Conversation with a hairdresser’s assistant (2010)

A Short Story from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1930s Wilhelm Reich, perhaps best known as the author of The Sexual Revolution, developed the theory that it was possible to explain the basic concepts of Marxian economics without employing complicated economic terms and arguments. As an example of his attempt at this, we publish below, for the first time in English translation, an article he wrote in 1935 under his pseudonym of Ernst Parell for the Zeitschrift für politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie (vol 2, No 1) he published in exile in Denmark.

Assistant: Style or a simple haircut?

Customer: A haircut please but square not round.

(Pause)

Assistant: What do you think of present times?

Customer: Terrible. Where will it lead to?

Assistant: The hooligans are going to cut each other’s throats and we’ll get the worst of it whoever wins, whether the Communists or the Nazis. They’re as bad as each other.

Customer: Perhaps you’re right. I can’t understand politics.

Assistant: I’m glad I’ve got a job and am making ends meet. As for the rest, all I want is to live in peace.

Customer: May I ask how much you in fact earn?

Assistant: 100 marks a month.

Customer: Can you live on that?

Assistant: Just about. I’d like to get married but it’ll take a long time until my fiancée and me have saved up enough to be able to rent a flat. I’ve been working ten years in this place and I’ve not saved up enough yet.

Customer: What’s your boss like?

Assistant: He’s a very nice person. Sometimes he’s a bit moody, but I get on fairly well with him.

Customer: How many customers do you deal with a day?

Assistant: 10 to 15. On Saturdays it’s more.

Customer: So that means that 15 customers pay 15 marks into the business. OK, but you only get 3.50 marks a day. What happens to the rest?

Assistant: You’ve not taken into account the expenses of our business. Lighting, telephone, insurance, instruments, rent, they eat up quite a bit.

Customer: I’d be interested how much.

Assistant: (thinks awhile) Well I suppose at least 8 marks.

Customer: OK, but that still leaves about 9-10 marks.

Assistant: Yes, but the business must make a surplus since the boss takes a great risk. For example, on some days there are fewer customers, or in bad times.

Customer: Does that mean that you get more when business is booming?

Assistant: No, why should I? I’m on a regular income.

Customer: I don’t understand. When you work more you don’t get paid more? And of the amount you earn on average for the boss keeps a fund for bad times?

Assistant: You’re quite right.

Customer: If I understand you correctly, you produce after subtracting all costs about 10 to 12 marks for him per day and of this you receive 3 to 3.50 marks. And if times become permanently bad for the business he’ll sack you, in which case the reserve fund is of no use to you. So what in fact does he use this money for?

Assistant: Well, for example the boss has to acquire modern machines. At present we’re replacing the hand clippers by electric ones.

Customer: What does that mean?

Assistant (surprised): What, you don’t understand that? It’s quite simple. Now I can deal with 10 customers a day, afterwards I’ll be able to deal with 20 because the cutting will be much faster.

Customer: And each one of these 20 will be paying 1 mark as before. And you, how much will you get then?

Assistant (even more surprised): Naturally, I’ll continue to get my 100 marks.

Customer: Excuse my being so inquisitive, I’m getting a bit lost and am rather amazed. With the new improved machines you’ll be earning 20 marks for, him but you yourself will continue to receive only 3.50. That means the surplus has grown from 8 to about 13? Where does the money go?

Assistant: (scratches his head) Actually, you’re right. That’s a good question but, you know, I get so tired from working that I don’t have much energy to think. I’m happy if I can rest and keep my job. You know next week 2 out of my 5 workmates are being made redundant and I have to ensure that I’m not sacked too.

Customer: It must be pretty bad to stand 10 hours a day in the shop – what about holidays?

Assistant: Oh yes. I get a fortnight every year, but the others also go on holiday and when they do I have to do more work. And now the boss is going away for 2 months.

Customer: Where does he get the money to stay away for so long?

Assistant: He has a villa in Dahlen.

Customer: Oh. How come?

Assistant: Well he’s owned this business for 30 years now.

Customer: I see. Does he work?

Assistant: Oh no, only sometimes he helps out. But it’s a successful business.

Customer: Listen. I don’t understand anything about such things but it seems to me that his villa and his summer holidays are paid by the 8 or 13 marks which you earn for his “business surplus”.

Assistant: Oh I don’t think so. But perhaps you’re right, it is odd. I’d like to talk to you sometime about this. You talk a lot of common sense.

In this conversation no political word has been mentioned, but this hairdresser’s assistant has developed the theory of surplus value, rationalisation and unemployment from the experiences of his own life. And over and above this he has developed a confidence in the “customer”. You don’t need to teach him about what rationalisation or exploitation is, he has described these himself. What he lacks is the understanding of the link between his knowledge about his work and surplus labour with the villa of the entrepreneur. Nor is he at all conscious of the fact that he identifies with his boss. And he is completely unable to see the connection between politics, which he is against and afraid of, and his everyday life. At this point it will be easy to make him conscious of this because it is contained in what he himself has said and experienced; all that has to be done is to develop it.

Ernst Parell

The Sexual Politics of Wilhelm Reich (1973)

From the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

What has prevented the growth of Socialist consciousness amongst the working class even though the material conditions for the immediate establishment of Socialism have been in existence for at least three-quarters of a century? Why, when Socialism is so obviously in their interest, do workers continue to support and maintain capitalism? Why is the political behaviour of the working class so irrational?

For Wilhelm Reich the answer could be summed up in two words: sexual repression. In his view, the restrictions on sexual activity imposed through the father-dominated family structure produced people dependent on authority and incapable of independent thought and action.

Reich was born in Dobrzynica in Galicia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in 1897, the son of German-speaking Jewish parents. As a medical student in Vienna after the first world war he became interested first in the physiology and then in the psychology of sex. He joined the circle around Freud, the psychoanalyst, and became one of his close disciples.

Instinct and Energy

Freud had been teaching since before the turn of the century that most mental illness was caused by “sexual repression” dating from early childhood; and that every human being was born with a “sexual instinct” which had to be tamed before he could become a fit member of society and that in fact this is what, from the psychological point of view, growing up and becoming socialized meant. “Instinct” is a notoriously vague word, but for Freud it was more than just a description of how people do in fact behave; he speculated that it did have a real physical basis in the human body and that sooner or later science would discover the precise chemical formula for “sexual energy”. For Freud was, in principle, a materialist who believed that men’s thoughts, conscious and “unconscious”, could ultimately be explained in terms of some chemical change in the human body. So when Freud spoke of “sexual energy” he meant the word “energy” to be understood literally. For him sexual repression was not just the psychological process of mentally suppressing sexual ideas but was also a real physical process of suppressing or diverting real bodily energy of some sort.

Or so Freud speculated, though nothing resembling any such “sexual energy” has yet been discovered, a fact which must reflect adversely on his theories generally — and also of course on those derived from them such as Reich’s. Reich was particularly interested in this aspect of Freudian psychology and clinically investigated bodily tensions associated with sex. Later, in 1939, he was to claim — without any scientifically acceptable evidence — to have actually discovered what “sexual energy” really was: apparently it wasn’t chemical after all but electrical!

Communist Party

But it is not the years of Reich’s pathetic decline into a charlatan claiming to be able to cure cancer by means of his “orgone box” (he died in 1957 in an American jail) that are of interest to Socialists. For, while working with Freud in the 1920’s, he came to the conclusion that all the Freudian psychoanalysts were doing was to patch up mentally sick individuals and send them back into the society whose sexual code had originally made them sick. He felt that the real solution to the problem of mental illness caused by sexual misery lay in transforming society. To this end in 1928 he joined the Austrian Communist Party. In 1930 he moved to Berlin and joined the German Communist Party (KPD). At the same time he was active in groups which combined sex education and calls for an end to legal restrictions on sex with anti-capitalist agitation. Not surprisingly really, his views on sex were not always to the liking of the leaders of the KPD, partly because they regarded the struggle for sexual reform as a diversion from their struggle for political power and partly because they themselves probably harboured certain prejudices about sex. Eventually in 1932 Reich was expelled.

