Lenin: A Triumph of Willpower Over the Orgasm

[Rakhmetov]

Lenin urges discipline for young lovers in order to prevent "free love" from degenerating into libertinism and bourgeois decadence. In many ways Lenin anticipates the danger forewarned by Huxley's Brave New World with respect to sexual promiscuity. Do you all agree with his stance, comerades? Let's debate this topic.




In a letter he observes,

“It is easily comprehensible that the very involved complex of problems brought into existence should occupy the mind of the youth. However, it is particularly serious if sex becomes the main mental concern during those years when it is physically most obvious. What fatal effects that has!”…”Although I am nothing but a gloomy ascetic, the so-called ‘new sexual life’ of the youth – and sometimes of the old – often seems to me to be purely bourgeois, an extension of bourgeois brothels. That has nothing whatever in common with freedom of love as we communists understand it. You must be aware of the famous theory that in communist society the satisfaction of sexual desires, of love, will be as simple and unimportant as drinking a glass of water. This glass of water theory has made our young people mad, quite mad. It has proved fatal to many young boys and girls.”…”Its adherents maintain that it is Marxist. I think this glass of water theory is completely un-Marxist, and, moreover, anti-social.”…”in my opinion the present widespread hypertrophy in sexual matters does not give joy and force to life, but takes it away. This is detestable.”…”You know, young comrade XYZ?. A splendid boy, and highly talented! And yet I fear that nothing good will come out of him. He reels and staggers from one love affair to the next. That won’t do for the political struggle, for the revolution.”…”Dissoluteness in sexual life is bourgeois, is a phenomenon of decay.”…”Self-control, self-discipline is not slavery, both are necessary for love.”

[PhoenixAsh]

The unfallable proof that we should never have a bolshevik or a priest tell us how to behave in matters or the heart and the bed. Thats something for everybody to decide for themselves. everybody should stay the hell out ofthe love lives of people except the people and their partners themselves.

Nor is Lenin exactly the one to lecture others on how to love or have sex. But that is besides the point.

Seriously...sex is corrupting. Sounds like that came directly from the Pope. :laugh:

[Leftie]

Well if Lenin said it must be true.

[Queercommie Girl]

In many cases, things which are too extreme tend to problematic. Best to adopt a "balanced" approach. Free love is a great thing, but potentially it could be abused too.

[Robocommie]

I want to point out that this was quoted from a letter. Apparently a personal letter, so it's not exactly a treatise on public policy or anything.

[Rooster]

I posted this in the 1984 thread but this theme is also in the novel We

http://mises.org/books/we_zamiatin.pdf

If you haven't read it then you should because it's a pretty decent novel.

[PhoenixAsh]

I want to point out that this was quoted from a letter. Apparently a personal letter, so it's not exactly a treatise on public policy or anything.


Good that you added that, lol....for a minute there I was worried we would be getting the NKVD after the revolution to chaperone our dates :D

But seriously...I didn't know that. THnx.

[Rakhmetov]

Good that you added that, lol....for a minute there I was worried we would be getting the NKVD after the revolution to chaperone our dates :D

But seriously...I didn't know that. THnx.

Lenin is expressing his personal opinion to a friend not promulgating it from the alleged pulpit of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Now tell me what love and tenderness is expressed in this video which does not have any nudity or sexually explicit images? Never mind the bad acting; focus on the dialogue and mannerism. This video is not all that different than when people got to a bar or nightclub to find a "fuckbuddy" of the moment. Look I'm not trying to impose my sexual mores or morays onto anyone. Just wanted to broach this topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMJ68rHCk1M

[Os Cangaceiros]

I love the tendency to classify anything you personally don't like as "bourgeois".

Nevermind the fact that "bourgeois society" endorsed sexual repression & monogamy pretty much exclusively during the time of Lenin. :mellow:

[Reznov]

I want to point out that this was quoted from a letter. Apparently a personal letter, so it's not exactly a treatise on public policy or anything.

This is going to be used to argue in debates for months to come now because most RevLefters are to lazy to read the fine detail.

[Rakhmetov]

I love the tendency to classify anything you personally don't like as "bourgeois".

Nevermind the fact that "bourgeois society" endorsed sexual repression & monogamy pretty much exclusively during the time of Lenin. :mellow:

Endorsing sexual repression is one thing, recommending sexual self-control and responsibility is an entirely different matter altogether.

An analogy: A well-balance diet is great, gluttony which leads to obesity is not.

[Robocommie]

I love the tendency to classify anything you personally don't like as "bourgeois".

Nevermind the fact that "bourgeois society" endorsed sexual repression & monogamy pretty much exclusively during the time of Lenin. :mellow:

This post is bourgeois as fuck. :mad:

[Rakhmetov]

This post is bourgeois as fuck. :mad:


Making accusations is easy, backing up your accusations with the weight of evidence is not.

