Woman under socialism

Without modern society, no modern ideas. That is obvious. With regard to the future social Order, it must be furthermore added that the means whereby the individual develops are the property of society. Society can, accordingly, not be bound to render special homage to what itself made possible and is its own product.

So much on the qualification of manual and brain work. It follows that there can be no real distinction between "higher" and "lower" manual work, such as not infrequently a mechanic to-day affects towards the day-laborer, who performs work on the street, or the like. Society demands only socially necessary work; hence all work is of equal value to society. If work that is disagreeable and repulsive can not be performed mechanically or chemically and by some process converted into work that is agreeable – a prospect that may not be put in doubt, seeing the progress made on the fields of technique and chemistry – and if the necessary volunteer forces can not be raised, then the obligation lies upon each, as soon as is his turn, to do his part. False ideas of shame, absurd contempt for useful work, become obsolete conceptions. These exist only in our society of drones, where to do nothing is regarded as an enviable lot, and the worker is despised in proportion to the hardness and disagreeableness of his work, and in proportion to its social usefulness. To-day work is badly paid in proportion as it is disagreeable. The reason is that, due to the constant revolutionizing of the process of production, a permanent mass of superfluous labor lies on the street, and, in order to live, sells itself for such vile work, and at such prices that the introduction of machinery in these departments of labor does not "pay." Stone-breaking, for instance, is proverbially one of the worst paid and most disagreeable kinds of work. It were a trifling matter to have the stone-breaking done by machinery, as in the United States; but we have such a mass of cheap labor-power that the machine would not "pay."191 Street and sewer cleaning, the carting away of refuse, underground work of all sorts, etc., could, with the aid of machinery and technical contrivances, even at our present state of development, be all done in such manner that no longer would any trace of disagreeableness attach to the work. Carefully considered, the workingman who cleans out a sewer and thereby protects people from miasmas, is a very useful member of society; whereas a professor who teaches falsified history in the interest of the ruling classes, or a theologian who seeks to befog the mind with supernatural and transcendental doctrines are highly injurious beings.

The learned fraternity of to-day, clad in offices and dignities, to a large extent represents a guild intended and paid to defend and justify the rule of the leading classes with the authority of science; to make them appear good and necessary; and to prop up existing superstitions. In point of fact this guild is largely engaged in the trade of quackery and brain-poisoning – a work injurious to civilization, intellectual wage-labor in the interest of the capitalist class and its clients.192 A social condition, that should make impossible the existence of such elements, would perform an act towards the liberation of humanity.

Genuine science, on the other hand, is often connected with highly disagreeable and repulsive work, such, for instance, as when a physician examines a corpse in a state of decomposition, or operates on supurating wounds, or when a chemist makes experiments. These often are labors more repulsive than the most repulsive ones ever performed by day-laborers and untutored workingmen. Few recognize the fact. The difference lies in that the one requires extensive studies in order to perform it, whereas the other can be performed by anyone without preparatory studies. Hence the radical difference in the estimation of the two. But in a society where, in virtue of the amplest opportunities of education afforded to all, the present distinction between "cultured" and "uncultured" ceases to exist, the contrast is likewise bound to vanish between learned and unlearned work, all the more seeing that technical development knows no limits and manual labor may be likewise performed by machinery or technical contrivances. We need but look at the development of our art handicrafts – xylography and copper-etching, for instance. As it turns out that the most disagreeable kinds of work often are the most useful, so also is our conception regarding agreeable and disagreeable work, like so many other modern conceptions, utterly superficial; it is a conception that has an eye to externals only.

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The moment production is carried on in Socialist society upon the lines traced above, it no longer produces "merchandise," but only articles of use for the direct demand of society. Commerce, accordingly, ceases, having its sense and reason for being only in a social system that rests upon the production of goods for sale. A large army of persons of both sexes is thus set free for productive work.193 This large army, set free for production, not only increases the volume of wealth produced, but makes possible a reduction of the hours of work. These people are to-day more or less parasites: they are supported by the work of others: in many instances they must toil diligently in return for a meagre existence. In Socialist society they are superfluous as merchants, hosts, brokers and agents. In lieu of the dozens, hundreds and thousands of stores and commercial establishments of all sorts, that to-day every community holds in proportion to its size, large municipal stores step in, elegant bazaars, actual exhibitions, requiring a relatively small administrative personnel. This change in itself represents a revolution in all previous institutions. The tangled mass of modern commerce is transformed into a centralized and purely administrative department, with only the simplest of functions, that can not choose but grow still simpler through the progressive centralization of all social institutions. Likewise does the whole system of transportation and communication undergo a complete change.

The telegraph, railroads, Post Office, river and ocean vessels, street railways – whatever the names of the vehicles and institutions may be that attend to the transportation and communication of capitalist society – now become social property. Many of these institutions – Post Offices, telegraph and railroads generally – are now State institutions in Germany. Their transformation into social property presents no difficulties: there no private interests are left to hurt: if the State continues to develop in that direction, all the better. But these institutions, administered by the State, are no Socialist institutions, as they are mistakenly taken for. They are business plants, that are exploited as capitalistically as if they were in private hands. Neither the officers nor the workingmen have any special benefit from them. The State treats them just as any private capitalist. When, for instance, orders were issued not to engage any workingman over 40 years of age in the railway or marine service of the Empire, the measure carries on its brows the class stamp of the State of the exploiters, and is bound to raise the indignation of the working class. Such and similar measures that proceed from the State as an employer of labor are even worse than if they proceed from private employers. As against the State, the latter is but a small employer, and the occupation that this one denies another might grant. The State, on the contrary, being a monopolistic employer, can, at one stroke, cast thousands of people into misery with its regulations. That is not Socialist, it is capitalist conduct; and the Socialist guards against allowing the present State ownership being regarded as Socialism, or the realization of Socialist aspirations. In a Socialist institution there are no employers. The leader, chosen for the purpose, can only carry out the orders and superintend the execution of the disciplinary and other measures prescribed by the collectivity itself.

As in the instance of the millions of private producers, dealers and middlemen of all sorts, large centralized establishments take their place, so does the whole system of transportation and communication assume new shape. The myriads of small shipments to as many consignees that consume a mass of powers and of time, now grow into large shipments to the municipal depots and the central places of production. Here also labor is simplified. The transportation of raw material to an establishment of a thousand workers is an infinitely simpler matter than to a thousand small and scattered establishments. Thus centralized localities of production and of transportation for whole communities, or divisions of the same, will introduce a great saving of time, of labor, of material, and of means both of production and distribution. The benefit accrues to the whole community, and to each individual therein. The physiognomy of our productive establishments, of our system of transportation and communication, especially also of our habitations, will be completely altered for the better. The nerve-racking noise, crowding and rushing of our large cities with their thousands of vehicles of all sorts ceases substantially: society assumes an aspect of greater repose. The opening of streets and their cleaning, the whole system of life and of intercourse acquires new character. Hygienic measures – possible to-day only at great cost and then only partially, not infrequently only in the quarters of the rich – can be introduced with ease everywhere. To-day "the common people" do not need them; they can wait till the funds are ready; and these never are.

Such a system of communication and transportation can not then choose but reach a high grade of perfection. Who knows but aerial navigation may then become a chief means of travel. The lines of transportation and communication are the arteries that carry the exchange of products – circulation of the blood – throughout the whole body social, that effect personal and mental intercourse between man and man. They are, consequently, highly calculated to establish an equal level of well-being and culture throughout society. The extension and ramification of the most perfect means of transportation and communication into the remotest corners of the land is, accordingly, a necessity and a matter of general social interest. On this field there arise before the new social system tasks that go far beyond any that modern society can put to itself. Finally, such a perfected system of transportation and communication, will promote the decentralization of the mass of humanity that is to-day heaped up in the large cities. It will distribute the same over the country, and thus – in point of sanitation as well as of mental and material progress – it will assume a significance of inestimable value.

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Among the means of production in industry and transportation, land holds a leading place, being the source of all human effort and the foundation of all human existence, hence, of Society itself. Society resumes at its advanced stage of civilization, what it originally possessed. Among all races on earth that reached a certain minimum degree of culture, we find community in land, and the system continues in force with such people wherever they are still in existence. Community in land constituted the foundation of all primitive association: the latter was impossible without the former. Not until the rise and development of private property and of the forms of rulership therewith connected, and then only under a running struggle, that extends deep into our own times, was the system of common ownership in land ended, and the land usurped as private property. The robbery of the land and its transformation into private property furnished, as we have seen, the first source of that bondage that, extending from chattel slavery to the "freedom" of the wage-earner of our own century, has run through all imaginable stages, until finally the enslaved, after a development of thousands of years re-convert the land into common property.

The importance of land to human existence is such that in all social struggles the world has ever known – whether in India, China, Egypt, Greece (Cleomenes), Rome (the Gracchi), Christian Middle Ages (religious sects, Munzer, the Peasants War), in the empires of the Aztecs and of the Incas, or in the several upheavals of latter days – the possession of land is the principal aim of the combatants. And even to-day, the public ownership of land finds its justifiers in such men as Adolf Samter, Adolf Wagner, Dr. Schaeffle, who on other domains of the Social Question are ready to rest content with half-measures.194

The well-being of the population depends first of all upon the proper cultivation of the land. To raise the same to the highest degree of perfection is eminently a matter of public concern. That the cultivation of the land can reach the necessary high degree of perfection neither under the large, nor the middle, least of all under the small landlord system, has been previously shown. The most profitable cultivation of land depends not merely upon the special care bestowed upon it. Elements come here into consideration that neither the largest private holder, nor the mightiest association of these is equal to cope with. These are elements that lap over, even beyond the reach of the State and require international treatment.

Society must first of all consider the land as a whole – its topographical qualities, its mountains, plains, woods, lakes, rivers, ponds, heaths, swamps, moors, etc. The topography, together with the geographical location of land, both of which are unchangeable, exercises certain influences upon climate and the qualities of the soil. Here is an immense field on which a mass of experience is to be gathered and a mass of experiments to be made. What the State has done until now in this line is meager. What with the small means that it applies to these purposes, and what with the limitations imposed upon it by the large landlords, who even if the State were willing, would check it, little or nothing has been done. The State could do nothing on this field without greatly encroaching upon private property. Seeing, however, that its very existence is conditioned upon the safe-keeping and "sacredness" of private property, the large landlords are vital to it, and it is stripped of the power, even if it otherwise had the will, to move in that direction. Socialist society will have the task of undertaking vast improvements of the soil, – raising woods here, and dismantling others yonder, draining and irrigating, mixing and changing of soil, planting, etc., in order to raise the land to the highest point of productivity that it is capable of.

An important question, connected with the improvement of the land, is the contrivance of an ample and systematically planned network of rivers and canals, conducted upon scientific principles. The question of "cheaper" transportation on the waterways – a question of such gravity to modern society – loses all importance in Socialist society, seeing that the conceptions "cheap" and "dear" are unknown to it. On the other hand, however, waterways, as comfortable means of transportation, that can, moreover, be utilized with but slight expenditure of strength and matter, deserve attention. Moreover river and canal systems play important roles in the matter of climate, draining and irrigation, and the supply of fertilizers and other materials needed in the improvement of agricultural land.

