Since authoritarian society reproduces itself in the structure of the mass individual by means of the authoritarian family, it follows that political reaction must defend the authoritarian family as the basis „of the state, of culture and of civilization“. It can base its propaganda on deep-seated irrational factors in the masses. The German masses would not have accepted a program of „world conquest“. In political propaganda, which is based on mass-psychological effects, one deals not with immediate economic processes, but with human structure. This fact should guide mental hygiene work; its neglect must lead to mass-psychological errors.
Revolutionary sex politics cannot be content with an elucidation of the objective basis of the authoritarian family. If it is to proceed from a mass-psychologically correct standpoint, it will have to make an appeal to the human longing for happiness in life, and happiness in love in particular.
From the standpoint of social development, the family cannot be considered the basis of the authoritarian state, only as one of the most important institutions which support it. It is, however, its central reactionary germ cell, the most important place of reproduction of the reactionary and conservative individual. Being itself caused by the authoritarian system, the family becomes the most important institution for its conservation.
In this connection, the findings of Morgan and of Engels are still entirely correct. But we are not interested here in the history of the family. We are interested in the important problem of how sex-economy must proceed if it is to defeat reactionary sexual and cultural politics which so successfully use the authoritarian family as their pivot. A detailed investigation of the basis and the effects [89] of the authoritarian family is all the more indicated in that, in revolutionary circles also, there is a great deal of confusion on this point.
The authoritarian family contains a contradiction the thorough understanding of which is of decisive importance for a successful sex-economic mental hygiene. The maintenance of the authoritarian family institution requires more than economic dependence of wife and children on husband and father. This dependence can be tolerated only under the condition that the consciousness of being a sexual being is extinguished as far as possible in women and children. The woman is not supposed to be a sexual being, only the producer of children. The idolatrous idealization of motherhood is grossly at variance with the brutality with which mothers among the working population are actually treated. This idealization of motherhood is essentially a means of keeping women from developing a sexual consciousness and from breaking through the barriers of sexual repression, of keeping alive their sexual anxieties and guilt feelings. The very existence of woman as a sexual being would threaten authoritarian ideology; her recognition and social affirmation would mean its collapse. Conservative sexual reform, true, talked of „woman's right to her own body“. But it made the mistake of not presenting this right in concrete terms, of not calling woman, unequivocally and unmistakably, a sexual being, of not defending her as such at least to the same extent as in her role of mother. Furthermore, the conservative sexual reform movement based its policies primarily on the function of procreation instead of giving up the reactionary equation of sexuality and procreation. For this reason, it had no firm stand against mysticism.
One of the supports of the authoritarian family is the ideology of the „blessings of large families“. This ideology is upheld not so much in the interests of imperialistic wars but in the interests of a more important function: that of depreciating woman's sexual function compared with her function of procreation. The antithesis of „mother“ and „whore,“ as for example in the writings of the philosopher Weininger, correspond to the antithesis be-[90]tween sexual desire and procreation in the thinking of the reactionary individual. According to these concepts, the sexual act for pleasure degrades the woman and mother; she who affirms pleasure and lives accordingly is a „whore“. The concept that sexuality is moral only when in the service of procreation is the core of reactionary sex politics. It is no less reactionary when advocated by Communists such as Salkind or Stoliarow.
Imperialistic wars require that there be no rebellion in the women against the function that is imposed on them, that of being nothing but child-bearing machines. That is, the function of sexual gratification must not be allowed to interfere with the child-bearing junction. In addition, no woman who is fully conscious of her sexuality would ever willingly follow the reactionary slogans which purpose her enslavement. This antithesis of sexual gratification and procreation holds only for authoritarian society, not for work democracy. The question is, under what sort of conditions women are to have children: under favorable conditions underwritten by society, or under conditions where there are no adequate institutions for maternal and infant welfare. If, then, women are to bear children without any social protection, without any security for their upbringing, without the right to determine the number of children they will have, and without rebellion against their childbearing function – motherhood must be idealized at the expense of the sexual function of woman.
If we want to comprehend the fact that Hitler's party – like the Center party – gained support precisely from women's votes, we must understand the irrationalism at work in this paradoxical phenomenon. The irrational mechanism is the antithesis of woman as childbearer and woman as sexual being.
If we understand this, we understand the standpoint of fascism as it is expressed in the following: The preservation of the family with many children is a matter of biological concept and national feeling. The family with many children must be preserved not because it is hungry but because it is a highly valuable, indispensable part of the German nation. Valuable and indispensable not only because it alone guarantees the maintenance [91] of the population in the future 1 but because it is the strongest basis of national morality and national culture ...
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1 This is the objective imperialistic function of the large family.
The preservation of the existing large families is synonymous with the preservation of the institution of the large family, because these two problems are identical ... The preservation of this family form is a necessity of national and cultural politics ... This concept is strictly at variance with the demands for an abolition of paragraph 218; it considers unborn life as sacrosanct. For the legalization of abortion is at variance with the function of the family, which is to produce children, and would lead to the definite destruction of the family with many children.
Thus wrote the Völkische Beobachter on October 14, 1931. It means that, in the question of abortion, too, reactionary family politics is the decisive factor; it is much more important than the factors stressed previously, namely, the interest in an industrial reserve army and the interest in cannon fodder for imperialistic war. The argument of the industrial reserve army became practically meaningless during the economic crisis, when there were many millions of unemployed in Germany alone, and over forty million all over the world. When political reaction keeps repeating that the maintenance of the abortion paragraph is necessary in the interest of the family and the „moral order,“ we can no longer doubt that the „authoritarian family“ and „the morality of moralism“ are reactionary forces of decisive weight. We cannot shrug them off as unimportant. It is a matter of giving women a fixation on the authoritarian family by means of suppressing their sexual needs; a matter of the reactionary influence of these women on their men; of safeguarding the effects of reactionary sex propaganda on the millions of women who are sexually suppressed and who tolerate this suppression. It is a great mistake not to follow reaction to wherever it exerts its influence. It must be beaten precisely where it defends its system.
The interest in the authoritarian family as an institution which „preserves the state“ ranks first in every aspect of reactionary sex politics. It is identical with the interest of the middle class in which the family is – or rather used to be – also the economic unit.
[92] It is from this standpoint that fascist ideology views state and society, economics and politics. It is also from this standpoint that reactionary sexology considers the state as an „organic whole“. To the working individuals in modern society, family and social existence are not identical; the family is not economically rooted. For this reason, they are able to recognize the „state“ as a compulsive social institution. In their sexology and sex-economy the „biological“ viewpoint that the state is an „organic whole“ is not valid. The extent to which the working individual is accessible to such a reactionary concept is determined by his authoritarian family upbringing. The lower middle classes and the peasantry would be more inclined to recognize their social responsibility if their family situation were not so interwoven with their economic position.
During the world economic crisis, with the economic ruin of many thousands of small businesses, this connection between family situation and economic situation was loosened. But the much-talked-about tradition of the lower middle classes, that is, their fixation on the authoritarian family, still had its effects. For this reason, they were much more accessible to the fascist ideology of the „large family“ than to the revolutionary concept of birth control; this all the more because the revolutionary movement failed to clarify this question and to put it in the forefront.
As unequivocal as this fact is, we would go wrong if we did not consider it in connection with other, contradictory facts. We must not overlook the contradictions in the sexually inhibited individual. To begin with, there is the decisive contradiction between sex-moralistic thinking and feeling on the one hand and concrete sexual living conditions on the other. For example: In Western Germany, there were a great many birth control leagues, largely of a „Socialist“ character. During the Wolf-Kienle campaign in 1931, a great many women who voted Center or NSDAP party were for the abolition of the abortion paragraph while their own parties were violently against it. These women voted for sex-economic birth control because they wanted to safeguard their sexual gratification. But at the same time they voted for their parties because, unaware of the contradiction, they had in them-[93]selves the reactionary ideology of „pure motherhood,“ of the antithesis of motherhood and sexuality, in brief, authoritarian ideology. True, these women knew nothing of the sociological role of the authoritarian family in dictatorship, but they were under the influence of the sex politics of political reaction: they affirmed birth control but were afraid of the responsibility imposed on them by a revolutionary world.
Sexual reaction, indeed, utilized sexual anxiety for its own purposes in every possible way. In the absence of a sex-economic counter-propaganda, the average middle-class woman with a Christian or Nationalist orientation was, of course, impressed by such propaganda as the following.
In 1918, the „Association for the Fight against Bolshevism“ issued a poster as follows:
German Women!
Do you have any idea what bolshevism threatens you with?
Bolshevism wants the socialization of women:
1. The right of possession of women between the ages of seventeen and thirty-two is abolished.
2. All women are the property of the people.
3. The previous owners retain the right to their wives without waiting in line.
4. Every man who wants to use a woman has to get a certificate from the labor committee.
5. The man cannot claim a woman for himself more often than three times a week and no longer than three hours at a time.
6. Every man is obliged to inform the police of women who refuse to comply.
7. Any man not belonging to the working-class has to pay one hundred roubles a month for the use of this common property.
The vileness of such propaganda is as obvious as its mendacity. Yet the first reaction of the average woman is horror, and the following letter is a typical expression of the reaction of progressive women:
I admit that there is only one way out of the present misery for us working people, and that is socialism. But it must remain within certain reasonable limits and not throw out everything in existence [94] as bad or unnecessary. Otherwise, the result will be a moral chaos much more terrible than the present economic situation. Unfortunately, socialism attacks a very important high ideal: marriage. It is claimed that there should be full freedom, complete licentiousness, sexual bolshevism, as it were. Every individual should be free to live out his sexuality without any bounds. No longer any companionship between man and woman, but living with one one day, with another the next day, according to passing whims. This is what they call freedom, free love, new sexual morality. But these beautiful terms cannot make me oblivious of the great dangers here. It would mean a degrading of the highest and noblest human feelings: love, faithfulness, sacrifice. It is impossible, it is against nature, that a man or a woman could love several people at one and the same time. That would result in a brutalization which would destroy all culture. I do not know what these things look like in the Soviet Union. But either the Russians are peculiar people or else they have not in reality permitted this absolute freedom and still have certain restrictive measures. As good as socialist theories may be, and as completely as I agree with you in all economic questions, I cannot agree in the sexual question, and this often makes me doubt the validity of all of it.
