the old 1897 edition of the "Encyclopedia of Social
Reform," an earlier work edited by W. D. P. Bliss, we are informed that
Socialism would allow all to live in permanent monogamy, but would not
force people to remain married if they were unwilling to do so. "The
Communist Manifesto," the work that made Marx and Engels famous among
Socialists the world over, thus answers the charge made against the
Revolutionists regarding their opposition to monogamy:

"What the communists might possibly be reproached with is that they
desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically
concealed, an openly legalized community of women."

Jules Guesde, a French Socialist, affirms in "Le Catechisme Socialiste"
that "the family is now only an odious form of property and must be
transformed or abolished."

The French Socialist leader, Jaures, in a parliamentary speech said that
"They [_i.e._, married men and women] were free to make the marriage and
should in the same way be free to unmake it. In fact, just as the will
of one of the parties could have prevented the marriage, so the will of
one should be able to end it. The power to annul should, of course, be
all the stronger when both parties desire it." It need scarcely be added
that free-love would in most cases begin with the voluntary dissolution
of the marriage ties.

While the program of the French Socialist Party, adopted at Tours in
1902, does not explicitly advocate free-love, still it calls for "the
most liberal legislation on divorce." Ernest Belfort Bax, a prominent
English Socialist, in "Outlooks From a New Standpoint," affirms that "a
man may justly reject the dominant sexual morality; he may condemn the
monogamic marriage system which obtains today; he may claim the right of
free union between men and women; he may contend he is perfectly at
liberty to join himself, either temporarily or permanently with a woman;
and that the mere legal form of marriage has no binding force with him."
["Outlooks From a New Standpoint," by Ernest Belfort Bax, page 114 of
the 1891 edition.]

"Prostitution for private gain is morally repellent. But the same
outward act done for a cause transcending individual interest loses its
character of prostitution." [Ibid., page 123.]

"There are few points on which advanced radicals and Socialists are more
completely in accord than their hostility to the modern legal monogamic
marriage." [Ibid., page 151.]

"There are exce