Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/26

 disorder, class strife, destruction of property, ruin of the family and of culture, most sensual enjoyment, the deepest degradation of woman. The truth could not be more completely and shamefully perverted. The old society throws its crimes at us, for on their account we have condemned it to death.

Disorder rules; socialism demands order.

War and class struggle prevail; socialism insists on peace and harmony of interests, doing away with class struggle through the abolition of classes.

Property is to-day a lie for the majority of men, a robbery for the minority. Socialism would make property the possession of every one. It would convert it into a truth, secure to the worker within society the full proceeds of his labor and destroy the capitalistic system of plunder from its foundation.

The present society separates the family—socialism, since it removes demoralizing class rule, will give value to the rights of the family.

State and society compete with each other to nip in the bud the culture of men, to stunt spiritually and physically the enormous majority of the people and to corrupt the ruling minority—socialism insists on equal and the best possible training for every individual; the practical development of their faculties for all men; the systematic advance of art and science, and will make art and science the common possession of the people.

Thanks to the wrong conditions of society and the state, woman is to-day without rights and in countless cases is condemned to wedded or unwedded prostitution. The intercourse of the sexes is unnatural and immoral—socialism will bring the emancipation of woman as well as of man. It insists on her complete political and social equality and equal position with man. It will destroy prostitution, whether it walk