Woman under socialism

Also in other important respects will Socialist society differ from the bourgeois individualist system. The motto: "Cheap and bad" – which is and must be standard for a large portion of bourgeois production, seeing that the larger part of the customers can buy only cheap goods, that quickly wear out – likewise drops out. Only the best will be produced; it will last longer and will need replacing at only wider intervals. The follies and insanities of fashion, promoted by wastefulness and tastelessness, also cease. People will probably clothe themselves more properly and sightfully than to-day, when, be it said in passing, the fashions of the last hundred years, especially as to men, distinguish themselves by their utter tastelessness. No longer will a new fashion be introduced every three months, an act of folly that stands in intimate relation with the competitive struggle of women among themselves, with the ostentatiousness and vanity of society, and with the necessity for the display of wealth. To-day a mass of establishments and people live upon this folly of fashion, and are compelled by their own interests to stimulate and force it. Together with the folly of fashion in dress, falls the folly of fashion in the style of architecture. Eccentricity reaches here its worst expression. Styles of architecture that required centuries for their development and that sprang up among different peoples – we are no longer satisfied with European styles, we go to the Japanese, Indians and Chinese – are used up in a few decades and laid aside. Our poor professional artists no longer know whither and whereto they should turn with and for their samples and models. Hardly have they assorted themselves with one style, and expect to recover with ease the outlays they have made, when a new style breaks in upon them, and demands new sacrifices of time and money, of mental and physical powers. The nervousness of the age is best reflected in the rush from one fashion to the other, from one style to the other. No one will dare to claim any sense for such hurrying and scurrying, or the merit of its being a symptom of social health.

Socialism alone will re-introduce a greater stability in the habits of life. It will make repose and enjoyment possible; it will be a liberator from hurry and excessive exertion. Nervousness, that scourge of our age, will disappear.

But labor is also to be made pleasant. To that end practical and tastefully contrived workshops are required; the utmost precautions against danger; the removal of disagreeable odors, gases and smoke, – in short, of all sources of injury or discomfort to health. At the start, the new social system will carry on production with the old means, inherited from the old. But these are utterly inadequate. Numerous and unsuitable workshops, disintegrated in all directions; imperfect tools and machinery, running through all the stages of usefulness; – this heap is insufficient both for the number of the workers and for their demands of comfort and of pleasure. The establishment of a large number of spacious, light, airy, fully equipped and ornamented workshops is a pressing need. Art, technique, skill of head and hand immediately find a wide field of activity. All departments in the building of machinery, in the fashioning of tools, in architecture and in the branches of work connected with the internal equipment of houses have the amplest opportunity. Whatever human genius can invent with regard to comfortable and pleasant homes, proper ventilation, lighting and heating, mechanical and technical provisions and cleanliness is brought into application. The saving of motor power, heating, lighting, time, as well as the promotion of all that tends to render work and life agreeable, demand a suitable concentration of the fields of labor on certain spots. Habitations are separated from places of work and are freed from the disagreeable features of industrial and other manual work. These disagreeable features are, in their turn, reduced to the lowest measure possible by means of suitable arrangements and provisions of all sorts, until wholly removed. The present state of technique has now means enough at command to wholly free from danger the most dangerous occupations, such as mining and the preparation of chemicals, etc. But these means can not be applied in capitalist society because they are expensive, and there is no obligation to do more than what is absolutely necessary for the workingman. The discomforts attached to mining can be removed by means of a different sort of draining, of extensive ventilation, of electric lighting, of a material reduction of hours of work, and of frequent shifts. Nor does it require any particular cleverness to find such protective means as would render building accidents almost impossible, and transform work in that line into the most exhilarating of all. Ample protections against sun and rain are possible in the construction of the largest edifices. Furthermore, in a society with ample labor-power at its disposal, such as Socialist society would be, frequent shifts and the concentration of certain work upon certain seasons of the year and certain hours of day would be an easy matter.

The problem of removing dust, smoke, soot and odors could likewise be completely solved by modern chemistry and technique; it is solved only partially or not at all, simply because the private employers care not to make the necessary sacrifice of funds. The work-places of the future, wherever located, whether above or under ground, will, accordingly, distinguish themselves most favorably from those of to-day. Many contrivances are, under the existing system of private enterprise, first of all, a question of money: can the business bear the expenditure? Will it pay? If the answer is in the negative, then let the workingmen go to pieces. Capital does not operate where there is no profit. Humanity is not an "issue" on the Exchange.181

The question of "profit" has exhausted its role in Socialist society: in Socialist society the only consideration is the welfare of its members. Whatever is beneficent to these and protects them must be introduced; whatever injures them must stop. None is forced to join in a dangerous game. If matters are undertaken that have dangers in prospect, volunteers will be numerous, all the more so seeing that the object can never be to the injury, but only to the promotion of civilization.

