He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited
in
common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that
the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.
He has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away
with the status of women as mere instruments of production.
For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the
virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women
which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established
by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce
community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of
their
proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common
prostitutes,
take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and
thus,
at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached
with,
is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a
hypocritically
concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest,
it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of
production must bring with it the abolition of the community
of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution
both public and private.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish
countries and nationality.
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