[Reznov]

I love the tendency to classify anything you personally don't like as "bourgeois".

Nevermind the fact that "bourgeois society" endorsed sexual repression & monogamy pretty much exclusively during the time of Lenin. :mellow:

This is bourgeoisie and reactionary post for pointing that out!

[Os Cangaceiros]

this (http://rs2kpapers.awardspace.com/theory27b2.html?subaction=showfull&id=1140167502&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&) was a slightly amusing indictment of Lenin's views on sex (as if anyone should care) that I remembered from a while back.

Some of those quotes, specifically about prostitution and promiscuity, are not exactly what I consider progressive.

[La Comédie Noire]

Lenin was infected with the Victorian morals of his day. *shrugs* Imagine how silly the posts on revleft are going to look in a hundred years.

[black magick hustla]

lenin cheated on his wife

[Manic Impressive]

Endorsing sexual repression is one thing, recommending sexual self-control and responsibility is an entirely different matter altogether.

An analogy: A well-balance diet is great, gluttony which leads to obesity is not.
Did he write the letter before or after he started shagging Inessa Armand?

[thesadmafioso]

lenin cheated on his wife

Your point? His marriage was more one of convince than anything else, his wife was basically little more than his receptionist and partner in the revolution. I believe they married right before his exile in Siberia as well, so it's not as if he treated this institution too seriously anyway.

[Manic Impressive]

Your point? His marriage was more one of convince than anything else, his wife was basically little more than his receptionist and partner in the revolution. I believe they married right before his exile in Siberia as well, so it's not as if he treated this institution too seriously anyway.
He may not have treated it seriously but his wife did and was definitely hurt by his affair.

[thesadmafioso]

He may not have treated it seriously but his wife did and was definitely hurt by his affair.

They were actually quite cordial with one another. The three of them were quite fond of going for long walks through the mountains in Switzerland. If she was hurt by his affair, it certainly wasn't too debilitating.

[Robocommie]

this (http://rs2kpapers.awardspace.com/theory27b2.html?subaction=showfull&id=1140167502&archive=&cnshow=headlines&start_from=&ucat=&) was a slightly amusing indictment of Lenin's views on sex (as if anyone should care) that I remembered from a while back.

Some of those quotes, specifically about prostitution and promiscuity, are not exactly what I consider progressive.

At the same time though, I think folks hemming and hawing about other folk's personal views on sex is more than a little lame. It's like you said, nobody should care about the personal sexual attitudes of a guy who died in 1924. Anyone who insists that this tripe is a political issue should explain to me how the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal was not a national crisis.

[Manic Impressive]

check out her letters and Lenin's for that matter.

You could say it only added insult to injury that she was made to feel like she had to go on those walks.

[Robocommie]

Making accusations is easy, backing up your accusations with the weight of evidence is not.

This post is too. :mad::mad::mad:

[Rakhmetov]

lenin cheated on his wife

Let's say he did cheat on his wife for the sake of argument. How does that one episode make one into a rake, a lecher, or a Hugh Hefner-type of scum????

[Robocommie]

a rake, a lecher, or a Hugh Hefner-type of scum????

A cad, a rapscallion, a ne'er-do-well? A rascal, a scoundrel, a boundering boorish blackguard or brute?

[La Comédie Noire]

Your point? His marriage was more one of convince than anything else, his wife was basically little more than his receptionist and partner in the revolution. I believe they married right before his exile in Siberia as well, so it's not as if he treated this institution too seriously anyway.

So he treated his wife as an object of pleasure and an underling? Well thank god, for a second there I thought Lenin was an asshole.

DISCLAIMER: I don't hate Lenin as much as other left libertarians do, he was a product of his time.

[PhoenixAsh]

Lenin is expressing his personal opinion to a friend not promulgating it from the alleged pulpit of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Now tell me what love and tenderness is expressed in this video which does not have any nudity or sexually explicit images? Never mind the bad acting; focus on the dialogue and mannerism. This video is not all that different than when people got to a bar or nightclub to find a "fuckbuddy" of the moment. Look I'm not trying to impose my sexual mores or morays onto anyone. Just wanted to broach this topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMJ68rHCk1M


I do not think love and tenderness are necessary for sexual intercourse....nor that sexual intercourse should be confined within the context of love and tenderness.

I think everybody should decide for themselves how they want to arrange their sex lives. If you want to or think that love and tenderness for you are essential...more power to you! If not...who cares? As long as everything you do is consensual and not brought about by force or misleading somebody I have no problem with how you like to arrange your sex live.

edit: nor do I think the prelude in a porno movie is a pretty good relation to reality...but If that thing happened in reality...who cares as long as they all want it.

[Niccolò Rossi]

Lenin was a prude.

Nic.

