their memory, and twenty peoples pillage at will
this legend, translate it into every language, and
surround it with their faith and admiration.
Brutus, the ferocious republican, forget-
ting his lengthy stupidity, chases the tyrants
from his adored rome and without trembling
slaughters his children! and history, in its most
marvelous pages, consecrates such deeds…and
for thirty centuries we have been putting our
children to sleep to tales of these horrors!
roman law puts the sword in the hands of
every father, and whether he sells or assassinates
his sons, asks for no accounting from him.
abraham, Jephte, Brutus, old roman sol-
diers, sleep your sleep of death, for the times have
truly changed. and if, thrown back to life from
As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so
goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986
the bowels of the earth, you were to offer to our
eyes the sight of your still bloodied hands, some
police officers would come to arrest you—and
the king’s prosecutor, his indictment in hand,
would demand justice against you for the pure
and innocent blood you so unjustly spilled.
how the stinginess of our laws would
make you laugh with pity, sublime execution-
ers! Our paltry laws that grant that the harsh-
est and most despotic father may put his son
in prison for only a few months, and that with
great difficulty!
The change is certainly remarkable, the
progress immense. in times past any father
could kill his children at will, and now he can
barely imprison them for a few days!
time will continue its immutable, eternal,
fertilizing course, will kick away this last phan-
tom, and will blow away this final servitude.
no more slavery, no more exploitation,
no more tutelage! emancipation for all: slaves,
proletarians, and minors from birth on.
and so:
no more paternity, always doubtful and
impossible to prove.
no more property, no more inheritance.
classification according to ability, com-
pensation according to work.
consequently:
no more maternity, no more law of blood.
i say no more maternity:
indeed, once woman is delivered and
emancipated from the yoke of tutelage and
protection of man, once she no longer receives
from man her food or wages, once man no lon-
ger pays her the price of her body, then woman’s
existence and social position will derive only
from her own ability and her own works.
For that to happen, the woman must create a work and fulfill a function. and how
could she if she is always condemned to spend
a more or less long period of her life attending
to the upbringing of one or more children?
either the work will be neglected and poorly
done or the child will be badly brought up and
deprived of the care his weakness and lengthy
period of development demand.
You want to liberate woman Well, then
bring the newborn from the bosom of the
blood mother to the arms of the social mother,
the professional nurse, and the child will be better raised, for he will be raised by the woman
who has the ability to raise, develop, and understand childhood; and every woman will be
able to classify herself according to her ability
and receive compensation for her works.
Then and only then will man, woman, and
child all be liberated from the law of blood and
from exploitation of humanity by humanity!
Then each and every woman and each and
every man will be the daughters and sons of
their works and only of their works.
Claire Démar, from “My Law of the Future.” A
member of the utopian-socialist society of Saint-Simonian, Démar committed suicide in her early
thirties in 1833. This pamphlet was discovered on
her desk, an affixed note stating that it should be
“read to the Saint-Simonian family of Paris.” It was
published in 1834. Quoting from the little-known
text in his arcades project, Walter Benjamin
observed that among the writings from the time
about “the future of woman,” Démar’s manifesto was
“unique in its power and passion.”
