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| Author | Wilhelm Reich |
|---|---|
| Original title | Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf |
| Language | German |
| Subject | Sexual ethics |
| Publisher | Sexpol-Verlag |
Publication date | 1936 |
| Publication place | f |
| Pages | 247 pp. |
| OCLC | 2391549 |
Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf ("Sexuality in the Cultural Struggle"), 1936 (published later in English asThe Sexual Revolution), is a work byWilhelm Reich.[1] The subtitle is "zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des Menschen" ("for the socialist restructuring of humans"), the double title reflecting the two-part structure of the work.[2]
The first part "analyzes the crisis of the bourgeois sexual morality" and the failure of the attempts of "sexual reform" that preserved theframe of capitalist society (marriage and family). The second part reconstructs the history of the sexual revolution that took place with the establishment of theSoviet Union since 1922, and which was opposed byJoseph Stalin in the late 1920s.[2]
Starting with the 1945 English edition, the following German, French and Italian editions had an unexplained change in the title:The Sexual Revolution. Such title changed "not only the perspective, but also the methodology", resulting in a misleading presentation of the actual work contained in the book.[3] More instructive is the change of the subtitle: fromfor the socialist restructuring of humans totoward a self-governing character structure.
The editions since 1945, also had a number of "reshuffles, terminology changes and abuses by editors", some of which were intended to "disguise the communist-revolutionary orientation", to avoid hurting the susceptible American public.[4] There are also crucial omissions and changes to the content; while the original edition (1936), based its theory on the "rejection of the family institution as such", the softened versions reject just the "authoritarian family structure", aiming to replace it with a "better and more natural form of family".[5] Other omissions or changes affected the "terms regarding religion, class society, radical left politics, the 'bourgeois' attribute referred to family, morality or sexuality, proletariat, etc.[6]
In 1992, Italian publisherErre Emme, published for the first time not only an integral 1936 edition,[7] but also integrations showing the changes of the 1945 edition, in order to allow a scientific confrontation.[6]
"We are living through a true revolution of all values regarding sexual life. And among those values most seriously undermined are those relating to infant and adolescent sexuality."
In Part I, Reich explains that sexual neuroses derive from the lack of gratification of natural sexuality. Natural sexuality is left unsatisfied and thereby creates neuroses due to suppression of this sexuality by the authoritarian state. For Reich, this state is characterized best by the capitalist state that is based on the unit of the patriarchical family, within which thefather mirrors the state as the absolute authority.
According to Reich, the authoritarian state uses a variety of tools in order to suppress its citizens' natural sexualities. These tools comprise Reich's view of "conservative,sex-negative moralism" and include:
These various means of suppression in turn cause the authoritarian state's citizens to both repress their natural sexual desires and create new, neurotic, unhealthy sexual desires. Reich explains that this relationship between suppression/repression of natural sexuality and the creation or intensification of sexual neuroses is a cyclical relationship that constantly results in more power for the authoritarian state.
The authoritarian state's motive, whether it is conscious of it or not, is to preserve its economic structure through continuance of the patriarchal family as its primary social unit. The family, according to Reich, is essential to the economic structure of capitalism because it benefits the capitalist as well as preserves itself to the next generation. The latter is achieved through suppression of infantile sexual attraction to the parents, thereby producing a repressed attachment to the family unit. The child longs for familial relationships and mimics the parent of its own gender in the creation of its own family. The capitalist benefits from the economic unit of the family because of the husband's economic dominance over the wife, who is economically dependent on her husband and works for no wage in the house. This allows the employer of the husband to pay him a lesser wage because the employer need not take into account the cost that the husband would have to pay a housekeeper or childcare provider. This lack of extra wage for traditional female housework and child-rearing encourages the woman to stay home to be economical, as well as allows her husband's employer to keep that extra surplus capital for himself. The husband also benefits because he is given power and authority in the home that he does not necessarily get in the workplace.
In the preface of the 1945 edition, Reich says that "our" (Western) family structure is inherited from oldpatriarchy.
Fraenkel (1992) notes that the supposed "sexual revolution" claimed for the West since the late 60s is indeed a misconception. Sex is not actually enjoyed freely, it is just observed in all the fields of culture. In order to move from that to an actual sexual liberation, we must change ourmental structures and ourmoral inhibitions. Instead, the repressiveJudeo-Christian morals still basically hold, and small social changes are exaggerated because they're seen in that light. Even many supposed atheists have justsecularized andinternalized the same old morals.[9]
Thebourgeois ideology has a strong demand thatadolescents, having reachedsexual maturity, be repressed insexual abstinence. To justify this sad privation, which is the basis of theirunhappiness, all sorts ofunscientific and ridiculous justifications have been made up.[10] This doesn't happen,anthropologicalcross-cultural studies have shown, in many contemporary societies which don't have a markedpatriarchal ideology (an ideology pushed by the bias of technologies like intensive agriculture and mechanization,[11] and which are therefore controversially termed "primitive" by westerns). Anthropologists who have studied such people includeBronisław Malinowski, with his 1929 workThe Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia,Ploss-Bartels (de),[12]Havelock Ellis,[13]Hans Meyer on theWahehe andWossangu.[14]
There is an active effort to obstructpubescent people from starting to engage in sexual activity. This includes keeping them from finding the information they need to understand their sexual issues. So-called "sex education" is practically always a work ofdeception which focuses on biology while concealingexcitement-arousal, which is what interests them the most, and hides the fact that all their worries and difficulties originate from unsatisfied sexual impulses.[15]
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