Reich was not simply a fellow-travelling Communist Party sympathizer but an active member during a period when the Party was violently denouncing the Social Democrats as “social fascists”. He was, and re­mained for some years after his expulsion, a thorough­ going Leninist firmly believing in the need for a “revo­lutionary leadership” to lead the masses in a violent assault on the capitalist State. His criticism of the German Communist Party for its failure to prevent the rise of Hitler, as expressed in the original version of The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and his pam­phlet What is Class Consciousness? amounts to a charge that because of their attitude to sex they left the way clear for Hitler to exploit the sexual misery of the masses for political ends; whereas, says Reich, this is what the KPD should have been doing and would have been doing if they had followed his advice.

To lead the Masses

It is the same with his explanation for the failure of the Russian revolution given in the later versions of The Sexual Revolution. (It is important to realize that Reich changed successive editions of his works in line with his changing views and that the English translation of this work and of The Mass Psychology of Fascism date from 1945 and so were considerably different from the original German versions of 1930 and 1933 respectively). According to Reich, Russia went off the rails because the Bolshevik government had failed to carry out properly the sexual liberation of the Russian people. As a result the Russian masses remained dependent on authority and incapable of democratic self-management so making a dictatorship inevitable.

This argument still accepts Lenin’s view that under capitalism the workers are incapable of reaching a full Socialist consciousness and so have to be led by a vanguard party and that the task of Socialist education of the majority cannot begin until after the seizure of power by the vanguard party. Reich’s criticism was essentially only that the Bolsheviks failed because they had not carried out their own theories properly — with the implication that if they had Russia would not have “degenerated” into the Stalinist dic­tatorship.

But it was Bolshevik theory itself that was wrong not its application. The vast majority of workers will have to become conscious Socialists before their political party (a mass democratic party rather than a vanguard of would-be leaders, of course) wins power. In the absence of such a Socialist majority, any minority which seizes power, no matter how sincerely they may desire Socialism, cannot but become a new ruling class because they would have no alternative but to run, or as in Russia in 1917 to develop, capitalism. The Bolsheviks’ coup was doomed, even before it was carried out, both by the economic backwardness of Russia and by the lack of Socialist consciousness (as opposed to mere mass discontent with the old order) of the Russian workers. It would not have been saved by a more liberal sex policy.

Change of Mind

Reich’s belief that Leninist tactics (which, after all, involve authoritarian leadership) could lead to a free society in which people would be able to manage their affairs without leaders was a glaring contradiction. For how, on his own theory, could people still psychologically dependent on leaders come to establish a society without leaders? When Reich was in the Communist Party and for some years after he clearly thought that after the revolutionary leaders had power it would be up to them to take steps to the masses’ psychological dependence on them by pursuing a liberal sex policy. In other words, the workers were not to emancipate themselves, but were to he emancipated by their leaders. A view quite in accord with Leninism, but equally quite opposed to Marxism. To be fair, Reich later, when in exile in America, came to see this contradiction. It led him to abandon Leninism (which he imagined to be Marxism) as the way to establish a free society. Instead he came to think that before such a society (which he now called “work-democracy” rather than “socialism”) could be established people must have ceased to be psychologically dependent on leaders and have become capable of the democratic self-management of their own affairs. In fact he even argued that, in the absence of this any attempt to establish a free society would lead rather to state capitalism. This is how he characterised Russia in his 1945 Introduction to the Third, English version of The Mass Psychology of Fascism:

“In the strictly Marxist sense, there is not even in Soviet Russia a state socialism but a state capitalism. According to Marx, the social condition ‘capitalism’ does not consist in the existence of individual capitalists, but in the existence of the specific ‘capitalist mode of production’; that is, in the production of exchange values instead of use values, in wage work of the masses and in the production of surplus value, which is appropriated by the state or the private owners, and not by the society of working people. In this strictly Marxist sense, the capitalistic system con­tinues to exist in Russia. And it will continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack respon­sibility and to crave authority.” (His emphasis).

Repression or Indoctrination ?

By this time Reich had become something of a gradualist, believing that the free society he wished to see would come when sufficient individuals had cone to liberate themselves sexually. This is probably why his ideas are so popular in certain circles today: they provide a seemingly satisfactory ideology for the current rebellion within capitalism against out-dated sexual codes. However, these same people — the sexual rebels — find some of his views on sex itself embarrassing. For, as a Freudian, Reich believed that there was a biologically natural form of sexual behaviour, even though distorted by class society. He labelled homosexuality as “unnatural” (though harm­less) and argued that women needed men in order to experience full sexual pleasure — views highly embarrassing to both gay liberation and women’s liberation.

But it is precisely because Freud’s theories posit a fixed “human nature”, at least in relation to sexual behaviour, that Marxists have been doubtful about their validity. Sexual behaviour is but one kind of social behaviour and, as such, socially not biologically deter­mined. So no one form of sexual behaviour can be said to be more “natural” than any other. Ironically then, it is Marx rather than Freud who provides the better argument for sexual tolerance! But then the Socialist tradition, before even Freud was born, championed sexual freedom and “free love”, i.e., a society in which people would be free to have sex without first having to get a licence from the Church or State. The struggle for Socialism has always been, among other things of course, a struggle for a rational attitude to sex and part of Socialist consciousness is being free from prejudices about sex (the inferiority of women, discrimination against homosexuals, etc).

But what about Reich’s, or rather his followers’, explanation for the irrational behaviour of the working class in keeping capitalism going? Is it really because workers are sexually repressed by the father-dominated families they grew up in? Many uncritically accept that it is, but for this to be true so would Freud’s speculations about the existence of some measurable “sexual energy”. The whole theory of sexual repression stands or falls on the existence of such energy, even more for Reich than for Freud since all his psychological theories depend on it. Yet there is no scientifically acceptable evidence whatsoever for the existence of any such thing, only Reich’s experiments which deceived nobody but himself. Sexual restrictions are bad for people’s health but they cannot be blamed also for the lack of Socialist consciousness any more than they can be blamed for the rise of fascism or the failure of the Russian revolution. Nor is there any reason to suppose that their removal would be in any way incompatible with capitalism. The most that can be said for Reich is that he did argue a good case for a rational attitude to sex; most of his book The Sexual Revolution is well worth reading just for this.

The explanation is much simpler: the success of the ruling class in directly (as opposed to indirectly via sexual repression) inculcating their ideas into the minds of the workers through the process of learning. The workers’ acceptance of capitalist political and social ideas, like their other ideas, is learned from other people — their parents, their schoolteachers, their workmates, the press, television — and so derived from society and is not a reflection of the suppression of some biologically natural behaviour as Reich claims. It follows therefore that the struggle against capitalist ideology must be a struggle to spread Socialist ideas as such and not a campaign for sexual reform.

Adam Buick

Letters: Marx and/or Freud? (2001)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and/or Freud?

Dear Editors,

I found the articles and discussion in the January and February issues on ads, capitalist art, psychology and Amos’s letter interesting; indeed one can make a synthesis of all this, which I would like to try and do, basing my discussion on Amos’s confused critique.

Your reply (Letters, January) was one way of answering him: socialism will be able to expand production of useful things in an ecologically defensive manner. There is another approach, and that is to point out how we see socialism being established. We have always stressed the need for majority, working class political action, based on understanding of and desire for socialism.

