Sex & Socialism

A fascinating quote from Anthony Crosland, a Labour Member of Parliament first elected in 1950:

I want more, not less spooning in the Parks of Recreation and Rest, more abortion, more freedom and hilarity in every way; abstinence is not a good foundation for socialism.

It would seem to me the only possible foundation for socialism, given that the alternative is everyone assuming that "society" should pay for the products of their freedom and hilarity, and indeed make sure they can get the freedom and hilarity they think they deserve.

The quote appears in Britain in the age of patience, a review by Ferdinand Mount in The Times Literary Supplement of a book titled Austerity Britain, a history of England after World War II by David Kynaston.

Comments

[Bill R]

It does explain, however, why much of socialism's popularity among youth has surprisingly little to do with politics per se.

[Michael]

Bill,

Why was I not, to be vulgar, getting laid more in high school socialism? This may explain my apostasy to conservatism...

[Bill R]

Michael, results aren't guaranteed. You're only assured that they will appeal to your desires. Kinda of like television.

[Michael]

Bill,

Haha! Touche, sir.

It is an interesting connection between sex and socialism, to say the least.

[Judy Warner]

Sexual freedom was certainly the motivation for most of the radicals of the 1960s. In those days there was a lot of hilarity; nowadays the left seems just as sexually "liberated" but more grim than hilarious.

[whitestonenameseeker]

And yet Marg Sanger and Marie Stopes were right wing politically weren't they?
I have always thought there wasn't much difference between Socialism and National Socialism.

[Ethan Cordray]

>>I have always thought there wasn't much difference between Socialism and National Socialism.<<

Yep, pretty much the "national" part is all the difference.

[Steve Nicoloso]

And yet Marg Sanger and Marie Stopes were right wing politically weren't they?

Whether of the "right" or the "left", no one who says, "[U]topia could be reached in my life time had I the power to issue inviolable edicts... I would legislate compulsory sterilization of the insane, feebleminded... revolutionaries... half-castes," has any claim to the label: "conservative."

[Judy Warner]

I wonder if they are considered right-wing because they were Nazi-like in their commitment to eugenics. Historically, though, it's been the left that promotes eugenics, as they promote right-to-die and abortion today.

[Michael]

>>Sexual freedom was certainly the motivation for most of the radicals of the 1960s.<<

This is most certainly true, but do you think that sexual radicalism was born of socialism in its purest form, or that the corrupted socialism espoused by the Left (e.g. Welfare state, degrading socialism) was born of the sexual radicalism?

[GL]

I would dispute the assertion that Sanger and Stopes were right-wing if by "right-wing," whitestonenameseeker means conservative. They most certainly were not conservative. They intended to bring about one of the biggest changes in attitudes and actions in the history of man (and they succeeded). That is not conservative.

[Judy Warner]

Sexual radicalism wasn't born of anything except the wish of people to do whatever they like with no higher power to lay down rules for them. Many if not most of the 1960s radicals got into radicalism because they liked the idea of lots of free sex and the general rebelliousness of the movement, and very few had any intellectual understanding of socialism or communism.

Theirs is an infantile position -- lots of freedom with no reponsibility -- so they naturally believe that the government should take care of their needs, just as an infant expects to be fed and held and have its diapers changed. I don't think it's much more complicated than that.

[Joe Long]

The association of "abortion" and "hilarity" stopped me in my tracks; and I think only a socialist, with his well-developed capacity for accepting cognitive dissonance, could really manage to associate those words.

Margaret Sanger, like the National Socialists, was functionally and ideologically left-wing by any American definition; even our "far right" is reactionary, while Sanger - and the Gestapo - were nothing if not forward-looking; "progressive", as it were. Their directions of "progress" may have diverged - somewhat, anyway - from one another, but neither advocated "regress", that's for sure.

Their philosopical heirs have discovered that sexual license is the REAL opiate of the people - a discovery which their capitalist counterparts, by the way, are just as eager to exploit; the difference being that the commercial types want to sell sex and to use sex to sell everything else imaginable, while the socialist types want sex to seem free through government subsidies of one form or another...

[Little Gidding]

Socialism and free love have gone together like peaches and cream all the way back to Fourier, and maybe back to Marat Sade's checkered relationship with the French Revolution or even further. Certainly the radical socialists of the 19th century were characteristically "progressive" in this regard. Free love, as preached by the radicals beginning in the 180s, is "the watchword that unlocks the door of the secret places," "the tocsin which sounds the signal for the onset," "the rallying cry of the marshaled forces," and "the beacon-fire, the blood-red cross, the general order of the day." It's the core requirement for eliminating the institution of the the family and of marriage--and so, it's also the absolute necessity for constructing a thoroughly Socialist state. Anything else is just a compromise with the bourgeois, the Patriarchy, the Church. Free love is the death of the family. It's the whole ball of wax.

