From André Tridon,

113 E. 28th Street, City,

Tel 10122 Madison Square.

WOMAN AND FUTURISM

by F. T. Marinetti

translated by André Tridon.

Our hatred for love's slavery shall be expressed through the
brief motto: Scorn woman! We scorn indeed one woman the provider of
love, the voluptuous lure, the fascination, the tragic bibelot, the
fragile, obsessing and fatal woman whose voice is as laden with fate
and whose fairy hair matches the mystery of the moonlit woodland. We
scorn love, baneful and overwhelming love, which weights down men's
steps and prevents him from breaking his fetters, from surpassing
himself, from raising himself to the nth power.

We scorn love the giant leash with which the Sun holds perhaps
the Earth tethered to its orbit, the daring Earth which would fain
bound off through space in quest of sidereal adventure.

We are convinced that love is the least natural of all feelings ;
for the only natural fact in the sexual realm is the act of procreation.

Love, sentimental and voluptuous obsession is a contrivance the
poets have foisted upon mankind. Other poets shall in their turn deliver
mankind from it.

The great tragi-comic experiment of love is nearing its end ; it
has not only proved unprofitable but entailed incalculable damage beside
Always colliding, never cooperating, the two sexes have been found uneq-
ual to their task.

Therefore, we the futurists shall withdraw that purely literary

## Introduction 16.

society drift down the stream of its own evolution, what becomes of me,
as an individual? Am I the weak tool of irresistible forces of economic
and political factors which are to save me against my wishes and transport
me into some Earthly Paradise? ......If the workers wish to emancipate
themselves from the tutelage of employer and State, and live without
masters of production or masters of politics, they must first train them-
selves for action and educate their will power. This is why Syndicalism
says to them: Have faith in yourselves only! Your salvation is in your-
selves. The world will only be what you will make it ......And the

Syndicalist practice "direct action" teaches men that nothing is preordained for it is men who make history....While indirect action lulls vitality to sleep, saps will power and panders to the lowest human instincts, direct Syndicalist action stimulates the dormant powers of the individual and combat his low desire for passivity....."

Even if the ballot and Parliamentary action could solve the social problem for certain classes of workers there would remain the ever increasing masses of unskilled workers to whom the ballot is of no earthly use. Tossed from one end of the country to the other by the ebb and flow of the labor market they seldom remain long enough in one region to qualify as voters, not to mention being eligible to any office or to Congress.

According to John Sandgren there are in this country "approximately

Tridon 2.

product, love from circulation even as an author withdraws from a publisher a book which is not fit to print.

In our struggle for independence the suffragettes shall be out most valuable allies. The more power, the more privileges mean woman conquers, the sooner she will cease to be a mere source of sentimental passion or a mere provider of pleasure. This will be hastened by the prodigious development of feminine luxury which has transformed love into a pitiful thral rebelling weakly under the heavy fist of Gold the master.

When woman and love have been stripped of their hale, of all their peppery dressing of sin and Don Juan-like boasting, love will be but a bodily function like the satisfaction of hunger and thirst. Then the Superman we dream of will preserve unto his dying day his sexual power and will never know the decrepitude and impotence born of excesses.

The young males of to-day forsaking altogether erotic literature and swearing off these stultifying antOXijicants, sentimentalism and passion, immune at last to love's malady, must rid themselves systematically of all heartaches by tearing to tatters all they hold dear and seeking new diversions for their sex and their mind.

As far as woman's alleged inferiority is concerned we believe that if woman had received century after century the physical and mental training man has received we could reasonably expect a perfect equality of the sexes.

At the present day woman's intellectual and sexual slavery which places her in a condition of undeniable inferiority can but make her a medicare factor in legislative life.

We therefore uphold all the demands presented by the suffragettes much as we deplore their childish eagerness for something as ridiculous as the franchise, for we are convinced that they will help unconsciously to destroy that great hoax founded on corruption and platitudes, the modern Parliament.

Introduction 10.

"The State, in its present form, is necessarily and essentially national. It was created to defend and bring prosperity to a definite area of land and people, and with a tendency to enrich itself at the cost of all other national groups. This means simply Capitalism-the gospel of exploitation-transferred to groups or States instead of individuals. The State is Capitalistic in its deepest essence. It was started for the sake of exploitation, and the best govern State must always remain Capitalistic, because its attitude to other States is either hostile or indifferent.

"Therefore, when Socialists look to the State as the true commonwealth and want the State to take possession of the sources of wealth and to abolis the abuses of monopoly or exploitation, they will necessarily drift into Nationalism -as we'd see it happen in Germany and France-and thereby lose their true Socialistic character.

"This was felt by the leaders of Anarchism-when the great schism betwee Bakunin and Marx took place."

For identical reasons the Welsh Miners who are ardent Syndicalists oppose nationalization or government ownership of public utilities proposed by Reform Socialists it would, one speakers said, to the formation of a national Trust with all the force of the government behind it whose one concern will be to see that the industry is run in such a way as to pay the interest on the bonds with which the coal owners are paid out, and to extract as much more profit as possible in order to relieve the taxation of other landlords and capitalists."

Lagardelle considers that the Socialist view of the great change is lazy and sterile.

"If in order to build up a free world we must simply let Capitalist

Introduction 14.

a creative value it lacks entirely....You cannot conjure overnight out of nothing an organized system of society. Whatever authority you may dispose of, you will not impart to the workers who elected Socialist candidates, to the voters, who for frequently futile and abstract motives are following you, the ability to regulate production and distribution. You will be the masters of the hour, you will hold all the power which yesterday was vested in the middle classes, you will pile up decree upon decree, lay upon law, but you will not work any miracle, you will not at a stroke enable the workers to replace the capitalists.