Capitalism shapes our needs through ads–you are what you own! Socialist society will certainly not be one of massive consumption since we will develop a new ethos; ideas become material forces when they lay hold of the masses, I believe Marx noted. Amos is judging consumption in socialist society through the eyes of a pro-capitalist when he says that everyone should, or would, be on a par with Western workers. Whoever said the lifestyle of Western workers is desirable? Also we certainly agree with Marx’s idea that humans make their own history, but only within the realms of what is materially possible. This is historical materialism, not utopian thinking of post-modernist idealism.

Seen in this light Amos’s view that social democratic parties are the best bet against fascism and barbarism is ludicrous. Concepts like fascism and democracy do not exist in vacuo. Democracy can only be safeguarded and expanded with the growth of socialist consciousness. That is the lesson Germany 1933-45.

That period does, though, raise troubling questions for Marxists. Class consciousness does not arise entirely spontaneously, it would seem. Some irrational factor is at work. Wilhelm Reich saw this as a result of sexual repression and the patriarchal family structure. Reich, however, was an unrepentant Leninist, and if his theory has any credibility it must be applicable to the truly fascist period of Stalinism as well.

A more credible approach is that taken by Erich Fromm (even though he made the mistake of equating nationalisation with socialism). Fromm is a good antidote to the idealist, psychological nonsense being peddled now, despite his works being some 30-50 years old. He took the concept of alienation, to be found in Marx’s philosophical worldview, and attempted to give it a Freudo-style twist. His Fear of Freedom, The Sane Society, and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness are great books.

Homo sapiens is not in control of the products of sinew and brain, relations to each other, has lost himself and his connection to nature. (It is also factually incorrect of Amos to state Marx wasn’t green—he was, and he need only read Marx to find out.) The impersonal forces can leave the individual truly crushed; open to neurosis and inclined to let someone else solve problems. Only by establishing democratic structures and common ownership (socialism) can the individual and society progress. In this respect can Reich’s idea of human emancipation (necessarily involving sexual emancipation) be defensible.

Capitalism creates the material grounding for socialism, but a society of alienated people. The dialectic, socialisation of production but not in society’s interest, will be solved in socialist revolution. As will be the dialectic of mind: rationality and irrationality. This concept answers those who wonder about anti-social behaviour in socialist society; it will regress.

I realise Freudo-Marxism isn’t held as being tenable by fellow comrades, so it is prudent you comment on it.

Yours for a sane society

G.C. Taylor, 

Brabrand, Denmark

Reply: 

It is true that we are Marxians rather than Freudians, historical materialists rather than believers in psychoanalysis. Freud himself of course was not a socialist, but in fact embraced the “human nature objection” in an extreme form. He was a pessimist who believed that without morality and government to channel human sexual energies constructively utter chaos would result. To their credit, some of his followers—Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm—did not go along with him on this and modified his theory to make the existence of a free, socialist society compatible with the Freudian view of human nature.

Reich’s The Sexual Revolution, written in the 1930s, has always been popular because it advocates a more relaxed attitude to sex—which Socialists share—but this message can be accepted without accepting the particular theory Reich put forward to justify it (which was very dubious and eventually led him to claim to have identified and to be able to measure “sexual energy” or “orgone” as he called it). Incidentally, although Reich was a member of the German Communist Party when he wrote it, he was soon expelled, partly because of it. In one of his later works, the pamphlet Listen, Little Man! he uses the term “state capitalism” in relation to Russia.

Marcuse’s Eros and Civilzation, like all his writings, is heavy going but his argument that abundance meant that sexual repression was no longer necessary found an echo amongst some socialists when it appeared in 1955.

You’re probably right about Fromm being the best of them, no doubt because (to the annoyance of the orthodox Freudians and even of Marcuse) he abandoned Freud’s explanations in terms of individual biology for social ones. The books of his you mention have always been popular amongst Socialist Party members—Editors.

Spying on the Trotskyists

Dear Editors,

In the article, “Chatham House and spies” (Socialist Standard, December 2000), I stated that the Security Service (MI5) has monitored, and heavily infiltrated Trotskyist organisations in this country, since 1943. In fact, the government’s Security Executive under the chairmanship of Viscount Swinton, using information obtained from MI5, reported under the heading of “subversive activities” on the British Union of Fascists, the Communist Party, pacifist and conscientious objectors; organisations, as well as Trotskyists, as early as 1941 (PRO: FO 371 32583).

In particular, the Security Executive considered the activities of Trotskyists in Britain, and concluded that nothing should be done to lessen their embarrassment to the Communist Party (PRO: FO 371 344 34416), and (PRO: FO 371 29523). Three years later, when the Trotskyists formed the Revolutionary Communist Party, Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, submitted a memorandum to the War Cabinet, in which he concluded that the Trotskyists had had little success in penetrating the Trade Unions. Among the leaders named was Ted Grant, the future leader of Militant Tendency, later ousted by the present leader, Peter Taaffe.

Peter E. Newell, 

Colchester, Essex

Letters: Scientific proofs (2006)

Letters to the Editors from the July 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scientific proofs

Dear Editors

As both a scientist and a socialist, I was dismayed to read two statements in the May Socialist Standard which appear to reflect an anti-science or anti-academia bias. The first statement, found in the Pathfinders column, is that “science itself is unable to prove anything very much at all, whether it is a theory of gravity, evolution, or climate change”. While this is ‘technically’ true, it is more than a little disingenuous, and may lead readers to believe that the Socialist Party rejects science as a tool for understanding nature and the human condition.

Science works by proposing theories, which are tested to see if they account for the available data, and then modified if they do not. Because new data is always being discovered, scientific theories are never proved with absolute certainty in the sense of a mathematical or logical proof, but rather in the sense of a legal proof – “beyond a reasonable doubt”. The overwhelming evidence in support of the theory of evolution is such that no biologist disputes its ability to account for the fossil record and origin of species; in this informal sense the theory can rightly be said to be “proven”.

Socialists should therefore not reject calls for scientific proof of our social and economic theories; rather, we should meet them by providing supporting evidence, or by modifying our theories when presented with contradictory evidence.

The second passage with which I take issue appears in Voice from the Back, where some professors are ridiculed for speculating on some matter of Christian mythology instead of speaking out against world hunger.

I’d like to know what evidence the author of this piece has that these professors are not socialists and are unsympathetic to the problem of world hunger. And is it his belief that the study of ancient history and literature has no redeeming value, and that it will be abandoned in socialism? Or merely that any activity not directly related to bringing about socialism should be held up to condemnation and ridicule?

Perhaps the author may be able to devote every waking hour of his life to socialist propagandizing, but most of the rest of us need to set aside at least some of our time for employment, hobbies, relaxation, and yes, even inconsequential philosophical debates.

Tristan Miller, 

London SW4

Another view of Freud

Dear Editors

I’d like to comment on the article “Freud and Marx: do they mix?” (May Socialist Standard) and put forward some of my own thoughts on the subject. In order to appreciate Freud you really need to approach him with the right mind-set. That mind-set, in my opinion, is an ability to understand where he’s “coming from”, together with a willingness to appreciate his insights without necessarily buying into his ideas wholesale.

This second point was explained by J.A.C. Brown in his book Freud and the Post-Freudians:

“It is convenient to regard the total body of Freudian thought as falling into roughly three categories: its basic psychological concepts; the theories based on clinical observations and described in terms of this conceptual scheme; and the essentially philosophical conclusions on such subjects as the nature of society and civilization, war and religion, which Freud drew from his own thought and experience. 

Whether or not such a division is logically justifiable it is undoubtedly empirically useful in any consideration of his influence on scientific thought; for many would accept his general approach to psychological problems who would not be uncritical of his theories, and others would accept both without taking very seriously his metaphysical conclusions.”

