letariat appears in its sharpest outlines only after all special
privileges of the capitalist class are abolished and the full legal
equality of both classes is established. A democratic republic does not
abolish the distinction between the two classes. On the contrary, it
offers the battleground on which this distinction can be fought out.
Likewise the peculiar character of man's rule over woman in the modern
family, the necessity and the manner of accomplishing the real social
equality of the two, will appear in broad daylight only then, when both
of them will enjoy complete legal equality. It will then be seen that
the emancipation of women is primarily dependent on the re-introduction
of the whole female sex into the public industries. To accomplish this,
the monogamous family must cease to be the industrial unit of society.

* * * * *

We have, then, three main forms of the family, corresponding in general
to the three main stages of human development. For savagery group
marriage, for barbarism the pairing family, for civilization monogamy
supplemented by adultery and prostitution. Between the pairing family
and monogamy, in the higher stage of barbarism, the rule of men over
female slaves and polygamy is inserted.

As we proved by our whole argument, the progress visible in this chain
of phenomena is connected with the peculiarity of more and more
curtailing the sexual freedom of the group marriage for women, but not
for men. And group marriage is actually practised by men to this day.
What is considered a crime for women and entails grave legal and social
consequences for them, is considered honorable for men or in the worst
case a slight moral blemish born with pleasure. But the more traditional
hetaerism is changed in our day by capitalistic production and conforms
to it, the more hetaerism is transformed into undisguised prostitution,
the more demoralizing are its effects. And it demoralizes men far more
than women. Prostitution does not degrade the whole female sex, but only
the luckless women that become its victims, and even those not to the
extent generally assumed. But it degrades the character of the entire
male world. Especially a long engagement is in nine cases out of ten a
perfect training school of adultery.

We are now approaching a social revolution, in which the old economic
foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its
complement, prostit