Robert Paul Neuman, Socialism, The Family and Sexuality: The Marxist Tradition and German Social Democracy Before 1914

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NEUMAN, Robert Paul, 1939-

SOCIALISM, THE FAMILY AND SEXUALITY: THE
MARXIST TRADITION AND GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
BEFORE 1914.
Northwestern University, Ph.D., 1972
History, modem
University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan
0 1972
ROBERT PAUL NEUMAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED
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NO R TH W ESTER N U N IV E R S IT Y
SOCIALISM, THE FAMILY AND SEXUALITY:

THE MARXIST TRADITION AND GERMAN
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY BEFORE 1914
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Field of History
by
ROBERT PAUL NEUMAN
Evanston, Illinois
June, 1972
PLEASE NOTE:
S o m e p ag es m ay have
in d istin ct print.
F i l m e d as received.
U n i v e r s i t y M i c r o f i l m s , A Xer o x E d u c a t i o n C o m p a n y
TABLE OP C O N TEN TS
Page
INTRODUCTION ...................................... 1
Chapter
I "CRITICAL UTOPIAN SOCIALISM"— INSTITUTIONAL

AND PASSIONATE SEXUALITY ................ 6
II KARL MARX ON MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY . . . . 31

III FRIEDRICH ENGELS ON LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND
THE F A M I L Y ................................ 69
IV GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY BEFORE 1914 .... 122

V SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC THEORIES ON MARRIAGE,
THE FAMILY, AND S E X U A L I T Y ................ 196
VI THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC

WOMEN'S MOVEMENT .......................... 271
VII THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC

YOUTH M O V E M E N T ............................ 319
C O N C L U S I O N S ....................................... 350
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................... 357
ill
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INTRODUCTION
In the half century before the First World War, German
Social Democracy evolved from a number of small groups con

cerned with the achievement of political democracy and a so
lution for the ''social question1' into an avowedly Marxist
Social Democratic Party (SPD) with a hundred representatives
in the Reichstag, thousands of other functionaries, and mil

lions of voters. But it would be a mistake to describe the
evolution of German Social Democracy simply as that of a
mass political party or to judge its importance merely in
terms of political success or failure. Such a description

would ignore the much broader influence which the Social
Democratic movement exerted on the lives and culture of a
large segment of the German working classes.

German Social Democracy developed in an industrializing
country where the dominant cultural values and social atti
tudes were still those of a pre-industrial agrarian and

artisanate society controlled by aristocratic elite groups.
To be sure, the SPD provided a channel for the political

aspirations of the emerging urban working class, but it also
helped to provide workers with a world-view which "explained"
the experience of the workers during a period of rapid social
change. In an age marked by the declining influence of tra
ditional theology, increasing confidence in scientific

1
2
progress, supported by a -vulgarized form of Darwinism, the
ideology of the SPD and participation in the labor movement
helped to orient workers in a society many of them regarded
as hostile and oppressive.

Not only did Social Democracy and its Marxist ideology
provide orientation for its adherents, it also developed an
elaborate subculture among workers which paradoxically
helped to integrate them into the very society which the

SPD declared doomed to disappear. Throughout its history
in Imperial Germany, Social Democracy sought to educate,

enlighten, and improve the working class through an elaborate
and extensive network of social and educational activities.

Ostensibly these activities were supposed to better prepare
the workers for the struggle against capitalism. But in

practice the educational and cultural work of the SPD in
culcated many of the very values and attitudes held by the

non-socialist dominant culture of Imperial Germany. This
educational work was only part of an elaborate complex of

cultural and literary activity within the SPD which amounted
to a working class subculture, and, as Guenther Roth has

pointed out, Mby helping the workers indirectly to adjust to
society at large, the subculture contributed to the stabil
ity of the dominant system.
■^Guenther Roth, The Social Democrats in Imperial

Germany (Totowa, N.J., P* 2^2.
3
Unfortunately, the intellectual and cultural facets of
Social Democracy in Imperial Germany remain among the least

explored aspects of a movement that has been studied in
great detail as a political phenomenon. This neglect is
rather surprising, for it might be argued that, in the long

run, the cultural and intellectual influence of the SPD was
more important for the German working class than the politi
cal activities and theoretical debates that occupy so much
space in the historiography of German Social Democracy. In
recent years a number of historians have tried to escape

from the narrow political perspective by examining the cul-
2
tural and ideological importance of the SPD before 1914.
They have stressed, among other things, the integrative
effects of Social Democratic ideology and cultural activi
ties; the eclecticism of an SPD ideology nomihally "Marx

ist,” but in fact compounded of a variety of Marxist,
Darwinian, positivistic, and other philosophical theories;
and the continuing tension within Social Democracy between
the movement’s radical theories and moderate practices.

As will be seen, all of these studies have influenced
o
In addition to Roth cited above, see Gerhard Ritter,
Die Arbeiterbewegung im Vilhelminischen Reich. 1890-1900
(Berlin, 1959); vernon Lidtke, the Outlawed Party. Social
Democracy in Germany 1878-1890 (.Princeton, 1966); Hans-
Josef SieinEerg, Sozlalismus und deutsche Sozialdemokratle.
Zur Ideologie der Partei vor dem I. Welikrleg (Hanover. 1967).
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4
my own discussion of socialism, marriage, the family, and
sexuality in the ideology and practice of German Social
Democracy in Imperial Germany. From its earliest days, the
SPD concerned itself with a variety of questions related to

the nature and history of marriage, the family, and human
sexual behavior. Indeed, the best known and perhaps most

influential book ever produced by a Social Democrat took as
its subject and title Die Frau und der Sozialismus. In the
following chapters I have attempted to trace the socialist
position on matters relating to marriage, the family, and
sexuality from Charles Fourier, through Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, to German Social Democrats like August

Bebel and Karl Kautsky. In addition to discovering the
socialist positions on these questions, I have tried to il
lustrate some of the problems faced by Social Democrats in
translating their theories into practice as seen in the

socialist women's and youth movements. Throughout my dis
cussion of the Social Democratic analysis of marriage, the

family, and sexuality, I seek to show the persistence of
traditional non-socialist attitudes on these matters both

in the theory and practice of German socialism. I also
suggest that German Social Democracy actually helped to re

inforce these attitudes and in fact helped to spread tradi
tional ideas on marriage and the family among the industrial
working classes of Imperial Germany.

I believe that all of these subjects are important to
5
anyone seeking a better understanding of the history of the
Social Democratic movement. In a larger sense, I hope that
the questions studied in the following chapters will serve
as a contribution to the analysis of what one writer has

3
called "the curious love affair of sex and socialism,"' an
affair as alive and as curious today as it was nearly a

century ago when August Bebel joined them together in his
book Die Frau und der Sozialismus.
I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. James J.

Sheehan of the History Department of Northwestern University
for his direction and help, both personal and professional,
in preparing this dissertation.
Êrazim Kohak, "Turning on for Freedom, The Curious

love Affair of Sex and Socialism," Dissent (Sep-Oct, 1969)»
438-443.
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CHAPTER I
"CRITICAL UTOPIAN SOCIALISM"—

INSTITUTIONAL AND PASSIONATE SEXUALITY
The study of the relationship of modern socialism to
marriage, the family, and human sexuality necessarily be

gins with the group Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels dubbed
"critical utopian socialists."'1’ The writings and theories
of Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and the Saint-Simonians

had a profound and lasting effect on later socialists con
cerned with the question of the past, present, and future

status of marriage and the family. Marx, Engels, and their
Social Democratic followers appropriated much of the utopian

socialists1 analysis and critique of these institutions even
though they rejected many of their other solutions to the
social question. It follows, therefore, that special empha

sis should be given to the utopian socialist critique of
marriage and the family while their overall analysis of
existing society and prescriptions for the future be treated

2
in summary fashion.
^ a r l Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto

(New York: Monthly Review edition, 1964), pp. 54-5$.
2
There is a large literature on the critical utopian
socialists. The following are of particular value for the
questions of marriage and the family: George Lichtheim,
The Origins of Socialism (London, 1969); J.F.C. Harrison,
Quest ifor the New Moral Order. Robert Owen and the Owenites
7
It can be argued that critical utopian socialism arose
in response to the cluster of unsolved problems associated
with the ’’dual revolutions" of the years from 1789 to 1848:

the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution of
•3
1789. One recent student of Robert Owen's thought concludes
that it "was not intended as an exercise in economic theory:
rather was it a response arising out of a vast discontent
with early industrial s o c i e t y . O w e n rejected what he re
garded as the basic tenets of this industrial society: the
pursuit of self-interests, selfish individualism, and com
petitiveness. In the place of these values Owen proposed a
set of social values, in which "'social1 signified the op
posite of 'selfish.1 Self-love found expression in economic

competition while 'social' sentiment favored cooperation,
hence 'socialism' or communalism."** Through the creation of
model communities and an education fostering cooperation,
Owen hoped to found a "new moral order" of harmony which

would put an end to the class struggle.
2(Contd.) in Britain and America (New York, 1969);

Frank Manuel, TEe Propkeis of Paris (New York: Harper
Torchbook, 1965); Herbert Bourgin, Fourier. Contribution
a 1'etude de socialisme Francais (Paris, 1905); Nicholas
Itiasanovsky, The Teaching of dharles Fourier (Berkeley,
1969); Frank Manuel. The New World of Henri Saint-Simon
(Cambridge, Mass., 19£6).
^See E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (New York,
1965).
^Harrison, Quest for the New Moral Order, p. 77.
^Lichtheim, Origins of Socialism, pp. 121-22.
Like Owen, Charles Fourier's socialism meant "the pri
macy of the central group over the isolated individual, and
the construction of the harmonious society of the future on
the basis of such groups."^ Less concerned than Owen about
the problems of industrialization, Fourier's criticisms

seem to have sprung from his disappointment that the French
Revolution had failed to effect a total transformation of
the values and institutions of the Ancien Regime. In spite

of more than two decades of revolutionary social upheaval
following 1789» French society to Fourier still seemed to

be based on the repression rather than the expression of
human liberty and passions. The basic institutions of this
repression, the church, the family, and government, re
mained essentially unchanged. In place of these social

institutions Fourier proposed the voluntary creation of
"phalansteries," largely agrarian colonies of men, women,
and children in which social harmony and order would be

achieved through the expression of all passions, by ending
repression in all forms, by matching the right person with
the right job and through the breakdown of the division

of labor.7
Unlike Fourier, Henri Saint-Simon and his followers
^Riasanovsky, Teaching of Charles Fourier, p. 186.

7Ibid., pp. 4-2-86.
did not propose a return to an agrarian social order. In
deed, Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians were proponents
of an industrial society under the direction of an elite of
industrialists, financiers, and technologists. Hard-headed

though such a form of "socialism" might seem to he, the
interests and ideas of those who came to he known as
Saint-Simonians also included notions ahout the role of
woman in society and the future of marriage that could he
termed either radical or "romantic” depending on one's per

spective.
Whatever the origins of utopian socialism, Owen,
Fourier, and the Saint-Simonians shared a common goal: the

creation of a harmonious social order. The means of achiev
ing this goal differed from one utopian socialist to an
other, hut all of them shared a fundamental critical atti
tude toward the hasic institutions and attitudes of exist

ing society. Not surprisingly, the family was one of the
prime targets of their criticism.

Robert Owen denounced the family as the hastion of
private property, the stronghold of individualism and self-
interest. The family, rather than competing social classes,

was the chief divisive force in society. If this division
was to he overcome the family had to he abolished, or in
other words, the entire community must assume the social

izing functions of the family, and in a sense become the
10
family on a vastly extended basis.8 Less radical than Owen,
the Saint-Simonians did not espouse the abolition of the

family, but they did recommend reforming it from within.
They advocated the abolition of inheritance rights within
the family, although, like Fourier, they did not propose an
end to private property as such. Critical of its exclusive

ness, the Saint-Simonians nevertheless retained a reformed
family in their plan for the future.^
Charles Fourier attacked the anti-social character of
the family in no uncertain terms. In a society based on

the patriarchal family "every father has forgotten all sen
timents of charity and philanthropy to be preoccupied only
with the interests of his wife and his children, a mania
which makes of each father an egoist and an illiberal person

who believes himself authorized to perform every deceit and
rapine under the pretext of working for his wife and his
children, whose names he pronounces as one possessed."^8

Because this family ethos placed its stamp on the entire
society, its selfishness and exclusivity became universalized.
Not only did the family corrupt society at large, it
also repressed and degraded its own members. Robert Owen
Garrison, Quest for the New Moral Order, pp. 59-60,
^Manuel, Prophets of Paris, p. 304.
10Quoted in Riasanovsky, Teaching of Charles Fourier,

pp. 149-50.
11
attacked the traditional monogamous marriage as "an organ
of tyranny, by which the woman was subjected to, and in

fact made the property of, her husband. She was condemned
to a life of petty drudgery and endless child-bearing.”11

Moreover, Christian ideals of propriety and morality, not
to say prudery, perverted the relationship between husband
and wife into one without frankness and honesty. Celibacy
Owen regarded as ’’unnatural and likely to lead to disease

12
of body and mind,” a view that later appeared in the
writings of German Social Democrats and which was finally
raised to primary importance in the psychoanalytic theories
of Wilhelm Reich in the 20th Century. To alleviate these
unhealthy internal aspects of Christian marriage, Owen sug
gested freer divorce laws, an end to church control of wed
dings, and the use of contraception to limit births. But
these were only interim reformist measures. They would
facilitate the transition to the harmonious life of the New

Moral Order which allowed a wide and free choice of sexual
partners, early secular marriages, as well as freedom from
the economic problems that often undermined marriages.

Only in this new order would a ”truly 'natural' system of
personal relationships . . . be established.”1^
^Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World, p. 60.

12Ibid., p. SI.
15Ibid., p. 62.
12
Owen's critique of the internal repressiveness of
marriage, that is, the domination of the wife by the husband,

had much in common with his continental contemporaries,
Charles Fourier and Prosper Enfantin, the latter a disciple

of Henri Saint-Simon. Interestingly, Enfantin, declared
that his interest in socialism and his criticism of French
society at large sprang less from his sympathies for ex
ploited workers than it did from the corrupt relationship
between men and women. In 1832 he wrote that "what moved

me even more than the wretchedness of the people was the
fraudulent, gross and immoral relations between man and
woman.Like Owen, Enfantin blamed these "gross and im

moral relations" on the antifeminism of Christian theology,
and the Christian church's suspicion and condemnation of
bodily pleasure. Summarizing Enfantin's views, Frank Manuel

says that "by refusing to admit the legitimate demands of
the body and the sacred rights of beauty, Christian society

15
had deformed and crucified love." ^ Furthermore the French
Utopians
came to realize that women, one half of humanity,

with their unique capacity for feeling, tender
ness, and passion, had been suppressed for cen
turies because the Judeo-Christian tradition had
identified them with evil, with the flesh, and
^Manuel, Prophets of Paris, p. 188.
15Ibid., pp. 186-87.
13
with the grosser parts of human nature. . . .
For the Saint-Simonians and Fourier the eman
cipation of women became the symbol of the
liberation of bodily desires.1®
The Saint-Simonian plan for the emancipation of women,
the freeing of the passions, and the abolition of male

tyranny, included three parts: first, an increase in the
general wealth of society through a centrally plahned and

controlled economy; second, the abolition of strict laws
governing marriage and divorce, and the permission of

temporary sexual relationships; and, third, the education
of all members of society to "love" and unselfish coopera

tion. In place of the anarchy of modern society, the Saint-
Simonian "apostles to the proletariat taught them to love
their superiors in the social hierarchy and promised that a

17
paternal love would embrace them in turn." At a more
exalted, not to say romantic, level, the Saint-Simonians
around Enfantin proclaimed the coming of a female messiah

from the East who would bring love, forgiveness, and comfort
to suffering mankind. She would undo all the centuries of
Ibid., p. 157. For an interesting discussion of the

French socialist concern with feminism in the 1830's and
1840's see Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of
Russian Socialism (Cambridge, taass., l$6l), pp. 26$-&8.
^Manuel, Prophets of Paris, p. 181. Also see Jean

DIaitron, "Les penseuers sociaux et la famille dans la
premiere moities du XIXe siecle," in Robert Prigent, ed.,
Renouveau des idees sur la famille /Tnstitut National d 1
Etudes demographiques. Cahiers No. 187 (Paris, 1954), pp. 84-
85; J.-P. Alem, Enfantin: le PropheTe aux Sept Visages
(Paris, 1963), pp. 63-66; Frank and ffrltzle Manuel, French
Utopias (New York, 1966), pp. 203-298.
14
calumny that Christianity heaped on women.
Although he shared the Saint-Simonian concern with the
plight of women, Charles Fourier did not prophesy the coming
of a Femme-Mere-Messie. Rather he envisaged the creation of

a society based on the expression, not the repression, of
human passions, a harmonious society which woulc not remake
human nature, but rather restore mankind to its original and
true nature. Because Fourier’s thoughts on society, and

particularly on the role of men and women in society, in
fluenced those of Marx, Engels, and leading Social Demo-
19
crats, it is necessary to examine them in some detail. *
Fourier's critique of civilization must be understood

as part of his overall idea of history. "Civilization,11
the present state of history, Fourier regarded as the fifth

stage of the world's and mankind's evolution. The first
of these stages, which included the first two centuries

after God created the world, Fourier called "Edenism."
As its name implies, this was a state of complete harmony

between man and nature, animal and animal. Men and women
lived in complete equality, without any exploitation of one
sex by the other. They engaged in promiscuous sexual love,
18J.L. Talmon, Political Messianism. The Romantic

Phase (New York, I960;, pp. 120-24.
19
^See especially Bourgin, Fourier; Talmon, Political
Messianism. pp. 125-56; Manuel. Prophets of Paris, no. 195-
248; Riasanovsky, Teaching of Charles Fourier, pp. 139-48.
15
?0
"in delights, in amorous festivals." Fourier paid particu
lar attention to man-woman relationships in Edenism, as he
did when discussing later historical epochs, for, in one
of his most penetrating and often repeated obiter dicta,

Fourier declared that "the change in an historical epoch
can always be determined by the progress of woman towards

freedom, because in the relation of woman to man, of the
weak to the strong, the victory of human nature over brutal
ity is most evident. The degree of feminine emancipation

21
is the natural measure of general emancipation." This
idea formed one of the central connecting threads in social
ist thought on woman and the family from Fourier through
Marx and Engels to German Social Democracy down to 1914.

If the changes in an historical epoch can be measured
by the level of woman*s emancipation, what determined his

torical changes themselves? Fourier's explanation of the
transition from Edenism to Savagery, the second stage of

history, anticipated to a certain extentthe explanation
for social change later developed by Marx and Engels. Ac
cording to Fourier, "it is always in the growth of popula
tions and of poverty that one must look for the source of
20Riasanovsky, Teaching of Charles Fourier, p. 141.

2^Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements, Oeuvres
completes, I, 195. quoted in Lichtheim, Origins of Social
ism, p. 37*
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16
op
decline of societies preceding Civilization." Population
growth put a strain on the available natural resources and
food supply. As a result, poverty appeared and selfishness
replaced cooperation. To meet the needs of a larger popu

lation, mankind developed agriculture and cattle-breeding.
A less nomadic culture appeared as society passed from Eden
ism to Savagery and men relegated women to the status of
slaves, as they did those peoples captured in warfare.
Slavery was retained in the next two stages of history,

the Patriarchate and Barbarism. Fourier speculated that
monogamous marriage probably originated among small-scale
patriarchal chieftains who had to accumulate enough heritable

wealth to provide for the welfare and prestige of daughters
given in marriage. Thus monogamy, private property, and
inheritance became intertwined and inseparable.
The slavery characteristic of the Patriarchate and
Barbarism, by accumulating capital and permitting the growth

of primitive technology, provided the necessary economic
foundations for Civilization, the period in which Fourier
himself lived. This is the period which Fourier criticized

at length and with great bitterness. He denounced Civiliza
tion as "le monde a rebours, the world in reverse of what it
22
Fourier, "Des lymbes obscures ou periodes d'enfer
social et de labyrinths passionel," la Phalange. Revue de la
Science Soclale (Jan-Feb, 1849), p. 15, quoted in Riasanovsky,
Teaching of Charles Fourier, p. 144. See also Talmon,
Political Messianism. p. 244.
17
23
was meant to be and one day might become.1' J We have al
ready noted that Fourier criticized the exclusivity of the
family under Civilization. He was perhaps even more criti
cal of the internal tyranny of the family, the domination
of woman by the man, of children by parents, and by the un

happiness engendered by the whole arrangement. Clearly for
Fourier the "civilized” family was a reversal of the Eden-
like equality and free love of the first centuries of
human existence. Little wonder that "civilized” society

was so unhappy when the family, its basic institution, was
itself corrupt and miserable. Fourier, a lifelong bachelor,
declared that he had "witnessed closely many families. I

have not found a single one joyful on the inside.” What
better proof of this unhappiness than the fact that the

members of the family continually tried to escape its con
fines?
The father escapes to the housekeeper, who spoils
him with food, he runs to the cafes, to the circles
and meetings of men; sometimes to those of women.
The mother escapes her conjugal Argus by arranging
for him distractions which keep him out while she
receives her supplicant. The children at the age
of puberty think only of escaping the insipidity
of the household. . . . As to the children below
the age of puberty, they are not satisfied except
when they manage to escape the eye of the father
and the eye of the tutor and enjoy everything that
is forbidden to them. . . . As to the family taken
collectively, it has no gaiety, no happy moments,
2^Riasanovsky, Teaching of Charles Fourier, p. 148;

also Maitron, "Les penseuers sociale ei la famille,"
pp. 97-98.
18
except as it succeeds . . . to escape from itself.
. . . But nothing is more mournful, more gloomy
than a family, which, without the means necessary
to receive or visit people, finds itself reduced
to the monotonous pleasure of familial association,
where the moralists want to locate h a p p i n e s s . 24
Fortunately, according to Fourier the misery of family

life and of society in general would disappear as mankind
entered into the next stage of history, that of Harmony.
The transition to this stage depended to a large extent
upon the acceptance of society of Fourier's own elaborate

blueprint for the harmonious society of the future. For
this reason, as is well known, Fourier waited each day at
noon in his Paris apartment for the arrival of a wealthy
patron willing to finance an experimental phalanstery,

Fourier's model society. Although Fourier waited in vain
for a wealthy visitor his scheme deserves some study.
Fourier's vision of the phalanstery was a community of
about 1600 men, women, and children housed in large build
ings with communal kitchens all in a rural setting. The
number of people in the phalanstery was based on Fourier's

conviction that there are about 800 variations of the twelve
basic human passions, multiplied by two. These passions in

cluded the five senses, the desire for internal and external
luxury, ambition, friendship, love, a desire for community,
2^Charles Fourier, Manuscrits (Paris, 1851), p. 64,

quoted in Riasanovsky. Teaching of Charles Fourier, pp. 216-
217.
19
a "cabalist" passion for intrigue, a "butterfly11 passion
for diversification, a "composite" passion which desired
the satisfaction of more than one passion at a time, and
finally "unityism," the passion for the integration and

interaction of all the passions resulting in the harmonic
happiness of the entire community. Satisfaction of these
various passions was guaranteed in the phalanstery by match
ing a person with a particular desire or desires with per

sons with the same desires. Together these people performed
useful functions at the same time they expressed and satis

fied their personal passions.
For example, Fourier believed that children had a pas
sion for dirt and also for gang life. In civilization these
passions are repressed when children are encouraged to avoid
dirt and develop themselves as individuals. But in the
phalanstery children expressed their dual passions by col

lecting refuse, cleaning sidewalks, and spreading manure in
the fields, all in workgangs of their peers. Adults who

have a natural passion for bloodletting would enjoy them
selves immensely at the same time they performed useful func
tions by slaughtering animals for the phalanstery's kitchens.

Because everyone has a variety of passions and desires there
was to be great diversification of labor in Fourier's model
society. No one worked at any one task more than a few
hours a day and thus the division of labor and boredom were
avoided. The result, according to Fourier, was a community
20
filled with happy, hardworking people whose efforts, because

the workers are doing jobs matched to their passions, natural-
25
ly produced a super-abundance of food and goods.
Abundance and diversification also reigned in the realm
of human relations within the phalanstery. Fourier argued

that the exclusiveness and narrowness of the family and
monogamy were alien to human sexual nature. Men and women
were polygamous. Moreover different people had different

sexual desires and varying intensities of passion. To take
account of these different needs the members of the phalan
stery were encouraged to choose sexual partners from the
wide range of sexual types permitted, or rather, encouraged
within the community. Naturally, this meant the disappear
ance of formal momogamous marriage. Sexual partners could

live together for as long or as short a time as they wished.
Only love, affection, and passionate attraction determined

the choice of partner and the duration of such partnerships.
How could the family in any form survive under such
changed conditions? Fourier was not altogether clear on

what would replace the patriarchal family, but it is cer
tain that the traditional family would be unable to compete
with the many sources of pleasure and togetherness afforded
by the phalanstery. Probably the patriarchal family would
21
wither away in a few years after the establishment of the
model community. In the words of Prank Manuel, ’'there were
so many other ways of achieving passionate fulfillment that
with time this antiquated institutional form /the family/

would just drop by the wayside— vanish without anyone's
26
noticing its disappearance.” This could not happen sud
denly, however, for the phalanstery must first of all reach
a high enough level of economic abundance and unselfish co

operation to relieve the family of the job of maintaining
and educating children. Hence there must be a transition
period after the foundation of the phalanstery during which
the passionate and physical beings of its members would be
restored to their original force and purity. With the com

pletion of this restoration period, woman would at last be
truly emancipated, free to express all of her passions, in
cluding her sexual passions, as would man. No longer would

marriage be a matter of economic convenience, or prostitu
tion a necessity for large numbers of women, or illegitimacy
a source of social disgrace. Mankind would have recaptured
the pristine bliss of Edenism, but at a much higher level of

affluence and with the consciousness of having recreated
bliss through its own efforts.

There are some peculiar anomalies in this recreated
Eden that must be noted. The first, concerning economic
26
Manuel, Prophets of Paris, p. 237.
22
relationships in the phalanstery, was later attacked and

repudiated "by Marxists. The second, regarding the sexual
life of adolescents, reappeared late in the 19th Century in
the writings of German Social Democrats.

Although he is called a socialist, Fourier's criticism
of "bourgeois society under Civilization did not extend to

private property. To he sure, he scathingly attacked com
mercial chicanery and the double-dealing middleman, but
Fourier left untouched the private ownership of goods and

the means of production. Indeed, shares were to be sold to
those who entered the phalanstery and shareholders were to
receive goods and services commensurate with their invest
ment. In addition there would be both quantitative and

qualitative differences in the food and pleasures enjoyed
by the various classes (the rich, the middle class, and the
poor) in the phalanstery. For example, the rich would enjoy

choice wines of rare vintage and bouquet while the poor con
tented themselves with wine of poorer quality. There would
also be differences in remuneration. Thus Fourier arbi

trarily declared that the products of the community's ef
forts would be divided three ways: five-twelfths to labor,

27
four-twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to talent.
These differences in the quality and quantity of re

wards look paradoxical in the writings of a socialist.
2^Riasanovsky, Teaching of Charles Fourier, p. 61.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r re p ro d u ctio n p ro h ib ited w ith o u t p erm ission.
23
They certainly are not egalitarian. But Fourier was never
daunted by paradox and he was by no means an egalitarian.

Within the phalanstery different passions and talents were
encouraged, as was competition between the members. But

would not this lead to envy of the rich by the poor,
struggle, and the breakdown of the community? Not according
to Fourier who argued naively that in absolute terms in the

Harmonic community "everyone was so gloriously rich in a
psychic and emotional sense that the variations in degrees

of enjoyment measured in accordance with wealth became in-
28
significant." It was just this strain of cheery optimism,
coupled with Fourier's hope that a benefactor would fund
his social revolution, that led Marx and Engels to include
the Prophet of Harmony among those Utopians who hoped to

produce "duodecimo editions of the new Jerusalem."2^ Unlike
Marx and Engels, Fourier did not regard the existence of

private property as the cause of social unhappiness or its
abolition the key to a social renaissance. Marxists there

fore relegated this part of Fourier's thinking to the gar
bage heap of history even though they retained many of his

criticisms of marriage and the family.
A second, and perhaps more puzzling anomaly, concerns
Fourier's position on the sexual freedom of adolescence.
28Manuel, Prophets of Paris, p. 237.

29
^Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto. p. 58.
24
Because Fourier preached complete sexual freedom for adults
in the phalanstery and often criticized the double standard
of adult and adolescent behavior taught by the educationists

of his time, it might be expected that he would permit ado
lescents the same freedom to express their sexual desires as
adults. Strangely enough, the Philosopher of Harmony turned

out to be something of a prude concerning the sexual rights
of adolescents. In the words of a recent student of Fourier's

thought,
beneath the lip service which he pays to liberty,

his recomendations add up to a system designed to
restrain adolescent sexual freedom. . . . Fourier's
ideal is that all children should remain chaste
until about twenty, because he wishes them to use
their energies for more fruitful and socially use
ful industrial activities. So at the age of fifteen
or sixteen all children automatically enroll in the
corporation of the Vestals, who practise chastity.
This corporation enjoys numerous privileges and high
esteem within the phalange. Its members lead cere
monies and take a prominent part in public works
within the industrial a r m i e s . 30
In the final analysis Fourier, like the German Social Demo

crats a half century after his death, was extremely cautious
when dealing with the force of developing adolescent sexual

ity. In any case, it is curious how closely Fourier's basic
position on the sexual life of adolescents and the need to

subjugate this life for the more "serious" needs of the
community approximates that of the Social Democratic Party
^ David Zeldin, The Educational Ideas of Charles

Fourier (London, 1 9 6 9 ) , p. 120; also ftisanovsky, Teaching
of Charles Fourier, pp. 79-80.
25
and its youth movement early in the present century.
What finally can be said about the utopian socialist
critique marriage and the family, as well as the visions
of the future socialist societies? Engels, who certainly

admired many aspects of their critical writings, concluded
that Owen, Fourier, and the Saint-Simonians,
were Utopians because they could be nothing

else at a time when capitalist production was
as yet little developed. They necessarily had
to construct the outlines of a new society out
of their own heads, because within the old
society the elements of the new were not as yet
generally apparent; for the basic plan of the
new edifice they could only appeal to reason,
just because they could not as yet appeal to
contemporary history.31
Despite the obvious bias in favor of the Marxist analysis
of history and society in this passage, perhaps Engels was

closer to the truth than more recent students of Fourier.
Not sharing Engels concept of historical materialism, they

tend to reduce Foui.er's theories to products of his own
personality and psychological problems. Thus J.L. Talmon
suggests that
Fourier's philosophical and sociological pre

occupations stem_clearly from his personal pre
dicament . . . /He7 was a Kafka type. Cramped
by the narrowness of his condition and paralyzed
by inhibitions and checks, he spun dreams of com-,2
plete release in some rapturous self-fulfillment.
^Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dflhring (New York, n.d.,

Originally published in lb7&).
•atp
Talmon, Political Messlanism. p. 125.
In the same vein, Frank Manuel states that Fourier*s theories
compensated for his "unappeased needs" and "neurosis," and

that he was one of the "grand neurotics," and "probably
i m p o t e n t . T h e views of Talmon and Manuel have about them
the air of ad hominem attacks which encourage the reader to

dismiss Fourier's ideas as the products of a crank. But if
"neurosis" is to be invoked to explain the life and thought
of a man like Fourier, what are we to make of the actions

of "practical" men like industrialists and politicians (or
even historians) who devote themselves singlemindedly to

the acquisition of wealth, power, and professional fame?
Clearly such psychological explanations explain everything
and yet not enough. It is well to bear in mind Nicholas

Riasanovsky1s judicious observation that "such concepts of
modern psychology as compensation can be invoked to turn the
very poverty of Fourier's life into partial explanations of
his doctrine. But these explanations should not exceed
their limits. Of the many people who lead drab existences

34-
in the world, very few become Charles Fouriers.
If the origin of the utopian socialist doctrine remains
an open question, the legacy of utopian thought to lster

socialists can at least be summarized. The first part of
this legacy, of course, is the concept of socialism itself,
^Manuel, Prophets of Paris, pp. 204-205, 248.

■^Riasanovsky, Teaching of Charles Fourier, p. 2.
27
understood as the expression of the "belief that men are by
nature cooperative and unselfish. The institutions of the
patriarchal family, the Christian church, and the state

repress and distort human nature, and generate a society of
alienated, unhappy men and women. For the Utopians only a

radical transformation of the old institutions promised the
emergence of a new, healthier social order.
Secondly, Fourier in particular left behind the idea
of an original state of Edenism in human history which re

appears in the later writings of Engels and August Bebel.
Fourier offered little or no evidence for the existence of

this original state of sexual promiscuity, equality between
the sexes and primitive communism. Like many 19th Century

anthropologists Fourier seems to have thought that prehis
toric society was very much like that of primitive societies
in his own time. Thus Fourier regarded the life and social
35
order of 19th Century Tahiti as a remnant of Edenism. J
Third, the utopian socialists, particularly Owen and

Fourier, attacked traditional Judeo-Christian views on mar
riage and the family, as well as institutionalized religion
itself. They regarded the church and its doctrines relating

to sexuality and family life as unnatural and repressive.
The Utopians dismissed the view that sexual relations out
side marriage were sinful and that woman (in the form of
35Ibid., p. 144.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p roh ibited w ith o u t perm ission.
28
Eve) had been the original seductress of mankind. Indeed
Fourier declared that the level of emancipation in a society
was to be judged by the level of the emancipation of women.
Woman's present position in society and the patriarchal
family were the products of historical evolution, not the

command of God. later in the century Social Democrats in
Germany were to combine many of these criticisms of marriage
and the family with their own bias against organized religion.
Fourth, the Utopians developed a vision of a future
social order free from the unhappiness and hypocrisy they

criticized in existing society. In theory all those dis
satisfied with the present state of things would be so at
tracted by the happiness of the future that they would

eagerly work for its realization. Marx and Engels later
repudiated Fourier's naive plans for the future and avoided
making detailed blueprints for their own socialist orders.

Nevertheless, the importance of a vision of the socialist
future was very great among German Social Democrats and
should not be underrated.
But perhaps the most important element which makes

Fourier's thought similar to that of Marx and Engels was
not his vision of the future, but rather his use of a mod
ified form of the dialectic in his analysis of the develop
ment of past, present, and future stages of history. That
is, Fourier's phalanstery was not simply the negation or

opposite of Civilization, the present stage of history.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p rohibited w ith o u t perm ission.
29
It was at once the recapturing of an earlier stage of sexual
promiscuity, equality, and affluence (Edenism), but at a
higher level of affluence and as a result of conscious human
effort and organization (Harmony). In the notion that the

future represents the partial negation and restructuring of
the present at a higher level, Fourier came very close to
the Hegelian and Marxist concept of Aufhebung. To be sure,
it cannot be argued that Fourier was a thoroughgoing dialec

tician. For his historical schema was in the end cyclical:
after reaching the historical stage of Harmony, mankind (and
the entire universe) would enter a long and gradual decline
ending in a period Fourier called Agonie. Thereafter the
entire cycle might begin again.

Before Mankind entered the post-Harmony period, however,
history for Fourier moved through its stages because of a
series of contradictions and negations that caused much un

happiness, but nevertheless ended in the harmony of the
phalanstery. In words that demonstrate clearly the similar
ity between Fourier’s thought and Marxism, Friedrich Engels
praised Fourier by declaring that

it is in his conception of society that Fourier
appears at his greatest. He divides its whole
past course into four stages of development:
savagery, barbarism, the patriarchate, civilisa
tion, the last of which coincides with what is
now called bourgeois society; and he shows that
the civilised stage raises every vice, practised
by barbarism in a simple way, into a complex,
ambiguous, hypocritical mode of existence; that
civilisation moves in a ’’vicious circle," in
contradictions which it constantly reproduces
30
but is never able to overcome, so that it con

stantly attains the opposite of what it wants
or pretends that it wants to achieve. So that,
for example, Min civilisation, poverty springs
from superabundance itself . n Fourier, as we
see, handles dialectics in the same masterly
way as his contemporary Hegel. With the same
use of dialectics he brings out the fact, in
opposition to the talk about the illimitable
perfectibility of man, that each historical
phase has its ascending, but also its descend
ing, curve, and also applies this conception to
the future of the whole human race.36
■Êngels, Anti-Dtihring. p. 293.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p ro h ib ited w ith o u t p erm ission.
CHAPTER I I
KARL MARX ON MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
The writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on mar
riage and the family present several problems for the his
torian. It is clear that they constitute a vital link be
tween the theoretical critique of the utopian socialists and
the practical concerns of the Social Democratic Party of

Imperial Germany. Marx and Engels incorporated many of the
ideas of the Utopians into their own criticism of the basic
institutions of bourgeois society. At the same time, they
tried to fuse these ideas into a complex synthesis including
a critique of Hegelian philosophy, the relationship between

economics and social institutions, and the evolution of mar
riage and the family from prehistoric times to the 19th
Century.
The first task of the historian is to examine this
synthesis at some length. Unfortunately, neither Marx nor

Engels ever produced a systematic discussion of their ideas
on marriage and the family which even approached the rich
detail and sustained argument of, say, Capital. Indeed, the

sources of information on these aspects of Marxist thought
are scattered throughout a number of works and letters

written over a period of forty years or more. Some of these
31
32
souroes, like the German Ideology, a joint work of Marx

and Engels written in 1845-1846, but not published in its
entirety until 1932, contain important ideas on problems
related to marriage and the family, but were unknown to

Social Democrats before the First World War. The same can
be said of Marx's Economic ahd Philosophic Manuscripts
(1844), and his Grundrlsse der Kritik der politischen
Oekonomie (1857-58), neither of which appeared in print
until the 1930's.

It would be wrong to exclude these works from consider
ation simply because they were unknown to Social Democrats
before 1914, for they provide useful insights and necessary

supplements to the best known and most influential sources
on the Marxist position of marriage and the family: the

Communist Manifesto (1848) and Friedrich Engels' The Origin
of the Family. Private Property and the State in the light
of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan (1884). Taken together

with the correspondence of Marx and Engels with one another
and third parties, these published and (before 1914) unpub

lished works provide the principal sources of Information.
During the four decades in which these souroes were written,
Marx and Engels developed and sometimes modified their views

on marriage and the family. In this and the following chap
ter these views are traced through the chronological develop

ment of Marx's and Engels' thought as nearly as possible.
33
In some of their earliest writings and letters both
Marx and Engels quoted Fourier and other '’utopian” social
ists approvingly and certainly praised the Philosopher of

Harmony in glowing terms. As early as 1843 Engels, for
example, wrote that in the writings of Fourier there was
”something not to be found among the Saint-Simonians—
scientific research, cool, unbiassed, systematic thought;
in short, social philosophy; whilst Saint-Simonism can only
be called social poetry.1,1 This was praise indeed for the
man who predicted that the oceans would turn to lemonade

and tigers be used for transport once his phalansteries had
introduced the age of Harmony!

In one of their earliest joint efforts, The Holy Family
(written in 1845), Marx and Engels quoted approvingly

Fourier's criticisms of marriage and the family and noted
his observation that the general degree of emancipation of

a society can be judged by the level of women's emancipa
tion. They described Fourier's insights as "masterful.”2

At about the same time Marx and Engels seriously considered
the possibility of translating and editing a series of
■^Friedrich Engels, "Progress of Social Reform on the

Continent," The New Moral World, XII (November 4, 1843),
p. 145. “
2
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (Hereafter
cited MEW) (Berlin, 1962), II, 207-2081 See also Auguste
Cornu.karl Marx und Friedrich Engels. Leben und Werk
(Berlin7T962T7"ll7“338:
34-
books to introduce the writings of Fourier, Owen, and other
socialists to German readers. Apart from a few pages of

Fourier on the trade question which Engels translated in
1846, nothing came of the project. It does, however, indi

cate the desire of both men to disseminate the ideas of the
3
utopian socialists to the German-speaking world.
Nor was this interest and admiration of Fourier merely

a youthful fancy. In a letter to Dr. Kugelmann in 1866,
Marx replied to a criticism of the utopian socialists writ

ten by Proudhon by saying that the French anarchist "himself
is only a philistine utopian, whereas in the utopias of a
Fourier, an Owen, etc., there is the presentiment and im
aginative expression of a new w o r l d . T w e l v e years later,
in the Anti-Pfihring. Engels described Fourier as "one of the
greatest satirists of all time," and proclaimed him as "the
first to declare that in a given society the degree of eman
cipation of women is the natural degree of the general
emancipation."^ So great was Engels' admiration of Fourier

that at the end of The Origin he wrote that he "had originally
^Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels. Eine Biographie (The

Hague, 1934), I, 207; Friedrich Engels, HEin fragment
Fouriers ilber den Handel," ISM, II, 604-610
^Karl Marx, letters to D r . Kugelman (Moscow, 1934),
p. 40.
^Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring (New York, 1939),
p. 284. For Engela1 comments on Fourier as a dialectician
see above, p. 30.
35
intended to place the brillian criticism of civilization
which is found scattered through the works of Charles Fourier
beside that of Lewis Henry Morgan and my own. Unfortunately
I have not had the time."*’
It should be obvious from the preceding passages that
neither Marx nor Engels tried to conceal their esteem for
Fourier. Nor were they altogether condescending towards

the Saint-Simonians or Owen. It cannot be stressed too
strongly that in the Communist Manifesto these men were not

simply dismissed as "utopian” socialists. Rather they were
referred to as "critical utopian socialists" and the first
adjective makes a crucial difference. Both Marx and Engels

valued the criticism of bourgeois society produced by their
predecessors.
To be sure, Marx and Engels themselves criticized the
critical utopian socialists. In the Manifesto they observed

that Owen, Fourier, and the Saint-Simonians
endeavor . . . to deaden the class struggle and
to reconcile class antagonisms. They still dream
of experimental realization of their social utopias,
of founding isolated phalansteres . . . duodecimo
editions of the New Jersuasalem— and to realize
Engels, Origin of the Family, p. 162n. This and the

preceding quotations iEowTSow misleading is the statement
that "Marx and Engels were at such pains to conceal their
debt to the Utopians, or condescendingly to attenuate it,
because they wished, even though perhaps unconsciously, to
conceal the core of utopia at the heart of their doctrine,"
found in Bertram Wolfe, Marxism. One Hundred Years in the
Life of a Doctrine (New ‘York, 1965), p. 337.
36
these castles in the air they are compelled to
appeal to the feelings and purses of the bour
geois. They attack every principle of existing
society. Hence they are full of the most valu
able materials for the enlightenment of the work
ing class. The practical measures proposed in them,
such as the abolition of the distinction between
town and country, of the family, of the carrying on
of industries for the account of private individuals,
and of the wage system, the proclamation of social
harmony . . . all these proposals point solely to the
disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at
that time, only just cropping up, and which . . . are
recognized in their earliest, indistinct and undefined
forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a
purely utopian character.«
In short, however useful their criticisms might be, the
plans of the utopian socialists to introduce ’’social harmony"

were unrealistic.
Nevertheless, Marx and Engels incorporated a good deal

of the utopian socialists' doctrine into their own socialist
schema.8 They took over and often repeated verbatim the at
tacks the Utopians levelled against marriage and the family.
7
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Mani
festo (New York: Modern Review Paperback, 1964,), pp. 57-58.
8See Robert Bowles, "The Marxian Adaptation of the
Ideology of Fourier," South Atlantic Quarterly. LIV (1955),
185-93} Thilo Ramm, "Die kttnftige Gesellschafxsordnung nach
der Theorie von Marx und Engels," Marxismusstudien. zweite
Folge (Stuttgart, 1957), pp. 110-17; I. Zilberfarb, "Les
etudes sur Fourier et le fourierisme, vue par un historien,"
Revue Internationale de Phllosophie. XVI, 2 (1962), 264-66;
I. Zilberfarb. Sotsialnala Filosofla Sharlia Fure i ee mesto
1 fstoril sotslal-isticheskoi mvsli pervol XIX veka THoscow,
1964), pp. 384-410. My thanks to Anthony Ivancevich for his
help in translating the pages from Zilberfarb's book; Nicholas
Riasanovsky, The Teaching of Charles Fourier (Berkeley,
1969), pp. 180-214 passim.
37
Fourier’s dictum that the general level of social emanci
pation in a given society can he gauged by the level of

women’s emancipation reappeared often in the writings of
Marx and Engels, with especial importance in the philo
sophical writings of the former. We shall see that Marx
took up this question in his Economic and Philosophic Manu

scripts of 1844. And lest anyone think that this was a
question which concerned only the ’’young” Marx, it should
he noted that in a letter to Dr. Kugelman in 1868 Marx

wrote in a jocular mood that ”anybody who knows anything
about history knows that great social changes are impossible
without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be meas
ured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the
ugly ones included).”^
It should not be forgotten that while they repeated
and accepted many of their critical ideas, Marx and Engels
both firmly rejected the Utopians' plans for reforming so

ciety and its basic institutions by creating model communi
ties. Rather, these reforms would have to be the byproduct
of the overall transition from capitalist to socialist so
ciety. In order to understand how marriage and the family

would be affected by this transition it is necessary to
examine the position of Marx and Engels on these basic in
stitutions and on the question of human sexuality in general.
Q
^Marx, letters to D r . Kugelmann. p. 65.
38
Karl Marx's earliest writings on human sexuality, mar

riage, and the family date from the period in his intellec
tual development when he produced his criticisms and modi
fications of Hegelian philosophy, that is, between 1842
and 1844. It is not surprising, therefore, that these writ

ings tend to have a pronounced philosophical, or better,
theoretical cast. Nevertheless, even at this early date,
and in keeping with his transformation of Hegelian thought,

Marx was at some pains to relate his philosophical position
to the realities of economic life, later in his career
Marx more and more came to stress the relationship of eco
nomics and anthropology to marriage and the family, but he
never relinquished his basic philosophical position of the
early 1840's.
In two of his earliest published works, Marx wrote
passages that must sound very strange to those who think of

him only as a "toughminded" economist and materialist. The
first appeared in an article published in 1842 in the
Rheinische Zeitung entitled "The Philosophical Manifesto
of the Historical School of Law." There he quoted approv
ingly the following lines of Benjamin Constant on women:

In renouncing for one man that mysterious re
serve whose divine law she carries in her heart,
she gives herself to that man. In momentary
abandon she suspends for his sake that modesty
which never leaves her. For him alone she dis
cards the veils which elsewhere are her sanc
tuary and her finery. Prom this stems the in
timate trust in her husband, the result of an
exclusive relationship which can exist ohly
39
between her and him without her feeling dis
honored. Prom this stems the husband’s apprecia
tion of a sacrifice and that mixture of desire and
deference for one who only seems to submit to him,
even in sharing his pleasures. From this stems
everything moral in our social order.10
In the same essay Marx wrote of the "sanctification of the

sex drive through exclusiveness, the restraint of the drive
through law, the ethical beauty which turns nature's com
mand into an ideal moment of spiritual union— the spiritual

essence of marriage."11 At first sight, these lines might
appear to be only random thoughts on the nature of woman and

love, lines reminiscent of the romantic outpourings of the
12
Junge Deutschland circle of the 1830’s and 1840’s. But
such a reading would be mistaken, for it can be shown that
Marx later developed these ideas further and incorporated
them into his social theories at large.

In the same year the Rheinische Zeltung published an
other article "On a Proposed Divorce Law." In it Marx

stressed the ethical content of marriage and opposed those
who would make the divorce laws too liberal. He criticized
those who
always talk of the misery of spouses bound to each
other against their will. . . . They think only of
10Loyd D. Easton and R.H. Guddat, eds., Writings of the

Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Garden City, N.Y.,
p. 1S5.
T W 7 J ,
1:LIbid.. p. 101.
12
See Jost Hermand, ed., Das Junge Deutschland. Texte
und Dokumente (Stuttgart, 1966), especially pp. 37^-81.
40
two individuals and forget the family. They
forget that nearly every dissolutionof a mar
riage is the dissolution of a family and that
the children and what belongs to them should
not be dependent on arbitrary whims.!3
In this passage Marx is not clear on what he means by

the "family." But additional clarification on this point
appeared in his Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts (written

in manuscript form between March and August, 1843; first
published in 1927). In this manuscript Marx systematically

criticized and transformed Hegel's philosophy of right to
his own satisfaction, and in the process of doing so de
veloped in outline form his later philosophical position.1^
Among other things, Marx sharply criticized Hegel's argument

that by protecting the aristocratic family from the vagaries
of economic change, entailed property rights guaranteed the
preservation of the noble family on an ethical, rather than
on a mere economic, basis. Marx argued that, far from being

an ethical oasis in the unethical desert of society, the
aristocratic family suffered from the same evils afflicting

that society.
The class whose basis is family life /according to

Hegel the aristocracy/ thus lacks the basis of
family life, i.e., love /das Liebe/ as the actual
^ E a ston and Guddat, Writings of the Young Marx, p. 139*

^ S e e Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought
of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 6-40; and Karl Marx,
Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Right'. J. O'Malley, ed.
(Cambridge, 1970).
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm is sio n o f th e co p yrig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p rohibited w ith o u t perm ission.
41
and thus effective and determining principle.
It is spiritless family life, the illusion of
family life. In its highest form of develop
ment, the principle of private property con
tradicts the principle of the family. Family
life in civil society becomes family life, the
life of love, only in opposition to the_class
of natural ethical life, the class of /accord
ing to Hegel, aristocratic/ family life. This
latter is, rather, the barbarism of private
property against family life.15
Two things emerge from this passage. First, for Marx
the "actual . . . effective and determining principle" of

family life should be das Liebe. This is not the case in
the aristocratic family, however. There the actual basis,

because of entailment and primogeniture, was economic, the
ownership of property. That is, Marx believed that proper

ty determined relationships within the aristocratic family.
Secondly, and following from the first point, Marx believed
that the "barbarism" of private property was antithetical
to "family life, the life of love." Although in 1843 Marx
had not yet reached a position in which he called for the

end of private property, he was already stating one of the
fundamental Marxist positions on the family, a position
that remained fundamentally unchanged in his later writings,

and the socialist movement before 1914— private property was
antithetical to a family life based on love.
^Marx, Critique of Hegel's "Philosophy of Right,"

pp. xxxvii, 90: MEW.~~I. 303-304; In the same work Marx asked
the question "Whai is the ultimate fixed difference of one
person from all others? The body. And the highest function
of the body is sexual activity." Cf. Marx, Critique, p. 40.
42
Now if Marx believed that the basis of family life
should be love, what did he mean by this term in these early

writings? We have already seen that in the essay on ’’the
Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of law'1

Marx spoke in terms of a woman ’’giving” herself to a man,
of the ”intimate trust” between husband and wife, the ’’mix

ture of desire and deference,” and the ’’sanctification of
the sex drive through exclusiveness.” Obviously Marx re
garded these elements as part of a definition of love,

specifically the love between man and woman, husband and
wife. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
(first published in 1952), Marx included what appears to be

his longest single discussion on the relationship of man to
woman. Because of its importance the passage is worth quot

ing in its entirety.
The direct, natural, and necessary relation of

person to person is the relation of man to woman.
In this natural species relationship man"^ relation
to nature is directly his relation to man, just as
his relation to man is directly his relation to
nature— his own natural destination. In this rela
tionship, therefore, is sensuously manifested.
reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which
human essence has become nature to man, or to which
nature to him has become the human essence of man.
Prom this relationship one can therefore judge man’s
whole level of development. Prom the character of
this relationship follows how much man as a species
being /Grattungswesen7. as man, has come to be him-
self and to comprehend himself; the relation of man
to woman is the most natural relation of human
being to human being. It therefore reveals the ex
tent to which man's natural behavior has become
human, or the extent io which the human essence in
him has hecome a natural essence— ike extent to which
43
his human nature has come to he nature to him.
In this relationship is revealed too the extent
to which, therefore, the other person has be
come for him a need— the extent to which he is
in his individual existence is at the same time
a social being.16
This is a very complex and important passage, for it re
veals, in a very condensed form indeed, a number of impor
tant facets of Marx's thought on man, woman, and society,

and illustrates in a novel fashion some of his fundamental
theories.
Before examining these ideas in detail it is necessary
to understand the context in which this passage appears.
In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts Marx was develop

ing for the first time in some detail his analysis of capi
talist society and the ways in which communism would emerge
from the further development and contradictions of the
former. Communism would represent an aufgehoben version of

capitalist society, and would, therefore, in its initial
stages, bear and even accentuate some of the worst features

of that society. Thus, for example, in the first stages of
communism private property would not be abolished or trans
cended. Rather it will be universalized, and the attempt

will probably be made to give equal shares of property to
everyone. In sexual terms this "raw" form of communism
^ Marx-Engels Cesamtausgabe (Erankfurt-Berlin, 1927-
44
finds expression in the animal form of opposing
to marriage (certainly a form of exclusive pri
vate property) the community of women, in which
woman becomes a piece of communal and common
property. . . . Just as the woman passes from
marriage to general prostitution /in "raw" com
munism/ so the entire world of wealth . . .
passes from the relationship of exclusive mar
riage with the owner of private property to a
state of universal prostitution.17
Clearly Marx had no sympathy for such a prostitution of
women, for it continued capitalist society's conception of
woman as an object of property and also failed to recognize
that the satisfaction of sexual needs is not to be found in

18
a piece of property, a thing, but rather in a human being.
Returning now to the lengthy passage quoted above on
the relationship of man to woman, we can say that Marx saw

it as a model for truly human relationships and also as a
paradigm of social relations as they might develop after
communism had passed through its first "raw" stage and
transcended its capitalist origins. Commenting on the
17
'Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of
1844 (New York, 1964), P« 153. Cf. Robert Tucker. Philosophy
and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 155-56; Avineri,
Political and Social Thought, pp. 223-26. In his criticism
of the "community of women,H Marx may have been referring to
some of the ideas associated with the circle around Gracchus
Babeuf in the 1790's. Cf. Economic and Philosophic Manu
scripts . p. 244 n.3; Paul Kagi. Ge~nesis des hisxorlschen
Material!emus (Vienna-Frafakfurt-Zurich, 1965), pp. 238-42;
George Lichtheim, The Origins of Socialism (London, 1969),
pp. 230-31, n.3.
^■8See D. Riazanov, "La doctrine communiste du marriage,"
Partisans. 32-33 (Oct-Nov., 1966), p. 83. This article was
first published in Russia in 1927.
45
significance of this passage, Shlomo Avineri observes that
to Marx the unique pattern of /the relationship
between the sexes/ has a systematic significance
which makes it possible to project them as a
general model for the structure of human rela
tions in socialist society. Sexual relations are
at once necessary and spontaneous; they are also
other-oriented par excellence. Man's need for a
partner in the sexual relationship makes his own
satisfaction depend upon another person's satis
faction. If they are unilateral they cease to be
a relationship, degrading the other person to the
status of a mere object, rather than a co-equal
subject.19
Marx was obviously struck by the fact that the male-female

relationship had at once human and animal, social and
natural aspects. The character of this relationship indi
cated how far man had transcended and humanized his animal
need for sexual gratification. Marx echoed Fourier's obiter
dictum that the general level of social emancipation can be

determined from the level of women's emancipation, but he
enlarged this concept to include men as well, for from the
relationship of man to woman one can "judge man's whole

level of development." From the nature of this relation
ship can be determined to what extent man has "sanctified"
IQ
Âvineri, Social and Political Thought, p. 89; Also
see Jean-Yves Calvez. La pensee de Karl Marx, 7th edition
(Paris, 1966), pp. 402-403. It might be objected that
sexual activity need not necessarily be other-oriented,
e.g., masturbation. But significantly when Marx mentions
masturbation he associated it with apes and referred to it
ironically as "the highest intensification of 'self'-love,"
a probable reference to Max Stirner's egoistic philosophy.
See The German Ideology (New York, 1947), p. 89
46
his sexual needs through exclusivity. From this relation

ship can be determined the extent to which man comes to see
woman as a subject and not merely an object, the extent to
which man sees himself as a member of society with recip

rocal responsibilities and not just individual desires.
But perhaps most important for Marx, the relationship of man

to woman reveals "the extent to which man's natural behavior
has become human” behavior.

