The Woman Socialist

Front matter

THE LABOUR IDEAL

THE WOMAN SOCIALIST

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Introduction

INTRODUCTION

“Woman Socialist” may be understood to mean one or both of two things. It may have reference to the woman who believes in Socialist principles whether in a position to apply these or not; or it may mean the woman who lives in a Socialist State, where the principle has been fully applied.

The first of these two is alive now, eagerly seeking to propagate her principles, rejoicing over every fresh triumph of her faith, and looking forward to the day of her complete emancipation and the emancipation of her fellows with a hope and confidence, touching in its simplicity, and as inspiring as that faith which is said to remove mountains. The second is the promise of the future; and society has no brighter hope, humanity no larger promise than her coming, radiant with health and happiness, love and liberty shining from her eyes, the beautiful, high-souled, sister-mother of the men that are going to be.

Though the woman of the future is to be the main subject of these pages, a description of the position of women under Socialism to be the chief object of this writing, it is impossible in such a connection to forget the rebel-women of the present, whose brave stand for justice and freedom are making the coming of real Socialism possible. They are pioneers, born in advance of their times. They are having to pay the penalty which all pioneers in time past have had to pay; misunderstanding and abuse, cruel slanders and countless lies all along the road, with Calvary and the cross at the end of it all. But their praises shall be sung from the mountain-tops and chanted in the valleys when the day of woman’s freedom shall dawn; and their reward shall be more than marble monuments and the sound of trumpets, for they shall be enthroned in the hearts of a people made free through their efforts and exalted through their sufferings and sacrifices.

Chapter I

CHAPTER I

SOCIALISM

A great logician once said that if we would only define our terms well there would be no need to argue. Whether this be strictly true or not, it is quite certain that much bitterness and stupid misunderstanding might be spared, and many differences removed, if the meaning of the terms used in any discussion were made perfectly clear one to another by the disputants.

Around the word Socialism has formed an obscuring cloud of ignorance and prejudice, which the strongest searchlights of truth and of eloquence are scarcely able to dispel.

We have already travelled far along the road which leads to Socialism. Each day sees some fresh application or extended application of its principles, Our most admirable and wonderful organisations are those which are conducted on Socialist lines. Socialist enterprise is the most distinguishing feature of the last fifty years. Men and women are thinking Socialism, speaking Socialism, acting Socialism, in their daily occupations, in their municipal life, and in their national undertakings. Socialism is the spirit of the age; a compelling spirit over which individuals have no control, and which is forcing them, consciously or unconsciously, towards the consummation of the Socialist hope.

Yet, in spite of all this, the grossest misconceptions of Socialism amongst large masses of the people still prevail. To the minds of many, even in these supposed enlightened days, the Socialist is a robber, an idle vagabond, who is seeking to steal from the thrifty their hard–earned store, or to take from the rich their rightly–inherited wealth. To some others Socialism is the negation of God and of religion. It would destroy the sacred ties of marriage, institute free love, give licence to immorality, pillage the churches and put to flight the anointed servants of the Most High. Another misconception of Socialism is that which associates it with wild anarchy. Use the word Socialism in the hearing of these people, and visions of bombs and dynamite, cruel assassinations and horrid explosions, maimed and mangled limbs and tortured bodies appear before their terrified eyes. Equally uninformed are those individuals who think that Socialism means an equal division amongst its inhabitants of the world's wealth; or that it involves the destruction of private property.

Socialism means none of these things. Not one of these is a part of the Socialist programme. Far from aiming at the destruction of private property its object is to increase private property amongst those whose property is so limited that they have a difficulty in keeping themselves alive. Not the sub-division of wealth but the sharing of it is the desire of the Socialist. A beautiful picture can be shared by all who look upon it, but its value is gone if it be cut up and divided amongst a number. A bloody revolution is not necessary for the advent of Socialism, nor will its coming mean the destruction of religion and the reign of lust and licence.

False and ignorant as are these conceptions of Socialism there is some justification for their existence. Socialists themselves are not a little to blame for their origin. Such amazing errors have been committed, such crimes of tongue and pen been perpetrated in the name of Socialism by those of its advocates whose hearts are better than their heads that the wonder would have been had no misunderstanding occurred. A prominent Socialist was, to a certain extent, quite right when he said that "Socialism would be all right if it were not for the Socialists!" But a cause is always better than its supporters, a principle greater than many of those who profess it.

