Woman and Socialism
This popular book by August Bebel advocating the emancipation of women appeared in American English translations three times before World War I: 1886, 1904, and 1910. It has been reprinted many times since and illustrates the interaction between Germany and the United States, especially in terms of socialism and feminism.
Composed mostly in prison, Bebel’s book first appeared as Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Woman and Socialism) in 1879 and was promptly forbidden by the Prussian police, but was reprinted in Zurich. Despite the initial reception, it went through over fifty reprintings and new editions in German by 1913 and achieved translation into more than twenty languages. It may have been among the world’s first best-sellers. Certainly it inspired many women throughout the world to rethink their social situation and some to join the Socialist or women’s movements. Its main point was that “The freedom of humanity is not possible without the establishment of the social independence and equality of the genders” (Bebel 1971, 192).The translation by Daniel de Leon of the thirty-third edition published in New York in 1904 probably had the widest impact in the United States because de Leon headed a large movement. The precise influence is difficult to measure but during 1909 in New York, when a male reader of the Volkszeitung (People’s Newspaper) insisted on the naturalness of marriage, the editors of the women’s page recommended that he “diligently read the women’s page and study Bebel’s book, Woman and Socialism” (Shore et al. 1992, 130). By then another translation by Meta Lilienthal Stern was being prepared, which appeared in 1910. Because millions of the immigrants to the United States came from Germany and most of them were from the working class, many would have received information through the radical German press. Many newspapers printed excerpts and the book sold through labor organizations.
Mari Jo Buhle has claimed in her book Women and American Socialism that Bebel’s book amounted to “the homelands greatest contribution on the woman question” (Buhle 1981, 26).Bebel’s book contains three parts: “Woman in the Past,” “Woman in the Present,” and “Woman in the Future.” He took up issues being discussed in the fledgling bourgeois women’s movement and
transformed them for a wider, and especially working-class, audience. The simple organizational approach and the clarity of the language helped gain a wide audience. However, the main substance focused upon the reality of German women’s situations in the present with many international comparisons. He presented the results of the new social sciences, especially statistically gathered information, in tables and precise examples. By succinct and novel information on sexuality, on prostitution, on working situations, and on lack of political rights, Bebel provided an exemplary tract. He illustrated well the difference between professed middle- and upper-class morality and the hypocrisy of marriage for money. He cited endless advertisements, such as a penniless noble offering a long pedigree for an American heiress, and for “[a] cavalry officer of the Guards, of large, handsome build, noble, 27 years of age, desires a financial marriage” (Bebel 1971, 95). The extent and harsh nature of women’s work and the consequences of a lack of civil rights were clearly demonstrated.
Bebel’s book asked the fundamental question: “[W]hat position in our social organism will enable the woman to become a useful member of the community, and will put her in possession of the same rights as those enjoyed by its other members, and ensure the full development of her powers and faculties in every direction?” (Bebel 1971, 222) He argued that the woman’s question, as the female work and political emancipation issue was termed in the nineteenth century, proved central to the social question. Without solving one, society could not solve the other.
Though some may question his assertion that only socialism could provide the solution, many women in North America and in Europe found in his way of laying out of the problem the best account at the time. In the twenty-first century, some authors have rediscovered Bebel’s approach to this issue and underscored the modernism of “men’s feminism” in Bebel’s seminal book.Dieter K. Buse
See also Liebknecht, Wilhelm
References and Further Reading
Bebel, August. Woman and Socialism. Trans.
Daniel de Leon (1904) with new introduction by Lewis Coser. New York: Schocken, 1971.
------. Ausgewahlte Reden und Schriften. 2 vols. Munich: Saur, 1996.
Buhle, Mari Jo. Women and American Socialism, 1870—1920. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1981.
Lopes, Anne, and Gary Roth. Mens Feminism: August Bebel and the German Socialist Movement. Amherst, MA: Humanity, 2000.
Shore, Elliott, et al., eds. The German- American Radical Press. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1992.