Marx made it quite clear that under capitalism natural
behavior was not being humanized and transcended. On the
contrary, under capitalism man's animal needs for sexual

intercourse and procreation were ends in themselves and
therefore remained at the bestial level. Thus in a discus

sion of the life of the worker under capitalism, Marx ob
served that
man (the worker) only feels himself freely active

in his animal functions— eating, drinking, pro
creating, or at most in his dwelling and in
dressing-up, etc.; and in his animal functions he
no longer feels himself to be anything but an
animal. What is animal becomes human and what is
human becomes animal. Certainly eating, drinking,
procreating, etc., are also genuinely human func
tions. But abstractly taken, separated from the
sphere of all other human activity and turned into20
sole and ultimate ends, they are animal functions.
Man's natural sexual needs must be transcended, they must

become reciprocal human needs which the individual con
sciously understands as social needs. In the relationship
20
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. p. 111.
47
of man to woman in primitive society the sexual needs of
man are automatic and unconscious. They are therefore un
acceptable to Marx as a suitable goal in the sexual develop
ment of social man. Man must somehow transcend and trans
form his primitive natural behavior toward woman.
Where and how is this transformation to take place?

For Marx it must take place within society, for that is the
place where man becomes human, a social being. And the

transformation will be effected by man remaking himself and
his society through his efforts as a producer, for through

his productive activities man remakes himself and also the
social nature of his sexual relationships within the insti
tutions of marriage and the family. In order to support

this position Marx had to devote some attention to the past
evolution of the family. This he attempted to do in con
junction with Friedrich Engels in The German Ideology,
written in 1845 and 1846, but not published in its entirety

until 1932. This work is usually taken to be the first de
tailed exposition of Marx's materialist interpretation of
history and includes valuable information on his early ideas

on the origin and evolution of the family. In it we see
Marx trying to find historical evidence to support his
philosophical analysis of male-female relationships in
earlier writings. It would appear that Marx arrived at the
latter first and then turned his attention to the historical

evolution of male-female relationships. This is not to say
48
that Marx therefore discarded the philosophical position
developed in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of

1844. Rather it can be argued that they remained unchanged
as we pass from a study of the "young" to a study of the
"old" Marx.
In The German Ideology Marx posited as the basic fact

of human life and historical development the need for and
the production of the basic means of existence (food, cloth
ing, shelter, etc.). Marx noted that in the very process of
satisfying these basic needs, man the maker (homo faber)

produced other, new needs which in turn required satisfac
tion. In the words of The German Ideology, "the satisfied
first need itself, the action of satisfying and the instru

ments created for its satisfaction lead to new needs— and
this creation of new needs is the first historical act."^
Thus the mere existence of material needs and their satis
faction constitute the first two premises of historical

materialism. "The third circumstance" of historical develop
ment, according to Marx,
which from the very first enters into historical

development is that men, who daily remake their
own life, begin to make other men, to reproduce
themselves— the relation between man and wife
/Weib7. parents and children, the family. The
family, which to begin with is the only social
relationship, becomes later, when increased needs
create new social relations and the increased
21
Marx, German Ideology, p. 18.
49
population new needs, a subordinate one . . .
and must be treated according to the existing
empirical data.22
The most obvious comment to be made on this passage is that

in it Marx was making clear that he rejected the tradition
al view that the family and marriage were products of divine
decree. Rather they were products of historical evolution.

The same view was repeated by Marx in a letter written in
1846: "Assume particular stages of development in produc

tion, commerce, and consumption and you will have a corre
sponding /entsprechende7 social constitution, a correspond

ing organization of the family, of order, of classes; in a
23
word, a corresponding civil society." ' This, of course,
had also been the position of the critical utopian social
ists and was to remain a basic tenet of German socialists

after Marx's death.
In addition, it appears that when Marx wrote this

passage in The German Ideology he believed that the family
was the first social unit from which tribal life in turn
developed.2^- Thus in a footnote to this passage we are
22Ibid., p. 20.
“^Letter from Marx to P.V. Annenkov (Dec. 28, 1846),

MEW. XXVII, 452.
2^Marx, The German Ideology, pp. 17-18; also Karl Marx,

Capital (London, 15^777 I. 3 5 1 ; Ernst Fischer, Marx in his
6wn Words (New York, 1970;, p. 38n; Karl Marx, The
Grundrisse. edited and translated by David Mclellan (New
York, 197i), p. 17.
50
told that savages had individual family dwellings, pursued
a separate domestic economy, and had no communal domestic
society. But this primitive level changed with the growth
of population, the emergence of towns, and the development

of more complex tools and means of producing goods. Iso
lated domestic economy was transformed into communal social
economy. The development of the latter in turn led to the
development of a new, aufgehoben family structure. "That

the abolition (Aufhebung) of individual economy is insepar
able from the abolition (Aufhebung) of the family itself is

self-evident."2^
Besides being the first social relationship, the family,
Marx argued, was the setting for the first division of labor
and also introduced the first form of property. Once again,
Marx saw the production of the means to live, population
growth, and increasing needs, as simultaneous and inter
related Momente or determining active factors alongside of

which "there develops the division of labor, which was or
iginally nothing but the division of labor in the sexual
act, then that division of labor which developes spontane

ously or 'naturally' by virtue of natural predispositions
pcj
•^Marx, The German Ideology, p. 18n. To translate
Aufhebung simply as "abolition"ignores the Hegelian
philosophical meanings of this term in Marx's thought.
See Avineri, Social and Political Thought, pp. 36-38.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p ro hibited w ith o u t perm ission.
51
(e.g., physical strength), needs, accidents, etc."2^
Now the emergence of the division of labor was of

fundamental importance to Marx for at least two reasons.
First, because such a division, if it was based on "natural

predispositions" gave rise to an unequal division of the
products of labor, in other words, to property as such.
Second, and more important for the present discussion, the
division of labor radically transformed relationships within
the family. Thus Marx declared that
with the division of labor . . .which in turn is

based on the natural division of labor in the
family and the separation of society into individ
ual families opposed to one another, is given
simultaneously the distribution (both quantitative
and qualitative) of labor and its products, hence
property /Eigentum7: the nucleus, the first form
of which lies in Uhe family, where wife and children
are the slaves of the husband. This latent slavery
in the family, though still very crude, is the first
property /Eigentum7. but even at this early stage it
corresponds perfectly to the definition of modern
economists who call it the power of disposing of the
labor-power of o t h e r s . 27
This passage introduced one of the fundamental problems

of Marxist theory, one closely related to the evolution of
the family and private property, and one which reappeared in
the later writings of Engels and German Social Democrats on
the history of the family. That is, in The German Ideology

Marx appears to be saying that it is the male of the species,
26
Marx, The German Ideology, p. 20.
27Ibid., p. 121.
52
the father of the family, who, thanks to the favored posi
tion in the division of labor which he owes to his physical

strength, enjoys and exploits the slave labor of his wife
and children. Presumably, because the slavery in the family

is only "latent” before the division of labor takes place
there was no slavery in the family which was to a large ex
tent egalitarian. The transformation of the family members

into the property of the husband and father would appear to
be based upon the superior strength of the male and also on
his consciousness of his superior position in the division

of labor. But does this argument not lead to the conclusion
of those economists who argued that man was b^ nature domi
neering, acquisitive, and greedy, that is, the position that

Marx himself rejected?
Marx in particular seems to have been troubled by the

notion that the human being somehow or other became greedy
and domineering as a result of some inner compulsion. In

deed, in the Grundrisse. one of the preliminary drafts for
Das Kapital (written in 1857-1858, first published in 1939)

Marx declared that
it is of course easy to imagine a powerful,

physically superior person, who first captures
animals and then captures men in order to make
them capture animals for him; in brief, one who
uses man as a naturally occuring condition for
his reproduction like any other natural thing;
his own labor being exhausted in the act of dom
ination. But such a view is absurd /abgeschmackt/>
however correct it may be from the point of view^~
of a given tribal or community entity; for it
takes the isolated man as its starting point.
53
But man is only individualized through the
process of history. He originally appears
as a generic being, a tribal being, a herd
animal/ein G-ai'iungswesen. Stammwesen.
Herdentier/
Of course for Marx such a view is absurd given his concept
of man as social man, a generic being who is not an indi

vidual, selfish creature, but rather homo faber, whose very
existence depends upon his need for other men to live (the
family and tribe) and his cooperation with them.2^ In this
part of his theories Marx was a socialist in the same sense
in which Robert Owen and Charles Fourier were socialists,

that is, man is by definition and of necessity a social
creature who needed to work and live with other men.
But if homo faber is a social being who, before the

division of labor, presumably lived in a state of primitive
communism, how did it come about that this period passed

away, that the male converted his wife and children into
his slaves when the woman at least had formerly been his
equal; that, in short, private property emerged? Obvious
ly to pursue these questions in detail would carry us far

afield from our central interest in the evolution of the
family in Marx's thought. Nevertheless certain aspects of
these questions can be dealt with here without losing the
28Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen

Oekonomie (Rohentwurf 1857-1858) (Moscow, 1939), p. 395.
2^See Avineri, Social a n d Political Thought, pp. 86-95.
54
central thrust of the discussion.
In The German Ideology Marx was careful not to attri

bute the male's domination of wife and family to some myster
ious subjective inner compulsion on the male's part. Rather

he sought the cause of the slavery in the family in a set of
objective external factors that appeared to be beyond man's
control. Thus, "the slavery latent in the family /i.e., the
domination of the family by the man7 only develops gradually
with the increase of population, the growth of wants and with

the extension of external relations, of war or of trade.
These various factors, together with the division of labor,,

created the conditions necessary for the production of a
surplus product above and beyond the needs of the family or
tribe. They furthermore created the conditiohs necessary

for a quantitative and qualitative differential distribution
of the surplus produced and for the beginnings of the ex
change of goods between one tribe and another. The surplus

goods produced took on exchange value when traded with other
producers. They became commodities produced precisely for
exchange.^
Marx rejected any individualistic explanation for the
unequal distribution of surplus goods, that is, private
^°Marx, The German Ideology, p. 9.
^Marx, Grundrisse. pp. 375ff. See Ernst Mandel,

Marxist Economic Theory (New York, 1968), I, 23-71.
property. And yet he seems to have taken for granted What
in fact he should have tried to prove. For example, it

would appear that Marx failed to produce a satisfactory ex
planation for the unequal division of surplus products in

ancient societies. In the Grundrisse Marx spoke of men
settling down in pastoral communities which have no pri

vate property in the modern sense. Rather ’’only in so far
as the individual is a member— in the literal and the fig

urative sense— of a . . . community does he regard himself
as an owner or possessor. In reality appropriation by means

of the process of labour takes place under these precondi
tions, which are not the product of labour but appear as
its natural or divine preconditions." In the Asiatic

economic setting (i.e., the one Marx believed was associated
with agriculture dependent upon irrigation which in turn
depended on a central authority to supervise the water-

systems) "the despot . . . appears as the father of all the
numerous lesser communities . . . It therefore follows that

32
the surplus product . . . belongs to this highest unity."'
Not only does the surplus product appear to primitive

men as belonging to the community at large or to a despot,
so also does his surplus labor, which "belongs to the higher
community, which ultimately appears as a person. This sur
plus labour is rendered both as tribute and as common labour
32
Marx, Grundrisse. p. 69.
56
for the glory of the unity, in part that of the despot, in
■3.V.
part that of the imagined tribal entity, of the god."^
But who is this despot, and how does he come to have a claim
on a share of the surplus product and surplus labor?
Marx seems never to have produced a satisfactory answer
to these questions. Nor have later Marxist commentators

been very successful either. Most recently, Istvan Meszaros
has written that

it is self-evident, that no society of even
limited complexity can come into existence
without the production of basic foodstuffs
that exceed the individual requirements of
the labourers. But it is equally self-evident
that the existence of agricultural surplus-
product does not contain any economic determina
tion as to the manner of its appropriation. It
can be appropriated by a limited group of people,
but it can also be distributed on the basis of
the strictest equality. . . . To render stable
the relation between production and appropria
tion when agricultural surplus-value first be
comes available . . . one must have a political
determination as the fundamental regulative
principle of the society in question. What
brings this political determination into exis
tence may be, of course, enormously varied, from
an outside challenge menacing the life of the
community to a favourable geographical location
furthering a speedier accumulation of wealth and
its discussion does not belong here.34
But surely the discussion does belong here if we are to
understand how Marx's early social beings became converted
55Ibid., p. 70.
■3 4 .
Istvan Meszaros, Marx1s Theory of Alienation
(London, 1969), pp. 139-?07
57
into the subjects of a despot. After all, how had the
despot become despotic and why? The questions are obviously

related to the puzzle of why the male of the species decided
to use his strength to exploit his favored position in the
division of labor and enslave his family to himself.

Meszaros suggests that if a society is to avoid continual
squabbling over the appropriation of the available surplus

products, it must work out a "regulative principle or insti
tution" capable of establishing and safeguarding property
rights. With this rather Hobbesian picture in mind, Meszaros
concludes by asking
where can one find such a regulative principle?

. . . The fundamental question is: how is this
continuity established in the first place? . . .
And yet the question remained unanswered: how
did the change that resulted in the establish
ment of a politically fixed appropriation—
private property— occur? . . . Obviously, the
answer to our question can only be provided by
the most detailed historical analysis, which is
greatly handicapped by the scarcity of available
data.35
Unfortunately, Marx never produced a detailed histor
ical analysis of the origin of private property. Rather,
as we shall see, Friedrich Engels tried to perform this
task after Marx's death. In Marx's own writings the origins
of private property and the appropriation of surplus goods

remain obscure. It seems clear that in The German Ideology.
Marx attributed the enslavement of woman and children to
35Ibid., pp. 151-52.
58
the male in the family— the first form of property— to the
physical strength of the male and the male’s position in

the division of labor. It is possible to argue that Marx's
failure to pursue these questions further does not constitute

a basic weakness in his theoretical schema. Even if one
were to accept the fact that private property originated in

biological differences between the sexes and between the
strength of individuals, it does not follow that mankind's
economic relations must forever be determined by these prim
itive forces. Marx of all people knew that the division of

labor and the appropriation of goods in a society were con
stantly changing and capable of yet further change.

In later writings on marriage and the family Marx
turned his attention from the obscurities of the past to

what he regarded as the contradictions of the present and
the promise of the future.^ It was the exposition of these
themes as found in the Communist Manifesto and Capital that
Marx's interest in the "woman question" continued

during the 1850's. In a letter to Adolf Cluss written on
October 8, 1852, Marx recommended the following books:
G. Jung, Geschichte der Frauen (Frankfurt am Main, 1850);
G. Meiners, Geschichte des weiblichen Geschlechts (Hannover,
1788-1800); J.A. de Segur, les femmes, etc. (Paris. 1803);
W. Alexander, History of Women (London, 1782); A.L. Thomas,
Essal but le caractere. les moeurs et 1'esprit des femmes
dans les differen siecles (Paris. 1772); and,for "the
Hegelian school position," J. Unger, Die Ehe in ihrer
Entwicklung (Vienna, 1850). See MEW. XXV ill. 555.
59
received most attention and seems to have had considerable
effect upon Social Democratic readers. As is well known,
in the Communist Manifesto. Marx denounced bourgeois mono
gamous marriage and family as models of thorough corruption.

"The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of produc
tion . . . On what foundation is the present family, the

bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. . . .
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money

relation. Whatever "natural" social relations the .family
may have retained as it emerged from barbarism have been
corrupted in the bourgeois family. The latter is based on
private property and inherited wealth, and it is these that

determine the relationships between family members.
Because the bourgeois marriage is usually based on
economic considerations rather than on love or mutual in

clination, it is not surprising, according to the Communist
37
'Marx, Communist Manifesto. p. 6. A recent student of
Marxist thought writes that for Marx "alienation is . . .
characterized by the universal extension of 'saleability'
(i.e., the transformation of everything into a commodity);
by the conversion of human beings into 'things' so that they
could appear as commodities on the market (in other words:
the 'reification' of human relations); and by the fragmenta
tion of the social body into isolated individuals . . . who
pursued their own limited, particularistic aims 'in servi
tude to egoistic need,' making a virtue out of their sel
fishness in their cult of privacy." Meszaros, Marx's Theory
of Alienation, p. 35.
60
Manifesto, that middle class husbands commit adultery on a
wide-scale with the wives of their fellow bourgeois. The

bourgeois employer also seduces the daughters of the pro
letariat who depend on him for employment. Moreover he

consorts with common prostitutes. Hypocritically, these
same men accuse the communists of wanting to introduce com
munity of women. This is because the bourgeois male regards

his wife as an instrument of production and he has heard that
communists plan to exploit the means of production in com

mon. The opposite is true. In fact communists hope "to do
away with the status of women as the mere instruments of
production in society.1' Furthermore, prostitution and

adultery, twin evils born of a society built upon private
property, will disappear with the Aufhebung. the abolition

and transcendence, of that society and that form of prop
erty.^8
The complement of the bourgeois family Marx found in
the family of the proletariat. There are great differences
between the two. "The proletarian is without property."
He does not therefore marry for the sake of economic con
venience as does the bourgeois. One result of this prop-

ertylessness is that the worker's "relation to his wife and
children no longer has anything in common with bourgeois
38Marx, Communist Manifesto, pp. 34-35; MEW, IV, 479.
61
xq
family r e l a t i o n s h i p s . T h a t is, as most members of the
proletarian family work and earn some of their own living,
there is not the great depende^c- on the husband and father
found in the bourgeois family. And yet the proletarian

family does not escape the ill effect capitalist society
has on human relations. Marx declared that "the bourgeois

claptrap about the family and education, about the hallowed
co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more dis
gusting the more, by the action of modern industry, all
family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and
their children transformed into simple articles of commerce
and instruments of labor.
Marx obviously condemned a family structure in which

human beings became mere commodities. But at the same time
he did not romanticize "the family we have lost." Rather
he discerned tendencies within capitalist industrial society
and its family structure which offer the hope that the
present family may be aufgehoben sometime in the future.
Thus, in the first volume of Capital Marx observed that
modern industry, in overturning the economic
foundation on which the traditional family,
and the family labour corresponding to it, had
also loosened all traditional family ties . . .
However terrible and disgusting the dissolution
59Ibid., p. 22.
^°Ibid., p. 34; Avineri, Social and Political
Thought. pp. 61-62. See footnote 37 above.
62
/Auflosung7. under the capitalist system, of
the old family ties may appear, nevertheless,
modern industry, by assigning as it does an
important part in the process of production,
outside the domestic sphere, to women, to
young people, and to children of both sexes,
creates a new economic foundation for a higher
form /hflhere Form7 of the family and the rela
tions'Deiween”T!Ke sexes . . . Moreover, it is
obvious that the fact of the collective work
ing group being composed of individuals of
both sexes and all ages must necessarily, under
suitable conditions, become a source of humane
development; although in its spontaneously de
veloped, capitalistic form, where the labourer
exists for the process of production, and not_
the process of production for the labourer,
is a pestiferous source of corruption and
slavery.41
The same ideas appeared in strikingly similar phrases in
the report of the General Council of the International

Workingmen’s Association on the subject of "The Work of
Young People and Children of Both Sexes" presented at the

1866 meeting of the First International at Geneva.^2
During the early years of the First International the sub
jects of the family, education, and the employment of women

and children outside the home were subjects of lively de
bate. The ’.
’Marxists" in the International argued that the
employment of women and children in industry was an inevit
able part of capitalist development and could have bene
ficial results, while the "Proudhonists" insisted that
^Marx, Capital, I, 489-490, and Das Kapital (Stuttgart.

1914), I, 431. “
42
See Jacques Freymond, ed., la Premiere Internationale;
Recueil de documents (Geneva, 1962J7 I, 3l.
63
woman's place was in the home.4-3 The latter position
clearly reflected the artisanate ethos of the French
"Proudhonists," an ethos that was shared by the German So

cial Democratic Party in its early years. The Gotha Pro
gram of the SPD suggested that child labor be prohibited.
In 1875 Marx criticized this position and wrote that

a general prohibition of child labour is in
compatible with the existence of large scale
industry and hence an empty, pious aspiration.
Its realization— if it were possible— would be
reactionary, since, with a strict regulation
of the working time according to the different
age groups and other safety measures for the
protection of children, an early combination
of productive labour with education is one of
the most potent means for the transformation
of present-day s o c i e t y . 4-4
It is not clear from these passages what the "higher

form of the family and relations between the sexes" was
supposed to be like in the future. Judging from Marx's
comments on the relation between the sexes found in the

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts they will become for
the first time consciously human, i.e., man will recognize
woman (and woman, man) as the subject of mutual need, a
need that is not simply that of the animal, but rather a

need that is humanized through reciprocal affection. Even
though the satisfaction of these needs leads to exclusive
43Ibid., I, 49-51, 67, 75-76, 89-98, 210-24.

44
^ K a r l Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (New
York, 1966), p. 22; Avineri, Social and Political Thought,
pp. 232-33.
64
relations between man and woman, they tend to remind them
of their inherent need for other human beings, that is,
of their natural sociality.
Unfortunately, before this stage of development can

be reached, the family and marriage must suffer under cap
italism, and also, as we have seen, during the first "raw"
stages of communism. As the transition to socialism is
made the bourgeois family is ’’abolished naturally with the

abolition of its /proletarian.7 complement, and both will
4-5
vanish with the vanishing of capital. J The absence of
private property in the proletarian family already fore
shadows the "higher form" of the future family. In addi
tion, the incorporation of women and children into the labor
market is "under suitable conditions," a source of personal
development. Given Marx’s fundamental views of the im
portance of work for homo faber, this is not surprising.
In addition to the incorporation of women and children

into industry, Marx extrapolated from one other existing
institution under capitalism which he believed contributed
to the coming of socialism— the public education of children.

Formerly a matter left to parents, by 1848 education was
evolving into a function of the state. Like participation

in industry, Marx believed that public education contributed
to the coming of socialism. Thus, in the Communist Manifesto
4.5
^Marx, Communist Manifesto, p. 33; MEW. IV, 478.
65
he wrote
Abolition /Aufhebung/ of the family! Even the

most radical flare up at this shameful proposal
of the communists. . . . But, you say, we de
stroy the most hallowed of relations when we re
place home education by social. And your educa
tion! Is not that also social, and determined by
the social conditions under which you educate, by
the intervention of society, direct or indirect,
by means of schools, etc? The communists have
not created the intervention of society in educa
tion; they do but seek to alter the character of
that intervention, and to rescue education from
the influence of the ruling class.4-6
It follows from the desire to use education as a social

izing tool for the realization of sooialism that later in
the Manifesto Marx included among the measures needed to

bring about socialism "in the most advanced countries" a
demand for "free education for all children in public

4-7
schools." ' In keeping with Marx’s belief in the inherent
sociality of man, through education children are to begin
the process of trancending the limits of the family and
rejoining society. This is the revolutionary reality be
hind the seemingly modest demand for free public education

found in Marxism.
Although they play a relatively minor role in the
4-7
'Ibid., p. 40. Eor more on the communist principles
of education see Engels' Principles of Communism, written
in 1847» in the Monthly Review edition of the Communist
Manifesto, p. 80.
66
corpus of his writings, Marx's ideas on the relationship

between the sexes, marriage, and the family represent a vital
link between the theoretical criticisms of his utopian pred
ecessors and the practical problems faced by his German
Social Democratic successors. The Utopians tended to blame
the ills of society and the subjugation of women on the

"unnatural" strictures and hypocrisy of Christian tradition
and bourgeois morality. Although he incorporated many of

their criticisms in his own writing, Marx rejected the
utopian belief that new relationships could be created in
new communities like Fourier's phalanstery. Rather, Marx

regarded the existing relationship between the sexes and
the structure of the family as the institutions correspond
ing to certain stages in the development of the means of

production and the distribution of property. He argued that
new relationships, indeed a new socialist society, would

have to develop as a result of the Aufhebung. the dissolu
tion and transcendence, of those relationships already in

existence within capitalist industrial society.
Thus, although Marx did not refrain f. om condemning

the effects of capitalist industrial life and private prop
erty on marriage and the family, he discerned in capitalist
society the shadow of things to come for marriage and the

family. If capitalism "broke down" the family by forcing
the wives and children of the proletariat into the factories,

it also provided the basis for a higher form of the family
67
in which the members all participated in meaningful work
and were not dependent upon the economic domination of the

male breadwinner. If, under capitalism, private property
played an insignificant part in the choice of marriage

partners in the proletariat, there was the possibility that
love, mutual affection, might become the basis of choice
for future partners. For Marx the relative absence of pri

vate property in the proletariat foreshadowed a higher form
of the family, one in which love, not property, determined
the relationships between man and wife, parent and child.
However painful and twisted human relations might be under
capitalism, Marx claimed the ability to discern the promise
of better things to come arising from capitalist society
itself.
However comforting this prospect may have been from
Marx's philosophical perspective, his followers in the German

Social Democratic Party had to confront the dilemma of ac
cepting the incorporation of women and children into factory

life as the theoretical prerequisite for the transition to
socialism at the same time they sought to mitigate the ef
fects of industrial society on the personal lives of the

German working classes. Because this problem will be taken
up in a later chapter, it need only be said here that be
cause many of the writings in which Marx outlined his ideas

on marriage and the family were unpublished and unknown
until after the First World War, the German Social Democrats
68
had to think through for themselves many of the theoretical
questions Marx tried to answer before 1870. To assist them

in this task the Social Democrats had Friedrich Engels,
whose book The Origin of the Family. Private Property and
the State claimed to offer the correct Marxist position on

marriage and the family.
C H A P TE R I I I
FRIEDRICH ENGELS ON LOVE,

MARRIAGE, AND THE FAMILY
Not long ago, in a study of Marx's scattered writings
on prehistory and ethnography, Erhard Lucas argued that Marx

never idealized the ancient past asja "golden age" to he re
covered in a future socialist society. Using his modified

form of the Hegelian dialectic, Marx reflected on the vari
ous stages of historical growth and tried to understand
the course of past developments from the perspective of
social structures and struggles in his own time. For Marx

the past provided indications, hut not a precise foretell
ing, of future socialist society.
Friedrich Engels, on the other hand, although no
stranger to the dialectic, tended to rhapsodize over pre
industrial and prehistoric societies. Seeing in prehis

toric societies people as yet uncorrupted hy the evils he
associated with private property and capitalism, Engels

sometimes gives his reader the impression that the social
ist society of the future will he a recapturing of the lost
innocence and happiness of prehistoric man. This tendency
in Ehgels1 writing should hot he exaggerated, for he seldom
lost sight of the Marxist idea that future society will he

an aufgehohen form of the past and present. Nevertheless,
69
70
readers of Engels who did not constantly bear in mind the

Hegelian thread that runs throughout his own and Marx's
writings might easily conclude that Engels believed in the
existence of a lost "golden age" and that mankind was evolv

ing naturally through ever higher stages of development to
ward a new "golden age." There is more than a grain of
truth in Erhard Lucas' conclusion that "if one looks for

analogous intellectual models, one could give Rousseau for
Engels, /and/ Hegel for Marx."1
Engels' writings on marriage and the family do contain
elements reminiscent of Rousseau's sense of a lost innocence
and joy in the past as well as a longing to recapture that

joy and innocence. The two books which contain practically
all of Ehgels' ideas on the past, present, and future con
dition of marriage and the family, The Condition of the
Working Class in England (1845), and The Origin of the

Family, Private Property and the State (1884), both inclu
ded passages praising highly the happiness and "natural
ness" of pre-industrial and particularly prehistoric
2
societies. Moreover the latter book provided glimpses of
1Erhard Lucas, "Marx' Studien zur Frtthgeschichte und

Ethnographie, 1880-1882, nach unverfiffentlichen
Exzerpten," Saeculum, XV-4, (1964), 341.
2
The tone and the vision of society found in Engels'
book The Origin have been compared with Rousseau's Essay on
Inequality in Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels. Eine
Biographle (The Hague, 1934), II, 438.
71
sexual relationships and the family under socialism which
might be interpreted as ’'utopian” were the reader to ignore
the central importance of the concept of Aufhebung as applied
to marriage and the family by Marx and Engels.

Clearly Engels’ association with Marx was a decisive
influence in the intellectual development of the former.

Nor can the influence of Hegel and Eourier on Engels be ig
nored. But it would be very misleading to limit the intel

lectual influences on Engels to this triumvirate, however
important they may have been. For Engels was also greatly
influenced by other general intellectual currents in his
time, particularly that of Darwinism. The following dis

cussion will trace Engels' development from a critic of the
impact of industrialization on marriage and family life in
the 1840's to the author of a sweeping work on social and
anthropological theory in the 1880's. The development is
first one of Engels in the process of becoming a "Marxist”
and later one in which Engels attempted to fuse Marxist

socio-economic analysis with some contemporary anthropologi
cal theories.
Engels' first book, The Condition of the Working Class
in England. contained many of the ideas on and criticisms of

the working class family that were to remain part of social
ist theory right down to the First World War. Prior to the
advent of the Industrial Revolution (which Engels dated
from about 1750), the English worker lived a simple and
72
healthy life as a cottage artisan. His

children grew up in the open air of the country
side, and if they were old enough to help their
parents work, this was only an occasional em
ployment and there was no question of an eight-
or twelve-hour day . . . The workers were cut
off from urban life, because they never had oc
casion to visit the towns . . . They were "re
spectable” people and good family men. In the
absence of temptations to immoraltiy they lived
God-fearing decent lives. There were no low
public houses or brothels in the neighbourhood. . .
She workers1 children were brought up at home,
where they learned to fear God and obey their
parents. This patriarchal relationship between
parents and children continued until the young
people left home to get married. Children grew
up in idyllic simplicity and in happy intimacy
with their playmates. It is true that sexual
intercourse almost always took place before
marriage, but this was only between engaged
couples who fully intended to get married and
in due course a wedding regularised the situa
tion . . . /The workers/ vegetated happily, and
but for the Industrial Revolution would never
have left this way of life, which was indeed
idyllic.’
The capitalist Industrial Revolution and the growth
of urban life shattered this idyllic setting. Crowded into
wretched hovels with next to no physical comforts, the

workers fell prey to every ill, physical and moral. "While
burdening the workers with numerous hardships the middle
classes have left them only the two pleasures of drink and
sexual intercourse. The result is that the workers, in
order to get something out of life, are passionately devoted
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class

in England, translated by W.O. Henderson and W.H. Chaloner
Tlstanrord U.P. paperback edition, 1968), pp. 10-12.
73
to these two pleasures and indulge in them to excess and in
the grossest fashion.”^ Factory employment often took both

parents from the home and the family was together only at
intervals. Children grew up as best (or as poorly) as they
could and Engels wondered "how can the children grow up into
decent, sober adults if they have been left to run wild when
young and grow up in surroundings of a demoralising char
acter?”^
Engels argued that "family life for the worker is al
most impossible under the existing social system." The con

stant threat of unemployment and poverty made a happy mar
riage a rare thing. Even where women could find work, "the
employment of wives dissolves the family utterly and of
necessity, and this dissolution, in our society, which is
based upon the family, brings the most demoralizing conse-

7
quences for parents as well as children.” In the factory
the mother was exposed to a physical and moral environment
that destroyed her morally and physically. Women factory
workers produced large numbers of illegitimate children and,

perhaps worst of all, the master-servant relationship be
tween the factory owner (or his overseer) and the female
4Ibid., p. 144.
5Ibid., p. 145.
6Ibid.
7Ibid., p. 160.
74-
worker, coupled with low wages and the fear of dismissal,
led many women into prostitution. In order to keep their

jobs, women workers "find that they have to grant to their
8
employers the lus primae noctis." All too easily the work
ing mother could become the working prostitute.

The employment of women also had direct effects within
the family. In many cases wives were able to find work

while the husband remained unemployed. This led to a "re
versal of the normal division of labour within the family
. . . There are many hundreds of men who are condemned to

perform duties /and the men7 virtually turned into eunuchs."9
Engels related at length the story of "Poor Jack" who sits

at home mending socks and cooking porridge while hiswife
is at the mill. Engels used this example to make some pen
etrating observations on the connection between economics
and the relationship between man and wife.
Gan one imagine a more senseless and foolish

state of affairs . . . ? It deprives the hus
band of his manhood and the wife of all womanly
qualities. Yet it cannot thereby turn a man
into a woman or a woman into a man. It is a
state of affairs shameful and degrading to the
human attributes of the sexes . . . We shall
have to accept the fact that so complete a re
versal of the role of the two sexes can only be
due to some radical error in the original rela
tionship between man and woman. If the rule of
the wife over her husband— a natural consequence
of the factory system— is unnatural, then the
8Ibid.. p. 167.
9Ibld.. p. 162.
75
former rule of the husband over the wife must
also have been unnatural. Today, the wife—
as in former times the husband— justifies her
sway because she is the major or even the sole
breadwinner of the family. In either case one
partner is able to boast that he or she makes
the greatest contribution to the upkeep of the
family. Such a state of affairs shows clearly
that there is no rational or sensible principle
at the root of our ideas concerning family in
come and property. If the family as it exists
in our present-day society comes to an end then
its disappearance will prove that the real bond
holding the family together was not affection
but merely self-interest engendered by the false
concept of family property.10
This passage is important first because of the similarities
of thought it shows to the ideas on the family found in
Marx's own writings of 1843 and 1844. Next because it

stresses the economic foundations of the family, a theme
to whidh Engels returned forty years later at great length
in The Origin of the Family. The notion that the rela
tionship between the sexes is based on the division of
labor and earning power is one of the unchanging basic

precepts in the thought of Engels and Marx before, during,
and after their long period of intellectual partnership.
In words that anticipated those of the Communist
Manifesto. Engels observed that

it is not surprising that the working classes
have become a race apart from the English
Ibid., pp. 164-65'. It should be obvious from this

passage that Engels did not share the '"Victorian' belief
that woman's place was in the home'' wrongly attributed to
him by the editors of this edition on p. 164, n. 1.
76
bourgeoisie. The middle classes have more in

common with every other nation in the world than
with the proletariat which lives on their very
doorsteps. The workers differ from the middle
classes in speech, in thoughts and ideas, in
customs, morals, politics and religion. They are
two quite different nations, as unlike as if they
were differentiated by race.11
Nor, to judge from Engels' comments, should the working

class wish to be associated with their bourgeois c ountrymen,
for "I have never seen so demoralised a social class as the

English middle classes. They are so degraded by selfish
ness and moral depracity as to be quite incapable of sal-
12
vation."In terms that reappear in The Origin of the
Family and also in the later writings of the German Social
Democrats, Engels declared that
the middle classes are themselves in no small

degree responsible for the extent to which
prostitution exists— how many of the 40,000 pros
titutes who fill the streets of London every
evening are dependent for their livelihood on the
virtuous bourgeoisie? How many of them were
first seduced by a member of the middle classes,
so that they now have to sell their persons to
passers-by in order to live? Truly the middle
classes are least entitled to accuse the workers
of sexual license.i3
During the four decades after the publication of The

Condition of the Working Class in England Engels added
little to his analysis of the working class family or
11Ibid.!, p. 139
12Ibid.,
, p. 311
13Ibid.,► p. H 4
77
bourgeois immorality. During this forty year period a
great deal was written on the subject of the family in

anthropology and ethnology and it is likely that Engels
read some of the new writings. In fact, Engels regarded
the publication of J.J. Bachofen's book, Das Mutterrecht in

1861, as the beginning of the history of the family.^ Be
cause Bachofen's book was highly regarded by Engels and also
the German Social Democrat, August Bebel, it deserves a
brief discussion before turning to The Origin of the Family

and the signal influence of the American ethnographer Lewis
Henry Morgan on the Marxist analysis of marriage and the

family.
During the decades after 1860 one of the principal
questions which attracted the attention of ethnographers

concerned the original state of sexual relations between
prehistoric men and women. Had men and women originally
lived in a state of sexual promiscuity or had there been
from the beginning certain social taboos which limited the
choice of a sexual partner? Related to this question was

another: was the family originally patriarchal or matri
archal? The details of this debate need not concern us

here. It suffices to say that through his study of ancient
14.
^Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family. Private
Property and the State in the LighF of the Researches of
Lewis HV Morgan (New York, 1942^7 P* 8.
78
Greek religion and mythology, Bachofen claimed to have dis

covered historical evidence of an ancient matriarchal society,
a matriarchy which he believed had come into being as a re
action against an earlier period of complete sexual promis
cuity, or "hetaerism" as Bachofen called it.
The matriarchy which gives the mother domination

over family and state . . . grows from the woman's
reaction to unregulated sexuality, from which she
is the first to seek liberation. The initial de
termined resistance to the bestial state of uni
versal promiscuity is woman’s. It is woman who
artfully or forcefully puts an end to this de
grading state. The staff is wrenched, from the
male, the woman becomes the master /through/ . . .
individual m a r r i a g e . “
One of the chief reasons for woman's mastery over male

promiscuousness is her religious proclivity, her "inclina
tion toward the supernatural and the divine, the irrational
and the miraculous." She is "more steadfast than man as a

keeper of religion, she is 1stiffer in the faith' . . .
more conservative, most especially in religious matters and

in the preservation of ceremonial."1^ At the same time it
is woman's "vocation to tame man's primordial strength, to
17
guide it into benign channels." Thus women created re
ligions based on maternal goddesses and the mysteries of

motherhood which helped to establish woman's dominant
Bachofen, Myth, Religion, and Mother Right.

Selected Writings, edited by Rudolf Marx (Princeton, N.J.,
1967), p. 142.
16Ibid., pp. 85-86.
17Ibid., p. 144.
79
position in the matriarchy.
But this dominant position was only temporary accord
ing to Bachofen. With the passage of time religious thought

evolved from matriarchal to patriarchal gods who personified
the "masculine” and paternal virtues. These virtues in turn
colored family life.

The idea of motherhood produces a sense of
universal fraternity among all men, which
dies with the development of paternity. The
family based on father-right is a closed in
dividual organism, whereas the matriarchal
family bears the typically universal character
that stands at the beginning of all develop
ment and distinguishes material life from
spiritual life.18
Bachofen believed that matriarchy meant the sensualization
of life while patriarchy meant the sublimation of natural,

particularly sexual, forces. Patriarchy produced a more
and more "civilized," or sublimated existence for man. On
the other hand, "matriarchy . . . corresponds to agricul

ture, to a regulated tilling of the soil . . . The more
primordial the people, the more the feminine nature prin

ciple will dominate the religious life and the higher
woman's social position will be."19 The emergence of pa
ternal authority and paternalistic religions marked the
triumph of man's "higher" mental faculties over his "lower"
I8Ibid.. p. 80.
19Ibid., pp. 134, 171.
80
physical desires, for maternity pertained to the physical
nature of man, a nature he shared with the animals. The

spirit of paternity represented "a sublimation of human
20
existence over the laws of material life." It is not
surprising that Bachofen concluded his discussion of the

role of women in a patriarchal society in lines very remin
iscent of Fourier: "the progress of civilization is not
favorable to woman. She is at her best in so-called bar

baric periods; later epochs destroy her hegemony, curtail
21
her physical beauty, reduce her . . . lofty position."
Bachofen had arrived at his conclusions through a
study of ancient Greek mythology and religion. Indeed he

argued that changing religious ideas were the primary forces
for social change at large. Of course Engels could not ac
cept such a conclusion however much he might admire
Bachofen’s other insights. Ideas more congenial to Marx

and Engels appeared in 1877 when the American ethnologist
Lewis Henry Morgan published a book entitled Ancient
Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from
Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. Morgan’s
finding seemed to confirm those of Bachofen and Fourier

on the history of the family while they avoided what Engels
20Ibid., pp. 109-110.
21Ibid., p. 171.
81
called Bachofen's "mysticism.” Engels' book on The Origin
of the Family relied heavily on Morgan's work which Engels
compared in importance with that of Darwin and Marx.22
But before proceeding to an examination of Engels' book it

is necessary to pause and ask an important question: to
what extent are we justified in interpreting Engels' book

as a "joint" effort of both Marx and Engels, i.e., do the
views expressed in the book accurately represent those of

Marx?2*5
This is an important question because before 1914
Engels' book became the standard "Marxist" interpretation
of the family for German Social Democrats who seem to have
regarded it as a product of both Marx's and Engels' thought,
as have most writers since. Of course, Marx died in March,

1883, a year before Engels wrote The Origin. But in the
introduction to the book Engels wrote that
the following chapters are, in a sense, the

execution of a bequest. No less a man than
Karl Marx had made it one of his future tasks
to present the results of Morgan's researches
in the light of his own— within certain limits,
22Engels, Origin, p. 16.

23
^This question is part of the larger one on how
much "Engelism" there is in Marxism. Surprisingly, not
much attention has been given to this question. See
George Lichtheim, Marxism (New York, 1965), pp. 141-53;
D.C. Hodges, "Engels' Contribution to Marxism," Socialist
Register 1965 (London, 1965), pp. 279-310; Shlomo Avineri,
The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge,
1558), pp. 2-3.
82
I may say our— materialistic examination of
history . . . I have the critical notes he
made from his extensive extracts from Morgan,
and as far as possible I reproduce them here. 4
For most readers of The Origin this has been sufficient
proof that the book in fact represents the thought of both

founders of Marxism. Thus, a recent American critic of
Marxist thought, H. Kent Geiger, says that the book "like
most of their collaborations was in the main a joint work"
and "their ideas will be assumed to be both in agreement

with one another and of mutual origin."2** Another writer
who shares this view, Marvin Harris, concludes that "the
important point . . . is that as far as primitive culture
is concerned, Marx and Engels bought /Lewis HenryJ Morgan

lock, stock, and barrel."2^ Before reaching such conclu
sions Geiger and Harris should have examined carefully the

origin of The Origin, a task we take up now.
In an article first published in Russian in 1926,
David Riazanov, the editor of the early unpublished writings

of Marx and Engels, mentioned the large number of notes on
2Êngels, Origin, p. 5.
25
H. Kent Geiger, The Family in Soviet Russia /Russian
Research Center Studies, 56/ (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 11.
Also see Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (Garden City, N.Y.,
1970), p. 121; Evelyn Reed. Problems of W o m e n s Liberation.
A Marxist Approach. 2nd edition (New York, 1970), p. 15.
2^Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory

(New York, 1968), p. 2457 --- -----------
83
27
Morgan found in Marx's papers. The Marx-Engels Institute
in Moscow later edited and published these notes in Russian
in 1941. Then, in 1964, Erhard Lucas published two articles
based on his study of Marx's notes as they appear in photo

graphic copies held in the archives of the International
Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.28 These articles

throw important new light on Marx's anthropological re
search and on the impact of Morgan's thought on Marx and
Engels. Lucas shows, among other things, that Marx, far

from "buying" Morgan "lock, stock, and barrel," exercised
his usual scholarly caution when reading the American

ethnologist.
Lucas also reconstructs the writing of The Origin, a
process that reveals Engels the scholar at work. While

sorting through Marx's papers after his death, Engels came
across some 300 pages of notes, references, and comments

on Morgan and a number of other ethnographers that Marx
was reading in 1880 and 1881. In an exchange of letters

with the Austrian Karl Kautsky (who was himself publishing
several articles on the evolution of the family in the
darwinist journal Kosmos) in 1883, Engels mentioned Morgan's
27
A French translation of this article appears in
D. Riazanov, "La doctrine communiste du marriage," Partisans.
32-33 (Oct-Nov, 1966), esp. p. 83.
28See the Lucas article cited above in footnote one,

and the same author's "Die Rezeption Lewis H. Morgans durch
Marx and Engels," Saeculum. XV-2 (1964), 153-176.
84
book on Ancient Society and compared its importance with

Darwin's writings. On February 16, 1884 he wrote that "if
I had the time I would prepare the material from Marx's
notes for the /Social Democratic journals/ Sozial-Demokrat

29
or Die Neue Zeit, but it's not possible." * Engels was
afraid that if his comments on Marx's notes appeared in
these journals they would be suppressed under the anti

socialist laws then in force in Germany. Nevertheless, in
another letter to Kautsky dated March 24, 1884 he repeated

the suggestion that he might work Marx's notes up into a
series of articles or a book. He apparently set about doing
this late in March, for in a letter to Kautsky dated
April 26, 1884 he mentioned that he had finished the final

chapter of The Origin. In the same letter he said that "I
want to show how ingeniously Fourier anticipated Morgan in
so many matters. Fourier's critique of civilization only
emerges in all its original genius through /a study of7

Morgan. And that takes work."^ Engels never wrote this
^ K a r l Kautsky, Aus der Fruehzeit des Marxismus. Engels

Brlefwechsel mit Kautsky Prague, 1935), p. 99. TF“is pos
sible that one of ike things which inspired Engels to set out
his ideas was his reading of August Bebel's book Die Frau in
der Vergangenheit. Gegenwart und Zukunft, parts of which he
must have found objectionable from a Marxist paint of view.
In a letter to Bebel dated January 18, 1884, Engels wrote
"Many thanks for your book Die Frau. I read it with the
greatest interest. There are many fine things in it." See
Werner Blumenberg, ed., August Bebels Briefwechsel mit
Friedrich Engels (The Hague, 1965)> pp» 172-73.
3QIbid.. pp. 103-104.
85
study of Fourier, probably because of a lack of time, for
by the end of May, 1884 he had completed his raanuscripit

and sent it to Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein in Zurich where
it was published in book form later the same y e a r . ^

According to his letters to Kautsky, Engels wrote The
Origin in about two months. How was he able to do this?
Simply because Engels based his book almost entirely on
Marx's notes alone. He did not go back to the sources

Marx himself had read. In fact, it appears that Engels did
not even read Morgan in any detail until he prepared the
fourth edition of the book in 1891. While working on this
edition he wrote a letter dated June 13» 1891 to Marx's

daughter, Laura lafargue, in which he confessed that "I had
to read the whole literature on the subject (which, entre

nous, I had not done when I wrote the book— with a cheek
worthy of my younger days), and to my great astonishment
I find that I had guessed the contents of all these unread

books pretty correctly— a good deal better than I had de-
32
served." But it would seem that Engels also gave himself
credit better than he deserved. For Erhard Lucas has shown
that in his haste and in his desire to make other theorists

agree with his own point of view, Engels sometimes misquoted
or misinterpreted them. Where these misinterpretations are
51Ibid., p. 105.
32 -
Friedrich Engels-Paul et Laura Lafargue, Correspondance
(Paris, 1959), p. 63. Cf. Lucas, "Rezeption," pp. 157-58.
86
germane to our discussion they will he noted.

This, then, is the history of the hook which early be
came and still remains for many readers, the "standard"
work on the Marxist history and analysis of the family as

well as heing "without douht one of the most influential
documents on hehalf of the emancipation of women in the
world's l i t e r a t u r e . T o say that it must he used with

care is to state the obvious. To think that it can he
taken at face value as a "joint" work of Marx and Engels
would he a mistake. In what follows I have attempted to
show in what ways the ideas on sex, marriage, and the
family presented in The Origin are similar to or different

from those found in the writings of Karl Marx.
Engels began The Origin by summarizing L.H. Morgan's
and his own division of history as follows:
Savagery— the period in which man's appropria

tion of products in their natural state pre
dominates; the products of human art are chiefly
instruments which assist this appropriation.
Barbarism— the period during which man learns to
breed domestic animals and tch practice agricul
ture, and acquires methods of increasing the
supply of natural products by human activity.
Civilization— the period in which man learns the
more advanced application of work to the products
of nature, the period of industry proper and of
art.34
^B.J. Stern, "Engels on the Family," Science and

Society. XII (1948), 44.
Êngels, Origin, p. 24. This division is roughly
the same used by Cnarles Fourier. Of. N. Riasanovsky, The
Teaching of Charles Fourier (Berkeley, 1969)> pp. 141-48.
Lewis H. Morgans theories have been subjected to much
87
Next Engels said that there are 11three principal forms of
marriage which correspond broadly to the three principal

stages of human development. For the period of savagery,
group marriage; for barbarism, pairing marriage; for civil

ization, monogamy, supplemented by adultery and prostitu
tion."^ To be sure, the lines dividing each period and
type of marriage were not sharply defined, but it is clear
that Engels believed that each level of socio-economic de
velopment had its corresponding marriage and family type.
V/e saw in the previous chapter that in a letter

written in 1846 Marx had expressed the view that there was
a "corresponding" (entsprechende) family organization for
particular stages of development in production, distribution,

and consumption.^ Judging from Marx’s own notes on Morgan
it appears that he was more selective and cautious in his
use of Morgan's findings than was Engels in The Origin.

It appears from Marx's notes on Morgan written in the early
^(Contd.) criticism. We are not here concerned with

their validity, but their relation to the thought of Marx
and Engels. Cf. R.H. Lowie, Primitive Society (New York,
1935); B.J. Stern, Lewis Henry Morgan. Social Evolutionist
(Chicago, 1931); Harris, Rise of Anthropological Theory^
pp. 180-88; Maurice Godelier, "â pensee de Marx et d'Engels
aujourd'hui et les recherches demain," La Pensee, 143 (Feb,
1969 ) t pp. 92-120. Also see Eleanor Leacock*s introduction
to the new edition of The Origin of the Family (New York,
1972).
Êngels, Origin, p. 66.

See page 49 above.
88
1880's that he doubted that one could say with any cer
tainty the exact type of family corresponding to the vari
ous stages of economic development. This is not to say
that Marx rejected the notion of a relationship between

economic development and the evolution of the family. But
his notes on Morgan seem to indicate that he was more inter

ested in tribal structure and the development of private
ownership among primitive peoples than of family in discover

ing the precise stages of evolution. His notes also stressed
the importance of population growth and its impact on the

available means of subsistence. Marx noted that primitive
American Indian tribes responded to increased population
pressure on limited resources by creating a communal way of

life with several Indian "families" living together in one
structure to avoid the wastefulness of individual "family"
cooking, cleaning, etc. Through his reading of Morgan it

appears that Marx gave up the idea (found in The German
Ideology and the first volume of Capital) that the original
human institution had been the family from which the tribe
had in turn developed. Rather the family in its various
forms evolved from a fairly undifferentiated tribal struc

ture.57
57lucas, "Rezeption," p. 165; The German Ideology (New

York, 1947), pp. 17-18; Capital (London, 1967), I, 551;
Ernst Fischer, The Essential Marx (New York, 1970), p. 38n.;
Karl Marx, The Grundrisse, edited and translated by
D. McLellan (New York, 1971), p. 17.
Like Bachofen and Fourier before them, both Marx and
Engels believed that before there existed any kind of family
mankind lived in a stage of complete sexual promiscuity.^®
Sexual intercourse took place with no restrictions or taboos

at all. The first ••family'* to emerge from this Urpromis-
kuitat Engels called the ''consanguine'* family, i.e., a

family in which parents did not have sexual intercourse
with their children, but one in which all adults were free
to have intercourse among themselves. Actually this was a
prohibition of intercourse between generations, for all
adults were considered to be the "parents'1 of children be

cause it was impossible to discover the paternity of
39
children. Engels offered no explanation as to how or why
the prohibition of inter-generational intercourse came about.
Indeed, he confessed that the very existence of the con

sanguine family can only be inferred from certain cultural
survivals in later forms of the family.
The second stage of family development saw the emer
gence of what Engels called the "punaluan" family, charac
terized by an incest taboo which precluded sexual inter

course between brothers and sisters as well as cousins of
opposite sexes. Engels attributed this extended taboo to

Darwin's principle of natural selection, by which "the
^®Lucas, "Rezeption," p. 164.

39
■Êngels, Origin, pp. 32-33.
90
tribes among whom inbreeding was restricted . . . were
bound to develop more quickly and more fully."^° Prom the
punaluan family there emerged the gens, a group of "hus

bands" and "wives" (for these unions were temporary and
changing) who had a common female ancestor. Because, for

reasons of natural selection, sexual intercourse between
"brothers" and "sisters" in the same gens was forbidden,
men and women were forced to seek their sexual partners in

other gentes. Most important for Engels was the fact that
in the gens the woman enjoys a respected position since all

descent was reckoned in the maternal line due to the uncer
tainty of paternity. In time, said Engels,
the family in primitive times consists in the

progressive narrowing of the circle, originally
embracing the whole tribe, within which the two
sexes have a common conjugal relation. The con
tinuous exclusion, first of nearer, then of more
and more remote relatives . . . ends by making
any kind of group marriage practically impossible.
Finally, there remains only the single, still
loosely linked pair, the molecule with whose dis
solution marriage itself c e a s e s . 4-1
It is important to note that thus far in his discus
sion of family development Engels made no reference to
either social or "economic" conditions as determining fac

tors. Rather he relied upon only one operative factor—
^ I b i d ., p. 34. In his notes on Morgan Marx paid little

attention io incest taboos. Cf. Lucas, "Rezeption," p. 166.
Êngels, Origin, pp. 41-42.
91
natural selection a la Morgan and Charles Darwin. According
to Engels, those tribes which, for unknown reasons, had some
type of incest taboo were those which avoided the presumed

ill-effects of inbreeding and enjoyed the benefits of cross
breeding. Thus, for Engels, during the long period of pre
history known as savagery, the structure of family life,
loose as it was, was determined by natural selection, not
by human decisions or the mode of economic production. In

terestingly, in his notes on Morgan, Marx paid little atten
tion to the importance of the incest taboo or natural selec
tion as the primary propelling force in the prehistoric de
velopment of the family. Judging by the number and extent
of his notes devoted to the subject, Marx was more inter

ested in what Morgan wrote on the relationship between pop
ulation growth and available resources as important factors
in the economic life of primitive peoples.
Engels described the third stage of the family as a

transitional type between the punaluan or group family and
the pairing family. In discussing this transitional type
Engels no longer talked about natural selection, but rather

saw this transition as a conscious choice by women in re
sponse to population growth and economic development. Thus,

Engels wrote that
^2Lucas, "Rezeption," p. 166.
92
Bachofen is also perfectly right when he con

sistently maintains that the transition from
what he calls "hetaerism" or "Sumpfzeugung" to
monogamy was brought about primarily through
the women. The more the traditional sexual
relations lost the naive primitive character of
forest life, owing to the development of eco
nomic conditions with consequent undermining of
the old communism and growing density of popu
lation, the more oppressive and humiliating must
the women have felt them to be, and the greater
their longing for the right of chastity, of
temporary or permanent marriage with one man
only, as a way of release. This advance could
not in any case have originated with the men. if
only because it has never occured to them, even
to this day, to renounce the pleasures of group
marriage. Only when the women had brought about
the transition to pairing marriages were the men
able to introduce strict monogamy— though indeed
only for womeii.45
The idea that women introduced the earliest forms of mono
gamy seems to contradict Engels' earlier position that in
group marriages women were held in high esteem because

descent was reckoned in the maternal line. Nor is it clear
why the decline of primitive communism or population dens

ity should have awakened a "longing for the right of chas
tity" or monogamy among primitive women. In taking such a
position Engels was following Bachofen's own line of

reasoning that woman was inherently monogamous and somehow
found promiscuity degrading. This, after all, was a common

view in the 19th Century and Engels seems to have shared it.
In this part of his history of the family Engels certainly

projected his own period's view of female sexuality back
Êngels, Origin, pp. 46-47.
93
4.4.
into the mists of prehistory.
Thanks to further economic development, population
growth, and the longing of women for more permanent rela
tionships, group marriage gave way to the pairing family.