Again, although Socialism is not atheism nor confiscation, not division nor revolution, it has something to say upon all these questions and a thousand questions besides.

Socialism is a principle, the co-operative principle. Belief in that principle is bound to affect our opinion upon every other subject. The Socialist need not be an atheist, but his Socialism will not permit him to look at matters of religious import in precisely the same way as does his individualist friend. There is nothing new in this idea. It applies to every ideal which fills the breasts of men. The ideal may be lofty or low, but it will colour the world for the idealist. Our gods are what we make them, and we are the servants of self-chosen masters.

Should the main idea in life be the making of money, every activity will be subordinated to that purpose. Religion, morality, education, politics, habits, friends—all will be looked at from the point of view of their usefulness. Will it pay to belong to that party? Is it profitable to attend that church?

Likewise a belief in Socialism, in the great principle of co-operative ownership and control as opposed to private monopoly and extortion, throws new light upon a hundred problems read before "through a glass darkly," and but dimly understood.

Socialism protests against an order of society which permits the few to live in idleness and luxury whilst the many toil in hopeless and degrading poverty. Socialists claim to have discovered the cause of the painful inequalities of our modern civilisation in the fact that land and capital, upon which the very lives of the people depend, are in the hands of a comparatively small number of people. By reason of their monopoly of the means of life the few are able to dictate to the many the terms upon which they shall live. A veritable slavery of the workers is the result; economic bondage of the many to the possessing few.

The purpose of Socialism is to destroy this bondage; and this it is proposed to do by making the tillers of the soil and the workers of the tools the owners of the machines they work and the land they cultivate. State or municipal management is to supersede private management, and national or civic ownership to take the place of private monopoly of the land, and of all the wealth produced by the land in return for the energy expended upon it. Under such a State everybody will be provided with the necessaries of life in proportion to his need, and in return for service rendered according to his ability. Production will be for the use of all and not for the profit of the enterprising few. All will be found employment, and each will have every opportunity for the development of his individual powers and peculiar genius.

Nor to the attainment for all of material prosperity alone does the true Socialist consecrate his life. This, he realises, is but a means to an end, and not an end in itself. He wants the people to be lifted out of their intellectual poverty, and is anxious for material benefits because he knows that where one is strong enough to master his circumstances a thousand are conquered by them and perish miserably. But he knows better than he can be told that the nationalisation of the land and capital of the country is not the last word in progress; that without the social spirit, the socialisation of men and women, our condition under Socialism might be little better than our present lot. If "Each for all and all for each" be nothing more than a text for a banner or a motto for a wall; if its truth has not captured the hearts and minds of men and women in that new society, we shall be an official-ridden people, with our eye on the best posts in the State for ourselves or our sons; and we shall be as pitiable in our spiritual deformity as we are in our economic bondage.

For the purposes of this book it is necessary to make one other point clear. Not only is it possible to conceive of the workers being little better off under a Socialist régime than under a Capitalist system, unless they be animated with something nobler than a fretful discontent with the existing order of things, but it is necessary to point out, and to emphasise the fact, that the position of women would actually be worse under a so-called Socialist system which neglected to give them political and economic equality with men. It is necessary to be strong on this point, since, to many calling themselves Socialist, the enfranchisement of women is unnecessary, or of so little importance that it can be postponed until all other reforms have been accomplished.

This is a colossal error. A Socialist system which does not represent the feminine point of view as recorded at the ballot-box is no Socialism at all. It is the dreariest shadow of Socialism for men, and for women it is additional degradation. For it is simply the strengthening of masculine authority and masculine privileges to the more thorough and complete enslavement of women.

Women of the present will, if they be wise, withhold their support from any man calling himself Socialist who is not willing to concede to their sex what he claims for his own, and that immediately. He has grasped neither the principle nor the spirit of Socialism if he would defer their political emancipation until liberty has been won for all men. His method of salvation is a wrong one. His gospel of salvation is not sound. If, as the story of the apple teaches us, the temptations of men come through women, so shall their victories and their glories be won. "A nation," says Professor Ramsay, "can never rise permanently above the level of its women."

