Page:Lily Gair Wilkinson - Revolutionary Socialism and the Woman's Movement.djvu/11

 8 Of old, the owner of the tool was also its operator; production was then an individual affair. To-day, by the highly organised division of labour, production has become co-operative, or social. Ownership, however, is still private, or individual. This brings about a contradiction at the very heart of society. The development from private production to social production has yet to be completed by the development from private ownership to social ownership. Nothing short of this is Socialism. All reformation of the present capitalist system is useless to the workers, since by the system of buying and selling labour-power which capitalism makes necessary to them, they are for ever robbed by a small minority in society—the owners, or capitalist class. And this robbery is always increasing in degree; the result of improved productive methods is a lessening of the demand for labour, and, consequently, an increase of the "unemployed army," i.e., an increased supply of labour in relation to the demand for it. In this way wages are lowered and capitalist robbery becomes greater; and greater also becomes the poverty, degradation, and slavery of the workers.

Thus the only hope of the workers is Socialism. To build their hopes and waste their energy and resources on attempts at reforming capitalism is mere illusion.

Now, in all this, the interests of working women are just the same as the interests of working men—directly opposed to the interests of the members of the capitalist class, women and men alike. The question is one of class, not of sex. Sex antagonism may have a very practical interest for the women of the bourgeoisie, but for women of the working class the practical question is the question of class antagonism.

From a wider outlook it may be shown that the true interests of all women are in reality bound up with the interests of the majority, the working women; because no woman, whatever be her position in society, can escape altogether from the burden of the age-long degradation of her sex while that degradation in any way endures. But, while this is fully recognised, too much is not to be expected in that direction. It must be remembered that the feminist reform movement is naturally very attractive to women in the capitalist camp. And, moreover, class prejudice is a thing that dies hard.

Therefore, whilst acknowledging that the true interests of all women lie in Socialism, and that in this sense there is a sex question distinct from class, we must endeavour to be practical and