The socialist project and the enduring tyranny of the small separate house

“ But in the households of the five men out of six in England who live by weekly wage, Socialism would indeed be a new birth of happiness. The long hours of work done as in a convict prison, without interest and without hope; the dreary squalor of their homes; above all that grievous uncertainty, that constant apprehension of undeserved misfortune which is the peculiar result of capitalist production: all this would be gone; and education, refinement, leisure, the very thought of which now maddens them, would be part of their daily life. ”

“ This state of affairs, says the Socialist, is chaotic or indifferent to a sea of wretchedness and failure, in health, vigour, order and beauty. Such pleasure as it permits is a gaudy indulgence filched from children and duty; such beauty—a hectic beauty stained with injustice; such happiness—a happiness that can only continue so long as it remains blind or indifferent to a sea of wretchedness and failure. Our present system of isolated and unsupported families keeps the mass of the world beyond all necessity painful, ugly and squalid. ”

“ The homes of the poor are a mockery of the name, but yet how many would think themselves happy if even such homes were secure, and if they were able to look to the future without seeing starvation for their children and the workhouse for themselves! One example will illustrate many. The Browns are a family of five; they occupy one room. The man is a labourer, London-born, quick-witted and slow-bodied, and, as many labourers do, he fills up slack time with hawking; the woman takes in her neighbours’ washing. ”

“ But apart from the improvidence and stupidity of the poor themselves, or anything like it, the home is still beyond the reach of many of them and in some districts it is a vanishing quantity. It is for the sanitary and the social reformer to work together to resuscitate the home, to augment the taste for it and make it more and more palatable in town and country. ”

“ That means, again, ease and cheapness of transportation in order that families may live in decent homes and yet the chief wage-earner go back and forth to his work without too great strain of strength or purse. That means some social control of housing facilities, food supply, public sanitation, and educational facilities which will secure the essential of human living to all workers and 256their families. To work harder to secure these vital elements of family well-being is the task of all. ”

“ The most striking thing about these housing proposals is the tacit acceptance by all parties in Parliament that the population of the coming years must be put away, each family in a little separate house of its own. If anything was needed to prove that the Socialism of the Labour Party was merely skin deep and its creative intentions an electioneering bid, it would be this. If one thing is clearer than another [Pg 319] in the outlook of the modern community, it is the impossibility of the small separate house. It is a cage of needless toil for women ”

“ The omnipresent domestic ideal is a deadly hinderance to the social ideal. When half our population honestly believe that they have no duties outside the home, the other half will not become phenomenal statesmen. This cook-and-housemaid level of popular thought is the great check. The social perspective is entirely lost; and a million short-sighted homes, each seeing only its own interests, cannot singly or together grasp the common good which would benefit them all. ”

“ Individualism in domestic life vitiates the movement towards socialism outside domestic life, for it gives us misshapen units unfit for a better social system—a system that seeks to banish tyranny, despotism, pride, self-will and every anti-social emotion in order to establish the perfect justice and equality that are essential to the highest ethical state. It is a necessity of socialism to lay hold of the family and fashion it anew so that it may produce a superior material of human life, i.e. ”

“ Builders to-day build houses on the fiction that each house will be occupied by one family. The fact that two or three families will at once take possession is kept out of sight, while the parlour, drawing-room, and single set of offices are finished off to suit the requirements of an English home. ”

“ Later civilisations have let them out to play—but not to work. The parasitic female of the upper classes is allowed the empty freedom of association with her useless kind; but the housewife is still confined to the house.
We are now giving great attention to this matter of home industry. We are founding chairs of Household Science, we are writing books on Domestic Economics; we are striving mightily to elevate the standard of home industry—and we omit to notice that it is just because it is home industry that all this trouble is necessary. ”

“ Although women have been given the opportunity to become economically independent, this independence is still supposed to terminate with marriage, the economic status of wives is still supposed to be one of dependence upon their husbands. Socialism will merely lead the present trend of development to its rational and inevitable conclusion by taking the last domestic industries out of the home and socializing them like all others, and by giving all women economic independence, regardless of their marital relation. Let us first consider the home as it is likely to be under Socialism. ”

“ Economic security, a larger freedom, and a more general culture and refinement that will come with Socialism, will only increase and cultivate the charm and beauty of those ideals. The only home that Socialism will destroy is the home as a workshop. The only family that Socialism will break up is the family founded on the economic dependence of women, Nor will this breaking-up process be achieved by Socialism alone. ”

“ It is one of the entirely unforeseen consequences that have arisen from the decay of the Normal Social Life and its autonomous home that great numbers of women while still subordinate have become profoundly unimportant They have ceased to a very large extent to bear children, they have dropped most of their home-making arts, they no longer nurse nor educate such children as they have, and they have taken on no new functions that compensate for these dwindling activities of the domestic interior. ”

“ An immense work of replanning, rebuilding, redistributing lies in the foreground of the Socialist vista. We contemplate an enormous clearance of existing things. We want an unfettered hand to make beautiful and convenient homes, splendid cities, noiseless great highways, beautiful bridges, clean, swift and splendid electric railways; we are inspired by a faith in the coming of clean, wide and simple methods of agricultural production. But it is only now that Socialism is beginning to be put in these terms. ”

