Extensive and conscientious therapeutic work on the human character has taught me that, in judging human reactions, we have to take into account three different layers of the biopsychic structure. As I have shown in my book, CHARACTER-ANALYSIS, these layers are autonomously functioning representations of social development. In the superficial layer, the average individual is restrained, polite, compassionate and conscientious. There would be no social tragedy of the animal, man, if this superficial layer were in immediate contact with his deep natural core. His tragedy is that such is not the case. The superficial layer of social cooperation is not in contact with the biological core of the person, but separated from it by a second, intermediary character layer consisting of cruel, sadistic, lascivious, predatory and envious impulses. This is the Freudian „unconscious“ or „repressed“; in sex-economic language, it is the sum total of the „secondary impulses“. Orgone biophysics has shown that the Freudian unconscious, the antisocial element in the human structure, is a secondary result of the repression of primary biological impulses. If one penetrates through this second, perverse and antisocial layer, one arrives regularly at a third, the deepest layer, which we call the biological core. In this deepest layer, man, under favorable social conditions, is an honest, industrious, cooperative animal capable of love and also of rational hatred. In character-analytic work, one cannot penetrate to this deep, promising layer without first eliminating the false, sham-social surface. What makes its appearance when this cultivated mask falls away, however, is not natural sociality, but the perverse antisocial layer of the character.
As a result of this unfortunate structure, every natural social or libidinous impulse from the biological core must, on its way to action, pass the layer of the perverse secondary impulses where it becomes deflected.
This deflection changes the originally social [viii] character of the natural impulse into a perverse impulse and thus inhibits any natural life manifestation.
We can now apply our insights into human structure to the social and political field. It is not difficult to see that the diverse political and ideological groups in human society correspond to the various layers of human character structure. We do, of course, not follow idealistic philosophy in its belief that this human structure is eternal and unalterable. After social conditions and changes have formed the original biological needs into the character structure, the latter, in the form of ideologies, reproduces the social structure.
Since the decline of the primitive work-democratic organization, the biological core of man has remained without social representation. That which is „natural“ in man, which makes him one with the cosmos, has found its genuine expression only in the arts, particularly in music and painting. Until now, however, it has remained without any essential influence upon the form of human society, if by society is meant not the culture of a small rich upper crust but the community of all people.
In the ethical and social ideals of liberalism we recognize the representation of the superficial layer of the character, of self-control and tolerance. The ethics of this liberalism serve to keep down „the beast“ in man, the second layer, our „secondary impulses,“ the Freudian „unconscious“. The natural sociality of the deepest, nuclear layer is alien to the liberal. He deplores the perversion of human character and fights it with ethical norms, but the social catastrophes of this century show the inadequacy of this approach.
All that which is genuinely revolutionary, all genuine art and science stems from the natural biological nucleus. Neither the genuine revolutionary nor the artist or scientist has been able thus far to win over and lead masses or, if so, to keep them in the realm of the life interests.
In contradistinction to liberalism, which represents the superficial character layer, and to genuine revolution, which represents the deepest layer, fascism represents essentially the second character layer, that of the secondary impulses.
At the time when this book was originally written, fascism was generally regarded a „political party“ which, like any other „social group,“ was an organized representation of a „political idea“. According to this concept, the fascist party „introduced“ fascism by force or by „political manoeuvre“.
Contrary to this concept, my medical experience with individuals from all kinds of social strata, races, nationalities and religions showed me that „fascism“ is only the politically organized expression of the average human character structure, a character structure which has nothing to do with this or that race, nation or party but which is general and international. In this characterological sense, „fascism“ is the basic emotional attitude of man in authoritarian society, with its machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical view of life.
It is the mechanistic-mystical character of man in our times which creates fascist parties, and not vice versa.
Even today, as a result of fallacious political thinking, fascism is still being considered a specific national characteristic of the Germans or the Japanese. The stubborn persistence of this fallacy is due to the fear of recognizing the truth: fascism is an international phenomenon which permeates all organizations of human society in all nations. This conclusion is confirmed by the international events of the past 15 years.
