social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention,
direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The
Communists have not invented the intervention of society in
education; they do but seek to alter the character of that
intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the
ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about
the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the
more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all
family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their
children transformed into simple articles of commerce and
instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams
the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production.
He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited
in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than
that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the
women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away
with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the
virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women
which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established
by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce