Social Reform B.C
Social Reform versus Birth Control
1927
The real history of the world is full of the queerest cases of notions that have turned clean head-over-heels and completely contradicted themselves. The last example is an extraordinary notion that what is called Birth Control is a social reform that goes along with other social reforms favoured by progressive people.
It is rather like saying that cutting off King Charles’ head was one of the most elegant of the Cavalier fashions in hair-dressing. It is like saying that decapitation is an advance on dentistry. It may or may not be right to cut off the King’s head; it may or may not be right to cut off your own head when you have the toothache. But anybody ought to be able to see that if we once simplify things by head cutting we can do without hair-cutting; that it will be needless to practise dentistry on the dead or philanthropy on the unborn—or the unbegotten. So it is not a provision for our descendants to say that the destruction of our descendants will render it unnecessary to provide them with anything. It may be that it is only destruction in the sense of negation; and it may be that few of our descendants may be allowed to survive. But it is obvious that the negation is a piece of mere pessimism, opposing itself to the more optimistic notion that something can be done for the whole family of man. Nor is it surprising to anybody who can think, to discover that this is exactly what really happened.
The story began with Godwin, the friend of Shelley, and the founder of so many of the social hopes that are called revolutionary. Whatever we think of his theory in detail, he certainly filled the more generous youth of his time with that thirst for social justice and equality which is the inspiration of Socialism and other ideals. What is even more gratifying, he filled the wealthy old men of his time with pressing and enduring terror, and about three-quarters of the talk of Tories and Whigs of that time consists of sophistries and excuses invented to patch up a corrupt compromise of oligarchy against the appeal to fraternity and fundamental humanity made by men like Godwin and Shelley.
Malthus: An answer to Godwin
The old oligarchs would use any tool against the new democrats; and one day it was their dismal good luck to get hold of a tool called Malthus. Malthus wrote avowedly and admittedly an answer to Godwin. His whole dreary book was only intended to be an answer to Godwin. Whereas Godwin was trying to show that humanity might be made happier and more humane, Malthus was trying to show that humanity could never by any possibility be made happier or more humane. The argument he used was this: that if the starving man were made tolerably free or fairly prosperous, he would marry and have a number of children, and there would not be food for all. The inference was, evidently, that he must be left to starve. The point about the increase of children he fortified by a fantastically mathematical formula about geometrical progression, which any living human being can dearly see is inapplicable to any living thing. Nothing depending on the human will can proceed by geometrical progression, and population certainly does not proceed by anything of the sort.
But the point is here, that Malthus meant his argument as an argument against all social reform. He never thought of using it as anything else, except an argument against all social reform. Nobody else ever thought in those more logical days of using it as anything but an argument against social reform. Malthus even used it as an argument against the ancient habit of human charity. He warned people against any generosity in the giving of alms. His theory was always thrown as cold water on any proposal to give the poor man property or a better status. Such is the noble story of the birth of Birth Control.
The only difference is this: that the old capitalists were more sincere and more scientific, while the modern capitalists are more hypocritical and more hazy. The rich man of l850 used it in theory for the oppression of the poor. The rich man of 1927 will only use it in practice for the oppression of the poor. Being incapable of theory, being indeed incapable of thought, he can only deal in two things: what he calls practicality and what I call sentimentality. Not being so much of a man as Malthus, he cannot bear to be a pessimist, so he becomes a sentimentalist. He mixes up this old plain brutal idea (that the poor must be forbidden to breed) with a lot of slipshod and sickly social ideals and promises which are flatly incompatible with it. But he is after all a practical man, and he will be quite as brutal as his forbears when it comes to practice. And the practical upshot of the whole thing is plain enough. If he can prevent his servants from having families, he need not support those families Why the devil should he?
A Simple Test
If anybody doubts that this is the very simple motive, let him test it by the very simple statements made by the various Birth-Controllers like the Dean of St. Paul’s. They never do say that we suffer from a too bountiful supply of bankers or that cosmopolitan financiers must not have such large families. They do not say that the fashionable throng at Ascot wants thinning, or that it is desirable to decimate the people dining at the Ritz or the Savoy. Though, Lord knows, if ever a thing human could look like a sub-human jungle, with tropical flowers and very poisonous weeds, it is the rich crowd that assembles in a modern Americanized hotel.
But the Birth-Controllers have not the smallest desire to control that jungle. It is much too dangerous a jungle to touch. It contains tigers. They never do talk about a danger from the comfortable classes, even from a more respectable section of the comfortable classes. The Gloomy Dean is not gloomy about there being too many Dukes; and naturally not about there being too many Deans. He is not primarily annoyed with a politician for having a whole population of poor relations, though places and public salaries have to be found for all the relations. Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical.
The Birth-Controller does not bother about all these things, for the perfectly simple reason that it is not such people that he wants to control. What he wants to control is the populace, and he practically says so. He always insists that a workman has no right to have so many children, or that a slum is perilous because it is producing so many children. The question he dreads is “Why has not the workman a better wage? Why has not the slum family a better house?” His way of escaping from it is to suggest, not a larger house but a smaller family. The landlord or the employer says in his hearty and handsome fashion: “You really cannot expect me to deprive myself of my money. But I will make a sacrifice, I will deprive myself of your children.”
