d to children and where these cannot be disinherited--in Germany,
in countries with French law, etc.--the children are bound to secure the
consent of their parents for marrying. In countries with English law,
where the consent of the parents is by no means a legal qualification of
marriage, the parents have full liberty to bequeath their wealth to
anyone and may disinherit their children at will. Hence it is clear that
among classes having any property to bequeath the freedom to marry is
not a particle greater in England and America than in France and
Germany.

The legal equality of man and woman in marriage is by no means better
founded. Their legal inequality inherited from earlier stages of society
is not the cause, but the effect of the economic oppression of women. In
the ancient communistic household comprising many married couples and
their children, the administration of the household entrusted to women
was just as much a public function, a socially necessary industry, as
the procuring of food by men. In the patriarchal and still more in the
monogamous family this was changed. The administration of the household
lost its public character. It was no longer a concern of society. It
became a private service. The woman became the first servant of the
house, excluded from participation in social production. Only by the
great industries of our time the access to social production was again
opened for women--for proletarian women alone, however. This is done in
such a manner that they remain excluded from public production and
cannot earn anything, if they fulfill their duties in the private
service of the family; or that they are unable to attend to their family
duties, if they wish to participate in public industries and earn a
living independently. As in the factory, so women are situated in all
business departments up to the medical and legal professions. The modern
monogamous family is founded on the open or disguised domestic slavery
of women, and modern society is a mass composed of molecules in the form
of monogamous families. In the great majority of cases the man has to
earn a living and to support his family, at least among the possessing
classes. He thereby obtains a superior position that has no need of any
legal special privilege. In the family, he is the bourgeois, the woman
represents the proletariat. In the industrial world, however, the
specific character of the economic oppression weighing on the
pro