fraud, they must also be on their guard against the illusive claims of the Adult Suffragists; not that Adult Suffrage is in itself undesirable, but because it is not desirable as the aim of working class effort, or the expenditure of working class energy and resources.
The Adult Suffragists maintain that their reform would lead to sex equality. This is to lose sight of the true function of politics, and so to put the cart before the horse. Women's subjection did not arise from political disabilities—these disabilities arose from women's subjection; and, as previously shown, this subjection has its roots deep down in economic inequality. Politics are the result of economic conditions, and in all its variety political action has gone upon lines of economic interests. The enfranchisement of every man and woman could only extend the possibilities of political action, but could not, of itself, remove the economic conditions of which political action is but a reflex.
Every Socialist is in a sense an Adult Suffragist, inasmuch as this is the only democratic method of election. But the suffrage in itself is neither desirable nor undesirable to the workers—its worth depends upon the use that is made of it and the economic power by which it is backed up. The claim of the Adult Suffragists is, of course, that by the use of the vote the workers could secure what conditions they please. As a matter of fact this is a fallacy which the impotence of the present Labour Party is exposing to the workers in actual practice. The vote is useless to the workers while it is not backed up by an organised economic power sufficient to ensure the introduction of Socialism.
The power of the enemy, the capitalist class, does not lie in the vote, but in the possession of property, and the resulting control of production. Which possesses true social power, and which is the social slave—the disfranchised lady-capitalist, or the enfranchised wage-worker in her employment?
The real interests of the workers are not bound up in mere political enfranchisement, but in the complete emancipation of all, men and women alike, from the power of capital.
