On aura vraiment tout lu sur ce forum.
On peut aussi lire ce texte de Kollontai de 1907 que je n'ai malheureusement trouvé qu'en anglais.
a écrit :
Marriage and the Problem of the Family
Let us turn our attention to another aspect of the woman question, the question of the family. The importance that the solution of this urgent
and complex question has for the genuine emancipation of women is well known. The struggle for political rights, for the right to receive
doctorates and other academic degrees, and for equal pay for equal work, is not the full sum of the fight for equality. To become really free
woman has to throw off the heavy chains of the current forms of the family, which are outmoded and oppressive. For women, the solution of the
family question is no less important than the achievement of political equality and economic independence.
In the family of today, the structure of which is confirmed by custom and law, woman is oppressed not only as a person but as a wife and
mother, in most of the countries of the civilised world the civil code places women in a greater or lesser dependence on her husband, and awards
the husband not, only the right to dispose of her property but also the right of moral and physical dominance over her. ...
Where the official and legal servitude of women ends, the force we call “public opinion” begins. This public opinion is created and supported
by the bourgeoisie with the aim of preserving “the sacred institution of property”. The hypocrisy of “double morality” is another weapon.
Bourgeois society crushes woman with its savage economic vice, paying for her labour at a very low rate. The woman is deprived of the citizen’s
right to raise her voice in defence of her interests: instead, she is given only the gracious alternative of the bondage of marriage or the embraces of
prostitution — a trade despised and persecuted in public but encouraged and supported in secret. Is it necessary to emphasise the dark sides of
contemporary married life and the sufferings women experience in connection with their position in the present family structure? So much has
already been written and said on this subject. Literature is full of depressing pictures of the snares of married and family life. How many
psychological dramas are enacted! How many lives are crippled! Here, it is only important for us to note that the modem family structure, to a
lesser or greater extent, oppresses women of all classes and all layers of the population. Customs and traditions persecute the young mother
whatever the stratum of the population to which she belongs; the laws place bourgeois women, proletarian women and peasant women all under
the guardianship of their husbands.
Have we not discovered at last that aspect of the woman question over which women of all classes can unite? Can they not struggle jointly
against the conditions oppressing them? Is it not possible that the grief and suffering which women share in this instance will soften the claws of
class antagonism and provide common aspirations and common action for the women of the different camps? Might it not be that on the basis of
common desires and aims, co-operation between the bourgeois women and the proletarian women may become a possibility? The feminists are
struggling for freer forms of marriage and for the “right to maternity”; they are raising their voices in defence of the prostitute, the human being
persecuted by all. See how rich feminist literature is in the search for new forms of relationships and in enthusiastic demands for the “moral
equality” of the sexes. Is it not true that while m the sphere of economic liberation the bourgeois women lag behind the many-million strong army
of proletarian women who are pioneering the way for the “new woman”, in the fight for the solution, of the family question the laurels go to the
feminists?
Here in Russia, women of the middle bourgeoisie — that army of independent wage-earners thrown on to the labour market during the 1860s
— have long since settled in practice many of the confused aspects of the marriage question. They have courageously replaced the
“consolidated” family of the traditional church marriage with more elastic types of relationship that meet the needs of that social layer. But the
subjective solution of this question by individual women does not change the situation and does not relieve the overall gloomy picture of family
life. If any force is destroying the modern form of the family, it is not the titanic efforts of separate and stronger individuals but the inanimate and
mighty forces of production, which are uncompromisingly budding life, on new foundation’s. ...
The heroic struggle of individual young women of the bourgeois world, who fling down the gauntlet and demand of society the right to “dare to
love” without orders and without chains, ought to serve as an example for all women languishing in family chains — this is what is preached by the
more emancipated feminists abroad and our progressive equal righters at home. The marriage question, in other words, is solved in their view
without reference to the external situation; it is solved independently of changes in the economic structure of society. The isolated, heroic efforts
of individuals is enough. Let a woman simply “dare”, and the problem of marriage is solved.
But less heroic women shake their heads in distrust. “It is all very well for the heroines of novels blessed by the prudent author with great
independence, unselfish friends and extraordinary qualities of charm, to throw down the gauntlet. But what about those who have no capital,
insufficient wages, no friends and little charm?” And the question of maternity preys on the mind of the woman who strives for freedom. Is “free
love” possible? Can it be realised as a common phenomenon, as the generally accepted norm rather than the individual exception, given the
economic structure of our society? Is it possible to Ignore the element of private property in contemporary marriage? Is it
possible, in an individualistic world, to ignore the formal marriage contract without damaging the interests of women? For the marital contract
is the only guarantee that all the difficulties of maternity will not fall on the woman alone. Will not that which once happened to the male worker
now happen to the woman? The removal of guild regulations, without the establishment of new rules governing the conduct of the masters, gave
capital absolute power over the workers. The tempting slogan “freedom of contract for labour and capital” became a means for the naked
exploitation of labour by capital. “Free love”, introduced consistently into contemporary class society, instead of freeing woman from the
hardships of family life, would surely shoulder her with a new burden — the task of caring, alone and unaided, for her children.
