Proletarec. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1906-19??, 1944-07-26
Proves q Point

Capitalist editors, being hard up for arguments to justify the
private profit economy, what with the depressions, wars, revolutions
and ether crimes resulting from the capitalist system, should not be
blamed too much for harping upon every apparent reversion. to cap
talist standards and practices in Soviet Russia.
Nevertheless, we must take issue with the scnbes of the master
class when they comment upon the recent Soviet DEGREES which make
divorces more difficult to obtain and grant government subsidies to
families with large children.
People who want to know why Russia's bosses act like that should
not look for the answer in the realm of morality and religion, but in
economics. If those recent DEGREES prove anything at all it i that the
early theoretical Socialists were right when they expounded the theorg
of economic determinism and stated that mankind acts and thinks
according to the manner in which mankind lives.
Divorces aren't being made more difficult because Russian leaders
are more holy than they were when the revolution ragged in 1917, but
because they ar more natonalisic. They were forced to become more
nathonaisic because the opposition and hatred of the capitalist world
convinced them that they had to develop their strength and depend
upon their own might to continue to exist.
Russians are more natonalishc because they must live by ma
Gonalism.
In this war Russias national strength has suffered heavy losses
by reason of the fact that more than 100000 of the best and most
prolific breeders in the nation have been slaughtered. The sacrifice of
so much human seed will mean the loss of IN entire generation unless
those who remain alive can be induced to breed at a more rapid rate
And % stress OF economic pressure nal Constitutes a threat to
their very existence, Russian morals appear to change.
The same thing happens in every counry-somehmes in reverse
Here IN these United States large families were the rule and
divorces We're considered disgraceful when the fact that agriculture was
the basic industry made every member of the family a potential worker
and when the family itself was an economic unit But with the rise of
the factory system and the growth of cities birth control ceased to be
a sin in the minds of many people and divorces have lately been po-
pularlzed by h example coming down to lowly folks from the White
House.
manner of preserving existence changed.
We like to press this point home because it constitutes a perfect ans
wer to those reactlonary mossbacks who believe that the present eco
nomic and social arrangement is the end in human development and
that the private-profit system, based upon the private possession of
capital, is the last word in all of time.
Already there is plenty of evidence to prove that the old order is
VIII aoanoon economic mdlVlouaIsm completely before long because
they can no longer live by it. In spite of the inertia which keeps people
vdualsm to collectivism. They already have been forced to change and
there is only one doubt about the future.
The one question which remains to be answered il whether the next
era will be a democratic 0 a fascist conecivism. Historians will
measure the political intelligence of this generation by the manner in
be proud of u only if W. who live today make the inevitable change
in the Socialist way-Reading Labor Advocate.