man rule in the
proletarian home has lost its ground--except, perhaps, a part of the
brutality against women that has become general since the advent of
monogamy. Thus the family of the proletarian is no longer strictly
monogamous, even with all the most passionate love and the most
unalterable loyalty of both parties, and in spite of any possible
clerical or secular sanction. Consequently the eternal companions of
monogamy, hetaerism and adultery, play an almost insignificant role
here. The woman has practically regained the right of separation, and if
a couple cannot agree, they rather separate. In short, the proletarian
marriage is monogamous in the etymological sense of the word, but by no
means in a historical sense.

True, our jurists hold that the progress of legislation continually
lessens all cause of complaint for women. The modern systems of civil
law recognize, first that marriage, in order to be legal, must be a
contract based on voluntary consent of both parties, and secondly that
during marriage the relations of both parties shall be founded on equal
rights and duties. These two demands logically enforced will, so they
claim, give to women everything they could possibly ask.

This genuinely juridical argumentation is exactly the same as that used
by the radical republican bourgeois to cut short and dismiss the
proletarian. The labor contract is said to be voluntarily made by both
parties. But it is considered as voluntary when the law places both
parties on equal terms on paper. The power conferred on one party by the
division of classes, the pressure thereby exerted on the other party,
the actual economic relation of the two--all this does not concern the
law. Again, during the term of the contract both parties are held to
have equal rights, unless one has expressly renounced his right. That
the economic situation forces the laborer to give up even the last
semblance of equality, that is not the fault of the law.

In regard to marriage, even the most advanced law is completely
satisfied after both parties have formally declared their willingness.
What passes behind the juridical scenes where the actual process of
living is going on, and how this willingness is brought about, that
cannot be the business of the law and the jurist. Yet the simplest legal
comparison should show to the jurist what this willingness really means.
In those countries where a legitimate portion of the parental wealth is
assure