Workmen's advocate., 1890-07-05


 Communists have not invented the in tervention of society ill education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue educa- tion from the influence of the ruling class.
 The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hal lowed correlation of parent and child become all the more disgusting, as, by the action of modern industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and thelr children transformed into simple articles of com merce and instruments of labor.
 But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
 The bourgeois sees in his wife mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, Can come to no otlier conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
 He has not even suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
 For the rest nothing is more ridcul- ous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Com munists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; 1t has existed almost from time i'm memorial.
 Our bourgeois not content with hay. ing the wives and daughters of their proetarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each others wives
 Bourgeois marriage is in reality sys- tenn of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly | legalized community of women. For the rest it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the com munity of women springing from tbat system, C. c., of prostitution both public and private.
 The Communists are further reproach- ed with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.
 The working men have no country. | We cannot take from them what they have not got Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not | in the bourgeois sense of the word. National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the develop. ment of the bourgeoisle, to freedom of r commerce, to the worlds market, to uni | formity in the mode of production and l in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
 The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of the first conditions | for the emancipation of the proletariat. In proportion as the exploitation of l one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to- In proportion as the antagonism between | classes within the nation vanishes the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.
 The charges against Communism made from religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an theological stand point are not deserving of serious ex- animation.
 Does it require deep intuition to com. prehend that mans ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, mans consci- ousness changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
 What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class
 When people speak of ideas that revo- lutlonize society they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
 When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Chris tian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to nationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death-b battle with the then revolution ary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.
 "Undoubtedly," it will be said, "reli- gious. moral. philosophical and jurldical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this | change"
 "There are besides, eternal truths. |