Lily Gair Wilkinson

“ We hear much from reformers and moralists of the famous "Woman Question," but women themselves are at last awakening to the fact that all this questioning does nothing to alleviate the misery of their bondage. This is the healthy and hopeful sign of modern feminine slavery; women are everywhere beginning to recognise the inferiority of their social position and to revolt against it. No matter how heavily nor how lightly the invisible chains may weigh upon her individually, a woman who has truly become conscious of her subordinate position must always be a woman in revolt. ”

“ Where their class interests are concerned women capitalists in general act no more mercifully than men capitalists. Their interests are to extract the fattest possible dividends out of the life-blood of the workers, without considering, or even knowing, whether the labour that creates these dividends is that of men or women. Would it not be folly in working women to expect these luxurious capitalist ladies to recognise common interests with them? ”

“ Many employers of female labour do not scruple to make this plain to the women who apply to them for situations. No wonder that the bourgeoisie recognises prostitution as a "necessary evil." "Necessary" to capitalism, which grows fat upon it!
Bitter want drives countless wives and daughters to this horrible resource as the one means of warding off starvation; and before all working women, existing in the terrible uncertainty which is now the condition of working class life, is always the possibility of having some day to make the ghastly choice between shame and starvation. ”

“ Can women not fight? Because they do not belong to the paid forces organised for the coercion of the oppressed at home and abroad, is that to say they cannot fight? Women certainly are not elegible to belong to troops of hired assassins, but wherever the fight is for freedom, when the class war breaks out in violence and bloodshed, women do not shrink away like cowards and hide themselves in the home. ”

“ But for working women it is a totally different matter. Capitalism has for them loosened the bonds of sex, only to rivet upon them the chains of wage-slavery. The attempt to win the adherence of working women to the bourgeois feminist movement, under the pretence that with equal political rights with men they could secure better wages, is utterly deceptive. The capitalists, who hold control of the means of production, and who by better organisation may still greatly enhance their profits, can utilise their power by introducing new machinery and by further combination. ”

“ When all women, with all men, shall be the owners of those things wherewith they work, and by which production is carried on, then their labour will be the labour of the free, and they will themselves reap its fruits.
The enemy of the women workers is not the male sex, but the capitalist class. That class is made up both of men and women. Many women are direct employers of labour; many are shareholders in capitalist industries; and as employers and shareholders they have equality with men. Do we find that their influence is used in favour of their women employees? ”

“ The development from private production to social production has yet to be completed by the development from private ownership to social ownership. Nothing short of this is Socialism. All reformation of the present capitalist system is useless to the workers, since by the system of buying and selling labour-power which capitalism makes necessary to them, they are for ever robbed by a small minority in society—the owners, or capitalist class. ”

“ Thus capitalism acquired an enormous impetus, and the foundations of modern wage slavery were laid.
The wages paid to such workers represent the price of the labour-power which they sell to the owners of the machinery of production. Labour-power being the only thing which a member of the dispossessed class has for sale, and by the sale of which he can live, he is forced to bring that labour-power (and he himself goes along with it of course) into the market, to endeavour to sell it there for what it will fetch, in just the same way as any other goods are sold. ”

“ While countless numbers of women are driven by actual dread of death to sell themselves into some form of misery, while the very conditions upon which capitalism exists deprives them of any other means of life than this, how can mere reforms within the capitalist system bring about the true emancipation of women? ”

“ If capitalist governments continue to deny the right of all men and women to vote, then here in the daily life of the workers—on the industrial field—lies the power which will overthrow the economic and political ascendency of capitalism. If, on the other hand, the master class, in frenzy of fear at this growing power of their slaves, should throw out Adult Suffrage among other sops, then women, as well as men, educated by the revolutionary struggle in the industrial organisation, will know how to use the ballot. ”

“ Thus the only hope of the workers is Socialism. To build their hopes and waste their energy and resources on attempts at reforming capitalism is mere illusion.
Now, in all this, the interests of working women are just the same as the interests of working men—directly opposed to the interests of the members of the capitalist class, women and men alike. The question is one of class, not of sex. Sex antagonism may have a very practical interest for the women of the bourgeoisie, but for women of the working class the practical question is the question of class antagonism. ”