Only a whole number of fundamental reforms in the sphere of social relations — reforms transposing obligations from the family to society and
the state — could create a situation where the principle of “free love” might to some extent be fulfilled. But can we seriously expect the modern
class state, however democratic it may be, to take upon itself the duties towards mothers and children which at present are undertaken by that
individualistic unit, the modern family? Only the fundamental transformation of all productive relations could create the social prerequisites to
protect women from the negative aspects of the “free love” formula. Are we not aware of the depravity and abnormalities that in present
conditions are anxious to pass themselves off under this convenient label? Consider all those gentlemen owning and administering industrial
enterprises who force women among their workforce and clerical staff to satisfy their sexual whims, using the threat of dismissal to achieve their
ends. Are they not, in their own way, practising “free love"? All those “masters of the house” who rape their servants and throw, them out
pregnant on to the street, are they not adhering to the formula of “free love"?
“But we are not talking of that kind of ‘freedom object the advocates of free marriage. “On the contrary, we demand the acceptance of a
‘single morality’ equally binding for both sexes. We oppose the sexual licence that is current, and view as moral only the free union that is based
on true love.” But, my dear friends, do you not think that your ideal of “free marriage”, when practised in the conditions of present society, might
produce results that differ little from the distorted practice of sexual freedom? Only when women are relieved of all those material burdens which
at the present time create a dual dependence, on capital and on the husband, can the principle of “free love” be implemented without bringing
new grief for women in its wake. As women go out to, work and achieve economic independence, certain possibilities for “free love” appear,
particularly for the better-paid women of the intelligentsia. But the dependence of women on capital remains, and this dependence increases as
more and more proletarian women sell their labour power. Is the slogan “free love” capable of improving the sad existence of these women, who
earn only just enough to keep themselves alive? And anyway, is not “free love” already practised among the working classes and practised so
widely that the bourgeoisie has on more than one occasion raised the alarm and campaigned against the “depravity” and “immorality” of the
proletariat? It should be noted that when the feminists enthuse about the new forms of cohabitation Outside marriage that should be considered
by the emancipated bourgeois woman, they speak of “free love”, but when the working class is under discussion these relationships are scornfully
referred to as “disorderly sexual intercourse”. This sums up their attitude.
But for proletarian women at the present time all relationships, whether sanctified by the church or not, are equally harsh in their
consequences. The crux of the family and marriage problem lies for the proletarian wife and mother not in the question of the sacred or secular
external form, but in the attendant social and economic, conditions which define the complicated obligations of the working-class woman, of
course it matters to her too whether her husband has the right to dispose of her earnings, whether he has the right by law to force her to live with
him when she does not want to, whether the husband can forcibly take her children away etc. However, it is not such paragraphs of the civic
code that determine the position of woman in the family, nor is it these paragraphs which make for the confusion and complexity of the family
problem. The question of relationships would cease to be such a painful one for the majority of women only if society, relieved women of all
those petty household cares which are at present unavoidable (given the existence of individual, scattered domestic economies), took over
responsibility for the younger generation, protected maternity and gave the mother to the child for at least the first months after birth.
In opposing the legal and sacred church marriage contract, the feminists are fighting a fetish. The proletarian women, on the other hand, are
waging war against the factors that, are behind the modem form of marriage and family. In striving to change fundamentally the conditions of life,
they know that they are also helping to reform relationships between the sexes. Here we have the main difference between the bourgeois and
proletarian approach to the difficult problem ,of the family.
The feminists and the social reformers from the camp of the bourgeoisie, naively believing in the possibility of creating new forms of family and
new types of marital relations against the dismal background of the contemporary class society, tie themselves in knots in their search for these
new forms. If life itself has not vet produced these forms, it is necessary, they seem to imagine, to think them up whatever the cost. There must,
they believe, be modem forms of sexual relationship which are capable of solving the complex family problem under the present social system.
And the ideologists of the bourgeois world — the journalists, writers and prominent women fighters for emancipation one after the other put
forward their “family panacea”, their new “family formula”.
