Mary E. Marcy gives a materialist analysis of morality, and the crass materialism of bourgeois morality, in this essay on how imperialist interests in World War One required changing old sexual moralities around women at work, marriage, and motherhood to fit new needs. Great stuff.

‘Morals and War Babies’ by Mary E. Marcy from the International Socialist Review. Vol. 15 No. 12. June, 1915.

THE strong men are those who make the morals for society. And we may be sure they make them in their own interests. When kings were absolute autocrats, the King himself “could do no wrong,” and all and all those acts which were for the BENEFIT of the King and the nobility were considered “good” acts, and those acts that were opposed to the security and interests of the King or the nobility were “bad” actions.

If you consider the various morals that have been taught in any nation for the past few years, you will find that nearly every “virtue” so applauded by the Church, the State, the University and the Press is admirable FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE PROPERTY OWNER. The “virtues” are the acquired human characteristics that make the owners of the mines, the railroads, the great factories, shops and mills SECURE in the enjoyment of their wealth; a “virtuous” workingman not only maintains the security of the Rich, but, by his virtue helps to maintain a condition that enables the great Owning Class to acquire still MORE wealth and power.

We are always taught that ANY line of conduct on the part of the working class that will help the great Owners of Wealth in securing MORE wealth, or in the peaceful enjoyment of their wealth, is right, and virtuous and noble and praiseworthy.

The whole nation and, in fact, the whole civilized world teaches you and me, and the whole working class to do the things that are to the interest of the OWNING CLASS.

But the strange feature of the capitalist morality, the things we are taught are “good” or “bad,” change from day to day, overnight if the masters so desire.

About the Babies

When men began to accumulate property and to acquire the desire of bequeathing their property to their sons, the old styles of marriage made way for the new style. Women were made the absolute property of their husbands and a wife was permitted only one husband. This became the law, the custom, the virtue in order that rich men might be certain that their own children, and no others, might inherit their property.

And this is the foundation of the lauded chastity in women, so that men might hand down their property to their own offspring and to the offspring of no other man. When it was considered ‘right and moral’ for women to possess many husbands, no man could know his own children. Virtue in wives was the only insurance men of property had of leaving their wealth to their own sons.

And because the property-owning class has always found plenty of men and women in the working class ready and eager to work for a part of their own products, because the property owners have always had all the soldiers they might need to protect their property and to fight to win more property for them, the unmarried mothers have won only opprobrium and stigma from the state and from society.

The young, unmarried girl who gave birth to a child was shunned and cast out. The babies who were unfortunate enough to be born outside the “bonds of holy matrimony” were permitted to die or starve for all the Capitalist Class did for them. Babies were a drug on the market. Children born to unmarried women were given none of the privileges of the state. Widowed mothers might be entitled to a pension to care for their young; the unmarried mother was barred from any and all consideration.

But the day came with the Great War in Europe when the great Owners of Wealth in England, France and Germany discovered that soldiers were the most important beings in the world for the protection of their property and for acquiring MORE FOREIGN property for them. They discovered that the great Capitalists of the rival nations were planning FUTURE wars wherein to gain more foreign territory and markets, to gain mines, rich lands possessed by them within the boundaries of their own nation.

They saw millions of the young men of their lands killed down in the war and the supply of vigorous young fathers depleted at home. They began to fear that the birth rate would decrease, that fewer babies would be born into the world, to do the world’s work, and to do the future fighting in the interests of the Capitalist Class.

And the morals of the Capitalist Class changed overnight. They changed at the very moment when the Rich of the lands discovered they needed more healthy babies, to fight their battles, to make profits for them, to keep them in security against the Capitalists of foreign nations.

Whole regiments were married in batches, and thousands of healthy young soldiers were encouraged to breed before they went to the front. The German Government issued a proclamation to the effect that it would care for women who were confined for a period of six weeks, whether these women were married or unmarried. Later this same Government came forth with an offer to raise all undesired babies born as a result of the German occupation of Belgium. France promised to pension all mothers, and puritan, honorable Old Mother Grundy England encouraged her soldiers to breed before they died. Young folks were urged into sexual promiscuity in order that England’s “chaste” womankind might have the honor of becoming unmarried mothers for the glory of Old England. To salve over the bridge of this sudden change in front, the English Government has taken the position that children born of the union of soldiers and their mistresses were as respectable as those born in “holy wedlock,” and that the unmarried woman who became a mother had the same right to the care and attention of the state.