[Turinbaar]

If free love is "bourgeoise" as Lenin puts it with no further justification, then it must be accepted that the alternative of discipline he is urging is much closer to the sexual standards of pre-bourgeois Tzarist Christian Orthodoxy, than anything close to socialism. He misses the ancient relationship between sexual repression and sexual hedonism and violence and his statements reveal more about his own personality than they do about the state of revolution at the time.

[RedSunRising]

lenin cheated on his wife

So?

Lenin was human, and very few people live up 100 per cent of the time to their principles, that doesnt mean the principles are necessarily wrong.

[Manic Impressive]

I think this might shed some light on what he meant.

Dear Friend, I very much advise you to write the plan of the pamphlet in as much detail as possible.[2] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jan/17.htm#fwV35E211) Otherwise too much is unclear.
One opinion I must express here and now:
I advise you to throw out altogether § 3—the “demand (women’s) for freedom of love”.
That is not really a proletarian but a bourgeois demand.
After all, what do you understand by that phrase? What can be understood by it?
1. Freedom from material (financial) calculations in affairs of love?
2. The same, from material worries?
3. From religious prejudices?
4. From prohibitions by Papa, etc.?
5. From the prejudices of “society”?
6. From the narrow circumstances of one’s environment (peasant or petty-bourgeois or bourgeois intellectual)?
7. From the fetters of the law, the courts and the police?
8. From the serious element in love?
9. From child-birth?
10. Freedom of adultery? Etc.
I have enumerated many shades (not all, of course). You have in mind, of course, not nos. 8–10, but either nos. 1–7 or something similar to nos. 1–7.
But then for nos. 1–7 you must choose a different wording, because freedom of love does not express this idea exactly.
And the public, the readers of the pamphlet, will inevitably understand by “freedom of love”, in general, some thing like nos. 8–10, even without your wishing it.
Just because in modern society the most talkative, noisy and “top-prominent” classes understand by “freedom of love” nos. 8–10, just for that very reason this is not a proletarian but a bourgeois demand.
For the proletariat nos. 1–2 are the most important, and then nos. 1–7, and those, in fact, are not “freedom of love”.
The thing is not what you subjectively “mean” by this. The thing is the objective logic of class relations in affairs of love.
Friendly shake hands![1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jan/17.htm#fwV35P181F01)
W. I.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jan/17.htm

Unless I've totally misread this I think he is saying that numbers 8 -10 are not proletarian demands but bourgeois.

This stood out
9. From child-birth? does this mean that he considered abortion bourgeois?

[bcbm]

why is this in workers struggles?

[Savage]

why is this in workers struggles?

why does this even exist

[Os Cangaceiros]

At the same time though, I think folks hemming and hawing about other folk's personal views on sex is more than a little lame. It's like you said, nobody should care about the personal sexual attitudes of a guy who died in 1924. Anyone who insists that this tripe is a political issue should explain to me how the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal was not a national crisis.

I half-agree.

I agree that no one should care. I don't care. But, at the same time, many historical figures face critiques due to their personal opinions on matters. Just look at Bakunin's awful anti-semitism. A lot of Marxists have criticized him on that point, despite the fact that drawing sweeping conclusions & generalizations about "the Jews" was common as mud during that time...I believe that even ol' Karl made some.

Taking into account the historical circumstances of a person's personal views are never really used across-the-board on the left...some people are atoned through an analysis of the epoch in which they were born, while others were and remain irredeemable racists and bigots.

[¿Que?]

I never understood what to make of things like this. On the one hand, these are personal correspondences, and this may have nothing to do with Lenin as a political figure. I find this kind of far fetched for a number of reasons. For one thing, I think that if we consider the forms that romances take as particular to a specific historical time period, within that time period what should such relations be like as communists.

And then you have the fact that Lenin doesn't really back up his claims about why things like promiscuity should be considered bourgeois. However, I think ultimately, what Lenin is saying has to do with this quote:

You must be aware of the famous theory that in communist society the satisfaction of sexual desires, of love, will be as simple and unimportant as drinking a glass of water.Because that's basically the point he's making, elbeit in a rather moralistic tone probably due to the era (we have a tendency these days to clinicize speech). But in any case, what ultimately matters is the attitude towards "love" as in, what exactly is it. If we are ultimately just animals reproducing, just as the quote suggests, drinking a glass of water, then that makes our sexuality something meaningless and cheap. And I think it is from this premise that Lenin's problem comes in with the whole promiscuity thing.

[Savage]

If I was a Russian worker back in the day and grandpa Lenin came around telling us kids about how to lead our sex lives, I'd tell the old bastard to fuck off....This has little to do with the modern state of communist struggle...

[Queercommie Girl]

All of you, show some respect for Lenin. Where did he ever say one's sex life or love life should be dictated? It is a personal letter and it didn't even oppose free love in principle, only calling for some restraint and prudent self-regulation.