How utopian these marriage formulas sound. How feeble these palliatives, when considered in the light of the gloomy reality of our modern
family structure. Before these formulas of “free relationships” and “free love” can become practice, it is above all necessary that a fundamental
reform of all social relationships between people take place; furthermore, the moral and sexual norms and the whole psychology of mankind
would have to undergo a thorough evolution, is the contemporary person psychologically able to cope with “free love"? What about the jealousy
that eats into even the best human souls? And that deeply-rooted sense of property that demands the possession not only of the body but also of
the soul of another? And the inability to have the proper respect for the individuality of another? The habit of either subordinating oneself to the
loved one, or of subordinating the loved one to oneself? And the bitter and desperate feeling of desertion, of limitless loneliness, which is
experienced when the loved ceases to love and leaves? Where can the lonely person, who is an individualist to the very core of his being, find
solace? The collective, with its joys and, disappointments and aspirations, is the best outlet for the emotional and intellectual energies of the
individual. But is modern man capable of working with this collective in such a way as to feel the mutually interacting influences? Is the life of the
collective really capable, at present, of replacing the individual’s petty personal joys? Without the “unique”, “one-and-only” twin soul, even the
socialist, the collectivist, is quite alone in the present antagonistic world; only in the working class do we catch the pale glimpse of the future, of
more harmonious and more social relations between people. The family problem is as complex and many-faceted as life itself. Our social system
is incapable of solving it.
Other marriage formulas have been put forward. Several progressive women and social thinkers regard the marriage union only as a method
of producing progeny. Marriage in itself, they hold, does not have any special value for woman — motherhood is her purpose, her sacred aim,
her task in life. Thanks to such inspired advocates as Ruth Bray and Ellen Key, the bourgeois ideal that recognises woman as a female rather than
a person has acquired a special halo of progressiveness. Foreign literature has seized upon the slogan put forward by these advanced women”
with enthusiasm. And even here in Russia, in the period before the political storm [of 1905], before social values came in for revision, the
question of maternity had attracted the attention of the daily press. The slogan “the right to maternity” cannot help producing lively response in the
broadest circles of the female population. Thus, despite the fact that all the suggestions of the feminists in this connection were of the utopian
variety, the problem was too important and topical not to attract women.
The “right to maternity” is the kind of question that touches not only women from the bourgeois class but also, to an even greater extent,
proletarian women as well. The right to be a mother — these are golden words that go straight to “any women’s heart” and force that heart to
beat faster. The right to feed “one’s own” child with one’s own milk, and to attend the first signs of its awakening consciousness, the right to care
for its tiny body and shield its tender soul from the thorns and sufferings of the first steps in life — what mother would not support these
demands?
It would seem that we have again stumbled on an issue that could serve as a moment of unity between women of different social layers: it
would seem that we have found, at last, the bridge uniting women of the two hostile worlds. Let us look closer, to discover what the progressive
bourgeois women understand by “the right to maternity”. Then we can see whether, in fact, proletarian women can agree with the solutions to the
problem of maternity envisaged by the bourgeois fighters for equal rights. In the eyes of its eager apologists, maternity possesses an almost sacred
quality. Striving to smash the false prejudices that brand a, woman for engaging in a natural activity — the bearing of a child — because the
activity has not been sanctified by the law, the fighters for the right to maternity have bent the stick in the other direction: for them, maternity has
become the aim of a woman’s life. ...
Ellen Key’s devotion to the obligations of maternity and the family forces her to give an assurance that the, isolated family unit will continue to
exist even in a society transformed along socialist lines. The only change, as she sees it, will be that all the attendant elements of convenience or of
material gain will be excluded from the marriage union, which will be concluded according to mutual inclinations, without rituals or formalities —
love and marriage will be truly synonymous. But the isolated family unit is the result of the modem individualistic world, with its rat-race, its
pressures, its loneliness; the family is a product of the monstrous capitalist system. And yet Key hopes to bequeath the family to socialist society!
Blood and kinship ties at present often serve, it is true, as the only support in life, as the only refuge in times of hardship and misfortune. But will
they be morally or socially necessary in the future? Key does not answer this question. She has too loving a regard for the “ideal family”, this
egoistic unit of the middle bourgeoisie to which the devotees of the bourgeois structure of society look with such reverence.
But it is not only the talented though erratic Ellen Key who loses her way in the social contradictions. There is probably no other question
about which socialists themselves are so little in agreement as the question of marriage and the family. Were we to try and organise a survey
among socialists, the results would most probably be very curious. Does the family wither away? or are there grounds for believing that the family
disorders of the present are only a transitory crisis? Will the present form of the family be preserved in the future society, or will it be buried with
the modem capitalist system? These are questions Which might well receive very different answers. ...
With the transfer of educative functions from the family to society, the last tie holding together the modem isolated family will be loosened; the
process of disintegration will proceed at an even faster pace, and the pale silhouettes of future marital relations will begin to emerge. What can we
say about these indistinct silhouettes, hidden as they are by present-day influences?
Does one have to repeat that the present compulsory form of marriage will be replaced by the free union of loving individuals? The ideal of
free love drawn by the hungry imagination of women fighting for their emancipation undoubtedly corresponds to some extent to the norm of
relationships between the sexes that society will establish. However, the social influences are so complex and their interactions so diverse that it is
impossible to foretell what the relationships of the future, when the whole system has fundamentally been changed, will he like. But the slowly
maturing evolution of relations between the sexes is clear evidence that ritual marriage and the compulsive isolated family are doomed to
disappear.