Chapter II

CHAPTER II

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY

“Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” was the brave and splendid legend inscribed on the blood–red banners of the French Revolutionists. And in strange ways the oppressed and hunger–maddened people sought to realise their ideal. It is still the battle–cry of the English Socialists, indeed, of the world–wide Socialist movement. Liberty of thought, speech, and of action, within the safety and happiness of the State; equality of opportunity for the development of each individual along his own lines, for the glory of the State; and universal brotherhood for the good of humanity are the ideals of the Socialists of this and other countries.

Under this present competitive system the great masses of the people are not free, but live in a condition which is the exact opposite of free. They are not free, because they are not all in the possession of the means to live; and where a small number of individuals in a community enjoy powers and privileges which are denied to the rest, there must be inequality and there cannot possibly be fraternity.

Much as the "free-born Briton" may dislike to hear the painful truth recited, it is a fact not to be controverted that four-fifths of our total population are bound as completely and as miserably as ever was a black African slave to a Western planter. There is no real freedom which is not economic freedom. He is a slave who depends for his bread upon the will or the whim of a man like himself, or of a number of such masters, who can and will and, owing to the trials and exigencies of modern commercial life, must cease to employ him as soon as it is no longer profitable to find him work.

It is reasonable to suppose, and necessary for a belief in the power for human happiness of the establishment of Socialism to understand, that the liberty, equality, and fraternity which are the Socialist’s hope, will be the portion of women as well as men when the good time comes.

Women are economically bound as well as men, the victims of Capitalism as well as men, and are seeking and needing the same freedom as men.

But there is an important difference between the present position of men and of women. The political power which is the key to their common economic prison is already in the hands of one sex, but is still denied to the other. That the prison door has not yet been opened is not the fault of the voteless women; but the responsibility of keeping fast within a helpless sex is with those who have the power and will not use it. Men might have voted themselves and their sisters into freedom half a century ago had they had the wisdom. Now women are clamouring for the right to do for themselves what men have so long neglected to do for them.

Nor is the tale of present inequality fully told when it is shown that women have no voice in making the laws which govern themselves and their children.

In the industrial world, women are generally paid much less for work similar in kind, quality, and amount to that done by men, and sometimes more in amount than that done by men in the corresponding positions in their departments. The average wage of the man-worker is about twenty-four shillings per week; that of the woman-worker, seven shillings per week.

The reasons for this offered by the average orthodox political economist will receive attention later. But no Socialist State worthy of the name could justify a relaxation of its principle of equality on account of sex.

The inadequacy of a woman’s earnings is frequently the cause of two other unfortunate conditions of her life. The struggle for existence is sometimes so hard, so lonely, so bitter, that she is constrained to sell herself into a still more terrible bondage. 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. Or, hopeless of attracting to herself a man who is willing to keep her honourably in the married state, she sells herself without the consent and blessing of society, choosing a life of luxurious or comfortable vice before the soul-starving, heart-breaking drudgery of a work-girl’s life.

But even worse in some ways than the whole condition of woman’s bondage, political, economic, and sexual (the last two being the offspring of the first), are the chains of a decrepit and soul-destroying orthodoxy and conventionality with which time and centuries of training have tamed her spirit, dulled her intellect, and crippled her body. It is this which has made so disastrously against her in every effort which has been made for her enfranchisement. It is this which seems to offer a justification for the taunt of her mental inferiority; to people, at least, who are not able to see in this condition an effect as well as a cause of her slavery. She has allowed herself to be cramped and baffled and hindered by rules imposed upon her by a man-governed society. She cannot escape from the dominion of the proprieties. "How do I look? What shall I wear? What ought I to do? What will people say?" And the men who have made this slavish code of morals and manners for women, and who insist on their observance, despise the women who obey them, and show their contempt for their own regulations by consistently and absolutely refusing to be governed by these themselves.

From the foregoing, then, it will be seen that conditions of life are much worse for women than for men; that women have far to travel before they arrive at a condition of equality with men; that women are trebly bound—economically, to the capitalist, sexually, to the man, and spiritually, to wrong ideas of life; ideas which are a degradation to themselves and a disaster to their children.

