74. Literature on the Woman Question

The friends of human progress who, through their temperament and perhaps also through a certain heightened capacity for judgment, become eulogists of a radical direction, have essentially two kinds of opponents. The first are those whose feelings are attached to the traditional because they believe they recognize the good in it. They see in reformatory ideas more or less the outflow of an intellectual or moral deficiency. These are the real conservative natures. They are joined by a second type of opponent. Those who are not hostile to reformatory ideas per se, but who never tire of emphasizing the "difficulties inherent in the circumstances" whenever a concrete question of progress arises. They see it as their task to put the brakes on, even if they are not hostile to the ideas of the more radicals. There is only one remedy for the first type of opponent: time. They cannot be approached directly with ideas. They can only be won over to something new by constantly being shown it again and again and thus adapting their feelings to its power.

The situation seems different for those opponents whose feelings sympathize with the new and who cannot ignore the "certain difficulties". Above all, they would have to come to a realization, namely that the main mass of these difficulties lies less in the power of circumstances, which man cannot control, than in their own preconceived opinions. They cannot come to any judgment about human progress, because they continually pile up all sorts of difficulties for themselves through their imaginations about what appears to be necessary. How many of the most important "questions of life" suffer from such imaginary difficulties! Could we not, for example, be much further along in the reform of the secondary school system if the circles involved were not constantly arguing all sorts of things about the necessity of retaining certain institutions of the current education system? And how much of what is emphasized as a necessity is only based on imagination!

There is no doubt that the so-called "women's question" is one of the "questions" that suffer most from such obstructionism in our time. When it is discussed, one can see how the highest mountains of such imaginary difficulties are piled up. Clarity about the real weight of individual present-day conditions could dispel many a prejudice in a very short time. One only needed to look clearly to recognize how things really are.

If the magazine, the first issue of which has just been published, lives up to its promise and makes the best possible start, then it will work in the most favorable way imaginable towards this clarification. The "Documents" aim to present the living and existential conditions of women. "Uninfluenced by all party currents and party positions, the magazine should give women independent, factual evidence - documents - strictly bound to the facts about the real conditions of life; it should show women the paths they must take to defend their interests, i.e. express the demands they are forced to make in order to assert themselves in the struggle for existence, the demands for economic, social and political equality."

What urgent demands these are is best illustrated by a statistical statement made by the editors in their preface. "The 1890 occupational census shows that of the 9 million women over the age of 10 in Austria, 6¼ million were self-employed." There are 79 self-employed women for every 100 working men in Austria, 39 in Germany, 26 in England and 15 in America. Who could deny that compared to these actual conditions, the position assigned to women by society and the state looks like a mockery? Social institutions are only healthy if they express the actual conditions that exist. The tasks that these actual conditions impose on women imperatively demand a reform of their public position.

It is one of the incomprehensible things in contemporary intellectual life that even scientific minds are hostile to women's demands. What is being said about the nature of women, and what is being deduced from it against the demands of women! One can constantly hear how women should not be able to take part in public life. One should least expect such talk from scientific thinkers. How they would clamor if a physical experiment were prevented because they wanted to explain from the nature of the forces involved that a result was impossible. They would rightly say that only experience can decide what is possible. And this is the only way a modern thinker can judge the women's question. We know nothing at all about the progress of a culture in which women take the part that a completely free development of their abilities gives them. It is up to us alone to bring about the possibility of such free development. And anyone who thinks in this way can only agree with the words of Björnstjerne Björnson, which he writes in an interesting letter to Miss Fickert printed in the first issue of "Documents": "The woman question is born of hard necessity; its ideals have new hopes for mankind. We are still faced with tasks which - it will gradually become clear - cannot be solved in any other way than in the spirit, which is above all the spirit of women. We are waiting for her to become the dominant spirit in our public negotiations. But then let her also prepare herself for it! In her disposition as well as in her character."

An essay by the Austrian law teacher Anton Menger on "The new code of civil procedure and women" shows how little current legislation takes account of the actual circumstances, and a discussion of the social situation of female junior teachers gives an idea of the economic struggles faced by a woman entering professional life.

Only when she enjoys complete freedom in the development of her powers can woman make the contribution to the cultural work of humanity that is possible for her according to her nature. Therefore, that view of life will do most justice to the demands of women which seeks to give human development the direction of unlimited freedom. Individualistic anarchism seeks to realize the unlimited freedom of man. Only those who are not in the least familiar with the aims and spirit of this conception of life can associate it with that anarchism which sees in the "propaganda of action" a means to the realization of freedom. One has only to state in clear words what individualistic anarchism wants: and it immediately follows that it must be the greatest enemy of all propaganda of action. What is to be said about the difference between anarchism and this propaganda was explained by J. H. Mackay and myself in No. 39 of the previous issue of this journal.

Individualistic anarchism occurs in every man who thinks in terms of the modern view of nature - and thinks consistently. This view of nature shows us the development of humans from lower organisms in a purely natural way. This development cannot be completed today. It must continue. Just as in the lower organisms lay the forces that led them up to man, so in man lie the forces for further development. Everything we do to force man into a predetermined order hinders this further development. Anyone who establishes a state or social order can only do so on the basis of previous development. But if you establish a certain order of human coexistence on the basis of this past development, you are restricting the future through the past. We have no way of knowing what germs of development are still hidden in man for further development. That is why we cannot establish an order in which man should develop. He must have complete freedom to develop everything that germinates within him. The order he needs will then always arise of its own accord from this freedom. This is the reason why the journal of individualist anarchism, "Liberty", published in America and founded by one of the best men of liberty, bears the motto: Freedom is not the daughter, but the mother of order.

The mindset that gave rise to this magazine is now also the source of the pamphlet " The Woman Question, A Discussion between Victor Yarros and Sarah E. Holmes". (The German translation was recently published by A. Zack, Berlin). Read this writing if you want a truly unbiased debate on the "woman question". There will be many who will first have to learn what unprejudiced means through such a book. They will see how small the circle is that they are able to overlook with their state-bred views. Two people are talking to each other, and in some cases against each other, for whom freedom really is a necessity of life, who have an idea of freedom against which the "liberals'" drivel about freedom is child's play. Don't ask me to tell you the content. If you want to know the content, read the essay, which is only 17 pages long and contains more than the thick books of the witty Treitschke, who was anointed with all prejudices. One breathes pure, natural spiritual air there, and is glad to be out of the stuffy air of literature for a quarter of an hour, which only exudes the past. Anyone who has preserved one thing from the bondage of our church, state and social orders: The love of freedom, he will breathe a sigh of relief when he follows the explanations of this writing.