In sex-economic practice one is used to seeing the political economist appear as the opponent of the so-called ‘overemphasis and exaggeration of the sexual question’. At the slightest difficulty, which is to be expected in this new area, he immediately tries to dismiss the whole field. To begin with, these opponents of sex-economy must be told that their jealousy is unfounded. Sex-economic cultural work does not constitute an encroachment upon their own domain of economy or a restriction of their sphere of work. It aims at a comprehension of an extremely important area of the cultural process, an area that has been totally neglected until now. The sex-economic fight is a part of the total fight of those who are exploited and suppressed against those who exploit and suppress. At present, to decide just how important this fight is and what place it assumes within the workers’ movement would be to engage in scholastic hair-splitting. In discussing the role and importance of sex-economy, instead of basing one’s appraisal on what has been accomplished in a practical way, one has been inclined to set up a rivalry between economic and sexual policies. We must not waste any time with such discussions. If all the experts of the various branches of knowledge would do their utmost to subdue dictatorial forms, if each of them would completely master his own field, then all discussions about rank and role would be superfluous. The social importance of the individual branches would follow of itself. It is merely important to stick to the basic conception, namely that the economic form also determines the sexual form and that the sexual form cannot be changed unless the economic and social forms are changed.
There are many slogans that stick fast like ice; they can be removed only by the use of radical means. One often meets with the dull objection that sex-economy is ‘individualistic’ and therefore of no use socially. To be sure, the method that is used to obtain knowledge about sex-economy is ‘individualistic’. But doesn’t social suppression of sexuality concern all the members of our society? Isn’t sexual distress a collective thing? Is the social fight against tuberculosis individualistic because the study of tuberculosis is carried out on individual patients? The revolutionary movement has always committed the grave error of regarding sexuality as a ‘private matter’. It is not a private matter for political reaction, which always rides on two tracks at the same time: on that of economic policies and that of’ moral renewal’. Until now, the freedom movement has travelled on one track only. What is needed, therefore, is to master the sexual question on a social scale, to transform the shadowy side of personal life into social mental hygiene, to make the sexual question a part of the total campaign, instead of confining oneself to the question of population politics. The freedom movement has always made the mistake of mechanically transferring the political slogans from the area of trade-unionism and political struggle to all the other areas of social life, instead of developing a view for each area of human life and activity appropriate to that area and that area alone. Among her things it was this mistake that contributed to its defeat. Thus in 1932 leading functionaries of the German sex-political organization wanted to exclude the sexual question 4md ‘to mobilize’ the masses in the sexual area with the slogan ‘against hunger and cold’. They contrasted the sexual question with the ‘social question’, as if the sexual question were not a part of the whole complex of social questions!
The population politics to which sexual reform restricts itself do not in the strict sense of the word have a sex-political nature. They are not concerned with the regulation of sexual needs, but only with the increase of the population, to which naturally the sexual act is related. Apart from this, however, it has nothing to do with sexuality in the social and biologic sense. Nor do the masses have the slightest interest in questions of population politics; they don’t care a hoot about them. The abortion law is of interest to them, not for political reasons, but because of the personal distress that hinges upon it.
Insofar as the abortion law causes distress, death and grief, it is a question of general social politics. Not until, and only when, it is clearly and explicitly understood that people violate the law because they have to have intercourse even if they don’t want to have children will the question of abortion become a sex-political question. This has passed unnoticed until now, despite the fact that it is emotionally the most important point of the question. If a reactionary social politician should take it upon himself to tell the people: ‘You complain that the abortion law demands so many sacrifices in health and human life! You don’t have to have sexual intercourse’, then there would be an end to the approach that is concerned solely with population politics. The question is meaningful only when one clearly and openly speaks up for the necessity of a satisfactory sex life. To give prominence to the sexual needs that continually beset the men and women of all social classes would have far more relevance than to enumerate the deaths caused by the abortion law. Everyone has a personal interest in sexual needs, but an interest in the abortion law presupposes a certain level of social conscience and fellow-feeling, which cannot always be assumed in modern man. In propaganda about the provision of food, it is personal need and not unrelated social and political facts that are appealed to. The same should hold true for propaganda in the sex-economic field. In short, the sexual question is a question that applies to all of us, a top-priority question of social life and mass mental hygiene.