“ 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? ”

“ This entrance into the social productive sphere certainly gives to the working women of to-day a semblance of independence unknown before in woman's history. And it gives, moreover, a promise of true independence to come. But while capitalist masters must be served this seeming independence is but a means of enforcing the most cruel slavery ever known. ”

“ On the one hand, the hypocritical bourgeois moralists are crying, "Woman's sphere is the home!"—on the other hand, capitalist conditions are forcing women out of the home into the misery of modern production, or into the still greater misery of personal debasement. ”

“ It is the power that belongs to all men and women who are wage-slaves—the power of the producers. The workers as a class must unite on the basis of the productive function which they fulfil in society—as industrial workers, in fact. This is the only sure way to freedom. Before the introduction of Socialism can become a practical and immediate possibility, the workers must be sufficiently organised to direct and control industry in their own interests. ”

“ And only the other day, when the workers of Belfast were shot down by the soldiers of the capitalist government, did the women not face these soldiers again and again just as the men did?
Women can, and do, fight for freedom. In the struggle of the future, whether the warfare be mainly industrial, or whether it be of a more violent nature, as certainly it may, women will take their full share of the burden. For them the inducement is even greater than it is for men, because in general their suffering is even greater. ”

“ Socialism claims that even if this were fully achieved it would be no true emancipation of women. Only those women would benefit who belong to the privileged, or propertied, class in society. The majority of women, like the majority of men, belong to the wage-earning class, and this class cannot benefit by the reform of capitalism owing to its condition of social life—the selling of labour-power—which gives to capitalist masters of both sexes the means of carrying on industry by an ever-increasing robbery of the workers. ”

“ Through generations of suffering capitalism has forced women to take a part in production, not merely in domestic life as dependents of men (as in pre-capitalist days) , but socially, and as independent of men. The foundation of a lasting independence for women has indeed been laid, since women now take part in the co-operative productive work of society; but while the conditions of the workers' lives remain conditions of wage-labour, their labour is slave-labour, and they are despoiled of its fruits by their masters. ”

“ We are too apt to judge genius merely by prominence and publicity, and these are just the things which most women avoid and dread as tending to deprive them of a certain vague abstraction called "womanliness," upon which they are taught to depend for success in life. How far women (in spite of a seclusion partly enforced and partly induced) have excelled in the past, may never be known—only here and there in history do we get a glimpse behind the veil—but it is certain that renown and success have for the most part been reaped by men. ”

“ Women are indeed reckoned as cheap goods on the market!
Turning to the "sweated" industries (but where are the workers who are not sweated by capitalism to-day?) we find that the greatest suffering is endured by the women, It is a ghastly record which capitalism produces in the columns of statistics relating to its female slave-driving. If we look down the rows of figures given in reports of investigations made into the conditions of the "sweated" workers we find over and over again the same terrible story told in the same chill words. ”

“ The development of capitalism was a complete revolution in society, and, among other things, it revolutionised the social position of women. The more brutal laws and customs of feudalism were now out of date, but the new order brought with it a new form of slavery. With the introduction of machinery into industry—the Industrial Revolution—the now dominant capitalist class made the discovery that there was a quite other "sphere" for working class women besides that of the home—namely, the factory. ”

“ Less labour being then required, the unemployed army will grow ever larger, and, as consequence, wages will tend to go down. Far from making it possible to raise the wages of the worst paid section of the workers (the women) to an equality with any better paid section, the progress of capitalist industry tends to lower the wages of the better paid sections to the level of those that were formerly worse paid. A mere coolie status for all is the outlook for the workers in the future, unless they use the power they possess to free themselves altogether from the wages-system. ”

“ And it is all the more urgent that prominence should be given to the true Socialist position because the bourgeois feminists have received great support in their campaign from many reformists calling themselves Socialists, who, pretending to serve the cause of women, serve that of the enemy instead.
What then is the position of revolutionary Socialism towards this modern feminist movement? How far is Socialism in sympathy with feminism, and in what are the two movements antagonistic? ”

