Christopher Lasch on De Sade and Contemporary Capitalism

Christopher Lasch in the Culture of Narcissism:

"Social conditions now approximate the vision of republican society conceived of by the Marquis De Sade at the very outset of the republican epoch.  In many ways the most farsighted and certainly the most disturbing of the prophets of revolutionary individualism, Sade defended unlimited self-indulgence as the logical culmination of the revolution in property relations--the only way to attain revolutionary brotherhood in its purest form.  By regressing in his writings to the most primitive level of fantasy, Sade uncannily glimpsed the whole subsequent development of personal life under capitalism, ending not in revolutionary brotherhood but in a society of siblings that had outlived and repudiated its revolutionary origins.

Sade imagined a sexual utopia in which everyone has the right to everyone else, where human beings, reduced to their sexual organs, became absolutely anonymous and interchangeable.  His ideal society thus reaffirmed the capitalist principle that human beings are ultimately reducible to interchangeable objects.  It also incorporated and carried to a surprising new conclusion Hobbes's discovery that the destruction of paternalism and the subordination of all social relations to the market had stripped away the remaining restraints and the mitigating illusions from the war of all against all.  In the resulting state of organized anarchy, as Sade was the first to realize, pleasure becomes life's only business--pleasure, however, that is indistinguishable from rape, murder, unbridled aggression.  In a society that has reduced reason to mere calculation, reason can impose no limits on the pursuit of pleasure--on the immediate gratification of every desire no matter how perverse, insane, criminal or merely immoral.  For the standards that would condemn crime or cruelty derive from religion, compassion, or the kind of reason that rejects purely instrumental applications; and none of these outmoded forms of thought or feeling has any logical place in a society based on commodity production.  In his misogyny, Sade perceived that bourgeois enlightenment, carried to its logical conclusions, condemned even the sentimental cult of womanhood and the family, which the bourgeois itself had carried to unprecedented extremes.

At the same time, he saw that condemnation of "woman-worship" had to go hand in hand with a defense of woman's sexual rights--their right to dispose of their own bodies, as feminists would put it today.  If the exercise of that right in Sade's utopia boils down to the duty to become an instrument of someone else's pleasure, it was not so much because Sade hated women as because he hated humanity.  He perceived, more clearly than the feminists, that all freedoms under capitalism come in the end to the same thing, the universal obligation to enjoy and be enjoyed.  In the same breath, and without violating his own logic, Sade demanded for women the right "fully to satisfy all their desires" and "all parts of their bodies" and categorically stated that "all women must submit to our pleasure."  Pure individualism thus issued in the most radical repudiation of individuality.  "All men, all women resemble each other," according to Sade; and to those of his countrymen who would become republicans he adds the ominous warning:  "Do not think you can make good republicans so long as you isolate in their families the children who should belong to the republic alone."  The bourgeois defense of privacy culminates--not just in Sade's thought but in the history to come, so accurately foreshadowed in the very excess, madness, and infantilism of his ideas--in the most throughgoing attack on privacy; the glorification of the individual, in his annihilation."

Sex and the Early Soviet Union

One of the earliest fruits of the Communist Revolution in Russia was the so-called "emancipation of women".

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/esp/59/emancipation.html

The above link (from the Fourth Internationalist Communist League) discusses the early changes in Soviet law, from a Trotskyite perspective.  According to our article:

"Just over a month after the revolution, two decrees established civil marriage and allowed for divorce at the request of either partner, accomplishing far more than the pre-revolutionary Ministry of Justice, progressive journalists, feminists and the Duma had ever even attempted. Divorces soared in the following period. A complete Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship, ratified in October 1918 by the state governing body, the Central Executive Committee (CEC), swept away centuries of patriarchal and ecclesiastical power, and established a new doctrine based on individual rights and the equality of the sexes."

But wait, there is more.  The adoption of contract marriage, no-fault divorce and civil marriage (thereby removing the Orthodox Church and replacing it with the totalitarian State) was not the only innovation after the Communist revolution:

"The Bolsheviks also abolished all laws against homosexual acts and other consensual sexual activity. The Bolshevik position was explained in a pamphlet by Grigorii Batkis, director of the Moscow Institute of Social Hygiene, The Sexual Revolution in Russia (1923):

Soviet legislation bases itself on the following principle:

It declares the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters, so long as nobody is injured, and no one’s interests are encroached upon.

—quoted in John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935) (New York: Times Change Press, 1974)" 

Communism, as initially manifest in the revolution, involved an exchange of economic freedoms, and the embrace of a totalitarian, centralizing state, but promised its citizens a total sexual freedom, provided no one is injured, and freed citizens from the tyranny of traditional religious organizations in the domain of marriage and sexuality.