The objection that could be raised by a psychoanalyst is more serious. His objection might run something like this: It is altogether Utopian to suppose that man’s sexual misery could be used ‘politically’ in the same way that his material distress is used. In psychoanalytic treatment it takes months and years of arduous work to make a patient conscious of his sexual desires. The moralistic inhibitions are just as deeply anchored as the sexual demands, and they have the upper hand. How do you propose to overcome sexual repression in the masses in view of the fact that a technique comparable to the one used in individual analysis does not exist? This objection has to be taken seriously. In the beginning, if I had allowed such objections to deter me from engaging in practical sex-economic work among the masses and gathering experience, then I too would have to agree with those who push aside sex-economy as an individualistic question and wait for the coming of a second Jesus to solve it. A very close associate once told me that my attempts constituted only a superficial elucidation, which failed to grasp the deeply-rooted sex-repressive forces. If a psychiatrist could make such an accusation, it might prove of value to discuss the difficulty in more detail. In the beginning of my work, I would not have known an answer to this question. However, practical experience revealed it.
To begin with, we have to make it clear that in sex-economic mass hygiene, we are faced with a task different from the one we are faced with in individual vegetotherapeutic treatment. In the latter we have to eliminate repression and to restore biologic health. This is not the task of sex-economic sociology; here it is a matter of making conscious the contradiction and suffering in subjugated man. One knows that one is moralistic; but that one has a sexual drive that has to be gratified is either not conscious or one’s consciousness of it is so weak that it cannot operate properly. Here the additional objection could be raised that the making conscious of sexual needs also entails individual analytic work. Again practical experience gives the answer. When I talk to a sexually inhibited woman in my office about her sexual needs, I am confronted with her entire moralistic apparatus. It is difficult for me to get through to her and to convince her of anything. If, however, the same woman is exposed to a mass atmosphere, is present, for instance, at a rally at which sexual needs are discussed clearly and openly in medical and social terms, then she doesn’t feel herself to be alone. After all, the others are also listening to ‘forbidden things’. Her individual moralistic inhibition is offset by a collective atmosphere of sexual affirmation, a new sex-economic morality, which can paralyse (not eliminate!) her sexual negation because she herself has had similar thoughts when she was alone. Secretly, she herself has mourned her lost joy of life or yearned for sexual happiness. The sexual need is given confidence by the mass situation; it assumes a
socially accepted status. When the subject is broached correctly, the sexual demand proves to have far more appeal than the demand for asceticism and renunciation; it is more human, more closely related to the personality, unreservedly affirmed by everyone. Thus, it is not a question of helping, but of making suppression conscious, of dragging the fight between sexuality and mysticism into the light of consciousness, of bringing it to a head under the pressure of a mass ideology and translating it into social action. At this point the objection might be raised that this would be a diabolical attempt, for it would precipitate people into a state of dire distress, would really make them sick if they were not already sick, without being able to help them. One is reminded of Pallenberg’s witty saying in Der brave Sunder: ‘What a poor wretch man is. Fortunately he doesn’t know it. If he did what a poor wretch he’d be!’ The answer is that political reaction and mysticism are infinitely more diabolical. Basically speaking, of course, the same objection applies to the distress of hunger. The Indian or Chinese coolie who bears the burden of his fate unconsciously, resigned and unquestioning, suffers less than the coolie who is aware of the hideous order of things, who, in short, consciously rebels against slavery. Who would try to make us believe that the real cause of his suffering should be concealed from the coolie for humanitarian reasons? Only a mystic, the coolie’s fascist employer or some Chinese professor for social hygiene would try to make us believe such nonsense. This ‘humanity’ is the perpetuation of inhumanity and its simultaneous concealment. Our ‘inhumanity’ is the fight for that about which the good and the righteous prattle so much, and then allow themselves to be immediately snared in the trap of fascist reaction. Hence, we admit: Consistent sex-economic work gives a tongue to silent suffering and creates new contradictions while intensifying the contradictions that exist already. It puts man in a position where he is no longer able to tolerate his situation. At the same time, however, it provides a means of liberation, namely the possibility of a fight against the social causes of suffering. It is true that sex-economic work touches the most sensitive, most exciting, most personal area of human life. But isn’t it also true that the mystical contagion of the masses does the same thing? What is important is the purpose that is served by the one and the purpose that is served by the other. He who has once seen the intense eyes and faces at sex-economic assemblies; he who has heard and has had to answer the hundreds of questions relating to the most personal sphere of human existence - that man has also arrived at the unshakable conviction that social dynamite lies buried
here, dynamite capable of bringing this self-destructive world to its senses. However, if this work is to be carried out by revolutionaries who vie with the church in the asseveration and advocacy of moralistic mysticism, who view the answering of the sexual question as being beneath the ‘dignity of revolutionary ideology’, who dismiss childhood masturbation as a ‘bourgeois invention’, who, in short - for all their ‘Leninism’ and ‘Marxism’ - are reactionary in an important corner of their personalities, then it would be easy to offer proof that my experiences cannot be right. For in the hands of such revolutionaries, the masses would immediately react negatively towards sex.
