husband and wife of to-day.

Let us put aside for the present the social value of such
part of women’s home—labour as is spent in rearing and
educating children, a function which she may, indeed. often
exercise best on a wider field than that of the home. Let us
confine ourselves for the present to childless families, to those
where the children are not educated at home or have left
home, and to the home-life of single women. The home-
duties of the woman are those towards husband, father,
brother or paramour. These are the labour-return the woman
makes for her support by the community, they form the basis
on which she can claim to be moral, the source from which her
feeling of independence, and her sense of contributing to society
something for what she receives from it, must arise. It is difficult
for us to suppose any man would accept cheerfully a similar
dependence on the dearest friend, and it is surprising that
customary modes of thought allow so many women to submit
to such chattel-slavery. \Ve have no hesitation in asserting
that the homecduties of the non-child-bearing woman do not
in the great majority of cases satisfy the standard of the
socialistic code. If the woman is called upon to labour, it is
to labour beyond the household limits. The great changes
introduced into domestic economy during the last fifty years by
machinery, by the wholesale production of provisions, by the
division of labour, by the fiat-system, etc., have revolutionised
home-life, and “what the housewife and her attendants sixty or
eighty years ago had good reason for doing, has now become a
pastime of no value, the machine mocks the individual
woman’s hand."* The reader will probably be able to
call to mind, not only several cases where a single man or
woman successfully manages his or her own home, but
instances where the husband and the non-child-bearing wife
follow their own professions, and yet their home is not a scene
of hopeless disorder. How much evidence on the same side
we could ourselves produce from the life of the Swabian and
Baden peasantry! Many a farmer’s wife undertakes not only
her home-duties, but the whole business of a village inn; or,
again, while her husband is occupied in the forest, she with
the aid of knave and maid manages entirely the little farm
and its homestead. we have seen her ploughing, dunging,
reaping and thrashing, milking and making butter, we have
sat with her in the evening by the kitchen fire, and

 

* Marianne Hainisch: Die Brodfrage der Frau, Wien, 1875.

 

 

IO SOCIALISM AND SEX.

the home did not seem neglected, nor her spiritual life utterly
void. At such times we have learnt that woman’s labour
has a social value which must carry her in all classes beyond
home-duties. Much of the time spent by women of the
middle-classes in increasing the comforts and ornaments of
home, with the corresponding round of ‘ shopping,’ and the
purchase of nicnacs and trifles, is simply anti-social, a
misdirection of the labour of others.

There may indeed be some who will say : “ But you are
neglecting the value of home-comforts and woman’s function
in producing social happiness? ” To this we reply: If it be
the function of women not to labour in the same manner as
men, but to be centres of comfort, sympathy and happiness in
social life, then to be consistent we must apply this rule to all
women. We must stop every woman from receiving
wages for her labour. We must prohibit entirely her employ-
ment‘for wages in factories, mills, post-office, Shops and domes-
tic service; to be consistent we must prohibit paid prostitution
and paid literary work. Are then the great mass of women who
now labour to be left to chance dependence on men, or to be
supported by the state ? As woman’s function would be differ-
ent from man’s, and involve immunity from social-labour, so
there would be for her a different code of morality. Women
would indeed‘have a glorious time of ease were this millenium
ever reached; our only regret is that men also could not share
it ! It seems to us, however, that all assumption of a dis-
tinction in social function between men and women, Which
reaches beyond the physical fact of child-bearing, is absolutely
unwarranted, and calculated to reduce women again to the
position of toys, of creatures having no souls, and incapable of
acting up to the higher social code we have laid down for men.
The labour of woman is a fund of infinite value to the commu-
nity,* and her right to have educational and professional institu-
tions thrown open to her is based upon her duty to contribute
to the common labour-stock of the community. The moral force
behind the ‘Womans’ Rights’ platform is woman’s duty to
labour. Such labour we are sure is not in the great majority
of cases synonymous with ‘ home-duties.’

Our argument then reduces itself to this: Economic inde-
pendence is essential to all humans in order that they may
develop their full individuality, and freely obey the highest code
ofmorality. The current type of seX-relationship which confines
the wife to the home, and permits of little, if any, free action
and free labour on her part is inconsistent with this economic
independence, and therefore is a type destined to extinction.

 

*Were labour socially organised, the introduction of female labour
would increase the number of workers, and so decrease the amount
required of the individual, without increasing the number of mouths
to be fed. V

SOCIALISM AND SEX. II

The socialistic movement with its new morality and the move-
ment for sex-equality must surely and rapidly undermine our
current marriage customs and marital law.

