Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/145

 production and from the exclusive chaining down of the mass of the people to the function of material production. The means of production have become so enormous, that they burst to-day the frame of private property. The productivity of labour is grown so huge that to-day already a considerable diminution of the labour time is possible for all workers. Thus grow the foundations for the abolition, not of the division of labour, not of the professions, but of the antagonism of rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, ignorant and wise.

At the same time, however, the division of labour is so far developed as to embrace that territory which remained so many thousands of years closed to it—the family hearth. The woman is torn from it, and drawn into the realm of division of labour, so long a monopoly of the men. With that, naturally, the natural distinctions which exist between the sexes do not disappear, it can also allow many social distinctions, as well as many a distinction in the moral demands which are made on them, to continue to exist or even revive such, but it will certainly cause all those distinctions to disappear from State and society which arise out of the fact that the woman is tied down to the private household duties, and excluded from the callings of the divided labour. In this sense we shall see not simply the abolition of the exploitation of one class by another, but the abolition of the subjection of woman to man.

And at the same time the world commerce attains such dimensions, the international economic relations are drawn so close that therewith the foundation is laid for superseding private property in the means of production, the overcoming of natural antagonisms, the end of war and armaments, and for the possibility of permanent peace between the nations.

Where is a moral idea which opens such splendid vistas? And yet they are won from sober, economic considerations, and not from intoxication through the moral ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity, justice, humanity!