We must still persist for a while in our discussion of the role of moralistic resistance which we encounter in our work. I stated that the individual moralistic inhibition, which, in contrast to sexual demands, is reinforced by the entire sex-negating atmosphere of authoritarian society, can be made ineffective by the creation of a counter sex-affirmative ideology. People could become receptive to sex-economic knowledge and thereby be made immune to the influence of mysticism and reactionary forces. It is clear that such an atmosphere of sexual affirmation can be created only by a powerful international sex-economic organization. It was impossible to convince the leaders of political parties that this was one of their main tasks. In the meantime, politics as such has been exposed as reactionary irrationalism. We can no longer rely on any political party. The task lies within the framework of natural work-democratic development.
Until now we have mentioned only the quiet and mute needs of the individuals in the masses, those needs upon which we could base our work. However, they would not be enough. From the turn of the century until the First World War these needs and their suppression were also present, yet at that time a sex-economic movement would have had little prospect of success. Since then a number of objective social preconditions for sex-economic work have come into being. These must be thoroughly known if one wants to set to work correctly. The very fact that so many sex-economic groups having various forms and directions came into being in Germany between 1931-3 indicates that a new social view is taking hold in the social process. One of the most important social preconditions of social sex-economy was the creation of gigantic industries employing armies of workers and officials. The two central pillars of the moralistic and anti-sexual atmosphere, the small enterprise and the family, were shaken. The Second World War accelerated this process appreciably. The women and girls working in factories developed freer conceptions of sexual life than they would have developed if they had remained confined to the authoritarian households of their parents. Since the industrial workers were accessible to sexual affirmation at all times, the disintegration process of authoritarian moralism began to spread among the lower middle classes also. If the lower middle-class youth of today is compared with the lower middle-class youth of 1910, it will be readily seen that the gap between real sexuality and the social ideology still prevailing has become wide and unbridgeable. The ideal of an ascetic girl has become a thing of shame, and certainly the same holds true for the ideal of the sexually weak, ascetic man. Even among the lower middle class, more open attitudes towards compulsive faithfulness in marriage have begun to appear more and more frequently. The mode of production of big industry made it possible for the contradiction of reactionary sexual policies to come out into the open. There can no longer be any talk of a return to the old consonance between real life and ascetic ideology, as was still pretty much the case before the turn of the century. As a sex-economist, one gains deep insights into the secrets of human existence and can ascertain a total disintegration of the moralistic ascetic modes of life, which are still so loudly advocated. The collectivization of adolescent life has not only undermined - even if it has not eliminated - the restrictive power of the authoritarian household but has also awakened a desire in modern youth, a desire for a new philosophy and for scientific knowledge about the fight for sexual health, sexual consciousness and freedom. Around the turn of the century it would have been out of the question for a Christian woman to belong to a birth-control group. Today it is more and more the rule. This process was not interrupted by the fascist seizure of power in Germany, but merely forced to go underground. What remains questionable is how the process will continue to take shape, if fascist murder and barbarism last longer than we fear. An additional objective factor, which is closely related to the above, is the rapid increase of neurotic and biopathic illnesses as an expression of disturbed sexual economy, and the intensification of the contradiction between real sexual demands on the one hand and old moralistic inhibitions and child education on the other hand. The
increase of biopathies means that one is more prepared to acknowledge the sexual cause of so many sicknesses.
