THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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was shattered not on the barrier of sex but on that of class. The class barrier was clearly apparent in 1896, and therefore in the early light of the new woman and her
struggle for freedom, it was apparent in the strike of the female clothing workers in Berlin. Women were forbidden by law to participate in political associations;a
deprivation of rights against which radical bourgeois women were the first to act. But the same bourgeois women used this law at the time as a pretext to leave the
striking female workers in the lurch; — the class barrier cut through the claims of the heart or the seemingly general female solidarity. Thus the question of women's
rights is a function of the social question; as had already occurred to George Sand. And also to almost all earlier utopians: Thomas More demanded total equality, and
Fourier taught that the degree of female emancipation was the natural measure of general emancipation in a society. A state which appears in the guise of Papua down
below will not be able to release women from their minority either, not even from their gilded minority in the ruling class.
In spite of all this, the question remains as to the moving force in this new departure by women. Sex is in fact the moving force within it, but one which steps forward
and seeks to be determined in social terms. It is false of course that only the old maid or even the masculine woman had rebelled. It was predominantly young women
who were stirred by the strange movement in the Nineties. There have always been old maids and masculine women, but for many centuries women were silent in the
community. And women's revolt, although it occurred again and again in between times, had no breadth up to the end of the last century. It only gained support, and
also the aspect of a thorough social utopia, when the capitalist need for forces of production gave it a permit; when the interest in freedom of movement released even
this kind of serf. Though in this connection no more was asked about the moving force in this new departure by women, about the submerged or remotely possible
contents of the sex, than capital asks on the whole about the unusable qualities of its employees. People were measured by results, ultimately only the flexibility of
women was taken into consideration, which was present and treasured in male law even before this so­called emancipation. It was good for badly paid jobs, for
voluntary subordination; this is also a reason why the women's movement went flat. In fact, an undeniable insipidity of women, which the cult of the Virgin Mary so
vehemently refused to admit and which is not predetermined in utopian terms either, was rewarded by capitalist objectification. And politically nothing actually changed
when women were