rty to make the most of our inherent capacity, and human longing
for a higher life will do all the rest."[915] "Socialism will strike
at the root at once of compulsory monogamy and of prostitution by
inaugurating an era of marriage based on free choice and intention,
and characterised by the absence of external coercion. For where the
wish for the maintenance of the marriage relation remains, there
external compulsion is unnecessary; where it is necessary, because the
wish has disappeared, there it is undesirable."[916] "The present
marriage system was based on the general supposition of the economic
dependence of the woman on the man, and the consequent necessity for
his making provision for her which she can legally enforce. This basis
would disappear with the advent of social economic freedom, and no
binding contract would be necessary between the parties as regards
livelihood; while property in children would cease to exist, and every
infant that came into the world would be born into full citizenship
and would enjoy all its advantages, whatever the conduct of its
parents might be. Thus a new development of the family would take
place, on the basis not of a predetermined life-long business
arrangement to be formally and nominally held to, irrespective of
circumstances, but on mutual inclination and affection, an association
terminable at the will of either party. There would be no vestige of
reprobation weighing on the dissolution of one tie and the forming of
another."[917]

Many Socialists, led by Bax, the philosopher of Socialism in Great
Britain, and by Bebel, the head of the Social-Democratic party in
Germany, take a very broad and a very primitive view with regard to
marital relations and to the greater freedom in these relations in the
Socialistic State of the future: "The whole of our sexual morality (as
such), in so far as it has a rational, as opposed to a mystical,
basis, is nothing but a 'plant' to save the ratepayers' pockets by
fixing the responsibility for the maintenance of children on the
individuals responsible for the procreation of them. To the consistent
Socialist, the sexual relation is, _per se_, morally indifferent
(neither moral nor immoral) like any other bodily function, but it
may easily become immoral _per accidentem_, i.e., from the special
circumstances under which it takes place, and whereby it acquires the
character of an act of injustice or treachery, such as seduction of a
friend'