[Little Gidding]

Sorry--the 1850s.

[Ethan Cordray]

Good quotes, Gidding. Where are they from?

[GL]

Little Gidding,

I second Ethan's request. Destroying the family is a recurrent theme in Satan's war against God, with humanity as his pawns.

This brings me back to Card's Ender's Game, mentioned in the Mohler on Mormons thread. It is in many ways a book with a very Christian message, that we humans are subject to manipulation by forces which we fail to recognize and which induce us to do acts which we would never do if we fully understood the consequences, but the true import of the acts we are being manipulated into doing are hidden from us. The acts are made to look enjoyable and even good. And too often, we are only made aware of the consequences when it is too late to undo the act.

We must remember this when evangelizing our misled neighbors, recalling that we not only once were misled ourselves but are still subject to being misled. Some leftists understand full well that destroying the family is a necessary component of reaching their goal, but others who may or may not otherwise be leftists believe in a live and let live attitude (good old libertarianism), not recognizing that a society which desires strong families cannot condone sexual license and the tools which man has invented to facilitate it.

Ethan, I have never read Ender's Shadow, but walking through the book store last evening, I noticed it on the shelf -- by pure happenstance, I wasn't looking for it or even for the SF section. I think I'll get a copy, based on your recommendation, and read it.

[Little Gidding]

Ah, the source of the quotes. I wish I could give you the original source free of the satirical context in which I found them parodied, but I haven't done the necessary research to do that, so you'll just have to read them as I did, in an obviously unserious lampoon of the Free Lovers, in an article in the New York Times, here: http://www.spirithistory.com/nyleague.html. You might find it interesting also to read this: http://www.spirithistory.com/freelov.html in order to see the historical connection between the politics of radical socialism and the ideas of eugenicists such as Margaret Sanger, who simply continued the work of their "progressive" forebears. If you get interested in the New York Free Love League from reading this, there's also material on it here: http://www.spirithistory.com/58rutlnd.html. The "League," as it was called, had members who were also involved, naturally, with a variety of Red Republican societies and brotherhoods, who had ties to Continental radical organizations. Some of the actors in this Free Love drama became associated with the various chapters of the International Workingman's Association. The League and its "social" arm circulated for years a list of its associates and members around the country who were committed to living the Free Love ideal--at least in the sequestered settings put in place by groups of fellow travelers around the country. The history of the NY League is also interesting because of the association with it of the Bohemians in the Bowery, in whose circles Walt Whitman was involved. The Times reporter's allusion to men dancing with men at the soirees of the League would seem to point to the League's being an early venue for what we could now recognize as homosexual "uncloseting."

[Nick]

GL,

You and I got totally different messages out of Ender's Game

[GL]

Nick,

There were several possible messages in Ender's Game. What did you take away from it?

[Little Gidding]

Another fascinating article is "The Russian effort to abolish marriage" in the July 1926 Atlantic Monthly. You can read it on the web if you're a subscriber. It was a pretty disastrous experiment in free love, driven by political ideals.

[Juli]

a discovery which their capitalist counterparts, by the way, are just as eager to exploit

Precisely. From a purely capitalist perspective, sex becomes one more commodity, and those who do not carry their own weight, at least as "consumers," are useless and disposable.

[Stuart Koehl]

I find the whole proposition a load of horse manure which conveniently overlooks the fact that both the Soviet Union, Communist China and their satellites and copycats were all sexually austere and puritanical. While they consistently tried to undermine the family because the family was the principal obstacle to the total supremacy of the state, they also saw sex as diverting the attention of the individual from the needs of the state. Sex was for procreation in the service of the state, period. Which meant, in effect, that the state could tell you when, how and with whom to have sex. And what they preferred were monogamistic, albeit passionless marriages that would not distract the workers from overfulfillment of production norms--outside of the bedroom.

In fact, in the USSR and PRC, sexual promiscuity was treated as a political crime, and a quick way to end up in the GULAG or a reeducation camp. That is not to say that the leadership of these classless societies were above benefiting sexually from their positions of dominance. Lenin, Stalin, Mao were all notorious for accumulating harums of young and attractive women who would do their all for the foremost party member--just as Kim Jong Il does today.

To the extent that socialism has a reputation for sexual looseness, it is only in the weak, decadent and half-assed Western European form.

[Judy Warner]

I think that was the meaning of the "new left," Stuart. Not following the strait-laced communists of the Soviet Union and China, but striking out boldly in new directions to overthrow their own capitalist systems. As confused as their thinking was, making the revolution about sex worked a lot better for the left than making it about state ownership of the means of production.

