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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 community of

women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of

their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common

prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's

wives.

Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and

thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be

reproached with, is that they desire to introduce, in

substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised

community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the

abolition of the present system of production must bring with it

the abolition of the community of women springing from that

system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.