classes with sincerity when they speak of inculcating morality in the people.
The Marxists had a particular reason for showing themselves suspicious in all that concerned ethics; the propagators of social reforms, the Utopists and the democrats, had so abused the idea of Justice that it was only reasonable to consider all discussions on such a subject as an exercise in rhetoric, or as sophistry intended to mislead those who were interested in the working-class movement. This is why, several years ago, Rosa Luxemburg called the idea of Justice "this old post horse, on which all the regenerators of the world, deprived of surer means of locomotion, have ridden; this ungainly Rosinante, mounted on which so many Quixotes of history have gone in search of the great reform of the world, bringing back from these journeys nothing but black eyes."[1] From these sarcasms about a fantastic Justice springing from the imagination of Utopists, they often used to pass, too easily, to coarse facetiousness about the most ordinary morality; a rather sordid selection could easily be made of paradoxes supported by the official Marxists on this subject. Lafargue distinguishes himself particularly from this point of view.[2]
The principal reason which prevented the Socialists from studying ethical problems as they deserved was the democratic superstition which has dominated them for so long and which has led them to believe that above everything else the aim of their actions must be the acquisition of seats in political assemblies.
- ↑ Mouvement socialiste, June 15, 1889, p. 649.
- ↑ See, for example, the Socialiste of June 30, 1901. "As in a communist society the morals which clogs the brains of the civilised will have vanished like a frightful nightmare, perhaps to be replaced by another ethic, which will incite women to flutter about like butterflies, to use Ch. Fourier's expression, instead of submitting to being the property of a male. … In savage tribes and among barbarous communists women are much more honoured when they distribute their favours to a great number of lovers."