[James A. Altena]

"Sex was for procreation in the service of the state, period."

Stuart, how does this statement square with the extremely high and state-sponsored abortion rates in these countries? I agree that these states (and Nazi Germany) were intensely interested in regulating sex as part of regulating all human relations in the service of the state, but abortion does not exactly further procreation in the servcie of the state.

[Joe Long]

Yes, Stuart, the Soviets don't exactly call sensual indulgence to mind - in fact they bring to mind Lewis' speculation in the "The Screwtape Letters" that the devils resent even the transient pleasures associated with sin, and try to promote the sin without the pleasure when they can.

The Western left, however, IS indulgent (or so promotes itself; perhaps in power it would be different - the Clinton Presidency notwithstanding). Our Commies are more the "orgy-porgy", "Woodstock" sort. Which actually makes sense as they are attacking social institutions, not trying to stabilize and perpetuate some new society, as the Soviets were.

On the literary side:
The main message of "Ender's Game", I think, was that the successful prosecution of war mandates ruthlessness - to the enemy and to the "children" (literally, in this book) who sacrifice their gifts, hopes and innocence in the struggle. Redemption of these defenders is a theme in the later (and not nearly as effective) books in the series...but in "Ender's Game" the rest of the world is saved by the unblemished lambs (in the "flawless, fit for sacrifice", not "sinless" sense) of the "Battle School". Ender's origin, evading the population control laws, certainly makes more than one Christian point - including having a savior arise from an unexpected source, and using what the world considers folly to confound the "wise".

[Rob Grano]

"Not following the strait-laced communists of the Soviet Union and China, but striking out boldly in new directions to overthrow their own capitalist systems. As confused as their thinking was, making the revolution about sex worked a lot better for the left than making it about state ownership of the means of production."

Right. Remember that one of the heroes of the New Left was Wilhelm Reich. Also, this doesn't necessarily contradict Stuart's contention. It seems to me that revolutionaries of this stripe will tout "sexual freedom" until they get into power; then the repression starts. In other words, it's used as a sort of bait to get people in.

E. Michael Jones has argued rather persuasively that there is always an element of sexual libertinism in left-leaning revolutions. Whether it continues afterwards is another story.

[Little Gidding]

There's a lot to say about this, but it doesn't advance any argument you may have when you begin by characterizing a view you've decided to oppose as "a load of horse manure."

Free Loverrs did not think of their ethic as "loose." They argued that everyone else's was "loose," that traditional marriage was a form of prostitution in which women traded sex for protection and material security. It was just a shallow arrangement for satisfying men's disordered desires. They believed, therefore, that it was licentious and promiscuous. It was selfish, according to their calculus. The result of the traditional arrangement, they argued, was the degeneration of the race.

The Free Lovers proposed replacing this "unnatural" arrangement with one in which sex was guided, not by "worldly" calculations, but by "heavenly" ones, which expressed the fact that in heaven, there is no marriage--at least of the sort that we have here. Sexual relations, they figured, should be guided by high principles, not by individuals. When people could be convinced--or their society could be ordered--to guide sexual relations in this way, then we would become "as angels," acting in a way that disregarded individualistic yearnings. It so happened that this "higher" and impersonal realm in which the sexual revolutionists thought we ought to order our behavior was perceived, especially by the Romantics, as operating in the form of "natural" passion, conceived as a kind of holy force that often expressed itself at odds with the "unnatural" strictures of traditional marriage. But this was advanced in all earnestness. With a truly "puritanical" earnestness. The most notorious Free Love society was the Oneida community, whose hierophant, John Humphrey Noyes, was a religious Perfectionist. The sexual techniques that amounted to birth control, but that also subserved the community's (rather than the individual's) management of sexual relations, were described in his publication, Bible Communism, which resulted in "Love" that was shared among the individual members of the community, but also that was strictly controlled and authorized by the community as a whole. It was Socialism. And it was earnest. And it was "strait-laced." And the community was populated by people who had inherited the sexual "puritanism" of their Puritan forebears. And anyone in the community could have sex with anyone else--at least in theory--as long as the community itself, whose authority was expressed by Noyes and a committe of elders--approved. This regime was anything but "half-assed." But it did result in what the members of the community regarded as a divine liberty but which outsiders regarded as mere license. Free Love depended on the control of sexual relations by the community--the State--which, you might say, paradoxically forbids sexual relations that are merely arrangements between individuals. Such arrangements are "selfish," and must be eradicated.

