Woman under socialism Part 31

The enthusiasm with which the reporter describes this artificial "vineyard" in a serious paper testifies to the deep impression made upon him by this extraordinary artificial cultivation. There is nothing to prevent similar establishments, on a much more stupendous scale and for other branches of vegetation. The luxury of a double crop is obtainable in many agricultural products. To-day all such undertakings are a question of money, and their products are accessible only to the privileged cla.s.ses. A Socialist society knows no other question than that of sufficient labor-power. If that is in existence, the work is done in the interest of all.

Another new invention on the field of food is that of Dr. Johann Hundhausen of Hamm in Westphalia, who succeeded in extracting the alb.u.men of wheat--the secret of whose utilization in the legume was not yet known--in the shape of a thoroughly nutritive flour. This is a far-reaching invention. It is now possible to render the alb.u.men of plants useful in substantial form for human food.

The inventor erected a large factory which produces vegetal alb.u.men or aleurone meal from 80 to 83 per cent. of alb.u.men, and a second quality of about 50 per cent. That the so-called aleurone meal represents a very concentrated alb.u.minous food appears from the following comparison with our best elements of nourishment:

Carbon- Water Alb.u.men Fat hydrate Cellulose Salt Aleurone meal 8.83 82.67 0.27 7.01 0.45 0.78 Hen's eggs 73.67 12.55 12.11 0.55 0.55 1.12 Beef 55.42 17.19 26.58 .... .... 1.08

Aleurone meal is not only eaten directly, it is also used as a condiment in all sorts of bakery products, as well as soups and vegetables.

Aleurone meal subst.i.tutes in a high degree meat preserves in point of nutrition; moreover, it is by far the cheapest alb.u.men obtainable to-day. One kilogram of alb.u.men costs:

In aleurone meal 1.45 marks In white bread or white flour 4 to 4.5 "

In hen's eggs, according to the season 8 to 16 "

In beef 12 to 13 "

Beef, accordingly, is about eight times dearer, as alb.u.minous food, than aleurone meal; eggs five times as dear; white bread or common white flour about three times as dear. Aleurone meal also has the advantage that, with the addition of about one-eighth of the weight of a potato, it not only furnishes a considerable quant.i.ty of alb.u.men to the body, but produces a complete digestion of the starch contained in the potato.

Dogs, that have a nose for alb.u.men, eat aleurone meal with the same avidity as meat, even if they otherwise refuse bread, and they are then better able to stand hards.h.i.+ps.

Aleurone meal, as a dry vegetal alb.u.men, is of great use as food on s.h.i.+ps, in fortresses and in military hospitals during war. It renders large supplies of meat unnecessary. At present aleurone meal is a side product in starch factories. Within short, starch will become a side product of aleurone meal. A further result will be that the cultivation of cereals will crowd out that of potatoes and other less productive food plants; the volume of nutrition of a given field of wheat or rye is tripled or quadrupled at one stroke.

Dr. Rudolf Meyer of Vienna, whose attention was called by us to the aleurone meal says[199] that he furnished himself with a quant.i.ty of it and had it examined on June 19, 1893, by the bureau of experiments of the Board of Soil Cultivation of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The examination fully confirmed our statements. For further details Meyer's work should be read. Meyer also calls attention to a discovery made by Otto Redemann of Bockenheim near Frankfort-on-the-Main. After granulating the peanut and removing its oil, he a.n.a.lyzed its component elements of nutrition.

The a.n.a.lysis showed 47 per cent. of alb.u.men, 19 of fat and 19 of starch--altogether 2,135 units of nutritious matter in one kilo.

According to this a.n.a.lysis the peanut is one of the most nutritious vegetal products. The pharmacist Rud. Simpson of Mohrungen discovered a process by which to remove the bitterness from the lupine, which, as may be known, thrives best on sandy soil, and is used both as fodder and as a fertilizer; and he then produced from it a meal, which, according to expert authority, baked as bread tastes very good, is solid, is said to be more nutritious than rye-bread, and, besides all that, much cheaper.

Even under present conditions a regular revolution is plowing its way in the matter of human food. _The utilization of all these discoveries is, however, slow, for the reason that mighty cla.s.ses--the farmer element together with its social and political props--have the liveliest interest in suppressing them._ To our agrarians, a good crop is to-day a horror--although the same is prayed for in all the churches--because it lowers prices. Consequently, they are no wise anxious for a double and threefold nutritive power of their cereals; it would likewise tend to lower prices. Present society is everywhere at fisticuffs with its own development.

The preservation of the soil in a state of fertility depends primarily upon fertilization. The obtaining of fertilizers is, accordingly, for future society also one of the princ.i.p.al tasks.[200] Manure is to the soil what food is to man, and just as every kind of food is not equally nouris.h.i.+ng to man, neither is every kind of manure of equal benefit to the soil. The soil must receive back exactly the same chemical substances that it gave up through a crop; and the chemical substances especially needed by a certain vegetable must be given to the soil in larger quant.i.ties. Hence the study of chemistry and its practical application will experience a development unknown to-day.

Animal and human excrements are particularly rich in the chemical elements that are fittest for the reproduction of human food. Hence the endeavor must be to secure the same in the fullest quant.i.ty and cause its proper distribution. On this head too modern society sins grievously. Cities and industrial centers, that receive large ma.s.ses of foodstuffs, return to the soil but a slight part of their valuable offal.[201] The consequence is that the fields, situated at great distances from the cities and industrial centers, and which yearly send their products to the same, suffer greatly from a dearth of manure; the offal that these farms themselves yield is often not enough, because the men and beasts who live on them consume but a small part of the product.

Thus frequently a soil-vandalism is practiced, that cripples the land and decreases the crops. All countries that export agricultural products mainly, but receive no manure back, inevitably go to ruin through the gradual impoverishment of the soil. This is the case with Hungary, Russia, the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities, North America, etc. Artificial fertilizers, guano in particular, indeed subst.i.tute the offal of men and beasts; but many farmers can not obtain the same in sufficient quant.i.ty; it is too dear; at any rate, it is an inversion of nature to import manure from great distances, while it is allowed to go to waste nearby.

Several years since has the Thomas-slag been recognized as an eminently fit manure for certain soils. The manufacturers, however, who grind the Thomas-slag into flour and carry it to market, have built a ring, and, to the injury of the farming interests who make bitter complaints on that score, they keep the prices high. Thus every progress is crippled by greed in bourgeois society. Another and at present inexhaustable source of fertilizers is offered by the deposits of potash in the province of Saxony and contiguous regions. The Prussian State owns a number of potash works and it also made the attempt to monopolize the industry, to the end of raising the largest possible revenues for the Treasury.

If the opinion of Julius Hensel on the subject of fertilizers proves correct, it will mean a revolution in the theory of fertilization, and a complete saving of the expenses now made for the importation of fertilizers, amounting for guano and Chile saltpeter to from 80 to 100 million marks a year.[202] Hensel makes the emphatic claim, and produces numerous proofs of the correctness of his views, that the mineral of our mountains contain an inexhaustible supply of the best fertilizing stuffs. Granite, porphyry, basalt, broken and ground up, spread upon the fields or vineyards and furnished with a sufficiency of water, furnished a fertilizer that excelled all others, even animal and human refuse.[203] These minerals, he claims, contain all the elements for the cultivation of plants: potash, chalk, magnesia, phosphoric, sulphuric and silicic acids, and also hydrochlorides. According to Hensel, the Sudeton, Riesen, Erz, Tichtel, Hartz, Rhone, Vogel, Taunus, Eisel and Weser mountains, the woods of Thuringen, Spessart and Oden had an inexhaustible supply of fertilizers. It will be literally possible to "make bread out of stones." The dust and dirt of our highways also are, according to Hensel, inexhaustible sources of the same blessing. In this matter we are laymen and can not test the correctness of Hensel's theories; a part of them, however, sound most plausible. Hensel charges the manufacturers of and dealers in artificial fertilizers with hostility to his discovery and with systematic opposition, because they would suffer great loss.