Political reaction’s powerlessness in the face of practical sex-economic work is the strongest point in sex-economy’s favour. It is well known that, owing to the lack of scientific literature on sex, it is mostly sexual tripe that is read in the public libraries. If sex-economic work could succeed in directing this enormous interest into scientific and rational channels, this would provide a measure of the importance of the sex-economic question. The fascists are able to deceive the submissive and mystically contaminated masses for a long time by pretending to represent the rights of work and the worker. It is different in the sex-economic sphere. Political reaction could never succeed in opposing revolutionary sex-economy with a reactionary sex-political programme that would be anything other than complete suppression and negation of sexuality. Such a programme would immediately alienate the masses, with the exception of a politically unimportant circle of old women and hopelessly dense creatures. It is the youth that matters! And they
- this much is certain are no longer accessible to a sex-negating ideology on a mass scale. This is our strong point. In 1932 sex-economic groups in Germany succeeded in winning over industries that were and had been completely closed to the subject of ‘Red trade-unionism’. It is clear that, when all is said and done, sex-economic mental hygiene must join forces with the general social freedom movement. And in actual practice this is precisely what it did. However, we have to have a clear eye for facts such as this: Fascist workers and employees, indeed students, are in complete accord with the revolutionary affirmation of sexuality, an affirmation that brings them into conflict with their leadership. And what could this leadership do if one could succeed in resolving this conflict altogether? It would be forced to use terror. But to the same extent to which it used terror, it would lose its influence. Let me stress once more that the objective loosening of the reactionary shackles placed on sexuality cannot under any circumstances be retightened. This is our greatest strength. If revolutionary work fails to make headway in this area, the result will be that the youth will continue as before to live a restricted life in secret, without being conscious of the causes and consequences of such a life. However, if sex-economic work is carried out consistently, political reaction would have no answer and no counter-ideology. Its ascetic teachings are tenable only as long as sexual affirmation in the masses is secret and fragmentary, only as long as it is not collectively organized and directed against political reaction’s asceticism.
German fascism made an all-out effort to anchor itself in the psychic structures of the masses and therefore placed the greatest emphasis upon the inculcation of the adolescents and children. It had no other means at its disposal than the rousing and cultivation of slavery to authority, the basic precondition of which is ascetic, sex-negating education.
The natural sexual strivings towards the other sex, which seek gratification from childhood on, were replaced in the main by distorted and diverted homosexual and sadistic feelings, and in part also by asceticism. This applies, for instance, to the so-called esprit de corps that was cultivated in the Labour Conscription Camps as well as to the so-called ‘spirit of discipline and obedience’, which was preached everywhere. The hidden motive behind these slogans was to unleash brutality and make it ready for use in imperialistic wars. Sadism originates from ungratified orgastic yearnings. The facade is inscribed with such names as ‘comradeship’, ‘honour’, ‘voluntary discipline’. Concealed behind the facade, we find secret revolt, depression to the point of rebellion, owing to the
hindrance of every expression of personal life, especially of sexuality. A consistent sex-economy must cast a dazzling light on the great sexual privation. If it does, it will be able to reckon with the most lively echo on the part of youth. At first this will produce bewilderment and perplexity among the fascist leaders. It is not difficult to see that the average boy or girl can easily be made conscious of his or her sexual privation. Contrary to the assertions of such youth leaders who have never attempted it practically, the experience gained from working with young people shows that the average adolescent, especially the adolescent female, takes to his or her social responsibility much more quickly, more effectively and more willingly, when it is made intelligible by means of bringing sexual suppression into consciousness. It is merely a question of correctly comprehending the sexual question and of showing its application to the general social situation. There are a thousand proofs in support of the above statement. One should not allow oneself to be scared off by threadbare objections, but ought to be guided solely by sex-economic practice.
