Contents |
1. THE INTEREST IN THE CHURCH
If we are to formulate the tasks of sex-economic mental hygiene, we must pay the closest attention to the modes of attack and defense of political reaction on the front of cultural politics. We cannot do away with the mystical slogans of reaction by calling them „diversion maneuvers“. As we have said: If reaction is successful with a certain ideological propaganda, this success cannot be due simply to „obfuscation“; rather, in each and every instance there must be a mass-psychological problem. There must be in the masses an as yet unrecognized process which enables them to think and act against their own vital interests. This is a decisive problem.
For without this behavior of the masses, political reaction would be powerless. The strength of fascism lies only and alone in the readiness of the masses to accept its ideologies, in the „mass-psychological soil“. A full understanding of this is, therefore, imperative.
Increasing economic pressure on the masses of the working people is always accompanied by an increasing pressure of compulsive morality. This can have only one function: that of preventing a rebellion of the working masses against the economic pressure by accentuating their sexual guilt feelings and their moral dependence on the existing order. The question is, how does this take place?
Since permeation with mysticism is the most essential mass-psychological groundwork for the acceptance of fascist ideology, [98] an understanding of fascist ideology is not possible without a study of the psychological effect of mysticism in general.
When, in the spring of 1932, after the fall of Brüning, the government of von Papen 1 assumed the helm, one of its first steps was the institution of measures for a „stricter moral education of the nation“. The government of Hitler continued this policy in an accentuated form. 2
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1 Papen paved the way for Hitler and later played an important role as fascist diplomat.
2 An illustration is the following news item of August, 1933: CONCENTRATION CAMP FOR „IMMORAL“ EXCURSIONISTS. Hamburg. The police authorities of Hamburg have instructed their officers to pay special attention to the behavior of sport people who often „neglect the simplest rules of public morals“. The police authorities have stated publicly that they will show no mercy and will interne offending canoers in a concentration camp so they can there receive training in decent moral behavior.
In an edict concerning education the following was said:
Youth will be geared to its difficult future only if it is governed by the idea of the state and the nation ... and that means education to responsibility and readiness for sacrifice for the whole. Softness and too much consideration for every individual inclination are out of place with a youth which will have a difficult role in life. Only then will youth be rightly prepared for their service to the state and the nation if ... they have been made accustomed to adjusting themselves to the discipline of education and to submitting willingly to its authority ... Education to a genuine national feeling must be complemented and deepened by a German culture which is based on the historical cultural values of the German people ... by a deepening of our historical Germanism ... Education to a national feeling derives its greatest inner strength from the truths of Christianity ... Faithfulness and responsibility toward nation and fatherland have their deepest anchoring in the Christian faith. For this reason, it will always be my highest duty to safeguard the free development of the Christian school and of the Christian fundamentals of all education.
We must ask ourselves wherein rests this much-praised strength of mystical faith. When political reaction states that national feeling derives its greatest strength from „the truths of Christianity,“ it is entirely correct. Before demonstrating this, however, we will have to summarize briefly certain differences with regard [99] to the concept of Christianity within the reactionary camp itself.
National Socialist and Wilhelmian imperialism differ in that the mass-psychological basis of National Socialism is a pauperized middle class while that of the German Empire was a flourishing middle class. Therefore the Christianity of the Empire was different from that of National Socialism. Yet, the ideological changes that have been made do not change the basis of the mystic Weltanschauung in the least; rather, they accentuate its function.
National Socialism, in the person of its ideological exponent Rosenberg, who belonged to the right wing, repudiated the Old Testament as „Jewish“. Similarly, the internationalism of the Catholic church was branded as Jewish. The international church was to be replaced by the „German national church“. After the seizure of power, the church was, indeed, „gleichgeschaltet“; this restricted the scope of its political power while at the same time it extended its ideological and moral sphere of influence considerably.
No doubt one day the German people will find a form for their knowing and experiencing God, a form in keeping with its Nordic blood. Not until then will there be the complete trinity of blood, belief and the state“ (Gottfried Feder, „Das Programm der NSDAP und seine weltanschaulichen Grundlagen“).
An identification of the Jewish God with the Holy Trinity had to be avoided at all costs. The embarrassing fact was that Jesus himself was a Jew. But Stapel soon found a way out of the embarrassment: since Jesus was a son of God, he could not be considered a Jew. The Jewish dogmata and traditions were to be replaced by the „experiencing of one's own conscience,“ indulgence by the „idea of personal honor“.
The belief in a life hereafter is refuted as „witchcraft of the South Seas“. The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary was treated similarly. With regard to the latter, Scharnagel states:
He [Rosenberg] confuses the dogma of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin, i.e., her freedom from original sin, with the dogma of the virgin birth of Jesus.
[100] The success of religious mysticism has always been great because its core has been the teaching of original sin, which means the sexual act for pleasure.
National Socialism retains the motif and only utilizes it with a different ideology, one which serves its own purposes: The cross is the symbol of the teaching of the sacrificed lamb which ... by the horrible presentation of pain depresses us and makes us humble, as the tyrannical churches want us to be ... A German church will in time, in the churches it will take over, present, in place of the crucifixion, the teaching spirit of the fire, the hero in the highest sense of the word (Rosenberg, l.c., p. 577).
It is only a matter of changing the fetters: Masochistic international religious mysticism is to be replaced by the sadistic narcissistic mysticism of Nationalism. Now it is a matter of recognizing German National honor as the ultimate yardstick of behavior. [The State] will give every religious belief every conceivable freedom and will in no way interfere with any kind of moral teachings – provided that they do not conflict with the preservation of national honor. (MEIN KAMPF – Translation by T.P.W.)
As we have seen, the ideology of national honor derives from the authoritarian order, and this in turn from the sex-negating sexual order. Christianity and National Socialism alike support the institution of compulsive marriage. To the former it is – apart from procreation – “a full lifelong communion“; to the latter, it is a biological institution for the preservation of racial purity. Outside of compulsive marriage, they do not recognize a sexual life.
National Socialism intends to maintain religion not on a historical but on a „present-day“ basis. This is because of the disintegration of Christian sexual morality, a process which cannot be stemmed by pointing to historical necessity alone.
The Völkische race state will have to find, sooner or later, its deepest anchoring in religion. Only when the belief in God is no longer con-[101]nected with a certain historical event of the past but with the specific being and acting of the people and the state as well as the individual, in an everlasting experience – only then will our world again have a solid basis. (Ludwig Haase, in Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte 1, Nr. 5, p. 213).
We know what „specific being and acting“ means: being „moral,“ that is, sex-negating.
Nothing shows more clearly what in religion is not essential for its reactionary function and what is essential than the aspects in which the National Socialists felt they had to differentiate themselves from the church and those which they advocate in common with the church. 3
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3 True, the National Socialists rescinded the Prussian concordat (of July 7, 1929) and the Bavarian concordat (of July 5, 1930). But that was merely a matter of an endowment of 4,122,370 RM. On the other hand, the increase in church taxes in Bavaria to 19.7 million RM. in 1931 (a year of severe economic crisis) was not opposed (in 1914, these taxes were 5.87 million). The following data are from the article by Robert Boeck, „Konkordate sehen Dich an“. According to the Bavarian concordat of January 25, 1925, the following concessions were made to the church:
1. The priests are state officials.
2. The state admits that the secularization of 1817 did a severe injustice to the church and leaves it to the church to put in a claim for a return of the confiscated property or its value in money to the amount of sixty million goldmarks.
3. The state is forced to use almost fifty per cent of the revenue from the state forests for the payment of a part of the duties to the church, i.e., it has pawned the forest revenues to the church, as it were.
4. The church is entitled to levy taxes (church taxes) on the basis of the government tax lists.
5. The church is entitled to acquire real estate. This is inviolable and protected by the state.
6. The state is obliged to provide the high church dignitaries, at state expense, with residences „in keeping with their position and dignity“.
7. The church, its priests and 28,000 monks enjoy unrestricted freedom in the pursuit of their religious and industrial activities (books, beer, liqueur manufacture).
8. At the universities of München and Würzburg a professor of philosophy and a professor of history must be engaged who have the confidence of the church and who teach only in conformity with the tenets of the church.
9. The state guarantees religious education in the public schools. The bishop or his delegates have the right to object to improprieties in the public religious life of Catholic pupils and to unfavorable or undue [!] influence, and to demand remedy from the state authorities.
According to a careful estimate, the concordat guaranteed to the Catholic church in Bavaria, in the form of cash, real estate, tax exemption, etc., a sum of one billion marks. The state of Bavaria paid to the Catholic church thirteen million marks in 1916; 28,468,400 marks in 1929; and 26,050,250 marks in 1931. [Continued p. 102]
[102] The historical element, the Dogmata, become meaningless if it is possible to replace their function by something else which is equally effective. National Socialism also wants the „religious experience“. It only wants to put it on a different basis. What, then, is this „everlasting experience?“
2. THE FIGHT AGAINST „KULTURBOLSCHEWISMUS“
Nationalistic and family feelings are closely interlinked with more or less vague, more or less mystical, religious feelings. The literature on this subject is enormous. A detailed academic analysis of this field is – at least for the present – impossible. We go back to our main problem: If fascism builds so successfully on the mystical thinking and feeling of the masses, then it can be fought only if one comprehends mysticism and if one fights the mystical infestation of the masses with correct educational and medical measures. The progressive development of a scientific Weltanschauung is not sufficient because it is so slow that it falls farther and farther behind the mystical infestation. It does so because it has not comprehended mysticism. The scientific enlightenment of the masses was restricted in the main to the unmasking of the evil deeds of church officials.
This left the overwhelming majority of the masses untouched. Scientific enlightenment appealed only to the intellect of the masses, not to their emotions. If, however, an individual has mystical feelings, then any unmasking of a church potentate leaves him cold, any presentation of the ways in which the state finances the church with the workers' pennies impresses him no more than the historical analysis of religion by Marx and Engels.
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The service of the church to the state, then, must pay. The concordat between the Reich and the Vatican in 1933 did not result in any new, mass-psychologically important relationships between church and state. The anti-sexual function of the church remained intact.
True, the atheistic movements tried to employ emotional means also, such as the youth festivals arranged by the German freethinkers. In spite of all these attempts, the Christian youth organizations counted about thirty times as many members as those [103] of the Communist and Social Democratic parties. Between 1930 and 1932, the Christian youth organizations had about one and a half million members, the Communist about 50,000, the Social Democratic about 60,000, the National Socialist about 40,000.