One of a Class
Meanwhile, as the Malthusian attack on democratic hopes slowly stiffened and strengthened all the reactionary resistance to reform in this country, other forces were already in the field. I may remark in passing that Malthus, and his sophistry against all social reform, did not stand alone. It was one of a whole class of scientific excuses invented by the rich as reasons for denying justice to the poor, especially when the old superstitious glamour about kings and nobles had faded in the nineteenth century. One was talking about the Iron Laws of Political Economy, and pretending that somebody had proved somewhere, with figures on a slate, that injustice is incurable. Another was a mass of brutal nonsense about Darwinism and a struggle for life, in which the devil must catch the hindmost. As a fact it was struggle for wealth, in which the devil generally catches the foremost. They all had the character of an attempt to twist the new tool of science to make it a weapon for the old tyranny of money.
But these forces, though powerful in a diseased industrial plutocracy. were not the only forces even in the nineteenth century. Towards the end of that century, especially on the Continent, there was another movement going on, notably among Christian Socialists and those called Catholic Democrats and others. There is no space to describe it here; its interest lies in being the exact reversal of the order of argument used by the Malthusian and the Birth-Controller. This movement was not content with the test of what is called a Living Wage. It insisted specially on what it preferred to call a Family Wage. In other words, it maintained that no wage is just or adequate unless it does envisage and cover the man, not only considered as an individual, but as the father of a normal and reasonably numerous family. This sort of movement is the true contrary of Birth Control and both will probably grow until they come into some tremendous controversial collision. It amuses me to reflect on that big coming battle, and to remember that the more my opponents practise Birth Control, the fewer there will be of them to fight us on that day.
The Conflict
What I cannot get my opponents in this matter to see, in the strange mental confusion that covers the question, is the perfectly simple fact that these two claims, whatever else they are, are contrary claims. At the very beginning of the whole discussion stands the elementary fact that limiting families is a reason for lowering wages and not a reason for raising them. You may like the limitation for other reasons, as you may dislike it for other reasons. You may drag the discussion off to entirely different questions, such as, whether wives in normal homes are slaves. You may compromise out of consideration for the employer or for some other reason, and meet him half-way by taking half a loaf or having half a family. But the claims are in principle opposite. It is the whole truth in that theory of the class war about which the newspapers talk such nonsense. The full claim of the poor would be to have what they considered a full-sized family. If you cut this down to suit wages you make a concession to fit the capitalist conditions. The practical application I shall mention in a moment; I am talking now about the primary logical contradiction. If the two methods can be carried out, they can be carried out so as to contradict and exclude each other. One has no need of the other; one can dispense with or destroy the other. If you can make the wage larger, there is no need to make the family smaller. If you can make the family small, there is no need to make the wage larger. Anyone may judge which the ruling capitalist will probably prefer to do. But if he does one, he need not do the other.
There is of course a great deal more to be said. I have dealt with only one feature of Birth Control—its exceedingly unpleasant origin. I said it was purely capitalist and reactionary; I venture to say I have proved it was entirely capitalist and reactionary. But there are many other aspects of this evil thing. It is unclean in the light of the instincts; it is unnatural in relation to the affections; it is part of a general attempt to run the populace on a routine of quack medicine and smelly science; it is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands; it is ignorant of the very existence of real households where prudence comes by free-will and agreement. It has all those aspects, and many of them would be extraordinarily interesting to discuss. But in order not to occupy too much space, I will take as a text nothing more than the title.
A Piece of Humbug
The very name of “Birth Control” is a piece of pure humbug. It is one of those blatant euphemisms used in the headlines of the Trust Press. It is like “Tariff Reform.” It is like “Free Labour.” It is meant to mean nothing, that it may mean anything, and especially some thing totally different from what it says. Everybody believes in birth control, and nearly everybody has exercised some control over the conditions of birth. People do not get married as somnambulists or have children in their sleep. But throughout numberless ages and nations, the normal and real birth control is called self control. If anybody says it cannot is possibly work, I say it does. In many classes, in many countries where these quack nostrums are unknown, populations of free men have remained within reasonable limits by sound traditions of thrift and responsibility. In so far as there is a local evil of excess, it comes with all other evils from the squalor and despair of our decaying industrialism. But the thing the capitalist newspapers call birth control is not control at all. It is the idea that people should be, in one respect, completely and utterly uncontrolled, so long as they can evade everything in the function that is positive and creative, and intelligent and worthy of a free man. It is a name given to a succession of different expedients, (the one that was used last is always described as having been dreadfully dangerous) by which it is possible to filch the pleasure belonging to a natural process while violently and unnaturally thwarting the process itself.
The nearest and most respectable parallel would be that of the Roman epicure, who took emetics at intervals all day so that he might eat five or six luxurious dinners daily. Now any man’s common sense, unclouded by newspaper science and long words, will tell him at once that an operation like that of the epicures is likely in the long run even to be bad for his digestion and pretty certain to be bad for his character. Men left to themselves gave sense enough to know when a habit obviously savours of perversion and peril. And if it were the fashion in fashionable circles to call the Roman expedient by the name of “Diet Control,” and to talk about it in a lofty fashion as merely “the improvement of life and the service of life” (as if it meant no more than the mastery of man over his meals), we should take the liberty of calling it cant and saying that it had no relation to the reality in debate.