Hitherto we have treated the question from the woman’s side,
but to the thoughtful man surely the present legal sex—relation-
ship must appear equaliy unbearable, even repulsive. The
idea will suggest itself that the woman possibly married him
for a livelihood or for a position; possibly she remains with
him for the same reasons, or because she thinks she has a duty
towards one who has so long supported her, or again, it may be,
because she feels the customary social ostracism following on
separation would be unbearable. The charm of friendship is the
spontaneity of its nature ; two humans remain friends so long
as they find in each other sympathetic attraction; it is the
very danger of rupture that produces mutual forbearance,
and renders friendship so frequently life-long. To be bound
to treat a person as a friend after sympathy had vanished would
be intolerable, yet this is too often the outcome of life-long
monogamy. Is it any wonder that men as well as women
shrink from such an union? Deprive life-long legal
monogamy of its ‘Customary respectability,’ or men and
women of their seX-instincts, which can only be ‘ respectably ’
exercised in this mode, and we do not believe a single man
and woman would again sign the register Which replaced the
freedom of friendship by a life-long Siamese twinship. The
economic independence of women will for the first time, render it
possible for the highest hmmm relationship to become again a matter
of pure aflection, raised above every suspicion of constraint, cmel
every taint 0f commercialism.

Those, who consider legalised monogamy necessary because
women have not yet economic independence, and because
man is by nature so knavish that he must needs take
advantage of woman’s dependence, have obviously clear ends
to work for in the emancipation of women and the propaga-
tion of the socialistic morality. But one result of maintaining
Without exception legalised monogamy may well be noted;
namely, that more and more men and women, as we get nearer
the epoch when possession and seX-relationship will change in
character, are likely to remain unmarried; the transition
from one type to the other will thus be more abrupt, more
revolutionary than evolutionary. It may well be doubted
whether this mode of change will be more advantageous to
society as a whole, than that whereby society would grow
accustomed to the new type by its appearance as a more and
more frequent variation.

We are now in a position to state what we hold the new
type of sex-relationship will be, and how law or social opinion
Will act with regard to it. We will start from its fundamentals—
the economic independence of women, and the duty as well as

 

 

IZ SOCIALISM AND SEX.

right of all to labour, involving as we have seen a limitation of
population. As other socialists we demand that all shall
labour, and that a field of labour shall be provided for all.
Differing, however, from the majority of socialists* we believe
that the existence of such a field essentially demands a limit-
ation of population. Now it will profit little that the social
man and woman without constraint limit the number of their
offspring, if large anti-social sections of society continue to
bring any number of unneeded human beings into the world.
Society and law will in some fashion have to interfere and
restrict the anti-social in the matter of child-bearing. For
this reason we think the seX-relationship of the future will
not be regarded as a union for the birth of children, but
as the Closest form of friendship between man and woman.

It will be accompanied by no child-bearing or rearing, or
by these in a much more limited measure than at present.
Hence one of the chief causes of woman’s economic depend-
ence will disappear. Her seX-relationship will not habitually
connote seX-dependence. \Ve must here make a distinction
which appears to us fundamental, although objections have
been raised against it, namely, between child-bearing and non-
Child-bearing women; a woman may pass and repass from one
class to the other, but the position of society with regard to
the two classes is essentially different. \Vith the sex-relation-
ship so long as it does not result in children, we hold that the
state of the future will in nowise interfere; but when it does
result in Children then the state will have a right to interfere,
and this on two grounds : first, because the question of popula-
tion bears on the happiness of society as a whole, and, secondly,
because child-bearing enforces for a longer or shorter interval
economic dependence upon the woman.

The reader will note that we have assumed that the non-
child-bearing woman of the future will possess economic
independence, and that there will be no legal or state distinc-
tion between the man and such woman. It may be asked

 

* Marx by abusing Malthus has not solved the population difficulty.
Leroux’s theory—that the food-supply is a question of dung, and that
the excrement of each individual if properly applied suffices to produce
his quota of food,——-and Dijhring's doctrine—that each additional
labourer increases the labour-stock, and so the social-capacity for
producing foodware alike naive, as they beg the question by presupposing
a field for the dung and the labour. Engels would apparently find such
a field in the valley of the Missisippi, or he suggests the remedy of emigra-
tion; this remedy Hyndman, on the other hand, declaims against as a
capitalistic expatriation. Bebel’s treatment of the problem is as wanting
in logic and historical accuracy as the rest of his writings. The minor
socialists will not face the problem, but practically shelve it. The real
solution is simply that the limitation of population is possible in a
socialistic community, but not in a capitalistic one. Kautsky seems
to stand alone among socialists in accepting the Malthusian law and its
consequences.

