Contents |
1. ITS CONTENT
The theoretical pivot of German fascism is its race theory. The economic program of the so-called twenty-five points plays no other role in fascist ideology than that of the means to an end: „The bettering of the German race and its protection against race mixture“. Race mingling, according to the National Socialists, means not only the decline of the „higher race“ but also the decline of culture. Therefore, „Keeping pure the race and the blood“ is the primordial task of a nation and is worth any sacrifice. This theory was put into practice in every conceivable way in the form of the persecution of the Jews.
The race theory is based on the premise of the „inexorable law of nature“ that each animal copulates only with an animal of its own species. Only extraordinary circumstances, like captivity, can temporarily invalidate this law and lead to race mixture. Nature, however, takes revenge: it makes the resulting bastards or their progeny sterile. Any crossbreeding of two individuals of a „higher“ with a „lower“ race must result in something intermediate between the two. Nature, however, intends a higher development; thus bastardization is contrary to nature. The selection of the higher species is seen also in the daily struggle for a living, in which the weaker, that is, the racially inferior, individuals, succumb. This is the „will of nature,“ for every higher development would cease if the inferior races, who are a numerical majority, were to push aside the superior races who are a numerical minority. Nature submits the inferior races to more severe living conditions which keep down their members; among [64] the superior races, on the other hand, it does not permit indiscriminate procreation but demands a ruthless selection according to health and strength.
This law, they say, also applies to nations. History shows that „blood mixture“ of Aryans with „inferior“ peoples always results in a decline of culture, in a decline of the physical and mental level of the „higher“ race and the beginning of a progressive decay.
„The Germanic inhabitant of the American continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed,“ says Hitler, „rose to be master of the continent; he will remain the master as long as he does not fall victim to defilement of the blood,“ that is, as long as he does not mix with non-Germanic peoples. „To bring about such a development means nothing less than sinning against the will of the Eternal Creator“ (MEIN KAMPF, p. 286).
Such views are unequivocally mystical: nature „wills“ and „regulates“. They are the logical continuation of biological metaphysics.
According to Hitler, humanity is divided into three kinds of races: those who establish culture, those who develop culture, and those who destroy culture. As founders of culture only the Aryans come into consideration, for they are responsible for „the foundation and the walls of human creation“. The Asiatic peoples, like the Japanese 1 and Chinese, have only taken over Aryan cultures and developed them into their own cultures.
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1 Political irrationalism showed itself in the clearest form in the later military pact of the Übermenschen with the Untermenschen.
The Jews, however, are a culture-destroying race. The existence of „lower races“ was always the prerequisite of the formation of higher culture. The first human culture rested on the utilization of lower races. At first it was not the horse but the vanquished race which pulled the plow. The Aryans subjugated the lower races and subordinated them to their will. But as soon as the vanquished races learned the language and the way of living of the „masters,“ and the barrier between master and slave was lowered, the Aryan relinquished the purity of his blood and lost his „paradise“. And [65] with that, he lost his capacity for culture. We do not forget that Hitler represents the very flower of culture.
He writes: Blood mixture and the resultant drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is contained only in pure blood. (MEIN KAMPF, p. 296)
An objective refutation of this concept cannot be given here. This concept borrows an argument from Darwin's hypothesis of natural selection which, in many aspects, is as reactionary as Darwin's finding of the evolution of the higher species from lower organisms was revolutionary. This concept, furthermore, serves to camouflage the imperialistic function of fascist ideology. For if the Aryans are the only race which creates culture, it follows that they are predestined to rule the world. Indeed, one of Hitler's cardinal claims was the expansion of the German Reich, particularly „to the East,“ that is, in Soviet Russian territory.
The glorification of imperialistic war, then, was part and parcel of this ideology: The aim for which we were fighting the War was the loftiest, the most overpowering, that man can conceive: it was the freedom and independence of our nation, the security of our future food supply, and – our national honor. (MEIN KAMPF, p. 177)
What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfilment of the mission allotted them by the creator of the universe. (MEIN KAMPF, p. 214)
What interests us here exclusively is the irrational origin of these ideologies which objectively correspond to the interests of German imperialism; in particular, the contradictions and [66] absurdities within the race theory. For example, the race theorists, in calling to witness a biological law, overlook the fact that the breeding of races in animals is an artifact. The question is not whether cat and dog have an „instinctive aversion“ to mingling, but whether such a thing exists between Dobermans and greyhounds, or Germans and Slavonians.
The race theorists, who are as old as imperialism, wish to create racial purity in peoples in whom mingling, as a result of the spread of world economy, has progressed to such an extent that racial purity no longer exists at all except in the brains of theorists. There is no sense in pointing out that not copulation according to races but promiscuous copulation within the same species is what actually takes place in nature. In this examination of the race theory – a theory which, instead of arriving from facts at valuations, distorts the facts – it is not a matter of its rational content. It would be useless to try to reach a Fascist, convinced as he is of the superiority of the German race, with arguments, if for no other reason because he does not operate with arguments but with irrational feelings. It would be useless to try to show him that a Negro or an Italian is not „racially inferior“ to him. He feels himself the „Master Race,“ and that's that.
There is only one way of invalidating the race theory: the elucidation of its irrational functions. The two most important of these functions are that of providing a biologistic justification for the imperialistic tendencies; and that of expressing certain unconscious emotional tendencies in the nationalist individual and of covering up certain other tendencies. We shall discuss here only the latter function. What interests us is why Hitler speaks of „incest“ when an Aryan mingles with a Non-Aryan while customarily incest means precisely sexual intercourse between blood relatives. What is the background of such nonsense in a „theory“ which presumed to be the basis of a new world, of a „Third Reich“? We must realize that even the irrational, emotional basis of such a hypothesis rests, in the final analysis, in certain conditions of living; we must rid ourselves of the idea that [67] the exploration of the irrational sources of ideologies, even though developed on a rational basis, is itself metaphysics. Then we open an avenue of approach to the sources of metaphysics itself, and comprehend not only its historical basis but also its material substance. The results of this explanation speak for themselves.
2. THE OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE FUNCTIONS OF IDEOLOGY
What leads most frequently to misunderstandings of the relationship between an ideology and its historical function is the failure to distinguish its objective from its subjective function. The concepts of a dictatorship derive directly from the economic base. Thus, the fascist race theory and nationalist ideology in general derive from the imperialistic goals of a leading stratum of society which tries to solve economic difficulties. The German as well as the French nationalism of the first world war appealed to the „greatness of the nation“ behind which were hidden the expansion tendencies of German and French finance. But these economic factors constitute only the social soil on which the corresponding ideology can develop, they are the social prerequisite but not the substance of the ideology itself. Occasionally, nationalism is not even socially represented, much less in harmony with a racial point of view. In the old Austria, nationalism did not correspond to any race, but to the „homeland“ Austria-Hungary. When Bethmann-Hollweg in 1914 appealed to „Germandom“ to rise against „Slavdom“ he should have proceeded, logically, against Austria, a predominantly Slav nation. The economic prerequisites of an ideology, it is true, explain its material basis, but not its irrational core. This core is the character structure of the people who are subject to the respective economic conditions and thus reproduce, in their ideology, the historical economic process. By forming ideologies, people change themselves; the process of ideology formation has a material core. An ideology, then, has a twofold foundation: a direct one in the economic structure of society, and in an indirect one in the typical structure of the people, a structure which in turn is determined [68] by the economic structure of society. Thus the fact becomes understandable that irrational ideology formations create irrational human structures.
The structure of the Fascist proved to be characterized by metaphysical thinking, piety, and the belief in abstract ethical ideas and in the Divine mission of the „Führer“. These traits rested on a basis of a strong authoritarian fixation to a Führer-ideal or the nation. The belief in a „master race“ was the strongest motive for the fixation of the National Socialist masses on the „Führer“ and for their voluntary submission to the status of crawling subjects. Besides this, however, there was another decisive element: the intense identification of the mass individual with the Führer which made him oblivious of his insignificant role as a member of the subject mass. In spite of his submission and dependence, every National Socialist felt himself a „little Hitler“.
The problem is the characterological basis of such attitudes. It is a matter of finding those energy functions which can change human structures in such a manner that they develop such reactionary irrational ideologies; that, in full identification with the „Führer,“ they become oblivious of the insult of being called „Untermenschen“.
If one is no longer blinded by ideological phraseology, if one analyzes its irrational content and realizes its connection with the sex-economic aspects of the process of ideology formation, one is first struck by the stereotyped equation of „race pollution“ and „blood poisoning“. What does this equation mean?
3. RACIAL PURITY, BLOOD POISONING, AND MYSTICISM
„Running parallel to the political, ethical, and moral contamination of the people, there had been, for many years, a no less terrible poisoning of the national body. Especially in the big cities, syphilis was beginning to spread more and more ..“. writes Hitler (MEIN KAMPF, p. 246ff.). „The cause lies, primarily, in our prostitution of love. Even if its result were not this frightful plague, it would nevertheless be profoundly injurious to man, [69] since the moral devastations which accompany this degeneracy suffice to destroy a people slowly but surely. This Jewification of our spiritual life and mammonization of our mating instinct will sooner or later destroy our entire offspring ... Blood sin and desecration of the race are the original sin in this world and the end of a humanity which surrenders to it“. Mixing of races, according to this concept, leads to „blood poisoning of the national body“. „The most visible results of this mass contamination can, on the one hand, be found in the insane asylums, and on the other, unfortunately, in our – children. They in particular are the sad product of the irresistibly spreading contamination of our sexual life; the vices of the parents are revealed in the sicknesses of the children“.
The „vices of the parents“ means only one thing here: that they mingled with Jewish blood, whereby the Jewish „world plague“ found its way into the „pure“ Aryan blood. It is remarkable how closely linked is this theory of pollution with the political thesis of the pollution of Germanism by the „world Jew Karl Marx“. The irrational fear of syphilis is the most potent source of National Socialist political Weltanschauung and antisemitism.
The logical goal is then, of course, the purity of the race, the purity of the blood.
Hitler emphasized again and again that the approach to the masses should not be by way of knowledge, arguments and proof, but only by emotions and belief. The language of National Socialism, as exemplified by Kayserling, Driesch, Rosenberg, Stapel and others, is so mystical and nebulous that this characteristic deserves a special analysis.
The question is, what is behind this fascist mysticism which so greatly fascinated the masses?
The answer can be found in an analysis of the „proofs“ which Rosenberg, in his MYTHUS DES 20. JAHRHUNDERTS,“ adduces for the correctness of the fascist race theory. He writes:
The values of the race soul which are the driving forces behind the picture of the new world, have not yet become living consciousness.
[70] Yet soul means race seen from the inside. Conversely, race is the outer world of the soul.
This is an example of the innumerable typically National Socialist phrases. They seem to disclose no meaning; more than that, they seem to hide any meaning as if intentionally, even from the writer himself. If one does not know the mass-psychological effectiveness of just such mystical phrases, one will also underestimate their great irrational political effect. Rosenberg says further:
Race history, therefore, is natural history and soul mysticism at one and the same time. Conversely, the history of the religion of the blood is the great world history of the ascent and decline of nations, of their heroes and thinkers, of their inventors and artists.
The recognition of this fact, Rosenberg goes on to say, leads to the further recognition that the „struggling of the blood“ and the „inkling of the mysticism of the life process“ are not two separate things, but represent one and the same thing in two different ways. „Struggling of the blood ..“. „mysticism of the life process ..“. „ascent and decline of nations ..“. „blood poisoning ..“. „Jewish world plague“ – all lie in a line which begins with the „struggling of the blood“ and ends in bloody terror against the „Jewish materialism“ of Marx and in the massacre of Jews.
One does not render the cause of human freedom a service by merely deriding this mysticism instead of unmasking it and reducing it to its basic irrational content. The essence of this irrational content is the irrationally mystified energy process, the most extreme expression of reactionary sexual ideology. The ideology of the „soul“ and its purity is the ideology of asexuality, of „sexual purity“. It is, basically, a result of patriarchal authoritarian sexual suppression and sexual anxiety.
„The relationship between blood and environment, between blood and blood, is the ultimate manifestation to which we have access. To search and investigate further back is not granted us,“ [71] says Rosenberg. He is in error: we are immodest enough to search and to discover the living process „between blood and blood“; more than that, in doing so we smash one of the cornerstones of National Socialist ideology.
We shall let Rosenberg himself prove the fact that the core of the fascist race theory is a mortal terror of natural sexuality and its orgasm function.
Rosenberg attempts to prove the thesis that the rise and decline of nations is due to race mixture and „blood poisoning,“ by referring to the ancient Greeks. He states that originally the Greeks represented the purity of the Nordic race. The gods Zeus and Apollo and the goddess Athene were „the symbols of great, genuine piety,“ „protectors of the noble and joyful,“ „teachers of psychic harmony and of artistic values“. Homer, he says, had no interest in the „ecstatic“. Athene represented the symbol of the life-gnawing lightning sprung from Zeus's head, the wise virgin, the protectress of the Hellenic people and its struggle. These highly pious Greek soul creations show the straight, still pure life of Nordic man. They are, in the highest sense, religious testimonials and the expression of confidence in one's own nature (p. 41ff.).
These gods who represent that which is pure, exalted and religious are contrasted to the gods of the Near-Eastern peoples. „While the Greek gods were heroes of the light and the skies, the gods of the Non-Aryans of Asia Minor showed all the traits of earthliness“. Demeter and Hermes were the products of these „race souls“. Dionysos, the god of ecstasies and voluptuous pleasure, signified the „inroad of the foreign race of the Etruscans and the beginning of the decline of Hellas“.
Rosenberg, in order to support his thesis of the race soul, arbitrarily calls the gods who represent a certain aspect of the cultural process, Greek; and others, representing a different aspect of the same Greek culture,he calls foreign gods. The reason why Greek history was misunderstood, he says, was because historical science became „racially prejudiced“ and misinterpreted Hellenism.
[72] With pious awe, great German romanticism feels how ever darker veils are drawn over the bright gods of the heavens, and it plunges deeply into the instinctual, the amorphous, the demoniacal, the sexual, the ecstatic, chthonic, into the adoration of the mother [italics mine. – W.R.]. Yet it still considers all this Greek (p. 43).
Idealistic philosophies do not examine the conditions which lead to this appearance of the „ecstatic“ and „instinctual“ in certain cultural epochs. Instead, they get entangled in the abstract valuation of this phenomenon. This valuation is from the standpoint of that cultural philosophy which feels itself so exalted and above what is „earthy“ (that is, natural) that it perishes from its very exaltation. We, too, arrive at an evaluation of such phenomena, but we derive it from the conditions of the social process which appears as the „decline“ of a culture. In this way, one recognizes the forward-driving and the inhibiting forces; one comprehends the manifestations of the decline as a historical process; and one sights the germs of the new cultural forms which we then help to develop. When Rosenberg, in view of the decline of the authoritarian civilization of the 20th century, points to the fate of the ancient Greeks, he takes the side of the conservative tendencies in history, his assertions of a „renovation“ of Germany notwithstanding. We gain firm ground in our standpoint toward the cultural revolution and its sex-economic core if we succeed in comprehending the standpoint of political reaction.
The reactionary cultural philosopher has only the alternatives of resigning and becoming skeptical or of trying to turn back the wheel of history by „revolutionary“ means. If, however, one recognizes the fact that the decline of the old culture does not signify by any means the decline of civilization as such, but only that of a certain civilization, the authoritarian, one arrives automatically at a different evaluation of positive and negative cultural elements. It is a matter of finding out the revolutionary attitude toward those phenomena which the reactionary considers symptoms of decline. It is characteristic, for example, that [73] in ethnology political reaction favors the patriarchal theory while the revolutionary world adheres to the matriarchal theory. This divergent sociological attitude toward historical facts corresponds to hitherto undiscovered sex-economic processes. Matriarchy – a historically proven fact – is not only the organization of natural work democracy but also that of the sex-economically natural society.2
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2 Cf. Morgan, ANCIENT SOCIETY; Engels, URSPRUNG DER FAMILIE; Malinowski, THE SEXUAL LIFE OF SAVAGES; and Reich, DER EINBRUCH DER SEXUALMORAL.
Patriarchy, on the other hand, has not only an authoritarian economic organization, but also a catastrophically chaotic sex-economic organization.
The church – far beyond the period of its monopolization of science – continued to keep alive the metaphysical thesis of the „ethical nature of man,“ his inherent monogamy, etc. For this reason, Bachofen's findings threatened to turn everything upside down. The amazing thing about the sexual organization of matriarchy was not its completely different blood relationships but its natural self-regulation of sexual life. Its real basis was the absence of private ownership of the social means of production, as shown by Morgan and Engels. Rosenberg, as a fascist ideologist, must deny the historical fact of the origin of ancient Greek culture in matriarchal forms of culture; instead, he propounds the hypothesis that the Dionysic element in Greek culture meant that the Greeks were taking over „foreign elements, physically and psychically“.
Fascist ideology (in contrast to Christian ideology) separates human orgastic longing from the structure created by the authoritarian patriarchy and assigns it to various races: „Nordic“ is equivalent to bright, heavenly, exalted, pure, asexual; „Asiatic“ to instinctual, demoniacal, ecstatic, sexual, orgastic. This explains the fascist refutation of Bachofen's research as „romantic, intuitive“ and as „misinterpreting“ ancient Greek life. In the fascist race theory, the orgasm anxiety of authoritarian man takes an absolute form as the „pure“ which is contrasted to the „animal-like“ and the orgastic. The „Greek,“ the „racial“ element becomes the symbol of what is „pure,“ that is, asexual; the „foreign race,“ [74] the „Etruscan“ is the symbol of the „animal-like,“ and is „lower“.
For this reason, patriarchy is considered the font and origin of Aryan history: On Greek soil, the first world-historically decisive battle was fought between racial values; it was decided in favor of Nordic being. Now, man approaches life from the standpoint of the day, of life. Everything developed from the laws of light and the heavens. From the spirit and the essence of the father all that developed which we call Greek culture, that greatest heritage of antiquity for our own selves. – Rosenberg.
The patriarchal authoritarian sexual order developed from the fundamental changes taking place in late matriarchy, such as economic independence of the chief's family from the maternal tribe, increasing barter trade between the tribes, development of the means of production, etc. This patriarchal sexual order then became the basis of authoritarian ideology by depriving women, children and adolescents of sexual freedom, by making a commodity out of sexuality, and by putting sexuality in the service of economic suppression. Under these circumstances, sexuality, in fact, came to be distorted into something demoniacal which had to be restrained. Under the pressure of patriarchal demands, the chaste sensuality of matriarchy appeared as the raging of sinister elements. The Dionysic turned into „sinful desire,“ into something which patriarchal culture can experience only as chaotic and „filthy“. With the development of distorted, lascivious, sexual structures, patriarchal man becomes enmeshed in an ideology in which „sexual“ becomes inextricably associated with „filthy,“ „low“ and „demoniacal“.
The fact should not be overlooked that this evaluation of sexuality receives, secondarily, a rational justification.
With the institution of chastity, women, under the pressure of their sexual needs, become unchaste. The natural orgastic sensuality of the men is replaced by sexual brutality which in turn gives the women the feeling that the sexual act debases them. Extramarital sexual intercourse is by no means effaced from the [75] earth. But, as a result of its different evaluation and of the abolition of the matriarchal institutions for its protection, it comes into conflict with official morality and comes to lead a backstairs existence. With the changed social position of extramarital intercourse the manner of experiencing sexuality changes also. The conflict which now exists between nature and a „higher“ morality disturbs the capacity for gratification. Sexual guilt feelings disturb the natural course of the orgastic process. This results in sexual stasis, and the dammed-up sexual energies seek an outlet through all kinds of pathological channels. Neuroses, perversions and antisocial sexuality become permanent social phenomena. Infantile and adolescent sexuality, which in the original work democracy of matriarchy was affirmed and socially underwritten, comes to be systematically suppressed. This distorted, disturbed, brutalized and debased sexuality in turn supports the very ideology to which it owes its existence. The denial of sexuality can now, rightly, be justified by the dogma that sexuality is something inhuman and filthy. What is overlooked, however, is the fact that this filthy sexuality is not natural sexuality but the specific sexuality of patriarchy. Sexology of the patriarchy of the past few hundred years has never made this distinction. This failure makes it altogether sterile.
We shall see later in which manner religious mysticism becomes the organized representation of these evaluations and ideologies. Here we only want to point out a difference between religious mysticism and National Socialist fascism. Religious mysticism denies the sex-economic principle altogether and stamps sexuality as a sin from which only the hereafter can save one. National Socialist fascism, on the other hand, imputes sensual sexuality to the „alien race“ and debases it in this manner. Depreciation of the „alien race“ thus fits organically into the imperialism of late patriarchy.
Just as in Christian mythology God never appears without his counterpart, the devil, „The God of Hades,“ and the victory of the heavenly God over the God of Hades becomes the symbol of human betterment, so does Greek mythology reflect the fight [76] between orgastic biosexuality and ascetic demands. To the abstract moralist and the mystifying philosopher, this fight appears as the fight of two „essences“ or „human ideas,“ one of which is a priori evaluated as low, the other as „essentially human“ and „higher“. If, however, one reduces this „fight of the essences“ – as well as their evaluation – to their material origin, if one realizes their true role in the social process and also the role of sexuality as a factor in history, one arrives at the following facts: Every tribe which developed out of a matriarchal order into a patriarchal order had to change the sexual structure of its members. This was necessary because the shift of power and wealth from the democratic clans to the authoritarian family of the chief was achieved essentially by means of suppressing the sexuality of the members of society. In this manner, sexual suppression came to be an essential part of the division of society into classes.
Marriage and the dowry laws became the core of the change from one organization to the other. 3
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3 The ethnological proof for this statement was presented in my book, DER EINBRUCH DER SEXUALMORAL.
To the same extent to which the power of the men, especially the chief, was enhanced by the marriage tribute of the gens of the woman to the family of the man, these men had an economic interest in preserving the marital bonds. For at this stage of development, only the man had an interest in marriage, not the woman. In this way, the simple marriage of natural work democracy, which could easily be dissolved at any time, changed into the permanent monogamous marriage of patriarchy. It became the central patriarchal institution which it has remained to this day. The maintenance of these marriages, however, required progressive restriction and debasement of natural genital strivings. This was the case not only in the more and more exploited „lower“ class. The other strata, which previously had not known any conflict between sexuality and morals, developed this conflict to an increasing degree. For compulsive morality acts not only from without; rather, it exerts its full influence only when it has become internalized, when it has become structural sexual inhibition. During [77] various stages of this process, one or the other aspect of the conflict will predominate. In the early stages the sexual needs will have the upper hand, in later stages the compulsive moralistic inhibition. At times of political upheavals of the total social organization, the conflict between sexuality and compulsive morality becomes most acute. This will impress some people as the „collapse of morality,“ other people as „sexual revolution“. At any rate, the idea of the „decline of culture“ is the perception of the breakthrough of natural sexuality. The only reason why it is experienced subjectively as „decline“ is the fact that it threatens the compulsive moralistic way of living. What happens objectively is only the downfall of the sexual dictatorship which maintains the compulsive moralistic forces in the individuals in the interest of authoritarian marriage and family. Among the ancient Greeks, whose written history begins only with the fully developed patriarchy, we find the following sexual organization: men's rule, courtesans for the higher strata, prostitution for the middle and lower strata, and, along with this, miserable, enslaved wives who functioned only as child-bearing machines. The men's rule of the Platonic age is definitely homosexual. 4
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4 The same principle governs the fascist ideology of the male leader's stratum (Blüher, Roehm, etc.).
The contradictions in the sex-economy became evident at a time when the Greek state declined politically and economically. To the Fascist Rosenberg it appears that during the Dionysian epoch the „chthonic“ element becomes „mixed“ with the „Appollonic“ element, resulting in the decline of both. The phallus, writes Rosenberg, comes to be the symbol of Greek Weltanschauung. To the Fascist, the return of natural sexuality is a symptom of decline, of lasciviousness and sexual filth. This corresponds not only to the fascist way of looking at these things, but also to the actual manner in which people experience sexuality in such epochs. The „Dionysian feasts“ corresponded to the various costume balls, etc., of our reactionary strata. If one really knows what goes on at such festivities, one will not make the common error of considering these „Dionysian“ activities as [78] genuine sexual experiences. Nowhere does the conflict between increasingly conscious sexual desire and moralistically disturbed capacity for gratification become as obvious as at such festivities. According to Rosenberg, „Dionysos' law of unlimited sexual gratification means the uninhibited mixing of races between the Hellenes and Asiatics of all tribes and varieties“. Imagine that a historian in the year 4000 would describe the sexual feasts of the 20th century as an uninhibited mixing of the Germans with the Negroes and Jews „of all tribes and varieties“!
Here, the meaning of the concept of racial mixing becomes quite clear. It means a defense against the Dionysian, which defense has its roots in the interest of patriarchal society in marriage. For this reason, we see in the history of Jason the development of compulsive marriage as a defense against the courtesans.
„Courtesans“ are women who rebel against the yoke of compulsive marriage and insist on their right to sexual self-determination. This demand, however, is in conflict with their early education which made them incapable of full sexual experience. Therefore, the courtesan engages in all kinds of adventures in order to escape her homosexuality, or she continues to be torn between the two strivings. The male counterpart is the homosexuality of the men who escape from compulsive marriage to the courtesan or homosexual boys and thus try to restore their capacity for sexual experience.
The sexual structure of the Fascists, understandably, is similar to that of the Platonic age because they affirm patriarchy in its strictest form and actually, on the basis of their familial way of living, reactivate the sexual life of the Platonic age: „purity“ in the ideology, pathological disturbances in actual sexual life. Rosenberg and Blüher recognize the state only in the form of a men's state on a homosexual basis. It is interesting to see how from this ideology develops the concept of the worthlessness of democracy. Pythagoras is rejected because he advocated the equality of all people, because he was „the prophet of democratic Tellurism, of the common possession of goods and women“. The almost inseparable connection between common possession [79] of „goods“ and of „women“ plays a central role in the anti-revolutionary struggle. The democratization of Roman patrician rule – up to the fifth century three hundred families of the nobility provided three hundred senators – is ascribed to the fact that, beginning with the fifth century, mixed marriages between patricians and plebeians were permitted, which resulted in a „racial decline“. Here, the reactionary character of the race theory discloses itself in pure form. For now it is stated that sexual intercourse between Greeks or Romans of different classes is race mixing. Members of the suppressed class are equated with members of an alien race. At another place, Rosenberg refers to the workers' movement as the „ascending human asphalt of the cities with all the offal of the Asiatics“.
That is, behind the idea of mixing with foreign races is the idea of sexual intercourse with members of the suppressed class. Behind this, in turn, is the tendency of political reaction to draw sharp lines which is possible economically, but is made impossible, as far as sexual morality is concerned, by the sexual suppression of middle-class women. Sexual intermingling between the classes, however, means a dangerous weakening of class rule; it means a „democratization,“ that is, sexual proletarization of the „noble“ youth. For the lower strata – in any social order – produce sexual concepts and ways of living which are extremely dangerous to the ruling class in any authoritarian order. 5
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5 Cf. the evaluation of the „impure caste“ in East-Indian patriarchal society.
The fact that behind the idea of race mixing is the idea of mixing with members of the ruled class provides the answer to the question, What role does sexual repression play in class society? We should not assume a mechanical relationship between sexual suppression and material exploitation. The functions of sexual suppression are much more complicated.
We shall mention only two:
1. Since sexual suppression takes its origin from the economic interests of marriage and inheritance, it begins in the ruling class itself. The morality of chastity, at first, applies most severely to [80] the female members of the ruling class. This is for the purpose of preserving the possessions which were gained through exploitation of the lower strata.
2. In early capitalism and in the feudal Asiatic cultures the ruling class is as yet not interested in the sexual suppression of the ruled strata. With the development of an organized labor movement and the resulting social betterment of the masses, their sex-moralistic inhibition sets in. Only now does the ruling caste begin to show an interest in the „morality“ of the suppressed. With the development of an organized working-class, then, there goes hand in hand an opposite process, that of an ideological adaptation to the ruling class.
In this process, however, the existing forms of sexual living do not get lost. They continue to exist alongside the moralistic ideologies which become more and more anchored; this results in the previously described conflict between reactionary and revolutionary structure in the same individuals. Historically, the development of this mass-psychological conflict coincides with the transition from feudal absolutism to bourgeois democracy. True, the exploitation only changed its form; but this change of form resulted in a characterological change in the masses. This is the fact which Rosenberg mystifies when he writes that the earth god, Poseidon, was forced by Athene, the goddess of asexuality, to rule in the ground below her temple in the shape of a snake, similar to the „Pelasgic python dragon“ beneath Apollo's temple in Delphi. „But not everywhere did the Nordic Theseus kill the beasts of Asia Minor; as soon as Aryan blood would relax its watchfulness, the foreign monsters would spring up again and again, that is, Near-Eastern bastardy and the physical robustness of the Eastern people“.
It is clear what is meant by „physical robustness“: that sexual naturalness which distinguishes the working people from the ruling class and which, in the course of the „democratization,“ gradually disintegrates, without, however, getting lost entirely. The snake Poseidon and the python dragon are a symbol of the phallus, that is, of genital sensuality. Genital sexuality has indeed [81] been forced underground in the structure of society and of its people, but it is not destroyed. The feudal upper stratum which has an immediate interest in the denial of natural sexuality (cf. Japan) feels itself endangered by the more natural sexual forms of living among the suppressed strata. This all the more because the ruling class has not only not vanquished its own sensuality, but sees it reappear in its own circles in distorted and perverse forms. The sexual forms of the masses, therefore, mean not only a psychological but also a social danger to the ruling class; in particular, the latter sees a threat to its family institution. As long as the ruling castes are economically strong and in the ascendency, as for example the English bourgeoisie of the middle of the 19th century, they are able to maintain their sex-moralistic differentiation from the masses. In times when their rule becomes insecure, and even more so in times of definite crises, as, for example, since the beginning of the 20th century in Middle Europe and England, the moralistic fetters of sexuality begin to loosen within the ruling stratum itself.
The disintegration of sexual moralism begins with a liquidation of the family ties while at first the lower middle classes, in full identification with the upper middle classes and its morality, become the real advocates of official antisexual morality. A natural sex life must appear a particularly serious danger to the maintenance of the sexual institutions at a time of an economic decline of the lower middle classes. Since the lower middle classes are the mainstay of the authoritarian order, this order is vitally interested in their „morality“ and „purity“. For there could hardly be any more serious danger to the dictatorships than if the lower middle classes were to lose their sex-moralistic attitude to a degree corresponding to their intermediate economic position between industrial workers and upper middle class. For in the lower middle classes, too, the „Python dragon“ lies in wait, ready to break his fetters and with that the political reaction of the middle classes. This is why an authoritarian regime, in critical times, always accentuates the propaganda for „morality“ and for the „consolidation of marriage and the family“. For the authoritarian family is the bridge from [82] the miserable social position of the lower middle class to the reactionary ideology. If the compulsive family is undermined by economic crises, by proletarization of the middle class or by war, this also seriously threatens to undermine the structural anchoring of the authoritarian system in the people. This problem will need extensive discussion. We must agree, then, with the National Socialist biologist and race theorist Leng who said at a meeting of the National Socialist society „Deutscher Staat“ in 1932 that the authoritarian family is the core of culture politics. We may add that it is the core not only of reactionary but also of revolutionary politics because these findings have far-reaching social consequences.
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