Freud’s outstanding fault was over-generalisation. But even this criticism of him has to be qualified because you have to judge each of his points individually. Making sweeping statements about someone who made so many different individual points over so many years is it itself an overgeneralisation. Many people have claimed that Freud’s ideas are untestable. This isn’t necessarily true. Seymour Fisher and Roger P. Greenberg have made a concerted effort to test Freud’s ideas against a wide range of scientific evidence. Their findings are compiled in their two books The Scientific Credibility of Freud’s Theories and Therapy and Freud Scientifically Reappraised.

The following paragraph, which appears in their first book, gives you an idea of their general approach:

“Overall, the best argument we can muster for scientifically testing Freud’s models is the fact that many competent people have already tried their hand at it and discovered new, interesting things. It should be added that their fairly precise quantitative observations are making it possible to speak in terms of the degree to which Freud’s ideas are valid or not valid, rather than simply Freud, at least in terms of his theoretical conclusions, had a somewhat pessimistic view of human nature, and in this sense saw things differently from socialists."

However, I believe that this should be set against Freud’s compassionate acceptance of human weakness and limitation, and in this respect, I believe, Freud and Marx were soul mates. Many of their peers would have been happy to regard the hysterical men and women as well as the poor oppressed masses as both, each in their own way, the cause of their own misfortune. Freud and Marx regarded them as fellow human beings, championed their causes, and sought to relieve them from their suffering. In doing so they both went completely against the grain of the societies they lived in, and for that bravery of spirit alone, deserve our gratitude and respect.

The idea that people are the cause of their own misfortune is a central argument of those on the political right. This is particularly so in America where it’s even accepted by many of those who suffer as a result of it. The idea is that whether someone is emotionally disturbed, or mentally ill, or a single mother, or lacks the skills, strength, or ability to get a well paying job, they are somehow supposed to have chosen to be exactly as they are. Giving them no support is then justified on the grounds that they could choose to somehow magically change themselves and their circumstances if they really wanted to. It’s interesting to note that these right-wingers choose to see emotional and economic difficulties in a very similar way.

Freud and Marx would have been united in opposing this absurd idea. Freud would have pointed out that people with emotional problems are victims of their own natures and certainly don’t choose to be the way they are. I don’t need to say what Marx would have said about the source of economic hardship.

In spite of the huge differences in their areas of interests there are quite a number of ways in which Freud and Marx parallel one another. They were both big fans of Darwin and saw themselves as doing work in a similar vein to him.

For an explanation of how Marx’s views on religion correspond to Freud’s ideas about paranoia see Paranoia by David Bell. This is an excellent little booklet which I thoroughly recommend. It gives a brilliant explanation of “false communities”, racism, hatred of asylum seekers, resentment welfare recipients, etc. from a  psychoanalytic point of view. Psychoanalysis has a tremendous amount to offer to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of human behaviour.

I can’t resist mentioning the books of Robert Jay Lifton in which he applies his background in psychoanalysis to the study of recent historical and political situations. Socialists should simply take from Freud and psychoanalysis whatever they find helpful or interesting and leave aside that which they don’t.

Adam Waterhouse, 

Bristol

Dear Editors 

The article on ‘Freud and Marx’ (May Socialist Standard) was quite interesting and may lead some readers to study more of the works of Freud, Reich and Fromm. However, it appears to make the usual errors by critics of their pioneering work

Freud’s discovery of psycho-analysis is used by the medical profession world-wide and has proved to be beneficial and invaluable in treating patients with deep emotional difficulties.

The article states that “Instinctual Sexual Energy” has never been found. This is not the case. Any objective observation of older babies and very young children will demonstrate that they have a natural and “instinctive” sexual or sensual drive for genital play for long before they have any understanding or knowledge of sexual functioning.

While there have been advances in sexual liberation for adults, in recent years, this has not led to much improvement in social attitudes. There is a specific reason for this. Development in the first five years of life pass through the stages of oral, anal and genital evolution of pleasure zones.

By puberty, on average, girls are menstruating at 10 years of age and boys, on average, are ejaculating at 12 years. So physiologically they are ready for mating.

This in our “Civilised” society is understandably unacceptable. So unlike all other living creatures, the “Sexual Instincts” must be repressed and thwarted. Freud and Freudians understood this and suggested that a price in emotional terms would be made. Hence the ‘Life and Death’ instincts evolve that give rise to the emergence of all kinds of sexual perversions that can develop. These are also expressed in ‘death’ drives in addictions, such as drug taking, smoking, alcohol, etc. And as Wilhelm Reich proved, into homoerotic political diversions, such as fascist and nazi fantasies. (Study the Nazi symbols and expressions and the “death instinct” is self-evident.) Sexuality or sensuality is the deepest natural emotional instinct all humans possess.

Most people, though unaware of their repressed emotions, are able to cope sufficiently in life. It is essential, however, to understand the complexity of our personalities, if we are ever going to be able to create a fully successful socialist society that will be really lasting. For we are not machines or robots, but thinking animals with many emotional layers. Just as the work of Marx is a guide to understanding, and not a dogma like religions. So also, is the work of Freud, Reich and Fromm.

Lionel Rich, 

London NW6

Freud and Marx: do they mix? (2006)

From the May 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Freud was born 150 years ago this month. Here we look at those who have tried to combine his theories with those of Marx.

Freud, who was an atheist and regarded himself as a scientific materialist, put forward a theory to explain irrational behaviour. As a doctor specialising in mental disorders and a pioneer in this field, he was quite entitled to put forward the hypothesis that mental disorders were generally connected with sexual repression in early childhood. But he was equally required to propose a mechanism as to how this could come about. His suggested materialist explanation was that there existed in human beings a special form of instinctual energy—sexual energy—to which he gave the name “libido”. That gave other scientists something to go on, something to look for in the physiology of human beings.

The trouble is that no such instinctual sexual energy has ever been found. Freud has, however, been proved right that what happens in early childhood is of crucial importance for the development of the adult personality. Other scientists have confirmed that this is the period of fairly rapid learning. But there is no reason to suppose that this is all about sex. Sexual preferences and orientations will be just one amongst many other things that will be learned during this period.

It is also true that people have been taught (more in the past than today) irrational ideas and attitudes about sex and this has had a harmful effect on their adult sex life and, in extreme cases, on their mental health. Freud’s critics don’t deny this but say he was wrong to seek to reduce everything to the expression or repression or diversion of some instinctual sexual energy.

Instinctual energy?

Wilhelm Reich, like Freud, was a medical doctor. At first he had been interested in the physiology of sex but then, under Freud’s influence, became interested in its psychology as well. But he always retained an interest in physiology and was the one of Freud’s followers who took the most seriously Freud’s hypothesis that there existed a material energy form called “libido” or “instinctual sexual energy” and set about trying to find it.

His break with Freud did not come over this, but over politics. Freud was an ordinary defender of liberal capitalism and wanted to keep his theories as essentially a clinical cure for certain forms of mental illness. Reich didn’t agree. He felt that a free society could exist if people in general were taught to take a rational attitude to sex. This led him in 1927 to join the Communist Party, from which he was to be expelled in 1933.

Reich offered an explanation as to why fascism had developed: sexual repression in early childhood. According to him, the particular form of sexual repression and family life practised in pre-Nazi Germany led to people, including workers, coming to have an authoritarian personality which inclined them to follow and be dependent on leaders, who represented the patriarchal father-figure they had been brought up to believe in and which, as a result, they had a psychological need for.

Reich’s theory didn’t have much impact at the time but it was revived in the 1960s and 70s when his The Sexual Revolution and The Mass Psychology of Fascism were hugely popular, being reprinted many times and translated into many languages. The combination of Marxism and sexual liberation caught the mood of the time. His argument in The Mass Psychology of Fascism as to why people had supported fascism was transferred virtually unchanged to explain why people supported capitalism; it was as if its title had been “the mass psychology of capitalism”. In this way sexual liberation came to be seen as being intrinsically anti-capitalist.