[Savage]

All of you, show some respect for Lenin

No, fuck off :tt2:

[Rainsborough]

No, fuck off :tt2:

And quite right why should anyone here show any respect for Lenin? After all its not as if he led the first truly successfull socialist revolution, without which the modern Left would be reduced to intellectual squabbles on the internet... Oh hang on... :rolleyes:

[Savage]

After all its not as if he led the first truly successfull socialist revolution

lol, I respect Lenin's theory, I was trolling because it's ridiculous for people to take ideological offense from equally ridiculous threads (btw, individuals do not lead revolutions, but lets leave that discussion to another thread, so as not to soil the intellectual abundance of this one).

[RedSunRising]

why is this in workers struggles?

The triumph of will power over lust can be a struggle even for workers, no?

If everybody in a cadre group is shagging each other than that can produce tensions and jealousies which will undermine or even lead to its serious division, therefore the issue belongs here.

[Savage]

If everybody in a cadre group is shagging each other than that can produce tensions and jealousies which will undermine or even lead to its serious division, therefore the issue belongs here.

orgies; the deadliest of counter-revolutionary forces.

[RED DAVE]

... when people got to a bar or nightclub to find a "fuckbuddy" of the moment.Do you have a problem with the above behavior?

RED DAVE

[Hit The North]

It's difficult to know where to put this thread, but Worker's Struggles is definitely not it!

Given we don't have a Sexual Morality forum, and given the antique nature of Lenin's views on individual morality, I'm moving it to History.

[PhoenixAsh]

To put it bluntly...

I think the world would be a better place if people started fucking each other instead of fucking each other over. :)


But seriously...yes...there is a difference between sexuality and expressing it and sexuality and flaunting it. People should do what they want...that does not mean they should do it right in your face.


And I agree somewhat with RedSunRising that jumping from one partner to the next in a small group could lead to tensions. I think however that that is something to discuss amongst each other and something to deal with when it arises....and that in my experience that is also possible with "real" relationships.

[RED DAVE]

To put it bluntly...

I think the world would be a better place if people started fucking each other instead of fucking each other over. :)From the movie Bulworth:


Bullworth: All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color
But seriously...yes...there is a difference between sexuality and expressing it and sexuality and flaunting it. People should do what they want...that does not mean they should do it right in your face.Do I hear a note of left puritanism here?


And I agree somewhat with RedSunRising that jumping from one partner to the next in a small group could lead to tensions. I think however that that is something to discuss amongst each other and something to deal with when it arises....and that in my experience that is also possible with "real" relationships.Give it up, Comrade. :D

RED DAVE

[Ismail]

I'm surprised no one has brought up Lenin's comments on Freud.

“The mention of Freud’s hypothesis is designed to give the pamphlet a scientific veneer, but it is so much bungling by an amateur. Freud’s theory has now become a fad. I mistrust sex theories expounded in articles, treatises, pamphlets, etc. -- in short, the theories dealt with in that specific literature which sprouts so luxuriantly on the dung heap of bourgeois society. I mistrust those who are always absorbed in the sex problems, the way an Indian saint is absorbed in the contemplation of his navel. It seems to me that this superabundance of sex theories, which for the most part are mere hypotheses, and often quite arbitrary ones, stems from a personal need. It springs from the desire to justify one’s own abnormal or excessive sex life before bourgeois morality and to plead for tolerance towards oneself. This veiled respect for bourgeois morality is as repugnant to me as rooting about in all that bears on sex. No matter how rebellious and revolutionary it may be made to appear, it is in the final analysis thoroughly bourgeois.” (Clara Zetkin, Reminiscences of Lenin, p. 101)


This stood out does this mean that he considered abortion bourgeois?The 1920 Soviet abortion decree read as follows: "The worker-peasant government is aware of the whole evil of this phenomenon for the collective. By consolidating the Socialist system and through propaganda against abortions within the female population of the working masses... It envisages the gradual elimination of this phenomenon." (Abortion and Protection of the Human Fetus, p. 250.) It goes on to say that repression has been ineffective and that banning it would be more harmful to women seeking abortion than by regulating it as an authorized medical procedure.

I doubt he considered it "bourgeois," but most considered it something unnecessary under socialism.

As a note, it's worth pointing out that the decree was validated in practice in regards to medical safety and, to an extent, elimination.

"Meanwhile, it is believed that illegal operations for abortion, which are severely punished by the criminal courts, have, in the USSR, almost entirely ceased to occur. Thus the paradoxical result has been obtained that in the USSR, where abortion is permitted under strict control, it is to-day far less frequently practised than it is in Germany and France where it is a criminal offence! 'In the Soviet Union,' declared Dr. Gens, the director of the department for abortion of the Moscow Institute for the Protection of Mothers and Infants, 'in spite of legalisation there are relatively few abortions: we are the country in which abortion is least practised.'"
(Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation? Vol. II. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1936. p. 832.)