“ This was the origin of that special kind of parasitism to which all women of the privileged class are born, which enables them to maintain their "respectable" position by the sacrifice and degradation of innumerable women of the proletariat. True monogamy has never been generally established in any society; it is everywhere the exception and not the rule. The present form of marriage is legal monogamy supplemented by prostitution—this is the terrible price which is paid for the reputed honourable position of the wives of civilisation. ”

“ Another result of increasing productive power by development of the tool was the second great division of labour in society—that of freemen and slaves. Instead of eating their prisoners of war, the conquerors found that, by the use of tools of production, they could force them to produce a sufficient amount to cover their own necessary sustenance and yet leave a surplus for the enjoyment of their masters. ”

“ The basic mistake of the feminists is that they do not recognise this, and therefore cannot trace the true cause of the inequality of the sexes. Sometimes they attribute women's social inferiority to her physical weakness; sometimes to the moral weakness of man. But these differences of the sexes, if they exist at all, are more likely to have arisen as effects of sex-inequality than to be causes thereof.
Socialism, on the other hand, does not look for an explanation of social enigmas in any such vague theories. Socialism holds that human society has an essentially economic basis. ”

“ When the workers themselves will own and control the machinery of production which they alone operate, they will enjoy the full product of their labour, but so long as there is a parasitic master-class standing between them and their instruments they will be robbed of the greater part of that which they produce. ”

“ Translated from the French by DANIEL DE LEON.
In order to understand our own time it is absolutely necessary that we know something of the times that have gone before. The generations are like links in a chain, all connected. The study, by which we can understand the philosophy of events and learn what has been done and thought before us, is history, and this is perhaps the most fascinating of all studies. The reading of history, clothed in the garb of fiction, without historic accuracy being sacrificed, is the most delightful way of gathering historical knowledge. ”

“ They are content to have as their aim in life the buying and selling of themselves into that peculiar ornamental slavery and dependence which is the capitalist ideal of marriage. Capitalism creates its institutions in its own image, and it is therefore not surprising that marriage in the capitalist class should be a mere business contract, The strangely callous competition which characterises this "marriage market," gives to bourgeois marriages the human peculiarity of female rather than male rivalry. ”

“ Here we have the secret of the origin of all forms of social slavery, the subjection of women among the rest. Without the introduction of economic inequality, sex-inequality could never have spread throughout the civilised world as it has done. And this economic inequality was itself a quite natural result of the primitive division of labour and the primitive development of the tool. ”

“ Behind those workers who may have the vote and use it as a means of revolutionary expression, must be the solid ranks of workers in factories, mines, mills, railways, and in all the other manifold branches of productive activity, united as workers, irrespective of sex or of suffrage privilege, or any other kind of privilege, united because they are the toilers, the producers, the sufferers, by whose toil and suffering society exists. ”

“ It is the best thing extant with which to begin the study of Socialism. The strike is used as an object lesson to show the nature of capitalist society. The development of the capitalist is clearly given, showing why it is that the capitalist class is able to live in idleness and luxury while the working class rots in poverty and toil. ”

“ The home-tasks of the women before the nineteenth century included spinning, knitting, baking, the making of clothes, soap, candles, and many other domestic necessaries. All these tasks are now executed by capitalist industry, and an ever-increasing number of women are forced by modern social conditions out of the home into the factories and workshops, there to take once up more a part in production—not now as wives and daughters producing for the family, but as wage-earners producing for the benefit of capitalist masters. ”

“ If a life of wage-slavery is bad for a man it is very much worse for a woman. Under capitalism women have entered nearly every line of production (many involving great danger or inevitable disease) , but employment is always given to them as an inferior sort of goods. An exact comparison between the wages of men and women has never been made, but as far as the records go women's wages compare very unfavourably with those of men. It has been shown that the average wage of women manual workers (including the textile workers, whose wages are relatively high) is very little over 7/ per week. ”

“ As has been said, woman's wage "is too low to live upon and too high to die upon." The fact is that modern capitalism calculates on, and to a great extent flourishes upon, the most odious of social evils. ”