There is nothing wrong with sexual liberation but it stands on its own and doesn’t need Reich’s psychological theories to justify it. Since the 60s and 70s the so-called sexual revolution has proceeded. The patriarchal family is not half so patriarchal as it used to be and is not so widespread either—yet capitalism is as solidly supported by the majority of people as it ever was. Which in itself undermines theories based on Reich as to why workers support capitalism.

In 1939 Reich claimed to have found Freud’s posited instinctual sexual energy, calling it “orgone”. After that, he went completely haywire, claiming that it came from outer space and could cure cancer. As a result of refusing to stop selling “orgone boxes” to cure cancer, he was jailed for contempt of court and in fact died in the hospital wing of a prison in 1957.

This pathetic end should not disguise the fact that he was merely trying to prove what was at the basis of Freud’s theories: that there was such a thing as sexual energy. He failed, and so has everybody else. These days not even most Freudians defend the existence of sexual energy in the sense Freud understood it, as an instinctual bodily energy that could be repressed or diverted into other forms of bodily energy.

Philosophical speculations

Although Freud did believe that ultimately a materialist basis for mental states would be found—that the nature of the “sexual energy” he posited would eventually be uncovered—he himself never claimed it had been or was anywhere near to being discovered. This didn’t him prevent him from continuing to speculate on the basis that it did exist. Indeed, from one point of view, Freud can be better seen as a speculative philosopher than as a practising scientist, at least in his later years. The trouble was that he came up with speculative theories which could neither be proved nor disproved.

For instance, he posited a “life instinct” and then, later, a “death instinct”. He talked about a “pleasure principle” and a “reality principle”. But how could the existence of such “instincts” and “principles” be proved? Some (most, in fact) of his followers—Reich for instance—denied that there was such a thing as a “death instinct”. So, Freud said there was; Reich said there wasn’t. But how to prove which one was right? You can’t. There’s no way of doing so.

One philosopher who took up Freud’s philosophical speculations was Herbert Marcuse. He started from a book written by Freud in 1930, Civilisation and Its Discontents. This is one of the most anti-socialist books ever written since it provides a pseudo-scientific justification for the so-called “human nature” objection to socialism. Freud was quite explicit about this:

“(. . .) men are not gentle creatures, who want to be loved, who at most defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him”.

According to Freud, human civilisation is based, and has to be based, on the repression of the basic “sexual” or “instinctual” energy he believed humans to have. What happened, in Freud’s view, was that this repressed sexual energy was diverted into the work which had to be engaged in to produce the things humans needed to survive and build up the material side of civilisation. This speculation that the energy for work comes from diverted sexual energy is baseless. We know where we get this energy from—the food we eat, which is a form of chemical energy which the body converts into potential mechanical energy.

Without such sexual repression, Freud taught, we would all behave like babies do in the first year or so of their life seeking immediate gratification, which in Freud’s mind meant sexual gratification. But more, by this time Freud had introduced a “death instinct” into his speculative philosophy. So, without sexual repression, human society would collapse into an orgy of sex and violence.

Marcuse—who was a philosopher and not a scientific researcher—set out to show, in his Eros and Civilisation (1955), that Freudian theories did not necessarily rule out a free, non-repressive society. He accepted Freud’s speculation that civilisation had originally been based on a necessary sexual repression, but added two riders: (1) that only a part of this had come from the conditions of scarcity which obliged humans to work, another part came from living in class-divided societies where ruling classes imposed an extra repression over and above that arising from natural scarcity, and (2) that, with the coming of automation and the like, scarcity had now been conquered. This being so, sexual repression—that imposed by natural conditions as well as that imposed by class-divided society—was no longer necessary. Civilisation need no longer be based on sexual repression. A free, non-repressive society was possible. Freud and socialism could be reconciled.

Marcuse’s explanation as to why people accepted capitalism was that they had been psychologically manipulated into wanting it. In other words, that their basic “instincts” had been remoulded so as to fit in with capitalist society. In so doing he presented himself with a dilemma: if this was really the case, how could such people ever come to want to get rid of capitalism?

Community life

Erich Fromm tried to combine Freud’s ideas with those of Marx in a quite different way. Whereas Freud (and Reich and Marcuse) saw the mind as something that could be explained in terms of the individual’s instinctual biological development, Fromm said that the mind was a social phenomenon. Thus, while Freud explained mental illness in terms of the failure of an individual to develop normally through the various stages of sexual development which his theory posited, Fromm (a medical doctor and practising psychiatrist himself) explained mental illness in terms of the failure of the individual to relate properly with other individuals. For him, not only the mind but (most) mental illnesses were social.

This might even be said to amount to the complete overthrow of the Freudian system. Fromm himself didn’t go that far. He still believed in psychoanalysis as a therapy and he still thought in terms of a “life instinct” and a “death instinct”. In his book The Sane Society (which also appeared in 1955) he wrote the following (which led orthodox Freudians to say that he wasn’t really a Freudian at all):

  “Freud, searching for the basic force which motivates human passions and desires, believed he had found it in the libido. But powerful as the sexual drive and its derivations are, they are by no means the most powerful forces within man and their frustration is not the cause of mental disturbances. The most powerful forces motivating man’s behaviour stems from the conditions of his existence, the ‘human situation’” (chapter 3).

By “the conditions of the human situation” Fromm meant that humans are the only animal species whose individual members have an awareness of themselves as separate individuals, have “self consciousness”. This gives us a sense of individuality and freedom, says Fromm, but at the same time a sense of aloneness. According to him, the driving force behind human behaviour is not, as Freud claimed, the search for pleasure which was ultimately sexual, but the desire to overcome this sense of aloneness, the desire to feel part of a greater whole, the desire to be liked and accepted by other human beings.

This is a theory of human nature. In the argument about human nature that has gone on amongst socialists—is it human nature to be completely adaptable or are there conditions that humans couldn’t adapt to because it would be contrary to their nature?—Fromm comes down in favour of the second view. Humans are social animals, and we need each other not only practically so as to collectively produce the material things we need to live but also psychologically—we need to feel part of a group, of a community. From which it follows that any society which does not satisfy this psychological need, or which actively works to prevent it being satisfied, is incompatible with human nature.

The basic theme of Fromm’s The Sane Society is that capitalism, because it encourages competition between individuals, pitting them against each other in a rat race for power, privilege and prestige, is a society that is incompatible with human nature. It is an “insane society”, a “sick society”. Only a society based on co-operation and community is a sane society as one which properly meets the psychological needs of human beings for a sense of belonging; not just a sense of belonging but a state of actually belonging to a real community.

The existence of false communities—such as those provided by racism, nationalism and religion—would seem to confirm Fromm’s theory that there is a human need to be part of a community with other human beings and that capitalism is against “human nature” because it denies, and works against, this basic need. Although capitalism continually seeks to reduce us to isolated social atoms who only collide in the marketplace as buyers and sellers, the basic human need for community still expresses itself even if in distorted and perverted forms.

If true, this is the answer to the dilemma that Reich and Marcuse had got themselves into with their theory that capitalism had learned how to manipulate what they regarded as the driving force behind human behaviour—Freud’s imaginary “sexual energy”—so as to create people whose very personality and character structure has been moulded for life under capitalism. It would mean that there was still hope for socialism. Capitalism can try to suppress the human need for co-operation and community but will never be able to succeed.

