The Proletarian in the Home

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DEAR COMRADE – In summarising Clara Zetkin’s Gotha speech for JUSTICE, November 7, I pointed out that at this great Socialist Congress there had been no room for “middle class molasses” on the subject of propaganda amongst women (Frauenagitation). I had also written that in the discussion upon comrade Zetkin’s speech there were “neither stupid old jokes nor Baxian absurdities.” The Censor, however, altered “Baxian” into “other absurdities.” I am glad to see that you, comrade editor, in this week’s JUSTICE, November 14, at once mark your disapproval of such censorship, and kindly justify my adjective by publishing Bax’s letter on the “Proletarian in the Home.”

I do not know whether Clara Zetkin will answer the wild and whirling Bax. But meantime I point out that at the mere mention of women poor Bax so entirely loses all self-control that he cannot even read. At least, I assume, he was too excited to read my summary, because the only alternative is to assume that he deliberately misquotes. “In the report of Clara Zetkin’s paper,” says Bax, “it appears she alleged woman in the present day to occupy the position of the proletarian in the home.” The report says nothing of the sort. The report says: “Frau Zetkin, starting with a quotation from Engels, ‘in the family the man is the bourgeois, the woman represents the proletarian” went on to show,” &c. As Bax is quite capable – where women is concerned he would out Habbakuk Habbakuk – of saying my summary is wrong. I give the official German report: “In dieser sozialen Rechtlosigkeit liegt nach Engels eine der ersten und ältesten Formen der Klassenherrschaft; er sagt; ‘in der Familie ist der Mann der Bourgeois, die Frau dagegen repräsentirt das Proletariat.'” So it is not the woman, Clara Zetkin, whom Bax is controverting, but the man, Frederik Engels. Now Bax has recently referred in JUSTICE to Engels as an authority. It is as well, therefore, that readers of JUSTICE should know Engels by no means agreed with Bax’s morbid views about women. As to Bax himself, he surely does not need to be reminded of what Engels thought of his womenphobia. -Yours fraternally,

Eleanor Aveling Marx
Sydenham, November 16, 1896.

[There is no point in Mrs. Aveling’s reference to the alteration of “Baxian” to “other” in her report. Any expression of the kind in anything but a letter is obviously, and as Mrs Aveling well knows, not permissible. In a letter, no one but the writer being responsible, no alteration can be made, it must be either inserted in toto or rejected. – Ed.]