The amplest application of motor powers and of the best machinery and implements, the utmost subdivision of labor, and the most efficient combinations of labor-power will, accordingly, carry production to such pitch that the hours of work can be materially reduced in the production of the necessaries of life. The capitalist lengthens the hours of labor, whenever he can, especially during crises, when the worker's power of resistance is broken, and by squeezing more surplus values out of him, prices may be lowered. In Socialist society, an increase of production accrues to the benefit of all: The share of each rises with the productivity of labor and increased productivity again makes possible the reduction of the hours of work, socially determined as necessary.

Among the motor powers that are coming into application, electricity will, according to all appearances, take a decisive place.182 Capitalist society is now everywhere engaged in harnessing it to its service. The more extensively this is done the better. The revolutionizing effect of this mightiest of all the powers of Nature will but all the sooner snap the bonds of bourgeois society, and open the doors to Socialism. But only in Socialist society will electricity attain its fullest and most widespread application. If the prospects now opened for its application are even but partially realized – and on that head there can be no doubt – electricity, as a motor power as well as a source of light and heat, will contribute immeasurably towards the improvement of the conditions of life. Electricity distinguishes itself from all other motor power in that, above all, its supply in Nature is abundant. Our water courses, the ebb and tide of the sea, the winds, the sun-light – all furnish innumerable horse-powers, the moment we know how to utilize them in full. Through the invention of accumulators it has been proved that large volumes of power, which can be appropriated only periodically, from the ebbs and tides, the winds and mountain streams, can be stored up and kept for use at any given place and any given time. All these inventions and discoveries are still in embryo: their full development may be surmised, but can not be forecast in detail.

The progress expected from the application of electricity sounds like a fairy tale. Mr. Meems of Baltimore has planned an electric wagon able to travel 300 kilometers an hour – actually race with the wind. Nor does Mr. Meems stand alone. Prof. Elihu Thomson of Lynn, Mass., also believes it possible to construct electromotors of a velocity of 160 kilometers, and, with suitable strengthening of the rolling stock and improvement of the signal system, of a velocity of 260 kilometers; and he has given a plausible explanation of his system. The same scientist holds, and in this Werner Siemens, who expressed similar views at the Berlin Convention of Naturalists in 1887, agrees with him, that it is possible by means of electricity to transform the chemical elements directly into food– a revolution that would hoist capitalist society off its hinges. While in 1887 Werner Siemens was of the opinion that it was possible, though only in the remote future, to produce artificially a hydrate of carbon such as grape sugar and later the therewith closely related starch, whereby "bread could be made out of stone," the chemist Dr. B. Meyer claims that ligneous fibre could eventually be turned into a source of human food. Obviously, we are moving towards ever newer chemical and technical revolutions. In the meantime, the physiologist E. Eiseler has actually produced grape sugar artificially, and thus made a discovery that, in 1887, Werner Siemens considered possible only in the "remote future." In the spring of 1894, the French ex-Minister of Public Worship, Prof. Berthelot, delivered an address in Paris at the banquet of the Association of Chemical Manufacturers upon the significance of chemistry in the future. The address is interesting in more respects than one. Prof. Berthelot sketched the probable state of chemistry at about the year 2000. While his sketch contains many a droll exaggeration, it does contain so much that is serious and sound that we shall present it in extract. After describing the achievements of chemistry during the last few decades, Prof. Berthelot went on to say: —

"The manufacture of sulphuric acids and of soda, bleaching and coloring, beet sugar, therapeutic alkaloids, gas, gilding and silvering, etc.; then came electro-chemistry, whereby metallurgy was radically revolutionized; thermo-chemistry and the chemistry of explosives, whereby fresh energy was imparted to mining and to war; the wonders of organic chemistry in the production of colors, of flavors, of therapeutic and antiseptic means, etc. But all that is only a start: soon much more important problems are to be solved. About the year 2000 there will be no more agriculture and no more farmers: chemistry will have done away with the former cultivation of the soil. There will be no more coal-shafts, consequently, neither will there be any more miners' strikes. Fuel is produced by chemical and physical processes. Tariffs and wars are abolished: aerial navigation, that helped itself to chemicals as motor power, pronounced the sentence of death upon those obsolete habits. The whole problem of industry then consists in discovering sources of power, that are inexhaustible and resortable to with little labor. Until now we have produced steam through the chemical energy of burning mineral coal. But mineral coal is hard to get and its supply decreases daily. Attention must be turned towards utilizing the heat of the sun and of the earth's crust. The hope is justified that both sources will be drawn upon without limit. The boring of a shaft 3,000 to 4,000 meters deep does not exceed the power of modern, less yet it will exceed that of future engineers. The source of all heat and of all industry would be thus thrown open. Add water to that, and all imaginable machinery may be put in perpetual operation on earth: the source of this power would experience hardly any diminution in hundreds of years.