Adam Buick

Letter: The Rise of Nazism (1983)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Clifford Slapper’s account of the rise of Nazism in Germany in your March issue is true — up to a point. He says: “Fifty years ago, Hitler and the Nazis came to power with the support of more than ten million workers”. Is he saying that over ten million wage-workers voted for the Nazi Party? And was the "election" of 5 March, 1933, a genuinely free election anyway? First, a few statistics (figures in millions):

Between 1923 and 1933, the votes for the Social Democrats and Communists remained fairly constant; in the March, 1933 election the Communists receiving nearly 5 million votes and the Social Democrats 7.1 million votes, despite the SA terror mainly directed against the Social Democrats. No one has ever denied that the vast mass of wage-workers consistently voted for these two parties from 1924 until Hitler crushed all opposition.

So, who voted the Nazis into power? In the main, it was the petit-bourgeoisie (a much larger group than in Britain), the peasants (also a group which did not exist in Britain), the lumpen-proletariat or semi-unemployable who, even before the advent of mass unemployment in 1932-33, numbered about 1.5 million and. lastly, the capitalist class itself. In the main, these groups — together with some “white collar" workers — tended to move away from the traditional capitalist “right-wing” parties to the Nazis who, as Slapper correctly points out, used the Jews and others as scapegoats — and made even more promises than the "left-wing” reformist parties, such as the Communists and Social Democrats

There are, of course, no socialist histories of "the birth of Nazism”; but readers might find the two following books of some interest: Der Fuehrer — Hitler's Rise to Power, by Konrad Heidcn (Gollancz, 1944); and Hammer or Anvil, by Evelyn Anderson (Gollancz. 1945 and Oriole Editions/Journeyman Press, 1973).

Peter E. Newell

Colchester. Essex

Reply:

The article in question stated that over ten million workers gave their electoral support to Hitler and the Nazis. This refers to people who did not possess substantial productive resources and who therefore had to work for others in order to survive. Their problems of insecurity and poverty applied regardless of whether they were paid by wage, salary or commission, and irrespective of the colour of their collars. According to the German census of 1925 (as interpreted by Lenz in “Proletarian Policies", Internationaler Arbeiterverlag, 1931) nearly 41 million of the total German population of 62.4 million were industrial workers, agricultural wage-labourers or lower paid "white collar" workers, including their families and the unemployed. It is clearly incorrect therefore that, as Peter Newell claims, the "vast mass” of wage-workers consistently voted for the Communist and Social Democratic Parties, when those parties only polled 13 million votes between them at their peak.

In March 1933, the Nazis and their allies, the Nationalists, polled between them over 20 million votes, an absolute majority (51.9 per cent) of the votes cast. Peter Newell attributes this support to the petit-bourgeoisie, the peasants, the “semi-unemployable" and the capitalists themselves. But according to the census figures referred to above, there were only 2 million capitalists, and about 9 million small farmers and peasants, many of whom were in the process of being transformed into agricultural labourers. The petit-bourgeoisie or small property holders were also a dying breed as their savings were eaten into by inflation. It is true that much of the Nazis’ support came from the white-collar workers, shopkeepers, students and professionals who formed the remaining 10 million of the population; but the frustration which drove them towards the Nazis was that of the dispossessed, of workers who felt they had some stake in capitalism but who were compelled to accept their economically dependent and impoverished position.

It has been our intention to stress that fascism, like the capitalist system of which it is one form, is not some kind of conspiracy forced on the workers from "above" by a minority of capitalists. Domination and inequality depend upon acquiescence and acceptance by the majority. It is on this basis that socialists seek to persuade a majority of our fellow workers to establish a system of society based on common ownership and democratic control. It is a common but dangerous myth on the Left that Nazism was not supported by workers; it is historically incorrect and implies a disdain for the democratic process of persuasion and voting. The German Communist Party, with 5 million votes in 1933, shared with the Nazis not only its nationalist campaign against foreign debt repayments, but also an anti-democratic contempt for the idea of a majority of workers deciding consciously to end capitalism. Their support for minority armed insurrection and street-fighting, like the modern claim that the workers didn’t really support fascism, begs the question why, in the words of Wilhelm Reich, “It was precisely the wretched masses who helped to put fascism, extreme political reaction, into power” (The Mass Psychology of Fascism). The short answer is that as long as workers are persuaded, contrary to our experience, that we should continue to support a system based on our exploitation, there will be no safeguard against a recurrence of the more brutal aspects of class rule.

Editors.

Freud and Marxism (2) (1989)

From the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first part of this article appeared in our September issue

For Freud, there was an inevitable and necessary conflict between the individual and society. Inevitable because the id instincts could never be fulfilled; the id was insatiable and social reality set limits on what could be provided. Necessary because the development of civilization required the repression and sublimation of the instincts to provide the energy needed for the production of culture.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Freud was at most a liberal reformer. He never questioned the socio-economic foundations of capitalism, nor criticised its specific ideologies. His criticisms were limited to the level of sexuality, in favour of a loosening of restraints on sexual expression.

Freud did not hold out much hope for any radical social change. Indeed, he wrote off most radical hopes as a search for “consolation”:

  “For at bottom that is what they are all demanding—the wildest revolutionaries no less passionately than the most virtuous believers.” (Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930).

Psychoanalysis, therefore, does not seem a likely candidate for a psychology compatible with Marxian social and political theory. Nevertheless, there have been a number of attempts over the last sixty years to adapt Freud’s views so that they can form the foundation for a Marxian psychology.

Freudo-Marxism

The first concerted attempt at an integration of Marx and Freud occurred in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time this was considered a bold and unconventional step. The Bolshevik regime had outlawed psychoanalysis, preferring the physiological reductionism of Ivan Pavlov as the orthodoxy. Although Trotsky had been sympathetic to psychoanalysis, his voice no longer counted after 1923. Instead, Lenin’s prudish accusation that Freud was poking about in sexual matters was to be the orthodox Bolshevik view.

Within the psychoanalytic movement the integration of Freud and Marx was suggested by a few, but with little success. The most vociferous proponent was Wilhem Reich. However, by the mid 1930s, he had been expelled from the psychoanalytic movement as well as from the Communist Party. It was not until the resurgence of radical politics in the 1960s that Reich’s views on sexual politics were re-examined.

It was around the intellectuals based at the recently formed Institute for Social Research in Germany (more commonly known as the Frankfurt School) that the main Freudo-Marxist debate took place. The attempt to introduce psychoanalysis into this school’s own particular brand of Marxism was part of its desire to free itself of what it saw as the straightjacket of orthodox Marxism. The director of the Institute, Max Horkheimer, had had an interest in Freud from the 1920s. What attracted him to Freud was a desire to find a psychology different from the instrumental utilitarianism that he felt dominated Marxism.

However, the main work of forging links between Marx and Freud was carried out by two other members of the Frankfurt School: Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse. It was through Fromm, himself a psychoanalyst, that the Institute first attempted to reconcile Marx and Freud, in a series of articles that he wrote for their journal, beginning in 1932. But even before joining the Institute Fromm had written The Development of the Dogma of Christ in 1931, his first major statement of the problem.

It was only in the 1940s and 1950s that Marcuse acquired a serious interest in Freud, unveiling his views in 1955 with the publication of Eros and Civilization. Along with Reich’s works, this formed the core of material that fuelled the debates in the 1960s and 1970s before the introduction of feminist theory into the Freud-Marx arena.

Although these three intellectuals shared a common interest in integrating Marx and Freud, their views on how this should be achieved were very different. The movement could not agree on even the basic requirements for integration. Fromm attacked Reich; Fromm attacked Marcuse; Marcuse attacked Fromm and Reich. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the debate attracted only a few adherents of either Freud or Marx.