After the liberation came the demands.  Because of inequalities between men and women, the Soviet civil code began requiring alimony for disabled ex-spouses.  According to the Fourth International, although these laws were on their face neutral, in application jurists favored the women and children. "In one case, a judge split child support three ways, because the mother had been sleeping with three different men."

These legal innovations were insufficient for the "social justice warriors" of their time, who celebrated the socialist ideal of Free Love, a society based on impermanent, random hook-ups, where love and commitment were forever abandoned to history.  Some criticized compulsory monogamy, and called for the abolition of marriage altogether.  This faction ultimately lost due to the need to provide support for women and children.  However, even the promulgators of this Code agreed with the sentiments of Free Love, and looked forward to a time when the State was sufficient to support all, and marriage could be finally abandoned, once and for all.  Then, every person would be completely free to manifest their sexuality however they chose.

But no-fault divorce, alimony, and legalization of homosexuality were not enough for our revolutionary reformers.  The 1918 Labor code provided for paid 30-minute breaks every three hours so that nursing mothers could breast feed.  The new Soviet laws also provided for fully paid maternity leave for eight weeks, nursing breaks, and factory rest facilities, free pre- and post-natal care, and cash allowances.  Women were often commonly accorded menstrual leave.

In 1920, more Communist progress transpired, in the form of free abortion on demand.  Unfortunately, the promise of this law was limited by the amount of State resources available to furnish this need.  Many women in the countryside suffered from unsafe and unsanitary abortion care.  Although contraception was lawfully available, access to rubber supplies were limited, so abortion became the primary form of contraception in this New Order of Humanity.

Today, we don't associate Communism with these kinds of sexual liberty.  In fact, all these reforms were for the most part reversed by Stalin by 1936.  Divorce was restricted.  Homosexuality outlawed.  Motherhood celebrated, and large families encouraged, but on Stalin's terms, not on the basis of tradition or Orthodox Christianity.  Cynically, we might say that sexual liberation is a tool of the totalitarian state used to destroy the power of the family and organized religion, which might provide a nexus of resistance against it.  Harness the power of sexual passion, and the resentments of women, in order to destroy those elements of society which might oppose the State.  However, there are other, pragmatic, explanations.  These policies caused a demographic slide in the population, which threatened Stalin's plans for militarization and centralization of Soviet economy.  There can be no territory without boots on the ground to occupy it.  Likewise, increasing numbers of orphaned children, falling into dependence on the State (essentially post-natal abortions) provided an economic burden that the developing Soviet Union could not afford.  A government intent on building a war machine will revert to a focus on industrial production and the virtues of motherhood out of necessity.
 

I find it interesting that there is a lack of curiosity in the West about the Communist system, which supported the ideals of Free Love and atheism.  These Bolsheviks of the 1920's would have a favored place at the table in today's contemporary discussions of divorce, marriage, abortion, and the role of religion in society.  Moreover, Eastern Europe underwent a decades long experiment to create a new man, a new citizen that had thrown off the yoke of tradition and religion and replaced it with a faith in reason and centralized planning.  While the West's focus on Communism has mostly been directed at Socialist economics, a new Socialist culture was emerging in places like the USSR.  While our own economic system no way resembles Communism, our own cultural system increasingly models itself on doctrines and ideas derivative from these early Communist revolutionaries.  As we Americans boldly construct our New Person, one free of ancient traditions and socially constructed notions of gender, perhaps we should look more closely at the historical effect of these policies in the former Communist block, specifically at impacts on demographics and public health?  Do we have any reason to believe that the long-term consequences will be any different here?

Many in the West regard the conservative attitudes of the former Eastern Block as backwards, yet the Eastern Block was atheistic and steeped in modern egalitarian rhetoric generations before the West.  The social justice warriors landed in Moscow in 1917, and began reconstructing the cultural order.  In contrast, the West had to wait to the 1960's for our liberation, when Western Academics began indoctrinating our youth with the Cultural Marxist agenda of the Frankfurt School.  Gay rights, liberal feminism, political correctness, ethnic supremacy for minority groups, these ideas all descended on the West through the works of intellectuals like Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Fromm.  Is it possible that the East is not in fact behind us but ahead of us?  Having witnessed the demographic and public health disaster that decades of atheism and "social liberalism" creates, is it possible that the East rejects these ideas for a good reason?     

Why Secular Liberalism is Doomed

I constantly encounter condemnations of Fundamentalism, and I will admit that Fundamentalism, in many forms, is easy to critique.  I don't abide with Young Earth Creationism, or a lot of other beliefs that I find silly, but fundamentalists of certain stripes take very seriously.  Yet I cannot look at Fundamentalism without appreciation, for I believe that the Fundamentalists will inherit the Earth.  Thus, Fundamentalism, in whatever form, is marked by vitality, zeal, discipline, and sacrifice for something higher.

In contrast, while my worldview is probably closer to Secular Liberalism, I think this worldview is much more worthy of criticism, because it is killing itself off and bequeathing the Earth to the Fundamentalists, which strikes me as a practical matter as stupid, despite the subtleties of it's syllogisms.  Any social order which seeks to survive must inspire certainty in its adherents, and Secular Liberalism, despite its claims of moral relativism, is just as intolerant and repressive of its enemies as any Fundamentalism, so certainty and a willingness to act against others to preserve itself are present.  However, Secular Liberalism fails because it cannot, by nature, inspire people to sustained sacrifice on behalf of the social order.  It does not inspire people to make more babies.  It does not inspire people to remain sober.  It does not inspire people to remain in difficult marriages.  It does not inspire people to remain in difficult employment situations.  It does not inspire people to fight for their country.

To sacrifice yourself requires the love of something greater than yourself, something so great you are willing to trade your life or well-being in the name of that greater love.  Certainly, Communism was a secular liberal system if there ever was one, but Communist zeal really burned out by Stalin's rise.  Stalin appealed to the sanctity of the Motherland to inspire his people to resist the Nazi invasion, not the Communist Revolution.  This is not to deny that a handful of people may be willing to sacrifice themselves in the name of equality for all humanity, but most people are unmoved by bloodless abstractions.

Any social order that can replicate itself through time must not only be intolerant (as Secular Liberals invariably are in fact, whether the "politically correct" left or the "Islamaphobic" Dawkins right), but any social order that can replicate itself in time must also inspire sacrifice.  The inversion of sacrifice in Secular Liberalism is manifest in its commitment to egalitarianism.  What we find under Secular Liberal egalitarian rhetoric is "gimme equality".  That is to say, the believer does not intend to surrender something to the other, the believer demands something from the other.  Further, equality is in the eyes of the beholder, so you end up with a political culture in which various groups attempt to mug each other in the name of "equality".

Let's take a concrete example.  In general, men tend to more extreme outcomes then women.  I don't know if this has always been true, or if it is genetic, or whatever, but you can look on death row, and you can look at the Boardroom of a Fortune 500 company and find men.  Men are disproportionately represented at the extreme bottom, or at the extreme top.  Thus, under "gimme equality", a woman looking at this situation will compile credible statistics about how men are disproportionately represented at the top, and women are kept down.  In contrast, a man looking at this situation will compile credible statistics about how men are disproportionately represented at the bottom, and how women (or "feminism") is keeping the men down.  They will then dispute, because they both know that they are entitled to something, they both have credible facts that they can point to, and will both claim how they lack rights, and they will never see each others' point of view.  Obviously, someone will win in the political process, but the resentments will not disappear.  Neither will be particularly grateful to the existing social order, because they will either obtain what they are "owed" by society, or they will be denied what they are lawfully "due" from society.  (Note: this "equality" is totally vacuous, as either side can win the political battle and claim a victory for equality.)

A house divided against itself cannot stand.  In contrast, if a person views their individual existence as part of a higher order, consisting of a family, a community, a religious community, and a nation, then the person has a particular role defined by their communities, and has particular and reciprocal duties.  This person is willing to gladly sacrifice, because they identify with something greater than themselves.  The person, in their self understanding, belongs to something greater than their particular existence or their particular privileges.  Because Fundamentalism does a better job of integrating individuals into families and communities, individuals are ready and willing and able to do what is necessary to preserve the integrity of the community.  Any sustainable social order must be rooted in communitarianism and holism.  From this point of view, what we often call "freedom" largely amounts to "alienation". 

Platonic Homosexual Thoughts

Read a fascinating article in the Yale Journal of Law and Humanities discussing the rationale for Plato's condemnation of homosexuality in the Laws, which has caused me to pause and think about the meaning of homosexuality:

http://www.randallclark.org/publicat/2000a.pdf

I believe Plato's political thought can be characterized as primarily focused on questions of collective security.  Plato recognized that the greatest threat to a person is their existential being, and the greatest threat to a social order is an existential threat to the order.  The most fundamental basis for any political thinking must relate to establishing laws and customs that promote the collective security of the polis, the city-state in Plato's day, and today the nation-state.  Laws and customs which diverge from the interests of collective security will ultimately be abandoned, or they will result in the city becoming conquered by its internal or external enemies.  Moreover, in Plato's time, collective security was much more in question, and the consequences of war were much higher.  In antiquity, if a city was conquered, the best scenario generally involved the slaughter of all adult males and the sale of the women and children into slavery.  In contrast, the last wars fought on American soil were in the 19th century, and America rules as hegemon throughout the Western Hemisphere.  American political philosophers are accordingly not very concerned about collective security, they generally assume the inexorable continuation of American power ad infinitum.

