Selected Writings

of Alexandra Kollontai
Translated with an introduction
and commentaries by

Alix Holt

LAWRENCE tfffiL and CG&RANY

Westport, Com£
Copyright © Alix Holt 1977

Published in the United States by

Lawrence Hill Co.. Publishers, Inc.,
Westport, Conn., 1978

ISBN 0 -8 8 2 0 8 -0 9 2 -X

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 77-88786

Printed in Great Britain

 Contents

Translator's note / 7
Chronology / 9
Introduction / 13

Social Democracy and the Woman Question / 29

From "Towards a H istory of the W orking W omen's
Movement in Russia" / 39
From "The Social Basis o f the Woman Question” / 58

Exile and W ar / 75
From "Excerpts from a Diary" / 81
From "Around W orkers' Europe" / 88
W hy was the German Proletariat Silent during
the July Days? / 99

The Revolution / 105

Where does "Revolutionary Defencism” Lead? / 110

t W omen and the Revolution / 113

In the Front Line o f Fire / 123
A Serious Gep /1 2 5
7 W orking Woman and M other / 127
Document from the Commissariiat o f Social Welfare /1 4 0
From "The Labour of Women in The Evolution of the
Economy" /1 4 2

Crisis in the Party / 151

The W orkers' Opposition / 159

t M orality and the New Society / 201

Sisters / 216
Theses on Communist M orality in the Sphere of
Marital Relations / 225
S o o n /2 3 2
 Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle / 237
^ Communism and the Family / 250
Prostitution and W ays o f Fighting it / 261
Make W ay for W inged Eros: A Lette rto W orking Youth / 276

7 v Diplomatic Duties / 293

Marriage and Everyday Ufe / 300
; The Opposition and the Party Rank and File / 312
Soviet Woman: Citizeness w ith Equal Rights / 316

Notes / 318
Bibliography / 321
Index / 333
 Translator's Note
The translations in this selection, w ith a few exceptions, eppear for the
first time in English. "Communism and the Family" was published in 1920
in th e W orker, the paper of the Scottish W orkers' Committee, end the
same translation was republished by Pluto Press in 1971; the translation here
is, however, a new one. "The W orkers' Opposition" was published in 1921 in
The W orkers' Dreadnought on the initiative o f Sylvia Pankhurst, and reprinted
in 1962 by Solidarity. Although this early translation is sometimes unclear or
ambiguous, no copy o f the Russian original is available and I have therefore
been unable to make a new translation. "Sexual Relations and the Class
Struggle" wes firs t published in my ow n translation in 1972, by Falling W all
press.
Until the revolution, Russia used the old Gregorian calendar, which was
thirteen days behind the Roman calendar: dates before and during 1917 are
given according to the Gregorian calendar, dates after the beginning o f 1918
according to the Roman calendar.
 Chronology
1873 Alexandra Mikhailovna Domontovich bom.
1878 Bestuzhevskii courses providing higher education fo r women opened
in St Petersburg.
1891 Tsar Alexander II assassinated.
1884 Engels's The Origin o f the Family, Private Property and the State
published.
1889 First congress o f the Second International held in Paris.
1893 Alexandra Mikhailovna marries V.L.Kollontai.
1896-8 Kollontai engages in political w ork, teaching in w orkers' schools and
helping political prisoners.
1898 1-3 March: Founding conference o f Russian Social Democratic
Workers' Party.
August: Kollontai travels to Zurich to study political economy.
1899 Kollontai returns to St Petersburg but not to her husband.
1901 Kollontai visits Europe and meets Rosa Luxemburg, Paul and Laura
Lafargue, Karl Kautsky and Georgii Plekhanov.
1902 Lenin w rites W hat Is To Be Done.
1903 Kollontai speaks in public for the first tim e: to students on Nietzsche
and morality.
1905 9 January, "B loody Sunday": Troops fire on peaceful demonstration.
14 October: Petrograd soviat o f w orkers' deputies established.
1907 3 June: Second Duma dissolved.
17-19 August: Kollontai participates in international conference of
socialist women in Stuttgart.
1908 September: Arrest warrant out for Kollontai for her book Finland
and Socialism. Propaganda w o rk in textile w orkers' union.
13-14 December: Kollontai leaves for the W est to escape arrest.
1909 January: Kollontai joins German social democratic party.
A p ril-M a y: Kollontai visits London w ith Clara Zetkin to take part
in suffrage campaign.
1910 28 A ugust - 3 September: Kollontai present a t Eighth Congress of
Second International.
August-September: Kollontai speaks at meetings in Denmark and
Sweden.
1911 February-March: Kollontai lectures in Bologna.
Spring: Kollontai moves to Paris.

9
 August-September: Koilontai active in the south o f France during
e wave o f strikes by housewives.
1912 Koilontai visits Belgium, Sweden end Switzerland.
2 -7 September: Koilontai attends Forty-fifth British Trade Union
Congress in Newport.
24-25 Novem ber Koilontai in Basle for international congress of
Second International.
1914 June: Austrian ultimatum to Serbia.
3 August; Koilontai arrested by German authorities.
4 August: Koilontai released. Reichstag approves w er credits.
Mid-September: Koilontai leaves for Denmark.
October: Koilontai moves to Sweden.
M id-N ovem ber Koilontai in Swedish prison. A fte r releese a t end
November she settles in Norway. W rites first lettera to Lenin.
1915 September: Zimmerwald conference, international gathering o f
socialists opposed to the war.
8 October: Koilontai begins a speaking tour of USA.
Koilontai now a member of Bolshevik party.
1917 23 February: Demonstration o f women workers which begins
"February Revolution".
March: Koilontai returns to Petrograd, and is elected a member of
executive com m ittee o f Soviet.
4 A pril: Koilontai speaks at meeting o f social democratic deputies
in suppoit of Lenin's A pril theses.
24-29 A pril: Kollontei at Seventh All-Russien perty conference.
Attem pts unsuccessfully to raise question of the organisation of
women.
3 -6 July: Popularcfemonstrations suppressed by the government.
Koilontai arrested.
26 J u ly - 3 A u g u s t Sixth party congress. In absentia Koilontai
elected member of central committee.
21 August: Koilontai freed.
September-October: Koilontai organises first Petrograd conference
o f working women.
25-26 O ctober Revolution. Koilontai is named Commissar o f Social
Welfare.
December: New marriage law.
1918 January: Under new marriage law Koilontai marries Pavel Dybenko.
6-8 March: Koilontai attends Seventh party congress, speaking
egeinst Brest-Litovsk treaty.
March: Koilontai resigns from Commissariat of Social Welfare.

10
 January: Rosa Luxemburg murdered in Berlin.
1919
July-August: Koilontai works as People's Commissar of Propaganda
and Agitation o f the Ukraine. Raturns to M oscow in September and
works in Central W om en’s Department.
1920 November: Abortion legalised.
22-29 December: Eighth All-Russian Congress o f Soviets. Koilontai
elected member of VTsIK (All-Russian All-Union Cential Executive
Committee).
1921 March: Kronstadt uprising.
a-16 March: Tenth party congress. Koilontai speaks for W orkers'
Opposition. New Economic Policy introduced.
22-27 December: Ninth All-Russian congress o f Soviets. Koilontai
re-elected member o f VTsIK.
Marie Stopes opens birth-control clinic in London.
1922 February: Koilontai signs the "Letter o f the 22" that put the case of
the W orkers' Opposition to the Executive Committee o f the
Communist International.
4 October: Koilontai eppointed adviser to Soviet legation in Norway.
1923 30 May: Koilontai given plenipotantiary powers in Norwegian
legation.
1324 January: Death o f Lenin.
4 August: Koilontai appointed Ambassador to Norway.
1926 September: Koilontai appointed head o f legation in Mexico; w ithin a
year she is recalled for health reasons.
19 November: Laws on marriage, divorce, the family and guardian­
ship passed.
1926-7 Join t Opposition opposes Stalin.
1927 October: Koilontai sent to Norwegian embassy.
14 November: Trotsky excluded from the paity.
Wilhelm Reich's The Function o f tha Orgasm published.
1929 February: Trotsky deported.
1930 January: Women's departments closed down.
Koilontai transferred to Swedish embassy.
1933 7 March: Koilontai awarded Order o f Lenin fo r w ork w ith working
and peasant women.
Shlyapnikov (co-leader o f the W orkers'O pposition) expelled from
the party.
1936 27 June: Abortion made illegal.
August: Trials o f Zinoviev and Kamenev.
1938 July: Pavel Dybenko shot. Massive purge trials.
1939 November: W ar w ith Finland begins.

11
1940 Januaiy-tVIarch: Kollontai active in concluding Finno-Sovietpeace.
1942 4 A pril: Kollontai awarded Red Banner o f Labour for services to
Soviet state to mark her 70th birthday.
1945 5 September: Kollontai awarded second Red Banner o f Labour fo r
services during Second W orld War.
1952 9 March: Kollontai dies of heart attack.
1953 5 March: Death o f Stalin.
1955 Abortion made legal.
1956 Twentieth congress o f the Soviet Communist Party.

12
 Theses on Communist Morality in the
Sphere of Marital.Relations
Fam ily and m arriage are historical categories, phenomena which
develop in accordance w ith the economic relations th a t exist a t the given
level of production. The form of m arriage and of the fam ily is thus
determined by the econom ic system o f the given epoch, and it changes
as the econom ic base of society changes. The fam ily, in th e same way
as government, religion, science, m orals, law and custom s, is part of the
superstructure w hich derives from the economic system of society.
W here econom ic fu nctions are performed by the family rather
than by society as a whole, fam ily and m arital relations are more stable
and possess a vital capacity: “The less the development of labour, and
the more lim ited its volume of production . . . the more preponderantly
does the social order appear to be dominated by ties of sex” {Engels,
Origins of the Fam ily). In the period of natural economy the fam ily
formed an enclosed econom ic unit which was necessary for humankind
and thus had a vital capacity. The fam ily was a t th a t time a un it of both
production and consumption. Outside th e fam ily/economic un it the
individual had no means, especially a t the e a rliest levels of the develop­
m ent of society, of sustaining the conditions necessary for life. In some
areas and in some countries where capitalism is weakly developed {among
the peoples o f the East, for example) the peasant fam ily is still funda­
mentally a fam ily/economic union. W ith the tran sition, however, from
a natural economy to a m erchant cap italist economy based on trade and
exchange, the family ceases to be necessary fo r the functioning of society
and thus loses its strength and vital capacity.
The fa ct th at with the consolidation o f the capitalist system of
production, the m arital/fam ily union develops from a production unit
into a legal arrangement concerned only with consumption, leads inevit­
ably to the w eakening of m arital/fam ily ties. In the era of private
property and the bourgeois-capitalist econom ic system, m arriage and the
family are grounded in (a) m aterial and financial considerations, (b)
economic dependence of the fem ale sex on the fam ily breadwinner - the
husband - rath er than the social collective, and (c) the need to care for
the rising generation. Capitalism m aintains a system of individual
economies; the fam ily has a role to play in performing econom ic tasks
and functions within the national capitalist economy. Thus under capi-

225
talism th e fam ily does n ot merge with on dissolve into the nationa]
economy but continues to exist a s an independent econom ic unit, con- I
cem ed with production in the case of the peasant fam ily and consump.
tion in th e case o f the urban fam ily. T he individual economy which
springs fro m private property is th e b a sis o f th e bourgeois family.
The com munist economy does away with the family. In the
period o f th e dictatorship o f the proletariat there is a tran sition to the
single production plan and collective social consumption, and the family 1
loses its significance as an econom ic unit. T he external econom ic func. |
tions of the family disappear, and consumption ceases to be organised j
on an individual fam ily basis; a network o f social kitchens and canteens /
is established, and the making, mending and washing o f clothes and
other aspects of housework are integrated into the national economy.
In th e period o f the dictatorship o f th e proletariat the family economic j
unit should be recognised as being, from the point o f view of th e national ,
economy, n o t only useless b u t harm ful. T h e fam ily econom ic unit
involves (a) the uneconomic expenditure o f products and fu el on the part
of small dom estic econom ies, and (b) unproductive labour, especially hy
women, in the hom e - and is therefore in conflict with the interest of
the workers’ republic in a single econom ic plan and the expedient use
o f the labour force (including women).
Under the dictatorship of the proletariat then, the m aterial and
econom ic considerations in which the family was grounded cease to exists
The econom ic dependence of women on men and the role o f the family
in the care of the younger generation also disappear, as th e communist
elem ents in the workers’ republic grow stronger. W ith th e introduction
of the obligation o f all citizens to work, woman has a value in the {
national economy which is independent o f her fam ily and m arital status.
The econom ic subjugation o f women in m arriage and the fam ily is done
away with, and responsibility for the care of the children and their f
physical and spiritual education is assumed by the social collective. The; ,
family teaches and instils egoism, thus weakening th e tie s o f the col;' |
lective and hindering the construction o f communism. However, in the j
new society relations betw een parents and children a re freed fro m anf j
elem ent of m aterial considerations and enter a new historic stage. j
Once the family has been stripped of its econom ic functions and '
its responsibilities towards the younger generation and is no longe| '
central to the existence of the woman, it has ceased to be a family. Tbe j
family unit shrinks to a union of two people based on m utual agreement}. 1
In the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers^ ,
state has to concern itself n ot w ith the econom ic and social unit o f the
family, since this unit dies as the bonds of communism are consoli­
dated, but w ith the changing form s of m arital relations. The family as
an econom ic unit and as a union of parents and children based on the
need to provide for the m aterial welfare of the latte r is doomed to dis­
appear. Thus the workers’ collective has to establish its attitude n ot to
economic relationships but to the form of relationships betw een the
sexes. W hat kind of relations betw een the sexes are in the best interests
of the workers’ collective? W hat form of relations would strengthen, not
weaken, the collective in the transitional stage betw een capitalism and
communism and would thus assist the construction o f the new society?
The laws and the m orality th a t the w orkers’ system is evolving are
beginning to give an answ er to this question.
Once relations betw een the sexes cease to perform the econom ic
and social function of the form er fam ily, they are no longer the concern
of the workers’ collective. It is n ot the relationships between the sexes
but the result - the child - th a t concerns the collective. The workers’
state recognises its responsibility to provide for m aternity, i.e. to
guarantee the well-being of the woman and the child, but it does not
recognise the couple as a legal unit separate from the workers’ collective.
The decrees on marriage issued by the workers’ republic establishing the
mutual rights o f the m arried cou ple (the right to demand m aterial
support from the partner for yourself or the child), and thus giving legal
encouragement to the separation of this unit and its interests from the
general interests of the workers’ social collective (the right of wives to
be transferred to the town or village where their husbands are working),
are survivals o f the past; they contradict the interests of the collective
and weaken its bonds, and should therefore be reviewed and changed.
The law ought to emphasise the interest of the workers’ collec­
tive in m aternity and elim inate the situation where the child is dependent
on the relationship betw een its parents. The law o f the w orkers’ collective
replaces the right o f the parents, and the workers’ collective keeps a
close w atch, in the interests o f die unified economy and o f present and
future labour resources. In the period of the dictatorship of the pro­
letariat there must, instead o f marriage law, be regulation of the relation­
ship of the governm ent to m aternity, of the relationship betw een m other
and child and of the relationship betw een the m other and the workers’
collective (i.e. legal norms must regulate the protection of fem ale labour,
the welfare of expectant and nursing m others, the w elfare of children and
their social education). Legal norm s must regulate the relationship
between the mother and the socially educated child, and between the
father and the child. Fatherhood should n ot be established through

