Heterodox
Ludwig Von Mises expanded his erroneous 1920 essay into a book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. The first edition was published in 1922 and the second edition in 1932. Since Von Mises is attempting to be more comprehensive, he treats the socialist advocacy of free love in an early chapter. Being au courant, he writes about Freud. He argues that the bourgeois idea of marriage as a contract, binding on both husband and wife, is an improvement on what came before. But I find it hard to get beyond passages like those below. Here, Von Mises confines women to her supposed role in propagating the human race, as in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: "The radical wing of Feminism, which holds firmly to this standpoint, overlooks the fact that the expansion of woman's
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Ludwig Von Mises expanded his erroneous 1920 essay into a book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. The first edition was published in 1922 and the second edition in 1932.
Since Von Mises is attempting to be more comprehensive, he treats the socialist advocacy of free love in an early chapter. Being au courant, he writes about Freud. He argues that the bourgeois idea of marriage as a contract, binding on both husband and wife, is an improvement on what came before.
But I find it hard to get beyond passages like those below. Here, Von Mises confines women to her supposed role in propagating the human race, as in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale:
"The radical wing of Feminism, which holds firmly to this standpoint, overlooks the fact that the expansion of woman's powers and abilities is inhibited not by marriage, not by being bound to man, children, and household, but by the more absorbing form in which the sexual function affects the female body. Pregnancy and the nursing of children claim the best years of a woman's life, the years in which a man may spend his energies in great achievements. One may believe that the unequal distribution of the burden of reproduction is an injustice of nature, or that it is unworthy of woman to be child-bearer and nurse, but to believe this does not alter the fact. It may be that a woman is able to choose between renouncing either the most profound womanly joy, the joy of motherhood, or the more masculine development of her personality in action and endeavor. It may be that she has no such choice. It may be that in suppressing her urge towards motherhood she does herself an injury that reacts through all other functions of her being. But whatever the truth about this, the fact remains that when she becomes a mother, with or without marriage, she is prevented from leading her life as freely and independently as man. Extraordinarily gifted women may achieve fine things in spite of motherhood; but because the functions of sex have the first claim upon woman, genius and the greatest achievements have been denied her." -- Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, pp. 100-101
Here, Von Mises suggests that women are not capable of the intellectual contemplation possible for men:
"It is clear that sex is less important in the life of man than of woman. Satisfaction brings him relaxation and mental peace. But for the woman the burden of motherhood begins here. Her destiny is completely circumscribed by sex; in man's life it is but an incident. However fervently and whole-heartedly he loves, however much he takes upon himself for the woman's sake, he remains above the sexual. Even woman are finally contemptuous of the man who is utterly engrossed by sex. But woman must exhaust herself as lover and as mother in the service of the sexual instinct. Man may often find it difficult, in the face of all the worries of his profession, to preserve his inner freedom and so to develop his individuality, but it will not be his sexual life which distracts him most. For woman, however, sex is the greatest obstacle.
Thus the meaning of the feminist question is essentially woman's struggle for personality. But the matter affects men not less than women, for only in co-operation can the sexes reach the highest degree of individual culture. The man who is always being dragged by woman into the lower spheres of psychic bondage cannot develop freely in the long run. To preserve the freedom of inner life for the woman, this is the real problem of women; it is part of the cultural problem of humanity." -- L. von Mises, op. cite., pp. 102-103
Here, Von Mises says that it does not matter that women cannot vote or hold elected office, as well as a lot of other vicious nonsense:
"...And now man and woman are equal before the law. The small differences that still exist in private law are of no practical significance. Whether, for example, the law obliges the wife to obey her husband is not particularly important; as long as marriage survives one party will have to follow the other and whether husband or wife is stronger is certainly not a matter which paragraphs of the legal code can decide. Nor is it any longer of great significance that the political rights of women are restricted, that women are denied the vote and the right to hold public office. For by granting the vote to women the proportional political strength of the political parties is not on the whole much altered; the women of those parties which must suffer from the changes to be expected (not in any case important ones) ought in their own interests to become opponents of women's sufferage rather than supporters. The right to public office is denied women less by the legal limitations of their rights than by the peculiarities of their sexual character. Without underestimating the value of the feminists' fight to extend woman's civil rights, one can safely risk the assertion that neither women nor the community are deeply injured by the slights to women's legal position which still remain in the legislation of civilized states.
The misconception to which the principle of equality before the law is exposed in the field of general social relationships is to be found in the special field of relations between those sexes. Just as the pseudo-democratic movement endeavours by decree to efface natural and socially conditioned inequalities, just as it wants to make the strong equal to the weak, the talented to the untalented, and the healthy to the sick, so the radical wing of the woman's movement seeks to make women the equal of men. [Footnote: To examine how far the radical demands of feminism were created by men and women whose sexual character was not normally developed would go beyond the limits set to these expositions.] Though they cannot go so far as to shift half the burden of motherhood on to men, still they would like to abolish marriage and family life so that women may have at least all that liberty which seems compatible with childbearing. Unencumbered by husband and children, woman is to move freely, act freely, and live for herself and the development of her personality.
But the difference between sexual character and sexual destiny can no more be decreed away than other inequalities of mankind. It is not marriage which keeps woman inwardly unfree, but the fact that her sexual character demands surrender to a man and that her love for husband and children consumes her best energies..." -- L. von Mises, op. cite., pp. 104-105
Von Mises' praise for Mussolini's fascism appears to be more well-known that his stated indifference to women not being allowed to vote.