The Mistake
The fact is, I think, that I am in revolt against the conditions of industrial capitalism and the advocates of Birth Control are in revolt against the conditions of human life. What their spokesmen can possibly mean by saying that I wage a “class war against mothers” must remain a matter of speculation. If they mean that I do the unpardonable wrong to mothers of thinking they will wish to continue to be mothers, even in a society of greater economic justice and civic equality, then I think they are perfectly right. I doubt whether mothers could escape from motherhood into Socialism. But the advocates of Birth Control seem to want some of them to escape from it into capitalism. They seem to express a sympathy with those who prefer “the right to earn outside the home” or (in other words) the right to be a wage-slave and work under the orders of a total stranger because he happens to be a richer man. By what conceivable contortions of twisted thought this ever came to be considered a freer condition than that of companionship with the man she has herself freely accepted, I never could for the life of me make out. The only sense I can make of it is that the proletarian work, though obviously more senile and subordinate than the parental, is so far safer and more irresponsible because it is not parental. I can easily believe that there are some people who do prefer working in a factory to working in a family; for there are always some people who prefer slavery to freedom, and who especially prefer being governed to governing someone else. But I think their quarrel with motherhood is not like mine, a quarrel with inhuman conditions, but simply a quarrel with life. Given an attempt to escape from the nature of things, and I can well believe that it might lead at last to something like “the nursery school for our children staffed by other mothers and single women of expert training.”
I will add nothing to that ghastly picture, beyond speculating pleasantly about the world in which women cannot manage their own children but can manage each other’s. But I think it indicates an abyss between natural and unnatural arrangements which would have to be bridged before we approached what is supposed to be the subject of discussion.
Social Reform B.C
Social Reform versus Birth Control
1927
The real history of the world is full of the queerest cases of notions that have turned clean head-over-heels and completely contradicted themselves. The last example is an extraordinary notion that what is called Birth Control is a social reform that goes along with other social reforms favoured by progressive people.
It is rather like saying that cutting off King Charles’ head was one of the most elegant of the Cavalier fashions in hair-dressing. It is like saying that decapitation is an advance on dentistry. It may or may not be right to cut off the King’s head; it may or may not be right to cut off your own head when you have the toothache. But anybody ought to be able to see that if we once simplify things by head cutting we can do without hair-cutting; that it will be needless to practise dentistry on the dead or philanthropy on the unborn—or the unbegotten. So it is not a provision for our descendants to say that the destruction of our descendants will render it unnecessary to provide them with anything. It may be that it is only destruction in the sense of negation; and it may be that few of our descendants may be allowed to survive. But it is obvious that the negation is a piece of mere pessimism, opposing itself to the more optimistic notion that something can be done for the whole family of man. Nor is it surprising to anybody who can think, to discover that this is exactly what really happened.
The story began with Godwin, the friend of Shelley, and the founder of so many of the social hopes that are called revolutionary. Whatever we think of his theory in detail, he certainly filled the more generous youth of his time with that thirst for social justice and equality which is the inspiration of Socialism and other ideals. What is even more gratifying, he filled the wealthy old men of his time with pressing and enduring terror, and about three-quarters of the talk of Tories and Whigs of that time consists of sophistries and excuses invented to patch up a corrupt compromise of oligarchy against the appeal to fraternity and fundamental humanity made by men like Godwin and Shelley.
Malthus: An answer to Godwin
The old oligarchs would use any tool against the new democrats; and one day it was their dismal good luck to get hold of a tool called Malthus. Malthus wrote avowedly and admittedly an answer to Godwin. His whole dreary book was only intended to be an answer to Godwin. Whereas Godwin was trying to show that humanity might be made happier and more humane, Malthus was trying to show that humanity could never by any possibility be made happier or more humane. The argument he used was this: that if the starving man were made tolerably free or fairly prosperous, he would marry and have a number of children, and there would not be food for all. The inference was, evidently, that he must be left to starve. The point about the increase of children he fortified by a fantastically mathematical formula about geometrical progression, which any living human being can dearly see is inapplicable to any living thing. Nothing depending on the human will can proceed by geometrical progression, and population certainly does not proceed by anything of the sort.
But the point is here, that Malthus meant his argument as an argument against all social reform. He never thought of using it as anything else, except an argument against all social reform. Nobody else ever thought in those more logical days of using it as anything but an argument against social reform. Malthus even used it as an argument against the ancient habit of human charity. He warned people against any generosity in the giving of alms. His theory was always thrown as cold water on any proposal to give the poor man property or a better status. Such is the noble story of the birth of Birth Control.
The only difference is this: that the old capitalists were more sincere and more scientific, while the modern capitalists are more hypocritical and more hazy. The rich man of l850 used it in theory for the oppression of the poor. The rich man of 1927 will only use it in practice for the oppression of the poor. Being incapable of theory, being indeed incapable of thought, he can only deal in two things: what he calls practicality and what I call sentimentality. Not being so much of a man as Malthus, he cannot bear to be a pessimist, so he becomes a sentimentalist. He mixes up this old plain brutal idea (that the poor must be forbidden to breed) with a lot of slipshod and sickly social ideals and promises which are flatly incompatible with it. But he is after all a practical man, and he will be quite as brutal as his forbears when it comes to practice. And the practical upshot of the whole thing is plain enough. If he can prevent his servants from having families, he need not support those families Why the devil should he?