227
m arriage or a relationship o f a m aterial nature. T h e m an should he able
to choose w hether or n ot to accept th e role of fath erhood (i.e. the right
which he shares equally with the m other to decide on a so d a l system 0f
education for the child, and the light, where this does not conflict with
the interests of the collective, of intellectual con tact w ith th e child and
th e opportunity to influence its development).
There a re two grounds on which, in the interests o f th e workers’
collective, the relationships betw een the sexes ought to b e subject to
legislative regulations: (a) the health and hygiene of the n ation and the
race, and (b) the increase or decrease of the population required by the
national econom ic collective. In the period o f the dictatorship o f the
proletariat, the regulation of relationships enters a new phase. Instead
of laws and the threat of legal proceedings, the workers’ collective must
rely on agitational and educational influences, and on social measures
to improve the relationships between the sexes and to guarantee the
health of the children born from these relationships. For example, the
Com m issariats of Health and Education m ust caxxy out a broad campaign
on the question of venereal and other infectious diseases, thereby
reducing the danger of these diseases spreading through sexual inter­
course and daily living. A person is guilty before the law n o t for having
had sexual relations but for having consciously kept silent and hidden
the fa c t th a t he or she has the disease from those w ith whom he or she
lives and works, and thus for failing to observe the rule on precautions
to be taken to reduce the likelihood o f infection.
In the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, communist
m orality - and not the law - regulates sexual relationships in the
interest of th e workers’ collective and of future generations.
Each historical (and therefore economic) epoch in the develop­
ment o f society has its own ideal o f m arriage and its own sexual morality.
Under the tribal system, with its ties of kinship, the morality was
different from th a t which developed with the establishm ent of private
property and the rule of the husband and father (patriarchy). Different
economic system s have different moral codes. N ot only each stage in the
development of society, but each class has its corresponding sexual
morality (it is sufficient to com pare the m orals of the feudal landowning
class and o f th e bourgeoisie in one and th e sam e epoch to see that
this is true). The more firmly established the principles of private pro­
perty, the stricter the m oral code. The im portance of virginity before
legal m arriage sprang from the principles of private property and the
unwillingness of men to pay for the children of others.
Hypocrisy (the outward observance of decorum and the actual

228
practice o f depravity), and th e double code (one code o f behaviour for
the man and another for the woman) are the twin pillars of bourgeois
morality. Communist m orality m ust, above all, resolutely spurn all the
hypocrisy inherited from bourgeois society in relationships between the
sexes, and reject the double standard of m orality.
In the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, relations
between the sexes should be evaluated only according to the criteria
mentioned above - the health of the working population and the develop­
m ent o f inner bonds o f solidarity within the collective. T he sexual act
must be seen n ot as something sham eful and sinful but as som ething
which is as natural as the other needs of healthy organism , such as
hunger and thirst. Such phenom ena ca n n o t be judged as m oral or im ­
moral. The satisfaction o f healthy and natu ral instincts only ceases to be
normal when the boundaries o f hygiene are overstepped. In such cases,
not only the health of the person concerned but th e interests of the w ork
collective, which needs th e strength and energy and health of its
members, are threatened. Communist m orality, therefore, w hile openly
recognising the norm ality o f sexual interests, condemns unhealthy and
unnatural interest in sex (excesses, for example, or sexual relations
before m atu rity has been reached, which exhaust the organism and lower
the capacity o f men and women fo r work).
As com munist m orality is concerned for the health of the
population, it also criticises sexual restrain t. The preservation o f health
includes th e fu ll and correct satisfaction o f all m an’s needs: norm s of
hygiene should work ro this end, and n ot artificially suppress such an
important function of the organism as th e sex drive (Bebel, W om an and
Socialism). Thus b oth early sexual experience (before the body has
developed and grow n strong) and sexual re stra in t m ust b e seen as
equally harm ful. T h is concern fo r the h e a lth o f the human race does
n o t establish either monogamy or polygamy as th e obligatory fo rm of
relations betw een the sexes, fo r excesses may be com m itted in the
bounds o f the fo n n er, and a frequent change of partners by no m eans
signifies sexual intem perance. Science h as discovered th a t w hen a woman
has relationships with many men a t one time, her ability to have children
is impaired; and relationships with a number of women drain the man
and affect the h ealth o f h is children negatively. Since the workers’
collective needs strong and healthy men and women, such arrange­
ments of sexual life are n ot in its interests.
It is accepted th a t th e psychological state o f parents a t the
moment o f conception influences the health and life capacity o f the
child. Thus in the interests o f human health, com m unist m orality

229
criticises sexual relations which are based on physical attraction alone
and are not attended by love or fleeting passion. In the interests o f the
collective, com munist morality also criticises persons whose sexual
relationships are built not on physical attraction but on calculation, habit
or even intellectual affinity.
In view of the need to encourage the development and growth
of feelings of solidarity and to strengthen the bonds o f the work col­
lective, it should above all be established th a t the isolation of the
“ cou ple" as a special unit does not answer the interests of communism.
Communist m orality requires th e education o f the working class in
comradeship and the fusion o f th e hearts and minds o f th e separate
members o f this collective. The needs and interests o f the individual
m ust be subordinated to the interests and aims o f the collective. On the
one hand, therefore, the bonds o f family and m arriage m ust be weakened,
and on the other, men and women need to be educated in solidarity and
the subordination of the will of the individual to the will o f the collective.
Even a t this present, early stage, the workers’ republic demands that
m others learn to be the m others not only o f their own child but o f all
w orkers’ children; it does n ot recognise the couple as a self-sufficient
unit, and does not therefore approve of wives deserting work for the
sake of this unit.
As regards sexual relations, com munist m orality demands first
of all an end to all relations based on financial or other econom ic con­
siderations. The buying and selling o f caresses destroys the sense of
equality betw een the sexes, and thus undermines the basis of solidarity
without which com munist society cannot exist. Moral censure is con­
sequently directed a t prostitution in all its forms and a t all types of
m arriage of convenience, even wben recognised by Soviet law. The pre­
servation of m arriage regulations creates the illusion that the workers'
collective can accept the “ couple” w ith its special, exclusive interests.
The stronger the ties between the mem bers of the collective as a whole,
the less the need to reinforce m arital relations. Secondly, communist
m orality demands the education of the younger generation in responsi­
bility to th e collective and in the consciousness th a t love is n ot the only
thing in life (this is especially im portant in the case o f women, for they
have been taught the opposite for centuries). Love is only one aspect
of life, and m ust n ot be allowed to overshadow the other facets o f the
relationships between individual and collective. The ideal of the bour­
geoisie was the married couple, where the partners complemented each
other so completely that they had no need of contact with society. Com­
munist m orality demands, on the contrary, th a t the younger generation

