sts, in
common with many Individualists, would considerably extend the list.
Some, for instance, would include the right to possess and bear arms for
the defense of person and property. On the other hand, it might be
objected with good show of reason by other Socialists that such a right
must always be liable to abuses imperiling the peace of society, and
that the same ends would be served more surely if individual armament
were made impossible. Again, some Socialists, like some Individualists,
would include in the category of private acts outside the sphere of law
and social authority the union of the sexes. They would do away with
legal intervention in marriage and make it and the parental relation
exclusively a private concern. On the other hand, probably an
overwhelming majority of Socialists would object. They would insist that
the state must, in the interest of the children, and for its own
self-preservation, assume certain responsibilities for, and exercise a
certain control over, all marriages. They would have the state insist
upon such conditions as mature age, freedom from dangerous diseases and
physical defects. While believing that under Socialism marriage would no
longer be subject to economic motives,--matrimonial markets for titles
and fortunes no longer existing,--and that the maximum of personal
freedom together with the minimum of social authority would be possible
in the union of the sexes, they would still insist upon the necessity of
that minimum of legal control.

The abolition of the legal marriage tie, and the substitution therefor
of voluntary sex union, which so many people believe to be part of the
Socialist programme, is not only not a part of that programme, but is
probably condemned by more than ninety-five per cent of the Socialists
of the world, and favored by no appreciable proportion of Socialists
more than non-Socialists. There is no such thing as a Socialist view of
marriage, any more than there is a Republican or Democratic view of
marriage; or any more than there is a Socialist view of vaccination,
vivisection, vegetarianism, or homeopathy. The same may be said of the
drink evil and tobacco smoking. Some Socialists would prohibit both
smoking and drinking; others would permit smoking, but prohibit the
manufacture of intoxicating liquors; most Socialists recognize the
evils, especially of drunkenness, but believe that it would be foolish
at this time to state in what manner the evils