A Simple Test
If anybody doubts that this is the very simple motive, let him test it by the very simple statements made by the various Birth-Controllers like the Dean of St. Paul’s. They never do say that we suffer from a too bountiful supply of bankers or that cosmopolitan financiers must not have such large families. They do not say that the fashionable throng at Ascot wants thinning, or that it is desirable to decimate the people dining at the Ritz or the Savoy. Though, Lord knows, if ever a thing human could look like a sub-human jungle, with tropical flowers and very poisonous weeds, it is the rich crowd that assembles in a modern Americanized hotel.
La Riforma sociale a.C.
La Riforma sociale contro il controllo delle nascite
1927
La vera storia del mondo è piena dei casi più bizzarri di idee che si sono rovesciate di netto, testa in giù, contraddicendo completamente se stesse. L’ultimo esempio è la straordinaria idea che ciò che si chiama controllo delle nascite sia una riforma sociale che procede di pari passo con le altre riforme sociali predilette dalle persone progressiste.
È un po’ come dire che tagliare la testa a re Carlo fu una delle più eleganti mode Cavalier in fatto di acconciatura. È come dire che la decapitazione è un progresso rispetto all’odontoiatria. Può essere giusto o meno tagliare la testa al re; può essere giusto o meno tagliarsi la testa da soli quando si ha il mal di denti. Ma chiunque dovrebbe essere in grado di vedere che se una volta semplifichiamo le cose con il taglio della testa possiamo fare a meno del taglio dei capelli; che sarà inutile praticare l’odontoiatria sui morti o la filantropia sui non nati—o sui non concepiti. Non è dunque un provvedere ai nostri discendenti dire che la distruzione dei nostri discendenti renderà superfluo provvederli di alcunché. Può darsi che sia distruzione solo nel senso di negazione; e può darsi che a pochi dei nostri discendenti sia concesso di sopravvivere. Ma è ovvio che la negazione è un puro pezzo di pessimismo, che si oppone alla nozione più ottimistica secondo cui si può fare qualcosa per l’intera famiglia dell’uomo. Né sorprenderà chiunque sappia pensare scoprire che questo è esattamente ciò che è realmente accaduto.
La storia cominciò con Godwin, l’amico di Shelley, e il fondatore di tante delle speranze sociali che si dicono rivoluzionarie. Qualunque cosa pensiamo della sua teoria nei dettagli, egli certamente riempì la gioventù più generosa del suo tempo di quella sete di giustizia sociale e di uguaglianza che è l’ispirazione del Socialismo e di altri ideali. Cosa ancora più gratificante, riempì i ricchi vecchi del suo tempo di un terrore incalzante e duraturo, e circa tre quarti dei discorsi dei Tory e dei Whig di quel tempo consistono in sofismi e scuse inventate per rappezzare un corrotto compromesso di oligarchia contro l’appello alla fraternità e all’umanità fondamentale lanciato da uomini come Godwin e Shelley.
Malthus: una risposta a Godwin
I vecchi oligarchi avrebbero usato qualsiasi arnese contro i nuovi democratici; e un giorno ebbero la squallida fortuna di mettere le mani su un arnese chiamato Malthus. Malthus scrisse dichiaratamente e apertamente una risposta a Godwin. Tutto il suo lugubre libro era inteso solo come una risposta a Godwin. Mentre Godwin cercava di mostrare che l’umanità poteva essere resa più felice e più umana, Malthus cercava di mostrare che l’umanità non poteva in alcun modo essere resa più felice o più umana. L’argomento che egli usò era questo: che se all’uomo affamato fosse data una tollerabile libertà o una discreta prosperità, egli si sarebbe sposato e avrebbe avuto un certo numero di figli, e non vi sarebbe stato cibo per tutti. L’inferenza era, evidentemente, che bisognava lasciarlo morire di fame. Il punto sull’aumento dei figli lo fortificò con una formula fantasticamente matematica sulla progressione geometrica, che qualsiasi essere umano vivente può chiaramente vedere essere inapplicabile a qualsiasi cosa vivente. Nulla che dipenda dalla volontà umana può procedere per progressione geometrica, e la popolazione certamente non procede in nulla del genere.
Ma il punto è qui: che Malthus intese il suo argomento come un argomento contro ogni riforma sociale. Non pensò mai di usarlo come altro, se non come un argomento contro ogni riforma sociale. Nessun altro pensò mai, in quei giorni più logici, di usarlo se non come un argomento contro la riforma sociale. Malthus lo usò persino come argomento contro l’antica abitudine della carità umana. Mise in guardia la gente contro ogni generosità nel fare l’elemosina. La sua teoria fu sempre gettata come acqua fredda su qualsiasi proposta di dare al povero proprietà o uno status migliore. Tale è la nobile storia della nascita del Controllo delle Nascite.