As its name implies, the latter consisted of one man, one
woman, and their children living in a commuhal tribe in

which descent was still traced through the female. While
women were held to strict fidelity to one man in the pairing

family, the males remained somewhat polygamous. The "mar
riage 11 of man and woman in the pairing family was easily
dissolved and children remained with the mother should

separation take place. In economic terms, "the pairing
family . . . in no wise destroys the communistic household
inherited from earlier times," because at this stage of de
velopment pairing families still lived together with several
other related families in the same household. "Communistic

housekeeping . . . means the supremacy of the female parent,
owing to the impossibility of recognizing the male parent

with certainty /and/ means that the women— the mothers—
45
are held in high respect."^ The pairing family appeared,
according to Engels, "on the dividing line between savagery
^ A recent writer on women's liberation has described

Engels as a "male supremacist." Cf. Suzie Olah, "Impolite
Questions about Frederick Engels," A Feminist Journal, I
(March, 1970), p. 6.
94
and barbarism . . . To develop it still further, to strict
monogamy, other causes are required . . . Unless new, social
forces come into play, there was no reason why a new form of
family should arise from the simple pair. But these new
4*6
forces did come into play."^
These new forces were economic in nature and marked
the transition from food-gathering nomadic life to food-

cultivating settled life. Throughout the period of sav
agery and into the lower stage of barbarism mankind lived
by hunting, gathering fruit, roots, and the like. Men

lived directly upon nature for there was no agriculture or
animal husbandry. Most important of all, at such a primi

tive level little or no surplus food or other products
could be accumulated and whatever exchange of goods took
place was very limited and unimportant. At this primitive
level of development the division of labor was "purely

primitive, between the sexes only,"47 i.e., men hunted and
fished, made the weapons necessary for these tasks, and

provided food for the tribe, while women looked after the
communal household, prepared food, gathered fuel, and the
like. This, for Engels, was the "natural" division of labor

found among the North American Indians of the 19th Century
and also of all of mankind down through the lower stage
46Ibid., p. 47.
47Ibid., p. 145.
95
of barbarism.
"But," Engels observed, "humanity did not everywhere
remain at this stage." In Asia, specifically in the area

known as the "Fertile Crescent," there developed the first
great social, as opposed to natural, division of labor.
Certain barbarian tribes learned how to domesticate and
breed animals. This gave them an advantage over other

tribes still at the food-gathering and hunting level, for
the herdsmen had milk, meat, wool, hides, and other animal
products in regular supply. Moreover they were able to

produce a surplus beyond their own needs which they could
exchange with other tribes. "Thus for the first time regu
lar exchange became possible."48 According to Engels, cattle
became the first important commodity or means of exchange
and provided for the first time in man's evolution the chance
for man to accumulate great wealth by accumulating this com

modity.
"But to whom did this new wealth belong? Originally

to the gens, without a doubt." ^ Commodity exchanges at
first took place between related tribes, but "private prop

erty in herds must already have started at an early period."
However, Engels argued that this "private property is not

to be understood in its modern sense." Rather he seemed to
48Ibid.
49Ibid., p. 48.
96
think that at first certain male members of the tribe looked
after part of the herds but did not regard them as their
"own.” Similarly, when agriculture began to develop (rough
ly simultaneously with animal husbandry) the land belonged

to the whole tribe and certain portions were alloted to
various households and in turn to different individuals.

"The users may have had certain rights of possession, but
nothing m o r e . " ^ Through a process on which Engels is
silent, these use-rights within the tribe became ownership-

rights belonging to the individual families.
Thus Engels characterized the middle stage of barbar

ism as the period marked by the domestication of animals
and settled agriculture, with the control and products of
these passing into the ownership and control of individual

pairing families. Here were the social forces needed for
the further evolution of the family toward monogamy. “Once

it had passed into the private possession of families and
there rapidly begun to augment . . . wealth dealt a severe

blow to the society founded on the pairing family and the
maternal gens."^1 Why was this so? Hitherto all wealth
belonged to the inter-related members of the gens as a
50Ibid., p. 146.
51
Ibid., p. 48. Eduard Bernstein remarked that Engels
seemed to regard the decline of the gens as a “kind of fall
into sin.11 Cf. Eduard Bernstein, "Bemerkungen flber Engels'
Ursprung der Eamilie. Vorrede zur italienischen Ausgabe
des Buch.es," Sozialistische Montshefte. IV (1900), p. 452.
97
group. When the male member of a pairing family within the
gens died whatever goods he might "own"— cattle, agricultur
al tools, weapons— were distributed to the other members of
the same gens. They were not bequeathed to his own children
alone. Now, given the fact that (for reasons Engels never
explained) ownership of the various means of production

passed to the individual pairing family, the male half of
the pairing marriage assumed a new and important position
vis-a-vis his wife. That is, he controlled the ownership

of the herd and agricultural products, thanks to a division
of labor which relegated his wife to the role of mother and

housekeeper. Woman came to own nothing but her labor.
Such, according to Engels, was the state of things as

the pairing family moved toward the strict monogamous mar
riage and patriarchal family of ancient historical times.
How did this strict monogamy emerge? Engels1 answer ap

pears in an important and revealing passage which declared
that
on the one hand, in proportion as wealth increased,
it made man's position in the family more important
than the woman's, and on the other hand created an
impulse (Antrieb) to exploit this strengthened
position in order to overthrow, in favor of his
children, the traditional order of inheritance.
. . . Monogamy arose from the concentration of
considerable wealth in the hands of a single
individual— a man— and from the need to bequeath
this wealth to the children of that man and of
no other.52
■Êngels, Origin, pp. 49, 67.
98
A simple "decree” (Beschluss) overthrew the matriarchy and
descent in the female line and replaced it with the patri
archy and descent through the male line. Thereafter, mem
bers of the gens were reckoned in the male line while
females were excluded and forced to marry into other gens.

Engels confessed that
as to how and when this revolution took place

among civilized peoples, we have no knowledge.
It falls entirely within prehistoric times. But
that it did take place is more than sufficiently
proved by the abundant traces of mother-right
which have been collected, particularly by
Bachofen . . . The overthrow of mother-right was
the world historical defeat of the female sex.
The man took command in the house also; the
woman was degraded and reduced to servitude, she
became the slave of his lust, and a mere instru
ment for the production of c h i l d r e n . 53
Here we must halt abruptly and ask a question that

surprisingly seems to have escaped practically all of the
many critical readers of The Origin. ^ What was the mys
terious impulse or Antrieb that transformed the hitherto

cooperative male who was willing to share both his goods
and his wife with other members of the gens into a tyrant
who exploited his position of strength within the division
of labor? Engels suggested that the male, favored by a

division of labor which gave him control of commodity pro
duction and therefore of the means of exchange, apparently
53Ibid., pp. 49-50.
3^But cf. M.M. Bober, Karl Marx's Interpretation of

History. 2nd edition (Cambridge, Mass., 1948;, p. 48.
99
was profoundly impressed by the spectacle of increasing
wealth— so impressed that he was seized by the desire to
pass his accumulated riches to "his" children and his alone.

Thus primitive communism and the spirit of social coopera
tion which had prevailed throughout the periods of savagery
and lower barbarism gave way to the desire for private prop
erty in the modern sense, and the anti-social behavior which
made its appearance in the stages of middle- and upper-

barbarism. And the culprit, for Engels, in this secularized
version of mankind’s fall into sin, was the male. If Marx
turned Hegel on his head, then surely Engels upended the
author of Genesis I
But our original question remains unanswered: what

was the Antrieb which turned the male into a tyrant bent
upon bestowing his wealth to his own children? Engels ob

served that
the "savage" warrior and hunter had been content

to take second place in the house, after the
woman; the "gentler" shepherd, in the arrogance
of his wealth /auf seinem Reichtum -pochend/.
pushed himself forward into the first place and
the woman down into second.55
Was greed the impulse that seized Engels' arrogant shepherd?
Near the end of The Origin Engels made some observations

about the third stage of human history, civilization, which
indicate that it may have been greed which compelled the
•Êngels, Origin, p. 14-7.
male to tyranny, for
civilization achieved things of which gentile
society was not even remotely capable. But it
achieved them by setting in motion the lowest
instincts and passions in man and developing
them at the expense of all his other abili
ties. Prom its first day to this, sheer greed
/•platte Habgier7 was the driving spirit of
civilization; wealth and again wealth and once
more wealth, wealth not of society, but of the
single scurvy individual /lumpigen Individuumg7
— here was its one and final aim.56
It might be objected that this passage shows that Engels
thought that civilization "put into motion" the passions

of sheer greed which had not prevailed during the stages
of savagery and barbarism. But it seems unlikely that the
greed Engels saw in civilization "from its first day to
this" could have been wholly absent on the eve of that

fateful day. But Engels argued that man had originally
been a communal being, untouched by greed. How had the
communistic barbarian become the greedy, impulsive "civil
ized" man?
It will be recalled that in The German Ideology Marx
and Engels had not directly attributed the male's desire
to dominate his family to any inner Antrieb like that men

tioned in Engels' The Origin. Rather they sought to
locate the cause for the slavery in the family in a set

of objective factors apparently beyond man's control.
Thus "the slavery latent in the family^fhat is, the
56Ibid., p. 161.
101
enslavement of wife and children "by the male/ only develops

gradually with the increase of population, the growth of
wants and with the extension of external relations, of war
*57
or of trade.*'JX These factors, together with the division
of labor, created the conditions necessary for the all-

important creation of a surplus above and beyond the needs
of an individual family or tribe. The creation of a sur
plus which can be used for exchange with other groups was
taken by Marx and Engels as one of the primary motive
forces in the evolution of economic man from savagery to
civilization. The unequal division of labor between man
and woman, together with the production of a surplus which

can be used as a medium of exchange, are fundamental to the
Marxist interpretation of economic man.^8
It is clear from The Origin that Engels believed that
the accumulation of surplus wealth (first in the form of

cattle) led directly to the desire of the male to dominate
the woman in a patriarchal, monogamous relationship and to

destroy matriarchal communism in favor of private property
CO
bequeathed to one's recognized heirs. But here Engels
appears to be guilty of projecting into the past and onto
-^Marx-Engels, The German Ideology, p. 9.
58Cf. Marx, Grundrisse (Moscow, 1939), pp. 375ff; also

Ernst Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory (New York, 1968),
I, 23-71.
•Êngels, Origin, pp. 49, 58.
102
primitive peoples the economic rationality he thought char
acteristic of 19th Century capitalism. As Simone de Beauvoir
pointed out some years ago,

the turning point of all history is the passage
from the regime of community ownership to that
of private property, and it is in no wise indi
cated how this could have come about. Engels
himself declares in the Origin of the Family
that "at present we know nothing about it . . ."
Similarly, it is not clear that the institution
of private property must necessarily have involved
the enslavement of women. Historical materialism
takes for granted facts that call for explanation:
Engels assumes without discussion the bond of
interest which ties man to property; but where does
this interest, the source of social institutions,
have its own source? Thus Engels's account re
mains superficial, and the truths he does review
are seemingly contingent, superficial. The fact
is that we cannot plumb their meaning without
going beyond the limits of historical materialism.
It cannot provide solutions for the problems we
have raised, because these concern the whole man
and not that abstraction: Homo oeconomicus.60
This criticism of Engels is valid, for he introduces by
sleight of hand a male impulse to accumulate yet more
wealth and fails to explain why the hitherto commuhistic
male suddenly becomes an exploiting tyrant.^1 Marx, as

we have seen, explicitly rejected the possibility that
individual men had once upon a time chosen to become the
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, 1952),

p. 50. For further discussion see Juliet' Mitchell, "Women:
The Longest Revolution," New Left Review. 54 (Nov-Dee, 1966),
pp. 11-37.
^Recent Marxist writers continue to ignore Engels'
sleight of hand introduction of the male Antrieb. See Branka
Magas, "Sex Politics: Class Politics," New LefT Review.
66 (Mar-Apr, 1971), 84.
103
exploiters of their fellows, and thereby invented private
property. And yet Marx too failed to offer a satisfactory
explanation for the reason men accumulated surplus wealth
and for the emergence of private property. Both Marx and

Engels seem to have believed that men in primitive societies
produced goods for "rational11 economic reasons, that, to

accumulate a surplus which could then be exchanged for other
goods, increasing one's wealth.

In fact, it has been argued that primitive men do not
produce a surplus for these "rational" reasons. Rather they
produce and use their surplus for such non-rational reasons
as personal prestige, for use in religious sacrifices, or

to be given away in the form of social gifts as in the
potlatch ceremony.^2 Although Engels' analysis of the

transition of the family from a natural to a socio-economic
base, i.e., from matriarchy to patriarchy, seems to be

based on such "materialist" causes as the emergence of
greater surpluses and private property through the division

of labor, his argument finally turns on his introduction of
^20n this problem see Karl Polanyi, The Great Trans

formation (Boston: Beacon, 1957), pp. 43-55; H.W. Pearson,
"The Economy has no Surplus: Critique of a Theory of De
velopment," in Karl Polanyi, et al., Trade and Market in
the Early Empires (New York, 19577, pp. 320-41; George
Dalton, "Economic Theory and Primitive Society," American
Anthropologist. LXIII (Feb., 1961), 1-25; and the chapter
entitled '^Filthy lucre" in Norman 0. Brown, life against
Death (Middleton, Conn., 1959), pp. 234-304.
104
an unexplained male domination over his wife and children.
Perhaps Engels would have done better to keep the explana
tion he and Marx gave for male dominance in The German

Ideology— the superior strength of the male. But even
then the question of why the male moved from the stqtus of
mate to that of master would remain unanswered.
In any case, for Engels, as mankind entered the his
torical stage of civilization, with its distinctions between

town and country, its emerging merchant groups, and the
ultimate commodity,— money, there existed a patriarchal

family and monogamous marriage ’'based on the supremacy of
the man, the express purpose being to produce children of

undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because
these children are later to come into their father's prop-

63
erty as his natural heirs." ^ This was the family and
marital structure that Engels discovered at the earliest
stage of written history and it was also the family and

marriage criticized by the critical utopian socialists,
Marx, Engels, and the German Social Democrats in the 19th

Century. The emergence of the patriarchal family was, ac
cording to Engels, of momentous importance for it "was the

first form of the family to be based not on natural, but
on economic conditions— on the victory of private property
6Êngels, Origin, p. 55.
105
over primitive, natural communal property.

Before turning to Engels’ discussion of the family
under civilization it may be useful to summarize briefly
his analysis of the evolution of the family from its natu

ral to its socio-economic basis. The first •’family” emerged
from the stage of primeval promiscuity in the form of group
marriage. Through natural selection and the incest taboo
the circle of sexual partners became smaller and smaller.
As mankind entered the stage of barbarism and began to

domesticate animals and to farm, the ’’pairing family” de
veloped, primarily due to woman's desire to escape the "de
grading” position of being the sexual object of many differ

ent men. Population pressure, an increasingly complex
division of labor, and the beginnings of commodity exchange
conditioned further change in family and marriage customs,
culminating for Engels in the male's "impulse" to pass his

accumulated wealth to his own natural heirs rather than
having it distributed among the members of his gens after
his death. In order to assure that his wife's children
were in fact his children too, men came to insist upon

strict monogamy for their wives and "decreed" that the tra
ditional matrilineal line of descent was to be replaced by
6Îbid., p. 57. In the original German Engels uses

the word gesellschaftliche rather than "economic."
Cf. Karl Marx-Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin, 1961), XXXI,
68n.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p ro hibited w ith o u t p erm ission.
106
patrilinity. Down to the period of middle barbarism in

prehistoric times, marriage and the family were conditioned
almost entirely by natural, rather than economic, forces,
that is, natural selection, the incest taboo, and population

growth. With the coming of settled agriculture and animal
husbandry and the power the division of labor at this bar
barian level gave to the male, earlier natural forces in
fluencing the family gave way to the conditioning forces of

economic calculation and the male's "impulse" to leave his
wealth to his children and his alone.

Engels' discussion of the family under civilization
was based on the premise that the family "is the cellular
form of civilized society in which the nature of the op
positions and contradictions fully active in that society

can be studied."6^ In rather more colorful language Engels,
in a well-known line, observed that in the modern family,
"the man is the bourgeois and the woman is the proletar

iat."^ The family and bourgeois marriage in civilization
were models of capitalist society in miniature, the scene
of exploitation, suppression, and hypocrisy.

Engels denounced the bourgeois marriage of convenience
which "often enough turns into crassest prostitution— some
times of both partners, but far more commonly of the woman,
65I M i * » P* 58. The same idea is repeated on page 60.

66Ibid., pp. 65-66.
107
who only differs from the ordinary courtesan in that she
does not let out her hody on piece-work as a wage-worker,
but sells it once for all into slavery."^7 From such a
marriage little good could be expected: at best boredom
and hypocrisy; at worst, adultery and the use of prostitu

tes;; Indeed, according to Engels, with the advent of civil
ized monogamous marriage "two constant social types, hither
to unknown, make their appearance on the scene— the wife's
attendant lover, and the cuckold husband . . . adultery
/becomes/ an unavoidable social institution."^8 The bour

geois husband carried on and preserved in a fashion the old
polygamy of the pre-civilized era, but in a demoralized way:
the more the hetaerism of the past is changed
in our time by capitalist commodity production,
and brought into conformity with it, the more
. . . it is transformed into undisguised pros
titution, the more demoralizing are its effects.
And it demoralizes men far more than women.
Among women, prostitution demoralizes only the
unfortunate ones who become its victims, and
even these by no means to the extent commonly
believed. But it degrades the entire male
world. A long engagement, particularly, is in
nine cases out of ten a regular preparatory
school for conjugal i n f i d e l i t y . 5®
In spite of the dreary prospect of bourgeois monogamy,

Engels believed that the emergence of monogamy under civil
ization also had its positive features which afforded models
67Ibid., p. 63.
68Ibid., p. 60.
69Ibid.. p. 66.
108
for higher developments in the future. Thus Engels devoted

a number of pages in The Origin to the curious subject of
'•modern individual sexual love" (moderne individuelle
Geschlechtsliebe).70
Engels argued that since the time of the Middle Ages
the bourgeoisie had paid lip service to the ideal of in
dividual sexual love (which he defined as love based on
mutual inclination and affection; love in which feelings
are reciprocated between man and woman; love of such an in
tensity as to make separation unbearable), but in fact con
tinued to arrange marriages between men and women who did

not love one another and so sought solace in adultery. Al
though there are exceptions, in general among the middle
classes considerations about career, wealth, property, etc.,

triumphed over passion when it came to choosing a marriage
partner. Although economic considerations prevented the
bourgeois marriage from being based on Geschlechtsliebe.
this was not the case among the working classes for
sexual love in the relationship with a woman
becomes, and can only become, the real rule
among the oppressed classes, which means today
among the proletariat— whether this relation is
officially sanctioned or not. But here all the
foundations of typical monogamy are cleared away.
Here there is no property, for the preservation
and inheritance of which monogamy and male su
premacy were established; hence there is no in
centive to make this male supremacy effective.'1
7°Ibld., pp. 61-73.

71Ibid.. p. 63.
108
In addition, Engels noted that industrial capitalism drew
women into the labor market. In The Condition of the Work

ing Class in England Engels stressed that such employment
meant the breakdown of the family. Pour decades later he

clearly felt that it also had a beneficial effect in that
•'large-scale industry has taken the wife out of the home
onto the labor market and into the factory and made her
often the bread-winner of the family. . . . /Therefore/ no
basis of any kind of male supremacy is left in the prole
tarian household, except, perhaps, for something of the
brutality towards women that has spread since the intro
duction of monogamy (es sei denn etwa noch ein Stuck der
seit Einfi'lh-rung der Monogamie eingerissenen Brutalitat
gegen Prauen)."^2
Obviously Engels knew that if the middle class male
dominated his wife by controlling the purse strings, the

proletarian husband, even if his wife did become the bread
winner, could and often did continue to dominate her with
his fists. Engels blamed this brutality on monogamy, which
had been introduced by the advent of private property which
Engels saw as the product of the division of labor and the

desire of the male to exploit his position in that division.
Although Engels tried to blame the "residual" brutality of
working class men toward their wives on an anti-feminist
^2Ibid.. p. 64. Marx-Engels, Werke, XXI, 74.
110
tradition associated with patriarchal monogamy, a careful
reader was able to trace this brutal behavior back to an
unexplained drive in man which Engels used to hypothesize
about the origins of monogamy and private property.
Despite the residue of male brutality, Engels insisted

that proletarian marriage rested on individual sexual-love,
mutual inclination and respect. It followed, therefore,
that proletarian marriage was spared the "attendants of
monogamy, hetaerism and adultery," which, in the working
class marriage, "play an almost vanishing part. The wife

has in fact regained the right to dissolve the marriage and
if two people cannot get on with one another, they prefer
to separate. In short, proletarian marriage is monogamous
in the etymological sense of the word, but not at all in

73
the historical sense."
Engels believed that the emancipation of women from
male domination would culminate under socialism, but it
already began under capitalist industrialism. He argued
that
to emancipate woman and make her the equal of
man is and remains an impossibility so long as
the woman is shut out from social productive labor
and restricted to private domestic labor. The
emancipation of the woman will only be possible
when woman can take part in the production on a
large social scale, and domestic work no longer
claims anything but an insignificant amount of
I l l
her time. And only now has that become possible

through modern large-scale industry, which does
not merely permit the employment of female labor
over a wide range, but positively demands it,
while it also tends towards ending private do
mestic labor by changing it more and more into
a public industry . '^
Women would return fully to the sphere of society at large
only under socialism when there will be a number of funda
mental changes in male-female relationships. Because pri
vate property as it was known under capitalism will disap
pear Tinder socialism, economic motives for marriage will
no longer exist. There will only be marriage based on
75
"mutual inclination."'^ This does not mean a return to
the sexual promiscuity of prehistoric times, for Engels,
like Marx before him, believed that "sexual-love is by its
nature exclusive— although at present this exclusiveness

is fully realized ohly in the woman— the marriage based on
sexual-love is by its nature individual marriage."7^ This
does not mean that such marriages will be for life under
socialism. Rather, because the intensity of sexual love
may decline or be replaced by love for another person,
Engels suggested that "separation is a benefit for both
74-Ibid., p. 148.
75Ibid., p. 72.
76Ibid.
112
77
partners as well as society."''
According to Engels, another feature of civilized
marriage and family life, male supremacy, will disappear,
under socialism for "the supremacy /Vorherrschaft7 of the

man in marriage is the simple consequence /einfache Folge7
of his economic supremacy, and with the abolition of the

latter will disappear of itself."^8 Because this came to
be the accepted view of German Social Democrats, it should
be stressed that earlier in The Origin, when he discussed

the development of patriarchal monogamy, Engels did not
attribute the triumph of male supremacy to "the simple conse
quence of his economic supremacy," although he did stress
the male's position in the division of labor. What Engels
ignored here was that mysterious impulse or Antrieb which
seized the male when he discovered that he could exploit

his wife and childreh to earn more wealth and then bequeath
it to his heirs. Obviously offering equal opportunities for
employment and wages to working men and women could act as
7Îbid.. p. 73. Thilo Ramm writes that "a greater

contrast between this sentence and Marx's strict interpre
tation /of marital duties/ is scarcely imaginable." Thilo
Ramm, "Die kunftige GeseTlschaftsordnung nach. der Theorie
von Marx und Engels," Marxismusstudien. Zweite E d g e
(Stuttgart, 1957), p. 109. But it should be noted that
Marx's view of the future made the raising of children the
task of society rather than of individual fathers and
mothers and therefore obviated most of the problems produced
by divorce or separation in the 19th Century.
^8Engels, Origin, p. 73.
113
an equalizing factor in society. But by introducing into
his analysis the male impulse to dominate the woman Engels
left open the possibility that male domination had its roots
elsewhere than in economics and that male supremacy might
not disappear when men and women achieved economic equality

under socialism.
In addition to male supremacy, Engels predicted that
adultery, the social stigma attached to illegitimacy, and
prostitution would all vanish under socialism. "For with
the transformation of the means of production into social

property there will also disappear wage-labor, the prole
tariat, and therefore the necessity for a certain— statis
tically calcuable— number of women to surrender themselves
for money. Prostitution disappears; monogamy, instead of

7Q
collapsing, at last becomes a reality— also for men."
And again, because prostitution and monogamy are "insepar
able contradictions, poles of the same society . . . can
prostitution disappear without dragging monogamy with it
into the abyss?"80

like Marx, Engels was not very precise about the
future structure of the family under socialism. In a draft
for the Communist Manifesto written in 1847 Engels asked
the question
79Ibld.. p. 67.
80Ibld.
114
What will "be the influence of communist society
on the family?
It will transform the relations between the
sexes into a purely private matter which con
cerns only the persons involved and into which
sooiety has no occasion to intervene. It can
do this since it does away with private property
and educates children on a communal basis, and
in this way removes the two bases of traditional
marriage, the dependence, rooted in private prop
erty, of the woman on the man and of the children
on the parents. And here is the answer to the
outcry of the highly moral philistines against
the "community of women." Community of women is
a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois
society and which today finds its complete ex
pression in prostitution. But prostitution is
based on private property and falls with it.
Thus communist society, instead of introducing
community of women, in fact abolishes it.81
Forty years later, in The Origin. Engels was able to add

very little to this summary. He did believe that the family
under socialism would transfer its traditional twin economic

and educational functions to society at large. These func
tions would be, in other words, socialized.
With the transfer of the means of produc
tion into common ownership, the single family
ceases to be the economic unit of society. Pri
vate housekeeping is transformed into a social
industry. The care and education of children
becomes a public affair; society looks after
after all children alike, whether they are legit
imate or not. This removes all the anxiety about
the "consequences," which today is the most essen
tial social— moral as well as economic— factor that
Friedrich Engels, "The Principles of Communism" in

Marx-Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: Modern
Review paperback edition, 19^4), P* 80* Also see Dirk
Struik, Birth of the Communist Manifesto (New York, 1971),
pp. 162-89.
115
prevents a girl from giving herself completely
to the man she loves.°2
It might be thought that contraception would be one
way of removing anxiety about the “consequences" of sexual
intercourse. In fact, for a number of reasons to be ex
amined in a later chapter, contraception was a subject of
considerable interest among German Social Democrats. In
1880 Karl Kautsky, later to become one of the leading in
tellectuals of the German SPD, wrote to Engels asking his
ideas about the question of population and its control under
the economic affluence expected to accompany socialism.
Engels replied that
if at some stage communist society finds itself
obliged to regulate the production of human beings,
just as it has already come to regulate the pro
duction of things . . . it is for the people in
the communist society themselves to decide whether,
when, and how this is to be done, and what means
they wish to employ for this purpose. I do not
feel called upon to make proposals or give them
advice about it.8*
This was, perhaps, a curious response from a man who did

not often hesitate to prescribe attitudes and action for
workers and socialists in his writings. More to the point,
questions about contraception, marriage, and the family
could scarcely be postponed until the advent of communist

^Letter from Engels to Kautsky, February 1, 1881, re
printed in R.L. Meek, ed., Marx and Engels on Malthus (New
York, 1954), p. 109. A second edition of this book has ap
peared entitled, Marx and Engels on Ihe Population Bomb
(New York, 1971).
116
society. Rather they were questions which were raised
increasingly as socialist parties began to organize large

numbers of people in Germany and later in Great Britain and
France. In light of the fact that these parties were faced
with the problem of hammering out policies and programs on
the role of women and children in society, ethical behavior,
prostitution, and related questions, the remarks by Engels
could sometimes appear to be avoiding the responsibility
of offering a "correct11 Marxist position. Thus, in The
Origin, discussing the questions of future relationships
of men and women wider socialism, Engels concluded that
they
will be answered when a new generation has grown
up; a generation of men who never in their lives
have known what it is to buy a womans surrender
with money . . . a generation of women who have
never known what it is to give themselves to
their lover for fear of economic consequences.
When these people are in the world they will
care precious little what anybody today thinks
they ought to do.8^
But even as Engels wrote these words in 1884 a generation

of socialists had already grown up in Germany and had to
come to grips in both a theoretical and practical way with
the problems confronting them in an industrializing capi
talist society. The question of the relationships between
men and women, parents and children, could not be postponed
until the advent of socialist society. Answers had to be
84.
117
sought "by socialist men and women who were themselves the
product of the social and intellectual milieu of the very
society they challenged. The way in which the German Social
Democrats tried to provide these answers will he examined
in the following chapters. Here it remains to offer some

concluding remarks on Engels* contribution to the Marxist
position on marriage and the family and the nature of that
contribution.
Erom Erhard Lucas' study of the reception of the
theories of lewis Henry Morgan by Karl Marx it would appear
that in The Origin Eriedrich Engels tended to exaggerate
his former collaborator's acceptance of Morgan's evolution
ary schema of the family. Judging from the notes and com
ments he left on Morgan, Marx was not convinced that the

history of the family could be reduced to the tidy evolu
tionary development that appears in Engels' book. Marx
never accepted Morgan's idea that the evolution of the
family was a ''progressive'1 one tending toward higher and
higher levels. Marx was too much of a Hegelian dialectician

to ignore the negative factors involved in the history of
family development. To be sure, Engels did not ignore these
negative factors either, but unless his readers in the 1880's,

1890's, and beyond kept these factors firmly in mind, it was
possible for them to read The Origin from a Darwinian per

spective which encouraged the view that the family was
''naturally1' evolving into different and higher forms without
118
the direct interference of human choice. The profound in
fluence of Darwinian thought on German Social Democracy-
after 1880 encouraged this view and contributed in part to
a "do-nothing" attitude toward marriage and the family
within the German labor movement.

In another way Engels' contribution to Marxist theory
raised problems which later troubled some theoreticians
within the German SPD. It will be recalled that in his dis
cussion of the evolution of the family during its very early
stages Engels had used the Darwinian principle of natural
selection to account for the evolution of the relationship
between men and women from promiscuity to pairing families.

Economic factors as such played no part in this evolution.
Indeed, it was not until the family stood on the eve of
civilization that the desire of the male to accumulate more
property in the form of herds that the economic factor be
came the primary operative force in family change. In
other words, Engels saw a sharp dialectical division be
tween the prehistoric and the historic family, the first
subjected to natural laws, the second to economic laws.
In a real sense this would seem to undermine one of the
basic tenets of historical materialism, a point not lost
on German Social Democrats for whom historical material
ism came to be, in the 1890's, an absolute point of dogma.

In the words of Erhard Lucas, "one can say that The Origin
of the Family is the first work of Marxist orthodoxy, which
110
even as orthodoxy came into contradiction with Marx's in
tentions."8**
If it developed that parts of Engels' Origin seemed to

contradict parts of Marxist orthodoxy, on the whole the
hook could he read and accepted hy most socialists in the

late 19th Century because it contained and reflected many
of the same attitudes held hy its readers. First, as al
ready mentioned, because Engels used Darwinian principles
and terminology at a time when these were at the peak of
their influence in Europe. Secondly, Engels tended to
idealize in his writings the pre-industrial family. Cer
tainly among German Social Democrats, where the petty-

bourgeois ideology of its artisan leaders long held sway,
there was considerable sympathy for the pre-industrial,

not to mention, patriarchal family. As will be seen in
a later chapter, German Social Democrats had to take a
stand on admitting women to industry in large numbers and
thereby "breaking-down" the pre-industrial family, or bowing
to the necessity that capitalist industry demanded that wo
men and children enter the factories in growing numbers.
Engels' dictum that by entering large-scale production
women would begin their emancipation was not an idea easily
accepted by Social Democrats deeply imbued with Mittelstand

artisan attitudes toward women and the home.
8^lucas, "Marx' Studien," p. 341.
120
Third, Engels seems to have shared in common with many

of Jiis 19th Century readers certain assumption about the
sexual nature of men and women. It will be recalled that
he argued that it had been women who had taken the first
steps toward monogamy in the pairing family by insisting

that the availability of women for the sexual use of large
numbers of men was felt by women to be "degrading." Evi

dently, Engels here projected (back into the past) the
idea common to his time that women naturally found sexual
activity revolting and degrading. The opposite side of

this coin for Engels shows that the intense emotion asso
ciated with individual sexual love "varies very much in
duration from one individual to another, especially among
men."88 Obviously Engels (and probably many of his

readers) shared the notion that men were more fickle and
changeable in their sexual relations them, women.
Finally, again and again in Engels' writings one is

presented with a picture of the degraded, immoral and
hypocritical bourgeoisie which seduced the daughters of
the people and was the chief customer of prostitutes.
Forced into loveless marriages of convenience, the midde
class males became adulterers, keepers of mistresses and
frequenters of brothels. Against this grim picture, Engels
held up the shining image of the proletarian male who
121
married the woman he loved and respected and therefore had
no need for the services of the prostitute. Nor did the
worker husband dominate his wife and family from a position
of economic tyranny like the middle class male. This
double-barrelled attack on middle class immorality combined
with the praise of working class righteousness found ready

acceptance and many echoes in thewriting of Social Democratic
writers in the years before 1914.

All of these various facets of Engels' attitudes and
writings on love, marriage, and the family must be borne
in mind as we turn to a discussion of German Social Democracy
in the half century before 1914, its reception of Marxism as
its fundamental ideology and the influence of other intel
lectual currents on the SPD's position toward sexuality,
marriage and the family. The ideas of Marx and Engels on
these questions combined with Darwinian thought and the
social origins of Social Democratic leaders themselves
to create the strange amalgam of socialism and sexuality
found in Imperial Germany.
C H A P TE R I V
GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY BEFORE 1914
It is likely that the ideas of Fourier, Marx and Engels

on marriage, the family, and sexual relationships would, have
had little influence "before 1914 if they had not been in
corporated into the ideology of the German Social Democratic
Party (SPD). After all, apart from Engels' book, The Origin
of the Family, the Marxist analysis of these matters was
scattered throughout the corpus of Marx and Engels' writ
ings, some of which were unpublished before the 1920's.
After the publication of the first volume of Capital in
1867, those socialists who did read Marx regarded him pri
marily as an economic theorist who happened to make inci

dental remarks about marriage and the family in t**e course
of his discussion of capitalism. Moreover, during his life

time Marx was unable to find a viable movement capable of
preserving and propagating his form of socialism and social
criticism. The body Marx seems to have hoped would serve
these functions, the First International, had foundered by
1871 due to a variety of factional splits and the defeat
of the Paris Commune.
The failure of the First International and the Commune,
however, did not mean the end of organized socialist
122
123
movements in continental Europe. Rather, as Marx had
expected, the defeat of the Commune signalled the defeat
of Proudhonian socialist theories and opened the possi
bility that some form of Marxist socialism could take root
in Germany. Marx's expectations were fulfilled during the
two decades after 1871 as the Social Democratic movement in
Germany gathered strength, and in the revised party program
accepted at Erfurt in 1891 openly proclaimed itself a
"Marxist” socialist group.
The acceptance of Marxism as the principal component
of SPD ideology meant that the Marxist position on marriage,
the family, and related questions would not simply be for
gotten. For the SPD dedicated itself to the preservation
and promulgation of Marxist theory on these matters as well

as on others, of course. Furthermore, as a mass movement
concerned both with the political and cultural life of its
working class constituents, the SPD tried to realize in
practice what it preached in theory. Because it was not
just either a band of theorists or a political movement,

the German SPD, particularly after 1890, faced the neces
sity of taking a practical stand on "the woman question,"
the youth movement, and other matters which Marx and Engels
had only discussed as theoretical issues. In addition the
party felt obliged to educate the German working class on
matters related to human sexuality as part of the general
cultural mission of Social Democracy. Later chapters will
124
examine the ways in which the SPD fulfilled this mission
and also its role iii the socialist womens' and youth move
ments.
But before examining the relationship between SPD
theory and practice in matters related to marriage and the
family it is necessary to present a brief history of the
SPD and also a discussion of its ideology. To be sure, in
1891 the party declared itself to be "Marxist," but Marxism
was by no means the only component of SPD ideology. Some
discussion of other components is therefore essential. Of

equal importance are the questions of how and why Marxism
was received as an ideology by German Social Democrats in
Imperial Germany. After reviewing all of these questions
it will be possible to examine the tension between theory

and practice in the SPD.
It is perhaps impossible to fix a definite, starting

point for the German labor movement. The Revolutions of
1840 brought the "social question" into sharp focus, but

even during the Vormlrz period many German artisans organ
ized themselves into a variety of educational and social
clubs.1 As most of these artisans regarded themselves as
members in good standing in the German Mittelstand (or at
Richard Reichard, Crippled from Birth. German Social

Democracy 1844-1870 (Ames, Iowa, 1969), pp. 32-49.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r re p ro d u ctio n p ro h ib ited w ith o u t perm issio n .
125
least aspired to membership), it was fitting that most of
these clubs were of an ,,improving,, and uplifting nature,
offering lectures on science, geography, and history. Al
though many of these clubs came to have a political cast
in the years just before 1848, they never completely gave
up their didactic functions. If one were seeking continui
ties between the labor movement of the Vormflrz and that of
the SPD in Wilhelmine Germany, surely the concern with ed
ucating and enlightening the workers would be one of them.
For those artisans whose concern over the Sozialfrage
went beyond sharing the culture of the German middle class,
it was necessary to look abroad for socialist ideas. Arti
sans like Wilhelm Weitling, a ladies’ tailor, travelled in
Prance and Switzerland in the late 1830's where they joined
expatriate German socialist clubs. Weitling, for example,
was profoundly influenced by reading the works of Charles
Fourier and his own book, The Guarantees of Harmony and
Freedom, is little more than a German rendition of the so
cial critique and utopian plans of the French socialist.
2
Although Marx himself repudiated Weitling as a utopian,
the German SPD was more generous towards the artisan social
ist, and as late as 1908 the party press reissued his book
^See Hans M{lhlestein, "Marx and the Utopian Wilhelm

Weitling," Science and Society. XII (1948), 113-129; Auguste
Cornu, Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels. Leben und Werk
(Berlin7"T95T77"l» 22T.
126
with an appreciative introduction "by Franz Mehring.^ This

is hardly surprising if one hears in mind the fact that
Weitling was very much interested in the future of man under
socialism. The SPD and its leaders also took a lively in
terest in the Zukunftsstaat and often speculated about the
future in their own writings. Moreover, Weitling and other
artisan socialists looked upon socialism as a substitute
for religion, and hoped that socialism would be able to
achieve the ideals of justice, renewal, and equality that
Christianity had failed to realize. German Social Demo

crats never really gave up these ethical goals in later
years, even though they paid lip service to the "scientific”
nature and inevitability of Marxist socialism.4-
If some artisan socialists looked to the future for
the answer to the "social question," other artisans in the

1840’s hoped to secure their social status by preserving
the guild system in the midst of socio-economic changes in
^Wilhelm Weitling, Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit

(Berlin, 1908; orig. pub. 1842). For discussions of Weit-
ling see Carl Wittke, The Utopian Communist. A Biography
of Wilhelm Weitling (Baton Rouge, 1950); Thilo Ramm. Die
grossen Sozialisten als Rechts- und Sozialphilosphen. Bd.
I: Die Yorlflufer (Stuttgart. 19!?5), pp. 566-561; Waltraud
Seidel-H&ppner. Wilhelm Weitling— die erste deutscher
Theoretiker und Agitator des Kommunismus (Berlin. i96l).
^Wolfgang Schieder, AnfSnge der deutschen Arbeiter-
bewegung. Die Auslandsvereine im Jahrzehnt nach der
Julirevolutlon~von 1850 (Stuttgart. 1965). especially
pp. 24-80.
127
the Vorm&rz era. In a period marked by population growth
that threatened available food supplies and the beginnings

of a factory system which threatened the guilds, many arti
sans looked to the state to help them survive as respectable
Handwerker and not as members of the less respectable

Proletariat.** The desire to preserve their social and
economic status was clearly manifested in the activities
of both master and journeymen artisans in the revolutionary

events of 1848/9.** Although many of those who died on the
Berlin barricades in March, 1848, were journeymen, it would

be a mistake to think of them as revolutionaries fighting
for a new social order. Artisans looked on themselves as
members in good standing in the German Mittelstand, and as
such they were opposed both to socialism and economic liber
alism which they regarded as threats to a social order in
which they had hitherto enjoyed a respected position.'
With the help of the state the guilds were able to survive
^Werner Conze, "Vom 'Pfibel' zum ’Proletariat1,”

Viertel.iahrsschrift fttr Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte.
XII (1954), 335-64.
^See Rudolf Stadelmann, Soziale und uolitische Geschichte
der Revolution von 1848 (Darmstadt, 1962; orig.pub. 1948);
Theodore Hamerow, Restoration, Revolution. Reaction (Prince
ton, 1958); and particularly P.H. Noyes, Organization and
Revolution. Working Class Associations in the German Revolu
tions of 1848-49 (.Princeton, 1966).
^See the interesting discussion in Edward Shorter,
’’Middle Class Anxiety in the German Revolution of 1848,”
Journal of Social History. II (Spring, 1969), 189-215.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r re p ro d u ctio n p ro h ib ited w ith o u t perm issio n .
128
into the 1860's and it is well to hear in mind that during
the history of the SPD in Imperial Germany the party drew

much of its membership and most of its leadership from men
trained in the artisan traditions. For men with such back

grounds it is possible to speculate that they never really
shook off their Mittelstand origins and that their associa
tion with the industrial proletariat of Imperial Germany
was more a product of ideological than of class identifica
tion.
In the months after March, 1848, German artisans ex
pressed their desires and demands through a variety of or
ganizations.8 Master artisans, who had been conspicuous by
their absence from the barricades, blamed revolutionary un

rest on economic liberalism, the appearance of factory labor,
and the undermining of the guilds. They called for compul
sory guild membership for factory workers, taxes on fac

tories which would be used to aid the guilds financially,
and strict limitations on the numbers of master and appren

tice artisans in each town. Journeymen, excluded from the
meetings of master artisans, met separately and demanded

universal suffrage, the abolition of local tariffs, and a
twelve hour working day. Although they were perhaps more

concerned about wages, hours, and working conditions than
the masters, and criticized the exclusiveness of master
8Noyes, Organization and Revolution.
129
artisans jealous of their privileges, the journeymen did
not attack the guild system itself. Nevertheless the split
between the interests and demands of masters and journeymen
prevented the artisans from showing a united front and
therefore threatened the guild position as a whole.

In order to overcome this factionalism, in August and
September, 1848, Stephan Born, a type-setter and friend of
Karl Marx, called on masters, journeymen, and skilled fac

tory workers (most of whom were actually journeymen arti
sans) to join forces in an Allgemeinen deutschen Arbeiter-

verbrflderung. or "Brotherhood,” as it was usually known.^
Born's Brotherhood drew nearly 8,000 artisans to its rally

of September 3, 1848, and the group's central committee
soon opened its office and newspaper, Der Volk, in Leipzig.
Born hoped that the Brotherhood would help to organize
educational and social clubs for craftsmen at the local

levels and also act as a national representative for arti
sans to bring their demands to the attention of the Frank

furt Assembly.
Born used Per Volk as a forum to argue that neither a
return to the guild system of the past nor the triumph of
®See Frolinde Balser, Sozial-Demokratie 1848/49-1863.

Die erste deutsche Arbeiterorganisation "Allgemeine deutsche
Arbeiterverbrtlderung^nach der Revolution (Stuttgart, 1<)62).
130
free competition could salve the problems of working men.
Rather he urged the creation of producers' cooperatives
run jointly by master and journeymen artisans. Born expec

ted that the state would provide the necessary capital to
set up the cooperatives, as well as funds for the care of

elderly and invalid workers. The idea of such state-financed
cooperatives had a perennial popularity in the German labor
movement from Born's time well into the 1860's. Workers
found the cooperative idea easier to grasp than the argu

ments of Marx's Communist Manifesto. In addition, the
German middle and upper classes found the notion of cooper
ation and self-help far less threatening than the rhetoric

of socialist and communist theorists.1^ Of course, arti
sans prided themselves as champions of self-help as well.
In Born's own words, the Brotherhood wanted "a society in
which we can develop our individuality and our human nature

freely and without hindrance."11
Apparently the development of this individuality and
human nature was ultimately to take place within a future

society of workers' cooperatives. In the meantime the
task fell to local clubs associated with the Brotherhood.

These clubs provided a variety of educational programs and
discussions intended to inform, improve, and uplift their
10Hedwig Wachenheim, Die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung

1844 bis 1914 (Cologne, 19^TT," pp.' 38=39.
^Balser, Sozial-Demokratie. p. 235.
131
members. They enjoyed a good measure of success, for hy
1850 the Brotherhood had at least fifty-two local and re
gional organizations numbering between twelve and twenty

12
thousand members, almost all of them artisans. Although
most of the local clubs avoided political activities as
such, some of them, like the Stuttgart branch of the
Brotherhood, did discuss such questions as universal suf
frage, democracy, and the like. But these questions were
more likely to be the concern of the better-educated news

paper writers, liberal pastors and shop owners who often
joined the local clubs. Because artisans considered them
selves members of the Mittelstand and were usually acoepted
as such in 1850, it is not surprising to find skilled work

men in the same clubs and discussion groups as newspaper
13
editors, ministers, and other "brain workers." ^
By 1850 the days of the Brotherhood were numbered.
The failure of armed revolt in the Spring of 1849, the re

vival of traditional authority in the German states, and
the final dissolution of the Frankfurt Assembly, introduced
a period of reaction. In the post-revolutionary era even
12Ibid.. p. 73.
13
^Wolfgang Schmierer, Von der Arbeiterbildung zur
Arbeiterpolitik. Die Anfange der Arbeiterbewegung in
Wflrttemberg 1862/63-1878 (Hanover, 1970), p. 39.
132
Born’s Brotherhood was suspect in the eyes of the German

governments. Par from supplying capital for the formation
of producer’s cooperatives, the various states, with Prussia
in the forefront, began making plans to suppress Born's or

ganization. At its last national congress at Leipzig in
February, 1850, the Brotherhood tried to avoid state sup
pression by carefully avoiding any political statements and
by announcing that thereafter the Brotherhood would restrict

itself to activities limited to self-help, i.e., the forma
tion of contributory sickness and burial insurance programs,

and clubs devoted to educational and social programs. Pro
ducers' cooperatives remained a part of the Brotherhood's

program, but without state financial aid they remained on
paper only.
These self-applied restrictions were not enough for

the Prussian government. During 1850 laws against politi
cal, economic, and even some recreational associations came
into force. Other German states followed Prussia's example
and by 1853 most of the Brotherhood's clubs and the group's

infrastructure were broken up.1^ There remained only the
health and burial insurance groups, carefully supervised by
the state; a handful of workers' Bildungsvereine that
ostentatiously avoided anything remotely to do with politics,
^ I b i d ., pp. 42-43; Hugo Eckert, Liberal- oder Sozlal-

demokratie. Fruhgeschichte der Nflrnberger Arbeiterbewegung
(Stuttgart, 1968), pp. 27-43.
133
and the apolitical Turnervereine or gymnastic societies.
There settled across the Germanies what Hedwig Wachenheim

has called "the political night of the 1850's."15 It was
symbolically appropriate that during the 'Fifties the pub
lic funeral procession was one of the few legal ways in

which considerable numbers of workers could demonstrate
their group existence and sentiments.1^
It would be a mistake, however, to believe that the

German labor movement disappeared completely in the 1850's.
To be sure, many leaders emigrated or lost interest in the

movement. Moreover, members of the middle classes sympa
thetic to the workers were disappointed by the failure of

the Frankfurt Assembly and liberalism, and turned their
attention away from politics during the 1850's. The

economic upturn of the early 1850's and the new lease on
life given the guilds by government prolongation of their
privileges alleviated some of the economic problems that

had contributed to the revolution of 1848. Nevertheless,
Born's Brotherhood, though it scarcely lasted three years,
gave thousands of workers the experience of participating

in a nationwide organization complete with a central com
mittee and several newspapers. Apparently many participants
in the Brotherhood— artisans and "brain workers" alike—
^Wachenheim, Die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung. pp. 54ff.

■^Reichard, Crippled from Birth, p. 127.
134
retained many of their ideas of self-help, Bildung. and
cooperation during the decade after 1853. With the re

vival of interest in political and economic questions in
the early 1860's many of the same men who had been active
in the Brotherhood reappeared to refound their old clubs,
usually with the same principles and often with the same
names. For this reason it is possible to describe the
labor movement from 1853 to about 1860 as "informal" and

"latent" rather than non-existent.1^
The 1850's marked the beginning of significant ad

vances in German industrialization, particularly in the
Prussian Rhineland and in Saxony. The number of "factories"

grew rapidly, but these usually employed five or less
workers. The number of master artisans in Prussia declined
only slightly from 553,107 in 1852 to 545,034 six years

later. At the same time the number of journeymen and ap-
18
prentices rose from 447,502 to 507,198. In some regions,
as in wilrttemberg, artisans outnumbered factory workers in
the 1850's five to one. Nevertheless, journeymen artisans

continued to feel caught between the exclusivity of the
masters above them and the threat of proletarization from
17
'Schmierer, Von der Arbeiterbildung. pp. 43, 259.
18Hamerow, Restoration. Revolution. Reaction, p. 241.
135
19
■below. 7 The process of proletarization of journeymen must
not "be exaggerated. "Artisans did not so much become pro
letarians, but rather were absorbed into the factories
20
. . .»■ where they often retained their artisante titles
of master and journeymeh, and regarded themselves as better

than their unskilled and uneducated workmates. Real wages
for almost all workers seem to have risen during the first
seven years of the 'Fifties, and it was characteristic of

German workers during this period to agitate and strike for
higher wages. With the coming of an economic downswing in
1857 German workers became quiescent on the economic as
well as the political level.

But in 1859 political life in Germany revived in re
sponse to the Italian struggle for unification and the brief
war between Italy, Austria, and France. It was, of course,
members of the newspaper-reading liberal middle classes who

took most interest in the Austro-Italian conflict, for mapy
of them still hoped for the unification of Germany denied
them first in 1848/49 and then a year later by the Austrian

"humilitation" of Prussia at Olmtttz. Within Prussia itself
liberals, organized into the Progressive Party, tried to
assert their ability to challenge the king's exclusive
control of the budget and military spending. Thus the
19
^Wachenheim, Die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung. p. 55.
2QIbid.. p. 58.
136
years from 1859 until the advent of Otto von Bismarck as
Minister President in 1862 exhibited a great deal of politi
cal activity which contributed to the revival of workingmen’s

clubs in most of the German states.
As mentioned earlier, many of the old Brotherhood mem

bers participated in the creation of these new clubs. Not
surprisingly they were very similar to the earlier organiza

tions. They drew their membership from the ranks of master
and journeymen artisans, small shop-keepers, liberal-minded

clergymen and doctors. A typical example of one of these
’’Worker's Educational and Cultural Associations” was founded

in Nuremberg in 1861 with the assistance of the Progressive
Party. Its ideological similarity to Born's Brotherhood is
striking. The Nuremberg club declared its purpose to be the

provision of sociability and Bildung to its members in order
to "make /them7 reliable and effective heads of families and

men in the town and state,” and to produce a "sound middle
class" (kernguten Burgerstand).”21 Unmarried journeymen in
their early twenties made up the majority of the membership.
Obviously many of these young bachelors looked to the club

as a place to drink and talk with friends. But the exten
sive educational and cultural activities of the clubs clearly

indicate that the Gesellen still hoped to become independent
masters and gebildete Menschen as well. Thus the clubs in
21
Eckert, Liberal- oder Sozialdemokratie. p. 97.
137
Nuremberg provided night school courses on mechanical and
free hand drawing, applied geometry, physics and mechanics,

book-keeping, elementary law, health care, and the like.
A reading room supplied with twenty different newspapers
and magazines as well as a 500 volume library open until
eleven six nights a week satisfied the intellectual needs

of Nuremberg journeymen thirstier for knowledge than for
beer.22
A similar pattern emerged in the workers' clubs of
Stuttgart, where the introduction of Gewerbefreiheit early

in 1862 signalled the government's relaxation of prohibi
tions against all but the most innocuous organizations dur
ing the 1850's. In 1863 the Stuttgart Arbeiterbildungsverein

already provided its eager members with weekly lectures on
Johan Kepler and his family, Benjamin Franklin, book-keeping,
the history of the Jesuits, and more. J Until late in the
1860's most of these "cultural societies" avoided all but

the most academic interest in politics, for politics, let
alone political change, was not their raison d'etre. In the
words of a recent student of the vrtlrttemberg labor movement

in the 1860's and 1870's, "working men did not regard them
selves /in the mid-1860's7 as a particular class opposed to
22Ibid., pp. 111-13.

