family of the private individual must
vanish before it just as the old water-works of private enterprise or
the old gas company."[11] To any one not idiotic nor blind with a
passionate desire to lie about Socialism, the meaning of this passage
is perfectly plain. Socialism seeks to broaden the basis of the family
and to make the once irresponsible parent responsible to the State for
its welfare. Socialism creates parental responsibility.

[10] _Socialism and the Family._ (A. C. Fifield. 6_d._)

[11] _Socialism and the Family._

Sec. 4.

And here we may give a few words to certain questions that are in
reality outside the scope of Socialists altogether, special questions
involving the most subtle ethical and psychological decisions. Upon
them Socialists are as widely divergent as people who are not
Socialists, and Socialism as a whole presents nothing but an open
mind. They are questions that would be equally open to discussion in
relation to an Individualist State or to any sort of State. Certain
religious organizations have given clear and imperative answers to
some or all of these questions, and so far as the reader is a member
of such an organization, he may rest assured that Socialism, as an
authoritative whole, has nothing to say for or against his
convictions. This cannot be made too plain by Socialists, nor too
frequently repeated by them. A very large part of the so-called
arguments against them arise out of deliberate misrepresentations and
misconceptions of some alleged Socialist position in these indifferent
matters.

I refer more particularly to the numerous problems in private morality
and social organization arising from sexual conduct. May a man love
one woman only in his life, or more, and may a woman love only one
man? Should marriage be an irrevocable life union or not? Is sterile
physical love possible, permissible, moral, honourable or intolerable?
Upon all these matters individual Socialists, like most other people,
have their doubts and convictions, but it is no more just to saddle
all Socialism with their private utterances and actions upon these
issues than it would be to declare that the Roman Catholic Communion
is hostile to beauty because worshippers coming and going have knocked
the noses off the figures on the bronze doors of the Church of San
Zeno at Verona, or that Christianity involves the cultivation of
private vermin, because of the condition of Saint Thomas a Beckett's
h