Woman and the Socialist Movement/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
SOCIALISM AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT.
THE SOCIAL QUESTION.
There is to-day no woman question, no religious question, no nationality question and no race question. There is only one question before which all the rest disappear or into which they dissolve themselves. That is the Labor Question, the Social Question.
When Socialism first became discussed in this country was ⟨it⟩ airily put aside as un-American. "It could not grow on American soil." In Germany it was called un-German, in England un-English, in Russia un-Russian, and Japanese comrades tell us that in Japan it is called un-Japanese. To judge by that, one should think it was unworldly, indeed, and that those struck the keynote who said that before we could have Socialism we must change human nature and all people must become angels. But for all that Socialism proved not to be so easily put aside. It proves to be in America, Germany, England, Russia and Japan to stay as an agitational force until it can be fully established.
The social question faces us everywhere. Statesmen have to wrestle with it. It props up in Congress and in the judiciary. It has faced the present executive of this nation, as it has faced no one in that capacity before. When the Idaho-Colorado outrage was perpetrated against the officers of the W. F. of M. and he was deluged with protests calling upon him on his official dignity to stand up for the rights of citizenship that had been trampled upon and human rights that had been outraged, he became mightily angry and determined to squash it by putting his imperial foot hard down upon it. With one stroke of his authoritative pen he condemned all labor agitators and all Socialists as "undesirable citizens." What must have been his surprise when that did not settle the social question forever. With that ban upon him every agitator was surely expected to go into lifelong hiding. But the other thing happened. A new deluge of protests came pouring in and, such is the wicked humor of the masses, it became an honor to be an "undesirable citizen." Now "third-term Teddy" is trying hard to make good. He is standing for "all the people" at the present time at Goldfield, and "will not allow any injustice to the workingmen." Even the imperial Theodore has found out as did once the late Mark Hanna that the workingmen are more easily cajoled than blustered into submission. He who would not quail before the biggest bad bear has had to quail before the social question!
This subject is taking tremendous proportions. It is cropping up in the school and the college, in the pulpit and on the public platform, in the press and in the home, in the workshop and out of it. It is the paramount question of the day.
Woman to-day is priding herself on the progress she is making. She is conscious of her power over the rising generation. She looks with joy to the place she will assume in the future. Therefore she cannot afford, for a day or an hour, to delay to post herself upon the great subjects of the day! The social question is not necessarily all dry economics and hard, ugly disagreeable tasks. The art, music, poetry, drama and literature of each succeeding age, that has been of value and has lived, is that which has stirred the human soul to progress! It has portrayed the sufferings and wrongs and misery of the oppressed. It has ridiculed the tyrant and the oppressor. It has satirized outworn customs, manners and laws. It has pointed out wrong and upheld right and truth. It has held up to the people the mirror of the future. There is not a field in which woman moves where she cannot make herself useful—in the nursery where she tells her little fairy-tales to the babes, in the factory where she meets the oppressed of her class, in the broad field of learning where she can disseminate knowledge and truth and beauty and high ideals to the world at large. She is half of humanity. She suffers deeply by its wrongs, she should indeed be highly interested in its progress.
THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT.
We saw that property laws and class rule have been the source of the oppression of woman and the lower classes alike, by the property-holding classes of all ages. We also saw that family relations among the workers were freed to a great extent from the nastiness and degradation that attached itself to misery and property, poverty and wealth alike. We saw that property laws and property relations have little if any influence in the working class family. Even so is this true in the social relations among the workers. The moral influences of the happy stage of being propertyless are most beneficial. We might unhesitatingly say that the wife, sister or daughter of an intelligent workingman, when the family is out of reach of poverty, is about the freest human being in the world to-day. It does not alter the fact that thousands of them do not know or realize it but complain and hanker for the follies of the rich. A fairly well paid workingman when in his health and prime stands, even under capitalism, in a position to shield his wife and daughters from the pangs of wage-slavery. Their lives are active and useful, their work may even be hard but their movements are free. If their visions are clear and their views bright they have every opportunity of equality, friendship and companionship with the men with whom they associate.