The Webbs also note that the amount of deaths due to abortion procedures was continuously being lowered.

Unfortunately abortion was restricted as the year 1936 progressed, but yeah.

[RED DAVE]

Unfortunately abortion was restricted as the year 1936 progressed, but yeah.And why would the stalinists do that?

RED DAVE

[Ismail]

And why would the stalinists do that?

RED DAVEFor what it's worth, this is the decree: http://www.red-channel.de/books/abortion.htm

It was reverted in 1955, so evidently it isn't something based entirely on "Stalinism."

[Angry Young Man]

I'm not convinced that having a higher sexual appetite than another, or higher than the average, is in any way harmful as is a higher appetite for food, so it's unfair to stamp the mean as normal and anything beyond that as excessive.

There probably is a problem when inequalities come in. I don't really know anything about BDSM because it's never interested me. But penetration is domination, and all good Marxists should turn gay forthwith. Especially the fit ones. :P

[Queercommie Girl]

There probably is a problem when inequalities come in. I don't really know anything about BDSM because it's never interested me. But penetration is domination, and all good Marxists should turn gay forthwith. Especially the fit ones. :P


:confused:

[PhoenixAsh]

From the movie Bulworth:

Do I hear a note of left puritanism here?

Give it up, Comrade. :D

RED DAVE


Well...its was a note of somebody currently not getting any :lol:

But close enough :)

[RED DAVE]

For what it's worth, this is the decree: http://www.red-channel.de/books/abortion.htm

It was reverted in 1955, so evidently it isn't something based entirely on "Stalinism."Oh please!

RED DAVE

[Robocommie]

Oh please!

RED DAVE

Stunning riposte.

[North Star]

If we are ultimately just animals reproducing, just as the quote suggests, drinking a glass of water, then that makes our sexuality something meaningless and cheap. And I think it is from this premise that Lenin's problem comes in with the whole promiscuity thing.
It was Alexandra Kollontai who used the glass of water metaphor. Lenin's attacks on sexual mores, come from him refuting her outlook. Kollontai simply sought to de-mystify sexuality, to free it from its religious connotations. I don't think she was seeking to cheapen bonds between people but to take away reactionary attitudes about sex whether it be for religious reasons or other reasons. In our society the taboo about sex is why people laugh at sex jokes. Kollontai wanted us to actually deal with sex in a realistic way that made sex as natural as anything else we do. I don't buy the idea that it cheapens us, and I think Lenin's whole attitude towards it is a by-product of his middle class upbringing and I disagree with him on it.

[Tim Finnegan]

It was Alexandra Kollontai who used the glass of water metaphor. Lenin's attacks on sexual mores, come from him refuting her outlook. Kollontai simply sought to de-mystify sexuality, to free it from its religious connotations. I don't think she was seeking to cheapen bonds between people but to take away reactionary attitudes about sex whether it be for religious reasons or other reasons. In our society the taboo about sex is why people laugh at sex jokes. Kollontai wanted us to actually deal with sex in a realistic way that made sex as natural as anything else we do. I don't buy the idea that it cheapens us, and I think Lenin's whole attitude towards it is a by-product of his middle class upbringing and I disagree with him on it.
It's also worth noting that Kollontai didn't even pose her position as such, instead saying that"sexuality is a human instinct as natural as hunger or thirst", which Lenin deliberately twisted to rob it of its emancipatory content and present it as something vulgar and soulless. But, then, did we really expect an old patriarch to grasp the sexual politics of a woman who would be considered radical even today?

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

What a load of bullshit. The left can be really embarrassing, especially when it is interpreting a letter that Lenin sent to someone with some spurious nonsense about sex. The stuff about abortions was pretty pathetic too.

I couldn't give a toss what Lenin thinks of sex and free love, no more than I could care what some religious preacher would have to say on the matter. I like sex, I think women should be able to abort unwanted pregnencies if they should wish to, I think enforcing any kind of sexual rule onto people is the antithesis of socialism and the whole notion of doing such a thing can fuck off.

We are more open about sex than ever before, Lenin would have a heart attack if he could see it, so let's forget about what he thinks and understand our own principles in the context of our place in history and move forward from here shall we? 'But Lenin said...' - Yeah who cares? You might as well go and say 'But in Matthew 24:6, God said thou shalt not fucketh aroundeth for it is the work of Satan'.

[North Star]

We are more open about sex than ever before, Lenin would have a heart attack if he could see it, so let's forget about what he thinks and understand our own principles in the context of our place in history and move forward from here shall we?

I think the openness about sex we now have within capitalism is actually what Lenin went on about. There are both positives and negatives to how we deal with sex these days. The main problem of course is that it is commodified as opposed to being taboo. That being said there has been some progress among feminists reclaiming sexuality for women.

