The sex-economic presuppositions of the authoritarian family

Since authoritarian society reproduces itself in the individual structures of the masses with the help of the authoritarian family, it follows that political reaction has to regard and defend the authoritarian family as the basis of the ‘state, culture, and civilization’. In this propaganda it can count on deep irrational factors in the masses. The reactionary politician cannot divulge his real intentions in his propaganda. The German masses would not have responded to a slogan calling for the ‘conquest of the world’. In political propaganda, which is a question of producing a psychological effect on the masses, one is not dealing directly with economic processes but with human structures. This consideration dictates a definite approach in the work of mental hygiene, and failure to make use of this approach can lead to errors in mass psychology. Consequently, revolutionary sexual politics must do more than just point out the objective basis of the authoritarian family. If it is to have an effect on the psychology of the masses, it must appeal to man’s yearning for happiness in both life and love.

From the point of view of social development, the family cannot be regarded as the basis of the authoritarian state, but only as one of the most important institutions that supports it. We, however, have to look upon it as political reaction’s germ cell, the most important centre for the production of reactionary men and women. Originating and developing from definite social processes, it becomes the most essential institution for the preservation of the authoritarian system that shapes it. In this regard, the findings of Morgan and Engels are as valid today as they were then. However, we are not interested in the history of the family. What concerns us is an important contemporary sex-political question, namely: How can sex-economy most effectively counter reactionary sexual and cultural politics in which the authoritarian family plays such a decisive role? A precise discussion of the basis and effects of the authoritarian family is vitally necessary, especially in view of the lack of clarity on this question that exists even in revolutionary circles.

The authoritarian family contains a contradiction which must be understood in all of its details if we are to have an effective sex-economic mass hygiene.

More than the economic dependency of the wife and children on the husband and father is needed to preserve the institution of the authoritarian family. For the suppressed classes, this dependency is endurable only on condition that the consciousness of being a sexual being is suspended as completely as possible in women and in children. The wife must not figure as a sexual being, but solely as a child-bearer. Essentially, the idealization and deification of motherhood, which are so flagrantly at variance with the brutality with which the mothers of the toiling masses are actually treated, serve as means of preventing women from gaining a sexual consciousness, of preventing the imposed sexual repression from breaking through and of preventing sexual anxiety and sexual guilt-feelings from losing their hold. Sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognised as such, would mean the complete collapse of the authoritarian ideology. Conservative sexual reform has always made the mistake of merely making a slogan of ‘the right of woman to her own body’, and not clearly and unmistakably regarding and defending woman as a sexual being, at least as much as it regards and defends her as a mother. Furthermore, conservative sexual reform based its sexual policies predominantly on the function of procreation, instead of undermining the reactionary view that equates sexuality and procreation. It is for this reason that it was not able to counter mysticism with sufficient force.

The ideology extolling the ‘blessings of large families’ is necessary for the preservation of the authoritarian family. It is necessary not only in the interest of warlike imperialism; its most essential purpose is to obscure woman’s sexual function as opposed to her function as a child-bearer. The drawing of a clear-cut distinction between ‘mother’ and ‘prostitute’ as we find, for example, in the writings of the philosopher Weinin-ger, corresponds to the distinction that the reactionary man draws between sexual desire and procreation. According to this view, to have sex for the pleasure of it degrades the woman and mother; a ‘prostitute’ is a woman who affirms pleasure and lives for it. The notion that sexuality is moral only in the service of procreation, that what lies outside the pale of procreation is immoral, is the most important feature of reactionary sexual politics. This notion is no less reactionary when represented by Communists such as Salkind and Stoliarov.

Aggressive imperialism dictates that women are nothing but child-bearing machines and it brooks no rebellion against this function. In short, this means that sexual gratification must not interfere with her function of reproduction. Apart from this, however, a woman who is conscious of her sexuality would never willingly heed the reactionary slogans, which have her enslavement in mind. This antithesis between sexual gratification and procreation applies only to authoritarian society, not to work-democracy. It is a question of the social conditions under which woman are to bear children: under favourable, socially guaranteed conditions, or conditions that do not provide adequate protection for the mother and child. In other words, if women are to bear children without any kind of social protection, without social guarantees for the rearing of their offspring; if, moreoever, they are not allowed to determine for themselves how many children they will have and are to accept this function willingly and unquestionably - then motherhood, as opposed to woman’s sexual function, has to be idealized.

If we are to comprehend the fact that Hitler’s party, just as the centre parties, relied chiefly upon women’s votes, we must comprehend irrationalism. The irrational mechanism at work here is the setting up of an antithesis between woman as child-bearer and woman as a sexual being. With this in mind we shall be in a better position to understand fascist attitudes such as the following:

The preservation of the already existing large families is a matter of social feeling; the preservation of the form of the large family is a matter of biologic conception and national character. The large family is to be preserved not because it is hungry; it is to be preserved as a valuable, indispensable part of the German people. Valuable and indispensable not only because it alone guarantees the preservation of the population in the future [objectively speaking, this is its imperialistic function, WR], but because national morality and national culture find their strongest support in it. . . The preservation of the existing large families amalgamated with the preservation of the form of the large family, for these two problems are inseparable . . . The preservation of the form of the large family is a matter of national, cultural and political necessity ... This view is also strictly opposed to the repeal of paragraph 218, and it holds pregnancy to be inviolable. The termination of pregnancy is at variance with the meaning of the family, whose task is precisely the education of the coming generation - apart from the fact that the termination of pregnancy would mean the final destruction of the large family.

This is how the Volkiscber Beobachter put it on 14 October 1931. Thus, political reaction's family politics are the key to the question of the termination of pregnancy also, far more so than the factors that had previously been pushed into the foreground -industrial reserve army and cannon fodder for imperialist wars. The argument in support of an industrial reserve army almost completely lost its relevance in the years of the economic crisis, when there were many millions of unemployed workers in Germany, and some forty million throughout the world in 1932. When political reaction tells us again and again that the preservation of the abortion law is necessary in the interest of the family and 'moral order', when the social hygienist Grothjan, who was a Social Democrat, argues along the same lines as the National Socialists hi this regard, then we must agree with them that 'authoritarian family' and 'moralistic ethics' are decisively important reactionary forces. We must not brush them aside as unimportant. It is a matter of binding the women to the authoritarian family by means of suppressing their sexual needs; it is a matter of the reactionary influence exercised by these women on their husbands; it is a matter of safeguarding the effect that reactionary sexual propaganda has on millions of women who are suppressed and who tolerate their suppression. From a revolutionary point of view it is imperative to follow political reaction wherever its effects are felt. It must be routed wherever it defends its system. Thus, the interest in the authoritarian family as an

institution intended to 'preserve the state' takes priority in all questions of reactionary sexual politics. It coincides with the similar interests of all members of the middle class who operate small businesses, for whom the family constitutes, or at least used to constitute, an economic unity. It is from this point of view that fascist ideology sees state and society, economics and politics. It is also from this point of view, determined as it is by the old mode of economy of the lower middle class, which prompts reactionary sexology to promulgate the state as an 'organic whole'. For the wage earner of modern civilization there is no longer any direct correlation between family and social mode of existence. The family is not economically anchored. Hence, the modern wage earner is in a position to look upon the state as a coercive institution of society; the 'biologic' view that the state is an 'organic whole’ is not valid for his sexology and sex-economy. If the working man proves to be accessible to this reactionary view, it is to be ascribed to the authoritarian family education that he received. And the small farmer and the lower middle-class man would be more accessible to an insight into their social responsibility if their family situation were not organically bound up with their economic situation.

In the economic world crisis it was shown that this connection between family and economy was loosened as a result of the economic ruin of small enterprises. Subsequently, the essential features of the oft-mentioned tradition of the lower middle class, namely its authoritarian familial tie, still had an effect. Hence it was much more accessible to the fascist ideology of the ‘large family’ than it was to the revolutionary ideology of birth control, mainly because the revolutionary movement failed to elucidate this question and to give it top priority.