According to Heider, a healthy adult secretes on an average 48.8 kilograms of solid and 438 of liquid matter a year. Estimated by the present standard of the prices of manure, and if utilized without loss by evaporation, etc., this offal represents a money value of 11.8 marks. Calculating the population of Germany to be 50,000,000 in round figures, and estimating the average value of the human offal at 8 marks, the sum of 400,000,000 marks is obtained, which now is almost totally lost to agriculture, owing to the present imperfect methods for utilizing it. The great difficulty in the way of a full utilization of these stuffs lies in the establishment of proper and extensive provisions for their collection, and in the cost of transportation.

Relatively, this cost is now higher than the importation of guano from far-away transmarine deposits, which, however, decline in ma.s.s in the measure that the demand increases. Every living being, however, casts off regularly an annual supply of manure about enough for a field that yields food for one person. The enormous loss is obvious. A large portion of the city excrement runs out into our rivers and streams, and pollutes them. Likewise is the refuse from kitchens and factories, also serviceable as manure, recklessly squandered.

Future society will find means and ways to stop this waste. What is done to-day in this direction is mere patchwork, and utterly inadequate. As an ill.u.s.tration of what could be done to-day, may be cited the ca.n.a.lization and the laying out of vast fields in the capital of the Empire, on whose value, however, experts are of divided opinion.

Socialist society will solve the question more easily, due, in a great measure, to the fact that _large cities will gradually cease to exist, and population will decentralize_.

No one will regard our modern rise of metropoles as a healthy phenomenon. The modern system of manufacture and production in general, steadily draws large ma.s.ses of the population to the large cities.[204]

There is the seat of manufacture and commerce; there the avenues of communication converge; there the owners of large wealth have their headquarters, the central authorities, the military staffs, the higher tribunals. There large inst.i.tutions rear their heads--the academies of art, large pleasure resorts, exhibitions, museums, theaters, concert halls, etc. Hundreds are drawn thither by their professions, thousands by pleasure, and many more thousands by the hope of easier work and an agreeable life.

But, speaking figuratively, the rise of metropolitan cities makes the impression of a person whose girth gains steadily in size, while his legs as steadily become thinner, and finally will be unable to carry the burden. All around, in the immediate vicinity of the cities, the villages also a.s.sume a city aspect, in which the proletariat is heaped up in large ma.s.ses. The munic.i.p.alities, generally out of funds, are forced to lay on taxes to the utmost, and still remain unable to meet the demand made upon them. When finally they have grown up to the large city and it up to them, they rush into and are absorbed by it, as happens with planets that have swung too close to the sun. But the fact does not improve the conditions of life. On the contrary, they grow worse through the crowding of people in already overcrowded s.p.a.ces.

These gatherings of ma.s.ses--inevitable under modern development, and, to a certain extent, the raisers of revolutionary centers,--will have fulfilled their mission in Socialist society. Their gradual dissolution then becomes necessary: _the current will then run the other way: population will migrate from the cities to the country: it will there raise new munic.i.p.alities corresponding with the altered conditions, and they will join their industrial with their agricultural activities_.

So soon as--due to the complete remodeling and equipment of the means of communication and transportation, and of the productive establishments, etc., etc.--the city populations will be enabled to transfer to the country all their acquired habits of culture, to find there their museums, theaters, concert halls, reading rooms, libraries, etc.--just so soon will the migration thither set in. Life will then enjoy all the comforts of large cities, without their disadvantages. The population will be housed more comfortably and sanitarily. The rural population will join in manufacturing, the manufacturing population in agricultural pursuits,--a change of occupation enjoyed to-day by but few, and then often under conditions of excessive exertion.