"With the aid of the earth's heat, numerous chemical problems will become solvable, among these the greatest of all —the chemical production of food. In principle, the problem is solved now. The synthesis of fats and oils has been long known; likewise are sugar and hydrates of carbon known; nor will it be long before the secret of compounding azote is out. The food problem is a purely chemical one. The day when the corresponding cheap power shall have been obtained, food of all sort will be producable with carbon out of carbon oxides, and with hydrogen and acids out of water, and with nitrogen out of the atmosphere. What until now vegetation has done, industry will thenceforth perform, and more perfectly than Nature itself. The time will come when everyone will carry about him a little box of chemicals wherewith to provide his food supply of albumen, fat and hydrates of carbon, regardless of the hour of the day or the season of the year, regardless of rain or drought, of frost or hail, or insects. A revolution will then set in of which no conception is so far possible. Fields bearing fruit, wine-bearing mountain slopes and pastures for cattle will have vanished. Man will have gained in gentleness and morality seeing he no longer lives on the murder and destruction of living beings. Then also will the difference drop away between fertile and barren districts; perchance deserts may then become the favorite homes of man being healthier than the damp valleys and the swamp-infected plains. Then also will Art, together with all the beauties of human life reach full development. No longer will the face of earth be marred, so to speak, with geometrical figures, now entailed by agriculture: it will become a garden in which, at will, grass or flowers, bush or woods, can be allowed to grow, and in which the human race will live in plenty, in a Golden Age. Nor will man thereby sink into indolence and corruption. Work is requisite to happiness, and man will work as much as ever, because he will be working for himself aiming at the highest development of his mental, moral and esthetical powers."

Every reader may accept what he please of this address of Prof. Berthelot; certain, however, is the prospect that in the future and in virtue of the progress of science, wealth – the volume and variety of products – will increase enormously, and that the pleasures of life of the coming generations will take undreamed of increment.

An aspiration, deeply implanted in the nature of man, is that of freedom in the choice and change of occupation. As uninterrupted repetition renders the daintiest of dishes repulsive, so with a daily treadmill-like recurring occupation: it dulls and relaxes the senses. Man then does only mechanically what he must do; he does it without swing or enjoyment. There are latent in all men faculties and desires that need but to be awakened and developed to produce the most beautiful results. Only then does man become fully and truly man. Towards the satisfaction of this need of change, Socialist society offers, as will be shown, the fullest opportunity. The mighty increase of productive powers, coupled with an ever progressing simplification of the process of labor, not only enables a considerable lowering of hours of work, it also facilitates the acquisition of skill in many directions.

The old apprentice system has survived its usefulness: it exists to-day only and is possible only in backward, old-fashioned forms of production, as represented by the small handicrafts. Seeing, however, that this vanishes from the new social Order, all the institutions and forms peculiar thereto vanish along with it. New ones step in. Every factory shows us to-day how few are its workingmen, still engaged at a work that they have been apprenticed in. The employes are of the most varied, heterogeneous trades; a short time suffices to train them in any sub-department of work, at which, in accord with the ruling system of exploitation, they are then kept at work longer hours, without change or regard to their inclinations, and, lashed to the machine, become themselves a machine.183 Such a state of things has no place in a changed organization of society. There is ample time for the acquisition of dexterity of hand and the exercise of artistic skill. Spacious training schools, equipped with all necessary comforts and technical perfections will facilitate to young and old the acquisition of any trade. Chemical and physical laboratories, up to all the demands of these sciences, and furnished with ample staffs of instructors will be in existence. Only then will be appreciated to its full magnitude what a world of ambitions and faculties the capitalist system of production suppresses, or forces awry into mistaken paths.184

It is not merely possible to have a regard for the need of change; it is the purpose of society to realize its satisfaction: the harmonious growth of man depends upon that. The professional physiognomies that modern society brings to the surface – whether the profession be in certain occupations of some sort or other, or in gluttony and idleness, or in compulsory tramping – will gradually vanish. There are to-day precious few people with any opportunity of change in their occupations, or who exercise the same. Occasionally, individuals are found who, favored by circumstances, withdraw from the routine of their daily pursuits and, after having paid their tribute to physical, recreate themselves with intellectual work; and conversely, brain workers are met off and on, who seek and find change in physical labors of some sort or other, handwork, gardening, etc. Every hygienist will confirm the invigorating effect of a pursuit that rests upon alternating physical and mental work; only such a pursuit is natural. The only qualification is that it be moderately indulged, and in proportion to the strength of the individual.