From this first fallacy all other misinterpretations follow logically. To the detriment of genuine endeavors for freedom, fascism is still regarded as the dictatorship of a small reactionary clique. My character-analytic experience, however, shows that there is today not a single individual who does not have the elements of fascist feeling and thinking in his structure. Fascism as a political movement differs from other reactionary parties in that it is supported and championed by masses of people. I am fully conscious of the responsibility involved in such statements. I could only wish, in the interest of this battered world, that the [x] working masses had an equal realization of their responsibility for fascism.
One has to distinguish ordinary militarism from fascism. Germany under the Kaiser was militaristic, but not fascist.
Since fascism, always and everywhere, appears as a movement which is supported by the masses of people, it also displays all the traits and contradictions present in the average character structure: Fascism is not, as is generally believed, a purely reactionary movement; rather, it is a mixture of rebellious emotions and reactionary social ideas.
If, by being revolutionary, one means rational rebellion against intolerable social conditions, if, by being radical, one means „going to the root of things,“ the rational will to improve them, then fascism is never revolutionary. True, it may have the aspect of revolutionary emotions. But one would not call that physician revolutionary who proceeds against a disease with violent cursing but the other who quietly, courageously and conscientiously studies and fights the causes of the disease. Fascist rebelliousness always occurs where fear of the truth turns a revolutionary emotion into illusions.
In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character. To the narrow-minded sociologist who lacks the courage to recognize the enormous role played by the irrational in human history, the fascist race theory appears as nothing but an imperialistic interest or even a mere „prejudice“. The violence and the ubiquity of these „race prejudices“ show their origin from the irrational part of the human character. The race theory is not a creation of fascism. No: fascism is a creation of race hatred and its politically organized expression. Correspondingly, there is a German, Italian, Spanish, Anglo-Saxon, Jewish and Arabian fascism. The race ideology is a true biopathic character symptom of the orgastically impotent individual.
The sadistic perverse character of the race ideology is also seen in the attitude toward religion. Fascism, we are told, is the [xi] arch-enemy of religion, and a regression to paganism. On the contrary, fascism is the extreme expression of religious mysticism. As such it appears in a specific social form. Fascism is based on that religiosity which stems from sexual perversion; it changes the masochistic character of the old patriarchal religions into a sadistic religion. It takes religion out of the other-world philosophy of suffering and places it in the sadistic murder in this world.
Fascist mentality is the mentality of the subjugated „little man“ who craves authority and rebels against it at the same time. It is not by accident that all fascist dictators stem from the milieu of the little reactionary man. The captains of industry and the feudal militarist make use of this social fact for their own purposes. A mechanistic authoritarian civilization only reaps, in the form of fascism, from the little, suppressed man what for hundreds of years it has sown in the masses of little, suppressed individuals in the form of mysticism, top-sergeant mentality and automatism. This little man has only too well learned the way of the big man and now gives it back, enlarged and distorted. The Fascist is the top-sergeant type in the vast army of our sick civilization. One cannot with impunity beat the tom-tom of high politics before the little man.
The little top-sergeant has outdone the imperialistic general in everything: in martial music, in goose-stepping, in giving orders and obeying them, in the deadly fear of thinking, in diplomacy, strategy and tactics, in uniformed strutting and in medals. In all these things a Kaiser Wilhelm appears as a poor bungler compared with Hitler. When a „proletarian“ general covers his chest with medals, on both sides, and from the shoulders to the belt, he demonstrates the little man trying to outdo the „real“ great general.
One must have thoroughly studied the character of the suppressed little man and must have learned to see things as they take place behind the facade, if one is to understand the forces on which fascism is based.
In the rebellion of the masses of abused people against the empty niceties of a false liberalism (I do not mean genuine liberalism and genuine tolerance) the character layer of the secondary impulses was expressed.
