August Bebel

“ When such a woman has succeeded in capturing a man, she has become so accustomed to outward show, extravagance in dress and costly enjoyments that she wishes to maintain them in her married life. Here men find themselves on the verge of an abyss, and many prefer to leave the flowers that bloom at this abyss unplucked. They prefer to pursue their path alone and seek entertainment and enjoyment while maintaining their freedom. Deception and fraud are common practices in bourgeois society. ”

“ How petty will our present age seem in comparison! This fawning for favors and good-will from above, this servile disposition, this envious struggle against one another for the best place, carried on by the lowest and most spiteful means, and, at the same time, suppression of one’s true convictions, concealing of good qualities that might displease those whose favor it sought, emasculation of character, the feigning of opinions and feelings that one does not possess—all these qualities that may be termed cowardice and hypocrisy, are daily becoming more pronounced. ”

“ This surplus value squeezed out of the workingman—inasmuch as it is not spent by the employer for his personal enjoyment—is crystallized into capital, and enables him steadily to enlarge his plant, to improve the process of production, and to employ more labor power. Thereby again he becomes enabled to encounter his weaker competitor, as a horseman, clad in armor, might encounter an unarmed pedestrian, and to destroy him.
This unequal struggle is developing more and more in all domains, and woman, furnishing the cheapest labor power, beside the child, plays an important part in this struggle. ”

“ Were not the believers in Christian faith at one time a small minority? Was the reformation not ushered in by a small and persecuted group? Did not the modern bourgeoisie contend with overwhelmingly powerful opponents? Nevertheless they were victorious. Or was Socialism destroyed in Germany by twelve years of persecution by exceptional laws? The victory of Socialism was never more certain than when it was thought to be destroyed. ”

“ If I do not go into the water I will never learn to swim; if I do not study and practice a foreign language, I will never learn to speak it. That is readily understood by everyone; but many fail to understand that the same holds true of the affairs of the state and society. Are our women less capable than the inferior Negro race that was given political equality in North America? Or shall a highly cultured, educated woman be entitled to fewer rights than the most coarse and ignorant man, only because blind chance brought the latter into the world as a male being? ”

“ But when the social conditions of development will be the same for both sexes, when there will be no restriction for either, and when the general state of society will be a healthful one, woman will rise to a height of perfection that we can hardly conceive to-day, because until now no such conditions have existed in human evolution. The achievements of individual women justify our highest expectations, for these tower above the mass of their sex just as male geniuses tower above the mass of men. ”

“ Then art and all the beauties of human life would attain their fullest development. The earth would no longer be disfigured by the geometrical figures drawn on its surface by agriculture, but would become a garden in which grass, flowers, shrubs and forests might be grown at will; all humanity would dwell in plenty, in a golden age. But man would not fall a victim to laziness and corruption. Work is needful to happiness, and man would work as ever, since he worked for his own welfare, for the development of his mental, moral and æsthetic possibilities. ”

“ On the contrary: if nature gives woman the right, and thereby also the duty,—for we shall not bury a talent bestowed upon us,—to exert her brain to the utmost in competition with the intellectual Titans of the opposite sex, it must also give her the right to preserve her equilibrium, just as they do, by quickening the circulation of her heart in whatever manner she may see fit. We all read without being shocked in the least how, for instance, Goethe,—to choose the greatest as an example,—again and again wasted the warmth of his heart and the enthusiasm of his great soul upon some other woman. ”

“ Nature has said to the man: ‘Be a man! The races, the hunt, agriculture, politics, all exertions are your privilege.’ She has said to the woman: ‘Be a woman! The care of your children, the details of the household, the sweet restlessness of motherhood, these are your tasks.’ Foolish women, why do you seek to become men? Are human beings not properly divided? ”

“ We do not know how the first king originated, just as we do not know where the first capitalist appeared. But we do know that monarchy has been greatly transformed in the course of thousands of years, that it is the tendency of evolution to diminish the power of kings more and more and that the time will come—and that time is not far distant—when kings will be quite superfluous. Just as monarchy, so every institution of state and society is subjected to changes and transformations and ultimate destruction. ”

“ The governments—and not only those in Germany—sway to and fro like reeds shaken by the wind. They must lean on something, for they cannot exist without a support, and so they incline first toward one side and then toward another. There is hardly a progressive state in Europe in which the government can count upon a permanent majority in parliament. Social extremes break up the majorities; and the constant fluctuations of the market, especially in Germany, undermine the last remnant of confidence that the ruling classes still placed in themselves. ”

“ The laws of capitalistic production prove stronger than the most cunning representatives of the system, who believed to have regulated it. The crisis came, nevertheless, and it was seen again that the wisest calculation proved faulty and that bourgeois society cannot escape its fate.
But capitalism continues in the same manner since it cannot change its substance. By the way in which it is bound to act, it upsets all laws of bourgeois economics. Unrestricted competition—the alpha and omega of bourgeois society—is supposed to place those most capable at the helm of all enterprises. ”

“ Persons engaged in mechanical arts hardly know what to do with all the designs and models. They have barely adapted themselves to one style, trusting to recover their expenses, when a new style appears that necessitates further sacrifices of time and money and of physical and mental forces. In this mad rushing from one fashion to another and from one style to another the nervousness of our age is vividly reflected. No one would claim that there is any sense or reason in this rush and haste, or that it might be regarded as a healthful state of society. ”

“ When society will save itself by taking back the property it has created, it will perform the most noteworthy deed. For then its actions will not purpose to suppress one to the advantage of another, but to obtain equality of opportunity for all and to enable each and every one to lead an existence worthy of a human being. It will be the grandest measure, morally, ever enacted by society. ”

“ The obligatory medical examination of prostitutes is a cruel punishment to the woman, for in those who are subjected to it the last remnant of modesty that may still exist in the most depraved, is forcibly destroyed. The state that seeks to regulate prostitution by police control forgets that it owes equal protection to both sexes, it degrades and demoralizes the woman. Every system of official regulation of vice permits of arbitrary police rule and leads to the infringement of personal safety against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, against which even the lowest criminal is guarded. ”

“ We are living in an age that rushes forward “with seven league boots,” and that makes all enemies of a new, higher order of society tremble.
Every day furnishes new proof of the rapid growth, and the tremendous spread of Socialist thought. Everywhere there is motion and progress. The dawn of a better day is drawing nigh. So let us struggle and strive onward, regardless of “where” and “when” the boundary-posts [508] of a new and better age for mankind will be raised. If we should fall in the course of this great struggle for liberation, others will take our place. ”

“ The class-conscious workingman knows that present industrial conditions compel woman to enter into competition with man. He also knows, that an attempt to exclude woman from industry would be as futile as an attempt to forbid the use of machinery. Therefore he endeavors to instruct woman in regard to her position in society and to enlist her aid in the struggle for freedom of the proletariat against capitalism. ”

“ In the struggle for the progress of mankind, no power, not even the weakest, can be spared. The steady fall of drops will finally hollow the hardest stone. Many drops make a brook, the brooks make a river, and the rivers make a stream. Finally, no obstacle is strong enough to hem the stream’s majestic course. It is the same with the development of man. If all who feel called upon devote their whole strength to this struggle, the ultimate victory will be certain. ”

“ Nine tenths of all maidens who are given an opportunity to marry, enter matrimony in complete ignorance of motherhood and its duties. The unpardonable prudery that prevents mothers from speaking to their grown daughters about the important functions of sex, leaves them in a state of densest ignorance concerning their duties to their husbands and to themselves. The entrance into marriage means to most women entrance into an utterly strange world. Their conceptions of marriage are purely imaginative, drawn from novels of doubtful value, and are usually very foreign to reality. ”