What answers would political reaction have to some questions posed by German adolescents?
The conscription of German boys and girls in labour camps has seriously impinged upon their private and sexual life. Urgent questions await an explanation and solution, for serious and menacing abuses has resulted. The situation is complicated by the general shyness and timidity of the adolescents to open a discussion on their personal, burning questions, added to which is the fact that the camp authorities forbid all talk on such questions. But it is a matter of the physical and psychic health of boys and girls!!!
What is the sexual life of the boys and girls in the Conscription Labour Camps?
On the average, the boys and girls in Conscription Labour Camps are at the age of budding sexuality. Most of the boys were previously in the habit of gratifying their natural sexual needs with their girlfriends. To be sure, the sexual life of these boys and girls was hindered even before they entered the labour camps by the absence o suitable possibilities of engaging in a healthy love life (housing problem of the youth), by a lack of money to buy contraceptives, by the hostility of the state authorities and reactionary circles to a healthy adolescent love life, one in accordance with their needs. This lamentable situation was made even worse by the Labour Conscription! For instance:
No possibility of coming together with girls or of preserving and cultivating former liaisons.
Being forced to choose between abstinence and self-gratification.
This leads to the brutalization and dissipation of erotic life, the proliferation of sexual obscenity and dirty jokes, disintegrating, fantasies (rape, lascivious greed, beatings), which also paralyse one’s will and energy.
Nocturnal involuntary emissions, which undermine one’s health and offer no gratification.
Development of homosexual tendencies and the forming of relationships between boys who had never thought of such things; severe annoyances from homosexual comrades.
Increase of nervousness, irritability, physical complaints, and various psychic disturbances. Ominous consequences for the future.
All adolescents, especially those between 17 and 25, who do not have a gratifying sexual life are threatened with a future disturbance of their potency and severe psychic depression, which always entails a disturbance of one’s work capacity. If an organ or a natural function is not used over a period, it later fails to operate. Nervous and psychic illnesses, perversions (sexual aberrations) are usually the result.
What is our position with regard to the measures and regulations adopted by our leaders on these questions?
Until now, the leaders have called for a ‘moral strengthening of the youth’ in very general statements. To us it is still not clear what is meant by this. Over the past years the German youth have engaged in a hard struggle with their parental homes and the big wheels of the system and were gradually beginning to win their right to a healthy sexual life, despite the fact that they were not able to reach their goal under the existing social conditions. But their idea was clear in broad circles: The youth had to carry on a bitter fight against sexual bigotry, sexual obscenity and hypocrisy, the consequences of the youth’s sexual subjugation. It was their idea that boys and girls should have a happy intellectual and sexual relationship with one another. Their idea was that it was society’s responsibility to regulate and alleviate the conditions of their lives. What is the government’s position towards this? , The ordinances it has issued so far are in sharp contradiction to the views of youth. The purchase of contraceptives has been made impossible by prohibiting their public sale. The measures employed by the Hamburg police against the aquatic athletes on moral grounds, the threat that those who ‘offend customs and decency’ will be put into concentration camps, are backed up by the law. Is it an offence to decency if a boy sleeps with his girlfriend in a tent camp?
We ask the leadership of the German youth: What is to be the sexual life of the youth?
There are only four possibilities.
Abstinence: Shall the youth live an abstinent life, i.e., contain every form of sexual activity until marriage?
Self-gratification: Shall the youth gratify its sexual needs by masturbation?
Homosexual gratification: Shall the German youth engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex? If so, how? By mutual masturbation or anal intercourse?
Natural love and sexual intercourse between boys and girls: Shall the German youth affirm and encourage natural sexuality? ”If so:
Where is intercourse to take place (housing problem)?
How and with what is conception to be prevented?
When is this intercourse to take place?
Is the adolescent allowed to do the same thing as the fuehrer?
Similar questions concern work with children. It may sound strange - to some incomprehensible - but the fact remains: In the main, revolutionary work with children can only be sex-economic work. Overcome your astonishment and listen patiently. Why is it that children in the pre-pubertal stage can be directed by sexual education in the best and easiest way?
