Why is the US an authoritarian state?
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
The Antidote to Sexual Repression
For a long time I was interested in Reich
and the role of sexual repression in making people
the kind of accepting, non-complaining,
pliable workers and citizens that capitalism needs
I did a fare amount of thinking and writing
about the roles sexual repression plays on
the intellects and emotions of people
In God's Name
These days presidential candidates are required to wear their religion on their sleeve. God is a personal adviser and inspiration to all of them.
They all pray relentlessly. Or so they say. If that's not true, I want to know it. And if it is true, I want to know more about it.
I want to know what God is telling them--just as I would want to know what Karl Rove was telling them if they claimed him for an adviser.
If religion is central to their lives and moral systems, then it cannot be the candidates' "own private affair."
To evaluate them, we need to know in some detail the doctrines of their faith and the extent to which they accept these doctrines.
"Worry about whether I'm going to reform health care, not whether I'm going to hell" is not sufficient.
What exactly should we worry about? Most important, we need to know what forms of conduct a candidate's religion forbids or requires and how the candidate interprets that injunction.
Is it a universal moral imperative or just a personal lifestyle choice? Every religion has its list of no-nos.
Mormonism's is very long and includes alcohol, coffee, tea and such forms of sexual behavior as "passionate kissing" outside wedlock.
If Mitt Romney's church doctrines require efforts to impose these restrictions on others, Romney has a Cuomo problem: he cannot be a good Mormon and a good President. He needs to show at the least that he has thought about this.
Some church doctrines give offense even though they don't constrain an outsider's behavior in any way.
They can imply a more general worldview, and voters have a right to know if a presidential candidate shares that perspective. Until recently, just about all religions had a built-in patriarchal worldview - God the Father, male priests and so on--that many today find offensive.
To what extent has the candidate's church moved with the times, and what has the candidate done to push his or her church in the right direction?
I say the right direction, but many voters, of course, believe that this kind of modernization is the wrong direction.
They also are entitled to know where the candidate stands and to vote on that basis.Bush, Sex & Repression
Father figures dominate Christian culture. Starting with God and ending with Bush. Figures of authority, control and discipline. America is one mother-fucking patriarchal society.
Like the Puritans of old and subsequent evangelicals, Bush seems to take literally the notion of original sin, in which the most intimate human relation is contaminated, forever scarring all subsequent generations.
His sexuality seems to be one of prohibition, a sexuality infused with a shame of the physical body and its wilder passions.
One can only suspect that this repression is rooted in a deep, personal knowledge--and fear--of the excesses of self-indulgence, an outgrowth of W's equally threatening excesses of alcohol and cocaine.
The Bush presidency is today's incarnation of the long-festering Puritan curse.
But keeping with the times, Bush's public sexuality embodies a highly fetishized eroticism, replete with all kinds of symbolic meaning.
Strutting about in his Top Gun uniform or with his sleeves rolled up while he ineptly asserted command amidst the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, Bush is a fetishist's dream come true.
He understands (if only unconsciously) that the trappings of power, the costumes, the proclamations, the public presentations, are as essential as its exercise, the wars conducted, the deals cut, the legislation passed.
Whether in a Top Gun outfit, a business suit or swaggering in a cowboy getup, Bush's uniforms codify a fetishistic representation of power.
The Sexual Politics of Wilhelm Reich
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.
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 psychoanalysist, and became one of his close disciples.
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.
Sexual repression is a very important socializing device
For a long time I was interested in Reich and the role of sexual repression in making people the kind of accepting, non-complaining, pliable workers and citizens that capitalism needs.
I did a fare amount of thinking and writing about the roles sexual repression plays on the intellects and emotions of people.
Let me make a parallel with what happened to the analysis some people made to the role that sexual repression plays on young people.
It's not well known, but the March 22nd movement in France -- which was the group that triggered off the events in May of 1968 -- this group was a group of students at Monterre university (a branch of the University of Paris) who got together, primarily because of a protest they made at the women's dormitories.
Their protest was over the rules that forbade men from being in these women's dormitories after a certain hour in the evening. The students, male and female, took over the dormitory.
They refused to leave, saying this wasn't just a policy to keep fellows from seeing their girlfriends, but that this was a conscious effort on the part of the state -- it was a public university -- to repress them sexually in order to make them the kind of people capitalism needs to run its enterprises.
The reason they took that line is there had been a talk given at the Monterre University by a French Marxist named Boris Frankel.
I was at that talk. There were about 500 people in the hall and he was very well received. Frankel had just translated some of Reich's work into French. His talk was on Reich and the social function of repression.
Afterwards, Frankel's little booklet, his French edition of Reich's work on this subject, was sold door to door by some students at the dormitories.
Reading this booklet and discussing these ideas, these students were able to engage in an action that would, then and now, I suppose, be a version of a panty raid at a university in the United States.
But in France it had a really political content and because of that action this group got started.
The students were thrown out of the women's dormitories by the police. They protested. Some of them got expelled. The police broke them up. They went with some followers to Paris.
They called upon students in Paris to join them. There was a larger protest that the police broke up with some violence, leading to massive student protests which led to workers taking over their enterprises after the cops got involved. And then you have the famous May events of 1968 in France.
At its origins, you have a protest by students over rules forbidding them from entering the female dormitories; a protest based on a Marxist-Freudian understanding of the role of sexual repression in the social life of the society.