106 Foundations of Democratic Dogma
In my callow days I used to think that the radical views
of the family associated with Marxianism were extraneous
—that you could have Marxian economics without Marxian
morals. I now think that this is impossible. It is quite clear,
I think, that it is impossible to modify the institution of
private property as radically as socialism proposes without
an equally radical remodeling of the family and the whole
of sex morality. And this is, again, impossible without an
entire re-education of man in the sentiments connected with
sex and the family—a complete transvaluation of all values
in this sphere. But, more than this, I think it is impossible
to do these things—to remodel radically our institutions of
family and property without remodeling—and as I think
destroying—all our ideas of rights and justice.
The Soviet play Red Rust, produced by the Theater Guild
in New York, illustrates my point precisely. One of the com-
munist girls, “married,” in the communist sense, to a com-
munist leader, cannot rid herself of the old bourgeois ideal
of constancy and is, therefore, sad over the brutal infideli-
ties and cynicism of her partner. To which one of her more
enlightened and hardened sisters replies, “Why should they
be faithful? We are merely female animals.” And indeed
it is hard to find any reason why they should—on these pre-
mises. But there is much more to it than this. The com-
munists in the play speak quite frankly of the whole struc-
ture of morality, including the notions of rights and justice
themselves, as essentially bourgeois virtue, which must dis-
appear in a communist society. Rights and justice have no
meaning except as instruments in the service of the will to
power and survival of the State.
Let us not be deceived by the confüsion of tongues about
us. An objective analysis of the ideologies of both our allies
and our enemies implies neither depreciation of the one nor
sympathy with the other. No economic system or political