According to the „Proletarische Freidenkerstimme“ of April, 1932, the figures were as follows:
Der katholische Jungmännerverbund Deutschlands: 386,879
Der Zentralverband katholischer Jungfrauenvereinigungen Deutschlands: 800,000
Der Verband katholischer Junggesellenvereine: 93,000
Der Verband katholischer weiblicher süddeutscher Jugendvereine: 25,000
Der Verband katholischer Büchervereine Bayerns: 35,220
Der Verband katholischer Schüler der höheren Lehranstalten „Neudeutschland“: 15,290
Katholischer Jugendbund werktätiger Mädchen Deutschlands: 8,000
Reichsverband deutscher Windhorstbünde: 10,000
An important point is the social composition. In the Catholic Young Men's Association it was as follows:
Workers 45.6%
Artisans 21.6%
Agricultural Youth 18.7%
Business 5.9%
Students 4.8%
Salaried employees 3.3%
The industrial workers constituted the overwhelming majority. The age distribution in 1929 was the following:
14-17 years 51.0%
17-21 years 28.3%
21-25 years 13.5%
Above 25 years 7.1%
That is, four fifths of the members were of adolescent and post-adolescent age.
[104] While in the struggle for winning over these youths the Communists stressed the class angle at the expense of ideological problems, the Catholic organization did the exact opposite: its stand was with the cultural and ideological front.
The Communists wrote: If clear-cut, consistent work is done, the cultivation of class consciousness will prove stronger even in young Catholics than the questions of Weltanschauung ... We must not put ideological problems in the foreground, but the class problem, the misery which binds us all together.
The leadership of Catholic youth, on the other hand, wrote (in Jungarbeiter, Nr. 17, 1931):
Reaching of young workers and workers' children at an early age is the strongest point and the greatest danger of the Communist party. We welcome the fact that the Reich government ... opposes the Communist party with the strongest measures. In particular, we expect the German government to take the strongest measures against the Communists' fight against the church and religion.
In Berlin there were, in the censorship offices for the „protection of youth“ from obscene literature, representatives of eight Catholic organizations. In an appeal of the Catholic Center youth in 1932 we find the following: We demand that the State protect the Christian cultural heritage with all available means against a poisonous press, pornographic literature and against an erotic film production which debases or falsifies the National character ...
The church, then, defended its mystical function at a different point from the focus of attack by the Communist movement.
It is the task of freethinking proletarian youth to show to the young Christian workers the role of the church and its organizations in the carrying out of fascisization measures ...
wrote the Freidenkerstimme. The question is, why did the masses [105] of the young Christian workers prove resistant to this appeal? Why did they not, as the Communists expected they would, see for themselves the „capitalistic function“ of the church? Obviously, because they had acquired a structure which made them credulous and incapable of criticism. The fact should not be overlooked, furthermore, that the representatives of the church took an anti-capitalistic stand in the youth organizations, so that the youths did not see any evident contradiction in the social attitudes of the Communists and the priests. It seemed as if a sharp line of distinction could be drawn only in the realm of sexuality. It seemed as if the Communists, in contradistinction to the church, had a positive attitude toward adolescent sexuality. Soon it turned out, however, that the Communist organizations not only neglected this decisive subject altogether, but felt in harmony with the church in their condemnation and inhibition of adolescent sexuality. The measures of the Communists against the German Sexpol – an organization which set into focus the problems of adolescent sexuality and attempted a solution of it – were no less sharp than those of many representatives of the church. A fact which fits into this picture is that the Communist pastor Salkind, who also was a psychoanalyst, became a Soviet Russian authority in the field of sex-negation.
It was not sufficient to state the fact that the authoritarian state had at its complete disposal the parental home, the church and the school for the purpose of tying youth to its system and ideology. These institutions could not be shaken because they were protected by the full power of the state; their abolition would presuppose the social revolution. On the other hand, the undermining of the reactionary effects of these institutions was one of the essential prerequisites of the social revolution. This is what many Communists termed the main task of the „Red cultural front“. The fulfillment of this task was impossible without a knowledge of the ways and means in which authoritarian parental home, school and church were able to exert such an influence on youth, without a knowledge of the process set in motion in youth by this influence. Such generalizations as „enslavement“ or „stulti-[106]fication“ would not do. „Enslavement“ and „stultification“ are already a result. The question was, what were the processes which led to the success of the dictatorial interests. The role of the suppression of adolescent sex life in this process has been described in my book, DER SEXUELLE KAMPF DER JUGEND. In the context of the present analysis, we have to find out what are the basic elements of reactionary cultural politics and, with that, what are the emotional elements on which revolutionary work must be based. Here, also, we must follow the principle of paying the closest attention to that which the cultural reaction places in the foreground; for that is not done accidentally, nor as a „diversion manoeuvre,“ but because these things are the central battlefield of revolutionary versus reactionary Weltanschauung and politics.
We must avoid the attack on the ideological and cultural front – the center of which is the sexual question – as long as we do not have the necessary knowledge and training to attack successfully. But if we succeed in gaining a solid basis in the cultural question, we are equipped with the means to prepare the way for work democracy. It has to be said again: the sexual inhibition of the average adolescent blocks his way to rational thinking and feeling. We must be able to counter mysticism with appropriate means. This requires a knowledge of its mechanisms.
We select arbitrarily one among many typical books, DER BOLSCHEWISMUS ALS TODFEIND UND WEGBEREITER DER RELIGION, by pastor Braumann (1931). We might pick any other one; the essential arguments are always the differences in detail are not important here.
Every religion is liberation from the world and its forces by union with God. For this reason, bolshevism will not be able completely to put people in chains as long as there is any religion left in them.
(Braumann, p. 12)
True, here the function of mysticism is expressed in so many words: the function of „liberating from the world,“ of diverting attention from everyday misery, to prevent a rebellion against [107] the true causes of the misery. But scientific findings concerning the sociological function of mysticism will not get us far. Of particular importance for practical work against mysticism are the experiences gathered in discussions between youths with a scientific and with a mystical orientation. Such discussions point the way to an understanding of mysticism, that is, to the mystical feeling of the mass individual.
An organization of workers' youth had invited a Protestant pastor to a discussion of the economic crisis. He appeared, flanked by about twenty Christian youths of about eighteen to twenty-five years. In his talk, he showed a tendency to jump from partially correct statements of fact into mysticism. The causes of all the misery, he said, were the war and the Young Plan. The world war was an expression of human sinfulness. The exploitation by the capitalists also was a sin (this typical attitude illustrates the difficulty of counteracting the influence of a mystic: he himself voiced an anti-capitalistic attitude, thus appealing to the anti-capitalistic feeling of Christian youths). Capitalism and Socialism, he said, were essentially the same thing. The socialism of the Soviet Union was a kind of capitalism; the socialist order meant hardships for certain classes as capitalism meant hardship for others. Any kind of capitalism had to be „hit in the puss“. The fight of bolshevism against religion was a crime. Religion, he said, did not cause the misery, but the fact that capitalism misused religion. (The pastor was definitely progressive.) What followed from all this? Since people were bad and sinful, the misery could not be eliminated at all, one had to bear it and to make the best of it. The capitalist, he said, was not happy either. The inner misery, which was the important thing, would not be eliminated by the third Five-year plan of the Soviet Union either.
Some revolutionary youths tried to explain their standpoint. It was not a matter of the individual capitalist, they said, but of the „system“. It was a question of whether the majority or only a small minority were suppressed. The advice to bear the misery meant only its prolongation and an aid to reaction. And so on. At the end, everybody agreed that a bridging of the gap was not [108] possible, that everybody was leaving with the same convictions with which he had come. The attention of the pastor's youthful companions was glued to the lips of their leader. They seemed to be just as poor as the Communist youths, and yet, every one of them agreed with the position that there was nothing that could be done about the misery, that one had to make the best of it and „trust in God“.
Afterwards, I asked a few Communist youths why they had not brought up what was the main point on the part of the church, adolescent abstinence. They said that was too difficult and too dangerous; that would cause an explosion and it was not customary to bring it up in political discussions.
At about the same time a mass meeting took place in a Western district of Berlin at which representatives of the church and representatives of the Communist party presented their respective views. A good half of the audience of about eighteen hundred consisted of Christians and middle class people. I presented the sex-economic viewpoint in the form of a few questions:
1. The church contends that the use of contraceptives, like any interference with natural procreation, is against nature. Now, if nature is so strict and so wise, why has it created a sexual apparatus which impels to sexual intercourse not only when one wants children, but on an average of two to three thousand times in the period of adult life?
2. Will the representatives of the church who are present here openly state whether they have sexual intercourse only when they want to create children? (They were Protestant pastors.)
3. Why did God create two kinds of glands in the sexual apparatus, one for sexual excitation and one for procreation?
4. Why do infants develop a sexuality, long before the function of procreation develops?
The stammering answers of the church representatives evoked a roar of laughter. I then explained the role of the negation of the pleasure function on the part of the church and of reactionary science; that the suppression of sexual gratification had precisely the function of making people submissive and resigned, incapable [109] of rebelling against their economic position. With that, the whole audience was on my side. The mystics were beaten.
Extensive experience in mass meetings shows that people readily understand the reactionary political role of mysticism in connection with sexual suppression if one presents the right to sexual gratification clearly and directly from the medical and social point of view. This fact requires detailed substantiation.
3. THE APPEAL TO MYSTICAL FEELING
„Anti-bolshevist“ propaganda states that „bolshevism“ is the „consistent enemy of any religion,“ particularly of „valuable“ religion. Due to its „materialism,“ bolshevism knows only material goods and is interested only in producing material goods. It has not the slightest understanding of intellectual and psychic values.
What, then, are these 'intellectual and psychic values“?
Faith and belief are often mentioned, but otherwise the phraseology dissolves into a vague concept of „individuality“: Because bolshevism wants to kill anything that is individual, it destroys the family which always gives a person an individual stamp. This is why bolshevism hates any nationalist strivings. All peoples should be as similar as possible ... All efforts at destroying personal individuality, however, will be in vain as long as there is any religion left in people, because in religion personal freedom from the external world is again and again achieved.
When the mystic says „bolshevism“ he does not refer to the political party founded by Lenin. He does not have the faintest idea of the sociological controversies of the turn of the century. „Communist,“ „Bolshevist“ or „Red“ have become slogans of the reactionary which have nothing at all to do with politics, party or economics. These slogans are as irrational as the word „Jew“ when used by the Fascists. They express the antisexual attitude of mystical and reactionary individuals. Thus the Fascists called Roosevelt a „Jew“ and a „Red“. In the eyes of the church hierarchy Bertrand Russel is a Bolshevist. These irrational slogans are always provoked by what is alive and sexual, even though those [110] to whom they are applied are far from any affirmation of infantile and adolescent sexuality. The Russian Communists were farther from the affirmation of sexuality than any American middle class individual. If one wants to fight mysticism, the core of all political reaction, one will have to comprehend the irrationalism of slogans. Wherever in the following pages „bolshevism“ is mentioned, one should think of „orgasm anxiety“ at the same time.
The fascist reactionary assumes a close relationship between family, nation and religion, a fact which sociological research hitherto has completely overlooked. The formulation that religion means „freedom from the external world“ confirms the sex-economic clinical finding that religion is a substitute for the gratification which is lacking in real life; this is in accord with Marx's statement that religion acts on the masses like opium. This is not a mere simile. Vegetotherapy demonstrated that the mystical experience in fact sets in motion the same processes in the autonomic life apparatus as an opiate. They are processes of excitation in the sexual apparatus which cause conditions similar to intoxication and which call for orgastic gratification.
But we must first study the connections between mystical feeling and family feeling.
Braumann writes, in the manner which is typical of reactionary ideology: Bolshevism, however, has yet another means of destroying religion, and that is through systematic destruction of marital and family life. Bolshevism knows only too well that the strong forces of religious life stem from the family. For this reason, marriage and divorce are being facilitated to such an extent that the Russian marriage approaches free love.
With regard to the „culture-destroying“ effect of the Soviet-Russian five-day week, Braumann states: This serves the purpose of destroying family life as well as religion ... Most serious are the destructions which bolshevism has wrought in the sexual field. By its destruction of marital and family life it [111] furthers immoral excesses of every kind, including incestuous relations between siblings and between parents and children. [This refers to the abolition of the punishment for incest.] Bolshevism does not know any moral inhibitions.
In Soviet Russian literature, instead of countering such reactionary attacks with an exact presentation of the natural sexual process, attempts were made to defend oneself by pointing out that it was not true that sexual life in the Soviet Union was „immoral“; that the marriages were again being consolidated, etc. Such attempts at defense were not only politically ineffective; they also did not correspond to the facts. Sexual life in the Soviet Union was, in fact, „immoral“ from the Christian point of view; there could be no question of the consolidation of marriage, because the institution of marriage in the sense of the authoritarian and mystical concept had indeed been abolished. Until about 1928 there was in the Soviet Union, legally and practically, pairing marriage. Russian Communism, then, did loosen the structure of compulsive marriage and of the compulsive family and it did away with moralism. 4
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4 [1945]: In the meantime, compulsive marriage has been reintroduced in the Soviet Union. Sexual legislation there is now far more reactionary than in other countries. This is only the consequence of the general authoritarian development of Russian sex politics since about 1934. Cf. THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION, Orgone Institute Press, 1945.
What should have been done, in addition, was to make the mass individuals conscious of their conflict: of the fact that they longed very strongly for that which the social revolution attempted to bring about, while at the same time they were moralistic. To do this, however, presupposes clarity about the connections between compulsive family, mysticism and sexuality.
We have shown that the nationalistic feeling is a direct continuation of the authoritarian family feeling. But mystical feeling, also, is a source of nationalistic ideology. That is, both patriarchal family attitudes and mystical attitudes are the basic mass-psychological elements of fascist and imperialist nationalism. Thus the fact that mystical education prepares the soil for fascism is [112] demonstrated on a mass-psychological scale when a social crisis sets the masses in motion.
In the New York Times of August 14, 1942, Otto D. Tolischus wrote on the imperialistic ideology of the Japanese as follows: A startling revelation of the Japanese war mind, as well as the ambitions prevalent not only in the military and ultra-nationalist cliques now dominating the Japanese Government but also among the intelligentsia, is contained in a booklet issued in Tokyo in February of this year by Professor Chikao Fujisawa, one of the leading exponents of Japan's political thought and philosophy.
According to this booklet, which was made up for widest distribution, Japan, as the original motherland of the human race and world civilization, is fighting a holy war to reunite warring mankind into one universal family household in which each nation will take its proper place under the divine sovereignty of the Japanese Emperor, who is a direct descendant of the Sun Goddess in the „absolute cosmic life-center,“ from which the nations have strayed and to which they must return.
In its general argument the booklet merely summarizes, systematizes and applies to the present war the ideas derived from Shinto mythology that Japanese politicians under the leadership of Yosuke Matsuoka developed into an imperialistic dogma to justify Japan's expansion policy. But for that very reason it appeals to all the religious, racial and national ideas and emotions most deeply ingrained in the Japanese nature. In that sense Professor Fujisawa is a sort of Japanese Nietzsche and Wagner and his pamphlet becomes the Japanese equivalent of Adolf Hitler's MEIN KAMPF.
As was the case with MEIN KAMPF, the outside world has paid little attention to this trend in Japanese thought, which is either regarded as pure phantasy or relegated to the field of theology. But for years it has furnished the ideological background for Japan's expansion policy, which led to the present war, and the last Japanese notes to the United States cannot be understood without reference to it.
The authoritative nature of the booklet is indicated by the fact Professor Fujisawa has been a permanent Japanese representative in the secretariat of the League of Nations and professor of political science in Kyushu Imperial University and has published numerous works in various languages on Japanese political science. He is now director of [113] the research department of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, created to organize the Japanese people for war, and is charged with making such ideas effective throughout the world.
The flavor of the booklet is amply illustrated by the first few paragraphs, which read: „Japan is often called in our poetic language 'Sumera Mikuni,' which conveys somewhat the meaning of divine clime, all-integrating and all-embracing. By keeping in mind its philosophic implications one will be able to grasp the keynote of the imperial rescript issued September 27, 1939, at the time of the conclusion of the Tripartite pact. Therein our gracious Tenno proclaimed solemnly that the cause of great justice should be extended to the far ends of the earth so as to turn the world into one household and thus enable all nations to secure their due places. This significant passage in the rescript will clarify the very character of our august sovereign, ever anxious to act as head of an all-embracing universal family, in the bosom of which to all nations shall be allotted their respective posts in a dynamic order of harmony and cooperation.
„It is incumbent upon our Tenno to do his best to restore the 'absolute cosmic life-center' and reconstruct the fundamental vertical order once prevalent among nations in remote antiquity; by so doing he wishes to transform the present-day lawless and chaotic world, where the weak are left to fall prey to the strong, into one large family community in which perfect concord and consummate harmony shall prevail.
„This is the objective of the divine mission that Japan has been called on to fulfill from time immemorial. In a word, it is to permeate the whole world and earth with the cosmic vitality embodied in our divine sovereign, so that all segregated national units may be led to reunite themselves spiritually with the sincere feeling of brothers sharing the same blood.
„Only in this way will all nations of the world be induced to abandon their individualistic attitude, which finds expression first of all in current international law“.
This, says Professor Fujisawa, is „the way of the gods,“ and, after explaining this in mystical terms, he continues: „In this light one can well understand that capitalistic individualism prevalent in the United States runs counter to the cosmic truth, for it ignores the all-embracing life-center and deals exclusively with [114] rampancy and unbridled ego. Dictatorial communism, elevated to an official doctrine by Soviet Russia, proves likewise irreconcilable with the cosmic truth, since it tends to disregard personal initiative and merely exercises drastic bureaucratic control of the State.
„It is noteworthy that the guiding principle of National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy have much in common with the Musubi principle, one of many distinguishing these Axis powers from the democracies and the Soviet Union. It is because of this spiritual solidarity that Japan, Germany and Italy have been prompted to present a common front against those powers defending the old order“.
Sumera Mikuni, Professor Fujisawa explains, is at war with the administrations of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, which have been eager for realization of their „inordinate ambition“ to dominate the Orient. But thanks to the earnest prayers offered by Sumera Mikoto (the Japanese Emperor) day and night to the spirit of the Sun Goddess, divine power has at last mobilized to deal a thoroughgoing blow to those revolting against the inviolable cosmic law.
In fact, Professor Fujisawa writes, „the present Greater East Asia is virtually a second descent of the grandchild (of the Sun Goddess, the mythological ancestor of the Japanese dynasty), who perpetuates himself in the everlasting life of Sumera Mikoto“.
Wherefore, Professor Fujisawa concludes:
„The holy war launched by Sumera Mikuni will sooner or later awaken all nations to the cosmic truth that their respective national lives issued forth from the one absolute life-center embodied by Sumera Mikoto and that peace and harmony cannot be realized otherwise than by reorganizing them into one all-embracing family system under the guidance of Sumera Mikoto“.
Piously Professor Fujisawa adds: „This noble idea should not be considered in any sense in the light of imperialism, under which weak nations are mercilessly subjugated“.
Startling as these ideas may appear, even more startling is Professor Fujisawa's „scientific“ basis for them. Although all Japanese chronicles and histories admit that at the foundation of the Japanese Empire, which the Japanese Government has put at 2600 B.C. but which historians date around the beginning of the Christian era, the inhabitants of the Japanese isles were still primitive savages, some of whom were „men with tails“ living in trees, Professor Fujisawa blandly advances [115] the claim that Japan is the motherland of the entire human race and its civilization.
Recent discoveries and rare archives in Japan, supplemented by the writings of some Western authorities, Professor Fujisawa explains, prove „the wonderful fact that in the prehistoric age mankind formed a single world-wide family system with Sumera Mikoto as its head, and Japan was highly respected as the land of parents while all other lands were called lands of children of branch lands“.
As proof of this the professor cites a world map prepared by „a certain Hilliford in 1280“ on which „East is located on top and the space occupied by the Japanese is named 'Kingdom of Heaven.' „Professor Fujisawa continues: „Eminent scholars preoccupied with thoroughgoing researches regarding the prehistoric chronicles of Japan are unanimous in concluding that the cradle of mankind was neither the Pamir Plateau nor the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, but the middle mountainous region of the Japanese mainland. This new theory concerning the origins of humanity is attracting the keen attention of those who confidently look to Japan's divine mission for the salvation of disoriented mankind“.
According to this professorial thesis, the Sumerians, who are believed to have founded Babylonian civilization, from which all other civilizations, including those of Egypt, Greece and Rome, blossomed, are identical with the early Japanese settlers at Erdu, and this, says Professor Fujisawa, explains the correspondence between the prehistoric accounts of Japan and the Old Testament. The same, he says, is true of the Chinese, who he insists were civilized by Japan, instead of the other way around. Yet Japanese histories record that the Japanese did not learn to read or write till the Koreans and Chinese taught them, around 400 A.D.
Unfortunately, says the professor, „the world order, with Japan functioning as its absolute unifying center, collapsed in consequence of repeated earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, tidal waves and glaciers, and due to these tremendous cataclysms all mankind became estranged geographically and spiritually from the parent land of Japan“.
But, it seems, Sumera Mikuni „was immune miraculously from all these natural catastrophies, and its divine sovereigns, Sumera Mikoto, [116] enjoying lineage unbroken for ages eternal, have appointed to themselves the sacred mission of remolding this floating dismembered mankind into a large family community such as existed in prehistoric ages“.
„Obviously,“ Professor Fujisawa adds, „none is better qualified than Sumera Mikoto to accomplish this divine work of saving humanity“.
Tolischus misinterprets the phenomena he describes. He believes that it is a matter of a conscious mystical obfuscation of a rational imperialism. His facts, however, show clearly that sex-economy is correct in reducing all forms of fascist, imperialistic, dictatorial mysticism to the mystification of vegetative life sensations, to their mystical distortion as it is brought about by the patriarchal authoritarian order of family and state.
While the national feeling derives from the mother fixation (homeland feeling), the mystical feeling derives from the anti-sexual atmosphere which is inextricably linked with this family fixation. The authoritarian family fixation presupposes the inhibition of sensual sexuality. Without exception, all children in any patriarchal society are exposed to this inhibition. No matter how „free“ and „uninhibited“ later sexual activities may be, they cannot hide this deep-seated inhibition. More than that, the pathological manifestations in sexual life, such as promiscuity, sexual restlessness, perversions, etc., are the result of the inhibition of the capacity for orgastic experience. The inevitable result of this orgastic impotence which authoritarian education brings about by unconscious guilt feelings and sexual anxiety is a constant unconscious orgastic longing which is accompanied by sensations of tension in the region of the solar plexus. There is a good physiological reason for the fact that everyday language localizes the feeling of longing in chest and abdomen. 5
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5 Cf. the clinical presentation in THE FUNCTION OF THE ORGASM, 1942.
The continued tension in the psychophysical organism is the basis of daydreaming in the child and adolescent which readily continues in the form of mystical, sentimental and religious feelings. This characterizes the atmosphere of the mystical, authoritarian individual. In this way, the average child acquires a structure [117] which cannot help but absorb the influence of nationalism, mysticism and superstition of any kind as avidly as a dry sponge absorbs water. The reaction of the biopsychic apparatus is the same when it reacts to gruesome fairy tales, later to mystery thrillers, to the mysterious atmosphere of the church and, finally, to militaristic and nationalistic display.
For an evaluation of the effects of mysticism it is irrelevant whether the mystical individual presents a rough or even a brutal surface. What matters is the processes in the depth of the personality. The sentimentality and the religious mysticism of such criminals as Matuschka, Haarman or Kürten have the closest relationship with their sadistic cruelty. As opposite as these traits may be on the surface, they have one and the same origin: an insatiable vegetative longing which is produced by sexual inhibition and which is barred from natural gratification. The repressed energies find partial outlet in the sadistic muscular discharge and are in another part, due to guilt feelings, channelled into mystical religious feeling. The fact that the child murderer Kürten was sexually disturbed was evident from the testimony of his wife; yet, it did not strike the psychiatric „expert“. Sadistic brutality and mystical feeling go always hand in hand when the normal capacity for orgastic experience is lacking. This was as true of the inquisitors of the medieval church, of the cruel and mystical Philip II of Spain, as it is of any modern mass murderer. 6
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6 Cf. De Coster's masterwork TILL ULENSPIEGEL.
Where a hysteria fails to absorb the energies in anxious impotence, or a compulsion neurosis in senseless and grotesque compulsive symptoms, the patriarchal authoritarian order provides ample opportunity for discharging the energies in sadism and mysticism. The pathological character of such modes of behavior is camouflaged by their social rationalization. It would be a worthwhile project to study the sociology of the diverse mystical sects in America, the Buddhistic ideology in India, the diverse theosophic and anthroposophic schools, etc., as socially important manifestations of the patriarchal sexual order. All that need be said here is that the mystical organizations are only a crystallization of facts which [118] can be found, in a more diffuse and less tangible form, in all strata of people. The degree of mystical, sentimental and sadistic feelings corresponds exactly to the degree of the disturbance of natural orgastic experience. Close observation of the audience of a trashy thriller or of a boxing match teaches more about these problems than a hundred handbooks of sexology. As different as the contents of mystical experience may be, they all have the same sex-economic basis. Compare with that the realistic, unsentimental experience of real revolutionaries, of genuine scientific searchers or of healthy adolescents!
One might object here that the primitive who lives naturally in a matriarchal order also has mystical feelings. It can be shown that what appears to be the same thing is, nevertheless, entirely different in the matriarchal as compared with the patriarchal individual. The relationship between religion and sexuality changed with the advent of patriarchy: while originally it was essentially a religion of sexuality, it turned into the enemy of sexuality. The „mysticism“ of the sex-affirming matriarchal primitive is not due to sexual suppression as is the mysticism of the patriarchal individual. It is in part immediate orgastic experience and in part animistic interpretation of natural processes.
