COMMUNISM AND WOMEN

Grey River Argus, 30 December 1920, Page 5

COMMUNISM AND WOMEN

Any woman interested in regaining total emancipation fo* her sex cannot be indifferent to any event that may impede or accelerate her object; and Communism must be considered as one of these events. The Feudal System, t>ased on force, established an aristocracy of birth. The Bourgeois (i.e., the Capitalist) System, founded on profit, and giving supremacy to the money. lords, has both enslaved and exploited the women. Will Communism continue the story or smash the sequence? Looked at superficially, one could almost believe so. Many, many militant Socialists have exactly the same ideology on the subject of women as those hfcld by the egotistical Romans-. I'hey do not understand the life of a woman chained up by the weary drudgeries of the kitchen, the cleaning, cooking, washing, etc. They cannot conceive of women i having any activity .apart .from the protection of a man. I have still in my hands a letter that a good Socialist addressed to me some time ago. "Many of my comrades," he said, "have,, like me, decided to withdraw tkelr women from the workshop." I cannot describe here the mariner in which this was conveyed. It is easily scon that in his thoughts and those of his comrades, the men having decided, the women, of course, must obey.' The idea of them having any personal ideas on the subject never seems to them. If, then, we only count on the progress oi masculine ideas which dominate society, *it would seem as if the emancipation of women was still in the fardistant future. -" But there is something stronger than the sentiments and ideas of individuals. All have to submit, whether they lick it or not, to the law of the system in which they live. ] The Communists will modify to-mor-' row the basis of society, and' will sub stitute for the dicta^rship of money the sovereignty of labour, and thus create the favourable atmosphere foi freeing the enslaved *nasses. Under the regime of the reactionaries of tin Right the woman can do nothing. Tin regime of money has given the place of supremacy to the monied man. Com munism, in basing all rights on labour, reveals the masters of the new system as the citizens who are engaged in nee cssary work for the body social, 'fhi^ includes those engaged in the home oi in keeping premises in order. (Consti tution of Soviets, Act G4.) By these principles by the merging together oi men and women, the Communist society takes, a gigantic step -forward, and in ! my opinion, if it does not also demolish the economic inferiority in which women are to-day placed, there will re main in the system of Communism a deadly cancer which sooner or late: will destroy it. / In order to prepare the society of to morrow which will smash all those ehaim Mi < J-'.-HMHl'sts must discover the cause (1 f this economic inferiority, and treat it as one of the most serious problems confronting them. At the prtwni period of an intensive mechanism, where it is not physical force but nor vous resistance that- is the importnu factor in production, women have ap proached a little nearer to career, which formerly had been closed t< them, under lock and Key as it were* She can now to some extent assure her self of an independent existence. The countless tentative experiencs of tht war have proved conciusivcly that sheis able to work, she can guarantee her subsistence. Then we must consider the child. The child is also :■ cause of the slavery of women. The working mother cannot work. A baby needs constant attention. A b»b\ during the first two years of its life monopolises the Avhole activity of the mother. Forced then, as she has bee;! up to thisd ay, to place both herself andVhcr child on the dependence oi the father, this has meant placing herself under a veritable despotism. Society has not only tacitly acquiesced in this dcplo'rablc state, but has actually registered and legalised it. Again, the Jaws relating to marriage and the family constitute a veritable mountain of inequity. They have placed women in a state of complete subordination to man ,aud have. made her an object of shameful exploitation. I .say Exploitation. The word is not too strong. ' "With undetermined hours of -work. I<> or 17 usually, there is impossibility of acquiring any personal cult.Jro, liu-f are the conditions of labour, whi<-h have never been ameliorated nor arc likely to be, and a detstable system of liytgion*. r ijhcse arc things that man is not so much trouble.), about. It is jiot ho who has to suffer' the confined quarters without air or : . lfcht or space such*as is found. in tho kitchens. o.f the proletarian. Such is the life fthat stretches drearily before the working woman. Worn out by the uninterrupted labour, called by ■shoddy literature and the bourgeois Fami'y Life, the queen (?) of the kitchen has never had time* +o lighten her burden. The Communists if Russia know full well that women must be enfranchised not only in appearance, by giving them political rights which Avill not permit economic discrepancy to survive, but by freeing them from the necessity of providing for the child, and also .by endeavouring to. industrialise some of the domestic labours and rendering more pleasant and less degrading women 's "task in the home. • That will not bje all, for as the years roll on 'the more precise and clearer will be the wish- for independenccj -and the more they will take stock of their inferior status which is the result of carrying (jut their maternal function in society. And before Communist KoVi«iy iL ;