230
 be educated in such a way th a t the personality o f the individual is
developed to th e full, and th e individual with his or her many in terests
has co n ta ct w ith a range of persons of both sexes. Communist m orality
encourages the development of many and varied bonds of love and
,, friendship among people. The old ideal w as “ all for the loved one” ;
communist m orality demands all fo r the collective.
Though sex love is seen in the context o f th e interests o f the
collective, com munist m orality demands th a t people are educated in
sensitivity and understanding and are psychologically demanding b oth to
themselves and to their partners. The bourgeois attitu de to sexual
relations as simply a m atter o f sex m u st be criticised and replaced by
an understanding o f th e whole gam ut o f joyful love-experience th a t
enriches life and makes fo r greater happiness. The greater the intellectual
and em otional development o f the individual the less place will there be
in his o r h e r relationship for the bare physiological side of love, and the
brighter will be th e love experience.
In th e transitional period, relations betw een m en and women
must, in order to m eet the interests of the workers’ collective, be based
on the follow ing considerations. (1) All sexual relationships m u st be
based on m utual inclination, love, infatuation or passion, and in no case
on financial or m aterial m otivations. All calculation in relationships m ust
be subject to m erciless condem nation. (2) The form and length o f the
relationship are n ot regulated, but th e hygiene o f the race and com ­
munist m orality require th a t relationships be based n ot on the sexual
a ct alone, and th at it should not be accompanied by any excesses th a t
threaten health. (3) Those w ith illnesses etc. th a t m ight be inherited
should n ot bave children. (4) A jealous and proprietary attitude to the
person loved m ust be replaced by a com radely understanding o f the
| other and an acceptance of his or her freedom. Jealousy is a destructive
' force o f which com munist m orality cannot approve. (5 ) The bonds
J between th e members of the collective m ust be strengthened. The
encouragement o f the intellectual and political interests o f th e younger
^ generation assists the development o f healthy and bright em otions in love.
, The stronger the collective, the m ore firm ly established becom es
j the com munist way o f life. The closer the em otional ties betw een the
' members o f the community, the less the need to seek a refuge from
loneliness in marriage. Under communism the blind strength o f m atter
is subjugated to th e will o f the strongly welded and thus unprecedentedly
Powerful workers’ collective. The individual has th e opportunity to
I develop intellectually and em otionally as never before. In th is collective,
| new form s c f relationships a re maturing and th e concept o f love is
; extended and expanded.

231
 Sexual Relations and the
Class Struggle
Among the many problem s th a t demand the consideration and
attention of contem porary mankind, sexual problem s are undoubtedly
some of the m ost crucial. There isn’t a country or a nation, apart from the
legendary “ islands” , where the question o f sexual relationships isn ’t
becoming an urgent and burning issue. Mankind today is living through
an acute sexual crisis w hich is far more unhealthy and harm ful fo t being
long and drawn-out. Throughout the long journey of human history, you
probably won’t find a tim e when the problem s of sex have occupied such
a central place in the life of society; when the question of relationships
between the sexes has been like a conjuror, attracting the attention of
millions of troubled people; when sexual dramas have served as such a
never-ending sou rce of inspiration fo r every so rt of art.
As the crisis continues and grows more serious, people are
getting themselves into an increasingly hopeless situation, and are trying
desperately by every available m eans to settle the “insoluble question”.
But w ith every new attem pt to solve the problem , the confused knot of
personal relationships gets more tangled. I t ’s as if we couldn’t see the
one and only thread th at could finally lead us to success in controlling
the stubborn tangle. The sexual problem is like a vicious circle, and
however frightened people are and however much they run this way and
that, they are unable to break out.
The conservatively inclined part of mankind argue th a t we
should return to th e happy times o f the past, we should re-establish the
old foundations of the fam ily and strengthen the well-tried norm s of
sexual morality. The champions o f bourgeois individualism say th a t we
ought to destroy all the hypocritical restrictions of the obsolete code of
sexual behaviour. These unnecessary and repressive “ rags” ought to be
relegated to th e archives - only th e individual conscience, th e individual
will of each person can decide such intim ate questions. Socialists, on
the other hand, assure us th a t sexual problems will only be settled when
the basic reorganisation of the social and econom ic structure o f society
has been tackled. D oesn’t th is “ putting off the problem u n til tom orrow "
suggest th a t we s till haven’t found th a t one and only “ m agic thread” ?
Shouldn’t w e find or a t least locate this “magic thread” th a t promises