This all has little to do with "looseness," at least in theory. It is anything but "loose." If you consider all this, I think it's easier to understand why the sexual revolutionists of the 1960s were enamored both of "unconventional" sex, as well as radical Left politics and the State-centered authoritarianism of Mao. And why, today, their "permanent revolution" entails the elimination of "individualistic" sexual economies--traditional marriage, first and foremost. For them, the State is ultimately the instrument for enforcing and justifying this utopian regime. It may be that the revolution has to advance its agenda by framing its argument in terms of individual rights and the autonomy of the individual and the right to choose, but, really, this sort of argument is just a stalking-horse, useful for a time in advancing the revolution in societies that have founded themselves on the tenets of Liberalism. But once the opposition is overcome, the "useful idiots" will no longer be useful, and the full-throated regime of State-mandated birth control, abortion, and euthanasia can be put in place. This, as I take it, is why GL brought up "Ender's Game," as an example of people being led to work for an outcome, while the actual goal is kept hidden from them. The drill nowadays is to establish "all-sex-all-the-time" but also to make it fruitless through universal birth control. Brave New World, indeed.

[Ethan Cordray]

>>It may be that the revolution has to advance its agenda by framing its argument in terms of individual rights and the autonomy of the individual and the right to choose, but, really, this sort of argument is just a stalking-horse, useful for a time in advancing the revolution in societies that have founded themselves on the tenets of Liberalism.<<

Maybe, but I would be more inclined to explain the connection as an internal incoherence than as a deliberate bait-and-switch. If one defines oneself by opposition to conventional living arrangements, be it through radical politics or mere libertinism, one may be inclined to uncritically assume that anything out of the ordinary fits within one's program of advocacy. One may forget, for example, that African-American urban culture is strongly anti-homosexual, or that uncritically embracing third-world cultures means disregarding feminist concerns.

I don't see why anyone would be surprised that some people might honestly advocate both sexual individualism and economic collectivism. It's just a classic example of doublethink.

As to Stuart's comment, of course history shows that whenever one of the two dominates the other is suppressed. But we have a word for those who pay attention to history, and it isn't "leftist."

[Judy Warner]

The idea of participating in a revolution sets off all sorts of ideas in people. They become giddy with possibilities. As Wordsworth wrote:

The French Revolution As It Appeared To Enthusiasts At Its Commencement

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress—to assist the work
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself )
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves;—
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart’s desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Wcre called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,—the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!

And we all know what happened next. So it is with every revolution of this sort. For a very short time, Russian supporters of the communist revolution thought it was bliss in that dawn to be alive, and during that time there was free love for all. It was afterwards that the clampdown came.

[James A. Altena]

"One may forget, for example, that African-American urban culture is strongly anti-homosexual...."

There is apparently a lot of cognitive dissonance there. I don't have them at my fingertips, but I've run across several references to studies that (at least claim to) document a bizarre bifurcation in the black community, of suprisingly large numbers of men who engage in sexual intercourse with other men (some exclusively, some also having relations with women), but doggedly insist that they are *not* homosexual. Apparently being "gay" is identified with a certain kind of deportment (e.g. brazen swishiness) rather than choice of sex partner. It would certainly be one factor accounting for the relatively much higher AIDS rate in the black community.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Stuart, how does this statement square with the extremely high and state-sponsored abortion rates in these countries? <<<

This came about mainly in the post-Stalinist period of the USSR, at which time the state was approaching decadence, and the main concern of the Party was in retaining its perquisites. The Nomenklatura were the first to put their own interests ahead of the Revolution, but that does not mean the official policy changed. All that changed was the willingness of the Party to tolerate abortion as a means of birth control. Promiscuity would still land you in trouble with the organs if it was not discreet. Serial monogamy was the order of the day.

In China, of course, the situation was different, since the mandate of the Party was to reduce the total fertility rate to 1.00. And the Party, even to this day, remains remarkably straightlaced about both premarital and extramarital sex.

[Joe Long]

"Promiscuity would still land you in trouble with the organs if it was not discreet."

Well, yeah...

Sorry.

[Nick]

The main message of "Ender's Game", I think, was that the successful prosecution of war mandates ruthlessness - to the enemy and to the "children" (literally, in this book) who sacrifice their gifts, hopes and innocence in the struggle. Redemption of these defenders is a theme in the later (and not nearly as effective) books in the series...but in "Ender's Game" the rest of the world is saved by the unblemished lambs (in the "flawless, fit for sacrifice", not "sinless" sense) of the "Battle School". Ender's origin, evading the population control laws, certainly makes more than one Christian point - including having a savior arise from an unexpected source, and using what the world considers folly to confound the "wise".

This is much closer to the message that I got. I would also point out that Ender, despite being a killer at age six(?) remains innocent the whole time. The violence perpetuated by those who are against Ender is always shown as evil. It is designed merely to hurt him and not out of any need for survival. The violence committed by Ender is innocent since he is only seeking to survive and is not aggressive. That's a powerful message. One that I've thought a lot about over the years.