One cannot make the Fascist harmless if, according to the politics of the day, one looks for him only in the German or Italian, or the American or the Chinese; if one does not look for him in oneself; if one does not know the social institutions which hatch him every day. One can beat fascism only if one meets it objectively and practically, with a well-grounded knowledge of the life processes. One cannot equal it in politics, in diplomacy or strutting. But it has no answer to practical questions of living, for it sees everything only in the mirror of ideology or in the form of the state uniform. When one hears a fascist character of whatever hue preach about the „honor of the nation“ (instead of the honor of man) or about the „salvation of the sacred family and the race“ (instead of the society of working individuals), if he lets out a stream of empty slogans, one only has to ask him this: „What are you doing to feed the nation, without plundering or killing other nations? What do you, as a physician, do against the chronic diseases, or as an educator for the happiness of children, or as an economist for the elimination of poverty, or as a social worker for the mothers of too many children, or as a builder for more hygienic living conditions? Give us a concrete, practical answer or shut up!“
Clearly, international fascism will never be vanquished by political manoeuvres. It can only be vanquished by the natural organization of work, love and knowledge on an international scale.
As yet, work, love and knowledge have not the power to determine human existence. More than that, these great forces of the positive life principle are not even conscious of their strength, their indispensability and their decisive role in the determination of human existence. For this reason, human society, even after the military defeat of party fascism, continues to hover at the brink of the abyss. The downfall of our civilization is inevitable if those who work, and the natural scientists in all branches of life (not death), and those who give and receive natural love, do [xiii] not become conscious, in time, of their gigantic responsibility.
Will human and social freedom, will self-regulation of our lives and that of our children come about peacefully or by force? Nobody can tell. But those who know the living function in the animal, in the newborn or in the true worker, be he a mechanic, a researcher or an artist, cease to think in those terms created by party systems. The living function cannot „seize power by force,“ for it would not know what to do with power. Does that mean that life will forever be at the mercy of political gangsterdom, that the politicians will forever suck its blood? No, it would be wrong to draw this conclusion.
As a physician, I have to treat diseases, as a researcher I have to disclose unknown facts in nature. If, now, a political wind-bag were to try to force me to leave my patients and my microscope, I would not let myself be disturbed but would, if necessary, throw him out. Whether or not I have to use force in order to protect my work on the living function against intruders does not depend on me or my work but on the intruders' degree of impertinence. Let us assume that all those who do work on the living function were able to recognize the political wind-bag in time. They would act in the same way. Perhaps this over-simplified example gives a partial answer to the question as to how the living function, sooner or later, will defend itself against its intruders and destroyers.
The MASSENPSYCHOLOGIE DES FASCHISMUS took shape during the years of the German crisis of 1930 to 1933. It was written in 1933. The first edition appeared in September 1933 and the second in April 1934 in Denmark.
Over ten years have passed since. The elucidation of the nature of the fascist ideology met with much approval, an approval which only too often was merely enthusiastic because neither did it spring from knowledge nor did it lead to action. The book was smuggled across the German border in great numbers, often under disguise, and was enthusiastically received by the illegal [xiv] revolutionary movement in Germany. The Fascists banned it in 1935, together with all our publications on political psychology. 1
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1 The following decrees were published in the Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt: No. 213 13.April 1935
Auf Grund der VO vom 4.2.33 werden die Druckschriften „Was ist Klassenbewusstsein“ von Ernst Parell, „Dialektischer Materialismus und Psychoanalyse“ von Wilhelm Reich, Nr. 1 und 2 der politisch-psychologischen Schriftenreihe des Verlages für Sexualpolitik, Kopenhagen-Prag-Zürich, sowie alle übrigen in der gleichen Schriftenreihe noch erscheinenden Druckschriften für Preussen polizeilich beschlagnahmt und eingezogen, da sie geeignet sind, die öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung zu gefährden.
41230/35 II 2 B 1. Berlin, 9.4.35 - Gestapo
No. 2146 7.Mai 1935
Auf Grund der VO des Reichspräsidenten vom 28.2.33 wurde die Verbreitung aller ausländischen Druckschriften der politisch-psychologischen Schriftenreihe der Sex.Pol. (Verlag für Sexualpolitik, Kopenhagen, Dänemark, auch Prag. Tschechoslowakei. und Zürich, Schweiz) im Inland bis auf weiteres verboten.