23
^Schmierer, Von der Arbeiterbildung, p. 59, n.71.
138
the rest of society. In wflrttemberg the declared aim of
the labor movement was the integration of the worker into
the existing bourgeois society, whose life and status norms

were accepted without question. Corresponding to these
ideas, /the clubjj7 regarded tnemselves as forces for reform

and rejected every revolutionary point."2*
-Obviously most of the same attitudes held by members
of Born's Brotherhood in 1850 survived among the proud
craftsmen who joined the new clubs of the 1860's. But not
all of the clubs during that decade avoided political issues.
In a speech delivered to the Leipzig Arbeiterverein in 1862
a shoemaker, Julius Vahlteich, called for the introduction

of universal and equal suffrage. When the members of the
club proved indifferent to his message, Vahlteich organized

the Vorwflrts club which devoted a great deal of attention
to economic and political questions, particularly to those
arising from the Prussian constitutional conflict.
Vahlteich hoped to organize local worker's clubs into

a national organization rather like Born's Brotherhood.
More a democrat than a socialist, Vahlteich sought to asso
ciate his Vorwflrts group with the liberal, middle-class
2Îbid., pp. 259-60. In mid-Victorian England the

adult education movement was also designed to remake its
working class students in the middle class image. See the
excellent study by J.E.C. Harrison, Learning and Living
1790-1960. A Study in the History of the English*"Adult
Education Movement (Toron-fco, 1961), especially pp. 38-89.
139
Nationalverein, an organization concerned with political
reform. In 1863 one of the leaders of the Nationalverein.
the journalist and liberal politician Schulze-Delitsch,
visited Leipzig and advised Vahlteich’s club members to

forget about politics and devote themselves to their educa
tional self-help programs. The Nationalverein refused to
accept workingmen as members. Convinced that workers would

have to organize their own political movement, Vahlteich
asked Ferdinand Lassalle in February, 1863 to draw up a

program for a new type of worker's movement and, if possible,
to assume leadership of the movement himself. In a letter to
Lassalle, Vahlteich and other representatives of the Leipzig
Vorwllrts group declared that "we find in Germany but one man,
who we think capable of such a difficult task, only one man
to whom we can give our complete trust, /and to whom7 we are

ready to subordinate our movement as leader. That one man
is you."2**
The subject of this effusive confidence, Ferdinand
Lassalle, was a rather unlikely leader for a labor movement.

The son of a Jewish merchant, Lassalle was born in Breslau
ifa 1825, and later studied philosophy in the universities

of his native city and Berlin. From early in life lassalle
2^Reichard, Crippled from Birth, pp. 131-33. The

standard biography is Herman 6ncken, Lassalle. Zwischen
Marx und Bismarck. 5th edition (Berlin, 1966), now supple
mented by -bhe massive Shlomo Na'aman, Lassalle (Hanover,
1970), esp. pp. 590-788.
140
regarded himself as a man with a mission, even though for

a long time he could not decide what that mission was.
After toying with the idea of becoming a Jewish nationalist
and the leader of his people, Lassalle found a more tangible
cause working as legal counsel to Countess Sophie von

Hatzfeldt whose divorce from her husband was a cause celebre
before its successful conclusion in 1854. Thereafter the
Countess remained an important source of money for Lassalle,

particularly when he began organizing his workers1 movement
in 1865/64. Before Vahlteich's group called on him,

Lassalle devoted himself to various writings in philosophy
and journalism, writings which earned him a reputation as

a radical democrat. He met Karl Marx-'in the late 1850's
and travelled in left-of-center intellectual groups. His

friendship with Sophie von Hatzfeldt helped make him a
wealthy man who enjoyed thoroughly bourgeois tastes and
habits, but these facts did not deter the Leipzig Vorwflrts
group from offering him the leadership of a new workers'
organization.
The Vorw&rts club had good reasons for making their

offer to Lassalle. Rejected by the middle-class National-
verein, Vahlteich wanted to create a political organization
made up of workingmen concerned about politics, not just
Bildung and weekly lectures on astronomy. Rejected by the

middle-class, workers might have to create their own polit
ical movement. This, in fact, had been the thrust of a
141
speech made hy Lassalle to a Berlin artisan group in April,
1862. He suggested that workers might have to disavow their
usual patrons and associates in the Progressive Party and
go their own way. The offer from the Leipzig group must
have struck Lassalle as a chance to lead the workers Gnto
this new path himself.

Lassalle accepted the offer of Vahlteich1s group and
revealed his ideological position in a published Open Answer.

There he argued that because wage increases would always be
outrun by rises in prices in a capitalist society, standards
of living for workers could not rise above the subsistence
level. As an escape from this ’’iron law of wages,” Lassalle

suggested the creation of state-funded producers' coopera
tives which would eventually replace capitalism. This, of

course, was Stephen Born's position, now made more impres
sive by Lassalle's use of economic analysis and phrases

that smacked of the Communist Manifesto. The old problem
of who was to supply the capital to found the cooperatives

remained unsolved, although Lassalle, like Born before
him, obviously expected the state to play the role of bene

factor. He argued that the various German states would only
grant the necessary capital after workers had fought for and
achieved universal male suffrage. With the vote, the work

ing class could organize its own party, win control of the
legislatures, and vote the coops into existence. Hence

Lassalle's Open Letter called upon German workers to
142
"organize yoursxlves as an all-German workers’ association

for the purpose of a legal and peaceful, yet untiring, un
relenting agitation for the introduction of universal

direct suffrage in all German states. Prom the moment when
this association includes hut 100,000 workers, it will al

ready he a force with which everyone must reckon."2*’
lassalle’s organization never included 100,000 workers.
Indeed, during the months from May, 1865 when lassalle’s

General German Workers' league came into heing until his
death as the result of a duel in August, 1864, the league
grew to only 4,000 members, concentrated in leipzig, Barmen,
Solingen, Dttsseldorf, and Hamburg. Despite the small size

of his_organization and the brevity of his own term of
leadership, lassalle's influence on the German labor move
ment in the 1860's and after should not be underestimated.
He had been asked by a worker's organization without any
distinct ideology or firm plan for political action to be

come its leader and organizer, lassalle did so, and con
vinced many German workers that they had the right, in fact
the duty, to participate in politics independently, free
from the tutelage of their mentors in the middle-class

Progressive Party. Perhaps that is the most important
positive feature of his career in the German labor movement.
On the negative side, lassalle's residual Hegelianism
of.
Reichard, Crippled from Birth, p. 148.
143
prevented him from being very critical of the state, even
of Bismarck's state. In fact, although his relationship

with the future Iron Chancellor is subject to various inter
pretations, it appears that Lassalle hoped that his Workers'

League could agitate for democracy and universal suffrage
rather as the English Anti-Corn Law League had done against
the grain tariffs. In this interpretation Lassalle appar

ently hoped that Bismarck would play the role of a Prussian
27
Peel, a conservative carrying out liberal reforms. Al
though Bismarck may have toyed with this idea early in the
1860's, he was too wily a politican to be taken in by

Lassalle's complimentary logic. Nevertheless, Lassalle
never gave up the idea of a "social monarchy" which would
aid the workers in their struggle for political and social

justice. Lassalle's successors in the SPD abandoned any
hope for a "social monarchy," but it is possible to argue
that the party's ideology remained marked by the state

socialism that colored Lassalle's thought.
After the death of Lassalle his German Workers' League
continued to grow, particularly under the leadership of
Johann von Schweitzer, editor of the League newspaper
Social-Demokrat and, after 1867, president of the League
itself. Even more pro-Bismarck than Lassalle had been,
Schweitzer was also a better organizer. By 1868 the number
2^Na'aman, Lassalle, p. 586.
144
of dues-paying members in the League reached 8,000, most
of them concentrated in the west and northwest German states.
In the elections held early in 1867 for the assembly of the
North Germanic Confederation, the Lassallean group ran

twenty candidates and secured 40,000 votes. However, only
von Schweitzer got enough votes to win a seat for Barmen-
Elberfeld.
Despite the existence of the Lassallean "party" and
its growth under Schweitzer, the great majority of German
artisans in the 1860's continued to regard middle-class
liberals as their natural allies and representatives in

politics. For this majority the various Workmen's Educa
tional Societies remained the places where they could enjoy

the company of their fellows, read, sing in the club choir,
and listen to lectures on cultural and practical subjects.
In June, 1863 representatives of many of these educational
societies gathered at Frankfurt am Main and organized the

Union of German Workens' and Educational Societies (Verband
deutscher Arbeiter- und Bildungsvereine. VDAV).28
Drawing much of its membership from Saxony and other

non-Prussian states, the VDAV actually was prussophobe and
favored a united, liberal, federal German state with par
liamentary government. The VDAV included in its ranks such
28
in Germ_____________
145
democratic scholars as the historian of materialism,
Friedrich Lange and the young master wood-worker, August

Behel, later the longtime head of the SPD. Although Bebel,
an omnivorous reader and autodidact, appreciated the edu

cational functions of the VDAV, he and his friend, Wilhelm
Liebknecht, a journalist, descendant of a respected academic
family, and friend of Karl Marx, were interested in giving

29
the Saxon branches of the VDAV a more political cast.
In the mid-1860's many of the south German artisan
members of the VDAV gave their political support to the
People*s Party or Volksnartei. which supported the unifica

tion of Germany into a democratic, non-dynastic state. In
1866 Bebel and Liebknect formed an affiliate of the

Volkspartel. the Saxon People's Party. Like the parent
organization, Bebel*s party was liberal and anti-Prussian,

indeed its opposition to the creation of a unified Germany
dominated by Bismarck's Prussia was perhaps its chief
ideological component. However, Bebel and Liebknect were
also concerned with the "social problem," and addressed
themselves to the problems faced by artisans threatened by
^ There exist no adequate biographies for either

Liebknecht or Bebel. But see August Bebel, Aus meinem
Leben (Berlin, 1961; orig. pub. 1913) for these early years.
Also Gustav Mayer., "Die trennung der proletarischen von der
bflrgerlichen Demokratie in Deutschland, 1863-1870," Archiv
fflr die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewe«un«
TKipiTgTTSisTrir:------------------------------------------------
146
the growing competition of factory labor. While the Volks-

partei agitated for political democracy, Bebel's Saxon
party called for ”social democracy.” A rift opened between
the liberal democrats of the Volkspartei and its Saxon
affiliate.
The rift did not appear over night. For some time
Bebel's party had no distinct ideological program to set it
apart from the Volkspartei or, for that matter, the

lassallean groups of northern Germany. Bebel and Liebknecht
soon found a program ready to hand in the theoretical posi
tion of the International Workingmen's Association, the
First International.30 At its 1868 convention, Bebel's

Saxon People's Party accepted the basic formulations of the
First International, most of which agreed with precepts al
ready held by members of the party: the need for interna
tional cooperation among workers; the principle that the

emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the
working class itself; that the aims of the labor movement

must be socialist, not simply reformist; and a fourth con
cept that gradually gained strength during the 1870's, i.e.,

that the truth of socialist doctrines and their ultimate
realization had been conclusively proved in the writings of

Karl Marx.-*1
3°See Roger Morgan, The German Social Democrats and the

First International 1864-T572 tCambridge, 196$). pp. .
31Ibid., pp. 132-34.
147
Although it is likely that most of the rank and file
members of Bebel's party did not understand very muoh about
the socialist part of their platform or the implications
of associating with the First International, apparently

liberals in the Volkspartei did. These Volkspartei liber
als regarded the First International, with its conglomerate
membership of trade unionists, Proudhonist mutualists,
radical democrats, "Marxists," and anarchists, as a danger

ous revolutionary socialist organization. The First Inter
national confirmed the worst suspicions of liberals all over
Europe in 1869 when it voted at its Basle conference in
favor of nationalization of land in a future socialist
society. Although it could be argued that this was only a

theoretical position, no one could deny that Bebel's party
had linked itself to an international group espousing com
munism. The gap between Bebel and his former oolleagues in
the Volkspartei widened still more.
In 1869 Bebel's group disassociated itself ffom the

Volkspartei. At the party's annual meeting in Eisenach,
the Saxon People's Party renamed itself the Social Democratic

Labor Party. The "Eisenachers" soon began to compete with
the Lassalleans of northern Germany for the political sup
port of workers. Although the Eisenachers were far more
critical of Prussia, there was a good deal of similarity
between both groups in economic policies. Like the
Lassalleans, Bebel's group advocated "state advancement
148
of the cooperative system and state credit for voluntary
productive cooperatives with democratic guarantees."32

Bebel's Social Democratic Labor Party insisted that
there could be little hope for the cooperatives or workers'

rights in general until Germany became a democratic Volks-
staat. The unification of Germany in 1871 under Prussian

hegemony made the creation of a "peoples' state" highly
problematical, In the meantime, social democrats had an
important task to carry out. In the words of Vernon Lidtke,

Bebel felt that "the party had to undertake to 'enlighten
the masses' about their social and political conditions.
On this educational task Bebel put great emphasis through
out his life; it was as if he never completely dropped the
assumptions of the educational societies."33 This is an

important observation, for while Bebel, Liebknecht, and
others might spend a great deal of time hammering out

ideological positions early in the 1870's, the majority
of their constituents continued to participate in a variety

of local Workingmens' Educational Societies. What kinds of
social ideas and educational activities prevailed at the

local level in the 1870's?
Unfortunately no satisfactory answer can be given to

this question given the present paucity of knowledge about
32Lidtke, The Outlawed Party. p. 30.

33Ibid., p. 32.
149
the local affairs of the labor movement in the years immedi
ately after German unification. It is known that some clubs

provided courses for political organizers, celebrations of
Lassalle's birthday, as well as theater presentations of

Schiller's Die Rftuber and Lassalle's drama Sioklngen. In
addition, clubs organized concerts, reading circles, and
encouraged the formation of consumers' cooperatives.^ Al
though these clubs now addressed themselves explicitly to

social and political questions, they still retained the
eqrlier artisanate emphasis on Bildung and education. In

the sense that the clubs performed a cultural role in trying
to provide their members with the education denied them by

the state, they can be interpreted as means whereby workers
were partially integrated into German society at large. J
More will be said on this integrative role later in a dis
cussion of the re-appearance of socialist clubs in 1890

after the end of the anti-socialist laws.
The unification of Germany in 1871 forced the

Eisenachers to accept Prussian domination as an established
fact. This acceptance helped smooth the way for a union of

Bebel'8 party, and Schweitzer's General German Workers'
^Wachenheim, Pis deutsche Arbelterbewegung. p. 150.
•^Guenther Roth, The Social Democrats in Imperial

Germany. A Study in Working-Class Isolation and National
Integration (totowa, N.J., 1 9 6 3 ) , pp. 221-52.
150
Association at a meeting in Gotha in 1875.^ The united
group, calling itself the Social Democratic Workers' Party,
worked out a compromise program that would appeal to both
Lassalleans and Eisenachers. /The program reaffirmed the

desire for state financed producers' cooperatives, though
by 1875 Bebel believed that Bismarck would never approve
such expenditures^ The program also announced that the

Social Democrats would pursue the creation of a "free
state" based on the principles of political democracy. It
is characteristic of German Social Democracy at the time of
the Gotha program that the term "free state" should be used
when a democratic republic was what the party desired. The
reason for using such a euphemism seems to have been the

fear that to use terminology reminiscent of the Paris Com
mune would only invite state repression of the Party. This
was neither the first hor the last time that Social Demo
cratic theory and practice were objectively determined by
the actions or expected actions of police and state author
ities.
This is not to accuse the Social Democrats of cowardice.

Men like Liebknecht and Bebel had paid for their opposition
to the Pranco-Prussian war in prison. Furthermore, within

the rigid authoritarian framework of the Bismarckian consti
tution and German society, the program of working for a
56lidtke, The Outlawed Party, pp. 43-52.
151
democratic "free state" was, after all, revolutionary.
But the Social Democrats rejected violent revolution. The
defeat of the Paris Commune and memories of 1848 led most
German socialists to conclude that armed revolt was not a

viable route to power, at least for the foreseeable future.
So the Social Democrats carried on their educational tasks

and also pursued its aims peacefully by electing representa
tives to the Reichstag. So successful were they that by

1877 Social Democratic candidates received 493,447 votes,
37
nearly ten per cent of the total cast.
Unfortunately, power in Bismarck's Germany could not
be reckoned in votes cast or even seats held, for the

Reichstag1s powers were limited and subordinate to those of
the Kaiser, the Chancellor, and the Upper House. Vote-
getting might comfort some Social Democrats that their

movement was "progressing," but others were pessimistic
about participation in government. In fact, the Social

Democratic Party suffered from what Vernon lidtke aptly
calls "ambivalent parliamentarism," that is, the desire to
avoid revolt and work within the government at the same time
believing that Social Democrats in the Reichstag would be
helpless to effect any real change in German society or

the Imperial constitution.
However the Social Democrats may have felt, Bismarck
37Ibid.. p. 54.
152
regarded the growing popular support for Social Democracy
as a threat to his notion of how German government and
society operated. It so happened that Bismarck's perception
of“this threat coincided with his intended political shift
to the right and the introduction of protective tariffs on

food imports. To prepare the groundwork for these changes
and also deal with the Social Democrats, Bismarck sought to
split the liberals and Progressives within the Reichstag.

The opportunity to put these various plans into action came
in May, 1878 when two unsuccessful attempts were made on
the life of Kaiser Wilhelm I.
Bismarck accused the Social Democrats of being con
nected with these attacks and introduced a set of anti

socialist laws in the Reichstag. Although the Social Demo
crats resolutely denied any knowledge or approval of the
attacks on the Kaiser, and even though many non-socialist
liberals opposed laws severely restricting the civil liber

ties of the SPD, the anti-socialist legislation cleared the
Reichstag on October 19, 1878. These laws became operative
forty-eight hours later and remained in force for the next

twelve years.
The anti-socialist laws had a profound effect on the

future development of German Social Democracy. They gave
German state and local governments the right to abolish
any societies and clubs they regarded as "social-democratic,

socialistic, or communistic." In order to prevent the
153
spread of socialist ideas local authorities were empowered
to dissolve any meetings which they interpreted as
"socialist-inspired." After 1878 policemen attended all
public SPD meetings and had the power to dissolve them on

the spot if they felt that it was in the "public interest"
to do so. Social Democratic newspapers and journals were

suppressed as local governments invoked a form of martial
law in areas known to have SPD sympathies. Largely to salve

the conscience of Liberals, the anti-socialist laws permit
ted the SPD to run candidates for public office. Over the
next dozen years this had the effect of concentrating in

terest within the SPD in political affairs and power into
the hands of the Reichstag members of the Party.

The anti-socialist laws practically destroyed the SPD
infrastructure during the first year of their application.
Local organizations and newspapers disappeared by the

dozens. But in 1879 the party's chief newspaper, the
Sozialdemokrat. reappeared in Zurich from where it was
smuggled into Germany through an elaborate system of con
spirators who remind one very much of early Christians

secretly practicing their religion in a hostile society.
If it did nothing else this rote Peldnost helped to preserve
Social Democracy at the local level where it circulated
newspapers and pamphlets among the faithful.
Under the anti-socialist laws the local activities of

the SPD were carried on by various non-political
154
organizations— choral societies, gymnastic groups, smoking
and other entertainment clubs. Cultural activities also
continued, but political discussions which might reach the
ears of the police could lead to immediate suppression.

Nevertheless clandestine electoral activities continued in
the Pachvereine. These were groups of craftsmen rather

like the trade unions which were also forbidden by the anti
socialist laws. The ffachvereine tried to get out the SPD

vote for Reichstag elections and also maintain some on
going political organization at the local level. After the

introduction of Sickness Insurance in 1883 Social Democratic
members of the Paohvereine could use the local freie

Hllfskassen as fronts for their activities.38
Recovering from the first onslaughts of the new laws,
a number of Social Democrats gathered at Wyden Castle in

Switzerland in August, 1880 to regroup and reorganize the
SPD. The meeting decided that the Reiohstagfraktion of

the SPD should be the party*s official representative in
Germany; that periodic congresses should be held outside

Germany to discuss theory and strategy; and arranged a
system of collecting contributions for the SPD.
In spite of the anti-socialist laws the SPD continued
to increase its electoral strength. In the 1884 Reichstag
elections 549,999 votes (9.71# of the total) were cast for
38Ibid., pp. 100-104.
155
the Party which now held twenty-four seats. The SPD was
no longer just a protest movement, hut a parliamentary
political party. Within the SPD Reiohstagfraktion itself
there continued to he a dispute between moderates who re

garded participation in parliamentary affairs as a useful
way to achieve some benefits for working people, and radi

cals who denounced the Reichstag activities in theory, hut
continued to participate, regarding parliament as a useful
forum from which to address the people. Anarchist social

ists, like Johann Most, argued that SPD participation in
the government amounted to collaborating in the self

repression of the socialist movement. When the SPD held
its conference at St. Gall in October, 1887, the anarchists,
incensed by the murder of the Haymarket rioters, demanded
that the SPD end its political activities in the Reichstag.

Afraid of being tarred with an anarchist brush, the major
ity rejected the violence and individual actions called for
by Most and decided to remain "ambivalent parliamentarians."

Indeed, the SPD was to remain ambivalent about the role of
socialist action in the Reichstag right into the Weimar

Republic of the 1920»e.
These disputes were temporarily shelved in 1890, the

annus mlrabile of the Social Democratic Party. In the elec
tions held that year the party won 1,427,298 votes— nearly
twenty percent of the total cast— and thirty-five Reichstag

seats. The SPD was now the largest popular party in Germany,
156
although voting districts which remained unchanged since

1867 left them under-represented in the German parliament.
Just as important, Otto von Bismarck retired in 1890 after
a number of disagreements with the young Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Anxious to win the support of the working class, the Kaiser
announced his intention to introduce labor legislation
designed to protect the life and improve the working condi
tions of workers. Most important of all, Wilhelm allowed
the anti-socialist laws to lapse. The SPD could once again

operate openly as a political, cultural, and social organ
ization.
What was the newly-legalized SPD like after twelve

years in the wilderness? As a political organization it
still appealed to and consisted of a "nominally Protestant,
relatively skilled working class supplemented by a small
•30
number of middle-class i n t e l l e c t u a l s . I n an article
published in 1906, Robert Michels, a socialist fast becom

ing disenchanted by the growing bureaucratization of the
SPD, claimed that the membership of the SPD oame from "the
elite of the industrial working class," that is, metal- and

woodworkers, painters, plasterers, tailors and shoemakers,
who took considerable pains to distinguish themselves from
unskilled workers and the Lumpenproletariat.^ Among the
^Roth, The Social Democrats, p. 257.
*°Robert Michels, "Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie.
157
Reichstagsfraktlon of the SPD Michele detected even clearer
signs of the middle class character of the SPD. He declared
that between 75 and 80 per cent of the SPD Reichstag mem
bers in 1903 were former skilled workers, artisans, and

"proletarianized petit-bourgeois.”41 Although Michels'
personal feelings probably colored his conclusions, it is
clear that most of the national SPD leadership were in fact
men who had risen from skilled artisanate origins to posi

tions of political prominence through the party. The long
time leader of the SPD, August Bebel, is only the best-
known representative of this group.
Another essential characteristic of the SPD in 1890

was the importance and authority of the Reichstagsfraktlon
within the party. Twelve years of restricted activity at

the local and L&nder levels meant that public attention and
a good deal of power focused on the SPD members of the
Reichstag. During the years of state repression the voices

of Bebel and other socialists in Reichstag debates consti
tuted the only legal public statements of the SPD in
Germany. After 1890 the statements and policy positions of

these parliamentary socialists continued to carry great
weight within the party.
40(Contd.) Parteimitgliedschaft und soziale

Zusammensetzung," Arohiv fflr Sozlalwissenschaft und Sozlal-
•polltlk. XXIII (1906), pp7Tl2-l4.
41Ibid.. p. 527.
158
Of equal Importance, perhaps, were the conclusions
drawn by these leaders from the dozen years under the

anti-socialist laws. Chief among these was the belief
that a nominal compliance with the anti-socialist laws and
a strict rejection of violence by the SPD had contributed

to the suspension of those laws in 1890. Once the laws had
lapsed leaders of the SPD were fearful that revolutionary

rhetoric or threats of violence on the part of socialists
might lead to the reintroduction of Bismarck's anti

socialist legislation. Convinced that social democracy
would ultimately triumph in Germany, most SPD leaders
counseled moderation, and the pursuit of power through
parliamentary political channels. The threat of renewed
repression of the SPD was real in the 1890's and if one

bears in mind the many restrictions still imposed on so
cialists (particularly in Prussia) the caution of the SPD
42
leaders becomes understandable.
Given the cautiousness of its leaders and the pos

sibility of renewed state persecution, it is at first sight
surprising to discover that at its second post-anti-
socialist law party conference at Erfurt in 1891 the SPD

revised its old Gotha program and declared itself to be a
"Marxist" socialist party. In order to understand what
this declaration meant, it is necessary to interrupt the
42
^ See Gerhard Ritter, Die Arbelterbewegung im Vilhel-
minischen Rdich (Berlin, 1959)•
159
narrative of party history and examine SPD ideology before
1890 particularly stressing the reception of Marxism by

German socialists during the period of the Anti-Socialist
Laws.
Luring the period before the passage of the anti-
socialist laws in 1878, German Social Democracy might be

called a movement in search of an ideology. There certain
ly was no party "line," and one is struck by the eclectic
fashion in which Social Democrats drew together a number of

ideas and philosophies which can better be called a Weltan
schauung than an ideology. Looking baok on these early

years even an intellectual like Eduard Bernstein was able
to write that "I was an eclectic, like most of us probably,

radical democrat with socialistic tendencies."^
Ferdinand Lassalle had died without producing a systematic
exposition of his ideas, and all but a handful of Social

Democrats were ignorant of Marx's writings or inoapable
of appreciating them.
Even the leaders of the "Marxist" Eisenach party,
Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, can only be described

as "Marxists" in the broadest sense in the early 1870's.
Thanks to his long association with Marx and Engels during
A rt
Quoted in Hans-Josef Steinberg, Sozialismus und
deutsohe Sozialdemokratie. Zur Ideologic der Partel vor
dem I. tfeitkrieg (Hanover. 1367 ) t p. 15 • Steinberg's
book~"is an excellent and indispensable study of SPD
ideology.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p rohibited w ith o u t perm ission.
160
his exile In England, the Eisenachers regarded Liehknecht
as the Marxist theoretician of the party. Recalling his

early contaots with the Social Democrats, Karl Kautsky
later wrote that the notion "Marx is Allah, and Liehknecht
is his prophet" was widespread among German socialists.
44
It soon developed, however, that the prophet's knowledge
of Marxism was superficial. In any case, Idebknecht's in
terest in theoretical matters was almost always secondary

45
to his organizational and political activities.
Like Liehknecht, August Bebel's ideology prior to 1878

was largely the product of his experiences as a political
agitator and party organizer. As early as 1864 Bebel tried

in vain to work his way through Marx's Critique of Political
Economy and it was only during a stay in jail in 1869 that
he read the first volume of Capital.*** In the early 1870's

Bebel's "Marxism" apparently consisted of his conviction
that the capitalist economic and social order was doomed to
collapse, a conviction reinforced by the onset of the de

pression of 1873.*^ Bebel's later flirtation with the
anti-marxist socialism of Eugen Dllhring would indioate that
**Karl Kautsky, Erlnnerungen und Brflrterrungen. edited

by Bendikt Kautsky (The Hague, 1960), p. y/4.
*^Steinberg, Sozialismus. pp. 13-14.
***Bebel, Aus meinem Leben, p. 131.

*^Steinberg, Sozialismus. pp. 18-19.
161
his understanding or acceptance of Marxism was by no means
complete before 1878.
Among rank and file Social Democrats Marx's version

of materialist scientific (i.e., non-ethical) socialism
found even fewer followers than among the leaders. Lassalle's

writings continued to exert great influence throughout the
1870's and even after, for that matter. His political ideas
on democracy were easy to understand and his ideas on social

justice were more comprehensible than Marx's "scientific''
socialism. Writing early in the 20th Century Julius

Vahlteich summarized what must have been the feeling of
many Social Democrats in the 1870's:
Our knowledge of the realm of economics was

slight. We knew nothing about constant and
variable capital and we were not privy to the
deep secret of capital accumulation. But we
knew very well that capital and the capital
ists were our enemies, and we also knew that
we could only overcome them through the develop
ment of power, through organization. We knew
nothing about relative value and a hundred other
economic categories . . . but we were certain in
the conviction that we had been betrayed and
robbed by the owners and that the laws had been
made to sanction their way of doing things.48
Although German Social Democracy later came to accept
Marxist socialism because it was proved "scientifically"
that capitalism was doomed by its own inherent contradic
tions, it is likely that many of the people who called
Julius Vahlteich, in Die Grundi der deutschen

Laldemokratie. Bine FestscErixt aer LelfzieeF
iTpziger Arbelter
TrrSTariîre. 25cTe31tibn'(Leipilg, x aTft.T)V
TTpP.-^r
162
themselves Social Democrats did so because they were con

vinced that socialism was ethically superior to capitalism.
A further indication of the eclecticism and the ide
ological fluidity of the SPD in the 1870*s can be seen in

the influence of the theories of Eugen Dtihring within the
p a r ty.^ A blind former Privatdozent at the University of
Berlin, Dflhring lost his academic position as a result of
writing a number of books on political economy and phil

osophy in the 1860’s and 1870's that became increasingly
socialistic. One of his books in particular, the Cursus der
National- und Sozlalflkonomle (1873), was well received by
Bebel, Bernstein, and a number of other leading Social
Democrats. Taking force, rather than economics, as the

fundamental determining factor in history, Dflhring developed
an attack on the existing state and social order similar
in many ways to that of anarchism. It is indicative of

the level of Marxism of Bebel and Bernstein in the mid-
1870's that they could not see that Dflhring's version of
socialism was fundamentally different from and opposed to
that of Marx. Dilhring’s willingness to describe in some

detail a future "sooietary social order" without private
property and based on "equal reciprocity" undoubtedly
struck a responsive chord in the minds of many Social
^ S e e Peter Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism

(New York, 1952), pp. 94--105; LldtEe. q?he Outlawed Party.
pp. 61-62.
163
Democrats for whom speculation about the Zukunftsstaat was
a favorite pastime.'*®
Oddly enough, it was Marx's "prophet," Wilhelm liehknecht,
who took it on himself to urge Engels to write a refutation

of Duhring's theories.^1 After some hesitation, Engels
agreed to write a series of articles criticizing Dtthring
which were published in the SPD's Berlin newspaper, Vorwarts.
between January, 1877, and July, 1878. In the latter month

the articles appeared in book form with the title Herr
Eugen Dfthrlng's Revolution in Science, usually referred to

as the Antl-Dtihring. Even though the book was suppressed
in Germany during the period of the anti-socialist laws,
it circulated "underground" among party intellectuals and
had a profound influence on German Social Democracy, one
that is difficult to exaggerate. For those who found Marx's
writings incomprehensible or at least very difficult to
understand, Engels' Antl-Dflhring provided a brief, lucid

exposition of the "correct" Marxist position on socialism.
Lest anyone doubt that the Anti-Dflhring represented that
position, Engels wrote in his introduction to the second,
1885, edition
^°Steinberg, Sozialismus. pp. 22-23.

^ I b i d . ; Lidtke, !Ehe Outlawed Party, p. 62. n. 36;
Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Ifengels (flhe hague, 1934), II,
283-84.
164
I must note In passing that Inasmuch as the mode
of outlook expounded In this hook was founded and
developed In far greater measure by Marx, and
ohly in an insignificant degree by myself, it was
self-understood between us that this exposition
of mine should not be issued without his knowledge.
I read the whole manuscript to him before it was
printed, and the tenth chapter of the part on eco
nomics . . . was written by M a r x . 52
The publication of the Anti-Dflhring in 1878 marks the

real beginning of the acceptance of Marxism as the basic
ideology of the SPD. In an undated manuscript preserved

in his Nachlass. Bernstein who first read the Anti-Dflhring
in 1879, wrote about his "recollection of that forbidden,

wonderfully compelling book of Engels’ . • . that at that
time opened the way in party circles for understanding the

53
hitherto little understood intellectual world of Marxism.
Kautsky read Engels' book in 1880 and later wrote that no
other book ever contributed so much to the understanding

of Marxism as the Anti-Dflhring.^ Speaking of the impact
of the book on himself, Kautsky later recalled that "all
the remains of eclecticism fell away from me. I became a
convinced and determined Marxist and remain so to the
^Friedrich Engels, Anti-gflhring (Moscow, 1969),

pp. 13-14. Oddly enough, Engels neglected to mention this
collaboration in the introduction to the first edition of
this book.
•^Quoted in Steinberg, Sozialismus. pp. 22-23.
^Benedikt Kautsky, ed., Friedrich Engels' Brief-
wechsel mit Karl Kautsky (Vienna, 1^55), pT 4.
165
55
present day."^'
How is the influence of the Anti-Dflhring on German
Social Democracy to he explained? Obviously one reason is
that there already existed before its appearance tremendous

respect for Marx's ideas among the leadership of the SPD,
even if that respect was not based on a very clear under
standing of Marxism. Engels' exposition of Marxist social
ism was brief, clear, and free of the burden of economic

and philosophic analysis that made, for example, Capital
so difficult for most Social Democrats. Moreover, it was
not necessary to read the Anti-Dflhring in its entirety to

grasp Engels' exposition of socialism. Two portions of
the book in particular, "Introduction," and "Socialism,"
discussed Marxist theory in relatively simple language,
stressing its differences from and superiority to other
forms of socialist thought. These chapters later appeared

in a pamphlet titled Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
which enjoyed a wide circulation in German, as well as in

English and French translations.
Another reason for the influence of the Anti-Dflhring.

and a more important one for understanding the ideology of
German Social Democracy, stems from Engels' remarkable
presentation of Marxism in a scientific, particularly a
Darwinian, framework. A generation of Social Democrats
55
^Kautsky, Erinnerungen. p. 437.
166
who had heard lectures in workingmen's clubs on the wonders
of chemistry and the discoveries of Darwin found a clever

mixture of science and socialism in the Anti-Dflhring.
There they read that capitalism led to increasing wealth
at one pole of society and increasing misery, slavery, and
ignorance at the other, proletarian, pole. "And to expect
any other division of the products of the capitalistic mode
of production is the same as expecting the electrodes of a

battery not to decompose acidulated water, not to liberate
oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at the negative pole, so

56
long as they are connected to the battery."^ "The enor
mous expansive force of m o d e m industry," Engels "compared
with that of g a s e s . H e r e was Marxist materialism in a
form understandable to any Social Democrat with a smatter

ing of chemistry and physics! Engels also drew on biology
in his discussion of the growing competition between nation
states and capitalists:

Advantages in natural or artificial conditions
of production now decide the existence or non
existence of individual capitalists, as well as
of whole industries and countries. He that falls
is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian
struggle of the individual for existence trans
ferred from nature to society with intensified
violence.58
Êngels, Anti-Dflhring. p. 326.

57 Ibid.
58Ibid., p. 324.
167
Social Democrats for whom Capital remained a closed hook
discovered in the Anti-Dflhring that Darwinism, which per
vaded much of their thought-world already, offered impor
tant insights into theoretical socialism. In the words of
Hans-Josef Steinberg
The fact that Engels closely connected the
teachings of evolution with Marxism and /Tn
his book on the Origin of the Pamily7 also
gave Marxism a prehistoric basis in the
theories of /liewis Henr^7 Morgan which were
also conditioned by Darwinism, was of de
cisive importance for the understanding of
Marxism within German Social Democracy, for
through /Engels' writings7 the way was opened
for a darwinian interpretation of Marxism in
the German party, and there are good reasons
for the assumption that Marxism was only ac
ceptable in this form for a generation steeped
in the teachings of evolution.59
Not the writings of Darwin as such, but rather those
of popularizers of his thought, like Ernst Haeckel and
others, were instrumental in spreading concepts explicit
in Darwin's theories (the struggle for existence, the sur

vival of the fittest, and natural selection) and also the
central concept implied by Darwin, i.e., the idea of
progress and improvement through evolution.^0 As early as
^Steinberg, Sozialismus. p. 44.

60These general ideas were not only held by intel
lectuals alone. Por the story of a young German brick-
maker's transition from Catholicism to Social Democracy
see Nikolaus Osterroth, Vom Beter zum Kflmpfer (Berlin,
1920). The vehicle of tETs transition was the widely read
pamphlet by Prof. A. Dodel-Port, Moses Oder Darwin? 11th
edition (Stuttgart, 1911; orig. pub. 18&5).
168
1865, in his widely read Arbelterfrage, Albert Lange al

ready suggested that the economic hardships suffered by
the working class were the social equivalent of the struggle
for existence in nature. Later Social Democratic writers

like August Bebel carried the analogy farther and argued
that the class struggle in human society was the equivalent
of the struggle between species in nature.^1

In the early 1870's articles began to appear in Social
Democratic newspapers which argued that the teachings of

both Darwin and Marx proved that mankind was evolving to
ward a "higher," "more favored" level. Karl Kautsky, who
was to emerge as the SPD's leading orthodox Marxist theo

rist in the 1890's, began his intellectual career as a
Darwinian materialist and during the mid-1870's produced
a number of writings on the application of Darwinism to
Steinberg, Sozialismus. pp. 45-53. Marx's own re

action to Darwinism was somewhat ambiguous. Although he
wrote to Lassalle on January 16, 1861 that The Origin of
Speoies provided "a basis in natural science for tneclass
struggle in history," he seems to have been more impressed
by the "mortal blow to 'teleology* in natural science"
he supposed Darwin's work to be. The distinction was not
one likely to have made much of an impression on Social
Democrats in the 1870's and 1880's. See Karl Marx, Cor
respondence (London, 1934), p. 125; Erhard Lucas, "Marx'
und Engels1 Auseinandersetzung mit Darwin," International
Review of Social History. IX (1964), 433-469; David
Joravsky, flhe Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970),
p. 254. Eor his part, Darwin commented in 1879 on the
"foolish idea /ThaiJ seems to prevail in Germany on the
connection between Socialism and Evolution, through Natural
Selection," quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the
Darwinian Revolution (New York: Norton ediiion, 1§66),
p. 423.
169
human society. His reading of the Anti-Dflhring converted
Kautsky to Marxism, hut he continued for some years to be
an ardent champion of evolutionary thought. In fact, when

he founded what was later to become the chief SPD theoreti
cal journal, Neue Zelt. in 1883, Kautsky hoped it would be

a forum for both Marxist and Darwinian thought. His per
sonal contacts with Engels and a deeper study of Marxism
later in the 1880*s convinced Kautsky that there were some

basic disagreements between the thought of Marx and Darwin
and toward the end of the decade articles on science and

evolution in Neue Zeit decreased in number while those on
Marxism and economics became more numerous. Nevertheless,

it can be argued that Kautsky, like most of his fellow
Social Democrats, never really succeeded in separating

62
social from natural evolution in his ideology.
A belief in evolutionary progress toward socialism
was perhaps the chief contribution of Darwinism to the

ideology of the SPD before 1914. Powerless to effect sig
nificant social change through their participation in
German politics, Social Democrats could draw courage from

their belief that socialism was the wave of the future,
one that would arrive naturally, without the necessity of
revolutionary struggle. This belief, coupled with an
ignorance of and an antipathy toward Hegelian philosophy
62Stelnberg, Sozialismus. pp. 60-72.
170
among party intellectuals, lead to a vulgar and one-sided
economic interpretation of Marx's thought. Marxism came

to be interpreted in the SPD as a "scientific" theory of
historical materialism which "proved" that capitalism and
capitalist society were doomed to collapse under the weight

of its internal contradictions. Therefore, the SPD need
not launch a frontal attack on capitalism. Rather the
party should organize and prepare itself for the time when
capitalist society fell. Social Democracy would not make
the revolution, it would simply raise a socialist soeiety
atop the ruins of the capitalist social order. In the
meantime the job of the SPD was to organize and enlighten

the working class for its future tasks.
Although it is almost impossible to exaggerate the
ideological importance the Darwinian interpretation given
to Marxism by Social Democrats, there were other reasons
for the acceptance of Marxism as the dominant ideology of

the SPD during the 1880's. The economic depression of the
1870's and 1880*s could be and was interpreted as "proof"
of Marx's economic analysis. In addition, the leaders of
the SPD (Liebknecht and Bebel) and leading party theorists

and editors (Kautsky and Bernstein) declared themselves to
be Marxists and consistently supported what they took to be
the Marxist position before 1891. During the 1880's a

debate within the SPD between an old guard of lassallean
state socialists, and the Marxist group lead by Bebel
171
arguing that socialism would only become possible when the
modern state had been transformed into a socialist system,
had been decided in favor the Marxists.^ Finally, in 1887
the leaders of the SPD met at St. Grail and passed a resolu
tion calling for a wre-workingw (Durcharbeitung) of the old

Gotha program of 1875. The appointment of Bebel and
liebknecht to the revisionist committee practically guaran
teed that the new program would bear a clear Marxist stamp.
When the new program eventually was prepared and accepted
at Erfurt in 1891 it was in fact Marxist.
The Erfurt Program reflected the ambivalent mixture of
despair about the plight of the worker under capitalism

and the hope that socialism would eventually triumph. The
program argued that the development of capitalism meant
that more and more people were being forced into the pro
letariat which was itself becoming more miserable, oppressed,
and exploited with the passage of time. Only the abolition

of private property and private ownership of the means of
production could end this immiseration. The aim of the SPD

therefore was the abolition of class domination through the
introduction of universal, direct stiffrage for all citizens
of the Empire over the age of twenty. The Erfurt program
also demanded the reapportionment of Reichstag seats in
accordance with population changes; the payment of elected
63Ibid., pp. 64-72.
172
representatives; the introduction of the referendum; the

substitution of a militia for the standing army' the aboli
tion of all laws prejudicial to free assembly, free expres
sion, and to women in their relationships with men; the

separation of church and state; the secularization of edu-
64.
cation; and graduated income and inheritance taxes.
The adoption of the Erfurt program and of Marxism in
general by the SPD can finally be seen as

a corollary of the power distribution between
the labor movement and the dominant system
. . . Indeed, Marxism was a radical creed that
did not demand active preparation for a revo
lution since it relied on the 'objective'
forces of history; it provided a convenient
defense for parliamentary inactivity if this
was desired, but it also could be comfortably
combined with reformist practice. Thus it
served as an aggressive as well as a defensive
instrument against the ideologies of the dominant
groups.65
Confronted by a social order they regarded as doomed to
collapse but which showed every sign of continued existence,

powerless to effect political change in a constitutional
system designed to keep power out of the hands of the masses,

the SPD cast its lot with an ideology that predicted the
inevitable fall of capitalism and the triumph of the pro
letariat .
By accepting Marxism the SPD assumed a revolutionary
*^See Karl Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm 2nd edition

(Stuttgart, 1892); Lidtke, The Outlawed ârtyT pp. 335-38.
6^Roth, The Social Democrats, pp. 167-68.
173
stance in Imperial Germany. At the same time the fear of
renewed state oppression and an unwillingness to lead a
forceful revolution meant that the SPD had to pursue its
goals through moderate practices. In fact, the history of

German Social Democracy from 1890 to 1914 is marked "by a
continuing tension between radical theory and moderate
practice, a tension made all the more perceptible by the
growing involvement of the SPD in practical affairs and a

relative deoline in concern over ideological purity.
The acceptance of Marxism as the party's ideology and

the development of Social Democracy as a truly mass movement
in the 1890's meant that the SPD had to take a stand on a
number of matters not directly connected with political

questions. Among these matters were the SPD's ideological
and practical positions on marriage, the family, the role
of women and children in the party and society, and the re
lationship of man to woman. For other political parties in
Germany (with the exception of the Catholic Center Party)

these social questions did not have to become real issues.
But Social Democracy was not simply a political movement.
As we have suggested here through a discussion of the SPD
ideology, Social Democracy represented an all-encompassing

Weltanschauung. which of necessity had to criticize basic
social as well as political and economic institutions and

enlighten workers about present conduct and future rela
tionships between man and woman, parent and child, in the
1 74-
eocialist society to come. Before turning to these ques

tions, however, it is necessary to return to the narrative
of SPD history in the quarter century before the First
World War.
The fall of the anti-socialist laws in 1890 heralded
a period of impressive growth for German Social Democracy,

but the end of this repressive legislation did not mean
that the laws could not be reintroduced or that there would

66
be an end of government harassment of the SPD. Kaiser
Wilhelm II began his reign by publicly expressing his con
cern with the "social question" and his desire to overcome

the divisions of industrial society. Although the young
Kaiser recognized the potential threat which Social Democracy

posed to Imperial German society, he could never bring him
self to support the thoroughgoing anti-socialist programs

pressed upon him by a number of conservative advisors dur
ing the 1890's. Rather, Wilhelm contented himself with

the retention of a variety of harassing laws which, particu
larly in Prussia, kept the SPD under the watchful eye and
oocasional heavy hand of police magistrates. Secure in the

knowledge that he retained full control of the military and
a constitution designed to prevent popular control of the
^ F o r the best general discussion of Social Democracy

in the 1890's see the "cross-sectional" study by Ritter,
Die Arbeiterbewegung.
175
government, Wilhelm obviously felt that Bismarck's anti
socialist laws could be abandoned.

Although it entered the 1890's under the banner of
Marxism, the earlier chief concerns of the SPD— the polit

ical organization and enlightenment of the working class—
remained unchanged. Throughout most of the 1890's the

organization of the party remained rather elementary, par
ticularly in Prussia where a variety of state restrictions

hampered political activities at the local level, and until
1899, forbade political organization at the land level.

The party devoted considerable time and money to getting
out the vote for Reichstag elections, and the Reiohstag-
fraktlon of Social Democratic leaders remained the national

forum of the movement. Within the Reichstag. Bebel and
other leading Social Democrats continued to be "ambivalent
parliamentarians." At the same they denounced the evils

of imperialism, militarism, and predicted the imminent fall
of capitalism, they called for social, political and eco
nomic reforms within the German Empire. There was cer

tainly nothing non-Marxist about such ambivalence, for
Marx had often argued that "progressive" changes within
the existing capitalist order could contribute toward the
Aufhebung of that order and its replacement by socialism,
less in keeping with the ideas and advice of Marx and Engels
was the SPD's consistent refusal to cooperate with middle
class political parties in the Reichstag or most state
176
assemblies. Marx believed that socialist parties could and
should ally themselves when necessary with middle-class

liberal movements. Afraid of being called "Millerandists,"
the leaders of the SPD Reichstagfraktion maintained their

ideological purity by rejecting anything resembling a pop
ular front between socialists and middle class liberals.

This intransigent purism of the SPD at the national
level tended to fade rapidly at the level of the L&nder
and municipalities. By the end of the 1890's Social Demo
crats were participating in the state assemblies and muni
cipal governments of southern and southwestern Germany. It
is no coincidence that at the same time party intellectuals

and annual party congresses ooncemed themselves with the
"revisionist" debate, Social Democrats in Baden, Bavaria,
and Wflrttemberg took their place as city council members

and showed a lively interest in municipal affairs— what the
Fabians called "gasworks socialism." At present little is
known about the nature and effects of this local participa

tion, but it does seem that these activities served as
schools in practical affairs for Social Democrats less in

terested in radical theory than in the daily affairs of
city government. The tension between radical Marxist theory
and moderate SPD practice was very evident at these local

levels where, as Gerhard Ritter writes, "it was difficult
to talk about class war and revolution at a /Social Demo
cratic/ Party meeting if, on the day before, a man had
177
agreed with his liberal colleagues in the municipal council

about the need for erecting lamps on a dark street in
town."67
At the same time that Social Democrats began to partici
pate in municipal affairs, the SPD began to organize local

bureaus run by a "labor secretary” (Arbeitersekret&re) who
collected information on a variety of social, economic, and
labor questions and also advised workers of their rightB
within the law, state pensions, workmen's compensation, and
the like. In hiB biography of Friedrich Ebert, who began

his political career as a labor secretary in Bremen in the
1890's, Georg Kotowski presents an illuminating picture of
a man to whom theoretical questions mattered little or

nothing, and for whom the daily round of listening to
workers' complaints, helping them fill out forms, etc.,
seemed to be a sensible and rewarding way for a socialist
to further the movement.68 To men like Ebert and thousands
of other SPD functionaries and city government members the

aim of Social Democracy was to reform rather than to revo
lutionize German society.6^
The socialist "free" trade unions which revived after
67Ibid.. p. 217.
68Georg Kotowski, Friedrich Ebert. Bine politische
Biographic (Wiesbaden, 1963), Bd .’”17
6^Steinberg, Sozialismus. pp. 109-126.
178
70
1890 also shared this reformist spirit. The very exist
ence and moderation of the socialist trade unions was de
facto acceptance of the continued existence of capitalism
by the workers, provided they got a "fair” share of the

profits of industry. During the first half of the 1890’s,
the last years of the Great Depression, little more than

local organizational work among craftsmen was done. Not
until the years of near-full employment and rising real

wages after 1895 (and especially after 1900) did the Free
Trade Unions acquire their huge pre-war membership. As
these unions grew in size they grew less socialist, indeed
less political, in their attitudes toward the existing
social order, and at the same time became more powerful

within the Social Democratic movement itself. Under its
longtime leader, Karl Legien, the Free Trade Unions posed
no real threat to the capitalist order, for the unions were
interested in sharing rather than seizing the fruits of

capitalism. The union sought and often got concrete gains
for their members.

Concern for practical gains rather than ideological
purity meant that the trade unions spent far less time
than the SPD on theoretical debates. When, for example, a
number of young radicals within the SPD tried to galvanize
70
' I n addition to Ritter, Die Arbeiterbewegung. see
Heinz Varain, Freie Gewerkschaften, Sozialdemokra-cie und
Staat (Dttsseldorf, 1$§6).
179
the party into a revolutionary position "by supporting a
mass strike following the Russian examples of 1905 > the

trade union leadership, ever fearful of losing their union’s
strike and retirement funds, pronounced the idea of the
mass strike provocative and counter-productive. The party

followed the lead of the trade unions as it usually did in
the decade before 1914. -At the annual SPD conference at

Mannheim in 1906, party leaders and union officials tacitly
agreed that the trade unions would not be subservient to

the party. In the words of Carl Schorske
though the fact was not openly recognized, the
Mannheim conference accorded institutional recog
nition to the primacy of the material interest of
German labor in the existing order, represented by
the trade unions, over the ”ideql” interest of the
working class, heretofore represented by the party,
in the overthrow of capitalism.71
At the same time that the socialist trade unions pur
sued reformist policies, the SPD became involved in an

ideological dispute over the "revision” of Marxist theory
72
and party practice. It is impossible to adequately sum
marize this debate in a few sentences, but some knowledge

of what Revisionism” involved is helpful in understanding
the later discussion of the attitudes of Social Democrats
71
1 Carl Schorske. German Social Democracy 1905-1917
(Cambridge, Mass., 1955)7 p." T T .
72
Gay, The Dilemma: Steinberg, Sozialismus. pp. 87-95.
180
toward the family, marriage, and the women's movement.
"Revisionism" is closely associated with the name of

Eduard Bernsteih, one of Social Democracy's best known in
tellectuals and one of the Party's earliest adherents of
Marxism. The publication in 1898 of his book Die
Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozial-
demokratie precipitated a violent debate among party intel
lectuals, particularly between Bernstein and his long-time

friend Karl Kautsky. Actually, from the early 1890's on
Bernstein had been re-examining two problems in particular:

first, the vulgar economism most Social Democrats regarded
as "Marxism"; and second, the materialist foundations of
Marxist socialism. In connection with the first point

Bernstein argued that the expectation that the condition of
the working class would get worse and worse, and that the
middle-class would become proletarianized under capitalism
was in fact mistaken. Drawing upon statistical studies
made in the 1880's and 1890's Bernstein tried to show em

pirically that capital and land were not being concentrated
into the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists and that the
standard of living of workers had actually improved. This
empiricist challenge to the vulgar economic Marxism of the

SPD contributed to much of the academic debate between
Bernstein and Kautsky, but the implications of this debate

were perhaps less important than those associated with the
second part of revisionism, that is, the re-examination of
181
the materialist foundations of Marxist socialism.
Marx's "scientific" socialism had rejected as a hasis
for the emergence of socialism the ethical superiority of
socialism to capitalism. Indeed, one of the reasons Marx

and Engels called Fourier, Owen, and Saint-Simon "Utopians"
was the fact that these early socialists believed that their
systems would triumph because of their inherent rational and
ethical superiority to capitalist society. Rather Marx had

argued that socialism would supersede capitalism because
the materialist foundations of society meant that contra
dictions between economic production and social structure
led to conflicts which would only find their resolution
under socialism. Socialism would "triumph" not because it

was ethically superior to capitalism, but rather because
capitalism found it impossible to solve the contradictions
inherent in itself or free man (the worker) to become a

universal creator.^
Marx's tough-mindedness on the question of ethics and

the appearance of socialism might be comforting to those
Social Democrats who had been materialists even before they

had become Marxists and who felt that Marxism "proved"
the "inevitable" triumph of socialism. But it must be re
membered that from its earliest days in the Vorm&rz era,
''See Shlomo Avineri, The Political and Social Thought

of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 19^3’)'» pp. 65-95 T T 5 0-84.
182
German socialism never wholly gave up the conviction that
capitalism was "unjust* while socialism was just and that
the ethical superiority of socialism made it worth fighting
for. The Social Democratic reception of Marxist ideology
in a materialist Darwinian framework during the 1870*s and

1880's pushed this conviction into the background hut did
not completely destroy it.
In the 1890's Bernstein and other party intellectuals

revived the ethical spirit of socialism through their study
of Neo-Kantianism.*^ Rejecting the crass materialism of

some of his Social Democratic comrades, Bernstein argued
that there was a place for idealism in the SPD. Socialism
might not he inevitable, hut it certainly was desirable

from the viewpoint of the working class. In comparison
with the injustices of capitalist society, socialism held
out the promise of a society which strove for justice and
human decency. It was this spirit which prompted Bernstein
to write that the ultimate goal was nothing, the socialist
movement everything. Bernstein called on the SPD to have
the courage to free itself "from a phraseology which is

indeed outdated; and to appear as what it really is today—
*^Gay. Dilemma, no. 151-61: Steinberg. Sozialismus.

pp. 96-106.
183
75
a democratic, socialist reform party.1,1J After lengthy and
heated debates within the party, Bernstein's revisionism
was officially denounced at the annual SPD conference at
Dresden in 1903.^
Official denunciation could not conceal the fact that
Bernstein's "critical socialism," as he called it, had
touched some very sensitive nerves within the party.

Bernstein was publicly calling attention to what many Social
Democrats recognized but may have wished left unpublicized,
i.e., the gap between moderate practice and radical theory
in the SPD. Moreover, by questioning the accuracy and

validity of Marx's theories he undermined the faith held
uncritically by many Social Democrats that Marx had "proved"

the inevitable triumph of socialism. Finally, Bernstein
had brought to the fore questions concerning justice and

injustice, questions that seem to have concerned rank and
file Social Democrats, but which Marxist theory had made
"obsolete" through its "scientific" foundations in material

ism and economics. We shall return to the problem of ethics
when we examine the Social Democratic critique of marriage

and the family under capitalism and its hopes for these
institutions under socialism.
Êduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism (New York.

1909), p. 197.
76
' Schorske, German Social Democracy, p. 24.
184
The reaction of party intellectuals to Bernstein's
revisionism is indicative of the growing rigidity of Social
Democratic ideology in the 1890's. Social Democratic in
tellectuals had found in "Marxism" and historical material
ism a Weltanschauung and key to understanding the whole of

history and when Bernstein appeared to criticize that key
he threatened to undermine all that made Marxism attractive
to them and superior to other types of socialism. Just how
rigid the adherence to "historical materialism" was among

party intellectuals can be seen in an interesting critical
attack levelled against certain ideas expressed by no less
an authority than Friedrich Engels in his book The Origin

of the Family.
In his introduction to this book, Engels made the
following statement:
Nach der materialistischen Auffassung ist das

letzter Instanz bestimmende Moment in der
Geschichte: die Produktion und Reproduktion
des unmittelbaren Lebens. Diese ist aber selbst
wieder doppelter Art. Einerseits die Erzeugung
von Lebensmitteln, von Gegenstflnden der Nahrung,
Kleidung, Wohnung und den dazu erforderlichen
Werkzeugen; andrerseits die Erzeugung von Menschen
selbst, die Fortpflanzung der Gattung. Die
gesellschaftlichen Einrichtungen, unter denen die
Menschen einer bestimmten Geschichtsepoche und
eines bestimmten Landes leben, werden bedingt
durch beide Arten der Produktion: durch die
Entwicklungsstufe einerseits der Arbeit, andrerseits
der Familie. Je weniger die Arbeit noch entwickelt
ist, je beschrankter die Menge ihrer Erzeugnisse,
also auch der Reichtum der Gesellschaft, desto
•Clberwiegender erscheint die Gesellschaftsordnung
beherrscht durch Geschlechtsbande. Unter dieser,
auf Geschlechtsbande begrflndeten Gliederung der
Gesellschaft entwickelt sich indes die Produktivitflt
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p ro hibited w ith o u t p erm ission.
185
der Arbeit mehr und mehr; mit ihr Privateigentum
und Austausch, Unterschiede des Reichtums,
Verwertbarkeit fremder Arbeitskraft und damit die
Grundlage von Klassengegens&tzen: neue soziale
Elemente, die im Lauf von Generationen sich
abmflhen, die alte Gesellschaftsverfassung den neuen
ZustSnden anzupassen, bis endlich die Unvereinbarkeit
beider eine vollstfindige Umwfilzung herbeiftlhrt. Die
alte, auf Geschlechtsverbflnden beruhende Gesellschaft
wirdgesprengt im Zusammenstoss der neu entwickelten
gesellschaftlichen Klassen; an ihre Stelle tritt eine
neue Gesellschaft, zusammengefasst im Staat, dessen
Untereinheiten nicht mehr Geschlechtsverbflnde,
s o n d e m Ortsverbflnde sind, eine Gesellschaft, in der
die Familienordnung ganz von der Eigentumsordnung
beherrscht wird und in der sich nun jene Klassen-
gegensfitze und Klassenkflmpfe frei entfalten, aus
denen der Inhalt der bisherigen geschriebenen
Geschichte besteht.77
To the uninitiated, perhaps, there was nothing remarkable
about these lines. Engels was giving a very condensed

summary of historical materialism, that is, the theory
that the development of human history and social institu
tions is ultimately determined by the production and re
production of immediate /unmittelbaren7 life. But to

eagle-eyed SPD ideologists for whom historical materialism
had become more an item of faith than a working hypothesis,
there were sentences here that ranked as heresy to "ortho

dox" German Marxists. For Engels seemed to give as much
importance to the reproduction of human life, the propaga

tion of the species, as he did to the production of the
material means of existence as the factors determining the

social institutions of a given historical period. He was
^ M a r x - Engels, Werke (Berlin, 1961), XXI, 27-28.
186
not saying that the social institutions of a period were
determined by the level of development of labor alone
(which is what most SPD theorists before 1914- believed),
but rather that these institutions were also determined by
the production of human beings and by the level of develop

ment of the family itself. This position appeared to con
tradict that taken by Engels throughout the main body of
his book— that the nature and structure of the family was
dependent upon the stage of economic development, or, to

use Marxist phraseology, the family was part of the social
"superstructure" resting upon and conditioned by the eco
nomic "base." To explain or explain away this apparent

contradiction of "unified" historical materialism became
the concern of several Social Democrats in the 1890's and
after.
The first of these socialist critics of Engels was
Heinrich Cunow, a self-taught anthropologist and sometimes
editor of Die Neue Zeit.^8 Cunow argued that Engels was
^8See Heinrich Cunow, "Die flkonomische Grundlagen der

Mutterherrschaft," Neue Zeit. XVI, 1 (1897-98), 106-118,
133-141, 176-182, 204-209, 237-242; Thomas Masaryk, Die
philoso-phisohen und sozlologischen Grundlagen des Marxlsmus
(Vienna, 16^9), pp. 330-373; Eduard Bernstein, *!Bemerkungen
uber Engels' Ursprung der Familie. Vorrede zur italienischen
Ausgabe des Buches," Sozialistische Monatshefte. VI (1900),
44.9-45O ; H. Cunow, Zur Urgeschichte der fehe und Pamille
/Erganzungshefte zur freuen Zeit, ftr. 14/ (Stuttgart, 1912);
H. Cunow, Die Marx'sohe Geschichtes-, Gesellschafts-. und
Staatstheorle (Berlin, 19^0-21), II, 104-142; KarlKautsky,
Die materlallstische Geschlchtsauffassung (Berlin, 1927),
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm is sio n o f th e co p yrig h t o w n er. F u rth e r re p ro d u ctio n pro h ib ited w ith o u t perm issio n .
187
mistaken in giving equal importance to the production of
men (Mensohennroduktion) and the production of the means

of existence (Lebensmitterproduktion). He noted that the
biological means of production remained constant through

out history, and only the social institutions associated
with procreation (marriage and the family) changed as the
result of changing economic conditions. "This is so clear,"
Cunow concluded, "at least to someone who has understood
the Marxist materialist conception of history, that it ap

pears incomprehensible how Engels could coordinate the
creation of humans with economic development as an inde

pendent developmental f a c t o r . B y arguing that procrea
tion and the rearing of children among prehistoric peoples
could be regarded as determining factors of history inde
pendent of economics, Engels seemed to Cunow to have "com

pletely broken the unity of the materialist concent of his
tory. for . . . this equation of sexual intercourse with

the economic mode of production signifies that only part of
the social structure is determined by the latter, but that
^8 (Contd.) I, 322-327; Max Adler, Lehrbuch der ma

terialist ischen Gesohichtsauffassung Band 2, tteil 1 {Berlin,
1932), 134-142; A. Leontiev, "Political Economy in the
Soviet Union," Scienoe and Society. VIII (1944), 115; Karl
Marx and Frederick llngels, Selected Works (Moscow, 1951),
p. 156, n.l; Maxime Ridinson, ^1’Etude des societes 'primi
tives' a la lumiere de l'ouvrage d'Engels," le Pensee, 66
(Maroh-April, 12,56), 18-22; H. Kent Geiger, ffEe gamlly in
Soviet Russia /Russian Research Center Studies, $6/
(Cambridge, Mass., 1968), pp. 10-40. ”
^Cunow, "Die Skonomischen Grundlagen," p. 141.
188
the other part is determined by sexual life.1’80
Cunow and other German Social Democrats were disturbed
that Engels undermined historical materialism by positing
a prehistoric period in which economics was not the chief
determining factor of change. Engels divided human his

tory into a prehistoric period in which natural laws con
ditioned family structure and a historic period in which
economic production largely, but not wholly, conditioned

the social superstructure, including the family. Neither
Marx nor Engels interpreted historical materialism in the
vulgar and rigid ecohomic sense given it by German social
ists. In a letter written to Marx in December, 1882,

Engels noted that he had been reading a book by the Ameri
can historian Bancroft and comparing his findings with

those of Tacitus on the early Germanic tribes. He says
the similarity /between the American Indian and

the Germanic tribes7 is in fact all the more sur
prising since the modes of production are so dif
ferent— on the one hand fishermen and hunters
without cattle-raising and agriculture, and on
the other nomadic cattie-raising developing into
agriculture. It shows how, even at this level,
the mode of production is less decisive than the
degree of dissolution /Auflflsung7 of the old kin
ship groups and the old mutual community of the
sexes within the t r i b e . 81
Engels to Marx, December 8, 1882, in Marx-Engels

Gesamtauggabe (Berlin, 1931), III. Abteilung, ted.4,
pp. 579-80.
189
Clearly in his discussion of the family, Engels was not a
single-factor economic determinist and he was critical of
those "Marxists" for whom historical materialism explained

everything.
According to the materialist conception of
history, the ultimately determining element in
history is the production and reproduction of
real life. More than this neither Marx nor I
have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists
this into saying that the economic element is
the only determining one, he transforms that
proposition into a meaningless, abstract,
senseless phrase. The economic situation is
the basis, but the various elements of the super
structure . . . also exercise their influence
upon the course of the historical struggles and
in many cases preponderate in determining their
form . • . Marx and I are ourselves partly to
blame for the fact that the younger people
sometimes lay more stress on the economic side
than is due to it. We had to emphasize the main
principle vis-a-yis our adversaries . • . and we
had not always the time, the place or the op
portunity to allow the other elements in the
interaction to come into their rights . . . Un
fortunately, however, it happens only too often
that people think that they have fully under
stood a new theory and can apply it without more
ado from the moment they have mastered its main
principles . . . And I cannot exempt many of the
more recent "Marxists" from this reproach, for
the most amazing rubbish has been produced in
this quarter, too.82
Such theoretical questions did not concern the rank

and file members of the SPD. The reappearance after 1890
Engels to J. Bloch, September 21/22, 1890, in Karl

Marx and Frederick Engels. Selected Works (Moscow, 1951)»
pp. 443-4TI Also Engels* 1894 letter to H. Starkenburg,
in Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence (New York,
1937), pp. 516-19; Isivan Meszaros. Marx1s~Theory of
Alienation (London, 1970), pp. 114-15T
190
of that oldest of all labor organizations, the Arbeiters-
bildungsverein. provided socialist workers with a less

heady diet of practical education and entertainment. It
will be recalled that in the years from 1849 to 1869 the

workers' cultural and educational clubs had supplied their
artisanate membership with courses of lectures and discus

sions designed to help them get ahead in their professional
and business lives. During the years before the introduc

tion of the anti-socialist laws these clubs became more
politicized, but still retained their cultural functions.
Prom 1878 to 1890 many of the clubs disappeared, condemned
by the police as "political" organizations. Those that re

mained continued to offer lectures, but became strictly
apolitical, at least in public. Many of them beoame mere
singing clubs or literary guilds. After 1890 workers'

clubs flourished once again and often provided a center for
political and economic debate. They became places where

the growing industrial membership of the SPD could learn
about socialism, but more often they simply provided enter

tainment for the workers or taught them how to speak and
write properly, and do simple arithmetic.
Precious little is known about the cultural activi
ties of the workingmen's clubs that operated from 1890 to

1914» but it is possible to speculate that, in spite of the
fact that they helped to spread Marxist socialism among the
workers, they also helped to stabilize German society and
191
to Integrate workers into that society. From heing atomized
individuals who felt powerless in the face of state and
economic elites, the various educational and cultural activ
ities of the Party and trade unions "could bind the members
more closely to the political commitments of the party.

Second, they could divert, by their inherent satisfactions
and difficulties, energies and attention from the political
goals of the /Social Democratic/ movement and the crucial

problem of power."8^ As part of the Social Democratic
movement, the workers' educational programs and clubs
offered increasing opportunities for more and
more workers to find social recognition among
their peers and thus reduced their dependence,
in this respect, on society at large. . . .
This resulted in an attenuation of the class
struggle, as some Marxists correctly charged
that it would. By helping the workers indi
rectly to adjust to the society at large, the
/Social Democratic/ subculture contributed to the
stability of the dominant system.84
This idea of indirect adjustment to the dominant social
system will reappear when we examine the objective results
of the Social Democratic critique of marriage and the family

under capitalism. Here it must be stressed that the help
provided to workers was by no means always indirect, as can
be seen from the extensive system of adult education pro
vided by the SPD and Free Trade Unions in Hamburg before
8^Roth, Social Democrats, p. 231.
84Ibid., p. 232.
192
1914.8^ Throughout most of the 1890's the SPD, trade
unions, and independent worker's clubs provided a variety
of cultural and educational programs for their members.
In 1906 these efforts were consolidated and coordinated
through a Zentralkommission des Blldungswesen which set
up an elaborate program of night courses, lecture series,

plays, concerts, and also provided a central lending
library for the benefit of working people. "Academic''

courses on literature, history, book-keeping, draftsmanship
and the like were offered, but significantly the largest
enrollments appeared in the Deutschkurse where newly ar

rived workers from East Prussia and elsewhere learned how
to read, write, and speak the language of dominant German
society, Hochdeutsch. instead of their native Plattdeutsch
or regional dialects.86 Those who completed elementary

courses in language and arithmetic often went on to pro
grams devoted to the "classics" of German literature.

The educational and cultural clubs also tried to teach
the workers the elements of socialism. But it appears that

only a relatively small number of worker-students (whose
average ages ranged between thirty and forty and included
a good number of women) actually read their way through
^Johannes Schult, Geschichte der Hamburger Arbeiter

1890-1919 (Hanover, 1967), pp. 208-£2£; passim.
86Ibid.. pp. 211-12.
193
the prescribed syllabus of •’scientific1’ courses which in
cluded the writings of Lassalle, Engels on utopian and
scientific socialism, Marx on wages and profits, the
Communist Manifesto. Franz Mehring on the history of the
SPD, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the Reverend Malthus.87

Among the most popular activities provided by the
Central Commission in Hamburg must have been the public

lecture series where a mere ten Pfennig bought a ticket.
But even here there were distinctions. In 1912/1913 3,890

people attended a series of eight lectures on astronomy
complete with colored slides while only 203 people turned
out for four unillustrated lectures on the Prussian consti

tutional conflict of the 1860's. Interestingly, a four
part lecture on the ’’historical evolution of the woman

88
question" in the same year attracted 448 listeners. It
is well to bear in mind that activities similar to those
offered in Hamburg were available to workers in praotically
every German town and city with a SPD or trade union organ
ization. By 1913 the SPD had 791 local Bildungsausschflsse

offering courses similar to those mentioned above. In the
same year the party sponsored 848 theater productions
attended by no fewer than 559,199 people.8^
87Ibid.. p. 213.
88Ibld.. p. 217.
8^Ritter, Die Arbelterbewegung. p. 222.
194
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the
cultural and educational activities supplied to the workers
by the SPD and the trade unions. At a time when masses of
German people were making the often painful transition from

rural to city life, from agrarian and artisanate to factory
production, these activities provided a channel through

which the working class could share in the culture of their
country. In fact, it can he argued that by providing this

channel the SPD helped to integrate the working class into
German society and thus contributed to the stability of

that society's dominant culture. Even though after 1891
Social Democracy claimed to be a Marxist movement, the SPD
ignored the dictum found in the Communist Manifesto that
proletarian culture had nothing in common with that of the

bourgeoisie. The lecture series and night courses in
Hochdeutsch. literature, mathematics and practical subjects
provided by the SPD actually helped make it possible for

workers to share the culture, indeed the very language, of
the bourgeoisie.
Moreover, the ideals of Bildung and self-help inherent
in SPD educational programs actually represented the values

of the dominant culture of German society, values which had
always been espoused by church and state, and, as shown
earlier, by the Arbeiterbildungsvereine of artisanate

vintage. The night courses and lectures of the period after
1890 helped to preserve and spread these artisanate, middle
195
class values among the emerging industrial working class.
In spite of its radical Marxist ideology, the SPD, in its
role of educator, kept alive the artisanate ethos of the

1860!s among German workers on the eve of the First World
War. The following chapters examine the mixture of radi

cal ideological positions on marriage and the family and
the persistence of middle class attitudes in the reaction
of Social Democracy to the socialist women's and youth

movements.
CHAPTER V
SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC THEORIES ON MARRIAGE,

THE FAMILY, AND SEXUALITY
Surely one of the most unusual facets of the "curious

love affair of sex and socialism11 was the fact that the
"best-known and perhaps most influential "book produced by
a German Social Democrat before 1914 combined an analysis

of the social and sexual roles of women with an exposition
of Marxist socialism. Because of this combination August
Bebel's Die Frau und der Sozialismus provides an excellent
introduction to the theoretical position of the SPD on
marriage, the family, and sexuality. Moreover, Die Frau,

which drew its information from sources as diverse as the
Bible, Herodotus, Martin Luther, J.J. Bachofen, Goethe,

Marx, Engels and others, is a classic illustration of the
eclecticism of Social Democratic ideology before the First
World War. Bebel's book on woman and socialism is an
amalgam of "scientific" socialism a la, Marx and Engels, and

an "ethical" socialism more akin to the Utopians Charles
Fourier and Wilhelm Weitling.
Bebel already concerned himself in the 1860's with
what later became known as the "woman question."^* He
1See the chapter on the socialist womens' movement,

pp. 277-78.
196
197
apparently maintained this interest, for in 1878, on the
eve of the anti-socialist laws, he sent to the printer his
manuscript of Die Frau und der Sozialismus. When the book
appeared early in 1879 it was confiscated by the police,

but copies of it circulated "underground" among leading
Social Democrats. In 1883 the book reappeared under the
less provocative title Die Frau in der Vergangenhelt.
Gegenwart und Zukunft. but was once again seized by police.

The book continued to be printed secretly in Germany and
also in Switzerland. It was revised and reprinted many

p
times before Bebel's death in 1913.
Although a long and involved book rather unlikely to

attract a large working class audience, Die Frau was not
written at the level of abstraction as Marx's Capital or
even the book which covered much of the same ground,

Engels' Origin of the Family. Whiting in honor of the
fiftieth edition of the book, the Austrian socialist Karl
Renner observed that
it was the masterful instinct of Bebel that he

did not speak first of all to Germans about world
p
Cf. August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus. 9th
edition (Stuttgart, 1 8 9 1 ) , pp. iii-v. Bebel's book went
through fifty editions before his death in 1913. A sixty-
first edition appeared in 1946 and it is periodically re
printed in the German Democratic Republic. See Wolfgang
Abendroth, "August Bebel, der Volkstribun in der Aufstiegs-
periode der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung," in the same
author's Antagonistlsohe Gesellschaft und politische Demo-
kratie (Neuwied-Berlin, 1967), p. 397.
198
economics and the state, or /about7 the social

/question/• Rather he went directly to daily
life, the relationship of man to woman, and ex
posed the sorry complement to the marriage bed
found in the bordello, and the bleak moral bar
renness of woman's life.3
No doubt the fact that Bebel avoided too much abstract

theorising contributed to his book's relative popularity.
Although we are not here concerned with how many people

actually read Die Frau, it may be of some interest to make
some observations about the extent of the book's reader
ship.
Die Frau went through fifty editions before Bebel's
death in 1913 and, according to one observer, "the book

made a fortune for its author."^ However that may be,
Bebel's book appears to have been very popular among the

members of various Social Democratic and trade union lend
ing libraries after 1890. Needless to say, information
about the reading habits of the members of these libraries

is limited, not to mention the question of whether bor
rowers actually read the books they took home. Neverthe
less, the following figures indicate the relative popularity
of Die Frau among working class readers.

In an 1894 survey of an SPD Leseverein in an unnamed
Renner, "Bebels 'Frau'— zur fflnfsigsten Auflage

des Buches," Der Kampf. Ill (1909), 98-99.
^Hugh Puckett, Germany *s Women Go Forward (New York,
1930), p. 217, n. 6.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm iss io n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r re p ro d u ctio n p ro h ib ited w ith o u t p erm ission.
199
southern German City of 80,000, the forty-five members of
the club selected ffom the 100 titles available as the

"top five" the following:^
NUMBER OP TIMES BORROWED

TITLE IN THREE YEARS
Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus 24

Dodel-Port. Moses Oder Darwin? 14
Kflhler, Weltschflpfung und Weltuntergang 11
Aveling, Die DarwiniscEe~Theorle 9
Kohler, Der sozialdemokratlscher Staat 9
It is interesting to note the attention given to Darwinian
thought in this list. By way of contrast, during the same
period the first volume of Capital was borrowed only three
times, as was Engels* Origin of the Bamily.

During a nine month period a wood-workers1 union
library in the same city loaned Die Frau eleven times as
compared with its next most demanded book, Aveling on
Darwinian theory, borrowed only six times.^ In 1895 a sur
vey of two Berlin workers* libraries revealed that, although

novels by Zola and Disraeli's Sybil were most in demand,
among non-fiction works Die Frau w$s among those most often
7
borrowed. Later studies in other cities produced similar
results.
It appears that Die Frau had a particular impact on
^Hans-Josef Steinberg, Sozialismus und deutsohe

Sozialdemokratie (Hanover, 1967), p. 1^0.
6Ibid.. p. 131.
7Ibid.
200
middle-class socialists and also to that elite of workers
who belonged to the various Lesevereine and did "serious11

reading. Recalling his life in Berlin in the 1880's, the
socialist physician and sex reformer, Magnus Hirschfeld,
wrote that reading Die Frau was very important in convert

ing him to socialism.8 Another Social Democrat remembered
that "for us young socialists /Die Frau7 was a program,
even more, a gospel /Evangelium7. I recall that I was

enthusiastic when 1 first became acquainted with the book
o
at the age of n i n e t e e n , S t e i n b e r g is probably correct
in concluding that "the work which shaped in the most de
cisive manner the conception of socialism of the intellec

tually bright workers was Bebel's Die Frau und der
Sozialismus. Beyond this circle of "bright workers"
8Magnus Hirschfeld, Geschlechtskunde (Stuttgart.

1930), III, 261-62.
Q
^Wilhelm Keil, Erlebnisse eines Sozialdemokraten
(Stuttgart, 1947), I , ~ T 5 T .
■^Steinberg, Sozialismus. p. 138. Surprisingly,
apart from a number of hostile reviews and a few polemical
works published more than fifty years ago, there seems to
exist no critical analysis of Bebel's Die Frau. See, for
example, "C.A.L.," (Conrad ley) A. Bebel und sein Evangelium.
Soclalpolltische Skizzen (Dusseldorf, 1885); XTyi Russell,
"Social Democracy smcl the Woman Question in Germany," in
Eertrand Russell, German Social Democracy (London, 1896),
pp. 178-87; Eugen filchier. Pictures of the Socialistic
Future (Freely Adapted From Bebel (London. 1907); Jacqueline
Strain, MFeminism andPolitical Radicalism in the German
Social Democratic Movement, 1890-1914," Dissertation,
University of California, Berkeley, 1965, pp. 32-42.
201
it is probable that few workers had the time or the inclina
tion to read through the hundreds of pages of Bebel’s book.
A female sociologist working "undercover" in several
Chemnitz textile and clothing factories found that very few

of her fellow women workers had even heard of the book,
although practically all of them knew who Bebel was.11
This is not to say that Bebel's ideas were only spread
through the printed page. On the sixteenth of December,

1891, for example, Bebel himself gave an address on the sub
ject of "the social position of women today" to an audience
of 1,200 people assembled in the lip'schen Brewery Hall in
Berlin.12
Those who did read Die Frau found that the first part
of the book dealt with "woman in the past," and traced the
evolution of marriage and the family from prehistoric times

on. Like Engels in The Origin of the Family. Bebel posited
the existence of a prehistoric communist society without
private property, marriage, or male domination of the
female. Like Bachofen before him, Bebel argued that pre

historic tribes first lived in a state of sexual promiscuity
and that some of these peoples developed into matriarchies
where women were held in high regard and descent was
^Minna-Wettstein-Adelt, 3j| Monate Fabrik-Arbeiterin.

Eine practische Studie (Berlin, 15§T)T"p. 7l.
12Yorw|rts (BerlinX 17 December 1891, p. 2.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm is sio n of th e co p yrig h t o w n er. F u rth e r re p ro d u ctio n pro h ib ited w ith o u t perm issio n .
202
13
reckoned in the female line.
These prehistoric conditions began to change as men

became hunters, warriors, cattle-raisers, and developed
both the intellectual and physical skills as well as the

tools necessary for these tasks. On the other hand, the
demands of motherhood bound the woman closely to the home

where she prepared food for the tribe, looked after children,
and engaged in primitive agriculture. The division oflabor

between men and women led to a change in the social relations
of the sexes. Men not only created and used the tools of
hunting and warfare, they also controlled these tools as
the major means of production and survival. "The man, who

was in the forefront of the development /of tools/ became
the actual master and owner of these sources of wealth.*'1^
Paralleling this division of ownership and labor was the

growth of population which led to struggles between tribes
for control of choice hunting and farming land. In order
to provide more laborers to work newly acquired land, women
were kidnapped from neighboring tribes and male prisoners
of war became the slaves of their captors.

The combined impact of population growth, and the
^Recalling his contacts with Bebel and liebknecht in

Berlin in the 1880's, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld observed that,
after Marx, the name most often used in discussions was that
of J.J. Bachofen. Hirschfeld, Geschlechtskunde. Ill, 81.
Âugust Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Berlin,
1961), p. 54. Unless otherwise indicated this is the
edition cited.
203
division of labor between men and women, hunters and herds
men, masters and slaves, profoundly influenced the social
and economic structure of primitive society. The communism
and egalitarianism between the sexes found in the old social
order began to erode. Earlier, when a man died all of his

possessions reverted to the tribe at large and were redis
tributed among all of its members. Because all adult mem
bers of the tribe lived in a state of sexual promiscuity,

it was impossible to bequeath the wealth acquired during
one’s lifetime to Mlegally recognized" heirs. Rather, a
man's or woman's "brothers" and "sisters" in the tribe shared
equally in the distribution of goods following a tribe
member's death.
Without explaining how or why, Bebel declared that
"the pressure (der Drang) to change this state of affairs
15
was a very strong one, and it was changed." From a stage
of relative promiscuity, the tribe passed to that of the
"pairing family." Because the pairing family restricted
the woman to sexual intercourse with one man only, the male
had reasonable assurance that the children born to his wife
were in fact his own. Henceforth, when a man died his goods
and property no longer reverted to the tribe, but passed to
his "legitimate" heirs. According to Bebel, "it was the

male who led and controlled this development. His private
15Ibid., p. 55.
204
interests (Prlvatlnteressen) no longer had any essential
common interest with the old tribal organization, whose
interests often conflicted with his own."1** Thus mankind
entered the stage of history marked by private property.

Through the institution of the pairing family, or monogamy,
the male not only dominated the female, but also assured
himself that his goods would pass to bona fide heirs.
Some fundamental questions about this analysis immedi

ately come to mind, questions raised earlier in connection
with Engels’ discussion of the emergence of private property
17
and monogamy. How are we to explain the sudden appearance
of der Drang, the pressure or impulse of the male to revo

lutionize property and sexual relationships in keeping with
his "private interests?" Presumably this pressure must have
been latent in the male during the earlier halcyon era of
communism and egalitqrianism. Why does it emerge at a par
ticular historical point? If the male impulse to dominate

others for his own private interests was latent in him from
the beginning of human history, what was its origin?

Christian theology, of course, might posit original sin or
greed, but Bebel, as a historical materialist and an atheist,

denied the validity of such interpretations which hearken
back to the mythological Garden of Eden and the Pall
17See pp. 96-99.
205
into sin.18
And yet Bebel's own account is rather similar to the
Genesis version of the Fall. His ancient society is Eden-
like in its happiness and equality, although in Bebel's

discussion it is the man, not the woman, who upsets this
idyllic life. For to Bebel, "the recognition of matriarchy

meant communism, the equality of all. The emergence of
patriarchy meant the domination of private property, and at
the same time signified the subjugation and bondage of the

19
woman." Thus, for Bebel, like Engels, the appearance of
private property and the patriarchal family constitutes the

world historical revolution.
Bebel tried to give a materialist economic explanation
for this revolution which is not satisfactory. In Die Frau

he argued that "all social dependence and oppression is
rooted in the economic dependence of the oppressed on the
oppressor. Woman found herself in this position from early

times on, whioh shows us the history of the evolution of
20
human society." But Bebel had posited that woman had not
been socially dependent or oppressed by the male until the
latter came to monopolize the creation and ownership of
18Bebel, Die Frau, p. 36.
19Ibid., pp. 58-59.

20Ibid.. p. 36.
206
tools and other means of production. Moreover, he argued
that growing population led to the need for additional land

and laborers. As a result of the division of labor and the
exploitation of more land more products were produced, for
"the more numerous these /work7 forces were, the greater

21
the abundance of products and herds." In essence this
is the same line of reasoning developed by Marx and Engels
in The Gterman Ideology and Engels in The Origin of the
Family. It is with the growing abundance of products that

Bebel, again like Marx and Engels, believed that the male
came to dominate and subjugate the female in order to have
heirs to inherit his property.

Obviously there is a close relationship between the
division of labor, population growth, increased wealth and

the unexplained "impulse" thatseizes the male and drives
him to revolutionize the communist social order at the par
ticular expense of the woman. And yet Bebel does not

explicitly explain this relationship. Why not? First,
because he might be forced to say that the social dependence

of woman on the man, of the "oppressed" on the "oppressor"
might be rooted in something other than economic dependence.

Bebel seems to have been aware of a non-economic factor in
the first edition of Die Frau, written at a time before he
21Ibid., p. 55.
207
had read Engels or Lewis Henry Morgan and when he was

clearly influenced hy Darwinian ideas. In a passage of
this first edition, dropped from the hook when he revised
it in 1890, Bebel observed:

that in which the slavery of woman in prehistory
was founded, and which maintained this /slavery/
over the course of millenia, and through which
the dependent relationship of woman even increased,
were her characteristics s b a sexual being. De
spite the equal development of her mental and
physical powers vis-a-vis the male, the prehistoric
woman was at a disadvantage when periods of preg
nancy, birth, and child care made her rely on the
male for help, support and protection. The woman's
need for help at certain times led in prehistoric
times, when physical force alone was respected and
- the struggle for existence appeared in its rawest,
most primitive forms, to a variety of brutal as
saults against the female sex, to the killing of
female infants, and to the abduction of women.22
It seems likely that Bebel removed this passage from

the 1890 edition of Die Frau because it appeared to dis
cover the origins of female subjugation in biological,

rather than economic, dependency. Even if one argued that
economic replaced biological dependence when mankind emerged
from prehistory, there remained two problems. First, it
meant that historical materialism understood in economic
determinist terms had not been operative in prehistoric
times, a position which was criticized by Social Democrats
when Engels took it in the introduction of The Origin of
22Bebel, Die Frau (1883 edition), p. 6.
208
p*
the Family. Secondly, the question as to whether "civ
ilized" man had really overoome and transcended his biolog
ical origins, an open question to socialist darwinists in
the 1880*s, might remain unanswered. If biological differ

ences remained important, how could socialists hope to ap
proximate the equality of the sexes?

Even if Bebel could explain the dependency of women
in biological terms he faced an even tougher problem ex
plaining in economic terms the pressure or Drang which

compelled the male of the species to dominate the female.
Bebel would have to posit an innate selfishness and ac
quisitiveness in the male which was not the result, but

rather the cause, of the abundance produced by the division
of labor, the exploitation of new land, etc. He would have
to argue that as mankind passes from the brute hand-to-
mouth level of subsistence and begins to acquire a surplus,

the male somehow becomes what he was not before, i.e., a
selfish, domineering creature acting under the influence
of an undefined Drang. And to argue in this fashion would
require the introduction of a non-materialist psychological

explanation for male domination which would not jibe with
Marxist ideology. It would mean a return to the Adam
Smith-Benthamite view of human nature, selfish and acquisi
tive no matter what the social arrangements.
23Cf. chapter on German Social Democracy, pp. 185-88.
209
Indeed, in another passage from the first edition of

Die Fran also dropped from later editions, Bebel came close
to taking the utilitarian psychological position. Discus-
sing the origin of monogamous marriage, Bebel wrote that

the male must have taken a position of mastery over woman
at the moment when a lasting relationship began
between the individual man and the individual
woman, a relationship probably introduced by the
male, lack of women /in the primitive tribe/,
the preference for a particular woman, awoke in
the male a desire for lasting possession. Male
egotism became active /Per mannliohe Eogismus
regte sich7. He took possession o f a woman with
or without the approval of other men, who then
followed his example. He laid on the woman the
responsibility of accepting only his caresses,
and in return took the responsibility of regard
ing the woman as his wife, and guarding and pro
tecting her children as his own. The greater se
curity of this arrangement permitted the woman to
regard this relationship as more advantageous.
Thus marriage began.24
Once again we are faced with a latent male egotism which

"became active" when the man, out of a desire for lasting
possession, takes one woman for his own. Like Engels, who
used the word Antrieb (impulse or drive) to account for the
origin of male domination, Bebel slurs over this problem

by referring to male egotism, a mysterious Drang which can-
25
not be explained in simple materialist terms. J If the

2În Lily Braun’s analysis of the evolution of monogamy,
it appears that the mere possession of property was the cause
of greed and egotism: "In addition to greed /the/ posses
sion /of property/ produced that egotism that reaches be
yond the grave which even after death doesn't want goods to
210
roots of male domination lay in the human psyche rather than

in the realm of economics and the material wotld, then there
could be no assurance that male domination would disappear
under socialism. Bebel never confronted this problem square

ly. But in an interesting line that anticipated Norman 0.
Brown's neo-freudian analysis of man's desire to produce a
surplus as part of his psychological struggle against death,

Bebel wrote that monogamous marriage produced "heirs in
whom man, along with his property, lived on, so to speak,

immortalized himself."2** The materialism of Bebel's social
ist ideology probably prevented him from asking how or why
the human mind came to seek immortality.
Unlike Ehgels, Bebel devoted a good deal of attention

to marriage and the family in the post-classical period,
with chapters on the Christian era, the Middle Ages, the
Reformation, Thirty Years' War, and the Enlightenment.
These sections reveal a part of Bebel's intellectual make

up that also characterized Social Democratic ideology before
1914— anti-clericalism in general and anti-Catholicism in
particular. It is obvious that Bebel shared most of the
2^(Contd.) go to strangers— the owner wants legitimate

heirs for hie wealth." Die Frauenfrags. ihre geschicht-
liohe Seite (Leipzig, 1901), p. 7.
26August Bebel, Die Frau (1883 edition), p. 10.

N.O. Brown, life Against Deaih (Middletown, 1959), pp. 234-
304.
211
"enlightened” attitudes of 19th Century free-thinkers, and
that much of what he wrote on the woman question was colored

27
by these attitudes. Presumably John Stuart Mill would not
have objected to Bebel's criticism of Christianity for con

taining within "its teachings the same contempt for woman
found in all oriental religions."28 Furthermore, the
Christian church has traditionally taught the
hatred of the flesh, which is also hatred to
wards woman, and also fear of woman, who is
depicted as the temptress of man in the /Genesis/
paradise scene. The apostles and church fathers
preached in this spirit; in this spirit the church
acted throughout the Middle Ages by creating
cloisters and introducing the celibacy of priests;
and it still operates in the same spirit today.
According to Christianity, woman is the Unclean
Thing, the seductress who brought sin into the
world and caused the fall of man.29
Whatever the shortcomings of the anti-feminist medieval
church might have been, Bebel romanticized the Middle Ages
for the relative lack of prudery, hypocrisy, and lascivious
ness among the common people of the age, characteristics he

believed poisoned the sexual relationships of m o d e m
Germans.30 Bebel did not overlook the sexual exploitation
Âugust Bebel, "Cftristentum und Sozialismus," (1874),

in August Bebel, Ausgewahlte Reden und Sohrlften (Berlin,
1970), I, 281-99: ana Heiner Grote.~5ozlaidemoicratle und
Religion (Tfibingen, 1968).
29Ibid., p. 85.
30Ibid., p. 103.
212
inherent in the feudal-manorial social structure with its

"right of the first night" claimed hy feudal lords when
their tenants married, a right Behel insisted was "today
still /claimed/ in Germany by the landowner or his officials

as something self-evident.
Oddly enough, Bebel pointed to Martin Luther as a re
liable source of sound sexual advice, noting that "the
healthy sensuality of the Middle Ages found its classical

interpreter in Luther."'*2 It is difficult to determine to
what extent Bebel was playing the role of Satan citing

Scripture when he took Luther as a fount of sexual wisdom,
but he did seem to have a certain respect for Luther's com

mon sense. Bebel quoted Luther's advice that a woman mar
ried to an impotent husband should seek sexual satisfaction
in an extra-marital affair.33 Because Luther recognized
the naturalness of the sexual drive and attacked celibacy

as an unhealthy alternative to marriage, Bebel concluded
that "in the struggle that it must lead against the clergy,
Social Democracy can, with complete authority and justice,
call upon Luther, who took a completely unbiased position
31Ibid.. p. 95.
32Ibid., p. 104.
33Ibid., pp. 105-106
213
on marital questions.,|5^
Prom Luther, Bebel turned to the question of fluctu
ations in German population size over the centuries. He
argued that the Thirty Years’ War drastically reduced

Germany's population which resulted in the clergymen and
princes of various German states encouraging or tolerating

polygamy in the decades after 1648 in the hope of restoring
the population. Bebel noted that population size did not

become a matter of concern for economists until population
growth after 1800 put increasing pressure on Germany's

agrarian resources. Because Germany lacked the industry
and towns to absorb the population suplus, there was a

dramatic increase in pauperism and vagabondage in the
decades before 1848. Bebel argued that the attempts to

hold down pauperism by restricting the rights of the poor
to marry and settle down, as in Bavaria until 1867, only

resulted in an increase in concubinage and illegitimacy.
He observed sarcastically that "these were the effects of

a patriarchal regime proud of its morality and Christi
anity."55
Bebel concluded his historical analysis by pointing
54Ibid.. p. 107.
55Ibid., p. 119. For a recent discussion of the
relationship between legal restrictions on marriage and
illegitimacy see John Knodel, "Law, Marriage, and Il
legitimacy in Nineteenth Century Germany," Population
Studies. 20 (March, 1967), pp. 279-94.
214
out that pauperism was only one, and a negative, facet of
the Vorm&rz period. As capitalism and nascent industrialism
began to transform agrarian society, the old marital and
familial patterns began to disintegrate. But Bebel, like

Marx and Engels, felt that industrialization laid the
groundwork for another, higher stage of development in these
institutions. Bebel believed that in spite of the hardships
of the transition from agriculture to industry, participa
tion in industrial production promised woman a great poten

tial for economic independence from her husband and parents.
"Next to the worker, it was the woman in particular who
profited from this new development, which created for her
a freer path."^ To Bebel this "freer path" led through

the integration of women in the industrial system, and,
presumably, through their participation in the socialist
movement. Unfortunately the integration of women into the

capitalist industrial order supposedly undermined marriage
and the family.

August Bebel added little or nothing to the Marxist
theoretical critique of marriage and the family under cap
italism. Like the founders of Marxism, Bebel’s criticisms

sprang from the basic premise that the family, monogamous
marriage and prostitution (the latter two being the only
institutionalized forms of sexual behavior permitted or
215
tolerated in Imperial Germany) were all inter-related parts
of a social superstructure standing atop an economic base

of private property and industrial capitalism.
Not content with simply leaving his criticism at the

theoretical level, Bebel attempted to provide statistical
evidence that marriage and the family were indeed in a state
of decline in late 19th Century Germany. He provided a good

deal of such evidence in the central portions of Die Frau
where he examined such topics as female suicide, the declin

ing birth and marriage rates in Germany and other industri
alizing countries, infanticide, illegitimacy, the ratio of
men to women in the population, the occupations of women,

and the like.
It is not my intention here to review and criticize

Bebel's statistical information. Such a study would re
quire the examination of a variety of problems tangential

to this dissertation (demography, to give only one instance)
and would furthermore obscure one of the dominant themes
of Bebel's and other Social Democrats' ideological position

on marriage and the family under capitalism, i.e., a position
compounded of an ethical condemnation of the hypocrisy and

moral degeneracy of bourgeois society on the one hand, and
the Marxist conviction that under socialism the present forms
of marriage and the family would be transcended, aufgehoben.

raised to a higher level of development.
Although the liberal use of statistics gave a
216
"scientific" cast to Bebel's discussion, it is significant
that before the appearance of the revised edition of Die

Frau in 1890 there were not many statistics included in
the text. In the editions which appeared after 1890, how

ever, statistical data became much more prominent. At the
same time, from the first to the fiftieth edition, Die
Frau was suffused with a tone of moral indignation and con
demnation of bourgeois morality more characteristic of
•37
Fourier and Weitling than of Marx and Engels. ' For ex
ample, like a latter-day Jeremiah, Bebel lamented that
our bourgeois society is like a huge carnival

in which each person tries to deceive and make
a fool of the other. Everyone wears his of
ficial uniform with dignity, in order that
afterwards he may unofficially pander to his
inclinations and passions in an unbridled
fashion. And outwardly everything drips with
morality, religion, and propriety. In no age
was hypocrisy greater than in ours. The number
of signs grows by the d a y . 38
No sign was too small to escape Bebel's eagle eye. Indeed
he seems to have regarded signs of bourgeois hypocrisy as

the moral equivalent of the economic immiseration of the
proletariat dear to the hearts of orthodox MarxistSocial
Democrats. Bebel noted as one of these signs the use of
■57
^'In fact, Bebel published a book-length sympathetic
study of Fourier in 1888. August Bebel, Charles Fourier.
Sein leben und seine Theorien /Internationale Bibliothek.
Bd. 6/ 3rd edition (siuttgart, 1907).
217
newspaper advertisements by wealthy bachelors seeking a
wife or parents seeking a husband for a daughter. He took

these advertisements as another indication that "modern
marriage is an institution very closely linked to the ex
isting social order, and stands and falls with that order.
But this ^form of7 marriage is in dissolution and decline,

39
exactly like bourgeois society itself."
In examining Bebel's views on marriage, the family,

and society in general, it is necessary to bear in mind
that his socialist criticisms are similar in content and

especially tone to those of other, non-socialist German
Kulturpessimisten^0 of the late 19th Century. Like Langbehn
and Lagarde, Bebel looked back on the Middle Ages with a

great deal of sympathy, as the "good old days" before cap
italism. At the same time, as a Marxist, Bebel had to
recognize the "backwardness" of the Medieval period and the

necessity of passing through capitalism before a socialist
society could be achieved. But the Social Democratic eth
ical tradition seems to have prevented Bebel from taking
Marx's position of ethical neutrality on the achievement of
59Ibid., p. 205.
^°See Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair
(New York: Anchor edition, 1965); and Klaus Bergmann,
Agrarromantik und Grossstadtfeindschaft (Meisenheim am
Gian, 19^0).
218
socialism. It is the mixture of socialist and cultural
pessimism that gives an ambivalent and sometimes contra
dictory direction to much of Bebel’s writing and that of

other Social Democrats. This ambivalence appears clearly
in the Social Democratic discussion of bourgeois and work

ing class marriage under capitalism and the relationship
of the two to prostitution.

Bor Bebel, modern marriage suffered from the demands
of capitalist society which placed economic considerations

above everything else. In Bebel's words, "marriage should
be a union which two people enter into out of mutual love
in order to achieve their natural purpose (Naturzweck).

Presumably this natural purpose was procreation for the
preservation of the species, but Bebel insisted that mar
riage should also be based on mutual love. He believed
that few marriages between upper and middle class men and
women had this basis. Rather he argued that women regarded
marriage as an institution that theoretically guaranteed
their economic security, while their husbands looked on it
as a commercial venture and a means of providing heirs for

the family fortune. Bebel complained that "for the male,
the woman is above all a pleasure object. Socially and
economically unfree, she sees in marriage her source of
livelihood. Hence she depends on the man and becomes for
^Bebel, Die Frau, p. 136.
219
him a piece of property.1,42 Because economic interest and
not mutual love formed the basis of most bourgeois mar
riages, Bebel was not surprised that so many of them ended
in divorce, or that men and women from the middle and upper
classes devoted so much time to prostitutes and love af
fairs.45
In addition to marrying for reasons other than love,
Bebel argued that middle and upper class German men mar
ried later in life than working class men. He provided

the following data on the age of marriage for Prussian males
in various occupations between 1881 and 188644
Occupation Age at Marriage
Miners 27.6
Factory workers 27.7
Metal workers 28.
Stone masons 28.2
Woodworkers 28.7
Tool and die makers 29.
Teachers 29.1
Farm workers 29.6
Transport 30.
Trade 30.9
Health, church, civil service 31.8 - 33.4
Not only did men in certain professions marry late, but
some, like junior military officers, were not permitted to
42Ibid., p. 66.
45Ibid.. p. 156.
44Ibld.. p. 201.
220
marry at all. In times of economic depression the men
willing to marry tended to decline in all professions. All

of this Bebel took as support for his argument that under
industrial capitalism
the number of men to whom, for various reasons,
marriage is denied, increases steadily. And it
is precisely among the so-called upper classes
and professions that men do not marry because
their pretensions are too great and also because
men from these circles find their amusement and
pleasure outside marriage.45
And what was the source of this extra-marital pleasure?
Because of the late marriage of men in the upper class and
professions, the declining marriage rate, and the loveless
ness of many bourgeois marriages, Bebel discovered that

source in prostitution, which "becomes a necessary institu
tion for bourgeois society, like the police, a standing
army, churches and business."4^ In fact, Bebel argued that
without prostitution "bourgeois society would be unthink

ab le."^ In common with other Social Democrats of his time,
Bebel charged that the bourgeoisie tolerated prostitution,
ostensibly because it was a "necessary evil" which would

help to preserve the honor of woman in its own class, but
in reality to gratify the desires of its male members.
45Ibid., p. 202.
46Ibid., p. 208.
47Ibid.. p. 210.
221
Still worse, middle class males seduced the daughters of

the working class who then often became prostitutes for
economic reasons.
Social Democratic writers on prostitution repeatedly-

accused the middle and upper classes of making the most use
of prostitutes and of seducing working class women, while

arguing that because they marry earlier, working class men
seldom have recourse to prostitutes. Paul Hirsch, author

of what is perhaps the longest and most detailed study of
prostitution produced by a Social Democrat before 1914,

declared that
for the well-to-do classes prostitution pro

vides the chief substitute for marriage, and
since the age of marriage among the educated
classes is steadily rising, they require
prostitution far longer than the working class,
for which /prostitution/ is today already as good
as unnecessary.48
Another Social Democrat, H. Lux, asked "which class makes
the most use of prostitution? The rich, well-to-do people,

for they alone are in the position to provide money for
prostitutes."^ Dr. Alfred Blaschko, an authority on

venereal disease and related problems as well as a socialist
^8Paul Hirsch, Verbrechen und Prostitution als soziale

Krankheltserschelnungeh. 2nd edition (Berlin. 1907).
pTTTI See also P. Domela Niewenhuis, "Zur Fragd der
Prostitution," Neue Zeit, II (1884), p. 256.
^ H . lux, Sozlal-politisches Handbuch (Berlin, 1892),

p. 135.
222
suggested that the demand for prostitutes was greatest in

large cities where a variety of social classes intermingled,
for prostitution presupposed

a misture of various classes, of possessors and
non-possessors, for, apart from exceptions of
course, it is the men of the possessing class
who are the buyers and the women of the non
possessing class who are the sellers of prosti
tution. • . . Among the members of the upper
ten thousand prostitution is only a luxury, but
it is precisely in these circles that luxury
itself is a necessity. Intercourse with women,
along with the other pleasures of life— horses,
sports, and the joys of the table— make up the
entire contents of the rich young man's life.
A real economic need for prostitution exists
only in the middle class (merchants, civil serv
ants, students, etc.) whose members are often
able to marry only in their middle or late
thirties. Custom forbids free premarital sexual
intercourse to the middle class woman. There
fore in these circles the young man is largely
limited to prostitution and its transitional
form, the affair (Verhflltnis) before his mar
riage. 50
In the same vein, another Social Democratic student
of prostitution, Paul Kampffmeyer, used the example of the

servant girl from a working class background to illustrate
the dangers of a social milieu that brings rich and poor
into close social and/or physical contact.
Female members of the proletarian classes slide

easily and quickly into the morass of prostitu
tion when they come into contact with the upper
social classes, as does, for example, the domestic
servant in our larger cities. In most cases these
•*°Alfred Blaschko, "Prostitution,” in J. Conrad, ed.,

Handwflrterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, 3rd edition
(Jena, 1910), VI, 1230.
223
girls are completely cut off from theirparental

home, among strange surroundings /where/ they
are denied the support found in a solid family.
Most of them come from the countryside and are
placed into a completely foreign world of culture
and morality, and they live under the same roof
with members of a social class which does not
regard her as intellectually or morally equal to
itself, but only as a physical s e r v a n t . 51
It would be easy to multiply examples like those just

cited, but it is not necessary. Without offering any con
crete evidence, Social Democrats repeatedly accused the

upper and middle classes of Germany of being the chief,
practically the sole, users of prostitutes. Why then did
socialists like Bebel argue that the "johns" or Stubben
("stumps” as they were known to Berlin prostitutes) were

drawn largely from the bourgeoisie? First, because such
a view dovetailed neatly with the socialist interpretation
of the loveless bourgeois marriage of convenience, which
contrasted sharply with the humble working class marriage
^ Paul Kampffmeyer, Die Prostitution als soziale

Klassenerscheinung und ihre sozialpolj-fcisohe Erkampfung
(Berlin, 1905), p. 28. By 1913 Kampffmeyer was willing to
admit that prostitution was a "complex of social-ethical
and social-hygienic questions," not simply one of economics
or the mingling of different social classes. See his
article, "Das Problem der Prostitution," Sozialistische
Monatsheft, XIX-1 (1913), 232-38. The entire spectrum of
Social Democratic ideas on prostitution appeared in ex
tended Reichstag debates in 1892 and 1900 over the so-
called "Lex Heinze" which was designed to toughen up the
laws concerning prostitution and procuring. See Vorwarts
(Berlin), September-November, 1891; June-July, 1892;
Reichstag debates for December, 1892; January-June, 1900.
A convenient summary appears in /Dr. Hieber & C.A. Patzig/
Lex Heinze. Dargestellt nach den Verhandlungen des
Reichstags von /Bibliothek ftir Politik und Volks-
wirtschaft. Heft 2/ (Berlin, 1901).
224
devoid of economic interest and supposedly based on mutual

inclination if not actual love. This, of course had been
the view of Engels in The Origin of the Family. and it was
preserved and repeated in the writings of Bebel and other

Social Democrats.
A second reason has already been noted earlier.

Social Democrats seldom missed an opportunity to denounce
the immorality and hypocrisy of the middle class. True

virtue resides in the working class and also in the Social
Democratic Party. There is a strong element of puritani
cal self-righteousness running throughout the socialist
literature on prostitution which casts the bourgeois male

as the lecherous sinner and the working class girl as the
sinned-against daughter of the people.
The reader of this literature wonders, however, just

how sympathetic Social Democrats were toward prostitutes
who were theoretically the helpless victims of capitalist
exploitation and the poor wages paid to women. After all,
much of the socialist condemnation of the bourgeois male

seems to spring from the fact that he actually does consort
with prostitutes and it is possible to get the impression

that some Social Democrats found prostitutes themselves
repugnant and blameworthy. It is odd that in the many
articles, pamphlets, and books produced by Social Democrats

on prostitution, there is very seldom any mention of the
225
individual prostitute per se. Usually the prostitute is

discussed as an ideal type of the.fallen woman who is forced
into prostitution out of economic necessity. Socialists
might sympathize with the prostitute, but, in a variant of

the question ’’would you want your daughter to marry one,"
one Social Democrat wrote that "no Social Democratic or
ganization would be inclined to accept a known prostitute
as a member."*^2 It was left to anarchists, like the group
around Erich flrflhsam in 1909, to hold meetings designed to
attract prostitutes, pimps, homosexuals, and petty crim

inals.*^ Anarchists might try to forge links with the
Lumpenproletariat, but Marxist Social Democrats with petit

bourgeois social origins would hardly wish to associate
with the underworld no matter what their sympathies might
be.
There may be a third reason for the great interest
shown by Social Democrats in the Prostitutionfrage as well
as their frequent denunciations of bourgeois males for using
prostitutes. Werner Thflnnessen has recently suggested that
the Social Democrats

completely shared the repressive sexual morality
of the bourgeoisie. Certainly there is a con
nection between decreasing wages and increasing
-*2Eduard Fischer, "Die Sexuelle Frage," Sozialistische

Monatsheft. XIII, 2 (1909), p. 961.
c-5
Ulrich Linse, Organisierter Anarchismus in Deutschen
Kaiserreich von 1871 (Berlin, 1969), pp. 110-11.
226
prostitution /a connection often emphasized by

German socialists/. Nevertheless, the signifi
cance given to prostitution in socialist dis
cussions was essentially of a projective origin.
They accused the bourgeoisie of enjoying liber
ties which were denied the workers. Because
they themselves were forced to suppress their
sexual needs, they charged the bourgeoisie with
abusing proletarian girls, and with not being
content with the moral standards they had been
forced to accept.54
These observations are very interesting, although
Thflnnessen offers no satisfactory evidence to support them.