L’unica differenza è questa: che i vecchi capitalisti erano più sinceri e più scientifici, mentre i capitalisti moderni sono più ipocriti e più nebulosi. Il ricco del 1850 lo usava in teoria per l’oppressione dei poveri. Il ricco del 1927 lo userà solo in pratica per l’oppressione dei poveri. Essendo incapace di teoria, essendo anzi incapace di pensiero, egli può trattare solo due cose: ciò che lui chiama praticità e ciò che io chiamo sentimentalismo. Non essendo tanto uomo quanto Malthus, non sopporta di essere un pessimista, e così diventa un sentimentalista. Confonde questa vecchia idea schietta e brutale (che ai poveri si debba proibire di riprodursi) con un mucchio di ideali e promesse sociali sciatti e melensi che vi sono nettamente incompatibili. Ma è dopotutto un uomo pratico, e sarà brutale quanto i suoi antenati quando si arriva alla pratica. E l’esito pratico di tutta la faccenda è abbastanza chiaro. Se può impedire ai suoi servitori di avere famiglie, non ha bisogno di mantenere quelle famiglie. Perché diavolo dovrebbe?
Una semplice prova
Se qualcuno dubita che questo sia il motivo assai semplice, lo metta alla prova con le affermazioni assai semplici fatte dai vari Controllori delle Nascite come il Decano di San Paolo. Non dicono mai che soffriamo di una fornitura troppo generosa di banchieri o che i finanzieri cosmopoliti non debbano avere famiglie così numerose. Non dicono che la folla alla moda di Ascot vada sfoltita, o che sia desiderabile decimare la gente che pranza al Ritz o al Savoy. Eppure, Dio sa, se mai una cosa umana potesse somigliare a una giungla sub-umana, con fiori tropicali ed erbacce velenosissime, è la ricca folla che si raduna in un moderno albergo americanizzato.
But the Birth-Controllers have not the smallest desire to control that jungle. It is much too dangerous a jungle to touch. It contains tigers. They never do talk about a danger from the comfortable classes, even from a more respectable section of the comfortable classes. The Gloomy Dean is not gloomy about there being too many Dukes; and naturally not about there being too many Deans. He is not primarily annoyed with a politician for having a whole population of poor relations, though places and public salaries have to be found for all the relations. Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical.
The Birth-Controller does not bother about all these things, for the perfectly simple reason that it is not such people that he wants to control. What he wants to control is the populace, and he practically says so. He always insists that a workman has no right to have so many children, or that a slum is perilous because it is producing so many children. The question he dreads is “Why has not the workman a better wage? Why has not the slum family a better house?” His way of escaping from it is to suggest, not a larger house but a smaller family. The landlord or the employer says in his hearty and handsome fashion: “You really cannot expect me to deprive myself of my money. But I will make a sacrifice, I will deprive myself of your children.”
One of a Class
Meanwhile, as the Malthusian attack on democratic hopes slowly stiffened and strengthened all the reactionary resistance to reform in this country, other forces were already in the field. I may remark in passing that Malthus, and his sophistry against all social reform, did not stand alone. It was one of a whole class of scientific excuses invented by the rich as reasons for denying justice to the poor, especially when the old superstitious glamour about kings and nobles had faded in the nineteenth century. One was talking about the Iron Laws of Political Economy, and pretending that somebody had proved somewhere, with figures on a slate, that injustice is incurable. Another was a mass of brutal nonsense about Darwinism and a struggle for life, in which the devil must catch the hindmost. As a fact it was struggle for wealth, in which the devil generally catches the foremost. They all had the character of an attempt to twist the new tool of science to make it a weapon for the old tyranny of money.
But these forces, though powerful in a diseased industrial plutocracy. were not the only forces even in the nineteenth century. Towards the end of that century, especially on the Continent, there was another movement going on, notably among Christian Socialists and those called Catholic Democrats and others. There is no space to describe it here; its interest lies in being the exact reversal of the order of argument used by the Malthusian and the Birth-Controller. This movement was not content with the test of what is called a Living Wage. It insisted specially on what it preferred to call a Family Wage. In other words, it maintained that no wage is just or adequate unless it does envisage and cover the man, not only considered as an individual, but as the father of a normal and reasonably numerous family. This sort of movement is the true contrary of Birth Control and both will probably grow until they come into some tremendous controversial collision. It amuses me to reflect on that big coming battle, and to remember that the more my opponents practise Birth Control, the fewer there will be of them to fight us on that day.
The Conflict
What I cannot get my opponents in this matter to see, in the strange mental confusion that covers the question, is the perfectly simple fact that these two claims, whatever else they are, are contrary claims. At the very beginning of the whole discussion stands the elementary fact that limiting families is a reason for lowering wages and not a reason for raising them. You may like the limitation for other reasons, as you may dislike it for other reasons. You may drag the discussion off to entirely different questions, such as, whether wives in normal homes are slaves. You may compromise out of consideration for the employer or for some other reason, and meet him half-way by taking half a loaf or having half a family. But the claims are in principle opposite. It is the whole truth in that theory of the class war about which the newspapers talk such nonsense. The full claim of the poor would be to have what they considered a full-sized family. If you cut this down to suit wages you make a concession to fit the capitalist conditions. The practical application I shall mention in a moment; I am talking now about the primary logical contradiction. If the two methods can be carried out, they can be carried out so as to contradict and exclude each other. One has no need of the other; one can dispense with or destroy the other. If you can make the wage larger, there is no need to make the family smaller. If you can make the family small, there is no need to make the wage larger. Anyone may judge which the ruling capitalist will probably prefer to do. But if he does one, he need not do the other.