237
to unravel the tangle? Shouldn’t we find it now, a t this very moment?
The history o f human society, the history of the continual battle
betw een various social groups and classes o f opposing aims and interest .
gives us the clue to finding this “thread ” . It isn ’t the first time th a t man­
kind has gone through a sexual crisis. This isn 't the first tim e that the
pressure of a rushing tide o f new values and ideals has blurred th e clear
and definite meaning o f moral commandments about sexual relationships.
The "sexual crisis” was particularly acute a t the rm e o f the Renaissance
and the Reform ation, when a great social advance pushed the proud and
patriarchal feudal nobility who were used to absolute command into
the background, and cleared the way for the development and establish­
m ent of a new social force - the bourgeoisie. The sexual m orality o f the
feudal world had developed out o f the depths o f the “ trib a l way o f We” _
the collective economy and th e tribal authoritarian leadership th a t stifles
the individual w ill of the indiv'dual m em ber. This clashed with the new
and strange moral code of the rising bourgeoisie. The sexual m orality of
the bourgeoisie is founded on principles th a t are in sharp contradiction
to the basic m orality o f feudalism. S trict individualism and the exclusive­
ness and isolation of the “nuclear fam ily” replace the emphasis on
“collective work” th a t was characteristic of b oth the local and regional
econom ic structure o f patrim onial life. Under capitalism the ethic of
com petition, the trium phant principles o f individualism and exclusive
private property, grew and destroyed whatever remained of the idea of
the community, which was to som e extent common to all types o f tribal
life. For a whole century, while the com plex laboratory of life was
ing the old nonns into a new formula and achieving the outward harmony
of moral ideas, men wandered confusedly between two very different
sexual codes and attem pted to accom m odate themselves to both.
But in those bright and colourful days o f change, the sexual
crisis, although profound, did n o t have the threatening character that it
has assumed in our tim e, The main reason for this is th a t in “ th e great
days” of the Renaissance. in the “new age” when the bright light of a
new spiritual culture flooded th e dying world with its clear colours.
flooded the bare monotonous life o f the Middle Ages, th e sexual crisis
affected only a relatively small part of the population. By far the largest
section of the population, the peasantry, was affected only in the most
indirect way and only as, slowly, over the course o f centuries, a change
in the econom ic base. in the econom ic relations o f the countryside, took
place. At the top of the social ladder a h itter b a ttle betw een two opposing
social worlds was fought out. This involved also a struggle betw een theit
different ideals and values and ways of looking at things, I t was these
238
people w ho experienced and were threatened b y th e sexu al cr isis th a t
developed. T h e peasants. wary o f new things, continued to cling firmly
to the well-tried tribal trad ition handed down from th eir forefathers,
and only under the pressure o f extreme necessity modified and adapted
( this tradition to the changing conditions of their econom ic environment.
| Even a t the height of th e struggle betw een the bourgeois and the feudal
' world the sexual crisis by-passed the “class o f tax payers” . As th e upper
strata o f society went about breaking up the old ways, the peasants in
fact seemed to be m ore intent on clinging firmly to their traditions. In
spite o f the continuous whirlwinds th at threatened overhead and shook
the very soil under th eir feet, the peasants, especially our Russian pea­
santry, m anaged to preserve th e basis of their sexual code untouched
and unshaken fo r m any centuries.
The story today is very different. The “sexual crisis” does n o t
spare even th e peasantry. Like an infectious disease it “knows neither
rank nor sta tu s”. It spreads from the palaces and mansions to the
crowded quarters of the working class, looks in on the peaceful dwelling
places of the petty bourgeoisie, and makes its way into the heart of the
countryside. It claim s victim s in the villas o f the European bourgeoisie.
n the fusty basement of the w orker’s family, and in the smoky hu t of
the peasant. There is “no defence, no b o lt” against sexual conflict. To
imagine th a t only the members o f the well-off s e c t ons o f society are
floundering and a re in the throes o f th ese problems would b e to m ake a
* grave m istake. The waves o f th e sexual crisis are sweeping over the
threshold o f workers’ hom es, and creating situations o f conflict th a t are
as acute and h ea rtfe lt as the psychological suffen'ngs o f th e “ refin ed
bourgeois world” . The sexual crisis no longer interests only the “pro-
I pertied” . The problems o f sex concern the largest section o f society -
| they concern the working class in its daily life. I t is therefore hard to
i understand w hy th is vital and urgent subject is treated w ith such in ­
! difference. This indifference is unforgivable. One o f the tasks th a t con­
front the working class in its attack on the “beleaguered fortress of the
future” is undoubtedly the task of establishing more healthy and more
joyful relationships betw een the sexes.
W h at are the roots o f this unforgivable indifference to one of
the essential task s of the working class? How can we explain to our­
selves the hypocritical w ay in which “sexual problem s” are relegated
to the realm o f “ private m atters” th a t are not w orth the effort and
attention of the collective? W hy has the fa ct been ignored th at through­
out history one o f the constant features of social struggle has been the
attem pt to change relationships betw een the sexes, and the type o f moral
239
codes th a t determine these relationships; and th a t th e way persona [-
relationships are organised in a certain social group has had a vital
influence on the outcome of the struggle between hostile social classes?
T h e tragedy o f our society is n ot ju st th a t the usual forms 0 f
behaviour and the principles regulating this behaviour are breaking down,
b u t th at a spontaneous wave of new attem pts a t living is developing
from within the social fabric, giving man hopes and ideals th a t cannot
yet be realised, W e are people living in the world of property relation-
ships, a world of sharp class contradictions and of an individualistic
morality. W e still live and think under the heavy hand of an unavoidable
loneliness of spirit. Man experiences this “loneliness” even in towns
full of shouting, noise and people, even in a crowd of close friends and
w ork-m ates. Because of their loneliness men are apt to cling in a pre­
datory and unhealthy way to illusions about finding a “ soul m ate” from
am ong the m em bers o f the opposite sex. They see sly Eros as the only
m eans of charming away, if only for a tim e, the gloom of inescapable
loneliness.
People have perhaps never in any age felt spiritual loneliness
as deeply and persistently as at the present time. People have probably
never become so depressed and fallen so fully under the numbing
influence of this loneliness. It could hardly be otherwise. The darkness
never seems so black as when there’s a light shining ju st ahead.
T h e “individualists” , who are only loosely organised into a
collective with other individuals, now have th e chance to change their
sexual relationships so th a t they are based on the creative principle of
friendship and togetherness rather than on som ething blindly physio­
logical. The individualistic property m orality of the present day is begin­
ning to seem very obviously paralysing and oppressive. In criticising the
quality of sexual relationships m odem man is doing far more than reject­
ing the outdated forms of behaviour of the current moral code. His lonely
soul is seeking the regeneration of the very essence of these relationships.
He moans and pines for “great love” , for a situation of w arm th and
creativity w hich alone has the power to disperse the cold sp irit o f lone­
liness from which present day “individualists” suffer.
If the sexual crisis is three quarters the result o f external socio­
econom ic relationships, the otber quarter hinges on our “refined indi­
vidualistic psyche”, fostered by the ruling bourgeois ideology. The
“potential fo r loving” of people today is, as th e German writer Meisel-
H ess puts it, a t a low ebb. Men and women seek each other in the hope
of finding fo r themselves, through another person, a means to a larger
share of spiritual and physical pleasure. It makes no difference whether

240
they are married to the partner or n o t, they give little thought to w h at’s
going on in th e other person, to w h at’s happening to their em otions and
psychological processes.
The “crude individualism ” that adorns our era is perhaps
nowhere as b latan t as in the organisation of sexual relationships. A
person w an ts to escape from his loneliness and naively imagines th at
being “in love” gives him the right to the soul of the other person - the
right to warm himself in the rays o f th a t rare blessing of em otional
closeness and understanding. We individualists have had our emotions
spoiled in the persistent cult of the “ego” . W e imagine that we can
reach the happiness of being in a s ta te of “great love” w ith th o se near
to us, w ithout having to “give” up anything of ourselves.
The claims we make on our “contracted p artn er” are absolute
and undivided. W e are unable to follow th e sim plest rule o f love - th at
another person should be treated with great consideration. New concepts
of the relationships betw een the sexes are already being outlined. They
will teach us to achieve relationships based on the unfamiliar ideas of
complete freedom, equality and genuine friendship. But in th e m eantim e
mankind has to s it in the cold with its spiritual loneliness and can only
dream about the “b etter age” when all relationships betw een people will
be warmed by the rays of “ the sun god” , will experience a sense of
togetherness, and will be educated in the new conditions o f living. The
sexual crisis can n o t be solved unless there is a radical reform o f the
human psyche, and unless m an’s potential fo r loving is increased. And a
basic transform ation of th e socio-econom ic relationships along com ­
munist lines is essential if the psyche is to be re-form ed. T his is an “ old
truth” but there is no other w ay out. T h e sexual crisis will in no w ay be
reduced, whatever kind o f m arriage or personal relationships people care
to try.
H istory has never seen such a variety of personal relationships -
indissoluble m arriage with its “stable fam ily” , “ free unions” , secret
adultery; a g irl living quite openly w ith her lover in so-called “ wild
marriage” ; pair marriage, m arriage in threes and even the com plicated
marriage o f four people - n ot to talk of th e various form s of com m ercial
prostitution. You get the same two m oral codes existing side by side in
the peasantry as well - a mixture o f th e old tribal way o f life and the
developing bourgeois fam ily. Thus you get the perm issiveness o f the girls’
house* side by side w ith the attitude th a t fornication, or men sleeping

* In the traditional Russian villages, the young giris

would often get together to rent an old hut or a room
in someone's house. They would gather there in the