"Why should the coming into power of a few Socialist politicians transform the psychology of the masses, modify their feelings, increase their ability, create new life habits and enable a society of free men to take the place of a society of masters and slaves. No, it is not up on a mere change in the governmental personnel that the transformation of the world depends. That would be too simple, and progress demands much more.

A social system is not born without a long preparation and in this connection, Syndicalism, with a more practical view of things pits against your theories, what I have called institutional Socialism. We wish to remind the workers that no change will be possible until they have created with their own hands a system of institutions destined to replace the bourgeois system."

Tridon 4.

Let women have the ballot as soon as possible. For this is the final and
logical consequence of the democratic principle, of the universalsuffrage
idea dreamed of by Rousseau and other harbingers of the French Revolution.

Let women complete with lightening speed this huge experiment in integral
brutilization of politics. In our profound fear of politics we exult at
the thought that politics is to be thrown a prey to the revengeful claws
of woman. To woman the noble task was reserved of definitely killing politics
May no one suspect me of flippancy. I am in earnest; woman moulded as she
has been by modern society can only carry to its splendid extreme the
principle of corruption which clings intimately to the suffrage idea.

Those who oppose the rightful demands of the suffragettes do so for purely
selfish reasons; some are fighting to retain the baneful privileges their
eloquence conferred upon them but which women will not be slow in wresting
from them. This is of slow interest to us; we are burrowing many more
mine holes under the crumbling ruins of the present system.

Some also assert that government by women or with the help of women would
drag us unavoidably along the road of Tolstorian pacifism and cowardice to
the final triumph of churchianity and moral hypocrisy.

That may be ! That is quite likely to happen ! Well that's too bad.
Besides let's be prepared for a war of the sexes which overcrowding in
large cities, night life and the regulation of working women's wages will
bring about unavoidably.

Humorous mysoginists may be dreaming of a female Saint Bartholomew. This
sounds like idle jesting, like the flaunting of fantastical paradoxes.

Nothing, however, is more paradoxical than reality itself and I have
little faith in the logical sure-things of history. The history of nations
goes tottering along with the extravagant conduct and undignified demeanor
of some misguided maiden who only remembers her father's warning on New
years day or when one more lover abandons her.

And yet the young history of the world is too wise, too well behaved for

Introduction 13.

Reformist and revolutionary Socialists tell the workers that if Socialists can only capture the state either through propaganda leading either to an overwhelming victory at the polls or to a successful revolution, the Socialist State or the Socialist Government will run the nation and its industries for the benefit of the workers.

Only it is not evident that the tyranny of a Socialist State would be more easily born than that of a capitalist state. Furthermore the process may consume a great many years. Finally the failure of several Socialist Ministers and of one Socialist Premier in France to accord to the workers a treatment different from what they would have expected from a Radical or Reformist, is unlikely to spur the workers to renewed efforts to secure representation in Parliament.

The Ballot has magnificent theoretical possibilities; practically, its results are slow and doubtful; besides the ballot is restricted to a certain class of the population and at least in every country to a certain race, while all classes and races work side by side in every country of the world #.

Hubert Lagardelle, at the Socialist Congress held in Nancy on Aug. 14, 1907, said:

"The two tendencies of modern Socialism (reformed and revolutionary) are equally utopian for they attribute to the co-operative power of the state

Tridon 5.

our purpose. It is high time women should take a hand in misguiding it for
the males are almost rotten with the wisdom of centuries.

You must admit for instance that the triumph of feminism and in
particular the immersion of women in politics will strike a last blow to
the institution of the family. I know you will balk in terror and answer
me with speciousSex arguments for you are absolutely hostile to anything
that might break up the home.

" All rights, all privileges for women " you clamor adding hastily
" but the family shall be preserved ".

Allow me to sneer with a mild touch of scepticism and to remark
that if the family disappears we will well manage to do without it. Not we
perhaps, but our sons, the sons we shall not beget, will manage very well
without it.

We are too full of fight, we futurists, to beget children, we who
only love the strenuous instinets, we who demand that masterpieces be burnt
up on their author's pyre, we who loathe the thought of achievement for
immortality's sake, as immortality is only a dream of usurpers' souls.

If woman is so eager to-day to conquer political rights it is
because she obscurely feels that as mother, wife or mistress she is pent
up in a narrow circle, purely animal and devoid of all usefulness.

You may have observed the feverish panting of an aeroplane still
held in check by the aviators' helpers and you have felt on your face the
spalling buffet of wind the screw blows while gathering speed. When we
behold this thrilling urge skyward we the futurist males grow indifferent,
of sudden, to woman who then appears to us too earthy, a true symbol of
the earth we would fain leave behind us.

And we are dreaming a new dream : to create some day our mechanical
son, begotten of our will power alone, a synthesis of all the laws towards
whose discovery science is now rushing madly .

## Introduction 12.

fight between the laborer and the capitalist can be had.... The unskilled laborer is not as a rule a voter; he can seldom stay long enough in one place to acquire residence.... The theory in the United States at least is that such employment is permanent only for the unfit.... it is no longer tenable .... The appropriation of public lands, the practical closing of opportunity, the degradation of the crafts in face of the consolidation of industry, all tend not only to shut the avenues of escape for the unskilled laborer but to greatly increase his numbers."

Although new unionists are in no way concerned with the opinions of dead theorists who could in no way foretell the gigantic industrial advance of the present day we may remind the reader that Marx had always expressed himself disparingly on the role which trade unions were to play in the social revolution.

"Trade unions", he said, in an address delivered before the Workingmen International, "are efficient as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail to a certain extent, however, from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally because they confine themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system instead of trying to change it in its entirety, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wage system."