Ma i Controllori delle Nascite non hanno il minimo desiderio di controllare quella giungla. È una giungla troppo pericolosa da toccare. Contiene tigri. Non parlano mai di un pericolo proveniente dalle classi agiate, nemmeno da una sezione più rispettabile delle classi agiate. Il Tetro Decano non è tetro perché vi siano troppi Duchi; e naturalmente nemmeno perché vi siano troppi Decani. Non è primariamente seccato con un politico per avere un’intera popolazione di parenti poveri, benché per tutti i parenti si debbano trovare posti e stipendi pubblici. L’Economia Politica significa che tutti, tranne i politici, devono essere economi.
Il Controllore delle Nascite non si cura di tutte queste cose, per la ragione perfettamente semplice che non è gente simile che egli vuole controllare. Ciò che vuole controllare è il popolino, e praticamente lo dice. Insiste sempre che un operaio non ha il diritto di avere tanti figli, o che un tugurio è pericoloso perché produce tanti figli. La domanda che egli teme è: «Perché l’operaio non ha un salario migliore? Perché la famiglia del tugurio non ha una casa migliore?» Il suo modo di sfuggirvi è di suggerire, non una casa più grande, ma una famiglia più piccola. Il proprietario o il datore di lavoro dice, nel suo modo cordiale e magnanimo: «Non potete davvero aspettarvi che io mi privi del mio denaro. Ma farò un sacrificio: mi priverò dei vostri figli.»
Uno di una categoria
Nel frattempo, mentre l’attacco malthusiano alle speranze democratiche lentamente irrigidiva e rafforzava tutta la resistenza reazionaria alla riforma in questo paese, altre forze erano già in campo. Posso osservare di sfuggita che Malthus, e il suo sofisma contro ogni riforma sociale, non stava solo. Era uno di un’intera categoria di scuse scientifiche inventate dai ricchi come ragioni per negare giustizia ai poveri, specialmente da quando il vecchio superstizioso incanto intorno a re e nobili era svanito nell’Ottocento. Una parlava delle Ferree Leggi dell’Economia Politica, e fingeva che qualcuno avesse dimostrato da qualche parte, con cifre su una lavagna, che l’ingiustizia è incurabile. Un’altra era una massa di brutali sciocchezze sul darwinismo e la lotta per la vita, in cui il diavolo deve prendersi l’ultimo. Di fatto era una lotta per la ricchezza, in cui il diavolo generalmente si prende il primo. Tutte avevano il carattere di un tentativo di piegare il nuovo strumento della scienza per farne un’arma a favore della vecchia tirannia del denaro.
Ma queste forze, per quanto potenti in una malata plutocrazia industriale, non erano le uniche forze nemmeno nell’Ottocento. Verso la fine di quel secolo, specialmente sul Continente, era in corso un altro movimento, notevolmente tra i Socialisti Cristiani e i cosiddetti Democratici Cattolici e altri. Non c’è spazio per descriverlo qui; il suo interesse sta nell’essere l’esatto rovesciamento dell’ordine di argomentazione usato dal malthusiano e dal Controllore delle Nascite. Questo movimento non si accontentava del criterio di ciò che si chiama Salario Vitale. Insisteva in modo speciale su ciò che preferiva chiamare Salario Familiare. In altre parole, sosteneva che nessun salario è giusto o adeguato se non prevede e non copre l’uomo, considerato non soltanto come individuo, ma come padre di una famiglia normale e ragionevolmente numerosa. Questo tipo di movimento è il vero contrario del Controllo delle Nascite, ed entrambi probabilmente cresceranno finché non giungeranno a una qualche tremenda collisione polemica. Mi diverte riflettere su quella grande battaglia futura, e ricordare che quanto più i miei avversari praticano il Controllo delle Nascite, tanto meno numerosi saranno per combatterci in quel giorno.
Il conflitto
Ciò che non riesco a far vedere ai miei avversari in questa faccenda, nella strana confusione mentale che avvolge la questione, è il fatto perfettamente semplice che queste due rivendicazioni, qualunque altra cosa siano, sono rivendicazioni contrarie. All’inizio stesso di tutta la discussione sta il fatto elementare che limitare le famiglie è una ragione per abbassare i salari, e non una ragione per alzarli. La limitazione può piacervi per altri motivi, come può dispiacervi per altri motivi. Potete trascinare la discussione verso questioni del tutto diverse, come se le mogli nelle case normali siano schiave. Potete scendere a compromessi per riguardo al datore di lavoro o per qualche altra ragione, e incontrarlo a metà strada prendendo mezza pagnotta o avendo mezza famiglia. Ma le rivendicazioni sono in linea di principio opposte. È tutta la verità in quella teoria della lotta di classe intorno a cui i giornali dicono tante sciocchezze. La piena rivendicazione dei poveri sarebbe di avere quella che considerano una famiglia di grandezza piena. Se la riducete per adattarla ai salari, fate una concessione per adeguarvi alle condizioni capitalistiche. L’applicazione pratica la menzionerò tra un momento; ora sto parlando della primaria contraddizione logica. Se i due metodi possono attuarsi, possono attuarsi in modo da contraddirsi ed escludersi a vicenda. L’uno non ha bisogno dell’altro; l’uno può fare a meno dell’altro o distruggerlo. Se potete rendere il salario più grande, non c’è bisogno di rendere la famiglia più piccola. Se potete rendere la famiglia piccola, non c’è bisogno di rendere il salario più grande. Chiunque può giudicare quale delle due cose il capitalista al potere preferirà probabilmente fare. Ma se ne fa una, non ha bisogno di fare l’altra.
There is of course a great deal more to be said. I have dealt with only one feature of Birth Control—its exceedingly unpleasant origin. I said it was purely capitalist and reactionary; I venture to say I have proved it was entirely capitalist and reactionary. But there are many other aspects of this evil thing. It is unclean in the light of the instincts; it is unnatural in relation to the affections; it is part of a general attempt to run the populace on a routine of quack medicine and smelly science; it is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands; it is ignorant of the very existence of real households where prudence comes by free-will and agreement. It has all those aspects, and many of them would be extraordinarily interesting to discuss. But in order not to occupy too much space, I will take as a text nothing more than the title.
A Piece of Humbug
The very name of “Birth Control” is a piece of pure humbug. It is one of those blatant euphemisms used in the headlines of the Trust Press. It is like “Tariff Reform.” It is like “Free Labour.” It is meant to mean nothing, that it may mean anything, and especially some thing totally different from what it says. Everybody believes in birth control, and nearly everybody has exercised some control over the conditions of birth. People do not get married as somnambulists or have children in their sleep. But throughout numberless ages and nations, the normal and real birth control is called self control. If anybody says it cannot is possibly work, I say it does. In many classes, in many countries where these quack nostrums are unknown, populations of free men have remained within reasonable limits by sound traditions of thrift and responsibility. In so far as there is a local evil of excess, it comes with all other evils from the squalor and despair of our decaying industrialism. But the thing the capitalist newspapers call birth control is not control at all. It is the idea that people should be, in one respect, completely and utterly uncontrolled, so long as they can evade everything in the function that is positive and creative, and intelligent and worthy of a free man. It is a name given to a succession of different expedients, (the one that was used last is always described as having been dreadfully dangerous) by which it is possible to filch the pleasure belonging to a natural process while violently and unnaturally thwarting the process itself.
The nearest and most respectable parallel would be that of the Roman epicure, who took emetics at intervals all day so that he might eat five or six luxurious dinners daily. Now any man’s common sense, unclouded by newspaper science and long words, will tell him at once that an operation like that of the epicures is likely in the long run even to be bad for his digestion and pretty certain to be bad for his character. Men left to themselves gave sense enough to know when a habit obviously savours of perversion and peril. And if it were the fashion in fashionable circles to call the Roman expedient by the name of “Diet Control,” and to talk about it in a lofty fashion as merely “the improvement of life and the service of life” (as if it meant no more than the mastery of man over his meals), we should take the liberty of calling it cant and saying that it had no relation to the reality in debate.
The Mistake
The fact is, I think, that I am in revolt against the conditions of industrial capitalism and the advocates of Birth Control are in revolt against the conditions of human life. What their spokesmen can possibly mean by saying that I wage a “class war against mothers” must remain a matter of speculation. If they mean that I do the unpardonable wrong to mothers of thinking they will wish to continue to be mothers, even in a society of greater economic justice and civic equality, then I think they are perfectly right. I doubt whether mothers could escape from motherhood into Socialism. But the advocates of Birth Control seem to want some of them to escape from it into capitalism. They seem to express a sympathy with those who prefer “the right to earn outside the home” or (in other words) the right to be a wage-slave and work under the orders of a total stranger because he happens to be a richer man. By what conceivable contortions of twisted thought this ever came to be considered a freer condition than that of companionship with the man she has herself freely accepted, I never could for the life of me make out. The only sense I can make of it is that the proletarian work, though obviously more senile and subordinate than the parental, is so far safer and more irresponsible because it is not parental. I can easily believe that there are some people who do prefer working in a factory to working in a family; for there are always some people who prefer slavery to freedom, and who especially prefer being governed to governing someone else. But I think their quarrel with motherhood is not like mine, a quarrel with inhuman conditions, but simply a quarrel with life. Given an attempt to escape from the nature of things, and I can well believe that it might lead at last to something like “the nursery school for our children staffed by other mothers and single women of expert training.”
I will add nothing to that ghastly picture, beyond speculating pleasantly about the world in which women cannot manage their own children but can manage each other’s. But I think it indicates an abyss between natural and unnatural arrangements which would have to be bridged before we approached what is supposed to be the subject of discussion.
C’è naturalmente molto altro da dire. Ho trattato una sola caratteristica del Controllo delle Nascite: la sua origine oltremodo sgradevole. Ho detto che era puramente capitalistica e reazionaria; oso dire di aver provato che era interamente capitalistica e reazionaria. Ma vi sono molti altri aspetti di questa cosa malvagia. È immonda alla luce degli istinti; è innaturale in rapporto agli affetti; è parte di un tentativo generale di far marciare il popolino su una routine di medicina da ciarlatani e di scienza puzzolente; è mescolata con l’idea confusa che le donne siano libere quando servono i loro datori di lavoro ma schiave quando aiutano i loro mariti; ignora la stessa esistenza di veri focolari domestici dove la prudenza viene per libero arbitrio e per accordo. Ha tutti questi aspetti, e molti di essi sarebbero straordinariamente interessanti da discutere. Ma per non occupare troppo spazio, prenderò come testo nient’altro che il titolo.