And so, suddenly, breeding legally, or without the law, has become respectable, honorable, desirable–to the Great Owners of the European nations now at war.

This is the morality of Capitalism–what it needs is right and noble; the actions opposed to its supremacy, its growth, its security are bad and vicious. When the rising merchants of Europe travelled from one country, or one part of a country, to another, in the eighteenth century, it was counted a brave and gallant deed for the servants of the nobles or for the noblemen themselves to fall upon and rob them of all they possessed. Thieving was a most honorable profession, and the most successful hold-up man wore the biggest plume in his hat.

Today it is considered clever and praiseworthy for those on the inside to juggle the stock markets, in any portion of the civilized world, and deliberately to steal the wealth of the Outsiders. It is the wolves of Wall Street who dine with the Roosevelts and the Tafts. The Lambs are the weak and foolish who have been shorn. This is “good” capitalist ethics. It enables the stronger owners of wealth to rob the weaker owners–legally.

But it has always been considered highly immoral for workingmen, out of employment, to steal clothing to protect themselves from the cold, or to take food to preserve life. It is immoral for poor men to steal because–from the viewpoint of the owners of the wealth of the world such stealing is “bad” for them–it threatens their property.

In the old days when women were allowed more than one husband, just as today men may be perfectly respectable and possess half a dozen women, it was considered the right and proper thing. But when the growing property owners decided that the old, loose form of marriage had to go, in order to insure the property of the man descending to his children, the new morality was straightway endorsed by the Church. Wise Men taught the new morality and it was written upon the Law Books of the lands– just as everything that is needed by the Rich and the Strong–to protect them in their robbery, in their riches and in their strength, has always been made into laws and has always been endorsed by the Church and the Clergy.   

As we run down the pages of history, we find that the paths of Morals make a very crooked line. One day we find the working class was taught one thing, taught to act in one way, because that sort of conduct was required in the interests of the Owners of Property. The next day we find the Masters teaching a new morality in accord with newly developed needs of their own class ever changing rules of conduct, making new laws of morality, new codes of ethics of what was “right” and what was “wrong” for the poor to do–and all taught and enforced for the benefit of the Rich.

It is interesting to note how one day we were taught that robbery was immoral and the next day we were praised and paid and given high offices for perpetrating robbery on the most gigantic scale.

The nobility believed and taught the virtue in robbery only a few score of years ago; but when the Rich began to own vast cities, great railroads, valuable mines and factories, beautiful palaces appropriated by the Rich from the labor of the Poor–the servants of the Rich, the Clergy, the Lawyers, the statesmen, the editors and the teachers, learned to teach the VIRTUE of HONESTY. They said nothing about the wrongs done the laborers when the product of their labor was taken from them by the Masters of the Earth, but they showed us how wicked it was for us to take back any of the wealth the Rich had taken from us.

The preachers said we would burn everlastingly if we stole; the lawyers and statesmen made laws that put us in prison if we laid hands upon the property the Rich had appropriated, and the teachers taught us to believe that decent people would rather starve than touch the property of the master class.

A refined and respectable carpenter who has built a score of homes, for other people, will freeze to death on the streets rather than enter one of those houses which he built but does not own. The honest and religious baker, who has made ten thousand loaves of bread, will starve quietly, decently and in a genteel manner before he will help himself to one of “his” loaves of bread.

You see how this helps out the Rich man. If the starving workers decided that it was the RIGHT and MORAL thing for them to take over the homes they have built, the food and clothing they have made, they might actually force their way into the presence of Plenty and preserve themselves and their wives and children as useful members of society while disturbing the peace and luxury of the Rich, non-working class.

Now, you and I know we have been taught these things. We have been taught them as a PROTECTION to the POSSESSORS of the WEALTH we have produced.

But read the next page. See what the Masters of the Bread have to say since the war began. From pulpits, from the newspapers, from the colleges and stock exchanges, they and their servants are telling the workingmen to gather their guns and to march upon Germany or upon Belgium or France, to go to war in order to “preserve the lives of many workingmen and women.’ On a sudden it is claimed that murder and robbery and destruction is a “right and proper” and noble thing. The men who go forth to fight and slay their neighbors across the border are brave men and heroes, are virtuous and patriotic!

Murder has become the highest and noblest of professions; robbery–not for bread for a starving man or woman, but for whole countries–for the zinc mines of Belgium, the gold mines of Africa, the untold wealth of China–robbery on the most gigantic scale the world has ever known–has been enthroned upon the height of heights. This is because the workingmen are being USED once more to fight the battles of the Owners of the great Countries now at war. They are to be again used, this time to capture the wealth of new lands, as well as old lands, for the great property owners of the warring nations of Europe.