As clear as all this is, we would err if we failed to assess it in relation to other factors which are contradictory to it. Our assessment would of necessity be false if we failed to take into account the contradictions that exist in the life of the sexually inhibited man. To begin with, the contradiction between sexual moralistic thinking and feeling on the one hand and the concrete sexual mode of existence on the other hand is decisive. An example: in Western Germany there were a large number of birth control groups of a predominantly ‘socialist’ nature. In the Wolf-Kienle campaign of 1931 the abortion law was put to a vote. It turned out that the same women who cast their vote for the centre parties or the NSDAP were for the repeal of this law, while their parties were passionately opposed to its repeal. These women voted for sex-economic birth control in an effort to secure sexual gratification. At the same time they voted for the centre and NSDAP parties, not because they had no knowledge of the reactionary intentions c; of these parties, but because they were still imbued with the reactionary ideology of ‘pure motherhood’, of the antithesis between motherhood and sexuality; but most of all they were still under the influence of authoritarian ideology itself. While these women knew nothing of the sociological role of the authoritarian family in a dictatorship, they were nonetheless under the influence of political reaction’s sexual politics: They affirmed birth control, but they feared the responsibility imposed upon them by the revolutionary world.

Sexual reaction made no bones about using any means whatever to exploit sexual anxiety for its own purposes. Since there was no corresponding sex-economic counterpropaganda from the revolutionary side, the wife of the average worker or lower middle-class woman who held Christian or nationalistic views, had to be impressed by the following kind of propaganda.

In 1918 the Vereiniprine’ zur Bekamofune des Bolshewismus (Alliance for the Fight against Bolshevism) printed posters having the following text:

German Women I

Have you any idea what Bolshevism has in store for you? Bolshevism wants the socialization of women:

The right of possession of women between 17 and 32 years of age is being abolished.
All women are the property of the people.
The former owners retain a priority on their wives.
Every man who wants to use a specimen of the people’s property must have a permit from the workers’ committee.
No man has the right to avail himself of a woman more than three times per week and longer than three hours.
Every man is required to report a woman who resists him.
Every man who does not belong to the working class has to pay a monthly fee of 100 roubles for the right to use this public property. The sordidness of such propaganda is as evident as its mendacity, but the first reaction of the average woman is to shrink back in horror, while the reaction of a progressive woman will be something as follows:

I admit that for us, the workers, there is only one way out of the present misery, and that way is socialism. But it has to remain within certain moderate limits, and not reject everything that was as wrong and unnecessary. Otherwise this will lead to a brutalization of customs, which would be even worse than the present sad material situation. And unfortunately, it is a very important and a high ideal that is attacked by socialism: marriage. Complete freedom, complete licentiousness, is being demanded, to a certain extent sexual Bolshevism. Every one is supposed to live one’s life to the full, to have one’s fling - freely, without inhibitions. Man and wife are no longer to belong together, instead one is together with this woman today and tomorrow with that one, just as one’s mood happens to be. This is called freedom, free love, the new sex morality. But these beautiful names cannot gloss over the fact that grave dangers are lurking here. Man’s highest and noblest feelings would be degraded by such practices: love, faithfulness, sacrifice. That a man or woman can love many other men or women at the same time is wholly impossible - it is contrary to nature. The result would be a terrible brutalization which would destroy culture. I have no idea how these things look in the Soviet Union, but either the Russians are peculiar people or they really haven’t allowed this absolute freedom and certain sanctions still exist there. . . Thus, as beautiful as the socialist theory is, and as much as I am in agreement with you on all economic questions, I don’t follow you when it comes to sexual matters, and because of this I often have doubts about the whole thing.

[Letter to the editor from a working woman]

This letter clearly reflects the conflict with which the average person is faced: he is made to believe that he must choose between compulsive sexual morality on the one hand and sexual anarchy on the other hand. ‘The average person has no knowledge of the sex-economic regulation of sexuality, which is as far from compulsive morality as it is from anarchy. He reacts to the imposed severe compulsion with promiscuous impulses; he defends himself against both. Morality is a burden, and instinct appears as a tremendous danger. The man reared under and bound by authority has no knowledge of the natural

law of self-regulation; he has no confidence in himself. He is afraid of his sexuality because he never learned to live it naturally. Thus, he declines all responsibility for his acts and decisions, and he demands direction and guidance.