Un pezzo di ciarlataneria
Il nome stesso di «Controllo delle Nascite» è un pezzo di pura ciarlataneria. È uno di quei clamorosi eufemismi usati nei titoli della Stampa dei Trust. È come «Riforma Doganale». È come «Lavoro Libero». È fatto per non significare nulla, così da poter significare qualsiasi cosa, e in special modo qualcosa di totalmente diverso da ciò che dice. Tutti credono nel controllo delle nascite, e quasi tutti hanno esercitato un qualche controllo sulle condizioni della nascita. La gente non si sposa da sonnambula né fa figli nel sonno. Ma attraverso innumerevoli epoche e nazioni, il normale e reale controllo delle nascite si chiama controllo di sé. Se qualcuno dice che non può assolutamente funzionare, io dico che funziona. In molte classi, in molti paesi dove questi rimedi da ciarlatani sono ignoti, popolazioni di uomini liberi sono rimaste entro limiti ragionevoli grazie a sane tradizioni di parsimonia e responsabilità. Nella misura in cui esiste un male locale di eccesso, esso viene, con tutti gli altri mali, dallo squallore e dalla disperazione del nostro decadente industrialismo. Ma la cosa che i giornali capitalisti chiamano controllo delle nascite non è affatto controllo. È l’idea che le persone debbano essere, sotto un certo aspetto, completamente e assolutamente incontrollate, purché possano eludere tutto ciò che nella funzione è positivo e creativo, e intelligente e degno di un uomo libero. È un nome dato a una successione di diversi espedienti (l’ultimo usato viene sempre descritto come tremendamente pericoloso) mediante i quali è possibile carpire il piacere che appartiene a un processo naturale, mentre violentemente e innaturalmente si ostacola il processo stesso.
Il parallelo più prossimo e più rispettabile sarebbe quello dell’epicureo romano, che prendeva emetici a intervalli per tutto il giorno affinché potesse consumare cinque o sei pranzi lussuosi al giorno. Ora il buon senso di chiunque, non offuscato dalla scienza dei giornali e dalle parole lunghe, gli dirà subito che un’operazione come quella degli epicurei è probabilmente destinata, a lungo andare, a nuocere perfino alla sua digestione e quasi certamente a nuocere al suo carattere. Gli uomini, lasciati a se stessi, avevano abbastanza senno da sapere quando un’abitudine sa manifestamente di perversione e di pericolo. E se fosse di moda, nei circoli alla moda, chiamare l’espediente romano col nome di «Controllo della Dieta», e parlarne in modo altero come di una mera «migliore vita e servizio della vita» (come se non significasse più della padronanza dell’uomo sui suoi pasti), noi ci prenderemmo la libertà di chiamarlo cantilena ipocrita e di dire che non ha alcuna relazione con la realtà in discussione.
L’errore
Il fatto è, credo, che io sono in rivolta contro le condizioni del capitalismo industriale e i fautori del Controllo delle Nascite sono in rivolta contro le condizioni della vita umana. Che cosa possano mai intendere i loro portavoce dicendo che io conduco una «guerra di classe contro le madri» deve restare oggetto di congettura. Se intendono che io faccio alle madri l’imperdonabile torto di pensare che desidereranno continuare a essere madri, anche in una società di maggior giustizia economica e uguaglianza civile, allora penso che abbiano perfettamente ragione. Dubito che le madri possano evadere dalla maternità nel Socialismo. Ma i fautori del Controllo delle Nascite sembrano volere che alcune di esse evadano da essa nel capitalismo. Sembrano esprimere una simpatia per coloro che preferiscono «il diritto di guadagnare fuori casa» o (in altre parole) il diritto di essere una schiava salariata e di lavorare agli ordini di un perfetto estraneo perché costui si dà il caso sia un uomo più ricco. Con quali immaginabili contorsioni di pensiero distorto ciò sia mai giunto a esser considerato una condizione più libera di quella della compagnia con l’uomo che ella stessa ha liberamente accettato, non ho mai potuto, in vita mia, riuscire a capire. L’unico senso che riesco a trarne è che il lavoro proletario, benché ovviamente più servile e più subordinato di quello genitoriale, è tanto più sicuro e più irresponsabile proprio perché non è genitoriale. Posso facilmente credere che vi siano alcune persone che preferiscono davvero lavorare in una fabbrica piuttosto che in una famiglia; poiché vi sono sempre alcune persone che preferiscono la schiavitù alla libertà, e che specialmente preferiscono essere governate piuttosto che governare qualcun altro. Ma penso che la loro contesa con la maternità non sia come la mia, una contesa con condizioni disumane, ma semplicemente una contesa con la vita. Dato un tentativo di evadere dalla natura delle cose, posso ben credere che possa condurre alla fine a qualcosa come «la scuola materna per i nostri figli, con personale composto da altre madri e da donne nubili di preparazione specializzata».
Non aggiungerò nulla a quel raccapricciante quadro, se non speculare piacevolmente sul mondo in cui le donne non sanno gestire i propri figli ma sanno gestire quelli altrui. Ma penso che ciò indichi un abisso tra assetti naturali e innaturali, che dovrebbe esser colmato prima che ci accostassimo a quello che si suppone essere l’argomento della discussione.