Page:Alexandra Kollontai - Communism and the Family (1920).djvu/14

 thousand years there would never be any change for her. There would always be a new layer of dust to be removed from the mantelpiece and her husband would always come in hungry at night and her little tots would always bring in mud on their shoes. … The work of the housekeeping woman is becoming more useless day by day, more unproductive.

The individual household has passed its zenith. It is being replaced more and more by collective housekeeping. The working woman will sooner or later need to take care of her own dwelling no longer; in the Communist society of tomorrow this work will be carried on by a special category of working women who will do nothing else. The wives of the rich have long been freed from these annoying and tiring duties. Why should the working woman continue to carry out these painful duties? In Soviet Russia the life of the working woman should be surrounded with the same ease, with the same brightness, with the same hygiene, with the same beauty, which has thus far surrounded only the women of the richer classes. In a Communist society the working women will no longer have to spend her few, alas, too few hours of leisure, in cooking, since there will be in Communist society public restaurants and central kitchens to which everybody may come to take his meals.

These establishments have already been on the increase in all countries, even under the capitalist regime. In fact, for half a century the number of restaurants and cafes in all the great cities of Europe increased day by day; they sprang up like mushrooms after an autumn rain. But while under the cap-