[Ismail]

'But Lenin said...' - Yeah who cares? You might as well go and say 'But in Matthew 24:6, God said thou shalt not fucketh aroundeth for it is the work of Satan'.One would think that Lenin, living a few thousand years after the Bible and adhering to scientific socialism, would be trying to bring out a Marxist conception of love than the rather ridiculous comparison you're making here.

It's one thing to argue that Lenin was a product of him time in this case, but it's another to basically insult him by comparing him to pre-scientific religious texts.

[∞]

http://memegenerator.net/instance/8206694

[Geiseric]

How do you guys find the time to post all this shit...

[Tablo]

I prefer the thoughts of Emma Goldman to those of Lenin.

"Free love? as if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love." - Emma Goldman

The point I'm trying to make is that people should do whatever the fuck they want. I don't think people should treat every relationship as if it will be permanent, but if that's the way you feel then go for it.

[robbo203]

It was Alexandra Kollontai who used the glass of water metaphor. Lenin's attacks on sexual mores, come from him refuting her outlook. Kollontai simply sought to de-mystify sexuality, to free it from its religious connotations. I don't think she was seeking to cheapen bonds between people but to take away reactionary attitudes about sex whether it be for religious reasons or other reasons. In our society the taboo about sex is why people laugh at sex jokes. Kollontai wanted us to actually deal with sex in a realistic way that made sex as natural as anything else we do. I don't buy the idea that it cheapens us, and I think Lenin's whole attitude towards it is a by-product of his middle class upbringing and I disagree with him on it.

I seem to recall in connection with his spat with Alexandra Kollantai that lenin refered to sex as "stealing fire from the revolution". An opposing viewpoint, I guess, would be that of someone like Erich Fromm who would see sexual repression as a means of propping up an authoritarian society. Sexual repression is an inversion or the mirror image of pornography and a more enlightened attitude towards sex would reject both

[Jimmie Higgins]

Lenin was the worst Love-Line guest-host ever!


For what it's worth, this is the decree: http://www.red-channel.de/books/abortion.htm

It was reverted in 1955, so evidently it isn't something based entirely on "Stalinism."Maybe just a little based on a ruling class that wants to influence reproduction due to the needs of that ruling class at that time?


However, the economic breakdown of the country which took place during the first years after the civil war and the armed intervention, and the inadequate cultural level of the women inherited from the pre-revolutionary epoch did not enable them at once to make full use of the rights accorded them by the law and to perform, without fear of the future, their duties as citizens and mothers responsible for the birth and early education of their children.So under capitalism women are unpaid childcare because bourgeois ideology claims it's natural and women have an inherent urge to do so but in the USSR women are semi-paid childcare because it's natural and their civic duty?

[Ismail]

Maybe just a little based on a ruling class that wants to influence reproduction due to the needs of that ruling class at that time?If we're going to chalk it up to "the needs of that ruling class" then we might as well put down absolutely everything the Bolsheviks did at any point from Lenin's party faction ban and formation of the Cheka to Trotsky's labor mobilization to Stalin's collectivization as examples of the "new ruling class" affecting policy for its own ends.

But again, the prohibition of abortion was repealed in 1955.


So under capitalism women are unpaid childcare because bourgeois ideology claims it's natural and women have an inherent urge to do so but in the USSR women are semi-paid childcare because it's natural and their civic duty?The restriction on abortion seems to have been more or less focused entirely on the need to combat what was seen as sluggish, declining birth rates. In any case Stalin wasn't alone in restricting abortion. "'There is no doubt' announced a Pravda editorial, 'that it will serve as a further strengthening of the Soviet family,' that it would discourage 'free love' and 'disorderly sex life.' Furthermore, it concluded, 'a woman without children merits our pity for she does not know the full joy of life. Our Soviet women, full blooded citizens of the freest country in the world, have given the bliss of motherhood. We must safeguard our family and raise and rear healthy Soviet heroes!' Similar items in other papers, letters from readers, and a series of commentaries by Krupskaya dwelt on the same theme and underscored the fact that removal of the right to abortion was simply the first step in putting an end to unbridled passion, casual pregnancies, automatic abortions, and the general disrespect for women, love, motherhood, and the family." (The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia, p. 387.) Abortion was also widely discussed and debated by the urban population, as noted by Sarah Davies in her book Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia.

It doesn't make the prohibition of abortions a good thing, and the public arguments which were given for abortion restrictions were far from persuasive, but I fail to see how it's some sort of example of the dreaded "Stalinist bureaucracy" lording over the working class or whatever. I've already noted that the 1920 decree basically denounced abortions as a necessary evil. If there was any real "retreat" that could have been definitely avoided under Stalin, I'd say abortion was it.

[RED DAVE]

It doesn't make the prohibition of abortions a good thingYou are not reading what you're writing. It most certainly cast the prohibition in a positive light.


and the public arguments which were given for abortion restrictions were far from persuasivePublic arguments were not the only weapon. Abortion was criminalized. You could go to the gulag for that.


but I fail to see how it's some sort of example of the dreaded "Stalinist bureaucracy" lording over the working class or whatever.Do you really fail to see how prohibiting abortions by working class women by a bureaucratic government is lording it over the working class? You really have a soft spot in your heart for stalinism. Maybe if you were a woman back then you might have a less positive opinion of the actions of the bureaucracy.


I've already noted that the 1920 decree basically denounced abortions as a necessary evil. If there was any real "retreat" that could have been definitely avoided under Stalin, I'd say abortion was it.But it wasn't avoided. Like the reinstatement of laws against gays, this actually happened. It was part of a general policy of repression. The attitudes of the bureaucracy towards abortion and homosexuality mirrored the repressive ideas of the bourgeoisie everywhere. To say anything else is to apologize for repression as some stalinists have apologized for rape.

RED DAVE

[chegitz guevara]

Making accusations is easy, backing up your accusations with the weight of evidence is not.

Not having a sense of humor is bourgeois as fuck!

[Ismail]

You are not reading what you're writing. It most certainly cast the prohibition in a positive light.I'm presenting the Soviet view, which I already noted was not a good one. As with many other cases, the public view ("women are so free we don't need abortions anymore") obscured the actual view ("low birth rates are bad for industrialization.")


Do you really fail to see how prohibiting abortions by working class women by a bureaucratic government is lording it over the working class?This presupposes the government is "bureaucratic."


But it wasn't avoided. Like the reinstatement of laws against gays, this actually happened. It was part of a general policy of repression. The attitudes of the bureaucracy towards abortion and homosexuality mirrored the repressive ideas of the bourgeoisie everywhere. To say anything else is to apologize for repression as some stalinists have apologized for rape.I don't "apologize" for abortion restrictions. It was wrong.

[Thirsty Crow]

One would think that Lenin, living a few thousand years after the Bible and adhering to scientific socialism, would be trying to bring out a Marxist conception of love than the rather ridiculous comparison you're making here.

What a load of crap. A "Marxist" conception of love? And how would that work, given the fact that Marxism represents a revolutionary theory? Would that work like a normative and prescreptive set of practices disseminated by social institutions such as the press and the school?

[Os Cangaceiros]

I feel inclined to mention that, although the times that Lenin grew up in were not the most suitable for a "progressive" viewpoint on sexual matters, there were radicals who lived during that time who did have the correct position on this topic. People like Emile Armand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Armand) (a French anarchist) and Ezra Heywood (http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=223) (an American individualist):



Armand was an important propagandist of free love. He advocated free love (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Free_love), naturism (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Naturism) and polyamory (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Polyamory) in what he termed la camaraderie amoureuse. He wrote many propagandist articles on this subject such as "De la liberté sexuelle" (1907) where he advocated not only a vague free love but also multiple partners, which he called "plural love". In the individualist anarchist journal L'EnDehors (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/L%27EnDehors) he and others continued in this way. Armand seized this opportunity to outline his theses supporting revolutionary sexualism and camaraderie amoureuse that differed from the traditional views of the partisans of free love in several respects. Later Armand submitted that from an individualist perspective nothing was reprehensible about making "love", even if one did not have very strong feelings for one's partner. "The camaraderie amoureuse thesis", he explained, "entails a free contract of association (that may be annulled without notice, following prior agreement) reached between anarchist individualists of different genders, adhering to the necessary standards of sexual hygiene, with a view toward protecting the other parties to the contract from certain risks of the amorous experience, such as rejection, rupture, exclusivism, possessiveness, unicity, coquetry, whims, indifference, flirtatiousness, disregard for others, and prostitution." He also published Le Combat contre la jalousie et le sexualisme révolutionnaire (1926), followed over the years by Ce que nous entendons par liberté de l'amour (1928), La Camaraderie amoureuse ou “chiennerie sexuelle” (1930), and, finally, La Révolution sexuelle et la camaraderie amoureuse (1934), a book of nearly 350 pages comprising most of his writings on sexuality.

In a text from 1937, he mentioned among the individualist objectives the practice of forming voluntary associations (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Voluntary_association) for purely sexual purposes of heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual nature or of a combination thereof. He also supported the right of individuals to change sex and stated his willingness to rehabilitate forbidden pleasures, non-conformist caresses (he was personally inclined toward voyeurism), as well as sodomy. This led him allocate more and more space to what he called "the sexual non-conformists", while excluding physical violence. His militancy also included translating texts from people such as Alexandra Kollontai (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Alexandra_Kollontai) and Wilhelm Reich (http://www.revleft.com/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich) and establishments of free love associations which tried to put into practice la camaraderie amoureuse through actual sexual experiences.