Far below the lowest working-man is the woman. But Socialism will bring liberty to both, a double portion of liberty to her; and the two, set free, shall show to the world what it has never yet dreamt of, of what human nature is capable when it dwells in the warmth and sunlight of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

Chapter III

CHAPTER III

THE WOMAN SOCIALIST OF TO–DAY

Socialism is not yet an established fact. It is coming; nothing can prevent that, It is the next inevitable step in ordered progress. But women must not wait for its coming; nor must they consecrate their time and talents entirely to firing the imaginations and touching the hearts of men with pity for their own condition whilst women live in bonds. The raising of women to the present position of men would be a revolution as great in its character and as important in its consequences as the destruction of the present social and industrial system and the establishment upon its ruins of the new social order. Let Socialist women remember this fact; and let them give their lives to raising their sisters, no matter what their position in society, so that men and women, equally armed, may fight side by side for that economic liberty denied to so many.

The Socialist woman-citizen of the future will find strange reading in the accounts of to-day’s struggle for the political emancipation of women. To her these times will have much the same character as the dark ages have to us. Picture them, the woman and the man, in their simple, beautiful home, lovely children at their knees:— “Self-reverent each, and reverencing each; Distinct in individualities, Yet like each other even as those who love;” discussing with intelligence and in sweet seriousness the grave political and social problems of their times; coming by their discussion each to a satisfactory conclusion, sometimes the same, sometimes different; and then proceeding, side by side, to record their respective opinions at the ballot-box in perfect peace and amity.

We have a long distance to travel ere that goal is reached; but it must be travelled, and it will be reached as soon as a sufficient number of women have been brought to a clear understanding of the true cause of their enslavement, and a determination to endure no longer their condition of political outlawry.

The brave women who are taking so prominent a part in the present great agitation for Parliamentary votes are to be highly congratulated, not only upon their courage, but also upon their wisdom.

They know of numberless other evils which afflict their sex in particular; and of unhappy conditions which women and men have in common. They yearn unspeakably to alter these conditions. They want work for the workless. They would have food given to the children. They want an old-age pension for every aged man and woman. They desire to see accomplished a vast number of reforms of a similar character. But for the present they are concentrating upon this one question, to the unthinking a question of minor importance; and they are wise in so doing.

This question is so foundational in its character that upon its satisfactory solution depends the satisfactory solution, ultimately, of all other problems, and in particular, of those bearing intimately and exclusively upon women. If women realised more completely and in greater numbers the real significance of their voteless condition, and the real nature of the opposition to their enfranchisement, the whole question would be taken out of the realm of politics, cease to be a matter of party strife, and the battle would rage round the greatest moral and spiritual problem that has torn asunder the souls of men since the fall of Adam and the coming of Christ.

But this is not fully realised even by the noblest supporters of the cause of women. The real inwardness of the movement is not appreciated by many. A few excitable women, loud and unwomanly, screaming for votes because they cannot have husbands, is the vulgar idea of the vulgar critics of a movement too great for their shallow minds to comprehend.

The movement for women’s votes means to the intelligent woman agitator something far more than its name implies. She appears to be asking for a vote for her own use. In reality she is demanding the raising of the status of a sex. To be deprived of the vote herself would not cause her a single pang, nor cost her a single tear, though she realises sufficiently its tremendous power and importance. The disgrace is not in the voteless condition of women, but it lies in their powerlessness to qualify, in any circumstances, for the elementary right of citizenship, because of an accident of birth.

It is not, at present, the concern of the women as to how many of their sex shall be enfranchised. A new principle has to be declared, a new relationship to be established, between men and women. We say to the men, "You have the power. Make your qualification for citizenship exactly what you please. We cannot interfere whatever you choose to do. We are powerless. But we demand that that which qualifies a man, whatever it may be, shall also qualify a woman. We desire the stain removed from our womanhood. The power of the vote is important, but it is a secondary consideration. Remove the hateful stigma from your mothers, your wives, and your daughters, which places the noblest and the best of them in a lower position than the most uncultured and immoral specimen of the male sex who pays his rates and taxes."

On these lines must the Socialist woman of the present agitate, in and out of season, if she be true to her Socialist principle of equality. Not turned aside by arguments of expediency, nor frightened of the consequences upon legislation of middle-class and aristocratic women’s votes, but determined to be just in all things, she will go on, in spite of sneers and calumnies, fighting for her oppressed sisters of all classes. And as certainly as that to-morrow’s sun will rise, so surely will the end prove to the advocates of expediency before justice that it is always expedient to be just.

Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV

WOMAN'S SPHERE

One of the most potent arguments used against the political enfranchisement of woman, and one which ought to be powerful if its premises be correct and its conclusion sound, is the old, old argument used against every extension of feminine freedom in time past; that it would affect disastrously the true sphere of woman. Nature, they say, has appointed to each sex its peculiar duties, and has formed it physically, and fitted it mentally for the performance of those duties; and anything which would tend to the derangement of Nature's plans and interfere with her designs would be neither profitable nor righteous.