While the women's rights advocate wrapped herself in the cloak of the martyrdom of the ages and made war upon man as her tyrant and oppressor, the Socialist woman quietly assumes her position in the labor movement. She becomes a militant on the battlefield of progress, a champion of the right of humanity. In the Socialist organizations there was never a question of woman's right and equality. The Socialists are to each other not men and women, boys and girls, they are Comrades with equal rights and privileges. The gray-headed men and women veterans in the movement are the "Comrades" of the little boy and girl in the Young Socialists' Club. The very use of the term shows the beauty of the fact behind it. But the equality is not likeness. No one strives for likeness. Each seeks his or her place and does the work it requires, conscious of its value, whatever it may be. All cannot be speakers, editors, or writers, but all can work. The Comrade Editor is of small use without the Comrade that pushes the subscription list. The Comrade Speaker would have little to say without the Comrade that distributes the handbill. There is no sentimentality or brotherly or sisterly love about the comradeship. It implies only that all are co-workers with equal rights and equal duties, co-workers that can be controlled and criticized and corrected, co-workers that must be ruled by science, reason and order. It implies discipline as well as freedom, obedience as well as power.
The Socialist women have none of the obnoxiousness of the women's rights advocate. As a rule they are modest and quiet and proud of being womanly and ready for the work they can do, whatever it may be. They do not try to imitate man. Why should they? Their usefulness consists in being women! They do not aspire to the place of man. Why should they? They have naturally and easily made a place for themselves. They do not envy man. Why should they? They know that the misery of the working class is common to them all.
The question whether woman has a place in polities, has vanished for the Socialist woman. She has taken her place in the political campaign as educator and organizer and worker. The question of electing or being elected is the insignificant part of the Socialist campaign at the present time. The great question is to educate the working class to class consciousness and then organize them for united action both on the economic and the political field. The Socialist woman, therefore, is no politician. She is simply working to preserve her home and the happiness of the future generation. With her it is a question of progress and human rights.
SOCIALISM.
The economic development points to the collective ownership of the means of prodoction in the future society. That is all there is to Socialism. The other questions will take care of themselves. Ethics and ideas, marriage relations and laws, will reflect themselves in the changed conditions. No one can prophecy exactly what they will be. We can only judge in a general way from general economic knowledge.
Woman lost her power over herself and her children and her civic rights in society, as her possessions lost their relative economic value. When man of the ruling class acquired economic power he begot all power. In a Socialistic society the economic power falls away from class or sex. It will rest with society at large. Woman is part of society. She will produce economic goods or serve the good of the community in some useful capacity as well as the man. There will be no room for parasites, no room for rulers, no room for slaves. It will be a return of the primitive tribal relationship where the good of all will be the ultimate aim and end, only it will be on a larger and broader and fuller basis, an inter national, an intersexual, in short an interhuman basis.
Slavery has been an inevitable scourge in the progress of the world. In order that a part of humanity might advance, and learn and bring out the higher things, another part had to become the drudges, in the days when food was hard to procure.
Aristotle once said that in order for slavery to disappear machines would have to be invented to do the work of men. He never dreamt of such machines existing and the largest portion of the human race being enslaved to them for the benefit of only a very few, who not even are truly bebefited as they are no longer the intellects of the world. But it is quite natural that the enslaved class should first have to learn the value and pay the price of liberty. "He who would be free must himself strike the blow."
The machine is here which Aristotle designated as the emancipator of mankind. It only remains for mankind to emancipate itself from it. Man has harnessed the elements to his will, let him now harness his will to control the giant he has called into life!
Expert statisticians have figured out that with the aid of of modern machines, if all able-bodied men were employed for a reasonable number of days in the year, for only four hours of the day, the nation could be supplied not only with the necessities of life but also with luxuries such as now only the rich can enjoy. Four hours' work a day can be called neither work nor labor. It is only healthy exercise. By men and women aiding each other in their different capacities it would reduce the workday till it was so short as to amount only to a bit of pleasure.
Some people like to speculate on the Socialist Republic and wish to know if women are to work side by side of man in the factory or if she will stay at home and do work there only. That question will take care of itself and future generations will settle it without the least regard to what we might have to say about it. One thing is certain, woman will be economically as free as man. She is part of society and society will own the economic powers collectively. That there will be division of labor is certain. That is part of progress. That this division will be based on natural tastes and powers is also quite certain. That is according to common sense and reason.
The great subject to-day is the education and organization of the working class both upon the political field, the great field of agitation where the capitalist hirelings can be met on their own ground, and upon the economic field where the workers must prepare for taking over the industries and carrying out the administration of the future. Women should do all they can to become organized to resist the oppression by the employer if possible, but most of all ⟨to fit⟩ themselves to take their places in the administration of the Socialist Republic.
The work in the Socialist organization furnishes all the opportunities for women. It is her only true and proper field of action.