III P 3952/53 Berlin, 6.5.35 - R.M.d.I.
Parts of it were reprinted in France, America, Czechoslovakia, Scandinavia, and other countries, and it was extensively reviewed and discussed. It was only the economistic party Socialists and the paid party officials who never were able to make anything of it. The Communist parties in Denmark and Norway, for example, fought it violently and branded it as „counter-revolutionary“. On the other hand, it was characteristic that youths with a revolutionary feeling, though members of fascist organizations, understood and appreciated the sex-economic elucidation of the irrational race theory.
In 1942, the suggestion came from England to translate the book into English. Thus I was confronted with the task of examining the book, ten years after its publication, as to its validity. The result of this examination reflects the tremendous changes in thought which have taken place during the past decade. It was also the touchstone for the correctness of sex-economic sociology and its applicability to the social revolutions of our century. Thus, when I started out to correct and expand the book which I had not looked at for years, I experienced vividly the errors in thinking of fifteen years ago, the revolutions in thinking which [xv] had taken place since then, and the magnitude of the tasks with which science is confronted in overcoming fascism.
To begin with, I had good reason to be gratified. The sex-economic analysis of fascist ideology not only stood the test of time, but, more than that, the past ten years confirmed it in all essential points. It survived the decline of the economistic concepts with which the German Marxist parties had tried to master fascism. It means something that, ten years after its publication, there is a new demand for the book. This is more than any Marxist publication of ten years ago, whose authors had condemned sex-economy, can say for itself.
The revolutions in thinking which had taken place since the publication of the second edition in 1934 expressed themselves as follows:
Around 1930 I had not even an inkling yet of the natural work-democratic relationships between working people. The then young sex-economic insights into human structure formation were put into the framework of the thinking of the Marxist parties. At that time I was working in liberal, Socialist, and Communist cultural organizations, and in my presentation of sex-economy I was forced to use the current Marxist sociological slogans.
The tremendous gap between sex-economic sociology and vulgar economism made itself felt even then in many painful disputes with various party officials. But since I still believed in the basically scientific nature of the Marxist parties, there was one thing I could not understand: why the party people fought the social effects of my medical work particularly violently just when masses of employees, industrial workers, small businessmen, students, etc., were coming with a thirst for knowledge about life to the organizations with a sex-economic orientation. I shall never forget the „Red Professor“ who in 1928 was sent from Moscow to one of my addresses to students, in order to defend the „party line“ against me. This man declared, among other things, that „the Oedipus complex is nonsense,“ that there isn't any such thing. Fourteen years later, his Russian comrades were being killed by the hordes of Führer-subservient machine men.
[xvi] Really one would have expected that parties which pretended to be fighting for human freedom would have welcomed my political-psychological work. As the archives of our Institute prove abundantly, the exact opposite was the case. The greater the social effects of the mass-psychological work, the more violent were the counter-measures of the party politicians. As early as 1932, the Socialist as well as the Communist organizations, over the vigorous protest of their own members, prohibited the distribution of the works published by the Verlag für Sexualpolitik, then in Berlin. I was threatened with execution as soon as Marxism should gain power in Germany. In 1932, against the explicit wish of their members, the Communist organizations in Germany banned sex-economic physicians from their meetings, as the Social Democrats in Austria had done as early as 1929 and 1930. I was expelled from both organizations because I introduced sexology into sociology and pointed out its implications for human structure formation. Between 1934 and 1937, it was again and again the officials of the Communist parties who reminded the fascist circles in Europe of the „dangerousness“ of sex-economy. The sex-economic publications were turned back at the Soviet Russian border as were the masses of fugitives who tried to escape German fascism. These are facts which cannot be countered by any argument.
These happenings, which at the time of their occurrence seemed absolutely senseless, became entirely understandable when, recently, I revised this book. The sex-economic psychological and biological findings had been put into the terminology of vulgar Marxism like a square peg into a round hole. When, in 1938, I revised my book, DER SEXUELLE KAMPF DER JUGEND, I had found that every word pertaining to sex-economy was as valid as eight years previously, while every party slogan which had found its way into the book had become meaningless. The same is true of the present book.
Today it has become absolutely clear that fascism is not the deed of a Hitler or Mussolini, but the expression of the irrational structure of the mass individual. Today it is clearer than ten years [xvii] ago that the race theory is biological mysticism. Today, one is closer to an understanding of the orgastic longing as a mass phenomenon than ten years ago; there is more of a general inkling of the fact that fascist mysticism is orgastic longing under the conditions of mystification and inhibition of natural sexuality. The sex-economic statements in the book showed themselves to be as true as ten years ago, and to be further confirmed by the experiences of the past ten years. The Marxist party slogans in the book, on the other hand, were all shown to be erroneous; they all had to be replaced.
Does that mean that the economic theory of Marxism is fundamentally wrong? I should like to clarify this question by an illustration. Is the microscope of Pasteur's time, or Leonardo da Vinci's water pump „wrong“?
Marxism is a scientific economic theory which stems from the social conditions of the early 19th century. However, the social process did not stand still, but developed into the fundamentally different process of the 20th century. In this new social process, it is true, we find all the basic elements of the 19th century, just as in the modern microscope we find the basic structure of that of Pasteur, and in the modern plumbing system the basic principle of Leonardo's pump. But one like the other would be of no use to us today. They have been surpassed by fundamentally new processes and functions which correspond to fundamentally new concepts and techniques. The Marxist parties in Europe failed and declined because they tried to comprehend fascism of the 20th century, a fundamentally new phenomenon, with concepts belonging to the 19th century. They declined as social organizations because they failed to keep alive the developmental possibilities inherent in any scientific theory. I do not regret my many years' work as a physician in Marxist organizations. I owe my sociological knowledge not to books, but primarily to the practical experience of the struggles on the part of the masses for a decent, free existence. The best sex-economic insights, in fact, were gained as a result of the errors in thinking on the part of the masses, the errors which brought them the fascist pestilence. To me as a physician, the working individual with his [xviii] everyday concerns was accessible in a way he never is to a party politician. The party politician saw only the „worker's class“ which he was going to „fill with class consciousness“. I saw the living being, man, as he was living under social conditions of the worst kind, conditions which he had created himself, which, characterologically anchored, he carried within him and from which he tried in vain to free himself. The chasm between economistic and bio-sociological conception became unbridgeable.
The theory of the „class individual“ became replaced by the knowledge of the irrational nature of the society formed by the animal, man.
Today everyone knows that the economic concepts of Marx have permeated modern thinking, even though a great many economists and sociologists are not aware of the origin of their views. Such concepts as „class,“ „profit,“„exploitation,“ „class struggle,“ „commodity,“ „surplus value,“ etc., have become common property. On the other hand, there does not exist today any party which could claim to be the heir and the true advocate of the scientific achievements of Marx when it comes to facts of social development instead of mere slogans which are no longer in keeping with the facts.
Between 1937 and 1939 there developed among the workers in the field of sex-economy in Scandinavia and Holland the new concept of work democracy. The present edition contains a presentation of the essence of this new sociological concept. It comprises the best and still valid sociological findings of Marxism. At the same time, it takes into account the social changes which the „worker“ has undergone during the past hundred years. I know from experience that it will be exactly the „legitimate representatives of the workers,“ the past and the coming „leaders of the international proletariat“ who will fight this extension of the concept of the worker, by calling it „fascist,“ „Trotskyist,“ „counter-revolutionary,“ etc. But organizations of workers which, for example, discriminate against or exclude Negroes and thus practice Hitlerism, have no claim to be considered organizations fighting for a better and freer society. Hitlerism is not confined to Germany; it permeates workers' organizations and all kinds of [xix] liberal and democratic circles. Fascism is not a political party but a specific Weltanschauung and a specific attitude toward people, toward love and work. The politics of the prewar Marxist parties has no future. Just as the concept of the sexual energy perished within the psychoanalytic organization and arose anew, young and vigorous, from the discovery of the orgone, so did the concept of the international worker perish in the Marxist party doings and arise anew in the framework of sex-economic sociology. For the activities of the sex-economist are possible only in the framework of all other socially necessary work, and not in the framework of a reactionary, mystical and non-working life.
Sex-economic sociology was born out of the attempts to harmonize the depth psychology of Freud with the economic theory of Marx. 1
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1 Cf. Reich, Wilhelm: „The 'living productive power, working power' of Karl Marx“. Internat. J. of Sex-economy and Orgone-Research 3, 1944, 151 ff.
Human existence is determined by instinctual and socio-economic processes. But we must refute any eclectic attempts at an arbitrary combination of „instinct“ and „economy“. Sex-economic sociology dissolves that fateful contradiction which made psychoanalysis forget the social factor and made Marxism forget the animal origin of man. As I once put it, psychoanalysis is the father and sociology the mother of sex-economy. But a child is more than the sum of its parents. It is a new, independent being with a future of its own.
In accord with the new, sex-economic concept of „work,“ the following changes in terminology were made in the process of revising this book. The concepts „communistic,“ „socialistic,“ „class-conscious“ were replaced by such sociologically and psychologically unequivocal terms as „revolutionary“ and „scientific“. What they mean is „radically changing things,“ „rationally active,“ „going to the roots of things“.
The change in terminology takes into account an important fact: today it is no longer the Communist and Socialist parties but, in opposition to them, many unpolitical people and groups of people of all shades of political opinion who are developing more and more a revolutionary attitude, who, in other words, are [xx] striving for a basically new, rational social order. There is a rather general awareness of the fact that the world, in its fight against the fascist pestilence, has entered a phase of a gigantic international revolution. The concept „proletarian“ was coined more than a hundred years ago to connote a stratum of society which was deprived of all rights. True, there are still such groups, but the great-grandchildren of the proletarians of the 19th century have developed into specialized, technically trained industrial workers who are socially responsible and conscious of their skills. The term „class consciousness“ has to be replaced by „work consciousness“ or „social responsibility“.
In the Marxism of the 19th century, „class consciousness“ was limited to the manual workers. The other working people in vitally necessary professions, without which society could not function, were distinguished from this „proletariat“ as „intellectuals“ and „petit-bourgeois“. This schematic and obsolete distinction was a major contributing factor in the victory of fascism in Germany. The concept of „class consciousness“ is not only too narrow; it does not even correspond to the structure of the class of manual workers. „Industrial work“ and „proletarian“ are, therefore, replaced by the concepts of „vitally necessary work“ and the „working individual“.
These two concepts comprise all who do socially vital work, that is, in addition to the industrial workers, the physicians, teachers, technicians, laboratory workers, writers, social administrators, farmers, scientific workers, etc. This eliminates a chasm which has done much to disrupt working human society and thus has contributed to fascism, be it the black or the red variety.
Marxist sociology, out of its ignorance of mass psychology, contrasted the „bourgeois“ with the „proletarian“. This is erroneous. A certain character structure is not limited to the capitalist, but pervades the working people in all professions. There are revolutionary capitalists and reactionary workers. There are no characterological class distinctions in the biophysical depth of human structure. The fascist pestilence makes it clear that the [xxi] economistic concepts of „bourgeoisie“ and „proletariat“ have to be replaced by the characterological concepts of „reactionary“ and „revolutionary“ Dialectic materialism as outlined by Engels in his ANTI-DÜHRING developed into biophysical functionalism. This development was made possible by the discovery of the biological energy, the orgone (1936-1939). Sociology and psychology were put on a solid biological foundation. Such a development cannot remain without influence on thought. As thinking develops, old concepts change and new concepts take the place of obsolete ones. The Marxist „consciousness“ was replaced by „dynamic structure,“ „needs“ by „orgonotic instinctual processes,“ „tradition“ by „biological and characterological rigidity,“ etc.
The vulgar-Marxist concept of „private enterprise“ was irrationally misinterpreted to mean that the revolutionary development of society would bring about the abolition of all private property. Of course, the political reaction made capital of this misinterpretation. As a matter of fact, the development of social and individual freedom has nothing to do with the so-called „abolition of private property“. The Marxist concept of private property did not pertain to people's shirts, pants, typewriters, toilet paper, books, beds, savings, residences or plots of land. It referred, exclusively, to the private possession of the social means of production which determine the social process, such as railroads, power plants, mines, etc. The „socialization of the means of production“ became a bogey because it was confused with the „expropriation of private property“ such as chickens, shirts, books, residences, etc. During the past hundred years, socialization of the means of production has reduced their private ownership in all capitalistic countries, in varying degrees.
Because the structure and the incapacity for freedom of the working people made them unable to adapt to the tremendous development of the social organizations, it came to pass that the „state“ exercised functions which properly would have been those of the „society“ of the working people. In Soviet Russia, the [xxii] alleged acropolis of Marxism, there is no trace of a „socialization of the means of production“. The Marxist parties had failed to distinguish „socialization“ from „nationalization“. The present war has shown that the American government, e.g., has the right and the means to nationalize poorly functioning industrial plants. A socialization of the means of production, their transfer from the private ownership of individuals to society is a much less frightening concept if one begins to realize that today, as a result of the war, there are in the capitalist countries only few independent private owners left while there are a great many collective owners responsible to the government; and if one further realizes that in Soviet Russia the state factories are in no way at the disposal of the workers, but of groups of government officials. The socialization of the means of production will not be possible until the masses of the working people become structurally capable of administering it, that is, not until they are conscious of their responsibility. Today, this is not true of the majority of them. Furthermore, a socialization of large enterprises in the sense that the administration would be entirely in the hands of the manual workers, with the exclusion of the technicians, engineers, managers, etc., would be sociologically and economically senseless. Today, not even the manual workers themselves would entertain such an idea. If that were not so, the Marxist parties would have long since come into power everywhere.
This is the main sociological reason why the private economy of the 19th century changes everywhere to an increasing degree into a state-capitalistic economy. In the strictly Marxist sense, there is not even in Soviet Russia a state socialism but a state capitalism. According to Marx, the social condition „capitalism“ does not consist in the existence of individual capitalists, but in the existence of the specific „capitalist mode of production,“ that is, in the production of exchange values instead of use values, in wage work of the masses and in the production of surplus value, which is appropriated by the state or the private owners, and not by the society of the working people. In this strictly Marxist [xxiii] sense, the capitalistic system continues to exist in Russia. And it will continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack responsibility and to crave authority.
Sex-economic structural psychology adds the characterological and biological to the purely economic comprehension of society. The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people.
Furthermore, the political ideology of the European Marxist parties operated with purely economic conditions characteristic of a span of about two hundred years of mechanical development from the end of the 17th to the 19th century. Fascism of the 20th century, on the other hand, threw into focus the basic questions of the human character, of mysticism and the craving for authority, problems pertaining to a span of 4-6000 years. Here also, vulgar Marxism tried to put a square peg into a round hole. Sex-economic sociology deals with a human structure which did not develop during the past two hundred years, but which reflects a patriarchal-authoritarian civilization of thousands of years' standing. More than that, it asserts that the excesses of the capitalist era of the past three hundred years (predatory imperialism, exploitation of workers, racial suppression, etc.) would not have been possible at all without that typical structure of the masses which is expressed in their longing for authority, their mysticism and their incapacity for freedom. The fact that this structure is not naturally given but produced by social and educational factors does not change its effects but points to the possibility that it can be changed. Thus, the standpoint of sex-economic biophysics is, in the best and strictest sense of the word, infinitely more radical than that of the vulgar Marxists, if by being radical one means „going to the root of things“.
From all this it is obvious that the fascist mass pestilence, with its background of thousands of years, cannot be mastered with social measures corresponding to the past three hundred years.
[xxiv] The discovery of the natural biological work democracy in international human intercourse is the answer to fascism. This will be no less true even if not one of the living sex-economists, orgone biophysicists or work democrats should live to see its general functioning and its victory over the irrationalism in social life.
W.R. - August 1945
