Page:Lily Gair Wilkinson - Revolutionary Socialism and the Woman's Movement.djvu/19

 16 capitalist conditions are forcing women out of the home into the misery of modern production, or into the still greater misery of personal debasement.

These universal evils make the talk of feminist reformers seem like a bitter mockery. While countless numbers of women are driven by actual dread of death to sell themselves into some form of misery, while the very conditions upon which capitalism exists deprives them of any other means of life than this, how can mere reforms within the capitalist system bring about the true emancipation of women?

Let bourgeois reformists fight as they may among themselves, it is for Socialism ever to express the interests of the workers, men and women alike, and to show that reforms cannot bring better conditions to their class. It is here, then, that the Socialist Labour Party comes into conflict with Suffragism.

The Suffragist movement makes two false claims upon the sympathy and support of working class women. (1) It claims that the present agitation for the extension of the suffrage to women on the same basis as it is granted to men, would enfranchise working women in general; (2) It claims that enfranchisement alone would lead to improved conditions for working women.

The first of these claims is made by limited Suffragists only; the second is made by both limited and adult Suffragists. The Socialist Labour Party combats both positions.

Taking first the question of a limited extension of the franchise to women, it is easy to see that the various Bills brought forward have had an undoubted bourgeois origin. It is proposed to extend the franchise to women upon the same basis as it is given to men. But this is a basis of property. This movement is in reality a movement in the interests of women of property; these women desire the emancipation of the women of their class—an insignificant