241
with their daughters-in-law, is a disgrace. I t’s surprising that, in the
fa c e o f th e contradictory and tangled forms. o f present-day personal
relationships, people are a ble to preserve a faith in moral authority, and
are ab le to m ake sense o f these contradictions and thread their way
through these mutually destru ctive and incom patible moral codes. Even
the usual justification _ " i live by the new m orality" - doesn't help any­
one, since th e new m orality is still only in the process of being fo rmed,
Our task is to draw out f rom t h e chaos o f present-day contradictory
sexual norms the shape, and m ak e clear th e principles, o f a m oral'ty
th at answers the sp irit r f the progressive and revolutionary class.
Besides th e a.lready mentioned inadequacies o f th e contemporary
psyche — extreme individuality, egoism th a t has becom e a cult — the
“ sexual crisis is made worse by t wo characteristics of the psychology
o f modern man:
1. The idea of "p o ssessing” th e married partner;
2. The belief th a t th e two sexes are unequal, th a t they are of unequal
worth in every way, in every sphere, including the sexual sphere.
Bourgeois m oralit y, with its introverted individualistic family
based entirely on private propm y, has carefully cultivated the idea that
one partner should Completely “ possess” the other. It has been very
successful. The idea of “ possession” is more pervasive now than under
the patrim onial system o f marriage relationships. During the long
historical period th a t developed under the aegis of the “ trib e”, the idea
o f a man possessing h is wife (there has never been any thought of a wife
having undisputed Possession o f her husband) did n o t go further than a
purely physical possession. The w ife w as obliged to b e faithful physically
— her soul was her o wn. Even th e knights recognised the right o f their
wives to have c h i c h e s b i (plato r ic friends and admirers) and to receive
th e “devotion” o f o tl^ r knights and minnesingers. I t is th e bourgeoisie
who have carefully ten d ed and f ostered the ideal o f absolute possession
o f the “contracted P artner’s” em otional as well as physical " I ” , thus
extending the concept o f property rights to include the right to the ° t her
person's whole spritlJ.a l and em otional world. Thus the family stru ctu re
w as strengthened and stability guaranteed in the period when th e bour­
geoisie w ere struggling fo r domination. T h is is th e ideal th a t we have
accepted as our herita.ge and have been prepared to see as an unchange'
evenrngs t o tell stories, do needlework and sing. The
y °ung men w ould come to join in the merrymaking.
Somet imes it seems that the merrymaking would
become an o rgy, th ough there are conflicting ideas
about this. ' of th an the ideas about possessing people chat we have inherited only
242
able m oral absolute! T h e idea o f “property” goes far beyond the bound­
aries o f ‘“lawful m arriage”. It makes itself fe lt as an inevitable ingredient
of the m o st “ free” union o f love. Contemporary lovers with all their
» respect fo r freedom are not satisfied by the knowledge of the physical
( faithfulness alone of the person they love. To be rid o f the eternally
present th re a t of loneliness, we “launch an a tta ck ” on the emotions of
the person we love with a cruelty and lack o f delicacy th at will n ot be
understoOd by future generations. W e demand the right t o know every
secret o f th is person's being. The modern lover would forgive physical
unfaithfulness sooner th an “spiritual” unfaithfulness. He sees any
emotion experienced outside the boundaries of the "fr e e " relationship
as th e loss o f his own personal treasure.
People “ in love” are unbelievably insensitive m their relations
to a third person. W e have all no doubt observed this strange situation —
two people who love each o th er are in a hurry, before they have got
to know e a ^ o th e r properly, to exercise their rights over a ll tbe relation­
ships th a t th e other person has formed up till th at time, to look into
the innerm ost corners o f their partner's life. Two people who yesterday
were unknown to each other, and who come together in a single m om ent
of mutual erotic feeling, rush to get at the heart of the other person's
being. They w ant to feel th at this strange and incom prehensible psyche,
with its p a st experience th at can never be suppressed, is an extension
of their ow n self. The idea th at the married pair are each other's property
. is so accepted th a t when a young couple who were yesterday each living
their ow n separate lives are today open'ng each other's correspondence
without a blush, and making common property of the words of a third
person who is a friend o f only one o f them, tthis hardly strikes us as
som ething unnatural. But t i i s kind o f "intim acy” is only really possible
when people have been working out their lives to geth er for a long period
of tim e. Usually a dishonest kind o f closeness is substituted fo r this
genuine feeling, th e deception being fostered by the m istaken idea th a t
a physical relationship betw een two people is a sufficient b asis fo r
extending th e rights o f possession to each other's em otional being.
The "inequ ality” o f the sexes —the inequality of t h e r rights, the
unequal value of their physical and em otional experience - is the other
significant circum stance th a t d istorts the psyche of contem porary man
and is a reason for the deepening o f the “sexual crisis”. The “double
morality” inherent in both patrim onial and bourgeois society has, over
the course o f centuries. poisoned the psyche of men and women. These
attitudes are so much a part of us that they are more difficult to get rid
243
from bourgeois ideology. The idea th a t the sexes a re unequal, even in the
sphere of physical and em otional experience, means th a t the sam e action
will be regarded differently according to whether it w as th e action of a
man or a woman. Even the m ost “progressive” mem ber o f th e bourgeoisie,
who has long ago rejected th e whole code of current m orality, easily
catches himself out at this point since he too in judging a man and a
woman fo r th e sam e behaviour will pass different sentences. One simple
example is enough. Imagine th a t a member of the middle-class intelli-
gensia who is learned, involved in politics and social affairs - who is in
short a “personality”, even a “public figure” - starts sleeping w ith his
cook (a not uncommon thing to happen) and even becom es legally
married to her. Does bourgeois society change its attitude to this man,
does the event throw even the tiniest shadow of doubt as to his moral
worth? Of course not.
Now imagine an oth er situation. A respected woman of bourgeois
society - a social figure, a research student, a doctor, or a w riter, it’s all
th e same - becom es friendly with her footm an, and to com plete the
scandal m arries him. How does bourgeois society react to the behaviour
of the hitherto “respected” woman? They cover her w ith “scorn”, of
course! And remember, i t ’s so much the worse fo r her if her husband,
(he footm an, is good-looking or possesses other “physical qualities”. “ It’s
obvious w hat she’s fallen fo r”, will be the sneer of the hypocritical
bourgeoisie.,
If a woman’s choice has anything of an “individual character”
about it she w on’t be forgiven by bourgeois society. This attitude is a
kind o f throwback to the traditions of tribal tim es. S o d ety still wants
a woman to take into account, when she is m aking her choice, rank and
status and the instructions and in terests of her fam ily. Bourgeois society
cannot see a woman as an independent person separate from her family
unit and outside the isolated circle of domestic obligations and virtues.
Contemporary society goes even further than the ancient trib a l sod ety
in acting as wom an’s trustee, instructing her not only to marry b u t to
fall in love only with those people who a re “ worthy” o f her.
W e are continually m eeting men of considerable spiritual and
intellectual qualities who have chosen as their friend-for-life a worthless
and empty woman, who in no way m atches the spiritual worth o f the
husband. W e accept this as som ething norm al and we don’t think twice
about it. At the most friends m ight pity Ivan Ivanovich for having landed
himself with such an unbearable wife. But if it happens the other way
round, we flap our hands and exclaim with concern, “How could such
an outstanding woman as Maria Petrovna fa ll for such a nonentity? I