The revolutionary movement has not yet had any success with its sexual politics -gauged against the success that consistent revolutionary sexual politics could have achieved -because it failed to react with appropriate weapons against political reaction’s successful attempts to exploit man’s suppressed sexual powers. If sexual reaction had publicised only its political thesis on population, it would not have poked a single cat from under the bed. But it exploited the sexual anxiety in women and girls, and to this it owes its success. It was skilful in linking its population aims with the compulsive moralistic inhibitions of the people, at all levels of society as a matter of fact. The hundreds of thousands of organized Christian workers are proof of this.

Here is another example of the propaganda methods used by political reaction:

In their devastating campaign against the entire bourgeois world, the Bolsheviks were from the very beginning particularly fixed on the family, ‘this especially strong remnant of the confounded old regime’. As early as 10 June 1924, the plenary assembly of the Comintern declared:’ The revolution is powerless as long as the old idea of the family and family relationships continues to exist.’ In consequence of this attitude, a violent fight against the family broke out immediately. Bigamy and polygamy were not prohibited and therefore permissible. The Bolsheviks’ attitude towards marriage is characterized by the following definition of the marital tie, proposed by Professor Goichbarg: ‘Marriage is an institution for the gratification of sexual needs in a less dangerous and more convenient way.’ How far family and marriage disintegrated under such conditions is indicated by the statistics of the general census of 1927. Ivestia writes: ‘In Moscow, the census revealed numerous cases of polygamy and polyandry. Frequently, two or even three women designated the same man as their spouse.’ There is no need for surprise when the German Professor Selheim describes family relationships in Russia in the following way: ‘It is a complete regression to the sexual order of prehistoric times, from which marriage and a usable sexual order was developed in the course of time.’

Compulsive marital and familial life is also attacked; complete freedom of sexual intercourse has been proclaimed. The well-known female Communist Smidowitsch worked out a scheme of sexual morality, according to which most boys and girls act. The scheme runs something as follows:

Every student of the workers’ faculty, even if he is a minor, is entitled and obliged to gratify his sexual needs.
When a young girl, whether she is a university student, a worker, or just a schoolgirl, is desired by a man, she is obliged to yield to this desire, otherwise she will be looked upon as a bourgeois girl who cannot pretend to be a genuine Communist.

Pravda wrote quite openly: ‘Among us there are only sexual relations between man and woman. We do not recognize the existence of love. Love is to be looked down upon as something psychological. Among us only physiology has a right to exist.’ In consequence of this communist attitude, every woman and every girl is obliged to gratify the sexual drive of the male. In view of the fact that this certainly does not always happen

in an entirely voluntary way, the rape of women in Soviet Russia has become a veritable plague.

Such lies on the part of political reaction cannot be set aside simply by exposing them for what they are, lies; nor, for that matter, by protestations to the effect that one is just as ‘moral’ as they are, or that the revolution does not destroy the authoritarian family and moralism, etc. The truth of the matter is that sexuality changes in the course of the revolution, that the old compulsive regimentation is loosened. This cannot be disavowed. Nor can the correct sex-economic position be ascertained, if ascetic attitudes on these questions are tolerated in one’s own camp and are allowed to be operative. We will have to inquire into this matter very carefully later.

The sexual politics of those who strive to achieve a genuine freedom in this sphere failed to explain - not once, twice, but again and again - and to establish a sex-economic regulation of sexual life. They failed to comprehend and to allay woman’s fear of sexual health. More than anything else, however, they failed to establish clarity in their own ranks by constantly and consistently pointing out the disparity between the reactionary and the sex-economic conception of sexuality. Experience shows that the average person accepts sex-economic regulation of sexuality if it is made sufficiently clear to him.

The anti-revolutionary movement originates from political reaction’s creeds, which are held together by the lower middle class’s economic mode of existence and by ideologic mysticism. The core of political reaction’s cultural politics is the sexual question. Accordingly, the core of revolutionary cultural politics must also be the sexual question.

It is sex-economy that gives the political answer to the chaos that was created by the contradiction between compulsive morality and sexual libertinism.