In discussing Plato's views, it is also important to reject a fundamental ontological category of modernity:  the so-called gay/straight divide.  To the modern person, people are sorted into two categories, gay or straight, presumably from birth or before.  Moreover, we are frequently told that these categories are the result of genes that determine these characteristics (similar to the way racists explain differences in IQ test results).  Plato's conception is more polymorphous.  Human beings are erotic beings, but this erotic energy is, to some extent, undirected, wild and chaotic.  The purpose of law is to attempt to direct erotic energy into socially constructive directions.

We can imagine a world like Plato's.  Perhaps some people in Plato's city would have a very strong attraction to people of the opposite sex, and would be incapable of ever engaging in same sex acts.  Likewise, some people in Plato's city would have a very strong attraction to people of the same sex, and would be incapable of ever engaging in heterosexual acts.  However, in the middle would be a wide swath of people who could, to some extent, swing either way.  It would be at this last group that the law would take aim.  (Of course, perhaps modern science and genetics renders the existence of these people impossible.)  Obviously a law which punished sodomy would promote heterosexual marriages, which in ancient times, with limited access to contraception, would result in children.  So we can understand legal sanctions against homosexuality are fundamentally natalist in principle.

Why would natalism be something that a state might want to encourage?  Well, clearly, the larger the population, the greater the specialization, then the larger and better equipped the army--which would in turn open up more opportunities and territory for the surplus population.  Good laws and customs would create a virtuous circle of expansion and growth, provided the polity could govern itself, and the laws were not corrupted.  In the ancient world, laws against homosexuality, and laws promoting heterosexual marriage, would result in a stronger and safer city, able to defend itself from invaders, and would ultimately promote expansion and conquest.  Thus, we should not be surprised that Plato would call for the outlaw of sodomy, not based on superstition, but based on basic strategic and military grounds.  [Thus, we can understand the reluctance of the post-Communist governments of Eastern Europe, facing a total demographic collapse and rampant drug and alcohol abuse, to embrace atheism and same sex marriage with the gusto of the West.]

But in fact, Plato's prohibition stems more from internal concerns than external threats.  Plato sees human desire as fundamentally as homophilic:  "It is according to nature that everyone is always somehow attracted to what is most similar to himself," [at least according Mr. Clark's translation.]  Eros for Plato is fundamentally narcissistic.  People seek relationships with people like themselves.  The rich court the rich.  The intelligent court the intelligent.  The powerful court the powerful.  This also follows for religious, ethnic and racial groups.  Within human desire there is a fundamentally incestuous and nepotistic quality.  We can witness this characteristic in the hemophiliac royalty of Europe and the autistic progeny of the New Class of Silicon Valley.  In contrast, maintaining a common order demands mixing with the Other.  If not, the polis becomes concentrated into rich and poor, learned and ignorant, white and black, male and female.  The basic civic division between citizen and alien is politically acceptable, even helpful, but divisions within citizens undermines law and order.  Thus, although Plato did not live in our time, we can imagine that he would support racial and ethnic miscegnation--perhaps even mandating it in his heavy handed way.  Otherwise, the polity would remain internally divided against itself.

Thus, Plato seeks to ban fornication, adultery, masturbation, incest and homosexuality, and to encourage heterosexual procreative marriage, presumably between differently ranked social groups, even recommending that a man marry the lesser of two suitors in the interest of the commonwealth.  It should be clear that Plato does not view eros negatively--but rather--he seeks the transformation of eros from a narcissistic, self-absorbed eros, to a truly ecstatic eros that moves beyond the limited division of self, into a higher love, a love of the other, and a love of the polis.  Moreover, Plato viewed the role of law as shaping citizens toward a higher civic life, not one based on the excessive accumulation of wealth or a narcissistic self-creation project, but toward a common wealth enjoyed by all.  Plato acknowledged the role of the love of the same, but sought to channel that love from a carnal love to a mode of friendship and mutual caring.

Obviously, Plato is not a man of our time, nor did he ever read Ayn Rand, nor had Al Gore invented the internet.  Perhaps his views are too demanding of human beings, too heavy handed, too idealistic, and perhaps Aristotle may provide a more grounded view of politics.  But the question of law remains with us today, and how we conceptualize the law, either reinforcing the natural human tendencies to segregate and separate, or fighting these tendencies to create a common social order remains an important question.