Later in this chapter I shall attempt to show that Social
Democrats did indeed share the sexual moral attitudes of
the bourgeoisie as well as traditional views on marriage

and the family. Here it suffices to say that when a man
like August Bebel rose from the status of artisan to the

leadership of Germany’s largest political party he assumed
many of the moral values of the middle classes. Or, as
seems more likely, Bebel, as a successful artisan in the

1860's and 1870's, already regarded himself as a member
of the German Mittelstand before his political career
carried him far above his origins. Certainly it would be

difficult to challenge Robert Michels' observation that,
whatever his theoretical views on marriage and sexuality
may have been, in his personal behavior Bebel was
^^Werner Th&messen, Frauenemanzipation. Politik

und Literatur der deutschen Sozialdemokratie zur
Frauenbewegung~l863-l933 (Frankfurt a. M . t 19^9), p. 22.
227
55
"burgerlichtreu und unanf echtbar.
The Social Democratic analysis of marriage and the

family under capitalism is completed with some discussion
of the picture of working class marriage found in Bebel!s
Die Frau. We have already noted that socialists argued

that working class men made little use of prostitutes be
cause they married relatively early and for love, not money.
Of course, Bebel recognized that working class marriages

were often just as unhappy as those of their social
"betters.” But Bebel attributed this unhappiness chiefly
to the illness, unemployment, low wages, and poor housing,
which afflicted the working class. Moreover he felt that

capitalism forced many women to leave their homes and work
in order to support her family. Bringing home her own
wages might give the working wife a rough sort of equality
with her husband, but Bebel felt that the family suffered
because of her employment outside the home. He noted that
the growing employment of women away from home meant that
"the family life of workers is ruined more and more.
/Furthermore/ the dissolution of marriage and the family

is the natural consequence of this process, and increases
immorality, demoralization, degeneration, illness of all
•’'’Robert Michels, "Altes und Neues zum Problem der

Moralstatistik." Archiv fttr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozial-
politik. LVII (1927), p.“T O "
228
56
kinds, and the infant mortality rate."^ In addition,
Bebel complained that the prolonged absense of one or both
parents from the home meant that children were often brought
up by older children, relatives, or friends who could not
give them the care and attention they required. All of
these evils Bebel and other Social Democrats blamed on the

economic system of capitalism and the class society it en
gendered. Bebel believed that these evils could only be

elimihated with the collapse of capitalism and the advent
of socialism. After describing the bleakness of the present,

it is scarcely surprising that socialists eagerly produced
glowing visions of the future.
Unlike Marx and Engels who were reluctant to describe

the nature of society and human social institutions under
socialism in anything but general terms, many German Social
Democrats drew pictures of the socialist Zukunftsstaat in

great detail. In this regard writers like Bebel were closer
to Fourier and Weitling than to Marx and Engels.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Bebel's thoughts about
the future as mere utopianism, the day-dreams of a social
ist longing for a society in which all wrongs would be
righted. No doubt his hopes for the future were in part a
function of the powerlessness of the SPD to effect funda

mental change in Wilhelmine German society. But it should
-^Bebel, Die Frau, p. 265.
229
also be remembered that in Die Frau Bebel was trying to
make intelligible and attractive the ideas of socialism
to a broad spectrum of German society (especially the work
ing class) which neither knew much about nor understood the
writings of Marx and Engels. If the Social Democratic
vision of the future often seems over-simplified and naive,
it may be because that vision was not being projected to a

very sophisticated audience.
Bebel devoted the last quarter of Die Frau to the sub
ject of “The Socialization of Society."**7 In it he dis

cussed the collapse in the near future of the capitalist
order, its replacement by a socialist society in which it

would be the duty of all able-bodied people to work; an
eventual end to the division of labor with the help of
technology which would free people from over-specialized

work, and increase lisure time. Social classes would dis
appear as would, eventually, the state itself. Under so

cialism, mankind would ehjoy the same equality and communal
existence it had known under the prehistoric matriarchy,

albeit on a much more highly developed social and economic
level. According to Bebel, "the 'golden age1 which men

have dreamed about and longed for for thousands of years
will finally come. Class domination will be ended once

and for all, and with it the domination of man over
57Ibid., pp. 405-577.
230
woman» Even Karl Kautsky, one of the SPD's beat known

and respected theoreticians, declared that with the arrival
of socialism, "a new generation will arise, as strong and
beautiful and happy as the heroes of the Greek Heldenzeit
and the Germanic warriors of the vSlkerwanderung.
While they looked forward to a golden age of heroes,
Social Democrats did not lose sight of the more mundane
chores of family life. In fact, the juxtaposition of high

flown ideals about the future and the everyday business of
housekeeping is very common in Social Democratic writings.

In an article on "Socialism and Housework," the future
anarchist and lover of Emma Goldman, Johann Most, argued
that under socialism women would be able to escape the nar

row confines of the home and participate in socially useful
work with the aid of advanced technology. Under socialism,
apartment buildings fitted with running water, good plumbing,

central heating systems, free laundries, communal kitchens
and kindergartens would replace the inefficient and often
unsanitary individual dwellings in which workers lived
under capitalism. Most denied that living in socialist

apartment buildings would be like living in military bar
racks, as some critics of Charles Fourier maintained.
58Ibid., p. 522.
59
Karl Kautsky, Per Einfluss der Volksvermehrung auf
den Fortschritt der Gesellschaft (Vienna. 1880). p. 267.
231
In fact, family life could be maintained and even improved

in a large, communally operated apartment building.^
In Die Frau, Bebel also indulged in some Fourier-like
speculation about communal kitchens, steam heating, public

laundries, and electrical cleaning appliances to make
woman's housework easier.^1 Earlier, Bebel had even sug
gested that with the help of modern household appliances,
the Hausfrau's work would be "improved and ennobled" in

62
communal society.
Curiously, in Die Frau, Bebel devoted less than ten
pages to the subjeot of "woman in the future," that is,
under socialism. Bebel felt that the reader could draw
his own conclusions, given the belief that socialism would
cure the ills previously attributed to capitalism and class

society. Of course, Bebel believed that complete social
equality would exist between the sexes. Women and men would
receive equal pay for equal work, and both sexes would be
eligible for the same high level of education. It was not
^Johann Most, "Der Socialismus und die hfluslichen

Arbeiten," Die Zukunft. Socialistische Revue. II (1878),
33-50.
^Bebel, Die Frau, pp. 504-14. It is hard to disagree
with the conclusion of a recent writer that "the communes
Bebel foresees are incredibly bourgeois cooperative arrange
ments of proper Victorian couples, designed to bring house
hold technology to working class families." Erazim V.
Kohak, "Turning on for Freedom. The Curious Love Affair
of Sex and Socialism," Dissent. (Sept-Oct, 1969), p. 438.
62
August Bebel, Unsere Ziele. 3rd edition (Berlin,
1872), p. 15.
232
altogether clear who would raise children under socialism,

for Bebel did not say whether the nuclear family would be
abolished or “wither away" of itself. Nor did he say that

marriage would vanish. He did insist, however, that marriage
as a legal institution would no longer exist under socialism.

Choice of a sexual partner would depend on mutual love and
inclination since conerns about preserving family fortunes
would no longer obtain. Under socialism, the union of man
and woman "is a private contract without the interference

of any functionary, just as marriage in the Middle Ages was
a private contract. In this matter socialism creates noth
ing new. It only places at a higher cultural level and
under new social forms that which was respectable before
private property came to control society."^
By claiming that sexual relations should and under

socialism would be a matter of personal choice and private
^Bebel, Die Frau, p. 515. A critique of Bebel argued

that the socialist solution for economic problems would not
eliminate things like jealousy among men and women under
socialism. See Simon Katzenstein, "Kritische Bemerkungen
zu Bebels Buch: 'Die Frau und der Sozialismus,'" Neue
Zeit, XV-1 (1897), 297-98. Bebel dodged the question by
saying that we must wait and see whether men and women are
still jealous of one another under socialism. See August
Bebel, "Kritische Bemerkungen zu Katzensteins kritischen
Bemerkungen fiber 'Die Frau und der Sozialismus,'" Neue
Zeit. XV-1 (1897), 331-32. A similar charge that social
ises ignored important questions of human psychology in
sexual matters appears in Max Lorenz, Die marxistiache
Socialdemokratie /Bibliothek ftir Socialwissenschaft. iBand £7
(Leipzig, 1896), pp. 126-33.
233
contract, Bebel laid himself open to the charges of conserva
tive critics who accused him of being an advocate of ’’free

love" and the community of women (Weibergemeinschaft)
This was, of course, one of the hoariest anti-socialist
jibes, one dealt with as early as the Communist Manifesto.

Nevertheless it was a question on which German Social Demo
crats were very sensitive and also one they repeatedly

denied. Thus, in 1871, a writer in a socialist newspaper
declared that "we are also supporters of monogamy, but we
are convinced that only socialism can /properljj/ organize

it."^ Twenty years later, in his exposition of the SPD’s
Erfurt Program, Karl Kautsky said that under socialism,
"for the first time in the history of the world, monogamous

marriage will no longer be simply a formalized institution,
66
but will become a reality for both man and woman." Of
course, what Social Democrats meant when they wrote about
"organizing" monogamy and making it a "reality" under
socialism was their conviction that under socialism the

sexual union of man and woman would be freed from the economic
^Cf. "C.A.I.," A. Bebel und sein Evangelium, pp. 5-20.
^ Volksstaat (Leipzig), December 9, 1871, as cited in

Grote, Sozialdemokratie und Religion, p. 126. The same
position is taken hy Johann Perch. £iebe und Ehe in der
arbeitenden Klassen (Oranienburg, nTdT"ZT933777""p• 35.
66Karl Kautsky, Das Erfurter Programm in seinem
grunds&tzlichen Theil. 2nd edition (Stuttgart, 1892),
pp. l l b - t f .
234
67
worries and demands of capitalism.
In addition Social Democrats saw the free choice of
sexual partners under socialism as the culmination of modern
European history's tendency toward the full and free reali

zation of individual personality. Already in the late 1850's
Ferdinand Lassalle believed that "because the course of the

m o d e m era moves toward the free untrammelled realization
of one's personality, a social revolution in connection

with love, sexual life, and morality is necessary. For
hitherto the feelings and the bodies of women have been
denied their free realization by an irrational slavish

68
morality." Lassalle echoed Marx's feelings in the latter's
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 by arguing that

sexual intercourse and the reproduction of children were
the ways in which the individual ego expressed and estab
lished its relationship to the whole human species.

Lassalle rejected gross sexual promiscuity under capitalism,
for this could only lead to women being burdened with the
care of illegitimate children. But after the establishment
of socialism, or, as Lassalle referred to it in the context
^ L i l y Braun, Frauenfrage und Sozialdemolcratie (Berlin.

1896).
88Quoted in Thilo Ramm, Ferdinand Lassalle ale Rechts-
und Sozialphilosoph. 2nd edition (Meisenheim am Gian, 1^56),
p. i5qT
.
69Ibid.. pp. 130-31.
235
of marriage and sexual activity, in the "realm of the free
spirit," women could bestow their sexual favors on whomever

they wished. The family would no longer exist as a legal
institution and children would be looked after by society

at large.
The socialist conviction that monogamous "marriage"

would take place on a "higher" plane is an interesting
example of the ethical strain common to German Social Democ

racy. In addition it shows that German Social Democrats
believed that, somewhat surprisingly, one of the effects of

socialism would be the greater development of individualism
within society, a belief held by non-socialist liberal

thinkers in the 19th Century. Nor was this desire for the
further development of individual personality a character
istic only of lassalle and other early Social Democrats.
No less a "scientific" Marxist theoretician than Karl
Kautsky could write that the development of personality
in the family would be an important result of socialism.

The following passage by Kautsky is quoted at length as an
illustration of the ambivalent mixture of socialist and
liberal ideas held by leading Social Democrats.
Nowhere can personality develop so completely

and be enjoyed to the fullest, without any
' Ibid.. p.
i. 132. Also !Shlomo Na'aman, Lassalle
(Hanover, 1970), pp. 502-503
236
interference by the hostile or limiting demands

of others, than in one's own home,_where, limited
only by material considerations, /personality/ can
be freely developed and embellished, /There the
individual/ can freely experience love, enjoy
friends, TiJooks, ideas and dreams, scientific and
artistic creations. But along with individualism
there also developes individual sexual love
/Geschlechtsliebe7 which finds its satisfaction
only in union with and living together with a
single, specific individual of the other sex.
Marriage founded upon this individual sexual
love also needs its own home in order to exist.
. . . The disappearance of the private household
/under socialism/ does not mean the dissolution
of marriage and— the family, /lather/ the disap
pearance of the individual household simply means
the transformation of the family from an economic
to a purely ethical unity. It means the realiza
tion of a moral imperative, the development of
individualism, already brought to maturity by
modern productive forces.71
The stress given in this passage to individual sexual love

is, of course, reminiscent of Engels' comments on the same
subject in The Origin of the Family. It is also in agree
ment with Marx's conception of the Aufhebung of marriage

and the family under socialism. Nor should one overlook
the portrait of middle class Gemtttlichkeit Kautsky draws
here of the individual thinking and creating in the home
setting surrounded by books and friends.
With the emergence of a higher form of nonogamy based
on love, and a higher level of material progress under

socialism, German Social Democrats predicted the disap
pearance of several phenomena related to human sexual
^ K a r l Kautsky, Der Agrarfrage (Stuttgart, 1899),

pp. 449-50.
237
institutions under capitalism. Kautsky flatly declared

that "every form of prostitution, legal and illegal, will
72
come to an end."1 Other socialists, more cautiously
claimed that in the future socialist society at least prosti
tution as a source of income would die out with the improved
7"?
wages and living standards of women. ^ Because socialist
society would provide for the needs of all its members,
illegitimate children would no longer be a source of finan

cial burden or social condemnation for unwed mothers.
Other socialists seem to have transcended the sublim
ity of the future and become ridiculous in their prognosti

cations. Thus Bruno Schoenlank could say that "as a mass
social phenomenon syphillis stands and falls with the cap

italist means of production," and would presumably disappear
74.
under socialism.'^ Another writer, showing some of the
prejudices of late 19th Century German Kulturpessimlsten

of the anti-big city variety, argued that masturbation
(which she euphemistically called Selbsthilfe) will longer
exist in a socialist society where healthy, happy children
will no longer exhibit the unhealthy nervousness and
72
1 Kautsky, Erfurter Programm. pp. 146-47. Early mar
riage is seen as the best way to eliminate prostitution in
Edmund Fisher, "Die Ueberwindung der Prostitution,"
Sozialistische Monatsheft. XII-1 (1906), 238-246.
73
'■'Hirsch, Verbrechen und Prostitution, p. 137.
74
' \Bruno Schoenlank, "Die Syphillis und die Sozial-
zust&nde," Neue Zeit. V (1887), p. 574.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm is sio n o f th e co p yrig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p rohibited w ith o u t perm ission.
238
premature sexual development associated with capitalist
urban society.1"^
In the midst of all these hopes there was one area
related to marriage and the family that seemed to threaten

the happiness and security of the socialist future— that of
population growth. If socialism succeeded in eliminating

the struggle for existence and allowed even the "unfit"
to survive, would not Malthus1 dire predictions come true?

Living in socialist luxury, and with unrestricted mutual
"sexual love," would not people reproduce at such a rate
as to nullify all the benefits of the socialist mode of

production? These were very real questions for German
Social Democrats and reflect their interest in and the in
fluence on them of Darwinian thought in the decades after
1870.
In Die Frau Bebel devoted more than twenty pages to
the "question of population and socialism." Karl Kautsky
devoted his first book, published in 1880, to "the influence
of population increase on the progress of society." Thirty

years later he returned to the same subject in a book en
titled "Reproduction and Evolution in Nature and Society.
^ H o p e Bridges Adams-Lehmann, "Sexuelle P&dagogik,"

Sozialistische Monatsheft. XI-2 (1907), p. 759.
"^Karl Kautsky, Vermehrung und Entwicklung in Natur
und Gesellschaft. 2nd edition (Stu-fctgart, 1920; originally
published in 19l0). Also see Karl Kautsky, "Malthusianismus
und Sozialismus," Neue Zeit. XXIX-1 (1911;, 620-27, 652-62,
239
Socialist concern with the population question antedates,
hut should be seen against the background of, the general
interest shown in Imperial Germany in the questions of

'•racial hygiene," the Geburtenrtickgang, and eugenics that
77
exercised the minds of nationalistic demographers.
Ferdinand Lassalle had dismissed Malthus' predictions
as nonsense. He believed that since human activity was
the source of all wealth, the more work-hands in a society,

the wealthier it would be. In any case the socialist state
would assume the burden of caring for children. The obvious

way of preventing too many births, contraception, Lassalle
rejected as "immoral, inhuman, and unnatural."^8 By and

large, this attitude remained common among most Social
Democrats until after 1900.

August Bebel's answer to the question of overpopulation
was rather simple, but contained several ambiguities. He
argued that the world could support many more people than
it presently did, and do so at a high living standard.
^ ( C o n t d . )684-97; Ludwig Quessel, "Karl Kautsky als

Bev8lkerungstheoretiker," Neue Zeit. XXIX-1 (1911), 559-65.
"^Julius Wolf, Der Geburtenrflckgang. Die Rational-
isierung des SexualleBens~Tn unserer Zeit TTeha, igiS;;
Hans Rost, Geburtenrdckgang und Konfession. Eine Unter-
suchung (Cologne, 1913); Max Hirsch, Fruchtabtrelbung und
Prfiventiwerkehr im Zusammenhang mit dem Geburtenrdckgang
IWrzburg,' I5ITJ.-------------- ----------------------
Ferdinand Lassalle. p. 132.
240
For Bebel, the problem was not overpopulation, but rather
the unequal distribution of goods between rich and poor

nations, the upper and middle classes and the proletariat.
Socialism, of course, would resolve these inequalities by-
eliminating the irrational capitalist system of production

and distribution. The standard of living of the great ma
jority of people would rise. Those who argued that under

such improved conditions people would reproduce at a much
higher rate ignored the fact that it was precisely among
the poor in German society that the birth rate was highest
and family size largest, while better paid workers, the
upper and middle classes tended to have smaller families.

Bebel thought family size would decrease under the improved
conditions of socialism. This was because

in the future one factor will be decisive in
regard to the question of population: the
higher, freer position of woman. As a rule,
intelligent and energetic women are not inclined
to regard a number of children as a "God-send,"
and to spend the best years of their lives in a
condition of pregnancy, or with babes at their
breasts. Even at present most women have an
aversion against a too numerous progdny and this
aversion is likely to increase rather than de
crease, regardless of the care that a socialist
society will bestow on pregnant women and mothers.
This is the main reason why, in our opinion, the
increase of population is likely to progress more
slowly in a socialist society than it does in
bourgeois society.79
But how were "energetic and intelligent women" to avoid
79Bebel, Die Frau, pp. 547-48.
241
numerous pregnancies? The obvious answer, contraception,
was, as shown above, rejected by Lassalle as "unnatural11

and this continued to be the feeling among many Social
Democrats, including Bebel himself. In the lines immedi
ately after the paragraph just quoted, Bebel declared that

"in a society living according to natural laws the size of
the population will ultimately be regulated without harmful
/iexual7 abstinence, or unnatural contraception (widernattir-

lichen Preventiwerkehr). »8Q Bebel does not make clear how
"natural laws" will regulate the size of population, but it
appears that he opposed "unnatural" contraception. In fact,
in the first edition of Die Frau, he had used an even

stronger adjective to describe contraception— wldrige. which
carries the implication of "disgusting" or "repugnant."81
In the same early edition of his book, however, Bebel
did refer to a kind of birth control he presumably did not

find repugnant or unnatural. "With women there are periods
of time when her ability to conceive is practically nil.

These should reliably occur only a few days before and after
menstruation."82 Bebel was advocating a form of birth
control acceptable to the Catholic church, that is, the so-
called rhythm method. In any case, Bebel closed his
8QIbid.. p. 548.
81Ibid.. (1883 edition), p. 214.

82Ibid., p. 213.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm is sio n o f th e co p yrig h t o w n er. F u rth e r re p ro d u ctio n pro h ib ited w ith o u t perm issio n .
242
discussion of the population problem with the assurance that
"in socialist society, in which mankind is for the first

time really free and founded on a natural basis, man will
consciously guide his own development. . . . In the new

society, man will act consciously and methodically, knowing
the laws of his own development."8^ These words do not
succeed in hiding Bebel's own repugnance toward most types

of contraception.
This repugnance was not shared by the SPD’s chief

ideologist, Karl Kautsky. We have already discussed Kautsky1s
evolution from Darwinism to Marxism.8^- As a budding social
ist Kautsky struggled with the Malthusian threat of popula
tion growth in a socialist society with a uniformly high
standard of living. Would not population growth negate the

material gains of socialism?
This problem was solved for Kautsky in 1876 when he
read a German translation of a well-known English work dis
cussing and describing various forms of contraception,

Dr. Drysdale's Elements of Social Science, or Physical.
Sexual and Natural Religion, first published in 1854.^ His
reading of Drysdale convinced Kautsky that proper education
85Bebel, Die Prau, p. 549.

8^See chapter on Social Democracy, pp. 168-69.
8^Karl Kautsky, Erinnerungen und Erfirterungen (The
Hague, I960), pp. 388-90.
243
in sexual matters, and the use of contraception would pre
vent population from outstripping production under social

ism. In one of his later works, Kautsky also said that if
people in a future socialist society felt that population
was growing too rapidly, public opinion would develop

against the idea of the large family. Moreover, women would
have too many interests outside the home to make them want
86
large families, and so contraception would be practiced.
The introduction of "public opinion" as a form of

controlling family size is a rather jarring note in Kautsky's
writings. To be sure, he rejected completely the proposals

of eugenicists who argued that the state should take an
active role in the scientific breeding of "superior" human
beings.87 Rather, Kautsky suggested that in a socialist
society there would be a gradual disappearance of the
hereditary illnesses and deformities (mental and physical)
afflicting the population under capitalism. Nevertheless,

he permitted a sinister note to enter in:
If then, /under socialism/ sick children still

come into the world, their infirmity can no
longer be blamed onto social conditions, but can
only appear as the personal fault of the parents.
Herein lies the basis for an effective "social
eugenics." /Under socialism/ public opinion as
well as the wisdom of the parents themselves will
condemn all reproduction /by a parson with/ a
sick constitution, and it will be considered a
88Kautsky, Vermehrung. pp. 256-57.

87Ibid., pp. 264-66.
244
duty by every adult who does not consider

himself healthy to acknowledge this before
he enters a marital relationship to obtain
expert advice on whether or not it is ad
visable for him or his partner to reproduce
his family. Begetting a sick child will then
be regarded in the same light as that of be
getting an illegitimate child is today.88
Although Kautsky may have had logic on his side, one cannot
help wondering who the ''eugenic experts" of a socialist
society would be, or regret that Kautsky could ignore how
vicious and repressive "public opinion" can be.
In spite of their "advanced" and, by the standards of

their time, radical theoretical position on marriage and
the family, German Social Democrats held many of the same

moral and sexual attitudes as the bourgeoisie they so
roundly denounced as hypocrites. An anecdote from the life

of a woman Social Democrat serves as an excellent introduc
tion to a study of the persistence of the bourgeois tradi
tion in German Social Democracy before 1914.

Lily Braun was a well-known, not to say notorious,
figure in the SPD women's movement around the turn of the
century. Born Lily von Kretzschmann, the daughter of a

Prussian general, she became a Social Democrat though the
influence of her first husband, Professor von Gizycki, who
died in 1895 when Lily was thirty years old. Shortly after
88Ibid.. p. 266.
245
the death of her hushand, she met and fell in love with
Heinrich Braunn, a socialist editor and a married man.
After an affair, Braun divorced his wife and married Lily
in 1896. Lily’s aristocratic family, Berlin ’’society,"
and a good many Social Democrats were scandalized by the

89
whole affair. In her roman de clef. Memoiren einer
Sozialistin, Lily described a dinner party at August Bebel’s
home at which the other wives of party members stared at

her the whole evening and finally snubbed her as a scandal
ous woman. When she complained to Bebel about the treatment
she received at the hands of party members who should have
known better, Bebel jokingly inquired if she was "still

amazed that your affhir has stirred up so much dust? Then
you don't know our male and female philistines very well!
In theory they tolerate all sorts of things, but in
practice— no, that doesn't go! Where would morality be
then?!”90
The philistinism of German Social Democratic writers

is obvious in the sizeable literature devoted to human
89
■'One can only guess at the reaction of party comrades
to the passionate love affair of Rosa Luxemburg and Leo
Jogisches. See J.P. Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg (Oxford, 1966).
9®Lily Braun, Memoiren einer Sozialistin (Munich,

1922), II, 154 ff. Also Julie Vogelsteln. Lily Braun.
Eln Lebensbild (Berlin, 1922). After Lily's death in 1916,
Julie Vogelstein became Heinrich Braun's third wife.
sexual behavior produced in the period before the First
World War. This literature reveals that far from being

sexual revolutionaries, Social Democrats were sexual tra
ditionalists in many ways, and even, through their

Aufkl&rungsarbeit among the German working class, helped to
maintain and spread middle class sexual attitudes among the

workers. At the same time Social Democratic writers were
describing the "breakdown" of marriage and the family under

capitalist industrialism, they were espousing many of the
patriarchal attitudes associated with the pre-industrial

German family. In a pattern already familiar from our
earlier discussion of the integrative role of the movement,

Social Democracy helped to stabilize (at least in theory)
monogamous marriage, the patriarchal family, and the sexual

behavior associated with these institutions at the same
time it pointed toward the transformation of these institu

tions in the promised land of socialism. The split between
radical socialist theory and moderate practice was not lost

on contemporaries. In a book published in 1912 Joseph Joos
noted that, in spite of all the talk about marriage reform
and the decline of the family in the writings of Bebel,
Kautsky, and Clara Zetkin,

no kind of catastrophes are known to have taken
place in their marital and family life. Bebel's
family life has never been impugned by even his
severest critics, and everyone knows how Clara
Zetkin cared for her husband and children and
247
sacrificed herself, and many other stories have

"been told about her profound motherliness .91
It would probably be fruitless to try to determine to
what extent socialist views on marriage or the family
’’liberated" Bebel or any other Social Democrat in private

life. It is likely that for every socialist who broke the
traditional moral code, there were many more who observed
it to the letter. In Imperial Germany only a handful of

artists and anarchist intellectuals proclaimed themselves
to be (and were in fact) practicioners of "free love" in
92
the popular sense of promiscuity.
It is possible to draw a profile of Social Democratic
attitudes on human sexuality from two broad sources:

first, from the theoretical writings meant primarily for a
rather narrow audience of informed and intelligent readers,
e.g., Bebel's Die Frau, Kautsky's studies on population;

book length studies of prostitution; and articles printed
in the SPD's chief theoretical journals, Neue Zelt and the
Sozialistische Monatsheft. Second, much can be learned
from the pamphlets prepared by the SPD for working class
readers interested in being "enlightened" on sexual, hygiene
91
Joseph Joos, Die sozialdemokratische Frauenbewegung
in Deutschland (Mflnciien-Gladbach, 1912), p.
92
linse, Organisierter Anarchismus. pp. 97-98. The
many affairs of Ferdinand Lassalle make him unusual in
the staid ranks of Social Democratic leaders. Cf. Na'aman,
Lassalle. p. 502.
248
and behavior. While both of these sources share an op
timistic tone springing from the hope of an ultimate liber

ation of men and women under socialism, they also reveal a
subtle and repressive view of human sexuality similar to
that of middle class sexual and moral "hypocrites" they

often attacked.
This sex-repressiveness was partly masked by an air
of frankness and acceptance of the importance and natural

ness of the human sexual drive. Thus, in an often-repeated
and basic Social Democratic viewpoint, Bebel declared that
"among all the natural drives which man possesses, the
sexual drive is, after the drive to eat and to survive,

the strongest . . . This drive is deeply rooted in every
normally developed person and, after maturity is reached,
the satisfaction of this drive is an essential condition
for one's physical and mental health."9^ Bebel went even
farther and declared that at certain (unspecified) periods

of life, people are "completely dominated" by the sexual
94
drive. He argued that abstinence from sexual activity,
whether from economic hardship which prevented marriage,
or from reasons of religious belief, or from sheer prudery,

could have dire effects. Among these were the "unusually
high" number of female suicides between the ages of sixteen
9^Bebel, Die Frau, p. 126.
94Ibid., p. 127.
249
and twenty wfrich Bebel attributed to "unsatisfied sexual
desire, heartbreak, unwed motherhood, or betrayal by some

95
man." Those women who did not take their lives often
sought to channel their unfulfilled sexual desires into
"religious Schwflrmerei, a /form of7 sublimation which,

with or without masturbation, leads to serious disorders
that strike so many women between the ages of twenty-five

and thirty-five."9^
At first glance it might appear that Bebel occupied
an enlightened sexual position considering his time and

social position as a political leader. But it is important
to note that in discussing the need for the satisfaction of
the sexual drive as aprecondition for goodmental and

physical health, Bebel included an importantqualifying
clause— such satisfaction is only necessary "after maturity

is achieved." But when is sexual maturity reached? Bebel
was never very clear on this although he did repeat approv
ingly Martin Luther's advice that those who could not be

abstinent should get married, the boy at age twenty, the
girl at fifteen or sixteen.97 If Bebel himself regarded

these as the ages of sexual maturity, he certainly must
have been aware that the social and economic conditions
95Ibid., p. 131.
96Ibid.. p. 132.
97Ibid.. p. 129.
250
of Imperial Germany usually prevented such early marriages.
In fact, there was a great deal of confusion among

social Democratic writers about the age of sexual maturity.
Thus, in a pamphlet designed to advise working class

parents on how to enlighten their children in sexual mat
ters, the author suggested that parents give their off

spring talks on the "wonders of nature" between ages seven
and ten. Nature lessons on flowers, birds, animals and

98
pond life were recommended for this purpose. But the
real explanation of human reproduction must wait until
age fourteen or fifteen (depending on the child) for it is
99
not until then that the sexual drive begins to "awaken."^
Even this may be too soon, for the author claimed that
the male did not reach full sexual maturity until age
twenty-four. Whoever is foolish enough to make any demands
on his sexual organs before this age could "seriously

damage his health, for the testes not only produce semen,
but also materials necessary for the blood, and the main
tenance and health of the body."100 Only after the twenty-
fourth birthday could the testicles perform their dual
" Julian Marcuse, "Geschlechtliche Erziehung in der

Arbeiterfamilie," /Arbeiter-Gesundheits-Bibliothek. Heft
107 (Berlin, 1908), p. 7.
" ibid.. p. 16.
251
function of reproduction and "bodily maintenance without
serious threat to the man's health. It followed then that
masturbation or sexual intercouse prior to that age could
lead to a shortage of "blood materials, anemia, and a life

long general listlessness."101
In addition to being unclear about the onset of sexual
maturity, the socialist sex advisors also had differences
of opinion about the causes and effects of masturbation,

unquestionably the bete noir of practically every 19th
Century writer on human sexuality. Thus a certain Dr.
Popitz struck an enlightened tone by announcing that mas
turbation was nothing unusual. For example, the doctor
wrote, anyone who visits a zoo knows that monkeys, large

102
and small, are "zealous onanists." Moreover, according
to the doctor, there was some comfort in knowing that
Working class boys, at least, were spared some of

the sexual pitfalls of their social "superiors." "For very
young men servant girls are more dangerous than prostitutes.
A friend of mine told me that during his last years in high
school a servant girl visited his bedroom every night /sic7.
To this he ascribed the fact that by the time he was twenty-
two years old he felt feeble and tired." Ludwig Gurlitt,
"Sexuelle Verirrungen der Schuljugend," Die Neue Generation.
V (1909), 30-31.
102
_ Dr. Popitz, "Die Jahre der Geschlechtsreife,"
/Arbeiter-Gesundheits-Bibliothek. Heft 2J j (Berlin, 1912),
p. 17. "Onanism" was the term frequently used by 19th
Century writers to refer to masturbation. The term comes
from the story found in Genesis 38: 8-10 of Onan, who in
fact practiced coitus interruptus with the widow of his
brother, and was punished with death by an angry Jehovah.
See John Noonan, Contraception. A History of its Treatment
by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge,
Mtsir; 19657, pp"T"33-35•---------------
252
orgies of "onanism” took place in the secrecy and seclusion

of monasteries and convents, which is precisely what ohe
might expect an anticlerical socialist to say.10-5 Dr.
Popitz even went so far as to suggest that masturbation
could be an occupational hazard:

that other causes may lead to masturbation
may be concluded from observing young women
working at sewing machines. It was often
noted /by Popitz during visits to a
clothing firm7 that all of a sudden one or
another machine was treadled at a racing tempo
while the girl worker gave clear signs of the
highest excitement. After a short while and
with a gentle sigh of relief /from the girl7,
the machine slowed down and work continued at
a slower pace. The woman supervisor of this
workshop matter of factly explained these oc
curences as gratifications of the sexual drive,
and added that the stimulation was usually
caused by sitting on the c o m e r of the chair—
a frequent bad habit of the female sex. Similar
results can be caused by riding a bicycle with
a poorly positioned saddle.
Another socialist writer observed that the things
usually ascribed to masturbation at the time— acne, egotism,
shyness, discontent, laziness, and self-denigration— were

simply the normal signs of adolescence.10^ Yet another
1Q3lbid.. p. 16.
10Îbid., p. 18. Bebel also refers to the sexual side

effects of sewing machine work in Die Frau, p. 199 See
further M. Mendelsohn, "1st das Radfahren als eine gesund-
heitlichsgem&sse Uebung anzusehen und aus flrtzlichen
Gesichtspunkten zu emprehlen?" Deutsche medizinsche Wochen-
schrift, XXII (1896), 381-84-.
10Êmest Gebert, "Geschlechtsverkehr und Geschlecht-
skrankheiten," in Arbeiter-Gesundhelts-Bibliothek (Berlin.
1911), I, 146.
253
suggested that a variety of nervous ailments and character
defects often blamed on masturbation were in fact the re

sults of hereditary illnesses.10^ More in keeping with
the usual attitude toward masturbation in the last century

the revisionist socialist, Eduard Bernstein, felt that
"self-abuse" could be a way-station on the road to such

"perversions" as homosexuality, sodomy, pederasty, and
107
sado-masochisn. '
In an article in Neue Zeit, Willy Hellpach declared
that the physical effects of masturbation had been exag
gerated by some writers. Nevertheless, "it is a vice, and

leads to derangement . . . disgust with oneself, boredom,
laziness, and much more. Certainly it is unnatural
/tfidernaturliches7. Bor every sexual activity is unnatural

which does not lead to the preservation of the species."108
Another writer managed to interpret masturbation as a class

phenomenon:
Masturbation is a rarity among the lower classes.

It is more common in the families of the rich,
the refined, and the well-off, who spoil their
108Leo Hirschlaff, "Zur Gesundheitspflege des Nerven-

systems," in Arbeiter-Gesundheits-Bibliothek (Berlin.
1911), I, 55- W .
10Êduard Bernstein, "Der Geschlechtstrieb," in Arbeiter-
Gesundheits-Bibliothek (Berlin, 1911), I, 386; Popitz,
HGeschlechtsreife," p. 22; Otto Ruhle, Die Aufklllrung der
Kinder ttber geschlechtliche Dinge (Bremen, 1907), p . l T T "
108Ernst Gystrow /Willy Hellpach7, "Die Nachfrage

beim Dirnenkauf," Neue Zeit. XVI-2 (T897/8), 300.
254
children or allow them to become spoiled;

who are terribly prudish at times, and at
others, terribly frivolous; sometimes doing
things in secrecy, and at others stimulating
the fantasies of children with innuendoes.
The hard-working craftsman’s and farmer’s
son doesn't masturbate. Rather it is the
high school student . . . who reads trashy
novels until after midnight and knows how
to get hold of the nastiest books. . . . To
repeat, masturbation occurs very seldom in
the country, but very often in the city in
spite of prostitution and in spite of the
precocious intercouse of the sons ofthe
well-to-do with prostitutes.109
Readers familiar with Stephen Marcus' The Other Vic
torians and Alex Comfort's The Anxiety Makers will recog

nize the similarity of some of the views expressed above
on the health-giving, almost supernatural, powers of semen
and the dangers of masturbation, and those found in 19th

Century English pornography and medical literature. We
need not seek similar ideas in German pornography. Rather,
it is interesting to note that socialist writers on sexu
ality shared a common set of assumptions with contemporary,

non-socialist sexologists. August Forel, perhaps the best-
known of the German speaking sex researchers before 1914,
also devoted much attention to the evil effects of mastur

bation. His chief objection to the practice was not on
moral grounds, but rather that it could be repeated so
%.M . "Zur Frage des Dirnenkaufs," Neue Zeit. XVI-2

(1897/8), 505. Another writer disputed M.M.*s view that
masturbation was primarily an upper middle and upper class
phenomenon. H.B., "Nochmals die Frage des Dirnenkaufs,"
Neue Zeit. XVI-2 (1897/8), 651.
255
frequently as to have a "depressing effect on the mind and

will."110 In addition, Forel believed that masturbation
could lead to a loss of stamina and appetite, impotence
and other abnormalities.

Another non-socialist writer on the Sexualfrage. Emma
Eckstein, regarded masturbation as a "dangerous habit," a

great danger," and "the most serious Volkskrankheit in
existence."111 In an interesting warning to parents who
kept servants in their home, Eckstein cited a doctor’s

testimony that some servants had the noxious habit of
soothing crying infants by stroking the child's genitals.
This practice was then often taken up by the child itself
with dire results— near-sightedness, nervousness, convul

sions, night-blindness, deafness or (oddly enough) hyper-
112
sensitivity to loud noises. Eckstein even quoted ap
provingly another doctor's opinion that thumbsucking created

a predisposition for masturbation in the very young.13-^
Whatever the effects might be, however, all of the
110August Forel, Die sexuelle Frage (Munich, 1905),

p. 70.
111Emma Eckstein. Die Sexualfrage in der Erziehung des
Kinde8 (Leipzig, 1904), pp. 7-8. Also see Max Marcuse, Die
geschlechtliche Aufklarung der Jugend (Leipzig, 1905),
pp. ll-l2.
112
Eckstein, Die Sexualfrage. pp. 9-10.
113Ibid.. p. 14.
256
socialist sex writers agreed that masturbation was some
thing to be shunned. But how? Consorting with prostitutes

carried the threat of venereal disease, and in any case
socialists believed that prostitution was the vice of the
bourgeoisie, not the working class male for whom marriage

based on love was supposed to be the sexual panacea. But
few working class males between the ages of seventeen and

twenty-four could be expected to marry and support a family.
Without masturbation or prostitutes, how could a youth of,
say, eighteen get through the years before reaching sexual
"maturity?” The answer provided by many socialist writers
in spite of Bebel's objections was the traditional middle

class one— abstinence.11^
It must be understood that at the same time that the
SPD’s pamphlets on sexual enlightenment appeared between
1905 and 1912 there was a lively debate in the German medi
cal field on the subject of the good and bad effects of
sexual abstinence.11^ This debate took place on a peculiar
medical-ethical plane. That is, quite apart from the pre

sumed health-giving effects of sexual abstinence, some
doctors recommended abstention from any kind of sexual
^^Popitz, "Geschlechtsreife," p. 21.

lie
Although written by a Swedish doctor, a good dis
cussion of this debate appears on Anton Nystrflm, Sexual-
leben und Gesundheit 2nd edition (Berlin, 1911).
257
release on moral grounds, i.e., the will was to he

"toughened,” abstinence set the youth free for more "seri
ous" pursuits, and the like.
Thus socialist pamphleteers suggested that the sexual
drive must be sublimated, channeled into sports, gymnastics,
hiking, and the like.'*’^ Part of every working class child's
education must be "the subordination of the /sexual7 drive to

the rule of intelligence and l e a r n i n g . J u s t as the body
is trained and strengthened through gymnastic exercises, so
the human will must be trained and strengthened through

118
Willengymnastlk. These suggestions are reminiscent of
the stress placed on education of the working class through
lectures, night schools, and the like, throughout the his
tory of the SPD. And the end product, the imitation of
middle class culture and values, also seems to be the same.
Working class parents were also encouraged to set a

good example for their children by abstaining from the use
of alcohol, for "the path to the brothel leads through the
■^Gebert, "Geschlechtsverkehr," p. 21. See also

the 1906 program of the working class youth organization
Yerband lunger Arbeiter und Arbeiterinnen Deutschlands
in Joseph Kipper, Pie sozialistische Jugendbewegung In
j)gjitj chland^/Soziale Tagesfragen. Heft 3 2 / (Mtoehen-GTadbach,
117
'Marcuse, "Geschlechtliche Erziehung," p. 18.
118ibia.
258
tavern."11^ The Kulturmensch must learn to master the

sexual drive. Eduard Bernstein recommended regular exer
cise, a "moderate, bland, largely vegetarian diet" for the
120
young person during the years of abstinence. On the
positive side, parents should encourage their child's in

terest in politics, trade union activities, "the great
social questions, participation in the intellectual life of
121
cultured humanity, in everything that ennobles life."
Only in these ways could sexual abstinence be borne with

equanimity. All in all, it is rather strange to find Social
Democrats advocating sexual abstinence when one realizes
that' middle class supporters of sexual chastity later man

aged to turn what should have been a straightforward medi
cal and psychological question into one involving the role
of German youth in "racial hygiene" and the "cultural

122
mission" of the Fatherland.
120Bernstein, "Geschlechtstrieb," I, 389.
121Ibid.. I, 390.
122
In January, 1917, one hundred student doctors and
several professors at Leipzig University, inspired by the
ethic of the Jugendbewegung and shocked at the amount of
venereal disease among university students, formed the
Deutsche Aertzebund. The Bund's program advocated com
plete sexual abstinence before age twenty-four. Only
through abstinence could the nation rid itself of VD and
prostitution, the twin threats to the nation's "racial
hygiene." Only through sexual abstinence could German
youth concentrate all of its efforts on winning the war and
assuring the post-war triumph of German culture. But
259
Even if the abstinent working class youth, with his

athletically trained will, bland diet, and hiking boots,
managed to reach the marriage bed in good physical and
mental health, his troubles were far from over. Too much
sexual intercourse could also be physically debilitating.
Thus Bebel warned his readers that

an excess of sexual indulgence is far more
harmful than too little. An organism abused
through over-use is also ruined. Impotence,
sterility, spinal injury, insanity, mental
weakness, and other illnesses are the results.
Moderation in sexual intercourse is just as
necessary as in eating, drinking, and other
human needs. But moderation seems to be dif
ficult for the majority of lively youths.
Hence the large number of "old young men" in the
upper social classes.123
Once again Bebel was repeating his attack on the sexual

promiscuity of the upper class, but working class readers
may have wondered how much sexual intercouse was too much.
(Contd.) abstinence was not enough. Literature

must be purged of its romantic descriptions of prostitution,
while naturalistic art must be abolished because "precisely
regarded, it is worthless." Civilians must follow the ex
ample of the heroes of the front who have endured sexual
deprivation for the Fatherland. Indeed, "scientific evi
dence" for the view that sexual abstinence had no ill ef
fects could be found in the "mass experiment in forced
abstinence in the prisoner of war camps . . . where only
among idle Russian officers" were complaints about sexual
abstinence heard. See the extremely interesting article
by J. Bilsching, "Die deutsche Aertzebund filr Sexualethik,"
in Anna Papritz, ed. Einfuhrung in das Studium der Prosti-
tutionsfrage (Leipzig, 1919), pp. 272-8T1 For some unusual
photographs of "abstinent" prisoners of war "in drag" see
Hirschfeld, Geschlechtskunde IV, 562-66.
125Bebel, Die Frau, pp. 237-38.
260
Eduard Bernstein provided an answer by recommending an in

terval of "several weeks" between cohabitations, in order
to give the male’s semen a proper chance to mature.12^

Two further subjects related to sexuality show that
Social Democrats shared many of the attitudes or preju

dices of their day and of traditional German society. The
first is homosexuality, a subject of much discussion in
the 1890's thanks to the trial of Oscar Wilde in England

and later scandals in the ranks of the German aristoc
racy.12^
Once again it is Bebel who best illustrates the ambi

valent mixture of liberal and traditional conservative at
titudes on homosexuality. In 1897 Bebel joined thousands
of other German intellectuals, doctors, writers, and poli

ticians in signing a petition drawn up by the socialist
Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld of Berlin, later Germany's foremost
sex researcher and reformer. The petition called for the
revision of the laws forbidding homosexual activities and
would have permitted such activities between consenting
TP6
adults. Signing this petition and taking a public stand
12^Bernstein, "Geschlechtstrieb," I, 389.

12Êduard Bernstein, "Die Beurtheilung des widernormallen
Geschlechtsverkehrs." Neue Zeit. XIII-2 (1894-5), 228-33.
12^See Per Spiegel (June 12, 1969), p. 65; Harry Wilde,
Das Schlcksal der Verfe’hmten (Ttibingen. 1969), p. 60; and
"Der Sinn eines Lebens. In Memoriam Magnus Hirschfeld,"
in Kurt Hiller, Kflpfe und Trffpfe. Profile aus einem Viertel-
.iahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1950), pp. 251-58.
261
for the revision of the law seems to have been part of

Bebel's general progressive and liberal stand on questions
of legislation. But in Die Frau, Bebel took a rather more
conservative attitude toward homosexuality.
Thus Bebel wrote that "the satisfaction of the sexual

drive is just as much a matter for the individual as is the
satisfaction of every other drive . . . How I eat, how I
drink, how I sleep and dress myself is my personal affair,
as is my intercourse with a person of another sex."127
The catch here, of course, is the concluding phrase "with
a person of another sex," which obviously excludes homosex
uality from the realm of a "personal affair." Elsewhere
in the same book Bebel referred to homosexuality as an
"unnatural satisfaction of the sexual drive," and as a

"perversion" widespread among upper class men and women in
Germany.128 In short, a reader of Die Frau who found in
himself homosexual tendencies discovered that Bebel regarded

him as an unnatural pervert, as would practically all of
Germany's judges and churchmen.
We have already touched on a second prejudice socialists
shared in common with middle-class Germans, that ojf contra
ception, earlier in our discussion. Bebel and lassalle

128Ibid., pp. 66, 238.
262
regarded contraception as “repugnant1' and “unnatural,"

even though we might have expected that Social Democrats,
with their concern about the welfare and standard of living
of the working class, would have been advocates of birth
control. But it took a party intellectual of Karl Kautsky's
caliber and background to be the most consistent advocate
of contraception and his experience with the SPD in this
matter is very enlightening on the attitudes of Social
Democratic leaders toward contraception.
As mentioned earlier, Kautsky already recommended

contraception in his first book, Der Einfluss der Volks-
vermehrung auf den Eortschritt der Gesellschaft (1880).
Naturally, Kautsky was sensitive to the charge that pro
ponents of birth control were really lecherous sensualists

whose main concern was pleasure, not the size of the popu
lation. He certainly did not want to have socialists
tarred with this particular brush. Therefore, it is not
surprising that he denounced a book by Roderich Hellmann,
Ueber Geschlechtsfreiheit. Ein filosofischer Versuch zur

Erhohung des menschlichen Gluckes which appeared in Berlin
in 1878. According to Kautsky, the book advocated a variety
of forms of “birth control” which not only prevented con
ception, but also increased people's pleasure by liberating
them from sexual repression. In place of the usual sexual

intercourse, Hellmann apparently recommended oral sexual
contacts for both men and women, as well as masturbation and
263
homosexual intercourse. Kautsky’s rejection of these al

ternatives seems to have been a mixture of socialist de
fensiveness and genuine shock. He wrote that Hellmann's
suggestions were not in accord with the "serious, highly

moral efforts resting on scientific convictions" of social
ists concerned with the population question.
It is the aim of those socialists who advocate
contraception to eliminate, rather than to
promote, the means of satisfying the sexual
drive proposed by Mr. Hellmann. For these means
of gratification belong to the unhealthy conse
quences which overpopulation, natural or arti
ficial, brings in its train, and which grow so
alarmingly with the advance of industrialism.
Contraception will eliminate these consequences.
It cannot be equated with these consequences, for
it is opposed to them.129
If Kautsky was confident that contraception would
solve the dilemma of over-population and various "per

versions" under socialism, he soon discovered that some
of his fellow Social Democrats did not sympathize with
his advanced views. After the publication of his book on
population and birth control appeared in 1880, Kautsky
learned
to my astonishment that my party comrades
bluntly rejected every kind of birth control.
Many of them, above all /Wilhelm/ Liebknecht,
opposed it as immoral and offensive /unsittlich
und widerlich7. Very widespread was the tele-
ological optimism espoused by Fourier v/hich was
based on the expectation that the propagation
of the human race would regulate itself in a
12%autsky, Der Einfluss der Volksvermehrung. p. 185,

n. 1.
264
suitable fashion. Hungry people had many

children, the well-fed only a few. Far fewer
children would he conceived in a socialist
society than in a capitalist one.l’O
A recent student of Kautsky1s intellectual development,
Hans-Josef Steinberg, notes that liebknecht1s reaction to
contraception was "an interesting indication of the strict

bourgeois moral viewpoint which can be observed again and
again in German Social Democracy at that time."1^ But

why should Social Democrats like Liebknecht, Bebel, and
Lassalle regard contraception as "immoral," "unnatural,"
and "offensive?" To be sure, these might be typical

bourgeois reactions, but perhaps there is another reason
as well. As we have already seen, many Social Democratic
150Kautsky, Erinnerungen, p. 590.

■^•^Hans-Josef Steinberg, Sozialismus und deutsche
Sozialdemokratie (Hanover, 1967), p. 50. Similar atti
tudes could be found in Switzerland in 1901 where Dr.
Fritz Brupbacher, an anarchist-socialist physician gave a
series of lectures on birth control practices to a number
of trade union educational societies. Brupbacher*s lectures
were so well received that the woodworkers' union made
preparations to open a free birth control clinic for working
class women. This was squelched by the union central com
mittee and by "social democratic politicians" who said that
contraception could only mean decreasing numbers of voters
and a postponement of the electoral triumph of socialism.
When Brupbacher*s lectures were published in pamphlet form
by a local union group the union central committee cut off
funds to the group. Nevertheless the pamphlet, Kindersegen
und Kein Ende was reprinted in Switzerland and Germany and
sold over 50*0,000 copies between 1904 and 1935. See
Fritz Brupbacher, 60 Jahre Ketzer. Selbstbiogranhie (Zurich,
1935)> PP» 95-97• The pamphlet was not well received in
intellectual circles of the SPD where it was argued that
contraception could do little to improve the proletariat's
standard of living. See the review of the pamphlet by
Heinrich Cunow in Neue Zeit, XXII-2 (1903-4), 572-74.
265
writers shared the widespread 19th Century fallacy that

masturbation led to a wide variety of physical and mental
ills. It is possible that some of the Social Democrats
shared another misconception of the last century, that is,
that contraception was simply another form of masturba
tion. A number of important writers in the 19th Century
argued that contraception in any form amounted to "conjugal
onanism" and would lead to the same calamities produced by
132
masturbation. '
In any case, Kautsky was later to write that the anti

birth control attitude in the SPD gradually changed as the
use of contraception filtered down from the upper and
middle to the working classes. By 1910, when he once more
argued that contraception was the best means of controlling

population size, he found that "nowhere among socialists
was /contraception7 now rejected as immoral.
132
y For the question of the relationship between mas
turbation and contraception in the writings of doctors and
theologians see Norman Himes, Medical History of Contracep
tion (New York: Schocken edition, 1970; orig. pub., 1936),
pp. 284-85; Noonan, Contraception, pp. 367, 397-98; Peter
Fryer, The Birth Controllers (New York. 1966), pp. 120-21,
181, 301, 3l2; Alex Comfort, The Anxiety Makers (London:
Panther edition, 1968), p. 64.
"^^Kautsky, Erinnerungen. p. 395* In a related debate,
Ludwig Quessel argued that a "birth strike" by working class
men and women in an attempt to improve their lives by hav
ing smaller families would only serve to weaken the German
Yolk, and, ultimately the German worker who might be re
placed with cheap Asian laborers. Eduard Bernstein believed
that the decline in the German birthrate had been overesti
mated and in any case was of more concern to imperialists
266
In fact, writers in the ’•Workers' Health Library” condemned

the practice of coitus interruptus because of its supposed
physical and mental e f f e c t s . U n f o r t u n a t e l y , this was
apparently the most widespread form of contraception among
workers and the author of this particular pamphlet offered
no substitute to his readers.
In a study of sexual behavior published in 1895 a

Lutheran minister from Posen complained that factory workers
came under the influence of Social Democratic ideas "which
do not put much stock in c h a s t i t y . H o w e v e r they might
feel about chastity, Social Democrats actually espoused many
of the traditional sexual attitudes as their non-socialist
contemporaries. In spite of their Marxist ideological
■^^(Contd.) like Theodore Roosevelt than to Social

Democrats. See Ludwig Quessel, "Die Oekonomie des Gebar-
streiks," Sozialistische Monatsheft, XIX-3 (1913), 1319-25;
Eduard Bernstein, "GeburtenrtLckgang, Nationalit&t, und
Kultur," Ibid.. XIX-3 (l?13), 1492-99; Ludwig Quessel,
"Die Philosophie des Gebarstreiks," Ibid.. XIX-3 (1913),
1609-16. For the argument that contraception, would help
to improve the lot of the worker see Alfred Bernstein,
Wie fordera wir den kulturellen Rtickgang der Beburten?
H n Mahnruf an das arbeitende Volk (.Berlin. l9l3).
■^■^Hirschlaff, "Zur Gesundheitspflege," pp. 55-56.
Ignaz Zadek, "Frauenleiden und deren Verhutung," Arbeiter-
Gesundheits-Bibliothek (Berlin, 1911), I, 219-38 did ad-
vise readers on ike use of condoms, pessaries, etc., but
almost always to prevent pregnancies which might threaten
the mother's life or produce unhealthy offspring.
« 5 0 . Wagner, ed. Die geschlechtlich-sittlichen
VerhMltnisse der evangeliscne Landbewohner im deutschen
Reiche (LelnzIgT I5g5=55)TT7 ^ ---------------------
267
positions on marriage and the family which set them apart
from those who accepted these institutions as God-given,

Social Democrats continued to advocate marriage as the
normal outlet for sexual expression and the family as the
place where the individual could "best develop his capa
bilities.^^ Moreover, socialists shared with their middle-
class contemporaries a deep concern that the will be strength

ened and that sexual energy be sublimated into "nobler”
activities. Considerable attention was devoted by social
ists to the question of sexual abstinence and the "evils"
of masturbation. Most of the discussion of these matters
was in terms of male, rather than female, sexual problems.
In fact, Social Democrats seldom discussed female
sexuality as such, and when they did it was often in
ambiguous terms. Thus, in the 1891 edition of Die Frau.
Bebel broke away from the usual view that women were for
all intents and purposes free from sexual feelings by
proclaiming that "woman has precisely the same /sexual7
^■^Some idea of the middle class attitudes of-Social

Democrats can be gained from a speech which Friedrich
Ebert, first president of Weimar Republic, gave on the
occasion of his daughter’s wedding in the aarly 1920's:
"If our young married couple who today take leave of their
parents' home always take as their guiding principle the
faithfulness to duty and honest, simple public spirit
/Bflrgersinn7 they have learned in their parental homes, I
believe they are armed to some extent against the storms
of life." Friedrich Ebert, Schriften. Aufzeichnungen.
Reden (Dresden, 1926), II,
268
drives as the man; indeed, at certain times of life (dur

ing menstruation) they are incomparably stronger than
otherwise . . .»137 In later editions of the same book,
however, Bebel seemed to equivocate slightly on this posi
tion by observing that "in general, /sexual7 excitation

/Reiz7 is supposed to be less marked in women than in men;
indeed that a certain antipathy toward the sex act often
exists among women. But this is /true of7 a small minor
ity, in which psychological and physiological predisposi
tions engender this condition.1,138
Very often, women entered the socialist discussion

of sexual behavior in relation to prostitution. We have
already noted Werner Thfinnessen’s hypothesis that the
Social Democratic concern with prostitution was an example
of projecting onto others (in this case the bourgeois male)
that which was denied to themselves. Unfortunately,
Thfinnessen offers no satisfactory evidence in support of
this hypothesis. Moreover, such a hypothesis overlooks

the fundamental importance of the view of "woman as victim"
which permeated the socialist literature on prostitution
and the women question as a whole before 1914. In his

138Bebel, Die ffrau. p. 128.
269
discussion of 19th Century American attitudes on the family,

feminism, and sex, David M. Kennedy observes that "men
constantly regarded the innocent woman as a potential vic
tim of sinister forces. They even sentimentalized the
obviously corrupted woman . . . as an unwitting gull of

evil persons. . . . The image of the hapless prostitute
as a victim of poverty or lechery found a ready acceptance
13Q
and frequent expression.11 ^
This image certainly appeared in Bebel’s Die Prau

where the idea of woman in general and the prostitute in
particular as the victims of economic exploitation and male

domination underlay his entire discussion of woman in the
past and present. Bebel denounced the society which paid
women low wages and permitted the seduction of the
"daughters of the people" by lecherous employers and the
sons of the "wealthy and cultured c l a s s e s . B e b e l and
other Social Democratic writers on prostitution obviously
regarded it as the ultimate victimization of women in a
society dominated by men.

But by casting women in the role of victims, Social
Democrats placed themselves in an ambivalent position.
On the one hand, they argued that women were the equals
^^David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America (Prince

ton, 1970), pp. 58-59.
140Bebel, Die Prau. pp. 232-33.
270
of men, although their equality could only he fully achieved
under socialism. On the other hand, woman as victim could
he regarded as a defenceless creature, less able than the
male to cope with the demands of a capitalist industrial
society. By sentimentalizing the "daughter of the people"

forced into prostitution, Social Democrats ran the risk of
reinforcing the traditional middle class ideal of woman as
a helpless creature in need of male protection. When the
socialist womens' movement emerged in the 1890's some
of the problems associated with this ambivalence had to

be faced both on a theoretical and a practical level. The
tension between radical theory and ambivalent moderate
practice in the socialist womens' movement forms the
subject of the following chapter.
C H A PTER V I
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL

DEMOCRATIC WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
Whatever their theories about marriage and the family,

German Social Democrats had to face the reality that more
and more women were being drawn into the German industrial
economy in the decades before the First World War."*"
WORKERS IN INDUSTRIES AND CRAFTS: 1875-1907

Percentage Percentage
(of total (of total
Male Workers employed Female Workers employed
Year (Millions) workers) (Millions) workers)
1875 2.64 49.1 0.49 9.2

1882 3.12 51.9 0.58 9.6
1895 4.59 57.6 0.94 11.8
1907 6.53 60.5 1.40 12.9
Not only were the absolute numbers of women in industry in
creasing, but more and more married women joined the indus
trial work force.

YEAR SINGLE MARRIED WIDOWED & SEPARATED
1882 791,926 (70.3#) 148,913 (13.2#) 186,137 (16.5#;

1895 1,048,818 (69.0#) 250,666 (16.5#) 221,634 (14.5# (
1907 1,412,062 (67.1#) 447,947 (21.3#) 243,915 (11.6#
The following tables appear in Jftrgen Kuczynski,

Studien zur Geschichte der Page der Arbelterin in Deutsch
land von 1700 bis zur Gegenwari /Die Geschichte der Lage
der Arbeiterunter dem Kapitalismus, Band 187 (Berlin,
1963), p. 105. In addition to Kuczynski's mass of material
see the excellent discussion of female employment, working
271
272
The growing participation of women in the work force

moved German socialists to reexamine and refine their theories
concerning the "breakdown11 of the family, the relationship
of women to the socialist party, and Also helped to inspire
the growth of a socialist women's movement in Germany.
The history of the latter is an extremely interesting and
complex one. It has not yet been fully explored in its

mutlifaceted origins and activities, although some excel-
p
lent surveys of the movement are available. The present
chapter provides an outline history of the socialist women's

movement, and stresses, first, the tension between theory
and practice; second, the persistence of certain tradition
al attitudes toward woman as mother, wife, and worker among
men in the Social Democratic Party; and, third, the rein
forcement of certain traditional attitudes toward the
family and marriage implicit in the women's movement.
Although the socialist women's movement did not play

a significant part of SPD history until the 1890's, some of
^(Contd.) conditions, and wages in Jacqueline Strain,

"Feminism and Political Radicalism in the German Social
Democratic Movement, 1890-1914," Dissertation, University
of California, Berkeley, 1964.
În addition to Kuczynski and Strain, see Annemarie
Neumann, "Die Entwicklung der sozialistischen Frauen-
bewegung," Sohmollers Jahrbuoh. XLV (1921), 815-88; and
Werner Thflnnessen. #rauenemanzipatlon. Politlk und Idtera-
tur der deutschen Sozialdemokratie zur Frauenbewegung.
273
the "basic questions which troubled the movement throughout
its existence first appeared in the 1860's when various

socialist workers' organizations tried to define their
position on the woman as worker, wife, and mother. It
should be stressed at once that the organizations referred

to as "Lassalleans" and "Eisenachers" in the later 1860's
and early 1870's consisted largely of male artisans, most
of whom regarded themselves as sober, honest members of the
German Mlttelstand. At this early stage, few of them
could be called radicals, let alone Marxists. Many of those

artisans perceptive enough to see which way the winds of
industrial change were blowing in the 1860's were far more
likely to desire a return to the good old days of guild

privileges than an advance toward the socialist industrial
Zukunftsstaat.
Even among men associated with the labor movement in
the 1860's it is not surprising to discover a traditional,
or to put it uncharitably, a reactionary attitude toward
the place of women in society and the economy. This atti
tude, which one writer has described as "proletarian anti
feminism," could be found in the Lassallean General German
■5
Workers' Union in the mid-1860's. Woman's place was sup
posed to be in the home, as in the pre-industrial artisanate
^ThSnnessen, Prauenemanzipation. p. 14; H. Lion, Zur

Sozlologie der Prauenbewegung (Berlin. 1906), p. 26.
274
family, not in the workshop or factory. If women could he

excluded from craft and industrial occupations, there would
he less unemployment among men and working men could also
get higher wages. With steady employment and high wages
men would he ahle to marry and provide a decent home for

women where they could perform the functions for which
nature and society intended them— looking after the needs
of their husbands and children. Indeed, Ferdinand Lassalle
himself excluded women from political and philosophic dis
cussions, with the notable exception of his longtime patron

ess Sophie von Hatzfeldt. It was Lassalle!s opinion that
woman's only Beruf was to make men happy.*
As might he expected, not all women found these ideas

acceptable. Luise Otto-Feters, who as early as 1848 had
brought the needs of women workers before the public, de
nounced the Lassallean idea that "the position of the woman
can only be improved by improving that of the man" as
"flouting all culture and humanity."'* Although she long
concerned herself with the problems of working women, luise

Otto-Peters did not align herself with the early Social
Democratic movement, perhaps because of the anti-feminism
of the Lassalleans. Rather, in 1865» she organized the
^Shlomo Na'aman, Lassalle (Hanover, 1970), p. 764.

**luise Otto, Das Recht der Frauen auf Erwerb (Hamburg,
1866), p. 103.
275
Allgemeinen Deutschen Frauenvereln which stressed the win

ning of women's civil rights and, into the 1880's, con
tinued under the leadership of middle class women anxious
to spread education and culture among working women. Otto-
Peters' Frauenverein was strictly reformist and in no way

foresaw any socialist overthrow of the existing society.
Thus the seeds of the split between the middle class and
socialist women's movements which emerged with particular
force after 1890 appeared in the early days of German Social
Democracy.
But anti-feminism did not go unchallenged among men in
the labor movement of the 1860's. Addressing the third

annual congress of the Deutscher Arbeitervereine in 1866,
the liberal-minded manufacturer, Moritz Milller, argued that
the trend of modern technology made it inevitable that more
and more women would be employed in shops and factories.
Furthermore, women had every right to take such employment
and through it seek equality with male workers. Far from
condemning women workers, men should welcome them in the
spirit of solidarity and help them to improve themselves
through educational clubs like those already enjoyed by men.
Although Muller's speech clearly conflicted with the arti-
sanate opposition to the further industrialization of so
ciety, and some of his listeners objected that men had to
be completely emancipated before women could be, his reso
lutions in favor of women's right to work and improve
276
themselves were passed by the meeting.*’
Mttller's theories were put into practice in Saxony
where rapid industrialization was undermining artisanate
production. There the textile workers of Chemnitz, Krimmit-

shau, and other towns organized local producers’ and con
sumers' cooperatives in 1867. Then, in 1869, the
Gewerkgenossenschaft der Manufaktur- . Fabrik-. und Hand-
arbelter was formed in Krimmitshau with the young wood
turner, August Bebel, as one of its leaders. The organ
ization was open to women as well as men, and had as one

of its aims the complete social and civil equality of men
and women through a united working class movement. Women
were eligible to hold offices and two of them actually sat
Neumann, "Die Entwicklung," pp. 822-23; Katherine

Anthony, Feminism in Germany (New York, 1915), 180-81;
Thonnessen, Frauenemanzination. pp. 14-15; Strain, "Feminism,"
pp. 22-25. ihree years earlier a certain Dr. Reventlow had
proposed to the all male Stuttgart Arbeiterbildungsverein
that women be allowed to attend the group's discussions
and lectures. One member objected that there wasn't enough
space in the club's meeting rooms to accomodate the ladies.
Another suggested that the proposal needed careful con
sideration at a later date. Still another agreed that
women might attend discussions and lectures, but be excluded
from meetings on official club business. He continued that
"in order for the women to have real meetings with us we
must have singing above all, and, therefore, in this con
nection, / IJ regard the singing question as the most
important." Dr. Reventlow withdrew his motion, observing
wryly that most of the men were afraid that if their
wives were present they would discover how much beer their
husbands drank. See Wolfgang Schmierer, Von der Arbeiter-
bildung zur Arbeiterpolitik. Die Anfange der Arbeiter-
bewegung in Wurttemberg. 1862/3-1878 CHanover. 1970).
p. 59, noie 78.
277
on the central committee of the cooperative organization.

One sixth of the 6-7,000 members were women and the group
created a fund which provided benefits for mothers follow
ing the birth of a child. Here, when motions to exclude
women from labor outside the home were raised, they were
defeated. Rather men and women were encouraged by Bebel
to work together on and off the job for equal pay and
7
treatment for both sexes.'
Apparently, August Bebel was f£om the outset of his
career a spokesman for women's rights.8 But even he seems
to have had some difficulty overcoming the traditional views

of his artisanate background. Thus, in his capacity as
leader of the newly formed Social Democratic labor Party
(the "Eisenachers"), Bebel wrote in 1869 that

when, by means of communal labor, the wages
of labor are replaced by the products of
labor, woman will no longer have to go into
the factory and compete with the man. She
then ffii.ll/ assume the position in which,
according- to nature and the law /Rechtswegen7
she belongs; that is, in the family in order
to educate the children and run the household.
Por the same reason, single girls, in their
youth, instead of being ruined physically and
^Neumann, "Die EntwiGklung," pp. 820-21. Clara Zetkin,

Zur Gesehichte des proletarischen Prauenbewegung Deutsch-
lands (Berlin. 1958), pp. 121-42. In lines written in
1928, Zetkin stressed the influence of the Pirst Inter
national on the Saxon labor movement, although she says
the connection was a "loose" one of shared feelings.
8Reinhold Jaeckel, Die Stellung des Sozialismus zur
Prauenfrage im 19. Jahrhundert (Potsdam. 1904), ll6-2l.‘
278
morally while sitting in the factory, will he

able to have the means and the time to train
themselves for their occupation as intelligent
housewives and mothers, and thus restore once
again the natural relationship between the
sexes.9
In this paragraph Bebel's position approximated that of the

anti-feminist lassalleans and artisans, particularly when
he suggested that women would not participate in labor out
side the home in the future when the ”natural relationship
between the sexes” would be restored. Clearly Bebel had
not yet understood the Marxist position that capitalism
required the labor of more and more women, and that their
labor could be, under the proper conditions, a useful part
of their personal development.
In any case, Bebel must have had second thoughts about

the lines just quoted, for in the third edition of Unsere
Ziele (1871), he toned down, but did not fundamentally re
vise his earlier views. He no longer said that woman's
natural place was in the home. Rather, he predicted that
under socialism, women would be able to work in factories
if they so chose. But he still implied that even under
socialism women would be responsible for the housework,
although the time devoted to this task would be shortened

and the work itself "enhobled and improved” with the aid
of household appliances. In short, under socialism the
Âugust Bebel, Unsere Ziele (Berlin, 1870), p. 15.
279
wife would no longer be the workhorse and slave of her
husband, nor, "for as long as she is young and pretty,

will she be in danger of being seduced and dishonored by
the wanton bourgeoisie and its accomplices."'1'^
Whatever sympathy and support the socialist women's

movement may have received from men like August Bebel,
its progress in the decades after 1870 was severely hampered
by external state oppression and the continued suspicion
among working men that working women constituted an eco
nomic threat. The reactionary Prussian Vereinsgesetz of
March, I860, prohibited women, along with students, ap
prentices, and males under age eighteen, from belonging to
organizations which police authorities defined as "politi
cal." Bavaria and several other states had similar laws,
and it was only in the old Hanseatic cities, Saxony,

Wdrttemberg, Baden, Hesse, and other small German states
that women could openly participate in political organiza
tions. 'L1 Only in 1898 did Bavaria grant women the right
to organize and join such groups, a right finally given

Prussian women in April, 1908. A recent student of this
10August Bebel, Unsere Ziele. 3rd edition (Berlin,

1872), pp. 20-21.
■^Neumann, "Die Entwicklung," pp. 821-22; Alice Salomon,

"Die Arbeiterinnenbewegung," in Helene Lange & Gertrud
B&umer, Handbuch der Prauenbewegung (Berlin, 1901), II,
216-17; Strain, "Peminism," pp. 49-69.
280
period observes that "the effect of these laws on women in

the Social Democratic Party and on the party as a whole
was profound. Until 1908 these statutes successfully ex
cluded the great majority of women from political activity
12
within the framework of organized parties.’1
The exclusion of women from participation in social
ist political activities had a number of significant re

sults. First, it left much of the activity among working
class women to non-political cultural organizations run by
middle class women intent on raising the moral and educa
tion level of their working class sisters. These organi
zations probably played a part in integrating working

women in the attitudes and norms of the dominant culture
similar to that of the male Arbeiterbildungsvereine. If

middle class feminists talked about emancipating women at
all, it was not in socialist terms, but rather in the
sense of giving women educational and job opportunities
equal to men. The strict rejection of collaboration be
tween the middle class and socialist women's movements
after 1890 by socialists like Clara Zetkin obviously de
rived from the period of tutelage under the bourgeois
women's movement of the 1870's and 1880's.1-*

A second result of keeping women out of socialist
12Strain, "Feminism,'' p. 63.

^Neumann, "Die Entwicklung," pp. 821-22.
281
activities resembled the effects of the anti-socialist
laws on the Social Democratic movement as a whole before
1890. During its years as an "outlawed party" from 1878
to 1890, the SPD refined its ideological position to that

of a radical rejection of any cooperation with bourgeois
14-
society. ^ In a similar fashion, theoretical purity and a
Marxist "hard line" became the trade mark of the socialist
women's movement between 1890 and 1908. J
Finally, legal restrictions on and police repression

of the socialist women's movement accounts for much of the
reluctance of male Social Democrats to take up the woman
question in any but a theoretical fashion before the 1890's.
Themselves the targets of Bismarck's anti-socialist laws,

many male socialists felt that men first had to achieve full
political rights before women could do so. In any case, to
invite women to join male socialist organizations mas
querading as "reading and debating clubs" would only en

courage the intervention of the police. Moreover, the
anti-feminist laws reinforced the old proletarian anti
feminism which regarded women as competitors for jobs and
"^Gerhard Ritter. Die Arbeiterbewegung im wilhelmlnisohen

Reich (Berlin, 1959), p. 2 2 W .
18
•'Arbitrary police harrassment and suppression of groups
defined as "political," such as Grafin Guillaume-Schack's
Verein zur Vertretung der Intereseen der Arbeiterinnen and
other mildly socialistic organizations in the 1880*s,
tended to reinforce the women's radical position. See
Neumann, "Die Entwicklung," p. 824.
282
in any case "believed that women were not yet "ready” to
join the movement. Women, even working class women, it
was argued, had a natural conservative bent antithetical to

Social Democracy.
Early debates among socialists over suffrage reform

clearly revealed this mixture of attitudes. When the
Allgemeinen deutschen sozialdemokratischen Arbeiterkongress
met at Eisenach in 1869 the Lassallean faction called for

"universal, equal, and direct voting rights for all men
aged twenty and over" in opposition to Bismarck’s pluto

cratic three class voting system. Bebel's group demanded
voting rights for "all state members (Staatsangehflrigen)."

phraseology which would have included women in voting.
The latter resolution was defeated.^ The male delegates
to the congress were not ready to extend the suffrage to

women.
At the same 1869 meeting a motion calling for the ex
clusion of women from work outside the home was also voted
down, not necessarily because the majority thought that
women should have the right to work wherever they wanted,
but rather because opponents of the motion argued that such

a prohibition would drive unemployed women into prostitu
tion. The "dangerous competition" between men and women
•^Protokoll allgemeinen deutschen soziaidemokratischen

Arbeiterkongress . . . Eisenach. 7-9 August 18&9 (Leipzig.
1869), p. 33.
283
was to be eliminated by awakening class consciousness among
working women and raising women to the level of joint com

rades ih the socialist struggle.1^
The question of female suffrage came up again at the

same Gotha party congress of 1875 which saw the unification
of the "Lassallean" and "Eisenach” branches of the labor
movement. There August Bebel once again introduced a motion
calling for votes for "all state members of both sexes.

When another delegate objected that women would use their
votes to support conservative causes because of their lack
of education and class consciousness, Bebel and Wilhelm
Liebknecht countered that the same objection could be

raised about many male voters. In any event, they argued,
participation in political and trade union affairs provided

the best means of educating women in their political and
19
class responsibilities. * Nevertheless, Bebel's motion
was defeated by a vote of 62 to 55, and the Gotha program
left the question of female suffrage open by calling for
^lion, Zur Soziologie. p. 29.

■Âugust Bebel, Aus meinem Leben (Stuttgart, 1911).
II, 331-32.
19
^Protokoll des Verelnigungs-Kongresses der Sozial-
demokraten Deutschlands . . . Gotha, 22-27 Hay 1875. re
printed in Die ereten deutschen SoziaTTstischen-kongresse
(Stuttgart, 1906), pp. 98, 108-109"!
284
equal voting rights for "all state members twenty years

old and over.” Another motion calling for the exclusion
of women from factory work was also rejected and the final
program simply forbade ’’child labor and all women’s work
20
harmful to health and morality.”
The debates and programs of Eisenach and Gotha showed

a decline in the old artisan opposition to the employment
of women outside the home and a growing acceptance of the
fact that modern industry demanded the services of more and

more women. As yet the debates were still cast in terms of
"women’s right to work,” and the incorporation of women in
industry was not yet seen in the Marxist sense as a neces
sary unavoidable stage in the Aufhebung or transcendence
of the existing family and woman's place in society, a view
that only gained influence in the 1880's with the appear
ance of Bebel's Die Frau und der Sozialismus and Engels’

Origin of the Family. Even then, it is likely that the
older notion that the family was being destroyed by cap
italism was more widespread than the concept that capitalism
was in fact preparing the groundwork for a "higher" form of

the family.
Even if the older proletarian anti-feminist views were
20
Ibid., p. 112. For Marx's reaction to this wording
see Kari Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (New York,
1970), p. 22.
285
in decline, they had by no means disappeared. They still
appeared from time to time after 1889, the year which saw
the real beginnings of the socialist women's movement in
Germany. In that year Frau Clara Zetkin delivered an ad
dress to the Paris meeting of the International Workers'

Congress on the woman question and socialism. During the
next twenty-five years her views on these questions pro
foundly influenced the socialist women’s movement in

Germany and a few words about her life are appropriate
here.21
Born in Germany in 1857, Clara Eissner became a school
teacher before marrying the socialist Russian emigre, Ossip

Zetkin. When her husband was expelled from Germany for
political reasons in the 1880's, Clara Zetkin and her

children followed him into exile in Switzerland and France
where the family lived in near poverty. In Switzerland

Clara Zetkin met a variety of exiled German and Russian
socialists. She read Marx and Engels and became a convinced
Marxist, a lifelong foe of "revisionist” socialists, and a
defender of what she regarded as the correct Marxist inter

pretation of the woman question.
Two years after her husband’s death in 1888, Clara
21
For a hagiographical account of Zetkin's life see
Louise Dornemann, Clara Zetkin (Berlin, 1962). Further,
Strain, "Feminism," pp. 25-!30.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm is sio n of th e co p yrig h t o w n er. F u rth e r re p ro d u ctio n pro h ib ited w ith o u t perm issio n .
Zetkin returned to Germany, and in 1891 she became the
editor of Die Gleichheit, the official women’s journal of
the SPD. She held the job of editor until 1917 when the
party leadership removed her from the job for her outspoken
opposition to the Majority Socialist position on the war.
She joined the Spartakusbund and later the German Communist

Party. In the 1920's she emigrated to Russia, but still
retained her German citizenship, as well as her seat in the
Reichstag as a member for the Communist Party. In keeping

with the custom that a newly elected Reichstag be convened
by the oldest member, Clara Zetkin returned to Germany and
addressed the Reichstag on August 30, 1932. In spite of
illness and her seventy-five years, and although her life

had been threatened by the Nazis, she spoke for two hours,
delivering a scathing attack on National Socialism and the

brown-shirted Nazi Reichstag members who tried to drown
out her voice by jeering, whistling,and stamping their

feet. Exhausted by her efforts, she returned to Russia
and died there in 1933. It is not surprising that the

’’caustic, impatient, but compelling personality” of this
woman left its imprint on the socialist women's movement
in Wilhelmine Germany.
In words which changed little in content or tone over

the following quarter century, Clara Zetkin expressed her
views on the social and economic position of women in a
speech delivered to the first meeting of the Second
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm is sio n of th e co p yrig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p rohibited w ith o u t p erm ission.
287
International in 1889 and in a pamphlet published in Berlin

22
the same year. Following the ideas of Marx, Engels, and
Bebel, she declared that woman*s inferior social position
was the result of her inferior position in the division of

labor. Although custom and tradition maintained that
woman's "natural” place was in the home, her social role
was actually determined by the existing economic system
and her position in it. Capitalist industrialism and its
need for cheap labor was forcing women from the home and
into the factories. Whatever effects this might have on

traditional family life and the home, the incorporation
of women into m o d e m industrial life was inevitable and

also laid the basis for a better relationship between the
sexes and between family members, for women would gain

economic independence through their labor. Zetkin de
nounced as reactionary those diehard socialists who still
insisted that woman's place was in the home. If men re
ceived low wages, she argued, this was not due to the com
petition of women, but rather to capitalist exploitation

which fell on both sexes. "As the male worker is subjugated
by the capitalist, so is woman by the man, and she will
remain in subjugation as long as she is not economically
22
Protokoll des intemationalen Arbeiterkongresses
. . . Paris, 14-20 Juli 1889 (Nuremberg, 1890), pp. 80-87;
and Clara Zetkin, Die Arbeiterinnen- und Frauenfrage der
Gegenwart (Berlin, 18897^
288
independent. The indispensable condition for economic in-

23
pendence is work."
Unlike middle-class feminists who desired equal civil
and educational rights and regarded men as their opponents,

Zetkin argued that working class women sought the right to
work as equal comrades with their husbands and sons in the
struggle against capitalism. Because the position of woman
in society was finally determined by her economic position,

the emancipation of woman was an economic matter which could
only be changed by the overthrow of capitalism. There could
be no "woman question" as such, but only a "labor question"
involving both working class men and women. Therefore every

possible step had to be taken to awaken the class conscious
ness of working women, to educate them in the social and
political issues confronting socialists, and to foster a
joint movement of working class men and women.

The end of the anti-socialist laws and the re-emergence
of the Social Democratic Party as a legal organization in
1890 provided the opportunity to realize in practice Zetkin1s
theoretical ideas. But the discussions at the first public
SPD congress at Halle in October, 1890, revealed that the

old anti-feminist attitudes were far from dead. A woman
active in trade union affairs, Emma Ihrer, told the dele
gates that preparations were nearly complete for the
23Protokoll . . . Paris . . . 1889, p. 81.
289
publication of a party newspaper devoted to the interests

of working women. (This paper, Die Arbeiterin, did. in fact
appear late in 1890, but ceased publication within a year
because of financial difficulties.) She informed the pre
dominantly male gathering that working women badly needed
a paper of their own, and that she was convinced thatsuch

a paper could succeed provided that men also supported it
and encouraged their wives to read it, a suggestion met by

a mixture of laughter and applause. She reminded her
listeners that
at the Paris Congress /of the International/ all

comrades were pledged t;o support the womenT s move
ment in every way, intellectually and materially.
What has happened since then? On the part of the
men, with a few renowned exceptions, as good as
nothing. We women still have no funds. We are
told: You can't be sent to the party conference
because you don't have the wherewithal. Yes,
then you men have to take our place. We don't
want an extra movement for women, a Sport: we only
want to support the general labor movement. But
then we also count on your support too. So don't
act so cooly toward us, and give us material sup
port. We have a right to be treated by you as
completely equal comrades. Support us materially
and intellectually . . . This is no question of
frivolity, but of the profound seriousness of the
times!24
Later in the same meeting, in reply to another woman

delegate who complained that men refused to take the
^Protokoll {lber die Verhandlungen des Parteitaees

der Sozialdemokratischen Partei DeutschlancTa abgehalten
zu Halle. 12-18 October 1890"TBerlin. 1890). pp. 48-49.
Hereafter these party reports are cited as Protokoll
(place, date).
290
socialist women’s movement seriously, Ignaz Auer, an old

and much respected Social Democrat whose reputation equalled
that of August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht within the SPD,
spoke in terms which illustrated the mixture of seriousness
and lightheartedness with which many male socialists ap
proached the Frauenfrage:

It is really regretable that the women have so
much to complain about, The reason for this
probably lies not only with the lack of under
standing on the part of their male comrades,
but also perhaps in the women's pessimistic
frame of mind. Their movement still lacks the
size that we all wish for it, and the smaller
a movement is— this is an experience we men have
also had in our time— the more it is still in
its undeveloped stages /in der Kinderachuhen
steckt7. the more internal disagreements,
grumblings, and a certain feeling of dissatisfac
tion make themselves felt. That's my personal
opinion. It seems to me that the leaders of the
women's movement who come to us are divided among
themselves about the things they want reformed,
and now we poor men are blamed because they can
not reach agreement among themselves. I am of
course married myself, and I hope that the ladies
will not repeat what I'm saying here today.
(Laughter from the assembly.)25
Whatever the substance of Auer's speech may have been, his

jovial paternal tone had an unmistakeable ring of conde
scension about it that must have been offensive to a woman

like Clara Zetkin.
A year later, at the 1891 SPD congress at Erfurt, a

program was adopted which unequivocally demanded "univer
sal, equal, direct suffrage, with secret voting rights,
25Ibid., p. 239. See Strain, "Feminism," p. 72.
291
for all members of the Empire twenty years of age and over,
26
without discrimination between the sexes.” It also
called for the abolition of all laws which discriminated
against women in public and private life, and for equal
access of men and women to public education at all levels.

Beyond these points, the Erfurt program included no special
demands for labor legislation to protect women workers in

particular. Indeed, Clara Zetkin opposed any proposals
for labor legislation (apart from time off work for women
who had given birth) that did not apply equally to men and
women. She argued that women needed no special protection
in the class struggle, that in fact women had to suffer the

same exploitation as men in order to awaken their class
consciousness and desire to struggle.
Zetkin also opposed those socialist women who wanted

the state to provide welfare funds for working women who
had given birth to children and had to take time off from
their jobs. Rather, she believed that the various workers'
organizations should provide such assis tance from their
own treasuries as an example to the bourgeois state and as

27
a sign of working class solidarity. Later the question
of protective legislation for women became a bone of con

tention between the radical wing of the socialist women's
2^Protokoll (Erfurt, 1891), p. 5.

^Neumann, "Die Entwicklung," pp. 844-4-6; Anthony,
Feminism in Germany. pp. 191-92.
292
movement, as represented by Zetkin, and the "revisionist”
wing represented by lily Braun, Wally Zepler, and others.
In the early 1890's such theoretical disputes were
set aside as efforts were made to organize the socialist
women's movement. Conflicts among the women themselves

were shelved as they fought against their common enemies,
the police and state ministers who used the anti
combination laws against women's organizations. One of

the first steps took place in 1890 when Clara Zetkin and
six other women received government permission to organ
ize a women's Agitationskommission to plan and hold meet
ings for Berlin women on various economic and social, but

not "political," questions. Using Die Gleichheit. edited
by Zetkin, as a clearing house, and organizing guide,
women in other cities followed suit and groups devoted to

the woman question sprang up all over urban Germany. These
continued for several years, but in 1895 the Imperial

government had second thoughts about its earlier abolition
of the anti-socialist laws and stepped up its harassment

of the SPD and groups the police deemed "socialistic."
The various women's Agitationskommlssionenwere declared

illegal by the police who defined them as "political
organizations" in violation of the 1850 laws against female
membership in such groups. The Berlin commission was the
293
first to be disbanded and many others followed.^8
Although police repression severely restricted the
actions of socialist women, steps had already been taken

before 1895 in the SPD to provide a parallel and alterna
tive form of ’’agitation" among women. Ever since the be
ginning of the anti-socialist laws in 1878, the SPD had
carried on most of its political activity at the local
level through so-called Vertrauensm£nner. trusted social

ists who helped get out the vote for Reichstag elections,
collected information on local labor conditions, distributed
pamphlets, and other day to day chores. At the SPD's
Berlin congress in 1892, the title of this job had been
changed to Vertrauenspersonen. so that women could also be

made eligible for such work wherever local police author
ities were not inclined to enforce the letter of the law

against women in political organizations. In fact, the
Prussian laws were directed against organized groups of

women more than against the actions of individual women.
Hence, female Vertrauens-personen usually escaped prosecu
tion by the police.
In 1896 Gotha party congress declared the tasks of

these women representatives to be "the education of
28
Neumann, "Die Entwicklung," p. 827; Salomon, "Die
Arbeiterinnenbewegung," pp. 222-24; Eduard Bernstein,
Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiterbewegung (Berlin, 1910),
294-
proletarian women in regards to politics and trade union

activities," as well as the awakening and strengthening
29
of class consciousness among women workers. Particu
larly after the suppression of the local women's agitation
committees, the women representatives became the backbone

of the women's socialist movement. They sent in reports
on women's working conditions to Zetkin's paper Die

Gleichheit, and after 1900 participated in the semi-annual
meetings of the socialist women's movement which usually

30
met a day or two before the SPD congresses. Before 1900
there are no figures available on the number of these
women, but thereafter there is the following information:
FEMALE VERTRAUENSPERSONEN (1901-1907)31
1901 25
1902 54
1903 78
1904 100
1905 190
1906 325
1907 407
As mentioned earlier, 1908 saw the repeal of the Prussian
laws forbidding the membership of women in political organ
izations. Thereafter, the SPD simply counted its women
2^Protokoll (Gotha, 1896), p. 160.
•^Thflnnessen, Frauenemanzipation, p. 52; Neuman,

"Die Entwicklung," p. 829.
295
Vertrauenspersonen among other local party leaders.
In fact, the years from 1909 to 1914 witnessed the

growing incorporation of the political aspect of the so
cialist women's movement into the SPD's bureaucracy. In

1909 the SPD decided at its Leipzig congress that the system
of Vertrauenspersonen should be abolished, and that all
party organizations which had female members should also
have women on their governing committees. Furthermore,
there was to be a permanent Zentralfrauensbureau of two

women, one of whom was also a member of the SPD's central
Vorstand. Although a woman remained a member of the SPD
Vorstand thereafter, in 1911 the special Frauenbureau was

made a subcommittee of the party Vorstand and in 1912 it
was abolished altogether. From then on a woman member of
the Vorstand was a paid party official (Sekretflrin) charged
with looking after the affairs of women in the SPD. One
thing was clear from this bureaucratic evolution: by 1912

the socialist women's movement was incorporated into the
SPD bureaucracy where the male majority could keep a watch
ful eye on its activities and prevent any serious radical

departures from party ideology and practice.
The incorporation or, perhaps a better word,

Gleichschaltung. of the women's movement into the SPD ran
parallel to the growing participation of women in German

industry, the trade unions, and interest in the Frauenfrage
296
as shown by subscriptions to Zetkin's Die Gleichheit. The

following table gives an overview of the expansion in these
various fields before the First World War:**2
Number Female io of Female Circula Female

of Women Union Total SPD tion of Die SPD
Year Employed Members Membership Members Gleichheit Delega-
_ _ _
1875 1,116,695
1882 5,541,517 - - - _ _
1890 — - - - _ 4
1891 - 4,355 1.8 - - 6
1894 — 5,251 2.1 - - -
1893 6,578,350 6,697 2.5 - _
7
1896 - 15,295 4.6 - _
1898 — 13,009 2.7 - - 6
1899 — 19,280 3.3 _ _
5
1900 — 22,844 3.3 _ ca.4,000
1901 - 23,699 3.4 - - -
1902 — 28,218 3.8 - - —
1903 — 40,666 4.5 - 9,500
1904 — 48,604 4.6 - 12,000 _
1905 — 74,441 5.7 4,000 23,000 _
1906 — 118,908 7.1 6,460 46,000 29
1907 9,492,881 136,929 7.3 10,943 70,000 16
1908 — 138,443 7.6 29,458 - 32
1909 — 133,888 - 62,259 77,000 17
1910 — 161,512 - 82,642 82,000 20
1911 — 191,332 - 107,693 94,000 36
1912 — 216,462 - 130,371 107,000 35
1913 - 223,676 8.8 141,115 112,000 29
(Percentage of members of SPD who were women: 1906 (1.7):
1907 (2.1): 1908 (5.6); 1909 (9.8); 1910 (11.5); 1911 (12.9);
1912 (13.4); 1913 (14.4).)
As the socialist women’s movement expanded numerically

in various directions, its theoretical aims and practical
work were discussed and debated in the semi-annual women
socialist conferences (the first of which met at Mainz in
^2Th8nnessen, Frauenemanzipation, p. 62; Kuczynski,

Studien zur Geschichte, p. 183.
297
1900), as well as in the columns of Die Gleichheit. Kautsky's

Neue Zeit, and the "revisionist" Sozialistische Monatsheft
under Eduard Bernstein. Among the dominant themes often
discussed in these meetings and articles were the relation

ship of the socialist women's movement to the middle class
feminist movement; the changing functions of marriage and

the family, particularly as these functions related to
women; labor legislation for women and female suffrage; and

educational activities among working class women.
At the Gotha party congress of 1896 Clara Zetkin re
peated at length her argument that the aims of the socialist
and bourgeois women's movements were fundamentally different

and that collaboration between the two was impossible. The
bourgeois women wanted to compete with the men of their own
class for positions and power within the existing capitalist

social order. Like Nora in Ibsen's drama The Doll House.
they sought to allow women to develop their individual per
sonality within a society based on the notion of individual
competition. But the anti-socialist laws of 1878-1890 and

the anti-feminist laws had taught working class women that
their struggle must be a joint one with men of their own
class against capitalism and capitalist society. There
was no special Erauenfrage, only an Arbeiterfrage under

which the problems of women were subsumed. The triumph of
socialism, not "equal rights" under the law, was the
298
33
prerequisite for the emancipation of women. ' Zetkin suc
ceeded in preventing the participation of women socialists
in the middle class feminist conference of 1 8 9 6 . ^
Not all of Zetkin1s fellow women socialists shared
her hard-line against bourgeois women's groups. Johanna

Lflwenherz replied to Zetkin's arguments at Gotha by point
ing out that middle class women also supported innovations
like women factory inspectors. Surely, she argued, there

was some common ground for cooperation.^ Lflwenherz re
peated this line of reasoning in an article published the

following year. There she maintained that something con
crete had to be done for working women before the advent

of socialism, and that a united movement of women from all
classes was essential to win improved working and social
conditions for women. As she saw it, "working women lacked

officers, while the f i d d l e class7 women's rights people
lacked an army." Together the two could make a successful
force . ^
» 0 f . Zetkin's speech in Protokoll (Gotha, 1896),

pp. 161-65.
•^See Georg Simmel, "Der Prauenkongress und die
Sozialdemokratie," Die Zukunft, XVII (1896), 80-84.
^ Protokoll (Gotha, 1896), p. 163.

^Johanna Lflwenherz, "Kflnnen Sozialdemokratinnen und
bflrgerliche Frauenrechtlerinnen ftir gemeinsame Ziele auch
gemeinsam kflmpfen?" Sozialistlsche Monatshefte. I (1897),
356-59. Hereafter this journal is cited as S.M.
299
Other women socialists criticized Zetkin's insistence

that there was no special "woman question" apart from the
"labor question." Wally Zeppler, a woman closely associ
ated with the pro-Bernstein wing of the SPD, agreed with

many of Zetkin's ideas, but felt that she paid too little
attention to the problems facing woman as a sexual being,
wife and mother. These were questions widely discussed in
the literature and drama of the time and also ones which
confronted working women in their daily lives. It was
foolish to relegate these questions to a socialist future
and subjugate them to the economic problems faced by all
working people.^ In a reply to Zepler, Clara Zetkin simply

reiterated her belief that woman's place in society was
the result of her economic position in the division of

labor, not of her sexual nature. She recommended that
Zepler and like-minded women read Engels' Origin of the

38
Family for a correct understanding of the problem.
The Zetkin "line" seems to have prevailed among the
most active leaders of the socialist women's movement.
Speaking at the second socialist women's conference at
^Wally Zepler, "Ein Kapitel aus der Frauenbewegung,"

S.M.. II (1898), 131-36; "Die Frau der Gegenwart und der
sexuelle Problem," S.M., III (1899), 235-43; "Die Frau
der Zukunft und die freie Liebe," S.M.. Ill (1899),
290-300.
^®Clara Zetkin, "Sozialistische Stimmen fiber die
Frauenfrage," Neue Zeit, XV-1 (1897-8), 783-89.
300
Munich in 1902, Ottillie Baader, long active in trade

union and local SPD activities, said that "we Social Demo
cratic women are not striving for any special interest
within the party, but rather that women become supporters

of Social D e m o c r a c y . S h e called for yet further agita
tion among women as well as the formation of "reading
circles" and lecture programs to inform women on the sub

jects of science, economics, and, where the police allowed,
the principles of socialism. Following Baader, a woman
from Leipzig described Leseabende in her city at which

women read and discussed the writings of Engels, Kautsky,
and other socialists.40 She recommended that similar dis
cussion groups be set up all over Germany to train speakers
for the movement and to improve the socialist understanding

of rank and file women workers.
Unfortunately, very little is known about the cultural
and educational activities of the socialist women's move
ment. It is known that these activities fell under two
headings: first, the rather formally organized Bildungs-

vereine with set programs of reading, discussion, and
courses of lectures; second, informally organized reading
•^Protokoll (Munich, 1902), p. 288.
40Ibid., p. 292.
301
and discussion circles. Because of the Prussian anti

feminist laws, "before 1908 all of these groups pursued a
rather ambiguous educational cum political path. Care
had to be taken that the subjects and books chosen for dis
cussion could not be obviously construed as "political" by
the police. This care, together with the traditional Social

Democratic concern with Bildung. meant there was a good deal
of attention given to subjects like evolution, labor legis
lation, history, and the like. In 1907 there were. "read-

ing evenings” for women meeting on a monthly or fortnightly
basis in 120 localities.

After the abolition of the Prussian organizational laws
against women in 1908 the discussion groups increased to 300
meeting once a month in 1913. Because these groups had as

one of their aims the enlightenment of "advanced" women
workers who were expected to spread the knowledge of social

ism among other women, their readings and discussion focused
on the works of Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lassalle and other
well-known socialists.^1 Not surprisingly, one male "re
visionist" socialist, Ludwig Radlof, complained in an
article published in 1913 that "our working women Qannot be
won over /to the SPD7 with our intellectual heroes, Marx,
Engels, and Lassalle," in evening discussions. Such sub
jects only bored the lady comrades who would rather have
4.1
Neumann, "Die Entwicklung," pp. 838-41.
302
lectures on child care and housekeeping.^-2
It is impossible to determine how successful these

educational activities were in winning working class women
over to Social Democracy. But there are indications that

traditional attitudes about woman's role in the family lived
on among socialist women interested in education. In a long
speech to the fifth socialist women's conference at Nurem

berg in 1908 Frau Duncker from Stuttgart spoke on the topic
"Socialist Education in the H o m e."^ She stressed the need
for "socially aware" and responsible women to inform them

selves on the dangers of alcohol and venereal disease to
unborn children. Because the task of molding the child's
character and answering its questions fell almost exclusive
ly to the working class mother in the pre-school years, she

should take it upon herself to become better educated.
Significantly Duncker did not mention the father's part in
the early nurture of the child. She severely condemned the

religious superstitions implanted in children and suggested
that a "rational" proletarian class morality could best be
inculcated in working class children at home, provided, of
course, that unity and harmony prevailed there and the
parents set a good example themselves. Interestingly,
42
ludwig Ladlof, "Kritisches zur Taktik der sozial-
demokratischen Frauenbewegung," S.M.. XVII-1 (1913), 427;
Protokoll (Bremen, 1904), p. 333.
^ Protokoll (Nuremberg, 1908), pp. 507-17.
303
Frau Duncker thought it a false sense of communism for

parents to insist that their children share their toys com
munally! She ended her speech with the complaint that too
many good Social Democratic men left democracy behind when

they entered their own homes where "in thought and deed
they are still absolutely petit-bourgeois and patriarchal."
The stress Frau Duncker placed on the importance of
the mother in early child training, the need for a solid

harmonious home life, and the dangers of alcoholism, sug
gests that the efforts of the socialist women's movement
(like those of the SPD as a whole) worked as a stabilizing
factor on the working class family and home which were, in
socialist theory, "breaking down" under capitalism. To be

sure, the ideal of the working class family could only be
achieved under socialism, but in the meantime, under cap
italism, by stressing the responsibilities of parenthood

and the importance of home life, socialists were preserv
ing the old artisan ideals and offering them as a model
for industrial workers. After all, apart from the rejection
of religious education, there was little about Duncker's
ideas that contemporary non-socialists would have objected

to.
Even a purist Marxist like Clara Zetkin helped to pro

ject the image of the socialist family as a bulwark against
the onslaughts of capitalist society. In a speech delivered
in 1906 she argued that both working class parents should
304-
participate in the education of their children and teach

them to love and respect w o r k . ^ In another speech to
Berlin university students she explained that as the family
ceased to he a unit of production under capitalism, it be
came a "purely moral whole" (rein sittllchen Ganzen) in

which the personality of each family member could develop
to its fullest extent in an atmosphere of trust and
love.^
By 1900 leading socialist feminists had come a long
way from the critical Utopian socialist condemnation of the

family as a bastion of privatism and self-interest. Para
doxically they strengthened the ideal of the nuclear family,
even though they rejected the patriarchal family. By doing

so they helped to preserve many of the middle class ideals
they otherwise attacked and also held up the ideal of tra
ditional family as a model for the masses. In short, so

cialist feminism contributed to the integration of the in
dustrial working class into German society.
Another example of the integrative effects of the
socialist women’s movement educational work, as well as
of the petit-bourgeois notion of "getting on," appeared in
^C l a r a Zetkin, Ueber Jugenderziehung (Berlin, 1957),

pp. 57-80. This is a reprint of Zetkin's writings on this
subject produced early in this century.
4.K
^ ■'Clara Zetkin, Geistige Proletariat. Frauenfrage und
Sozialismus (Berlin, 1902), p. 23.
305
Lily Braun's roman a clef, Memoiren eine Sozialistln.
In an incident which has a genuine ring of truth to it,

she described a visit to a socialist working women's
Bildungsverein in Berlin around 1900, Lily was accompanied

by her husband, Heinrich, and a certain Herr Romberg who
earlier had expressed cynical doubts about the quality and
goals of these female "cultural groups." At the meeting
a "short, smartly-dressed" woman stepped to the podium and

told the group
My husband is a machine operator, we have two

children, and hitherto had enough money so that
I didn't hhve to work as well. But our boy is
a bright lad. So I said to myself: He should
have things better than his parents. He should
also know how beautiful and rich the world is,
and not, like us, have only a tiny glimpse of
part of it. And now I'm back in the factory,
and Fritz is going to the gymnasium. I don't
want to praise myself for doing this, I only
want to advise everyone that they can do the
same thing.46
Although this speech could scarcely be interpreted as a
display of working class solidarity, Lily Braun's husband

shook the good woman's hand. Herr Romberg, however, was
more reserved, and made an excellent point by asking Lily

"do you think that 'Fritz' will be happier as an 'intel
lectual proletarian'?" Lily snapped back angrily that "it
is not a question of happiness, but rather of the level of
social accomplishment, which will be greater if his
^6Lily Braun, Memoiren eine Sozialistin (Munich.

1911), II, 302-303.
306
abilities are allowed to develop."
This incident sums up very well the central dilemma

of the socialist women's educatiohal efforts (as well as
the educational strivings of Social Democracy in general).
At the same time cultural clubs and discussion circles

were supposed to be equipping women with the intellectual
tools for understanding socialism and participating in the

class struggle, they were reinforcing the time-honored
middle class stress on education and, more important, on
getting ahead through individual initiative. Socialist

women might insist that these educational and cultural ac
tivities furthered the socialist cause by rescuing working

class men and women from the bonds of ignorance, but if
these cultural efforts were carried far enough, and if the
working class home became too "solid" and harmonious, would

not those conscientious enough to improve themselves be
come more like the German middle class than their prole
tarian fellows? If cultural improvement and the develop
ment of the individual were among the central aims of the
socialist women's Bildungsvereine. it could be argued that
they had these aims in common with the much maligned middle
class Brauenbewegung. In a sense, the socialist women's
educational movement had a built-ih "revisionist" tendency
which helped to overcome rather than intensify the class
307
struggle.4^
This same ’’revisionist," or perhaps better, socially-
integrating, factor was present in the demand for women's
suffrage and for labor legislation for the protection of

working mothers. Early socialist demands for votes for
women were usually based on woman's right to vote in a

society which demanded her labor services but denied her
suffrage rights. Moreover, the votes of socialist working
women were supposed to help the SPD in its efforts to change

the German state and society. This position was never given
up, but it was subtly changed in a speech by Ottillie Baader

to the 1902 Munich party day where she said that
The demand for women's suffrage is the product

of the economic and social upheavels produced
by the capitalist mode of production, but par
ticularly of the revolution in the labor,
position and consciousness of the woman. This
demand is essentially a consequence of the
bourgeois-democratic principle which calls for
the elimination of all social distinctions, a
principle which is not based on property, and
proclaims the rights of all persons of age to
complete juridical equality in the public as
well as in the private s p h e r e . 48
Baader shifted the emphasis from a right to vote based on
participation in the economic structure to one based on

the liberal democratic belief in the free development of
the individual personality, the same development socialist
Êrnest Schur, "Erauenfrage und Kultur," S.M.. XI-1

(1907), 302-10.
48Protokoll (Munich, 1902), p. 68.
308
women believed would take place through education and in

the "moral whole" of the family.
The development and improvement of the woman was also
the theoretical basis for many discussions about woman's
right to work and her dual roles as mother-wife and worker.

A series of articles in the Sozialistische Monatsheft be
tween 1906 and 1908 called for more labor legislation to
help working women, particularly just before and after hav

ing children. Most of these articles tried to discover ways
in which women could carry out their dual functions in a way
which would permit them to become "complete," well-developed
human beings. Emphasis was on reform, not at all on revo
lution, and final solutions were, of course, postponed until

the advent of socialism.^ These articles contained little
that could be termed uniquely socialist. In fact they are

better termed "liberal," for they called for state aid for
working women. Most important, all of them called for re
forms within the existing capitalist system, and none for
the abolition of that system. In the words of Werner
ThSnnessen,
with the shift of the central emphasis of

the Social Democratic women's agitation from
a radical emancipation struggle, which broke
4.0
^Wa l l y Zepler, "Problems des Prauenlebens," S.M..
VIII-1 (1904), 454-63; Ida HStiy-Lux, "Beruf und EheT15"
S.M.. X—2 (1906), 870-76; Wally Zepler, "Das Mutterschafts-
proFlem," S.M.. X-2 (1906), 580-90; Wally Zepler, "Beruf
und weibliche Psyche," S.M.. XII-2 (1908), 857-67.
309
the framework of capitalism, to one based on the
possible results of a voting contest in bourgeois
society, the women's movement progressed on the
way which led to its integration into that society,
and betrayed /the ideal of7 e m a n c i p a t i o n . 5 0
At the same time that the socialist women's movement
was moving from radical rejection toward working within
capitalist society, Edmund Fischer, a well-known and
crotchety revisionist, published two articles which revived
the anti-feminism of the 1860's and offended many women

in the movement. Fischer wondered if there really was a
Frauenfrage at all."51 He declared that the old utopian
dreams of communal kitchens a In Bebel's Die Frau had
failed to materialize. To be sure, predictions that more

and more women would enter industry had come true, but
"has the evolution of women's work and the home gone the
way described by Bebel, Kautsky, Zetkin and others? I
say no! And I go even further to maintain that so-called
'woman's emancipation' contradicts the female nature, and

human nature in general; that it is unnatural and there-
52
fore cannot be achieved."
Fischer also denied that the low wages and backward
ness of women were socially caused. After all, working
^ThiJnnessen, Frauenemanzipation, p. 71.

•Êdmund Fischer, "Die Frauenfrage," S.M.. IX-1
(1905), 258-66.
52Ibid., p. 262.
310
class girls had the same educational and job opportunities

as their brothers. It was all right to talk about the
liberating potential of factory work for women who could

earn a measure of independence from father and husband as
well as her wages, but work at home as a Hausfrau was cer
tainly preferable to work in a factory. After all, social

ist women, like all women, really wanted their own homes
and their own kitchens. Fischer recalled that even Kautsky

in his book, Die Agrarfrage. had regarded the individual
home as the best setting for the development of individual
relationships. He concluded that higher wages for working
men would insure and reinforce the continued existence of

the present family form. Speculations about the future by
socialists in the past had only proven to be a source of
embarrassment to those in the present.
Edmund Fischer stopped just short of declaring that
woman’s place was in the home, although in another article

he wrote that either women go to work in factories or the
professions and leave their children to be raised in some
kind of utopian barracks after being weaned, or they stayed

at home and looked after their husband and children. There
could be, as far as Fischer was concerned, no third alter

native.*^
Êdmund Fischer, ’’Die Familie," S.M.. IX-1 (1905),

532-39. For a discussion of Fischer's articles, see
Thflnnessen, Frauenemanzipation. pp. 108-16.
511
Predictably, Fischer’s articles provoked a number of

54.
angry responses from socialist women. They repeated the
argument that the present form of the family was the product
of past and present social and economic conditions and that

the family would further change with the passage of time.
Particularly galling was Fischer's suggestion that all
women wanted to become mothers and that motherhood was
woman's highest calling. The writers agreed that women

under socialism would still want to look after their own
children as much as possible, but they argued that no
woman should be restricted to the role of Hausfrau. On
the contrary, women wanted to share intellectual interests
on the same high level as men in German society. This,

after all, was the motivation behind the struggle of women
to enter the professions and other occupations.

Werner Thflnnessen writes that "the conception of the
Frauenfrage published for the first time by Edmund Fischer

in 1905 represented the application of revisionism to the
55
problem of women's liberation." Although Fischer was
certainly a revisionist who sharply challenged the analyses
^ E m m a Ihrer, "Die proletarische Frau und die

Berufstatigkeit," S.M.. IX-1 (1905), 443-49; Oda Olberg,
"Polemisches ttber Frauenfrage und Sozialismus," S.M.,
IX-1 (1905), 301-10; Hope Bridges Adams-Lehmann,"1T5Te
Arbeit der Frau," S.M.. IX-2 (1905), 1031-37; Wally Zepler,
"Das psychische Problem in der Frauenfrage," S.M.. (1906),
306-15.
*^Th8nnessen, Frauenemanzipation. p. 173.
and predictions of Kautsky, Bebel, and Zetkin, it can be
argued that the Social Democratic women's movement was in
a sense "revisionist'' from its outset; not perhaps in
spite of, but rather because of, the radical Marxist hard
line exemplified by Clara Zetkin. That is, Zetkin, like
Engels and Bebel, always insisted that the subordinate

social role of woman was the result of her economic posi
tion under capitalism. For this reason she argued that

there was no woman question separate and distinct from
the labor question as a whole. The triumph of socialism
alone held out the promise of solving both the woman and
the labor question. However, there were two parallel paths

toward socialism. The first was the political one pursued
by the Social Democratic Party. The SPl) had the task of
"enlightening" working women in the basic tenets of social

ism and also of seeking votes for women in order that they
might aid the party in the electoral struggle. Moreover,

the SPD hoped to use the Reichstag as a means of bringing
the labor question before the public and also of obtaining
improved working conditions and better wages for women.

In short, the SPD eschewed revolution in favor of working
within the Imperial system to achieve its socialist goals.
And no one knew better than the Social Democrats that the
Imperial constitution was designed specifically to pre
serve the very society and economic system the socialists
were committed to overthrow.
313
There was a second and related path which might con
ceivably have led to socialism in Germany— that of trade

unionism. Indeed, given Zetkin's and Bebel's insistence
that economic question lay at the bottom of the Frauen

frage . the trade union movement should have offered excel
lent opportunities for bringing women into the struggle

against industrial capitalism. But the history of women in
the socialist or "free" trade unions can hardly be described
as a triumph for the socialist cause. To begin with, the

unions were even more cautious about taking women into their
organizations before the revocation of the Prussian anti
feminist laws in 1908. In addition, trade unionists con
tinued to regard women as a threat to male employment, and
often complained that for women industrial jobs were only

temporary occupations to be given up as soon as women mar
ried. Time spent organizing such women was therefore sup

posed to be time wasted.^ To be sure, the free trade
unions did begin to take more interest in organizing women

in the decade before 1914, but the results were not strik
ing: by 1913 women constituted 8.8# of the socialist
trade union membership, i.e., about one out of every forty
women working in industrial or craft jobs.
The socialist trade unions were themselves the
■^Salomon, "Die Arbeiterinnenbewegung," pp. 232-34.
314
stronghold of revisionist socialism. Under the leadership

of non-ideological men like Karl Legien, the unions were
models of bureaucratic organizations committed to getting
as many benefits for the workers as possible within the

capitalist system. Nor did trade unionists have to read
Eduard Bernstein to arrive at their revisionist principles.