Experience teaches that poorly-watered regions suffer more severely from cold winters and hot summers than well-watered lands, whence coast regions are exempt from the extremes of temperature, or rarely undergo them. Extremes of temperature are favorable neither to plants nor man. An extensive system of canalization, in connection with the proper forestry regulations, would unquestionably exercise beneficent influences. Such a system of canalization, along with the building of large reservoirs, that will collect the water in cases of freshets through thaws or heavy rainfalls, would be of great usefulness. Freshets and their devastating results would be impossible. Wide expanses of water, together with their proportional evaporations, would also, in all probability, bring about a more regular rain-fall. Finally such institutions would facilitate the erection of works for an extensive system of irrigation whenever needed.

Large tracts of land, until now wholly barren or almost so, could be transformed into fertile regions by means of artificial irrigation. Where now sheep can barely graze, and at best consumptive-looking pine trees raise their thin arms heavenward, rich crops could grow and a dense population find ample nutriment. It is merely a question of labor whether the vast sand tracts of the Mark, the "holy dust-box of the German Empire," shall be turned into an Eden. The fact was pointed out in an address delivered in the spring of 1894 on the occasion of the agricultural exposition in Berlin.195 The requisite improvements, canals, provisions for irrigation, mixing of soil, etc., are matters, however, that can be undertaken neither by the small nor the large landlords of the Mark. Hence those vast tracts, lying at the very gates of the capital of the Empire, remain in a state of such backward cultivation that it will seem incredible to future generations. Again, a proper canalization would, by draining, reclaim for cultivation vast swamps and marshes in North as well as South Germany. These waterways could be furthermore utilized in raising fish; they could thus be vast sources of food; in neighborhoods where there are no rivers, they would furnish opportunity for commodious bath-houses.

Let a few examples illustrate the effectiveness of irrigation. In the neighborhood of Weissensfels, 7½ hectares of well-watered meadows produced 480 cwt. of after-grass; 5 contiguous hectares of meadow land of the same quality, but not watered, yielded only 32 cwt. The former had, accordingly, a crop ten times as large as the latter. Near Reisa in Saxony, the irrigation of 65 acres of meadow lands raised their revenue from 5,850 marks to 11,100 marks. The expensive outlays paid. Besides the Mark there are in Germany other vast tracts, whose soil, consisting mainly of sand, yields but poor returns, even when the summer is wet. Crossed and irrigated by canals, and their soil improved, these lands would within a short time yield five and ten times as much. There are examples in Spain of the yield of well-irrigated lands exceeding thirty-seven fold that of others that are not irrigated. Let there but be water, and increased volumes of food are conjured into existence.

Where are the private individuals, where the States, able to operate upon the requisite scale? When, after long decades of bitter experience, the State finally yields to the stormy demands of a population that has suffered from all manner of calamities, and only after millions of values have been destroyed, how slow, with what circumspection, how cautious does it proceed! It is so easy to do too much, and the State might by its precipitancy lose the means with which to build some new barracks for the accommodation of a few regiments. Then also, if one is helped "too much," others come along, and also want help. "Man, help yourself and God will help you," thus runs the bourgeois creed. Each for himself, none for all. And thus, hardly a year goes by without once, twice and oftener more or less serious freshets from brooks, rivers or streams occurring in several provinces and States: vast tracts of fertile lands are then devastated by the violence of the floods, and others are covered with sand, stone and all manner of debris; whole orchard plantations, that demanded tens of years for their growth, are uprooted; houses, bridges, dams are washed away; railroad tracks torn up; cattle, not infrequently human beings also, are drowned; soil improvements are carried off; crops ruined. Vast tracts, exposed to frequent inundations, are cultivated but slightly, lest the loss be double.

On the other hand, unskilful corrections of the channels of large rivers and streams, – undertaken in one-sided interests, to which the State ever yields readily in the service of "trade and transportation" – increase the dangers of freshets. Extensive cutting down of forests, especially on highlands and for private profit, adds more grist to the flood mill. The marked deterioration of the climate and decreased productivity of the soil, noticeable in the provinces of Prussia, Pomerania, the Steuermark, Italy, France, Spain, etc., is imputed to this vandalic devastation of the woods, done in the interest of private parties.

Frequent freshets are the consequence of the dismantling of mountain woodlands. The inundations of the Rhine, the Oder and the Vistula are ascribed mainly to the devastation of the woods in Switzerland, Galicia and Poland; and likewise in Italy with regard to the Po. Due to the baring of the Carnian Alps, the climate of Triest and Venice has materially deteriorated. Madeira, a large part of Spain, vast and once luxurious fields of Asia Minor have in a great measure forfeited their fertility through the same causes.

It goes without saying that Socialist society will not be able to accomplish all these great tasks out-of-hand. But it can and will undertake them, with all possible promptness and with all the powers at its command, seeing that its sole mission is to solve problems of civilization and to tolerate no hindrance. Thus it will in the course of time solve problems and accomplish feats that modern society can give no thought to, and the very thought of which gives it the vertigo.

The cultivation of the soil will, accordingly, be mightily improved in Socialist society, through these and similar measures. But other considerations, looking to the proper exploitation of the soil, are added to these. To-day, many square miles are planted with potatoes, which are to be applied mainly to the distilling of brandy, an article consumed almost exclusively by the poor classes of the population. Liquor is the only stimulant and "care-dispeller" that they are able to procure. The population of Socialist society needs none of that, hence the raising of potatoes and corn for that purpose, together with the labor therein expended, are set free for the production of healthy food.196 The speculative purposes that our most fertile fields are put to in the matter of the sugar beet for the exportation of sugar, have been pointed out in a previous chapter. About 400,000 hectares of the best wheat fields are yearly devoted to the cultivation of sugar beet, in order to supply England, the United States and Northern Europe with sugar. The countries whose climate favors the growth of sugar cane succumb to this competition. Furthermore, our system of a standing army, the disintegration of production, the disintegration of the means of transportation and communication, the disintegration of agriculture, etc., – all these demand hundreds of thousands of horses, with the corresponding fields to feed them and to raise colts. The completely transformed social and political conditions free the bulk of the lands that are now given up to these various purposes; and again large areas and rich labor-power are reclaimed for purposes of civilization. Latterly, extensive fields, covering many square kilometers, have been withdrawn from cultivation, being needed for the manoeuvering and exercising of army corps in the new methods of warfare and long distance firearms. All this falls away.

The vast field of agriculture, forestry and irrigation has become the subject of an extensive scientific literature. No special branch has been left untouched: irrigation and drainage, forestry, the cultivation of cereals, of leguminous and tuberous plants, of vegetables, of fruit trees, of berries, of flowers and ornamental plants; fodder for cattle raising; meadows; rational methods of breeding cattle, fish and poultry and bees, and the utilization of their excrements; utilization of manure and refuse in agriculture and manufacture; chemical examinations of seeds and of the soil, to ascertain its fitness for this or that crop; investigations in the rotations of crops and in agricultural machinery and implements; the profitable construction of agricultural buildings of all nature; the weather; – all have been drawn within the circle of scientific treatment. Hardly a day goes by without some new discovery, some new experience being made towards improving and ennobling one or other of these several branches. With the work of J. v. Liebig, the cultivation of the soil has become a science, indeed, one of the foremost and most important of all, a science that since then has attained a vastness and significance unique in the domain of activity in material production. And yet, if we compare the fullness of the progress made in this direction with the actual conditions prevailing in agriculture to-day, it must be admitted that, until now, only a small fraction of the private owners have been able to turn the progress to advantage, and among these there naturally is none who did not proceed from the view point of his own private interests, acted accordingly, kept only that in mind, and gave no thought to the public weal. The large majority of our farmers and gardeners, we may say 98 per cent. of them, are in no wise in condition to utilize all the advances made and advantages that are possible: they lack either the means or the knowledge thereto, if not both: as to the others, they simply do as they please. Socialist society finds herein a theoretically and practically well prepared field of activity. It need but to fall to and organize in order to attain wonderful results.