As on all other fields, bourgeois society is promoting this development also: every year new industrial undertakings are transferred to the country. The unfavorable conditions of large cities--high rents and high wages--drive many employers to this migration. At the same time, the large landlords are steadily becoming industrialists--manufacturers of sugar, distillers of liquor, beer brewers, manufacturers of cement, earthen wares, tiles, woodwork, paper goods, etc. In the new social order offal of all sorts will then be easily furnished to agriculture, especially through the concentration of production and the public kitchens. Each community will, in a way, const.i.tute a zone of culture; it will, to a large extent, itself raise its necessaries of life.

Horticulture, perhaps the most agreeable of all practical occupations, will then reach fullest bloom. The cultivation of vegetables, fruit trees and bushes of all nature, ornamental flowers and shrubs--all offer an inexhaustible field for human activity, a field, moreover, whose nature excludes machinery almost wholly.

_Thanks to the decentralization of the population, the existing contrast and antagonism between the country and the city will also vanish._

The peasant, this Helot of modern times, hitherto cut off from all cultural development through his isolation in the country, now becomes a free being because he has fully become a limb of civilization.[205] The wish, once expressed by Prince Bismarck, that he might see the large cities destroyed, will be verified, but in a sense wholly different from that which he had in mind.[206]

If the preceding arguments are rapidly pa.s.sed in review, it will be seen that, with the abolition of private property in the means of production and their conversion into social property, the ma.s.s evils, that modern society reveals at every turn and which grow ever greater and more intolerable under its sway, will gradually disappear. The over-lords.h.i.+p of one cla.s.s and its representatives ceases. Society applies its forces planfully and controls itself. As, with the abolition of the wage system the ground will be taken from under the exploitation of man by man, likewise will it be taken from under swindle and cheating--the adulteration of food, the stock exchange, etc.,--with the abolition of private capitalism. The halls in the Temples of Mammon will stand vacant; national bonds of indebtedness, stocks, p.a.w.n-tickets, mortgages, deeds, etc., will have become so much waste paper. The words of Schiller: "Let our book of indebtedness be annihilated, and the whole world reconciled" will have become reality, and the Biblical maxim: "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread" will now come into force for the heroes of the stock exchange and the drones of capitalism as well.

Yet the labor that, as equal members of society they will have to perform, will not oppress them: their bodily health will be materially improved. The worry of property--said to be, judging from the pathetic a.s.surances of our employers and capitalists in general, harder to bear than the uncertain and needy lot of the workingman--will be forever removed from those gentlemen. The excitements of speculation, that breed so many diseases of the heart and bring on so many strokes of apoplexy among our exchange jobbers, and that render them nervous wrecks, will all be saved to them. A life free from mental worry will be their lot and that of our descendants; and in the end they will gladly accommodate themselves thereto.

With the abolition of private property and of cla.s.s antagonism, the State also gradually vanishes away;--it vanishes without being missed.

"By converting the large majority of the population more and more into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the power, that, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. By urging more and more the conversion of the large, already socialized means of production into State property, it points the path for the accomplishment of this revolution.... The State was the official representative of the whole society; it was the const.i.tution of the latter into a visible body; but it was so only in so far as it was the State of that cla.s.s which itself, at its time, represented the whole society; in antiquity, the State of slave-holding citizens; in the middle ages, the State of the feudal n.o.bility; in our own days, the State of the capitalist cla.s.s. By at last becoming actually the representative of the whole social body, it renders itself superfluous.

As soon as there is no longer any social cla.s.s to be kept down; as soon as, together with cla.s.s rule and the individual struggle for life, founded in the previous anarchy of production, the conflicts and excesses that issued therefrom have been removed, there is nothing more to be repressed, and the State or Government, as a special power of repression, is no longer necessary. The first act, wherein the State appears as the real representative of the whole body social--the seizure of the means of production in the name of society--is also its last independent act as State. The interference of the State in social relations becomes superfluous in one domain after another, and falls of itself into desuetude. The place of a government over persons is taken by the administration of things and the conduct of the processes of production. The State is not 'abolished'--_it dies out!_"[207]