Childhood in all social classes, even in those in which hunger and privations are suffered, is filled with sexual interests, more so than later stages of life. In addition, we have to bear in mind that hunger to the point of physical deterioration concerns only a number of children, whereas sexual suppression concerns every child of every class without exception. This extends the social field of attack enormously.
The usual methods employed by the freedom movement to organize children are the same as those employed by the reactionaries in their work with children: marching, singing> dressing up, group games, etc. Unless he stems from exceptionally liberated parents - which of course is not very often the case — the child does not distinguish between the content of reactionary and revolutionary forms of propaganda. To see to it that reality is not glossed over is only the first commandment of anti-fascist education. It is our contention that children and adolescents will march just as happily to fascist music tomorrow as they march to liberal music today. Moreover, political reaction can mould the forms of group propaganda among children incomparably better than the anti-fascist movement. In this regard the latter was always behind. In Germany, for instance, the socialist movement, in contrast to the reactionary movement, was extremely weak in its work with children.
While it is true that political reaction is far superior in its organizational work with children, there is one thing that it cannot do: It cannot impart sexual knowledge to children; it cannot give them sexual clarity, nor can it dispel their sexual confusion. Only the revolutionary movement can do this. First of all because it has no interest in the sexual suppression of children. (On the contrary, it is precisely the sexual freedom of children that it has in mind.) Second of all because the revolutionary camp has always been the advocate of a consistent and natural education of children. This powerful weapon was never put to use in Germany. And it was those in charge of child organizations who offered the strongest resistance to the proposal that the usual individual treatment of sex education be turned into sex education on a mass scale. It was both tragic and comical that these opponents of sex-economic work among children called upon Marx and Lenin in their defence. Naturally, neither in Marx’s nor in Lenin’s writings do we find anything about sex-economy. And yet the fact remained that children fell to political reaction’s share en masse. Notwithstanding the enormous difficulties involved, unexpected possibilities arise of developing child education on a sex-economic basis. The most important of these possibilities is the ardent interest of the children themselves. If we could once succeed in engaging the sexual interests of children and adolescents on a mass scale, then reactionary contamination would be faced with a tremendous counterforce - and political reaction would be powerless.
To those who doubt, resist and are otherwise worried about the ‘purity’ of the children, we will cite only two examples from our practical experience. They are typical of many others.
First: The church is not so squeamish. A fifteen-year-old boy who transferred to a communist youth group from a fascist organization told us that in his former organization the priest was in the habit of calling the boys aside one by one and asking them about their sexual behaviour. They were always asked whether they had masturbated, which was naturally always the case and shamefully admitted. ‘That is a great sin, my boy; but you can atone for it if you work diligently for the church and distribute these leaflets tomorrow.’ That’s how mysticism practises politics with sex. We, however, are ‘modest’; we are ‘pure’; we want nothing to do ‘with such things’. And then we are surprised that mysticism is in control of the majority of the adolescents.
