Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

The IntelWar Years /445
marriage and in the patriarchal family. With this repression and oppression of sexual
freedom, human feelings are altered, religion which is adverse to sexuality is born
and the ruling class begins to construct a whole sexual political organization. This includes
especially the churches in all their forms, and their ultimate aim is the suppression
of sexuality and what little happiness there is in human existence. All this
contains a sociological significance in respect of the increasing exploitation of the
work of the disinherited classes.
Reich illustrates how the ruling classes give the proletariat, today more then
ever before, substitutes in place of a sexuality restricted by the official morality of
capitalist society. Such abnormal methods of satisfaction include militarism with its
constant excitation in favour of sadism and with its fetishism of the uniform, nationalist
fa naticism, etc. The major source of sexual oppression, however, today and in
the earlier times of the creation of private property, continues to be the fa mily and
marriage. It is here that the authority of the male is born, of the father over the
mother and children and which in the minds of women and children becomes the all
powerful state. In place of confidence in themselves, the youth, women and the exploited
classes hold authority in fe ar, are submissive to it and go through a process of
"self-identification" of the suppressed individual with the authority that they are suppressed
by. Here we have the model of the ideal subject. The person of this mentality
and psychological structure will serve the state, the capitalist exploiter and the leaders
of political parties faithfully.
Given the huge importance of the ideological foundations of capitalist exploitation,
Reich defends the need for a conscious cultural program in class struggle, a process
of intellectual preparation of the proletariat fo r its task of liberation. This
process should have its basis in effective propaganda against official sexual morality.
The author of this book states: "The more developed capitalism is, the greater the
bourgeois infection of the proletariat. In turn, the revolutionary duties on the cultural
front become more important, a task whose essential component is politico-social
activity." Further, "Propaganda against hunger. .. was a too narrow base,
even though it was the most important argument against capitalism. The young
worker, for example, has a thousand sexual and cultural questions which remain after
satisfYing his hunger. The struggle against hunger is of the first order but it
should not be wrought in isolation ..."
Reich thus finds himself before the eternal question of the relations between
man and society ... There is a mutual interconnection here that is difficult to resolve
either through simplistic deterministic statements or through voluntaristic extrem-