Along with the State, die out its representatives--cabinet ministers, parliaments, standing armies, police and constables, courts, district attorneys, prison officials, tariff and tax collectors, in short, the whole political apparatus. Barracks, and such other military structures, palaces of law and of administration, prisons--all will now await better use. Ten thousand laws, decrees and regulations become so much rubbish; they have only historic value. The great and yet so petty parliamentary struggles, with which the men of tongue imagine they rule and guide the world, are no more, they will have made room for administrative colleges and delegations whose attention will be engaged in the best means of production and distribution, in ascertaining the volume of supplies needed, in introducing and applying effective improvements in art, in architecture, in intercourse, in the process of production, etc. These are all practical matters, visible and tangible, towards which everyone stands objectively, there being no personal interests hostile to society to affect their judgment. None has any interest other than the collectivity, and that interest consists in inst.i.tuting and providing everything in the best, most effective and most profitable manner.

The hundreds of thousands of former representatives of the State pa.s.s over into the various trades, and help with their intelligence and strength to increase the wealth and comforts of society. Henceforth there are known neither political crimes nor common ones. There are no more thieves, seeing that private property has ceased to be in the means of production, and everyone can now satisfy his wants with ease and comfort by work. Tramps and vagabonds likewise cease to be; they are the product of a social system based on private property; the former cease to be with the latter. And murder? Why? None can grow rich at the expense of another. Even murder out of hatred and revenge flows directly or indirectly from the modern social system. Perjury, false testimony, cheating, thefts of inheritance, fraudulent failures? There is no private property on and against which to commit these crimes. Arson? Who is to derive pleasure or satisfaction therefrom, seeing that society removes from him all sources of hatred? Counterfeiting? Why, money has become a chimera, love's labor would be lost. Contempt for religion?

Nonsense. It is left to the "omnipotent and good G.o.d" to punish him who should offend Him--provided there be still controversies on the existence of G.o.d.

Thus all the cornerstones of the present "order" become myths. Parents will tell their children stories on those heads, like legends from olden days. The narrations of the persecutions, that men with new ideas are to-day overwhelmed with, will sound to them just as the stories of the burning of heretics and witches sound to us to-day. The names of all the great men, who to-day distinguish themselves by their persecutions of the new ideas, and who are applauded by their narrow-minded contemporaries, are forgotten and blown over, and they are run across only by the historian who may happen to dive into the past. What remarks may escape him, we care not to tell, seeing that, unhappily, we do not yet live in an age where man is free to breathe.

As with the State, so with "Religion."[208] It is not "abolished." G.o.d will not be "dethroned"; religion will not be "torn out of the hearts of people"; nor will any of the silly charges against the Socialists materialize. Such mistaken policies the Socialists leave to the Bourgeois ideologists, who resorted to such means in the French Revolution and, of course, suffered miserable s.h.i.+pwreck. Without any violence whatever, and without any manner of oppression of thought, religion will gradually vanish.

Religion is the transcendental reflection of the social conditions of given epochs. In the measure that human development advances and society is transformed, religion is transformed along with it. It is, as Marx puts it, a popular striving after the illusory happiness that corresponds with a social condition which needs such an illusion.[209]

The illusion wanes so soon as real happiness is descried, and the possibility of its realization penetrates the ma.s.ses. The ruling cla.s.ses endeavor, in their own interest, to prevent this popular conception.

Hence they seek to turn religion into a means to preserve their domination. The purpose appears fully in their maxim: "The people must be held to religion." This particular business becomes an official function in a society that rests upon cla.s.s rule. A caste is formed that a.s.sumes this function and that turns the whole ac.u.men of their minds towards preserving, and enlarging such a social structure, seeing that thereby their own power and importance are increased.

Starting in fetis.h.i.+sm at low stages of civilization and primitive social conditions, religion becomes polytheism at a higher, and monotheism at a still higher stage. It is not the G.o.ds that create men, it is man who turns the G.o.ds into G.o.d. "In the image of himself (man) he created Him"

(G.o.d), not the opposite way. Monotheism has also suffered changes. It has dissolved into a pantheism that embraces and permeates the universe--and it volatilizes day by day. Natural science reduced to myth the dogma of the creation of the earth in six days; astronomy, mathematics, physics have converted heaven into a structure of air, and the stars, once fastened to the roof of heaven in which angels had their abodes, into fixed stars and planets whose very composition excludes all angelic life.