It had been their experience since 1890 that good organi
zation and cautious tactics could win moderate improvements

in working conditions, wages and hours for their member
ship.
Now if the leaders of the socialist women's movement

were sincere in their statements that they wanted no
separate movement within the Arbeiterbewegung and that the
woman question was really the labor question, ought they

not have left the economic question to the SPD and the
socialist trade unions? This, of course, came to be the

position of both the SPD and the unions before 1914, both
of which were jealous of their own bureaucratic organiza
tions and prerogatives. In fact, when suggestions were
made that unions specifically for women be organized and

grievance committees made up of women and devoted to ad
vising women workers of their rights, they were opposed

on the grounds that the trade unions already had institu-
57
tions for just these purposes. '
•^Protokoll (Munich, 1902), pp. 297-99; also Emma
315
The socialist women’s movement in Imperial Germany

carried on the Marxist tradition of criticizing the ex
isting forms of marriage and the family. Like Engels and
Bebel, Clara Zetkin believed that socialism alone could
provide the sound basis for a thoroughgoing transformation

of these institutions. She rejected cooperation between
the socialist and bourgeois women’s movements on the
grounds that the latter was not radical enough and ignored
the fundamental importance of and the need for the over

throw of capitalism. Police persecution and denial of
civil rights to women strengthened Zetkin's Marxist con
viction that the struggle for women's emancipation had to
be seen as an integral part of the struggle for the liber
ation of the entire working class.
This struggle was pursued through agitation for
women's suffrage, better protection for and assistance to

working women and mothers, and through participation in
SPD and trade union activities. Although Zetkin and other
Social Democrats might have regarded these activities as

contributing toward the ultimate arrival of socialism, in
retrospect they appear as means for helping working women
to integrate themselves into German society. Even the
cultural and educational efforts of the socialist women
5^(Contd.) Ihrer, "Porm oder Inhalt? Zur Arbeiter-

innenorganisation,” S.M.. X-l (1906), 402-408.
316
seem to have had the effect of reinforcing and extending
the middle class ideals of Blldung and advancement through

individual efforts.
Moreover, the socialist women's movement tended to
strengthen the ideal of the family as the center of indi

vidual development, a haven from the class struggle where
children could be taught the virtues of love and hard work.
However critical they may have been of the patriarchal

family, radical socialist feminists were reluctant to en
gage in any experiments for drastically revising the nu

clear family structure. Early in this century Lily Braun
proposed the organization of working class Hauswirthschaft-

genossenschaften, apartment buildings complete with com
munity kitchens, laundaries, and kindergartens. Other

socialist women rejected this scheme on the grounds that
it was utopian. Capitalist society, they argued, would

never permit such experiments, and in any case, municipal
governments were supposed to finance education.^8 Quite
apart from these objections it can be observed that Lily
Braun's communes were designed to enable women to continue
her traditional dual functions in the working class as

mother-wife and worker. Even in such socialist schemes the
woman's role as mother remained inviolate.
Radical theory seems to flourish best in an atmosphere
58Strain, "Feminism," pp. 188-89.
317
of social and political repression. The experience of
women under the anti-socialist and anti-femifaist legal

codes helped to create an environment in which radical
theorizing was practically the only avenue left to socialist
women. When such laws were relaxed and finally abolished,

women had to try to turn their theories into practice. And
by 1900 "practice" meant that the women's movement had to
subordinate itself to the SPD and the trade unions, both of
which, all protestations of Bebel and Kautsky to the con

trary, were becoming more and more integrated into the
society they condemned.
As if it were not ehough that socialist women had to

suffer police repression, they also had to contend with a
tradition of what would now be called "male chauvinism"

within the ranks of Social Democracy. Obviously leaders
like Bebel and Zetkin thought that this tradition would
die out as women joined the men in the labor movement and
became wage earners themselves. But anti-feminist, patri
archal attitudes proved to be very persistent. Rendered

powerless by a society that rejected them as a threat to
its stability, male socialist workingmen were reluctant to

surrender their modicum of power within the family sphere.
Over all the chorus of theoreticians and organizers, the

complaint voiced to Lily Braun by a Berlin working woman
provides a painful insight into the proletarian home—
318
"Most men don't praise women 'cause they go to a meeting
or join a club. They're s'posed to stay home and mend

KQ
stockings.
•^Braun, Memoiren. II, 177.
CHAPTER V I I
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL

DEMOCRATIC YOUTH MOVEMENT
If the Social Democratic Party, with its residual

anti-feminism and petit-bourgeois family ideals, had an
ambivalent and sometimes strained relationship with so
cialist feminism, it had even greater difficulty accom
modating its theory and practice to the socialist youth
movement in the decade before 1914. In part this diffi

culty sprang from the lack of a clear ideological posi
tion on the question of youth. Although German socialists,

following in the footsteps of Marx and Engels, devoted con
siderable attention to the effects of capitalist industri
alism on marriage and the "breakdown" of the family, this

attention centered almost wholly on the plight of the
woman as worker, wife, and mother. Apart from a concern

over the sexual pitfalls of adolescence, particularly
masturbation, socialists largely ignored the problems and
needs of working class youths.

The socialists were not alone in their ignorance.
It is possible to argue that before the 20th Century there

was no generally accepted concept of "youth" or adolescence
as a separate and well-defined social category. The emer
gence of the nuclear family as a strictly social rather
319
320
than a producing unit, the lengthening period of years de
voted to education and therefore of dependency, undoubted

ly contributed to a growing awareness of the idea of
adolescence as a distinct part of life. In addition the
feminist movement, both middle class and socialist, helped

to focus attention on the internal dynamics of the family
and the roles of its members. Where mothers and wives

questioned and sometimes challenged traditional roles and
patterns within the family, it is not surprising that youth
should do the same thing.'1'
The emergence of this challenge appeared in the years
between 1900 and 1914 when Germany witnessed the appearance

of a multi-faceted and intriguing phenomenon known as the
Jugendbewegung. The largest and best-known faoet of the

youth movement, the so-called Wandervflgel. found its great
est support and in fact originated among the sons of pro

fessional men, government officials, and the owners of
businesses, that is, the German middle class. From its
beginnings in 1898 the Wandervogel grew rapidly all over

Germany until by 1914 there were hundreds of thousands of
boys (and rather fewer girls) between the ages of fourteen
and eighteen participating in programs of hiking, crafts,
and discussion groups.
lHarry Pross, Jugend. Eros. Politik. Die Geschichte

der deutschen Jugendverbflnde (Bern-Munich-Vienna. 1964).
pp. 17-59.
It is very difficult to pinpoint the stimulus behind
the Wandervogel movement or to generalize about its ide
ology and aims. Among the middle class youths who par
ticipated there seems to have been some feeling of a gen
erational antipathy toward parents who had sacrificed high
ideals for the mundane business of getting wealthy and
getting ahead. Then too, the stress on hiking in the
countryside, of preserving native crafts and folksongs, can

be regarded as part of a romantic reaction against the
growing industrialization and urbanization of German life

after 1870. The youth movement consciously tried to re
capture the old spirit of Gemeinschaft that seemed to be
disappearing and dissolving into a class-ridden and di

visive Gesellchaft. The "back to nature" cult associated
with the Wandervogel also included a strong puritanical

strain which exhorted German youth to abstain from the use
of alcohol, tobacco, premarital sexual intercourse and
masturbation. In short, the Wandervflgel sought to return

to the healthier, simpler existence of the Volksgemein-
schaft from which their parents had turned in pursuit of
p
material comfort.
2
Ibid. Also see Walter Laqueur, Young Germany. A
History of the German Youth Movement (tondon, 19$2); Karl
0. PaeteT7 Jugend ln~der EntscheiAung 1913-1933-1945. 2nd
edition (Bad Godesberg, 19&3); Werner Kindt. ed., Grund-
schriften der deutschen Jugendbewegung /Dokumentation der
Jugendbewegung. I/(Dtlsseldorf, 1963). Werner Kindt, ed.,
Die Wandervogelz'eit. Quellenschriften zur deutschen
322
The middle class Wandervogel and the youth movement
in general has been seen by some historians as a part of

the "crisis of the German ideology," and a forerunner of
some of the vSlkisch elements of the Nazi movement of later
years.^ While this analysis cannot be dismissed out of
hand, it ignores the fact that there was also a sizeable

socialist youth movement in the years before 1914 which
did not retreat into a romantic glorification of the German

Volk and its cultural mission in world history. Nor did
members of the socialist youth movement look on their
parents and elders as their actual or potential enemies.

On the contrary, the socialist youth movement proclaimed
its desire to join its parents in the class struggle which
would eventuate in the creation of a socialist society.^-
2(Contd.) Jugendbewegung 1896-1919 /Dokumentation

der Jugendbewegung II/ (Dflsseldorf, 1968).
^George Mosse, The Crisis of the German Ideology (New
York, 1964), pp. 171-89.
În the early 1890*s a number of young, university-
trained Social Democrats became very critical of the re
formist parliamentarianism of the older generation of
Social Democrats. Although their criticisms anticipated
many of those which emerged among young socialists during
the First World War, the Jungen of the 1890’s soon made
their peace with the older generation, and many of the
young radicals later found a home in the revisionist wing
of the SPD or abandoned socialism altogether. See Vernon
Iddtke, The Outlawed Party. Social Democracy in Germany
1878-1890 (Princeton. 196b), pp. 305-19; Hans Manfred
Bock, "Die ’Literaten- und Studenten-Revolte1 der Jungen
in der SPD urn 1890." Das Argument. 63 (March, 1971),
22-41.
The SPD itself had not done very much to prepare work
ing class youth to join the struggle. To be sure, as early
as 1871 Social Democrats had prepared a socialist catechism
so that parents could instruct their children in the basic

tenets of socialism, but otherwise there were no formal
organizations within the SPD devoted to working class boys
and girls.^ This is all the more surprising given the
large number of young people active in the German labor
force. By 1904, when the first socialist youth group made
its appearance, there were about 4,000,000 girls and boys

between the ages of fourteen and eighteen employed in non
agrarian occuaptions.^ Although the hours and working con
ditions of adolescents in factories left a great deal to

be desired, the state of affairs of apprentices was much
worse. Tied to their jobs and masters by pre-industrial,

almost feudal, contracts, apprentices enjoyed little pro
tection from a variety of abuses. For example, the patri
archal apprenticeship laws allowed masters to beat appren
tices who failed to show •'proper*1 diligence and respect,
and also forbade any kind of labor organization among ap-

7
prentices.
^Karl Korn, Die Arbeiter.jugendbewegung. Einfilhrung

in ihre GeschichTe. 2nd ediiion ^Berlin, 1924), p. 7»
6Ibid.. pp. 16-17.
7Ibid.. pp. 18-29.
324
In fact, it was the abuse of an apprentice by his
master that led to the beginning of the socialist youth
movement. In June, 1904 a Berlin apprentice hanged him

self, and the subsequent investigation of his death revealed
that he had suffered numerous beatings at the hands of his
master and that these had contributed to his decision to
take his life. Incensed by this and similar incidents,
twenty-four teenage apprentices met on October 10, 1904 and

established the Verein der lehrlinge und .iugendlichen
Arbeiter Berlins.8 Because Prussian law forbade apprentices
from belonging to "political" organizations, the Berlin
group's statutes took as its goals the economic defense and
the educational improvement of its members. In deference

to Prussian law these statutes expressly excluded matters
relating to religion or politics from its consideration,

like the Social Democratic Party and the socialist women's
movement before it, the Berlin, or, as it came to be known,

North German, youth movement instituted a program of lec
tures and discussions on science and "practical subjects"
such as mathematics and dfawing for its members. Further

more, members took part in "discussion evenings," museum
visits, and had access to reading rooms provided by the
group. The publicly stated goal of all these activities

were very similar to those of the middle class Wandervflgel
8Ibid.. p. 33.
325
in that they encouraged "character-building and the strength
ening of the will."9

The North German movement had developed spontaneously
under the direction of its own adolescent members, without
the help or interference of adult Social Democrats. It was
predominantly concerned with the questions of wages and
working conditions of apprentices. These concerns were re

flected in the group's monthly newspaper, Die Arbeitende
Jugend, which first appeared in Berlin in January, 1905.

In addition to publicizing cases of physical mistreatment
of apprentices, the paper also presented biographical
articles on men like Robert Owen, Fourier, Marx and Engels.

In a fashion similar to the middle class youth movement,
Die Arbeitende Jugend encouraged its readers to abstain
from using alcohol and tobacco, and warned of the dangers

of "trashy books and movies."10 No doubt stress on ab
stention from alcohol and tobacco had something to do with

the fact that the early meetings of the Berlin group took
place in back rooms provided by sympathetic socialist tavern
keepers. Drinking and smoking at such meetings were, of
9Ibid.. pp. 33-35.

10Ibid.. pp. 36-41. In a study on the proletarian
child fire-b published in 1912 a socialist author blamed
movies of setting bad examples for working class children.
In § chapter entitled "Paths to Vice" he reduced his con
demnation to a simple formula: "Movies— Temptation—
Prostitution— Crime— Police." See Otto RfUile, Das prole-
tarische Kind: eine Monographie, 2nd edition (Munich,
19^2), p . " 2 9 S . --------- -------
326
course, forbidden to members.11

By 1907 the Berlin group had grown from twenty-four to
1,268 members. In all there were some 4,000 members of the
"Union of Free Youth Organizations of Germany," the name
given to Berlin group's affiliates in the North German

youth movement. In Berlin, 199 of the members were eighteen
years of age or older. The rest were between fourteen and
eighteen, practically all of them apprentices in skilled
trades, e.g., metalworkers, carpenters, printers, and the

like. Thus in Berlin the membership was drawn almost en
tirely from the craft trades rather than from young factory
workers. Interestingly, at a time when the middle-class

Wandervogel was debating the wisdom of admitting girls to
its clubs, the Berlin apprentice group already included a
12
dozen girls among its members.
Nearly two years after the creation of the Berlin youth
group, what came to be known as the South German socialist

youth movement was founded in Mannheim by a young lawyer,
Dr. Ludwig Frank, a well-known Social Democrat.1^ Frank had
^Korn, Arbei ter .jugendbewegung. p. 47.

12Ibid., p. 60.
1^Ludwig Frank, "Sozialistische Jugendorganisationen,"

Neue Zeit, XXII-2 (1903-4), 726-30; S. Grunebaum, Ludwig
Frank" Sin Beitrag zur Entwicklung der deutschen Sozial-
demokratie (Heidelberg. 1924). Hereafter the .journal Niue
Zeit is cited as N.Z.
327
been greatly impressed by the anti-militarist activities of

the Belgian socialist youth group, Junge Garde, and when he
organized the Mannheim Yereins .lunger Arbeiter anti
militarism was an important part of the program of the

group. Because there were no laws in Mannheim against
political organizations involving youths under age eighteen,

Frank’s group was from the beginning an avowedly political
and socialist Verein, openly proclaiming itself as part of

the Social Democrztic movement.^
Like its North German counterpart, Frank’s youth or
ganization drew most of its initial membership from the ranks
of adolescent craft apprentices. During the first years of

its existence, the South German movement drew but few mem
bers from unskilled or factory workers. The Mannheim ’’Young
Workers” stressed educational activities in clubs which pro

vided lecture courses on ’’serious” subjects, that is, eco
nomics, history, the history of revolutions, the SPD and
trade unions, as well as literature and science. Frank also
edited a newspaper called Die Junge Garde which had a strong
anti-militarist bias and often reported instances of ill-
treatment of enlisted men at the hands of non-coms and of

ficers. In the first issue of Junge Garde Frank announced
"^Korn, Arbeiterjugendbewegung. pp. 66-69; Joseph

Kipper, Die sozlallstische t/êndbewegung in Deutschland
/Soziale Tagesfragen. Hefte 3^/ ^ttncnen-Glad'bach, 1913),
pp. 6-9.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p erm is sio n o f th e c o p y rig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p ro h ib ited w ith o u t p erm issio n .
328
that "the youth of the party will attain its goals by apply
ing the same methods as the SPD did in its early days, i.e.,
through education and cultural activities.^
The resolutions passed at the 1906 organizational con

ference of the South German group illustrate the rather
peculiar mixture of radical and traditional strains which
marked the socialist youth movement before the First World
War. They included resolutions calling for the spread of
information among young workers about their rights under

the industrial laws; a campaign among young people against
the use of alcoholic beverages; a message of greeting and

solidarity "in the heroic struggle of our brothers and
sisters in Russia"; and an exhortation to young workers to
maintain sound minds and bodies by joining the various work
ing class gymnastic and athletic societies.^ These reso

lutions were similar to those passed in 1907 by the First
International Conference of Socialist Youth Organizations"
held in conjunction with the Stuttgart meeting of the

Second International. There motions had been passed calling
for educational courses on history and Marxism for young
people, as well as physical fitness programs, and lectures
on "the natural sciences, social hygiene, including information
15
•\Korn, Arbeiter.jugendbewegung. p. 89.
16Kipper, Jugendbewegung. p. 10.
329
17
on the sexual question, and alcoholism." '
The enthusiastic concern of the socialist youth move
ment with economic and political questions was not welcomed
hy the increasingly conservative majority of SPD and trade
union leaders. When the youth movement began to gain mo

mentum in 1906 Social Democrats and trade unionists began to
express doubts about the wisdom of some of the Jugend
bewegung aims, activities, and organization. In an article

on the education of youth, Edmund Fischer argued that few
young people were "mature" enough to understand political
18
questions before the age of seventeen. Speaking to a
trade union conference in November, 1906, Karl legien de
clared that the youth movement was not suitable for the
pursuit of the aims sought by the unions. Therefore, eco-

19
nomic questions should be left to the Free Trade unions. *
Within the Social Democratic Party itself indifference
marked the early years of the youth movement. Although the
1905 SPD congress had empowered the party executive to begin

organizing youth groups and to publish a paper for young
20
workers, next to nothing was done during 1905 and 1906.
17Ibid.. pp. 11-13.

18Edmund Fischer. "Jugenderziehung," Sozialistische
Monatsheft. X-2 (1906), p. 765. Hereafter ihe journal
Sozialistische Monatsheft is cited as S.M.
19
?K o m , Arbeiterjugendbewegung. pp. 120-21.
20Protokoll flber die Verhandlungen des Parteitages
330
However, party radicals like Clara Zetkin and Karl Liebknecht
welcomed the youth movement as a force necessary to prevent

pi
stagnation within the SPD. Liebknecht particularly ac
claimed the anti-militarist agitation of the South German

group, for he himself regarded militarism as the chief
22
problem confronting German socialism. Neither the leaders
of the SPD nor the trade unions shared these radical opin
ions. On the contrary, they believed that a radical youth
movement would only encourage further repression and harm

23
to the entire labor movement.
Not until 1907 and 1908 did the SPD have to confront
the question of the Jugendbewegung head on. In November,

1907, Chancellor von Billow proposed legislation to the
Reichstag which would have removed many of the restrictions

against the organized participation of women and young
people under the age of eighteen in political groups.24
20(Contd.) der Sozlaldemokratischen Part el Deutschlands

abgehalten zu Jena (Berlin, 1905), pp. $9, 283; ProiokolT
(Mannheim7 1^06;, p. 22; Carl Schorske, German Social Dem
ocracy 1905-1917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 100-101.
^ S e e Clara Zetkin's lengthy speech on the socialist
youth movement in Protokoll (Nuremberg, 1908), pp. 521-43.
22Protokoll (Leipzig, 1909). PP. 263-77; E. Rieger,

"JugenderzTSEung," N.Z., XXIII-2 (1904-5), 638-41; See Karl
Liebknecht, Militarism and Anti-militarism with SpePial
Regard to the International Young Socialist Movement (New
m 5 E T KrSIg, - W W ; orig.' puS7T9577:--------------
2^Schorske, German Social Democracy, pp. 100-101.
24Ibid., pp. 102-103.
331
Socialist trade union leaders apparently wondered whether

such a revision might not lead to further radicalization of
the youth movement and further 11interference" of the move
ment in the activities of the party and trade unions. At

a trade union conference in December, 1907, a union spokes
man, Robert Schmidt, declared that by concerning itself with
political and economic questions, the socialist youth move
ment had strayed from its most important task, that of edu
cating and preparing young workers for admission to the SPD

and unions. Therefore, the leadership of the latter organ
izations should take over the Jugendbewegung and steer it

back onto the right path.2^
Chancellor von Bdlow's scheme to liberalize the asso

ciation laws failed to materialize according to plan. Al
though the Prussian laws against the political organiza
tion of women were revoked, those against adolescents under

age eighteen were not. In fact, young people were now to
be forbidden even from attending political meetings.
Furthermore, the new anti-youth organizational laws were to
be extended all over Germany, including the South German

states where hitherto there had been no such laws. The
tougher laws were to go into effect on May 15, 1908.
The new anti-youth laws were a godsend for the SPD
25
Ibid., p. 103; Korn, Arbeiter.jugendbewegung.
pp. 1 2 0 ^ 2 7
332
and trade union leaders who could now pose at once as the
defenders of working youth against state tyranny and also
subordinate the Jugendbewegung to their own ideas. At an
emergency meeting of trade union, SPD, and South German

youth leaders early in May, 1908, it was decided that the
youth movement should devote itself to decentralized

"cultural activities," and leave a final decision on the
movement under the new laws open until the SPD congress
later in the year. A month later at the Hamburg trade

union congress Robert Schmidt introduced a plan which
would end the socialist youth movement as an independent
organization. His plan allowed that the cultivation of

youth via lectures on natural science, history, and the
like, was the responsibility of the adult labor movement.
Therefore there was no need for an independent youth move
ment. Joint committees of trade union and SPD representa

tives which would include a few young movement leaders
would take over the task of running the socialist Jugend-

26
bewegung. The plan was adopted with little opposition.
Robert Schmidt's speech at the Hamburg trade union
congress and the tone of an article published on the youth

question in 1908 were extremely sarcastic and offensive to
26
Schorske, German Social Democracy, p. 105; Korn,
Arbelter.jugendbewegung. pp. 125-28; Ludwig Prank, "Die
Zukunft die Jugendorganisation," K.Z.. XXVI-2 (1907-8),
233-35.
333
the Jugendbewegung. He advised young apprentices who could

not raise the monthly ten pfenig dues to belong to the youth
groups that "it's better to buy a piece of sausage for

yourselves— it's healthier."2*^ He denounced the "anti
militarist playing around" of the South German groups and
advised young people to stick to education and self im
provement. He also called for a party financed paper for
young people that would be "tactfully edited, and free

from all ponderous meditations."28 In the same vein,
Carl Legien pointed out that since the SPD and unions would
be paying the bills for the youth movement in future, it

went without saying that the adults should have a final
say in the way in which funds were spent. In general he

felt that there was no need for an independent Jugend-
organisation in order to cultivate and educate young
workers.2^
The speech and writings of Schmidt and legien provoked
a number of critical responses. Anton Pannekoek argued that

the party and union leaders were looking on young people as
2^Korn, Arbelter.lugendbewegung. p. 129.

28R. Schmidt, "Jugendbildung," S.M.. XII-2 (1908),
732-35.
2^Carl Legien, "Jugendorganisation Oder Organisation
zur Erziehung der Jugend?" S.M.. XII-3 (1908), 1161-64.
Two years later another writercomplained that some Social
Democrats wrongly encouraged members of the youth movement
to hate members of other social classes. The real purpose
334
something to he seen and not heard rather than as joint
comrades in the socialist struggle. He accused the trade

unions especially of developing a number of non-socialist
petit-bourgeois attitudes toward young people and main

tained that there was a need for a strong, socialist-
oriented, independent youth movement.^0 These opinions
were shared by a young organizer from the movement who

claimed that Schmidt sounded more like a bourgeois anti
socialist than a Social Democrat. In any case, the unions
and party should not treat young workers as "lesser beings"
to be looked after by their elders.”*1 Another writer com
plained that leaders like Schmidt didn't really know what

the Jugendbewegung was doing and that the unions were
really afraid that the youth movement would somehow dis-
"52
turb the smooth functioning of union affairs. Finally,
another youth worker doubted whether the unions would take

the problems of young workers seriously given their past
indifference to the youth question. He hoped that the SPD
congress meeting in fiuremberg in 1908 would clarify the
2^(Contd.) of the movement was Bildung. Ludwig Radlof,

"Alte und neue Jugendideale," S.M.. XIV-1 (1910), 374-78.
•30
Anton Pannekoek, "Zur Frage der Jugendorganisation,"
N.Z.. XXVI-2 (1907-8), 557-61.
^Franz Krflger, "Was wird aus unseren Jugendorganisa-
tionen?" Ibid.. 56-63.
^2Karl Bflttcher, "Das Ende der deutschen Jugendorgan
isation?" Ibid.. 642-46. Also Richard Seidel, "Gewerk-
schaftliche Jugendorganisation," Ibid., 714-17.
335
S'?
problem. ^
At the Nuremberg congress the SPD produced one of the
compromise positions that its growing reliance on the re

visionist trade unions often forced on it. The SPD and
trade unions were permitted to establish local youth com

mittees while young people were permitted their own local
organizations which would operate "with the agreement of

the adults."^ This arrangement meant that the activities
and autonomy of youth groups varied greatly at the local
level and in subsequent years led to a great deal of in

efficiency and confusion within the socialist youth move
ment. ^ As a final check on the radical tendencies of the
*^Max Frankenthal, "Zur Organisation der Jugend,11

Ibid., 612-15.
•^Schorske, German Social Democracy, p. 107; Richard
Peraer, wJugend una Bildung im ^Proletariat," N.Z.. XXVII-1
(1908-9), 139-4-1.
^ M a x Frankenthal, "Zur Jugendbewegung," N.Z.. XXVII-2
(1908-9), 215-18; Karl Bflttbher, "Zur Situation in der
Jugendbewegung," Ibid., 664-67; Kurt Rosenfeld, "Die Jugend-
ausschusse," Ibid.. 685-89: Adolf Schulz, "Nochmals die
Jugendausschusse," Ibid., 797-99; Max Kette, "Zur Jugend
bewegung," N.Z.. XX!7TlT-l (1909-10), 316-18; Bernhard
Dflwell, "Reorganisation der Jugendbewegung," Ibid., 413-14;
Franz Krtiger, "Jugendausschftsse oder Jugendorganisation?"
Ibid., 541-42; Heinrich Schulz, "Sozialdemokratie und
Jugendbewegung," N.Z.. XXVIII-2 (1909-10), 493-99;
W. Sollmann, "Jugendausschttsse und Jugendabteilungen der
Gewerkschaften," Ibid., 933-35; W. Sollmann, "Zum Ausbau
unserer Jugendbewegung," N.Z.. XXIX-2 (1910-11), 813-16;
Richard Weimann, "Wie gewinnen wir die Jugend zwischen den
aohtzehnten und einundzwanzigsten lebens jahre?" N.Z..
XXXI-1 (1912-13), 449-50; A. Keimling, "Die Partei und die
Jugend," N.Z.,. XXXII-1 1913-14), 145-50; Max Peters, "Jugend
land Partei." *Ibld.. 289-91; E. Sonnemann, "Die Partei und
336
youth movement a central committee consisting of three

representatives each from the Jugendbewegung. SPD, and trade
unions was set up to coordinate activities, at the national
level. Although Clara Zetkin was a member of the central

committee, her radical bent was more than balanced by
Carl legien and Hermann Miller, both of whom had publicly,

expressed doubts about the usefulness of the youth move
ment. The committee was chaired by the unimaginative party

functionary and future president of the Weimar Republic,
Friedrich Ebert.56
Under adult party and trade union supervision the so
cialist youth movement continued to grow during the years
before the First World War. Beginning in January, 1909» the

party financed magazine Arbeiter-Jugend began publication.
By 1913 it had 100,000 subscribers.5^ In the same year the

local youth committees numbered some 655, with more than
65,000 members.58 Police authorities still continued to
harass local groups which they regarded as 'lpolitical.,,
55(Contd.) die Jugend," Ibid., 378-80; Hugo Werner,

"Jugend, Partei, und Gewerkschaften," Ibid., 514-517;
Felix Schmidt, "Hochmals: Jugend,Partei, uhd Gewerk-
schaften," Ibid.. 792-94.
56Korn, Arbeiterjugendbewegung. 175-76; Also Georg
Kotowski, Friedrich Ebert. Eine politische Biographie
(Wiesbaden"; 1^5") ,"X"T7?-8 T .
•37
Korn, Arbeiter.jugendbewegung. p. 249.
58Ibid.. p. 247; Max Peters, "Wie steht es mit unserer
Jugendbewegung,?" N.Z.. XXX-1 (1911-12), 17-22.
337
In an attempt to avoid such harassment the local youth
clubs concentrated their attention on sports, lecture

series, museum visits, and social activities. Little is
known in detail about these local activities. One itiner

ant socialist lecturer gave some interesting facts about
club life in Saxony before 1908. Hermann Wolf lectured
young people on evolution and reported that members used

the ffreie Turner songbook to sing such songs as "Wer schafft
das Gold zutage?," and also mentioned celebrations in the
club at Christmastime and on Palm Sunday in honor of newly
confirmed s o c i a l i s t s N o t h i n g could better illustrate
the eclecticism of German Social Democracy than such cele
brations in the socialist youth movement.

In keeping with the rather straitlaced rules of con
duct laid down by the 1908 Nuremberg protocols on the youth
movement, both smoking and drinking were forbidden in the

"youth centers" provided by local union and SPD groups.
Furthermore an adult had to be present at all meetings and
40
the club rooms were to be locked promptly at ten o'clock.
Nighttime hikes in the woods by boys and girls were not

encouraged, but did take place. Recalling his membership
in the Bremerhaven Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend immediately
^Hermann Wolf, "Aus der Praxis der proletarischen

Jugendbewegung," N.Z.. XXVI-2 (1907-8), 842-45*
^Kipper, Sozialistische Jugendbewegung. p. 26.
338
before the First World War, Ludwig Tureck wrote that on such
coeducational night wanderings nothing against morality was

ever done, "unless one is supposed to regard it an immoral
thing when a well-developed seventeen year old girl has sex

ual intercourse with an eighteen year old fellow on the
flowery heath or in the thick pine f o r e s t . I t seems un
likely, however, that such things happened very often.
Fortunately, Johannes Schult, a Hamburg school teacher

and longtime socialist youth leader, has left a rather de
tailed account of the youth movement in his native city be
fore and during the First World War.^2 Like the groups
elsewhere in Germany, the Hamburg socialist youth organi
zation saw as one of their primary tasks the provision of

meeting places for adolescents between the ages of fourteen
and eighteen. The clubs were to help "protect them from
the enervating, mindless pleasure-seeking so often offered

by the big city; and to help young people to develop sound
minds and bodies as fighters in the proletarian cause.
^Ludwig Tureck, Ein Prolet erzflhlt. Lebenschilderung

eines deutschen Arbeiters ^Hejrlin, 1930;, pT781
4-2
Johannes Schult. Geschichte der Hamburger Arbeiter.
1890-1919 (Hanover, 1967), pp. 222-377 315-23. Incident
ally, Scnult may be described as a moderate socialist who
had little sympathy for the radical wing of the SPD asso
ciated with Zetkin, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and
others.
4?Ibid.. pp. 226-27.
339
Schult maintained that during its early years after
1906, there was no generational conflict between parents
and adolescents in the working class as there was between
parents and children in the middle and upper classes.

Working class members of the youth movement tended to look
on themselves as comrades of their fathers in the socialist
struggle. Nevertheless, Schult noted that criticism of the
private life of parents, particularly of fathers, was not

absent:
The class-conscious worker of that time /ca. 1906/

was not always a good model in his private life.
As Famillenvater he often acted like a tyrant, and
he spent most of his leisure time in the tavern
playing cards and dice, drinking beer and Schnapps,
talking about politics and union affairs. Drunken-
ness was still widespread among workers. So, often
enough, the father did not provide a good example
for his children. It was not by accident that the
young people developed an aversion to alcohol and
nicotine. It was strictly forbidden for young
people in the Jugendbund. but not for their adult
advisors, to use alcohol or to smoke. This rule
was rigidly enforced and applied even apart from
meetings. /The clubs7 often sat in stern judg
ment on sinners, and expelled many of them. In
general, one can speak of a generational trans
formation, which was noticeable in the entire life
style /of young people/. The social gatherings,
fests, and celebrations of grownups were looked
upon by young people with a critical eye.44
From Schult's description of the Hamburg youth clubs,

one gets the impression that the socialist youth movement
provided a form of surrogate home for many young workers.
Few working class parents had more than a grade school
44Ibid., pp. 228-29.
340
education, and were seldom able to provide a very stimula
ting or rewarding home life. It is interesting that in

Hamburg the clubrooms provided by the SPD and trade unions
to the youth movement were called Jugendheime. youth homes.

By 1914 there were ten such youth homes in Hamburg. Several
of them had sizeable libraries and reading rooms in addition
to meeting and game rooms. Reading rooms offered socialist
youth magazines like Die arbeitende Jugend and Arbeiter.lugend.

Other SPD-finaneed publications included Die Gleichheit and
Neue Zeit. The journal Kosmos, devoted to evolutionary
thought, as well as Der Abstinente Arbeiter and K&rper-
kultur were also available for young readers, as were daily
newspapers.4^ Carrying the idea of the youth club as a

home away from home further still, several Jugendheime had
small kitchens and gardens.4^ Clearly the goal of such
homes was to provide for young workers what their own par
ents either could or would not provides a place where they
could enjoy and also educate and improve themselves.
The Hamburg socialist youth movement also provides an

excellent illustratioh that all was not harmony and light
between the Jugendbewegung and the elders in the SPD and

trande unions. As noted above, from 1908 on the latter had
taken the youth movement under their control ostensibly to
45Ibid., p. 232.
46Ibid., p. 233.
R e p ro d u c e d w ith p e rm is sio n of th e co p yrig h t o w n er. F u rth e r rep ro d u ctio n p rohibited w ith o u t perm ission.
341
prevent further state repression. And there can he no douht

that there was always the threat of this. In the Prussian
administered suburbs of greater Hamburg, for example, uni
formed policemen attended many meetings of the socialist
youth clubs, and also demanded copies of club statutes and
membership lists.^
But fear of repression by the state was not the only
reason the SPD and trade unions took the youth groups under
their wings. Both groups felt that the Jugendbewegung
should leave political and union matters to the older gener

ation. Furthermore, they feared that radicals within the
SPD might try to use the youth movement for their own pur
poses. The experience of the Hamburg youth groups in the

First World War shows that this fear was not unfounded.
In March, 1916, the Central Committee of the Hamburg
SPD and free trade unions declared that a shortage of funds

made it necessary to close all of the Jugendheime. Schult,
however, notes that this was not the real reason for the
closures. A generational conflict between members of the
Jugendbewegung and the leaders of the SPD and unions which
had been suppressed before the war emerged between 1914 and
1916. It became more and more common for the youth leaders
to refer to their elders in the party and unions as Bonzen

or bigwigs who were out of touch with young people and
342
furthermore had compromised themselves by supporting the

Kaiser's war.
Demands for complete independence from the SPD and
unions were seized upon by radical anti-war socialists like

Dr. Heinrich Laufenberg, later a key figure in the revolu
tionary events in Hamburg in 1918. The party and union

leaders hoped that by breaking up the youth movement and
closing the Jugendheime they could prevent laufenberg and

others associated with the radical S-partakusbund from or»-
ganizing a "praetorian guard" among the young. In fact,
their actions in March, 1916 and later efforts to reorganize
the youth groups on a very loose apolitical basis only rad

icalized further a good many young people.4® The First
World War brought to the surface and exacerbated some of
the tensions between young and old in the Social Democratic
movement in much the same way as it produced the "great
schism" between moderates and radicals which had been re

peatedly put off by timely compromises in the pre-war
period.
In his history of the Arbeiter.lugendbewegung. Karl

Korn compared the youth movement with a child which had
grown without much supervision, and then was adopted by
adults who took it into their own home and required the
4®Ibid., pp. 316-20.
343
4.Q
child to live by the foster parents' rules. J This was a
very apt comparison. The socialist youth movement began
in a burst of enthusiastic concern with the economic and

political questions involved in the lives of young workers
themselves. But the movement soon encountered state re
pression and also the opposition of Social Democratic Party

and trade union leaders. In order to survive in an organ
ized fashion, the youth movement had to surrender most of
its political, economic, and anti-militarist activities,
and subordinate itself to the direction and goals of the

senior branches of the German labor movement.
This subordination was a bitter pill for some young

socialists to swallow. They accused the SPD and trade unions
of collaborating with the state against the youth movement.
In fact, the motives of trade union and SPD leaders in op

posing an "independent" youth movement were not so sinister.
No doubt these leaders sincerely believed that in order to

survive in the face of state repression and to prevent even
further interference, the youth movement had to eschew
political and economic questions. These, after all, were

supposed to be the concern of well organized and established
political and trade union wings of the Social Democratic

movement. Men like the trade union leader Karl Legien
clearly had no wish for the interference of inexperienced
^ Korn, Arbeiter .-jugendbewegung. p. 147.
344
youth in the well-oiled operation of the unions.
These caveats should not obscure the fact that the

elders of the labor movement had some difficulty accommo
dating their ideological position with the real existence

of the youth movement. That is, as Marxists the Social
Democrats were committed in theory to the "dissolution" of
the family, or at least to radical changes within the family
under capitalism. As wage earners, young people were sup
posed to gain a certain measure of independence from and
parity with their parents, and also join with them in the
struggle against capitalism. But in practice most Social
Democrats and trade unionists expected that young workers

would join them as junior partners in that struggle. Until
they were "mature" enough— usually at the age of eighteen—
to join the party and trade unions, young workers were ex
pected to participate in a youth movement firmly under the
control of the older generation, and one devoted to Bildung

and character building.
To be sure, the youth movement was supposed to incul
cate the elements of socialism in young workers and prepare
them for entrance into party and union activities, but a
closer examination of the goals set for the Jugendbewegung
by older socialists reveals a cluster of traditional aims
and attitudes compatible with middle class German society.

Even a radical Marxist like Clara Zetkin espoused a number
of these aims. In her lengthy speech on the youth organizations
345
at the women socialists' conference in 1908 she observed
that the socialist youth movement had to rescue working
class adolescents from the degradation imposed on them by

capitalism. Bildung. educational lectures, and hiking were
supposed to contribute to this rescue operation. Further
more the movement should strive to protect proletarian
youth against capitalist "exploitation" in the form of al

cohol, pornography, and cheap variety shows produced to
50
corrupt and profit from young workers.
Zetkin further suggested that the youth movement had

to provide for both girls and boys what the working class
home and schools either could not or would not give; "in
sight into the natural laws regulating the sexual drive,
after hunger, the strongest of natural drives." Young
people must be made to understand "how this drive involves
more than mere physical satisfaction." It involved the

preservation of the race. The youth movement had to teach
young people what a great responsibility adhered to the
sexual life of the individual. "Young proletarians have to

be trained to bridle intellectually and morally coarse, blind
instinctive sexual life, and to permeate and spiritualize
51
it with the values of our culture." She dismissed as idle
50Protokoll (Nuremberg, 1908), pp. 519-28.
^1 «Die nungen Proletarien mflssen dazu erzogen werden,

das rohe, blinde sexuelle Triebleben geistig una sittlich
zu zugeln, es mit dem Oehalt unserer Kultur zu durchdringen,
zu vergeistern." Ibid.. p. 529.
346
the fears of those who objected to both young men and women
belonging to the same clubs. Mixed activities could only
teach youth comradeship in the common cause of the working

52
class.
The ideals of comradeship, responsibility, and the

channelling of the sexual drive persisted in the Jugend-
bewegung after the First World War. In a pamphlet addressed
to young workers in 1920, Hans Hackmack repeated the pre-war

socialist proscription of "premature" sexual activity. He
informed his readers that nthere is complete agreement over
the fact that, for health reasons alone, sexual intercourse
is not justified before the age of sexual maturity, that
is, on the average around the age of twenty. To help

young people reach the age of maturity without being too
troubled by the sexual drive, Hackmack argued that the

socialist youth movement could help to channel that drive
into "harmless comradeship" between the sexes, and also

blunt the drive's force through sports and "above all,
hiking." Such activities strengthened the body at the same
52Ibid., p. 535. In 1907 the "First International

Conference of Socialist Youth Organizations" at Stuttgart
also proclaimed that "common mutual work and mutual struggle
for a great Cause is the best means for bringing about the
reciprocal respect and comradeship between the sexes which
constitute the basis of the sexual morality of socialism."
Kipper, Sozialistische Jugendbewegung. p. 13.
^ Ha n s Hackmack, Arbeiter.lugend und sexuelle Frage
(Berlin, 1920), p. 18.
347
time that the sexual drive, “which steadily grows and grows
with staying at home all the time (Stubenhocken), finds to
a certain degree a beneficial release. In the years /before
age twenty/ useful and enjoyable activity is the most effec

tive means of protecting the youth from premature intemper-
54
ance and degeneration."
The final solution of the sexual problem for Hackmack
was, of course, marriage based on self- and mutual respect,

participation of husband and wife in the socialist move
ment, a quiet home life, and a spiritual bond. For the so
cialist young married couple, "love-life also remains fresh
and pure, because these life-affirming Sturmer und Dranger
arrive at the over-excitement and degeneration of their
instinctual life far less often than the commonplace
person."h 55
Behind these discussions of bridling, spiritualizing,
and channelling the sexual drive, and encouraging comrade
ship between the sexes in the socialist youth movement,
there is an ideal which can be at once described as tra
ditionally socialist and middle class. The middle class

youth movement also sought to sublimate sexual relations
•Îbid.. p. 20. Also see Edwin Hoernle, Sozial-

istische Jugenderziehung und sozialistlsche Jugendbewegung
(Berlin, l9i9); Kurt Kerlttw-Lflwenstein. Sozialistische
Schul- rand Erziehungsfragen (Berlin, 1913T
348
into the KameradschaftlichkeitBprinzlp.^ and non-socialist
writers also encouraged youth to ennoble their sexual life.

At the same, the ideal of mutual love and respect between
the sexes was an ideal espoused by Marx and Engels in their

writings. In the socialist youth movement these ideals
were supposed to coalesce and foreshadow the relationship
of the sexes under socialism.
Although it could be argued that the socialist youth

movement was indeed a useful tool in preparing young people
for a "higher" form of socialist morality, it can also be
suggested that the movement also helped to integrate young

workers into the dominant culture of German society. Young
people were supposed to reject the amorality usually asso
ciated with the working class in the 19th Century. They

were to work hand in hand with their parents and elders in
the labor movement. They were encouraged to look on mar

riage and a happy home as the goal for young men and women.
However often Social Democrats might repeat the Marxist

view that the family and morality were being undermined by
capitalism and lecherous capitalists, they obviously be

lieved that education, sports, hikihg, and comradeship
could help to preserve and elevate working class morality
^6Se Fritz Jungmann, "Autoritfit und Sexualmoral in

der freien btjrgerlichen Jugendbewegung," in Marx Horkheimer,
ed., Autoritat und Familie /Studien aus dem Institut fflr
Soziaiforschun£7*TParis, 1936), pp. 682-86 .
349
and the family. The activities of the youth movement, like

the socialist womens' movement and the Arbeiterbildungs-
vereine before it, contained an inherent paradox, if not an
actual contradiction. At the same time it involved young
people in the labor struggle and sought to create in embryo

the model of socialist morality, it fostered among working
class youth the acceptance of moral standards and family
ideals which helped to integrate them into the dominant

society of Wilhelmine Germany.
CONCLUSIONS
In spite of its radical theories attacking bourgeois
capitalist society, German Social Democracy was itself a

product of that society and bore its deep imprint. Par
from being a movement entirely alienated from German society,

the SPD of Imperial Germany can be interpreted as a sizeable
subculture which embodied and helped to disseminate among
the working classes many of the very values and attitudes

associated with the dominant culture it theoretically con
demned. Par from being the negation of that culture, both

in its radical theory and moderate practioe German Social
Democracy represented an uneasy synthesis of that which it

hoped to achieve under socialism and that which, it was re
luctant or unable to abandon under capitalism.
Thus there existed a subtle and dialectical relation

ship between the socialist subculture and the dominant cul
ture of Imperial Germany which is sometimes overlooked.
In his excellent study of Social Democracy from 1878 to

1890, Vernon Lidtke argues that the "reality of the Social
Democrats can only be penetrated by remembering their
strained and hostile relationship to all major aspects of
German s o c i e t y . L i d t k e is correct in counting among these
"^Vernon Lidtke, The Outlawed Party. Social Democracy

in Germany. 1878-1890~TPrince-j;on. 1966;, p. 6>6.
350
351
major aspects German nationalism and traditional religion,
for the SPD proclaimed itself to be internationalist and

agnostic. Furthermore, German socialists had taken a pro-
Communard position early in the 1870*s at a time when the
Paris Commune symbolized to its enemies the epitome of so

cial disorder and violent revolution.
But did Social Democrats really have a "strained and
hostile relationship1' to all aspects of German society?
Surely the patriarchal family, monogamous marriage, sexual

mores and behavior must also be numbered among the major
aspects of German society. Certainly marriage and the
family must be included among the most important and funda
mental institutions in any social order. Was the relation

ship between the SPD and these institutions also "strained
and hostile?"
The preceding chapters have shown that in theory it

was. Social Democrats accepted the analysis of marriage
and the family found in Marx and particularly in Friedrich
Engels, The Origin of the Family. August Bebel and others

denounced the moral and sexual hypocrisy of capitalist so
ciety, and singled out middle class men as the seducers of

"daughters of the people" and customers of prostitutes.
Social Democratic ideology condemned the traditionally ac

cepted forms of monogamous marriage and the patriarchal
family, and promised radical changes in these institutions
after the advent of socialism.
352
But in -practice, in matters relating to sexual be

havior, marriage, and the family, Social Democracy proved
to be extremely moderate in effecting any changes in the
status quo. In part this moderation sprang from the con

stant fear that radical action might lead to increased
harassment or even the renewal of anti-socialist legisla

tion. Moreover, moderate practice was due to the diffi
culties any reform movement faces when dealing with insti

tutions as resistant to change as marriage and the family,
and the sexual attitudes incorporated in them. But the
moderation of Social Democracy also derived from the per
sistence of the lower middle class ethos of its principal

spokesmen, and the artisanate origins of the SPD itself.
Given these factors, it is not surprising that the disjunc
tion between the SPD's radical theory and moderate practice

is a constant theme in the history of Social Democracy.
Another important theme follows from Guenther Roth's

perceptive observation that the Social Democratic "sub
culture was 'negatively* integrated into the dominant sys

tem because by its very existence it provided an important
means for the controlled expression and dissipation of

conflict and this contributed, for decades of peacetime,
p
to the stability of the Empire." The socialist women's
2
Guenther Roth, The Social Democrats JLn Imperial
Germany (Totowa, N.J., 1963), p. 3l5.
353
and youth movements provide examples of the ways in which
a variety of discontents could he institutionalized, chan

nelled, and finally defused within the SPD itself. By
providing carefully controlled outlets for the expression

of grievances felt by socialist women and youths, outlets
which combined radical theoretical positions with moderate
practices, the Social Democratic subculture paradoxically
tried to preserve traditional marital and familial patterns
at the same time it predicted their demise.

At a time when socialists decried the ’'breakdown” of
the family and marriage, they encouraged the emerging urban
working class to look on monogamy and the family circle as

shelters from the class struggle where one could develop
his personality to the fullest. The many educational ac
tivities of the SPD, as well as the women's and youth move

ments, helped to spread the artisanate model of marriage,
the family, and the subordination of sexuality to "nobler”

causes among the very working class which was supposedly
being demoralized by urban life in a capitalist society.
Par from being the enemies of traditional morality and the
destroyer of marriage and the family, as its critics

calimed, German Social Democracy sought to preserve them
among their working class constituents.

To what extent was Social Democracy successful in
perserving and spreading traditional sexual and family atti
tudes among their working class constituents? At present it
354
is impossible to answer this question, largely because so
little is now known about the familial and sexual lives of

German workers before the First World War. However, it is
possible to make some tentative suggestions which may point
toward future research and the development of larger schema

in which sexual behavior would be seen as an integral part
of the life of working people in Imperial Germany.^

There is some evidence that such indicators of sexual
behavior as fluctuations in the rate of illegitimate births

and the use of contraception among working class people
can be seen as facets of the growing demystification and

secularization associated with urban industrial societies.
The examination of autobiographies written by working class
men and women before 1920 reveals that their increasingly
rationalized sexual behavior and attachment to socialist

ideas were facets of a world-view less and less influenced
by traditional religious prohibitions, and more and more
by a diffuse "scientific" outlook composed largely of bits

and pieces of materialism and vulgarized darwinian thought.
In such a world-view the ego-gratification and expectations

of the worker increasingly influence the sexual mores of the
individual. The point being that changes in the sexual be
havior of working class people in the late 19th Century should
^For a fuller discussion see R.P. Neuman, "Industrial

ization and Sexual Behavior," in Robert Bezucha, ed.. Modern
European Social History (Boston, 1972), pp. 270-98.
355
perhaps he approached as part of the overall problem of the
declining authority of religious ideas on sexuality.

Working class autobiographies also provide valuable
information about family life in Imperial Germany, particu

larly when they are used in conjunction with contemporary
sociological studies of housing, family budgets, and such
home 11industries" as sewing, cigar-making, and the like.
By examining such sources we can begin to discover to what

extent traditional artisanate family relationships managed
to survive into the industrial era.

The autobiographies of workers, sociological and
medical studies on the personal lives of working class
people, police records on the social origins and lives of

prostitutes, all help to provide possible starting points
for the yet unwritten "analytical history of moral behavior
and attitudes" called for by the German historian, Thomas

Nipperdey.* As he points out, until very recently histor
ians have tended to neglect the history of marriage, the
family, and sexual customs, while they have devoted great
energy to the investigation of economic and political man.

While the importance of the latter is undeniable, it seems
clear that if historians showed the same ingenuity in
4.
Thomas Nipperdey, "Kulturgeschichte, Sozialgeschichte,
historische Anthropologie," Vierteliahrschrift fur Sozial-
und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. 55 (19*>8;, pp. 159-60.
356
studying the moral and sexual behavior of past generations,
we might not only discover that the research problems are

not insurmountable, but that it is possible to find answers
to questions that now confound us.
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Por socialist theories on marriage, the family, and
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Much useful information also came from the theoretical

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357
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Conclusions
Neuman, R.P., "Industrialization and Sexual Behavior: Some

Aspects of Working Class Life in Imperial Germany,"
in Robert Bezucha, ed., Modern European Social History.
Boston, 1972.
VITA: Robert P. Neuman
PERSONAL INFORMATION: Born 17 May 1939 in La Crosse,

Wisconsin: married; three children
EDUCATION & DEGREES: Undergraduate: Wisconsin State U.

CLa Crosse) f 1962-65. Major: History.
B.S. 1965.
Graduate: University of Cincinnati,
1965-66. Field: Modern Europe.
M.A. 1966.
Field: Northwestern University,

1966-72. 19th-20th Century Europe.
Ph.D. 1972.
HONORS & FELLOWSHIPS: B.S. with Highest Honors, 1965

N.D.E.A. Fellowship, 1965-1966
Danforth Foundation Graduate Fellow,
1966-71
TEACHING EXPERIENCE: 1967-68; 1970-71 Teaching Assistant
Northwestern U. (Evanston)
1968; 1970-71 Instructor
Northwestern U. (Chicago)
1971-72 Instructor State
University College of New York
(Fredonia)
TEACHING & RESEARCH M o d e m German Social History

FIELDS: 19th & 20th Century European Social
and Intellectual History
19th Century European Anarchist &
Socialist Movements
Western Civilization
PUBLICATIONS: "Industrialization and Sexual Behavior:

Some Aspects of Working Class Life in
Imperial Germany," in Robert Bezucha,
ed., Modern European Social History
(Lexington, Mass., 1972)
FOREIGN TRAVEL: 1958-61 lived in England while on
duty with the U.S. Air Force
1969 year of research and travel
in Germany, England, Italy, and
Holland.

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NEUMAN, Robert Paul, 1939-

University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

ROBERT PAUL NEUMAN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED

SOCIALISM, THE FAMILY AND SEXUALITY:

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY BEFORE 1914

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

for the degree

ROBERT PAUL NEUMAN

I "CRITICAL UTOPIAN SOCIALISM"— INSTITUTIONAL

II KARL MARX ON MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY . . . . 31

IV GERMAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY BEFORE 1914 .... 122

VI THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC

VII THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................... 357

In the half century before the First World War, German

Social Democracy evolved from a number of small groups con­

lution for the ''social question1' into an avowedly Marxist

Social Democratic Party (SPD) with a hundred representatives

in the Reichstag, thousands of other functionaries, and mil­

mass political party or to judge its importance merely in

terms of political success or failure. Such a description

Democratic movement exerted on the lives and culture of a

large segment of the German working classes.

country where the dominant cultural values and social atti­

tudes were still those of a pre-industrial agrarian and

To be sure, the SPD provided a channel for the political

change. In an age marked by the declining influence of tra­

ditional theology, increasing confidence in scientific

progress, supported by a -vulgarized form of Darwinism, the

ideology of the SPD and participation in the labor movement

helped to orient workers in a society many of them regarded

as hostile and oppressive.

elaborate subculture among workers which paradoxically

helped to integrate them into the very society which the

in Imperial Germany, Social Democracy sought to educate,

and extensive network of social and educational activities.

the workers for the struggle against capitalism. But in

culcated many of the very values and attitudes held by the

educational work was only part of an elaborate complex of

to a working class subculture, and, as Guenther Roth has

society at large, the subculture contributed to the stabil­

ity of the dominant system.

■^Guenther Roth, The Social Democrats in Imperial

Social Democracy in Imperial Germany remain among the least

rather surprising, for it might be argued that, in the long

cal activities and theoretical debates that occupy so much

space in the historiography of German Social Democracy. In

recent years a number of historians have tried to escape

They have stressed, among other things, the integrative

effects of Social Democratic ideology and cultural activi­

ties; the eclecticism of an SPD ideology nomihally "Marx­

the movement’s radical theories and moderate practices.

Democracy in Imperial Germany. From its earliest days, the

SPD concerned itself with a variety of questions related to

Social Democracy evolved from a number of small groups con

in the Reichstag, thousands of other functionaries, and mil

country where the dominant cultural values and social atti

change. In an age marked by the declining influence of tra

society at large, the subculture contributed to the stabil

effects of Social Democratic ideology and cultural activi

ties; the eclecticism of an SPD ideology nomihally "Marx

socialist positions on these questions, I have tried to il

suggest that German Social Democracy actually helped to re

marriage, the family, and human sexuality necessarily be

social question. It follows, therefore, that special empha

with early industrial s o c i e t y . O w e n rejected what he re

pursuit of self-interests, selfish individualism, and com

set of social values, in which "'social1 signified the op

repression, the church, the family, and government, re

termed either radical or "romantic” depending on one's per

tude toward the hasic institutions and attitudes of exist

other words, the entire community must assume the social