SOCIALISM AND SEX. I3

whether such economic independence, such sex-equality is
really possible? We believe it will be so in the future, we
doubt whether it is so in the present. The Post Office employs
women-clerks, not because of their equality with male-clerks,
but because their decreased efficiency and increased
sick-leave are more than compensated by the diminished wages.
This fact lies at the basis of much of the employment of female
labour under our present system. But the lesser physical
strength and general intelligence of the average woman of to-day
are no real arguments for those who would maintain her present
enslaved condition. The student of the history of civilisation
will find that there was a time when the woman physically was
on a par with the man, while mentally she was his superiorfi“
There is no rigid natural law of feminine inferiority, and what
we see now in certain classes of our current society is the
outcome of the generations during which woman’s physical
and intellectual training have been neglected. Every teacher
or examiner who has had to deal with women students
will admit their capacity to grasp the same intellectual
training as men. The wanderer in the mountainous
lands of Southern Germany, Switzerland, and Northern
Italy knows to what extent woman’s physical strength can be
developed by a healthy outdoor life. We ourselves have often
rested in a Tyrolese Alp, miles away from the nearest
hamlet, where for four or five months one or two maidens had
charge in all weathers of 40 to 50 cows. Morning and
evening these cows had to be milked, cheese had to be made
and occasionally butter carried down into the valleys. Still
early in the morning after milking, one or both women might
be seen one or two thousand feet above the Alp, almost on the
snow-line, mowing green fodder, and later carrying it down in
masses that many a man would fail to lift. In bad weather,
in mist and snow the cows had to be sought for and brought
home ; at other times they had to be driven to pastures which
could only be reached by crossing considerable snow-fields. Yet
notwithstanding the physical severity of their task these
Tyrolese Dirndl are among the healthiest, freshest and
happiest women we have met. We are not pointing to any
abnormal cases of mental and physical power in women,
they are merely types of what training easily produces.
We have faith then that when one or two generations of
women have received a sound intellectual training, and when
the physical education of girls is as much regarded as that of
boys, then a non-child-bearing woman will be the economic
equal of man, and so preserve her Independence; for, she will be
his physical and mentalequal in any sex-partnership they may

* The evidence we have collected on these points is far too complex and
copious to be reproduced here. Suffice it to say that women first practiced
agriculture, first created religion, and first discovered medicine, at least
among the Aryans.

 

 

 

14 SOCIALISM AND SEX.

agree to enter upon. For such woman we hold that the sex-
relationship, both as to form and substance, ought to be a pure
question of taste, a simple matter of agreement between the man
and her, in which neither society nor the State would have any
need or right to interfere. The economic independence of both
man and woman would render it a relation solely of mutual sym-
pathy and affection ; its form and duration would vary according
to the feelings and wants ofindividuals. This free sexual union
seems to us the first outcome of socialism as applied to sex.
We are, although socialists, no advocates of state-inter-
ference for its own sake, only when it appears of social value
as capable of hindering the anti-social oppression of one
individual by a second more favourably situated. Children
(1pm we hold it unbearable that church or society should in
any official form interfere with lovers. Were it not customary
it would seem offensive; it has become customary as a protection
for a subject class. When marriage is no longer regarded as
a profession for women, and nigh the only way in which they
can gain the comradeship of men and a wider life,——when the
relations of men and women are perfectly free and they can
meet on an equal footing,——-then so far from this free sexual-
relationship leading to sensuality and loose living, we hold it
would be the best safe-guard against it. Men and women
having many friends of the opposite sex with whom they were
on terms of close friendship, would be in far less danger of
mistaking fancy or friendship for love, and the relation of lovers
would be far less readily entered upon than at present, when
in some social Circles man and woman must be lovers or
exhibit no sign of affection. Every man and woman would
probably ultimately choose a lover from their friends, but the
men and women who being absolutely free would choose more
than one would certainly be the exceptions;—exceptions, we
believe, infinitely more rare than under our present legalised
monogamy accompanied as it is by socially unrecognised
polygamy and polyandry—by the mistress and the prostitutei“

1f the above, to any degree, express the solution of the
sex-problem for the non-child-bearing woman, whose
economic independence will preserve her individuality, how
shall we socialists regard her sister, the child-bearing woman P
Here again it seems to us needful that she should be rendered
economically independent of the husband and lover. In the
society of the future the brth of a child will have social
sanction or it will not. If the birth is sanctioned, then we
hold that the woman in bearing a child is fulfilling a high
social function, and on society at large, on the state, falls

 