In Western Europe the end of the First World War sparked off a number of working class uprisings that seemed to some to herald the imminent overthrow of capitalism. But, with varying degrees of difficulty, these uprisings were put down. In the wake of these failures there followed the rise of Stalinism and of Fascism, both finding a significant level of support from the working class. To many Marxists such events were incomprehensible. The means of production were sufficiently developed to provide the objective conditions for socialism, yet the subjective side, working class consciousness, seemed to be moving in the opposite direction with socialist ideas becoming less and less attractive.

This divergence of objective and subjective was seen as suggesting a major deficiency in Marxist theory: an inadequate understanding of the individual and of how irrational ideology could be accepted, when it was clearly not in the interest of the working class. Socialist consciousness did not follow automatically with the growth of the means of production. Somehow working class consciousness could be manipulated to ensure that workers willingly accepted capitalist ideology and submission to authoritarian control. In the search for an answer to this most crucial of questions, Freud seemed appropriate with his emphasis on the role of the irrational and unconscious in human affairs, suggesting that capitalist ideology penetrated deep into the unconscious and repressed instincts that might otherwise challenge the social order.

Reich and Sexual Revolution

Reich was aware of the central role of ideology, or false consciousness, in social oppression. The task of psychoanalysis was to account for the mechanisms whereby the economic base of society could be internalized to comprise a set of unconscious beliefs that would provide an obstacle to revolutionary consciousness. For Reich, the desire to change the social conditions of capitalism is a natural response of the unconscious. Psychoanalysis, therefore, was seen as a process of undoing the repression of patriarchal capitalism and releasing the individual to act in accordance with his or her individual desires.

Reich based his views on Freud’s notion of the libido and its repression, leading to neurosis. Poverty and bad housing gave rise to sexual repression and the damming up of sexual energy that would otherwise be released. Sexuality, for Reich, was expressed as heterosexual orgasm based on the genitals. Sexual repression did not exist in primitive cultures, argued Reich, and only emerged with class interests, being one of the main ways the ruling class maintained its domination. Within the personality this repression is achieved by the build up of a character armour (the ego), as a result of the conflict between the sexual instincts of the id and the requirements of a repressive society.

The character structure is formed in childhood and embodies the ideology of an earlier era. It is this force of tradition that accounts for the lack of correspondence between objective and subjective factors. Reich saw the family as the main vehicle for the reproduction of sexual repression. This led to a respect for authority, which was functional for the child’s future role of worker and servile citizen. In the family, authority was in the father and was cased on the subordination of women. It was the ruthless sexual repression to which the “lower middle class” was exposed that, said Reich, created the authoritarian fixation on which Nazism fed.

Any political revolution, he concluded, must also be a sexual revolution, otherwise all the old authoritarian ideology embedded in the character armour would return. Thus, Reichian therapy aimed at breaking through this armour and allowing the instinctual sexual energies to be fully released and satisfied.

Such a viewpoint is one of the views that uses a concept of human nature as a justification for social change. Reich’s main and radical modification of Freud was in the historicisation of repression, of its restriction to class society. Socialist society, concluded Reich, would have no repression; the free expression of sexual energy would result in enjoyment, comradeship and mutuality.

Marcuse and Surplus Repression

It was on the issue of repression that Herbert Marcuse attacked Reich; for, like Freud, Marcuse held that repression of the libido was a necessary condition for civilisation. Bui Marcuse, too, introduced a historical dimension to repression. This he did by the distinction between basic and surplus repression.

Basic repression was necessary for the continuation of the human race in civilization, whereas surplus repression was necessary only for social domination. The necessity of repression varies with the level of technology and productiveness. Given a constant amount of repression, more of it will be surplus in a society of plenty than in one of scarcity.

Marcuse also introduced a historical element into the reality principle as the law of the ego. He argued that in different historical periods it took different forms. Under capitalism it took the form of the performance principle, ensuring that the libido was repressed during alienated labour. The only period during which the libido was released was during the workers’ brief recreation time.

Since the performance principle was based on the need to overcome material scarcity, the technological advance it resulted in reduced the problem of scarcity and therefore weakened the basis for its continued existence. With the growth in the possibility of pleasure as scarcity became less and less of a problem, more of the repression became surplus. More and more effort was put into warding off the possibility of rebellion by increasing the extent to which the productive capacities were turned against the individual; there was thus an increase in state repression and the manipulation of consciousness.

For Marcuse, the spiral of surplus repression is broken by the power of imagination and fantasy within the unconscious and by the pursuit of sex for pleasure rather than procreation. Revolutionary change would occur not with the development of socialist consciousness in the working class, but through the development of art and play. It was these aspects of Marcuse that were irresistible to the pleasure-seeking radicals of the 1960s.

Erich Fromm’s Social Psychology

For Erich Fromm, the main task was to use psychoanalysis to provide the link between ideological superstructure and socio-economic base. Marx, he argued, had the beginnings of a psychology, seeing humans as having certain basic drives (hunger, love, and so on) which seek gratification. But other psychological insights were needed. Marxists such as Kautsky and Bernstein had proposed inborn moral instincts that would account for the demand for socialism. Fromm viewed such notions as idealistic whereas psychoanalysis was a materialist, historical and social science.

Freudian drive theory was compatible with Marxism. Also, Fromm added, both Marx and Freud agreed in regarding consciousness not as the ultimate motor of history, but as the reflection of other, hidden forces. To Marx, these forces were human’s instincts, needs and capacities which had become hidden because of the alienation in capitalist society.

Each society, Fromm argued, had its own libidinal structure, a combination of basic human drives and of social factors. The task of analytical social psychology was to understand the effects of the socio-economic substructure on the basic psychic drives, and especially sexuality due to its ability of being displaced, sublimated and satisfied in fantasies. Childhood experiences in particular were important as the family was the agent of society.

A valid social psychology, said Fromm, must recognise that when the socio-economic base of society changed so did the social function of the libido. Thus, for Fromm the Oedipus complex was not a universal aspect of human development but was restricted to patriarchal societies. In general, the instinctual apparatus was given but highly modifiable; the role of primary formative factors went to the economic conditions.

Feminism and Freud

The resurgence of the women’s liberation movement and the corresponding development of feminist theory since the late 1960s produced a second movement for the development of Freudo-Marxism.

At first the varieties of feminist thought found much to criticise in Freud. For example, Freud’s account of female psychology rests heavily on the concept of “penis envy” (the awareness of lack in comparison with the male), with the implication that the woman wants sex not for pleasure but for the restitution of her lost penis via male penetration. For Freud, only the male is really a full human being; the woman is a crippled, castrated man.

However, a turning point in the evaluation of Freud by feminism occurred in 1974 with the publication of Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Consciousness-raising techniques, which had been a prominent feature of the feminist movement, had failed to free women of their patriarchal feminine ideology and desires. This suggested that these were more deeply rooted in the mind and were not capable of being rejected solely at the conscious level. Psychoanalysis seemed to provide the concepts which would enable feminists to understand how patriarchal ideology functioned by being internalized into the unconscious layers of the personality. The earlier explanation of social conditioning into sexual roles was rejected as inadequate for concentrating on surface appearances and being unable to deal with the depth of penetration of feminine ideology Psychoanalysis was seen as offering an explanation of the formation of sexual identity and gender formation. But the appropriation of Freud had to be a critical one; his biological reductionism and sexism had to be seen not as the essence of his views but merely the result of his own unconscious acceptance of patriarchal ideology.

Mitchell’s work encouraged feminists to pursue this dialogue with Freud and post-Freudian theory. For Freud, the resolution of the Oedipal conflict with the father was the most significant period in development. But in recent years feminists have focussed on the pre-Oedipal period and on the role of the relationship between infant and mother. It is during this period, according to Object Relations Theory, that the differences between masculine and feminine personality characteristics are formed.