Second: The sex-economic work-group in Berlin had resolved to make its first attempt at sex-economic education of children, and had collectively put together a story for this purpose: The Chalk Triangle, Group for the Study of Adult Secrets. Before having it printed, this little story was first discussed with leaders of child groups. It was resolved to read the booklet to a group of children and to see how they reacted to it. One wished that all those who shrugged their shoulders derogatively at the mention of social sex-economy would have been present. To begin with, seventy children were present, instead of the usual twenty or so. Contrary to the usual indifferent attentiveness following the reports of the functionaries - it was always difficult to establish quiet - the children hung on the speaker’s words, their eyes glowed, their faces formed one single bright spot in the auditorium. At some points, the reading was interrupted by bursts of enthusiasm. At the end the children were asked to express their opinions and criticism. Many raised their hand for permission to speak. One had to blush at one’s own prudery and embarrassment in front of these children. The teachers who had edited this story had decided not to include the question of contraception and also to omit the subject of childhood masturbation. Promptly the question was asked: ‘Why don’t you say anything about how not to get children?’ ‘We know that anyhow,’ a boy interjected laughing. ‘What’s that, a tart?’ a third boy asked, ‘there was nothing said about that in the story.’ ‘Tomorrow we’ll go to the Christians,’ they stated enthusiastically. ‘They always talk about such things -we’ll get them I’ ‘When is the book coming out? How much will it cost? Will it be cheap enough for us to buy it and also to sell it?’ The first part that had been read dealt almost exclusively with sex education. It was the group’s intention, however, to supplement the first volume with a second volume, which was supposed to show the social implications of these questions. The children were told this.’ When is the second volume coming out? Will it also be so funny?’ When has a group of children ever asked for a social booklet so enthusiastically? Shouldn’t this be a lesson to us? Yes, it should. By affirming their sexual interests and gratifying their thirst for knowledge, children must be educated to -take an interest in social matters. They have to become firmly convinced that this is something political reaction cannot give them. And they will be won over in large numbers, be immunized against reactionary influence in all countries and - what is most important -they will be firmly bound to the revolutionary freedom movement. At present, however, it is not only political reaction that obstructs the realization of this goal, but also the ‘moralists’ in the camp of the freedom movement.
An additional important area of sex-economic work is the elucidation of the sexual situation that recently resulted in Germany from the fact that women were pushed from industry back into the kitchen. This work can be accomplished only by imbuing the concept of woman’s freedom with the contents of sexual freedom. It must be pointed out that it is not her material dependency on the man in the family that is a nuisance to a woman. Essentially, it is the sexual restriction that goes with this dependency that is a burden. The proof of this is that those women who have succeeded in completely suppressing their sexuality not only endure this economic dependency easily and
unresistingly, but even affirm it. To make these women conscious of their suppressed sexuality and to stress the unpleasant consequences of an ascetic life are the most important preconditions for the political fertilization of the material dependency on man. If sex-economic organizations fail to accomplish this work, then the new wave of sexual suppression of women in fascism will immure the consciousness of her material enslavement. In Germany and other highly industrialized countries, all the objective social preconditions are present for a forceful rebellion of the women and the adolescents against sexual reaction. If inexorable, consistent, unflinching sexual policies were applied to this area, we would be rid once and for all of a question that has occupied freethinkers and politicians time and again, without yielding an answer: Why is it that women and adolescents are always far more willing to listen to political reaction? No other field exposes so clearly the social function of sexual suppression, the intimate connection between sexual repression and political reactionary views.
In conclusion, let me mention one further objection made by a psychiatrist after reading this section. It is not easily countered. There is no doubt, he said, that the broad masses have the keenest interest in the sexual question. They are well-nigh obsessed with it, but does this necessarily lead to the conclusion that their interest can be exploited politically to further the social revolution, which demands so many privations and sacrifices? Once they have grasped the idea of sex-economy, what will keep the masses from wanting to cash in on sexual freedom immediately? When we are engaged in difficult work, we have to listen to every objection very attentively, consider its validity and express our view on it.
We have to be on our guard against allowing our wishful revolutionary thinking to get the best of us and regarding as a realistic possibility that which is only right ‘as such’.
The success or failure of the fight against hunger will not be decided by the fact that one wants to eliminate it at all cost, but by the presence or absence of the objective preconditions necessary for its elimination. Can, in other words, the sexual -interest and sexual distress of the masses of all countries be translated into social action against the social system that causes this distress, as is done with primitive material interest ? We have cited the practical experiences and the theoretical considerations that indicate that what succeeds in individual groups and in individual meetings must also be possible on a mass scale. We have merely neglected to mention several additional preconditions, which are indispensable. To accomplish the task of putting social sex-economy into effective operation, it is first of all necessary to have a united workers’ movement. Without this precondition sex-economic work can only be of a preparatory nature. Furthermore, it is absolutely necessary to establish a tight international sex-economic organization, which would have the task of carrying out and securing the actual work. The final indispensable precondition is a cadre of thoroughly disciplined leaders of the movement. For the rest, it is not advisable to try to solve every individual problem in advance. That would be confusing and stagnating. It is practice itself that will yield new and more detailed practice. This book will not be burdened with such details.
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