Page:Alexandra Kollontai - Communism and the Family (1920).djvu/20

 therefore approaches the working woman and the working man and says to them: "You are young, you love each other. Everyone has the right to happiness. Therefore live your life. Do not flee happiness. Do not fear marriage, even though marriage was truly a chain for the working man and woman of capitalist society. Above all, do not fear, young and healthy as you are, to give to your country new workers, new citizen-children. The society of the workers is in need of new working forces; it hails the arrival of every newborn child in the world. Nor should you be concerned because of the future of your child; your child will know neither hunger nor cold. It will not be unhappy nor abandoned to its fate as would have been the case in capitalist society. A subsistence ration and solicitous care are assured to the child and to the mother by the Communist Society, by the Workers' State, as soon as the child arrives in the world The child will be fed, it will be brought up, it will be educated by the care of the Communist Fatherland; but this Fatherland will by no means undertake to tear the child away from such parents as may desire to participate in the education of their little ones. The Communist Society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child, but the paternal joys, the maternal satisfaction—such will not be taken away from those who show themselves capable of appreciating and understanding these joys." Can this be called a destruction of the family by means of violence? or a forcible separation of child and mother?

There is no escaping the fact: the old type of family has seen its day. It is not the