244
begin to doubt th e worth of Maria Petrovna.” W here do we get this
double criterion from? W hat is the reason for it? The reason is un­
doubtedly th at the idea of the sexes being of “different value” has
become, over the centuries, a part of m an ’s psychological make-up. W e
are used to evaluating a w om an n ot as a personality with individual
qualities and failings irrespective of her physical and em otional experi­
ence, but only as an appendage of a m an. This man, the husband or the
lover, throws the light of his personality over the woman, and it is this
reflection and not the wom an herself th a t we consider to be the true
definition of her emotional and m oral make-up. In the eyes of society
the personality of a man can b e more easily separated from his actions
in the sexual sphere. The personality of a woman is judged alm ost
exclusively in terms of her sexual life. This type of attitude stem s from
the role th at women have played in society over the centuries, and it
is only now th a t a re-evaluation o f these attitudes is slowly being achieved,
at least in outline. Only a change in the econom ic role o f wom an, and
her independent involvement in production, can and will bring about the
weakening of these m istaken and hypocritical ideas.
The three basic circum stances distorting the m odem psyche -
extreme egoism, the idea th a t married partners possess each other, and
the acceptance of the inequality of the sexes in term s of physical and
emotional experience - must be faced if the sexual problem is to be
settled. People will find th e “magic key” w ith which they ca n break out
of their situation only when their psyche has a sufficient store of “feelings
of consideration”, when their ability to love is greater, when the idea of
freedom in personal relationships becom es fact, and when the principle
of “com radeship” triumphs over the trad itional idea o f “inequality” and
submission. The sexual problems cannot be solved w ithout this radical
re-education of our psyche.
But isn ’t this asking too much? Isn’t the suggestion utopian,
without foundation, the naive notion of a dreaming idealist? How are
you honestly going to raise mankind's “ potential for loving” ? Haven’t
wise men of all nations s'mce time immemorial, beginning with Buddha
and Confucius and ending with Christ, been busying themselves over
this? And who can say if the “ potential for loving” has been raised?
Isn ’t this kind o f well-meaning daydream about the solution o f the
sexual crisis simply a confession of weakness and a refusal to go on
w ith the search fo r the “m agic k ey ”?
Is th at the case? Is the radical re-education o f our psyche and
our approach to sexual relationships som ething so unlikely, so removed
from reality? Couldn’t one say that, on the contrary, while great social

245
and econom ic changes are in progress, th e conditions are being created
that demand and give rise to a new b asis fo r psychological experience
th at is in line with what we have been talking about? Another class, a
new social group, is coming forward to replace the bourgeoisie, with its
bourgeois ideology, and its individualistic code o f sexual m orality, "Ihe
progressive class, as it develops in strength, cannot fa il to reveal new
ideas ab ou t relationships betw een th e sexes th a t form in close con­
nection w ith the problem s o f its social class.
The com plicated evolution o f socio-econom ic relations caking
place before our eyes, which changes all our ideas about the ro le o f women
in social life and undermines the sexual m orality o f th e bourgeoisie, has
two contradictory results. On th e one hand we see mankind’s tireless
efforts to adapt to the new, changing socio-econom ic conditions. This is
m anifest either in an attem pt to preserve th e “old form s” while providing
them with a new content (the observance of the external form of the
indissoluble, strictly monogamous marriage with an acceptance, in prac­
tice, of the freedom o f the partners) or in the acceptance of new forms
which contain however all the elem ents of the m oral code of bourgeois
m arriage (the "fr e e ” union where the compulsive possessiveness o f the
partners is greater than within legal marriage). On the other hand we
see the slow but steady appearance of new forms of relationships between
the sexes that d'iffer from the old norms in outward form and in spirit.
Mankind is not groping its way toward these new ideas with
much confidence, but we need to look a t its attem pt, however vague it
is at th e moment, since it is an attem p t closely linked with th e tasks of
the proletariat as the class which is to capture the “ beleaguered fortress”
o f the future. If, amongst the com plicated labyrinth of contradictory and
tangled sexual norms, you w an t to find the beginnings o f m ore healthy
relationships betw een the sexes - relationships tb a t promise to lead
humanity out of the sexual crisis - you have to leave the “ cultured
quarters” of the bourgeoisie with their refined individualistic psyche, and
take a look a t th e huddled dwelling-places o f the working class. There,
am idst the horror and squalor of capitalism , am idst tears and curses, the
springs o f life are w elling up.
You can see the double process which we have ju st mentioned
working itself out in the lives of the proletariat, who have to exist under
the pressure of harsh econom ic conditions, cruelly exploited by capital­
ism. You can see both the process o f “passive adjustm ent” and th a t of
active opposition to the existing reality. The destructive influence of
capitalism destroys th e b a sis o f the w orker’s fam ily and forces him un­
consciously to “adapt” to the existing conditions. This gives rise to a

246
whole series o f situations with regard to relationships between th e sexes
which are sim ilar to those in other social classes. Under the pressure
of low wages the worker inevitably tends to get married a t a la ter age.
If tw enty years ago a w orker usually got married betw een the ages of
twenty and twenty-five, be now shoulders the cares of a fam ily only
towards his th irtieth year. The higher the cultural demands of the
worker - th e m ore he values the opportunity o f being in co n ta ct with
cultural life, o f visiting theatres and lectures, of reading papers and
magazines, o f giving his space tim e to struggle and p o litics or to some
favourite pursuit such as a rt or reading etc. - the later he tends to get
married. B u t physical needs w on’t tak e a financial situation in to con­
sideration: they in sist on making themselves felt. T he w orking-class
bachelor, in th e same way as the middle-class bachelor, looks to p rostitu­
tion for an outlet. This is an example of the passive adjustm ent o f the
working class to the unfavourable conditions of their existence. Take
another example. W hen the worker marries, the low level of pay forces
the worker’s fam ily to “ regulate” childbirth ju st as the bourgeois family
does. The frequent cases of infanticide, the growth of prostitution - these
are all expressions of the same process. These are all examples of ad ju st­
ment by the w orking class to the surrounding reality. But th is is n ot a
process characteristic o f the proletariat alone. All the other classes and
sections o f the population caught up in the world process o f capitalist
development react in this way.
W e see a difference only when we begin to talk about the
active, creative forces a t work that oppose rather than adapt to the
repressive reality, and a b o u t th e new ideals and attem pts a t new relatio n ­
ships between th e sexes. It is only w ithin the working class th a t th is
active opposition is taking shape. This doesn’t m ean th at th e other classes
and sectio n s o f th e population (particularly the m iddle-dass intelligentsia
who, by the circum stances of their social existence, stand closest to the
working class) don't ad op t the “new” forms th a t are being worked ou t by
the progressive working class. The bourgeoisie, m otivated by an instinc­
tive desire to breathe new life into their dead and feeble forms of
marriage, seize upon the "n ew ” ideas of the working class. But the ideals
and code of sexual m orality th a t the working class develops do not
answer the class needs o f the bourgeoisie. T hey reflect the demands of
the working class and therefore serve as a new weapon in its social
struggle. They help shatter the foundations o f the social dom ination of
the bourgeoisie. Let us make this point clear by an example.
The attem pt by the middle-class intelligentsia to replace indis­
soluble m arriage by the freer, m ore easily broken ties of civil marriage