The ruling cla.s.s, finding itself threatened in its existence, clings to religion as a prop of all authority, just as every ruling cla.s.s has done heretofore.[210] The bourgeoisie or capitalist cla.s.s itself believes in nothing. Itself, at every stage of its development and through the modern science that sprang from none but its own lap, has destroyed all faith in religion and authority. Its faith is only a pretence; and the Church accepts the help of this false friend because itself is in need of help. "Religion is necessary for the people."

No such considerations animate Socialistic Society. Human progress and unadulterated science are its device. If any there be who has religious needs, he is free to please himself in the company of those who feel like him. It is a matter that does not concern society. Seeing that the clergyman's own mind will be improved by work, the day will dawn to him also when he will realize that _the highest aim is to be man_.

Ethics and morality exist without organized religion. The contrary is a.s.serted only by weak-minded people or hypocrites. Ethics and morality are the expression of conceptions that regulate the relations of man to man, and their mutual conduct. Religion embraces the relations of man with supernal beings. And, just as with religion, moral conceptions also are born of existing social conditions at given times. Cannibals regard the eating of human beings as highly moral; Greeks and Romans regarded slavery as moral; the feudal lord of the Middle Ages regarded serfdom as moral; and to-day the modern capitalist considers highly moral the inst.i.tution of wage-slavery, the flaying of women with night work and the demoralization of children by factory labor.[211] Here we have four different social stages, and as many different conceptions of morality, and yet in none does the highest moral sense prevail. Undoubtedly the highest moral stage is that in which men stand to one another free and equal; that in which the principle: "What you do not wish to be done unto you, do not unto others" is observed inviolate throughout the relations of man to man. In the Middle Ages, the genealogical tree was the standard; to-day it is property; in future society, the standard of man is man. And the future is Socialism in practice.

The late Reichstag delegate, Dr. Lasker, delivered, in the seventies, an address in Berlin, in which he arrived at the conclusion that an equal level of education for all members of society was possible. Dr. Lasker was an anti-Socialist a rigid upholder of private property and of the capitalist system of production. The question of education is to-day, however, a question of money. Under such conditions, an equal level of education for all is an impossibility. Exceptional persons, situated in relatively favorable conditions, may, by dint of overcoming all difficulties and by the exertion of great energy, not given to everybody, succeed in acquiring a higher education. The ma.s.ses never, so long as they live in a state of social oppression.[212]

In the new social order, the conditions of existence are equal for all.

Wants and inclinations differ, and, differences being grounded in the very nature of man, will continue so to be. Each member, however, can live and develop under the same favorable conditions that obtain for all. The uniformity, generally imputed to Socialism, is, as so many other things, false and nonsensical. Even if Socialism did so wish it, the wish were absurd; it would come in conflict with the nature of man; Socialism would have to give up the idea of seeing society develop according to its principles.[213] Aye, even if Socialism were to succeed in overpowering society and to force upon it unnatural conditions, it would not be long before such conditions, felt to be shackles, would be snapped, and Socialism would be done for. Society develops out of itself, according to laws latent in it, and it acts accordingly.[214]

One of the princ.i.p.al tasks of the new social system will be the education of the rising generation in keeping with its improved opportunities. Every child that is born, be it male or female, is a welcome addition to society. Society sees therein the prospect of its own perpetuity, of its own further development. It, therefore, also realizes the duty of providing for the new being according to its best powers. The first object of its attention must, consequently, be the one that gives birth to the new being--the mother. A comfortable home; agreeable surroundings and provisions of all sorts, requisite to this stage of maternity; a careful nursing--such are the first requirements.

The mother's breast must be preserved for the child as long as possible and necessary. This is obvious. Moleschott, Sonderegger, all hygienists and physicians are agreed that nothing can fully subst.i.tute the mother's nourishment.