This letter clearly presents the conflict of the average individual: Compulsive sexual morality is contrasted with the idea of sexual chaos. The average individual does not know the sex-economic regulation of sexual life, a regulation which is as different from compulsive morality as it is from sexual chaos. He rebels against the compulsion with promiscuous impulses and must in turn defend himself against these. The moral regulation is a heavy burden and the sexual impulse is experienced as a tremendous danger. The individual brought up in the authoritarian way does not know the natural laws of self-regulation; he is afraid of his sexuality because he has never learned to live it naturally; he has no confidence in himself. Therefore, he declines responsibility for his actions and decisions and demands guidance.
Thus far, the revolutionary movement has had no success with its sex politics because it could not match the successful method of reactionary politics, that of appealing to the sex-negative forces in the average individual. If the reaction had used no propaganda [95] but its population-political thesis, it would not have impressed a soul. But what it did was work successfully on the sexual anxiety of women and girls. It cleverly combined its population-political goals with the compulsive moralistic inhibitions of the people in every stratum of society. Here is another example of the methods of propaganda of the reaction: 2
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2 „Welt vor dem Abgrund“ – “Der Einfluss des russischen Kulturbolschewismus auf die anderen Völker“. Deutscher Volkskalender, 1932.
In their destructive war against the whole bourgeois world, the Bolshevists, from the beginning, paid special attention to the family, „this relic of the cursed old regime“. The plenary meeting of the Comintern of June 10, 1924 declared, „The revolution is powerless as long as the old concepts of family and family relationships continue to exist“. In keeping with this concept, the family was fought violently. Bigamy and polygamy are not prohibited, and, with that, permitted. The attitude of the Bolsheviks is characterized by Professor Goichbarg's definition of marriage as „an institution for more convenient and less dangerous gratification of sexual needs“. The extent of the disintegration of family and marriage under such conditions was shown by the results of the general census in 1927. The Istvestia wrote: „In Moscow, the census revealed numerous cases of polygamy and polyandry. Cases where two or even three women claimed the same man to be their husband were a common occurrence“. It is not surprising, then, that the German professor, Sellheim, describes the family situation in Russia as follows: „It is a complete regression to the sexual order of remote antiquity, from which, over a period of thousands of years, a useful sexual order has developed“.
Compulsive family and marriage life are also attacked by the proclamation of full freedom in sexual intercourse. The well-known Communist Smidowitch published a statement on sexual morality 3 of adolescents, somewhat like the following:
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3 These remarks of Smidowitch were actually meant ironically and implied a criticism of adolescent sex life.
1. Every student of the workers' faculty, including those not of age, is entitled and obliged to satisfy his sexual needs.
2. When a man desires a girl, be it a student, a worker or even [96] a schoolgirl, the girl has to submit to his wishes, otherwise she is considered bourgeois and unworthy of calling herself a Communist.
The Pravda writes openly, „With us, there are only sexual relationships between man and woman, we do not recognize love, love is only something psychological; with us, only physiology counts“. In keeping with this Communist attitude, every woman or girl is under obligation to satisfy the sexual desire of the men. Since they do not do this altogether voluntarily, rape has become a veritable plague in Soviet Russia.
Such lies by the political reaction cannot be made ineffective by being unmasked as lies, nor by protestations such as that one is just as „moral“ as the reactionaries, that the revolution does not destroy the authoritarian family and its moralism, etc. The fact is that the revolution brings with it a change in sexual living, that the old compulsive order disintegrates. One also cannot arrive at a sex-economic orientation if one tolerates in one's own camp ascetic attitudes toward these questions. This we shall have to discuss later.
Revolutionary sex politics failed to explain continuously the sex-economic regulation of sexual life and to comprehend and counteract women's fear of sexual health; it failed, furthermore, to create clarity in its own rank and file by consistently and clearly distinguishing reactionary from sex-economic concepts. Experience shows that the average individual will affirm the sex-economic regulation of sexual life if he is made to understand it.
It is from the concepts of political reaction – which are based economically on the economic conditions of the lower middle classes and ideologically on mysticism – that the anti-revolutionary movement originates. The core of the cultural politics of political reaction is the sexual question. It follows that the core of revolutionary cultural politics also must be the sexual question.
Sex-economy gives the political answer to the chaos which was created by the conflict between compulsive morality and sexual libertinism.
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