“ For, as a rule, not the workers but the employers are the only ones to derive any advantage from it. The worker must fear that the new machine, or the improvement, will make him superfluous and turn him out into the street. Instead of joyfully acclaiming a new invention that is a credit to humanity and ought to be a boon to him, he curses it. Many an improvement in the process of production invented by workingmen has never been introduced. The inventor keeps his invention to himself, because he fears that it will harm him, instead of benefiting him. ”

“ They who seek a complete solution of the woman question must, therefore, join hands with those who have inscribed upon their banner the solution of the social question in the interest of all mankind—the Socialists.
The Socialist Party is the only one that has made the full equality of women, their liberation from every form of dependence and oppression, an integral part of its program; not for reasons of propaganda, but from necessity. For there can be no liberation of mankind without social independence and equality of the sexes. ”

“ Beneath this apparent praise of woman lurks her degradation and the egotism of man. The professor [111] depicts woman as a dainty creature, endowed nevertheless with the needful knowledge of arithmetic to keep the household accounts well balanced, caressing like a gentle spring breeze the master of the house, the ruling lion, and with her soft hand smoothing the wrinkles from his forehead, that perhaps have appeared there from brooding over his own stupidity. The professor depicts woman and marriage such as barely one among a hundred actually exist. ”

“ To exclude woman from equal rights because she has been born a woman and not a man—a fact [245] of which both man and woman are innocent—is as unfair, as to make rights and privileges depend upon religious or political opinion; and it is as irrational as the belief that two persons are innate enemies because, by the chance of birth, they belong to different races or nationalities. Such views are unworthy of a free human being. Progress of humanity consists in removing whatever keeps one human being, one class or one sex in slavery and dependence upon another. ”

“ Yet the same gentlemen consider it quite proper that pregnant women should be employed at occupations which shockingly degrade their womanly dignity and decency and undermine their health. That man is a wretch, indeed, who dares to ridicule a pregnant woman. The very thought that his mother was in the same condition before she gave him birth must drive the blood to his cheeks in shame, and the other thought, that his wife’s being in the same condition may mean the fulfillment of his fondest hopes, must silence him. ”

“ We are threatened by the dissolution of society as the termination of a historic career, whose sole aim is wealth; for a career of this sort contains the elements of its own destruction. Democracy in administration, fraternity in social relations, general education,—these will initiate the next, higher stage of society, toward which experience, reason and science are constantly leading us. It will be a resurrection, only in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the old gens. ”

“ But a rivalry as to who can best serve the common welfare, is a sort of competition that Socialists do not repudiate.”—John Stuart Mill, “Political Economy.” Every society, every organization of persons having the same aims and a common cause, also furnishes many examples of a nobler endeavor that leads to no material success but to a purely ideal one. The persons vieing with each other are indeed impelled by the ambition of serving the common cause and of winning recognition. ”

“ No matter from what side we view the capitalistic system of production, we arrive at the conclusion that the poverty and misery of the masses is not due to a lack of food, but to an unequal distribution of same, and to wrong methods, that create an abundance for some and compel others to live in want. The assertions of Malthus have sense only from the standpoint of capitalistic production. On the other hand, the capitalistic method of production urges the production of children. ”

“ If the bourgeois suffragists would achieve their aim and would bring about equal rights for men and women, they would still fail to abolish that sex slavery which marriage, in its present form, is to countless numbers of women; they would fail to abolish prostitution; they would fail to abolish the economic dependence of wives. To the great majority of women it also remains a matter of indifference whether a few thousand members of their sex, belonging to the more favored classes of society, obtain higher learning and enter some learned profession, or hold a public office. ”

“ Accumulation of great wealth points to the opposite extreme of wage-slavery, oppression of the masses by the system of production, rule of the masses by the propertied minority, and all the resulting evils.
As a matter of fact, we see that the class antagonism and class struggle, which is raging in Germany, is stirring all of Europe, the United States of America and Australia. In Europe we meet with a spirit of unrest and dissatisfaction from Russia to Portugal, from the Balkans, Hungary and Italy to England and Ireland. ”