Leo Tolstoi lashes the hypertrophic and unnatural character that art and science have assumed under the unnatural conditions of modern society.185 He severely condemns the contempt for physical labor, entertained in modern society, and he recommends a return to natural conditions. Every being, who means to live according to the laws of nature and enjoy life, should divide the day between, first, physical field labor; secondly, hand work; thirdly, mental work; fourthly, cultured and companionable intercourse. More than eight hours' physical work should not be done. Tolstoi, who practices this system of life, and who, as he says, has felt himself human only since he put it into practice, perceives only what is possible to him, a rich, independent man, but wholly impossible to the large mass of mankind, under existing conditions. The person who must do hard physical work every day ten, twelve and more hours, to gain a meager existence, and who was brought up in ignorance, can not furnish himself with the Tolstoian system of life. Neither can they, who are on the firing line of business life and are compelled to submit to its exactions. The small minority who could imitate Tolstoi have, as a rule, no need to do so. It is one of the illusions that Tolstoi yields to, the belief that social systems can be changed by preaching and example. The experiences made by Tolstoi with his system of life prove how rational the same is; in order, however, to introduce such a system of life as a social custom, a social foundation is requisite other than the present. It requires a new society.

Future society will have such a foundation; it will have scientists and artists of all sorts in abundance; but all of them will work physically a part of the day, and devote the rest, according to their liking, to study, the arts or companionable intercourse. 186

The existing contrast between mental and manual labor – a contrast that the ruling classes seek to render as pronounced as possible with the view of securing for themselves also the intellectual means of sovereignty – will likewise be removed.

It follows from the preceding arguments that crises and compulsory idleness are impossible phenomena in the new social Order. Crises arise from the circumstance that individualist, capitalist production – incited by profit and devoid of all reliable gauge with which to ascertain the actual demand – brings an overstocking of the world's market, and thus overproduction. The merchandise feature of the products under capitalism, of the products that their owners endeavor to exchange, makes the use of the product dependent upon the consumer's capacity to buy. The capacity to buy is, however, limited, in so far as the overwhelming majority are concerned, they being under-paid for their labor, or even wholly unable to sell the same if the capitalist does not happen to be able to squeeze a surplus value out of it. The capacity to buy and the capacity to consume are two wholly distinct things in capitalist society. Many millions of people are in want of clothes, shoes, furniture, linen, eatables and drinkables, but they have no money, and their wants, i. e., their capacity to consume, remains unsatisfied. The market is glutted with goods, but the masses suffer hunger; they are willing to work, but they find none to buy their labor-power because the holder of money sees nothing to "make" in the purchase. "Die, canaille; become vagabonds, criminals! I, the capitalist, can not help it. I have no use for goods that I have no purchaser to buy from me with corresponding profit." And, in a way, the man is right.

In the new social Order this contradiction is wiped out. Socialist society produces not "merchandise," in order to "buy" and to "sell;" it produces necessaries of life, that are used, consumed, and otherwise have no object. In Socialist society, accordingly, the capacity to consume is not bounded, as in bourgeois society, by the individual's capacity to buy; it is bounded by the collective capacity to produce. If labor and instruments of labor are in existence, all wants can be satisfied; the social capacity to consume is bounded only by the satisfaction of the consumers.

There being no "merchandise" in Socialist society, neither can there be any "money." Money is the visible contrast of merchandise; yet itself is merchandise! Money, though itself merchandise, is at the same time the social equivalent for all other articles of merchandise. But Socialist society produces no articles of merchandise, only articles of use and necessity, whose production requires a certain measure of social labor. The time, on an average requisite for the production of an article is the only standard by which it is measured for social use. Ten minutes social labor in one article are equal to ten minutes social labor in another – neither more nor less. Society is not "on the make"; it only seeks to effect among its members the exchange of articles of equal quality, equal utility. It need not even set up a standard of use value. It merely produces what it needs. If society finds that a three-hour work day is requisite for the production of all that is needed, it establishes such a term of work.187 If the methods of production improve in such wise that the supply can be raised in two hours, the two-hour work day is established. If, on the contrary, society demands the gratification of higher wants than, despite the increase of forces and the improved productivity of the process of labor, can be satisfied with two or three hours work, then the four-hour day is introduced. Its will is law.

How much social labor will be requisite for the production of any article is easily computed.188 The relation of the part to the whole of the working time is measured accordingly. Any voucher – a printed piece of paper, gold or tin – certifies to the time spent in work, and enables its possessor to exchange it for articles of various kinds.189 If he finds that his wants are smaller than what he receives for his labor, he then works proportionally shorter hours. If he wishes to give away what he does not consume, nothing hinders him. If he is disposed to work for another out of his own free will, so that the latter may revel in the dolce far niente, – if he chooses to be such a blockhead, nothing hinders him. But none can compel him to work for another; none can withhold from him a part of what is due him for labor performed. Everyone can satisfy all his legitimate desires – only not at the expense of others. He receives the equivalent of what he has rendered to society – neither more nor less, and he remains free from all exploitation by third parties.