“ But at least one thing would have become clear, the little swarm of Owners and their claims standing in the way of any bold collective dealing with housing or any such public concern. The real work to be done here is to change an idea, that idea of ownership, to so modify it that it will cease to obstruct the rational development of life; and that is what the Socialist seeks to do. ”

“ But I think there will be very few servants to private people, and that the “menial” conception of a servant will have vanished in an entirely educated community. The domestic work of the ordinary home, one may prophesy confidently, will be very much reduced in the near future whether we move toward Socialism or no; all the dirt of coal, all the disagreeableness attendant upon lamps and candles, most of the heavy work of cooking will be obviated by electric lighting and heating, and much of the bedroom service dispensed with through the construction of properly equipped bath-dressing-rooms. ”

“ Such homes in the Socialist future will certainly be supplied by the local authority, but they will be fair, decent houses by good architects, fitted to be clean and lit, airy and convenient, the homes of civilized people, sightly things altogether in a generous and orderly world. But in addition there will be the prosperous private person with a taste that way, building himself a home as a lease-holder under the public landlord. ”

“ It is, at best, a palliative, a necessary evil, rendered necessary by the conditions of capitalist society. One hopes that in the Socialist régime, home life would be so far developed as to make possible the proper feeding and care of all children in their homes. This is but an illustration. The Socialist ideal of the state of the future, when private property is no longer an instrument of oppression used by the few against the many, is not a life completely enmeshed in a network of government, but a life controlled by government as little as possible ”

“ Working people, directly or through their organizations of associated labour and other self-managing organizations and communities, shall form self-managing communities of interest in the housing sector, in which these organizations and communities shall pool resources for housing construction, formulate housing construction policy and programs, and together with tenants manage residential buildings and dwellings in social ownership, and shall realize other common interests. ”

“ If plenty for everybody, without too much or too little for anybody will purify, glorify and vivify the family, Socialism will purify, glorify and vivify it. Socialism will place all of the great machinery of modern production in the hands of the people, to be used fully and freely for nobody’s advantage but their own.
Of course, the family cannot be improved without changing it. Upon this obvious fact is based the whole capitalist attack upon Socialism as a destroyer of the home. Socialists believe that freedom from poverty would have a profound effect upon domestic relationships. ”

“ It is perfectly absurd to suppose that it would be necessary to "take away the poor man's cottage," about which some opponents of Socialism shriek. It would not be necessary to take away anybody's home.
On the contrary, Socialism would most likely enable all who so desired to own their own homes. At present only thirty-one per cent. of the families of America live in homes which they own outright. More than half of the people live in rented homes. They are obliged to give up practically a fourth part of their total income for mere shelter. ”

“ There has been a muddle over housing and a resort to Liberal assistance. These Labour leaders over whom the Intelligenzia waved its banners of constructive Socialism and of a world remade, so bravely, turn out to be for the most part just ordinary politicians abjectly afraid to stop anything or start anything that may affect votes. ”

“ The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic, of one man one house--this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one; Socialism may be the world's deliverance. ”

“ For reasons that will become clearer when we tell something of the early history and development of Socialism, the Socialist propositions with regard to the family lie open to certain grave misconceptions. People are told—and told quite honestly and believingly—that Socialism will destroy the home, will substitute a sort of human stud farm for that warm and intimate nest of human life, will bring up our children in incubators and crèches and—Institutions generally. ”

“ What the opponents of Socialism have in mind when they use the term is rather lust than love. They charge us Socialists with trying to do away with the monogamic marriage relation—the marriage of one man to [150] one woman—and the family life resulting therefrom. They say that we want promiscuous sex relations, communal life instead of family life and the turning over of all parental functions to the community, the State. And to charge that these things are involved in Socialism is at once absurd and untrue. ”

“ Norman laughed.
"And you think capitalism is building ideal homes with its drudgery that kills woman—its poverty that starves the man and drives the girl to a life of shame?"
"Our conditions are not ideal, my son. But they are growing better with each generation. Because all homes are not ideal, you propose to abolish the institution. There are ten million homes in America. Perhaps a million of them are unhappy. Can we mend matters by destroying them all?"
"Socialism proposes to build the highest ideal of home ever seen on earth, founded on love—and only love." ”

“ The world must stop trying to make progress by walking backward. We must make room for a vaster scheme of household economics than the last generation ever dreamed of. The home must be made to catch up with the factory, the store and the office, and we know that in comparison with these industries home-making has lagged behind. Now—suddenly—we realize that feeble-minded children are becoming more numerous, that malnutrition in school children is becoming so great that the highest standard of study is impossible and that street life is taking the place of home life. ”

“ The ills of the modern home are symptomatic. Divorce, childless families, irreverent children, and a decadence of the old type of separate home life are signs of forgotten ideals, lost motives, and insufficient purposes. When the home is only an opportunity for self-indulgence, it easily becomes a cheap boarding house, a sleeping shelf, an implement for social advantage. While it is true that general economic development has effected marked changes in domestic economy, the happiness and efficiency of the family do not depend wholly on the parlor, the kitchen, or the clothes closet. ”

“ Unless the great problem of the housing of the poor is rightly solved, and unless educated women become roused to the necessity of a changed home-life in the interests of their children, and set themselves voluntarily to the task of domestic reform within their own circle, the social state can never be greatly improved. ”