4. The Goal of the Cultural Revolution in the Light of the Fascist Reaction
The social revolution concentrates all its strength on the elimination of the social basis of human suffering. The primary necessity for revolution in the social order obscures the sex-economic intentions and goals. The revolutionary is forced to postpone the solution of important problems, as urgent as they may be, until such time as the most urgent task, that of creating the prerequisites for their solution, is fulfilled. The reactionary, on the other hand, fights most violently against precisely those ultimate cultural goals of the revolution which have to be postponed in favor of the preliminary tasks which prepare the ground.
„Kulturbolschewismus strives for the disintegration of our historical culture and wants to replace it by a new culture which [119] serves only the earthly happiness of people,“ wrote Kurt Hutten in his KULTURBOLSCHEWISMUS (1931). Does political reaction, in its accusations, hit upon that which the cultural revolution really intends to bring about, or does it, for reasons of demagogy, impute goals to the revolution which are not intended by it? In the former case, a clarification of the necessity of these goals is indicated; in the latter case, only disproof of the imputation.
How does political reaction evaluate the antithesis of earthly happiness and religion? Kurt Hutten writes: To begin with, the most embittered fight of Kulturbolschewismus is that against religion. For religion, as long as it is alive, is the strongest bastion against its goal ... Religion subjects all human life to a supernatural, eternal authority. It demands denial, sacrifice, the renunciation of desire. It gives human life an atmosphere of responsibility, guilt, judgment, eternity. It inhibits an unrestricted living out of human
impulses. Cultural revolution is cultural revolution of the human, it is subjugation of all fields of life under the idea of happiness. (Italics are mine. – W. R.)
Here, the reactionary negation of earthly happiness is expressed in so many words. The reactionary senses the danger to the structural anchoring of imperialistic mysticism (which is what he calls „culture“). He is much more aware of this danger than the revolutionary is conscious of his ultimate goal because the latter concentrates his efforts on changing social conditions. The reactionary recognizes the danger which the revolution represents to the authoritarian family and to mystical moralism. He recognizes it at a time when the average revolutionary has not begun to have an inkling of such consequences of the revolution. The reactionary advocates heroism, self-sacrifice and renunciation in an absolute, eternal way; in doing so, he advocates the interests of imperialism, whether he wants to or not (cf. Japan). To do that, however, he needs mysticism, that is, in the last analysis, sexual renunciation. By happiness he means essentially sexual gratification. And of course, this definition is, in itself, correct. The revolutionary also demands a great deal of duty and renunciation, because the [120] possibilities for happiness must first be fought for. In his practical work with the masses he forgets only too readily the real goal, which is not work (social freedom brings with it progressive reduction of working hours) but sexual play and life in all its forms, from the orgasm to the highest achievements of the intellect. True, work is and will remain the basis of life, but in a work-democratic society less work has to be done by the individual to the extent to which it is taken over by the machines. This is what rationalization of work means.
Sentences like the following are found in many mystical and reactionary writings though not as clearly formulated as by Hutten: Kulturbolschewismus is nothing new. It is based on a striving which humanity has had since its earliest days: the longing for happiness. It is the eternal nostalgia for paradise on earth ... The religion of faith is replaced by the religion of pleasure.
We, on the other hand, ask: Why not happiness on earth? Why should not pleasure be the content of life? If one were to put this question to a general vote, no reactionary ideology could stand up.
The reactionary also recognizes, though in a mystical manner, the connection between mysticism and compulsive marriage and family: Because of this responsibility (for the possible consequences of pleasure), society has created the institution of marriage which, as a lifelong union, provides the protective frame for the sexual relationship.
Right after this, we find the whole register of „cultural values“ which, in the framework of reactionary ideology, fit together like the parts of a machine: Marriage as a tie, the family as a duty, the fatherland as value of its own, morality as authority, religion as obligation from eternity.
[121] It would be impossible better to describe the rigidity of human plasma!
The reactionary of any kind condemns sexual pleasure because it stimulates and repulses him at the same time. He is unable to solve the conflict within him between sexual demands and moralistic inhibitions. The revolutionary refutes the perverse, unhealthy kind of pleasure, because it is not his kind of pleasure, because it is not the sexuality of the future, but the sexuality which results from the conflict between instinct and morals, the sexuality of authoritarian society, a debased, smutty, pathological sexuality. He may easily make the mistake of stopping at the condemnation of pathological pleasure, instead of opposing it with his own positive sex-economy. If, as a result of his own sexual inhibitions, he does not clearly see the goal of a free social order, he will deny not only pathological pleasure but pleasure per se, will become an ascetic and lose any chances of influencing youth in a positive sense. In the otherwise excellent Soviet film „The Road to Life“ the average pathological sexuality is contrasted not with free, sex-economically regulated sexuality, but with asceticism, that is, antisexuality; the sexual problem of youth is simply excluded from consideration. The disintegration of moralistic forms of sexual living expresses itself at first as rebellion. This rebellion inevitably takes pathological forms. It is a matter of recognizing the fact that it is healthy forces which try to break through in these pathological forms, and of guiding this rebellion into rational channels, to a sex-economic regulation. Here, too, the freedom of life is born out of the convulsions of life.
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