EQUAL SUFFRAGE.
The so-called woman question has, during the last years, boiled down almost entirely to a question of the ballot, the right of equal suffrage for man and woman. As a question of moral right, justice and equality, who but the most pig-headed can have any opposition to woman suffrage? She is part of society, she suffers keenly by its wrongs and she is, or ought to be, deeply interested in its progress. But politics and State rule came into the world with class society and its repression of woman. What is more natural, then, than that woman as a whole should share the fate of the oppressed classes and be prevented from partaking in the political deliberations of the privileged class?
At the present time it is not worth the while of the progressive, at least not of the Socialist, woman, to go one step out of her way to procure the ballot. The struggle to-day is a class struggle. The reforms that might be procured by use of the ballot are insignificant and could only serve to patch up existing society. We Socialists don't want it patched. As far as the ballot is and can be used to abolish the present system, let whosoever has it, use it. The working class is anyhow the immense majority of the population and is more than sufficient numerically to vote out present society when they are educated to do so. The great political battle of the working class is a battle of education. It is carried on with speech and with pen, and in this campaign the capable woman takes her place regardless of capitalistic laws, or of class society's restriction of the ballot.
In a Socialist society the question solves itself. The administration there will have for its aim the direction of industry, of production, and distribution, of education, enjoyment, and health, and will and must be carried out through these various branches. As woman partakes in all these branches of work she will unquestionably assume her part in the administration of them. She will assume this work naturally as her right and duty without either grant or favor.