The sphere of woman—it is scarcely necessary to state, so universally is the idea accepted and acted upon—is confined within the four walls of her home. Her sole function in life should be maternity and all that is involved in the performance of that duty, the care of the children and the home, and, by no means incidentally, the service of the children’s father.

Thousands of intelligent women are in revolt against this doctrine, and their numbers increase daily. Still, by far the greater part of the population, men and women alike, are in bondage to this ignoble conception of woman’s purpose in life, having advanced no farther in these Christian times than their heathen predecessors of Greece, one of whose teachers declared: “War, politics, and public speaking are the sphere of man; that of woman is to keep house, to stay at home, and to receive and tend her husband.”

The fact that so many women of the present still cling tenaciously to this old idea of their sex’s servitude is due in part to their belief in its Divine sanction, and partly to a condition of intellect and soul which is the most painful effect of ages of subjection. Ages of domination have produced a love of domination, a desire for servitude. Enslaved for so long in the flesh they have become also slavish in spirit, loving fondly the chains that bind them and grovelling at the feet of the being who destroys them.

Let it not be understood from the foregoing that the holy office of motherhood is despised, that a well-ordered home is not a desirable and necessary thing, and that the rearing and educating of the nation’s future citizens is not the noblest of all work. No true woman would deny the great importance of these duties; nor that she, by reason of centuries of training at least, if not by reason of her sex, is peculiarly fitted to undertake them. And, far from shirking, she would glory in their doing, if the conditions of her labour bore any relation to the importance and dignity of the work.

The revolt of woman to-day is not against the work which Nature, confessedly, intended her to do. It is against the arbitrary limitations put upon her activities by men in matters educational, professional, social, and political which in increasing numbers she protests; and she justifies her rebellion completely when she points out that the sphere which is supposed to be peculiarly the sphere of woman is barred to innumerable women through no fault of their own, and by reason of economic changes over which neither man nor woman has any control.

Plato, who was more advanced than many of his contemporaries, and whose ideal is still to be fully realised, spoke the thoughts of the modern woman when he taught: “None of the occupations which comprehend the ordering of a State belong to woman as woman, nor yet to man as man, but natural gifts are to be found here and there in both sexes alike; and so far as her nature is concerned, the woman is admissible to all pursuits as well as the man.”

It would make interesting and instructive reading to discover how, out of the time-long servitude of woman, arose the conception of the purely domestic animal. Since Eve furnished Adam with excuse for his cowardly whine the curse of man has been upon her descendants. And the civilised man has always been the worse offender; for, knowing well what he was doing, he has used not only custom and tradition, but culture and religion to enslave his mate, whilst the savage enslaved but knew no wrong.

Far back in those dim ages, before the dawn of civilisation, animal-man and animal-woman lived in savage happiness, roaming the woods for the fruits and nuts with which they nourished themselves, and slaying for food such animals as came their way with the rude weapons they possessed. No knowledge was there of the inferiority of the one sex or the superiority of the other. The man pursued, the woman was pursued, and thus they came together, under no other ordinance than the sexual emotion, and with no other sanction than their sexual needs, to lose one another in the bush when Nature’s demands had been satisfied.

The savage woman, knowing her condition, was compelled to make preparation. Out of the leaves and branches of trees and such things as she could lay hold of, she constructed a rude temporary shelter for herself during the time of her helplessness, and provided beforehand such food as she might require. Unless the child died, or until it could provide for itself, she preserved the shelter, and into her life crept something withheld from her promiscuous lover, the mother-love with its humanising power, denied to the terrible savage, slaying and gorging in the forests.

Time passed, and the benefits of the primitive domestic arrangements began to appeal to the man, who saw himself saved from danger and exposure if he stayed with the woman. She would build for him, work for him, give him food and shelter, heal him when he was sick, grow herbs and fruits for him on the little plot outside the dwelling, and bring forth sons for him, whom he might train to feats of daring, and to assist him in the chase and against his enemies. Then came a short period of woman’s superiority. She alone knew anything of the domestic arts which made for comfort and happiness. To her belonged the rude knowledge of medicine. For a time she received homage; then began her career of slavery.