Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 23:35:41 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Wives in common


Casey quotes:

>But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the
>whole bourgeoisie in chorus.
>
>The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears
>that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and,
>naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to
>all will likewise fall to the women.
>
>He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is doing away with
>the status of women as mere instruments of production.
>
>The Communist Manifesto

But he breaks off just when it starts to get interesting:

	For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous
	indignation  of our bourgeois at the community of women which,
	they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the

	Communists.  The Communists have no need to introduce free
	love; it has existed almost from time  immemorial.

	Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of
	their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common
	prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's

	wives.

	Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and

	thus,  at the most, what the Communists might possibly be
	reproached with is  that they desire to introduce, in substitution

	for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized system of free

	love.  For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the

	present system of production must bring with it the abolition of

	free love springing from that system,  i.e., of prostitution both

	public and private.

	(CM, 4 or 5 pages before the end of Part II, Proletarians and

	Communists)

Fred was in fine form when he wrote this!

	Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common...

"No marriage is an island, entire of it self", so to speak.

Enjoy.

Hugh




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