And this robbery is a virtue; this murder extolled. The capitalist class tells us that this war is good and necessary for the preservation of many workingmen. They say murder and robbery and hold-ups are right and noble so long as they are to save the lives of many workingmen. It is only wicked to rob or steal a loaf of bread to save the life of one workingman.

But these are lies. The war is not going to help the workers. The Master class has their paid servants filling the papers and the pulpits and the magazines with articles today to deceive the workers who are fighting and dying. The capitalist class has permitted the death of millions of workingmen and women and raised neither its voice nor its hand. It does not care to preserve us except when it needs us. And it needs the lives of its soldiers today in order that the strongest Capitalist Class of the strongest nation in Europe may reach out and grab millions of dollars’ worth of wealth to add to its already overflowing coffers.

And so this Master Class tells us that the war is our war and that murder and robbery are holy things.

Violence and the Laws

As soon as the owning class began to accumulate great wealth they began to put the soft pedal on violence. They, who had won their great lands, their rich mines, their harbors and privileges through bloodshed and violence, taught the working class to depend upon legal battles, because they made the laws, and knew that violence would always be a menace to their own security. For the masses hold the power when it comes to hands or to arms. And the college professors echoed the refrain and taught us that violence is a relic of barbarism, while the State, the Judges, and lawyers, the police and armies killed and imprisoned and punished the workers who refused to adopt the new boss morality.

But there is no institution, no custom, no law, no religion but bends the knee before the needs of the great Capitalists. Institutions are as changeable as the needs of the ruling classes change and evolve.

Violence that was “bad” yesterday has become “virtue” today. Though “the destruction of property” was “immoral” last week, it is greatly to be desired this week, provided we destroy the property of the Great Capitalist across the national boundary lines who is trying to prevent us from seizing his spoils for the Capitalist Class in our own nation.

If ten millions of workingmen shouldered their guns to take and hold England for the English workers, Germany for the German workers, France for the French laboring class, they would be called murderers, thieves, bandits, brigands, traitors. They are only praised when they follow the flag to steal zinc mines for the German Capitalist Class, or African possessions for the English Owning Class.

Men are decorated with the Iron Cross, are given titles, and high positions, who invent war machines capable of destroying whole cities, entire armies, and vast industries for the benefit of a great capitalist group of one nation at the expense of the great capitalist group of another nation. This kind of violence and murder is rewarded with the highest honors, is wreathed in a halo of virtuous verbiage— because it serves the interest of the strongest owning group of a particular nation.

And with the needs of the capitalists for more soldiers, the chastity of woman has ceased to be a virtue. Child-bearing has become the noblest of professions. Since there are too few husbands to go around, young girls are urged to become impregnated, to yield to the Army Boys and to become mothers of future sons for future armies.

Slavery was “ordained of God” said the preachers, the editors, the Governments and their laws, so long as the owning class needed slaves to work their land and perform their labor. It only became immoral when the strongest owning group discovered that wage-labor was more profitable to them than slave-labor.

Men guilty of minor offenses are sold into actual slavery by the State officials of Florida to the Turpentine Kings, at so much per head, because men cannot be hired for wages to endure the rigors, the agonies of a Turpentine camp. And so slavery flourishes today in America, under the banner of Church and State and Respectability, because it fills a need of the Capitalist Class in that part of the country.

So much for what is taught us in the name of morals. It matters not what evil we may do, to what hideous barbarity we may sink, to what ignominy we may fall, so long as we burn, or rob, or murder in the interests of the ruling class, the great property owners of the world. All that we do will be garbed in. the broad mantle of Patriotism, Heroism, Loyalty, so long as we do not act in our own interests, in the interests of those who perform all the useful work of the world.

To the Master Class, morality is solely a question of expediency. They have always used us to serve their interests and to fight their battles. But we are learning to understand the forces at work about us. We have learned that the comfort, the happiness, the welfare of the men and women who perform the world’s work is the most important thing under the heavens.

And we are more and more setting ourselves to so unite the workers that they may arise in their great strength and take the world for themselves-to make of it a world wherein all may labor and all may enjoy, and where every healthy man and woman shall perform some useful function in society-shall enjoy the benefits of the Great Brotherhood of Labor!

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v15n12-jun-1915-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf