The larger portion by far of the women in society, engaged in the
movement for the emancipation of woman, do not see the necessity for
such a radical change. Influenced by their privileged social standing,
they see in the more far-reaching working-women's movement dangers, not
infrequently abhorrent aims, which they feel constrained to ignore,
eventually even to resist. The class-antagonism, that in the general
social movement rages between the capitalist and the working class, and
which, with the ripening of conditions, grows sharper and more
pronounced, turns up likewise on the surface of the Woman's Movement;
and it finds its corresponding expression in the aims and tactics of
those engaged in it.
All the same, the hostile sisters have, to a far greater extent than the
male population--split up as the latter is in the class struggle--a
number of points of contact, on which they can, although marching
separately, strike jointly. This happens on all the fields, on which the
question is the equality of woman with man, within modern society. This
embraces the participation of woman in all the fields of human activity,
for which her strength and faculties are fit; and also her full civil
and political equality with man. These are very important, and as will
be shown further on, very extensive fields. Besides all this the working
woman has also a special interest in doing battle hand in hand with the
male portion of the working class, for all the means and institutions
that may protect the working woman from physical and moral degeneration,
and which promise to secure to her the vitality and fitness necessary
for motherhood and for the education of children. Furthermore, as
already indicated, it is the part of the working-woman to make common
cause with the male members of her class and of her lot in the struggle
for a radical transformation of society, looking to the establishment of
such conditions as may make possible the real economic and spiritual
independence of both sexes, by means of social institutions that afford
to all a full share in the enjoyment of all the conquests of
civilization made by mankind.
The goal, accordingly, is not merely the realization of the equal rights
of woman with man within present society, as is aimed at by the
bourgeois woman emancipationists. It lies beyond,--the removal of all
impediments that make man dependent upon man; and, consequently, one sex
upon the other. Accordingly, this solution of the Woman Question
coincides completely with the solution of the Social Question. It
follows that he who aims at the solution of the Woman Question to its
full extent, is necessarily bound to go hand in hand with those who have
inscribed upon their banner the solution of the Social Question as a
question of civilization for the whole human race. These are the
Socialists, that is, the Social Democracy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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