* Some of the above remarks we owe to the letter of a woman-friend ;
they express our own views in truer words than we should have found for

ourselves. a z

SOCIALISM AND SEX. 15

the correlative duty of preserving her economic independence.
The state, not the individual, should in one form or another
guard that its child-bearing women do not lose their indepen-
dence owing to their incapacity to undertake other forms of
social labour while bearing and rearing its future citizens.
Let not the reader picture to himself huge state lying-in
hospitals, free nurseries and public schools ; we see no reason
Why dismal barracks of this kind should replace our ordinary
home-life, nor why the father’s affection for his children, even
as it exists to-day, should be based solely on the fact that
he is bound to support them; there is surely a deeper root
to it than that! Nay, we imagine that as friends dwell
together now, so lovers will seek to do in the future; that
as they will not ‘have children without the mature considera-
tion and desire of the woman, if not of both, so they will
desire to have those children about them, to form round
themselves a home-life. But in this home-life the wife, no
longer a chattel, will possess an economic independence
insured by the state.

Let us take apm’ely hypothetical example—on the details of
which we lay no stress and which is not given to raise idle
discussion on its value—let us suppose that on an average three
births to a woman has been found sufficient at any epoch to
maintain the population at its proper limit or to give it a needed
increase. Some women would doubtless have more, others
less or none in such cases there might well be a communal
transfer, a sanctioned addition to the local average ; but for
each sanctioned birth it would be the duty of the commune or
state to contribute a certain annual sum for the maintenance of
mother and Child, and this not with the View of decreasing the
father’sinterest or responsibility in his child, but in order to
render the mother a free individual. As the national wealth
increased a larger number of births or a greater annual sum
per Child would be allowed. This seems to us the only satis-
factory method of placing the child-bearing woman on a true
footing of economic equality with the man, to destroy her
chattel-slavery to the husband. Obviously an unsanctioned
birth would receive no recognition from the state, and in
times of over-population it might be needful to punish positively,
as well as negatively, both father and mother. As such births
might be due to ignorance or inefficiency of some check
system, we hold it would be the essential duty of the state to
scientifically investigate the Whole question of Checks, and to
spread among its ,citizens of riper years a thorough knowledge
of such as were harmless and efficient in practise.*

 

* The need for state action in this matter has been well pointed out by
Jane Hume Clapperton in her work Scientific M eliorism, Kegan Paul, Trench
and Co., 1885, p. 427.

 

 

16 SOCIALISM AND SEX.

Such then seems to us the socialistic solution of the
sex-problem: complete freedom in the seX-relationship left to
thejudgment and taste of an economically-equal, physically
trained and intellectually developed race of men and wom‘én ;
state interference in the matter of child-bearing in order to
preserve intersexual independence on the one hand, and the
limit of population on the other. To those who see in these
things an ideal of the distant centuries, and not of the near
future, we can only reply: Measure well the forces which are
at work in our age, mark the strength of the men and women
who are dissatisfied with the present, weigh carefully the
enthusiasm of the teachers of our new morality socialistic and
sexual, then you will not class us as dreamers only. To' those
who would know their duty at the present,,we can but say':
The first steps towards our ideal are the spread of socialism as
a morality, and the complete emancipation of our sisters. To
others who, like the aged poet, halt and are faint at heart,
seeing in the greatness of our time only pettiness and lust,
we bid a sorrowful but resolute farewell—“ Father, thou
knowest not our needs, thy task is done, remain and rest, we
must onward—farewell.” We are full of new emotions, new
passions, new thoughts; our age is not one of pettiness and
lust, but replete with Clearer and nobler ideas than the past,
ideas that its sons will generate and its daughters bring to
birth. Dangers and difficulties there are, misery, pain, and
wrong-doing over and enough. But we of, to-day see beyond
them; they do not cause us to despair, but summon us to action.
You of the past valued Christianity—aye, and we value free-
thought; you of the past valued faith—aye, and we value know-
ledge; you have. sought wealth .eagerly—we value more the
duty and right to labour; you talked of the sanctity of marriage
—-We find therein love sold on thevmarket, and we strive for a
remedy in the freedom of sex. Your symbols are those of the
past, symbols to which civilization owes much, great land-
marks in past history pointing the direction of man’s progress,
even suggesting the future, our ideal. But as symbols for our
action to-day they are idle, they-denote in the present serfdom
of thought and serfdom of labour and serfdom of sex. We have
other ideals more true to the” coming ages—freedom of
thought, and freedom of labour and freedom of sex—ideals
based on a deeper knowledge of human nature and its history
than you, our fathers, could possess. . Term them impious, irra-
tional, impure, if you will; ’tis because you have understood
neither the time, nor us. We must leave you sorrowfully behind,
and go forward alone. The age isstrong in knowledge, rich in
ideas; we hold the future not so distant when our symbols
shall be the guides of conduct, and their beauty brought home
to humanity by their realisation in "a renascent art. K P