In 1878, several thousand supporters of Ezra Heywood held an "Indignation Meeting" at Boston's Faneuil Hall. They were protesting his conviction and imprisonment on obscenity charges. Educated for the ministry, he had come to reject all forms of social control. He was an ardent abolitionist and, after the Civil War, a strong supporter of women's rights. He sought not just suffrage for women but their right to be free from the "sexual slavery" he believed marriage entailed. Together with his wife Angela, he published a journal and pamphlets that advocated free love and birth control. In doing so, he knowingly violated federal obscenity laws. He paid for his beliefs with his own freedom, spending two years at hard labor in a Dedham jail.

Emma Goldman, as well, especially in her journal Mother Earth. They were true heroes for the cause!

[Ismail]

What a load of crap. A "Marxist" conception of love? And how would that work, given the fact that Marxism represents a revolutionary theory? Would that work like a normative and prescreptive set of practices disseminated by social institutions such as the press and the school?I don't know, I'm not Lenin living in the early periods of the 20th century. I'm just saying that Lenin should be respected a bit more than "Oh hey he seems to have had rather archaic views on love and sex. You know who else did? THE BIBLE!"

[Wanted Man]

I feel inclined to mention that, although the times that Lenin grew up in were not the most suitable for a "progressive" viewpoint on sexual matters, there were radicals who lived during that time who did have the correct position on this topic. People like Emile Armand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Armand) (a French anarchist) and Ezra Heywood (http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=223) (an American individualist):





Emma Goldman, as well, especially in her journal Mother Earth. They were true heroes for the cause!

Leading us to the stunning conclusion that some revolutionaries at the time had the right position, and some didn't. Holy shit!

[Invader Zim]

What a load of puritanical wank. Yet another reason to ignore Lenin.

[the_red_pickle]

I'm not surprised to learn that's how Lenin views free love. This is great. This make me look up to Lenin even more.

[Queercommie Girl]

To be fair, Lenin didn't actually oppose free love in principle.

[#FF0000]

Don't think he's all that wrong. I don't think I agree with where he's coming from but whatever.

People can do what they want. Doesn't matter. If someone wants to be the most hedonistic creature to ever snort whole diet pills off of a public toilet seat, then fine, whatever, no judgments, have a good time. I just don't think that sort of thing is very fulfilling.

Hope folks understand what I'm trying to say and don't think I'm coming across as one of those "hurf durf morals gub gub" guys.

[chegitz guevara]

The context should also be considered. If we'retoo busy pleasuring ourselves, we're not busy doing the things that matter, like shooting the capitalists invading army.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Leading us to the stunning conclusion that some revolutionaries at the time had the right position, and some didn't. Holy shit!

Actually it was more of an opportunity to bring up obscure historical figures who I like. :lol:

[Dire Helix]

Lenin just like many other revolutionaries at the time was heavily influenced by Chernyshevsky`s novel "What`s to Be Done?". Anyone who`s read it would understand why Lenin could have such views on sexual relationships. The image of a revolutionary created by the novel is one of an incredibly stoic person who rejects the love of a woman as well as other pleasures and dedicates his life to the greater cause.

[Desperado]

Endorsing sexual repression is one thing, recommending sexual self-control and responsibility is an entirely different matter altogether.

An analogy: A well-balance diet is great, gluttony which leads to obesity is not.

Except it's pretty universally accepted that obesity in the long run is not good, i.e most obese people don't want to be obese. You and Lenin have decided that "lots of sex with different people is bad".

Why having lots of sex also means I have no self-control (if I choose to do it, want to do it, and do it, isn't it an example of self-control?), or no responsibility (rape is irresponsible, most sex is not) is totally beyond my comprehension.

OK, if Lenin means we're wasting time having sex instead of making revolution as some have suggested, it's not as bad. Then the analogy would be "eating so much food you don't have time to make revolution" - nothing to do with too much food and gluttony per se. But doesn't that strike you as ridiculous? Saying we should dedicate our lives to revolution like political monks - sacrificing all else - is a step to far for me. Does lots of sex, or just promiscuous sex in untied relationships, really take that much time from our lives? Happiness is the point - and the point of revolution is to bring happiness.

Besides, it goes on to how Lenin believed in a nucleus of elite dedicated revolutionaries, which is in itself flawed.

I wish it was rampant sexual activity holding the left back, rather than capitalisms ability to adapt and strangle the spirit of the working class.

[Thirsty Crow]

Oh, I fear that it's not just that sex takes up a lot of time.
If anyone is interested in this topic, you should check out Gramsci's "Americanism and Fordism" which, among other nasty things, covers the issue of promiscuity and the nature of the relationship between man and woman suitable for a "new society" (basically, the society of Taylorist supervision and mass production).

[Astral_Disaster]

This post is bourgeois as fuck. :mad:

I'm with Robocommie there. What do you think you're accomplishing?

[∞]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=8236&stc=1&d=1308344456

Free love?