political equality with man. These are very important, and as will
be shown further on, very extensive fields. Besides all this the working
woman has also a special interest in doing battle hand in hand with the
male portion of the working class, for all the means and institutions
that may protect the working woman from physical and moral degeneration,
and which promise to secure to her the vitality and fitness necessary
for motherhood and for the education of children. Furthermore, as
already indicated, it is the part of the working-woman to make common
cause with the male members of her class and of her lot in the struggle
for a radical transformation of society, looking to the establishment of
such conditions as may make possible the real economic and spiritual
independence of both sexes, by means of social institutions that afford
to all a full share in the enjoyment of all the conquests of
civilization made by mankind.
The goal, accordingly, is not merely the realization of the equal rights
of woman with man within present society, as is aimed at by the
bourgeois woman emancipationists. It lies beyond,--the removal of all
impediments that make man dependent upon man; and, consequently, one sex
upon the other. Accordingly, this solution of the Woman Question
coincides completely with the solution of the Social Question. It
follows that he who aims at the solution of the Woman Question to its
full extent, is necessarily bound to go hand in hand with those who have
inscribed upon their banner the solution of the Social Question as a
question of civilization for the whole human race. These are the
Socialists, that is, the Social Democracy.
Of all existing parties in Germany, the Social Democratic Party is the
only one which has placed in its programme the full equality of woman,
her emancipation from all dependence and oppression. And the party has
done so, not for agitational reasons, but out of necessity, out of
principle. _There can be no emancipation of humanity without the social
independence and equality of the sexes._
Up to this point all Socialists are likely to agree with the
presentation made of fundamental principles. But the same cannot be said
on the subject of the manner in which we portray the ultimate aims to
ourselves; how the measures and special institutions shall be shaped
which will establish the aimed-at independence and equality of all
members of the sexes, consequently that of man and woman
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