From this perspective, change from “patriarchal society” is seen as coming about through men and women sharing child care to provide both sons and daughters with the conditions for their relational capacities to be fully developed. But it is difficult to see how such changes in child care can lead to changes in the basis of society. As a political programme this can only lead to failure. If social change is to come then socio-economic foundations themselves must be attacked. Ideological struggle and change in individual relations are important, but political power is the only way to change basic social relations.

While feminists are justified in analysing the role of the family in the construction of the individual, other influences are also important. There are other, more significant sites where individuality is forged—those connected with capital and the state. The personal may be political, but the political is not personal. It is in the failure to reveal the interconnectedness between the personal, ideological, political and economic that Freudo-feminism is at its weakest. What is needed is not just a castrating of Freud, but a more radical critique.

Ed Blewitt

Mixed Media: ‘Death: A Self Portrait’ (2013)

The Mixed Media Column from the May 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death: A Self Portrait at the Wellcome Collection in London was an exhibition of art related to mortality taken from the collection of Chicago antique dealer Richard Harris. The key to Christian art about death is ‘memento mori’ (remember you must die). Pascal’s words ‘It is easier to endure death without thinking about it than to endure the thought of death without dying’ is fundamental to humanity’s thinking about ‘this mortal coil.’

Christian art of ‘memento mori’ in the Late Middle Ages was portrayed in the Dance of Death, which reflected the fragility of life in the midst of famines, the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and the Peasant War in Germany. The ‘danse macabre’ depicting revelry uniting humans and skeletons is portrayed in Toten Tanz by Wolgemut in the 1493 Nuremberg Liber Chronicarum. Inspired by the Book of Revelation, the 1498 woodcut The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer depicts the staples of medieval life; plague, war, famine, and death.

The Miseries of War of 1633 by Callot are eighteen etchings of the Thirty Years War portraying soldiers pillaging, burning and killing their way through towns and cities. Engels described this war as ‘devastation’. It killed eleven million people, and ‘annihilated the most important parts of the productive forces in agriculture.’ The Disasters of War by Goya are eighty-two prints from 1810-20 which portray abuse, torture, killing, starvation, and other atrocities of the French invasion of Spain in the Napoleonic Wars.

The iconic images of the Mexican Day of the Dead originate with the painting of Calavera de Huerta by Posada which satirised bourgeois General Huerta in the Mexican Revolution. Posada’s Calavera de La Catrina is a satire on the 1875-1910 bourgeois dictatorship of Diaz which was an ‘industrial capitalism on top of the hacienda system, debt-peonage in the shell of a corrupt feudalism.’

The George Grosz 1958 collage Faces of Death references his own 1920 painting Republican Automatons. Both works are an attack on the mediocrity and mendacity of bourgeois capitalist civilisation which kills the individual human spirit.

According to bourgeois psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in his 1930 work Civilisation and Its Discontents, the drive to death (Thanatos) now ruled supreme over Eros (Love). He wrote that ‘people need a Reality Principle to keep the Pleasure Principle under control otherwise we’d have anarchy.’ Wilhelm Reich replied that ‘the Reality Principle of the capitalist era imposes upon the proletarian a maximum limitation of his needs . . . the ruling class has a Reality Principle which serves the perpetuation of its power.’

Steve Clayton

Mass Psychology (2017)

Book Review from the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Wilhelm Reich and the Function of the Orgasm, Short Biography, Book Reviews, Quotes, and Comments’. By Peter Fritz Walter

Socialists know Reich as one of those who have tried to combine Marx and Freud, though he was always more Freud than Marx. In the 1930s he was a member of the German Communist Party and wrote The Mass Psychology of Fascism in which he argued that the type of sexual repression that people in Germany had suffered in childhood had contributed to making them prepared to support an authoritarian ideology like fascism. Later, in the 1960s this pamphlet enjoyed a popularity as if it had been entitled ‘The Mass Psychology of Capitalism’.

In the meantime Reich had moved on and had become a quack doctor claiming to have discovered a cosmic force called ‘orgone’ that could cure cancer, leukaemia and the rest. He got himself jailed over this and died in prison in 1957. No doubt he was sincere but people don’t have much sympathy for those who offer false hope to cancer sufferers.

Reich always regarded himself as a scientist and was convinced that he had made the same sort of ‘scientific discovery’ as other scientists. In this book, Walter argues that Reich was nearer to ‘the Eastern medical approach’ (with ‘orgone’ being the same as ‘chi’) and was ‘the true founder of the Aquarius Age’, i.e. that he was nearer to so-called ‘alternative medicine’. There is some truth in this. Walter regards this as a compliment.

Adam Buick

Punk was proletarian (2012)

Originally posted on the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

The New York Times reported that Tom Morello, of the metal rap band Rage Against the Machine, described Romney's pit bull, Paul Ryan thus, "He is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lot of rage in him; a rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically, the only thing he is not raging against is the privileged elite he is grovelling in front of for campaign contributions." And metal is not the only type of music to offer meaningful social comment...

Jowe Head and the Demi-Monde (featuring singer and multi-percussionist Catherine Gerbrands) played a short set in July at Club Integral at 'The Grosvenor' in Brixton in London. Jowe, resplendent in an exploding psychedelic tie-dye shirt and a top hat with feather performed a Kevin Coyne song with Gerbrands on theremin, a 12th century ballad beautifully sung by Gerbrands, and a cover of Oscar Brown's 'Rags and Old Iron'. Jowe Head played in the bands Swell Maps, Palookas, TV Personalities, and was one of the pioneers of low-fi DIY music production which represented punk's swipe at corporate and monopoly capitalism.

Punk was proletarian at musician level but the capitalist manufacturers of music were major labels like EMI who also had commercial interests in the defence industry. Punk was critical of capitalism, consumerism and commodity fetishism (X-Ray Spex's 'Oh Bondage Up Yours!'), alienation, and the selling of oneself in wage slavery (The Pop Group 'We Are All Prostitutes' and Vic Godard sang “Everyone is a Prostitute”). Punk was also concerned with a sense of existential authenticity in life criticising “poseurs”, and The Clash sang of “bullshit detectors” to identify inauthenticity.

The first low-fi DIY production was the Buzzcocks 'Spiral Scratch' EP in 1976 whose cover detailed the means of production; recording process, takes, overdubs, and the catalogue number ORG 1 (ORG ONE) was a playful reference to Wilhelm Reich.

Green, a member of the British Young Communist League playing as Scritti Politti also 'appropriated the means of production' for the pressing of the single 'Skank Bloc Bologna' in 1978. The single cover demystified the process of production by listing the complete costs of studio hire, recording, mastering, pressing, and printing. Green made reference to Leninist thinker Gramsci idea of a 'bloc' of classes in opposition to capitalist hegemony. Green was inspired by 'il movimento' in 'la rossa' city of Bologna in 1977 where a cultural revolt and political uprising of autonomists (Marxists and Anarchists) and counter culture radicals took control. There were clashes with the police, protesters killed and eventually the Italian Army went in to suppress the revolt.

The Desperate Bicycles pressed 500 copies of their single 'Smokescreen' in 1977 on their own label Refill Records. The cost of production was £153 (studios, pressing, sleeves), and a profit of £210 was made in 4 months which went to a second pressing of 1,000 and with profit from these sales a further 2,500 copies pressed and capital investment in equipment made.

Jowe Head and the Swell Maps booked Spaceward Studios in Cambridge and pressed 2,000 copies of their single 'Read About Seymour' in 1977. Jowe Head recalled “the thrill of feeling empowered by our realisation that we could seize the means of production”. Low-fi DIY music production was about making your own entertainment and selling it to other creative, autonomous and like-minded souls. It represented authenticity and a purity of intent, and was an exercise in anarcho-capitalism.

Steve Clayton

This article was originally posted on the Socialism or Your Money Back blog on September 12th, 2012. Click on the link for the original article with comments.