The Woman Socialist/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
THE WOMAN SOCIALIST OF TO–DAY
Socialism is not yet an established fact. It is coming; nothing can prevent that, It is the next inevitable step in ordered progress. But women must not wait for its coming; nor must they consecrate their time and talents entirely to firing the imaginations and touching the hearts of men with pity for their own condition whilst women live in bonds. The raising of women to the present position of men would be a revolution as great in its character and as important in its consequences as the destruction of the present social and industrial system and the establishment upon its ruins of the new social order. Let Socialist women remember this fact; and let them give their lives to raising their sisters, no matter what their position in society, so that men and women, equally armed, may fight side by side for that economic liberty denied to so many.
The Socialist woman-citizen of the future will find strange reading in the accounts of to-day’s struggle for the political emancipation of women. To her these times will have much the same character as the dark ages have to us. Picture them, the woman and the man, in their simple, beautiful home, lovely children at their knees:—
“Self-reverent each, and reverencing each;
Distinct in individualities,
Yet like each other even as those who love;”
discussing with intelligence and in sweet seriousness the grave political and social problems of their times; coming by their discussion each to a satisfactory conclusion, sometimes the same, sometimes different; and then proceeding, side by side, to record their respective opinions at the ballot-box in perfect peace and amity.
We have a long distance to travel ere that goal is reached; but it must be travelled, and it will be reached as soon as a sufficient number of women have been brought to a clear understanding of the true cause of their enslavement, and a determination to endure no longer their condition of political outlawry.
The brave women who are taking so prominent a part in the present great agitation for Parliamentary votes are to be highly congratulated, not only upon their courage, but also upon their wisdom.
They know of numberless other evils which afflict their sex in particular; and of unhappy conditions which women and men have in common. They yearn unspeakably to alter these conditions. They want work for the workless. They would have food given to the children. They want an old-age pension for every aged man and woman. They desire to see accomplished a vast number of reforms of a similar character. But for the present they are concentrating upon this one question, to the unthinking a question of minor importance; and they are wise in so doing.
This question is so foundational in its character that upon its satisfactory solution depends the satisfactory solution, ultimately, of all other problems, and in particular, of those bearing intimately and exclusively upon women. If women realised more completely and in greater numbers the real significance of their voteless condition, and the real nature of the opposition to their enfranchisement, the whole question would be taken out of the realm of politics, cease to be a matter of party strife, and the battle would rage round the greatest moral and spiritual problem that has torn asunder the souls of men since the fall of Adam and the coming of Christ.
But this is not fully realised even by the noblest supporters of the cause of women. The real inwardness of the movement is not appreciated by many. A few excitable women, loud and unwomanly, screaming for votes because they cannot have husbands, is the vulgar idea of the vulgar critics of a movement too great for their shallow minds to comprehend.
The movement for women’s votes means to the intelligent woman agitator something far more than its name implies. She appears to be asking for a vote for her own use. In reality she is demanding the raising of the status of a sex. To be deprived of the vote herself would not cause her a single pang, nor cost her a single tear, though she realises sufficiently its tremendous power and importance. The disgrace is not in the voteless condition of women, but it lies in their powerlessness to qualify, in any circumstances, for the elementary right of citizenship, because of an accident of birth.
It is not, at present, the concern of the women as to how many of their sex shall be enfranchised. A new principle has to be declared, a new relationship to be established, between men and women. We say to the men, "You have the power. Make your qualification for citizenship exactly what you please. We cannot interfere whatever you choose to do. We are powerless. But we demand that that which qualifies a man, whatever it may be, shall also qualify a woman. We desire the stain removed from our womanhood. The power of the vote is important, but it is a secondary consideration. Remove the hateful stigma from your mothers, your wives, and your daughters, which places the noblest and the best of them in a lower position than the most uncultured and immoral specimen of the male sex who pays his rates and taxes."
On these lines must the Socialist woman of the present agitate, in and out of season, if she be true to her Socialist principle of equality. Not turned aside by arguments of expediency, nor frightened of the consequences upon legislation of middle-class and aristocratic women’s votes, but determined to be just in all things, she will go on, in spite of sneers and calumnies, fighting for her oppressed sisters of all classes. And as certainly as that to-morrow’s sun will rise, so surely will the end prove to the advocates of expediency before justice that it is always expedient to be just.