247
destroys th e essential basis o f th e social stability o f the bourgeoisie. It
destroys the monogamous, property-orientated fam ily. On the other hand,
a greater fluidity in relationships between the sexes coincides with and
is even the indirect result of one of the basic tasks of the working class.
The rejection o f the elem ent o f "su bm ission " in marriage is going to
destroy the last artificial ties of the bourgeois fam ily. This a ct of “ sub­
m ission" on the part of one m em ber of th e working class to another,
in the sam e way as the sense o f possessiveness in relationships, h as a
harm ful effect on the proletarian psyche. I t is n o t in the interests o f that
revolutionary class to elect only certain mem bers as its independent
representatives, whose duty it is to serve the class interests before the
interests o f the individual, isolated fam ily. Conflicts between the interests
of the fam ily and the interests o f the class which occur a t the time of
a stn'ke or during an active struggle, and the m oral yardstick with which
the proletariat views such events, are sufficiently clear evidence of the
basis of the new proletarian ideology.
Suppose fam ily affairs require a businessman to take his capital
out of a firm a t a time when the enterprise is in financial difficulties.
Bourgeois m orality is clear-cut in its estim ate of his action: "T h e interests
of the fam ily come first". W e can compare with this the attitude of
workers to a strikebreaker who defies his com rades and goes to work
during a strike to save his family from being hungry. "T h e interests of
the class come first". H ere’s another example. The love and loyalty of
the middle-class husband to his family are sufficient to divert his wife
from all in terests outside th e home and end up by tying her to the
nursery and the kitchen. "T h e ideal husband can support the ideal
fam ily” is the way the bourgeoisie looks a t it. But how do workers look
upon a "conscious” member o f th eir class who shuts the eyes o f his wife
or girl-friend to th e so cia l struggle? For th e sak e o f individual happiness,
for the sake o f the fam ily, the m orality o f the working class will demand
that women take part in the life th a t is unfolding beyond the doorsteps.
The "cap tiv ity " o f women in the home, the way fam ily interests are
placed before all else, the widespread exercise of absolute property
rights by the husband over the wife - all these things are being broken
down by the basic principle of the working-class ideology of "comradely
solidarity”. The idea th a t som e members are unequal and must submit
to other members o f one and the same class is in contradiction with the
basic proletarian principle of comradeship. This principle of co m ra d e-:
ship is basic to the ideology of the working class. It colours and deter­
mines the whole developing proletarian morality, a m orality which helps
to re-educate the personality of man, allowing him to be capable of ^

248
positive feeling, capable o f freedom instead o f being bound by a sense
0f property, capable of comradeship rather th an inequality and sub­
mission.
It is an old tru th th a t every new class th a t develops as a result
o f an advance in econom ic growth and m aterial culture offers mankind
an appropriately new ideology. The code of sexual behaviour is a part
o f this ideology. However it is w orth saying something about "p roletarian
eth ics" or “proletarian sexual m orality", in order to criticise the well-
w om idea th a t proletarian sexual m orality is no m ore than "su per­
structure”, and th a t there is no place fo r any change in this sphere until
the econom ic base o f society has been changed. As if the ideology o f a
certain cla ss is formed only w hen th e breakdown in th e socio-econom ic
relationships, guaranteeing the dominance of th a t class, has been com ­
pleted! All the experience of history teaches us th a t a social group
works out its ideology, and consequently its sexual m orality, in the
process o f its struggle with hostile social forces.
Only with the help o f new spiritual values, created within and
answering the needs o f the class, will th a t class manage to strengthen
its social position. It can only successfully win power from those groups
in society th at are hostile to it by holding to these new norms and
ideals. To search for the basic criteria for a m orality th a t can reflect the
specific interests of th e working class, and to see that the developing
sexual norms are in accordance with these criteria - this is the task th a t
must be tackled by th e ideologists of the working class. W e have to
understand th at it is only by becoming aware of the creative process th a t
is going on within society, and o f the new demands, new ideals and new
nonns that are being formed, only by becoming clear ab ou t the basis
of the sexual m orality of the progressive class, th a t we can possibly
make sense o f the chaos and contradictions of sexual relationships and
find th e thread th a t will m ake it possible to undo the tightly rolled up
tangle o f sexual problem s.
W e must rem em ber th a t only a code o f sexual m orality th a t is
in harmony w ith the problems of the working class can serve as an
im portant weapon in strengthening the working class’s fighting position.
The experience of history teaches us th a t much. W hat can stop us using
this weapon in the interests of the working class, who are fighting for a
communist system and for new relationships between the sexes th a t are
deeper and more joyful?

249
 Communism and the Family
W om en’s role in production: its effect upon the family
Will the fam ily continue to exist under communism? W ill the
family remain in the same form ? These questions are troubling many
women of the working class and worrying their m enfolk as well. I.ife is
changing before our very eyes; old habits and custom s are dying out,
and the whole life of the proletarian family is developing in a way that
is new and unfam iliar and, in the eyes o f some, “ bizarre” . No wonder that
working women are beginning to think these questions over. Another
fa ct th a t invites attention is th a t divorce has been made easier in Soviet
Russia. The decree of the Council o f People’s Commissars issued on
18 December 1 9 1 7 means th a t divorce is no longer a luxury th a t only
the rich can afford; henceforth, a working woman will n ot have to
petition for m onths or even for years to secure the right to live separately
from a husband who beats her and makes her life a misery with his
drunkenness and uncouth behaviour. Divorce by mutual agreem ent now
takes no m ore than a week or two to obtain. Women who are unhappy
in their married life welcome this easy divorce. But others, particularly
those who are used to looking upon their husband as "breadw inners”,
are frightened. They have not yet understood th a t a woman must
accustom herself to seek and find support in the collective and in society,
and not from the individual man.
There is no p o in t in n ot facing up to th e tru th : th e old family
in which th e man w as everytEing and th e woman nothing, th e typical
family where the woman had no will o f her own, no tim e o f her own
and no money o f her own, is changing before our very eyes. B u t there is
no need fo r alarm . It is only our ignorance th a t leads us to think that
the things we are used to can never change. Nothing could be less true
than the saying “as it was, so it shall b e ” . W e have only to read how
people lived in the past to see th a t everything is subject to change and
that no customs, political organisations or m oral principles are fixed and
inviolable. In the course of history, the structure of the family has
changed many tim es; it was once quite different from the family of
today. There w as a tim e when th e kinship family was considered the
norm : th e m other headed a fam ily consisting o f her children, grand­
children and great-grandchildren, who lived and worked together. At
another period the patriarchal fam ily was the rule. In this case it was

250
[he father whose will w as law fo r a ll the other members o f th e family;
even today such families may be found among the peasantry in the
Russian villages. H ere the m orals and customs o f family life are n ot those
of the urban proletariat. In the countryside, they observe norm s which
the worker has long fo rg otten . The structure of the fam ily and the
customs of family life also vary from nation to nation. Among some
peoples such as the Turks, Arabs and Persians, a m an is allowed to have
several ivives. There have been and there still are tribes where the
woman m ay have several husbands. W e are used to the fa c t th a t a young
girl is expected to remain a virgin until marriage; however, there are
tribes w here it is a m atter o f pride to have had many lovers and where
the women decorate their arms and legs w ith the corresponding number
of bracelets. M any practices which m ight astonish us and which m ight
even seem im moral are considered by other peoples to be quite norm al
and they, in their tu m , consider our laws and customs “ sinful”. There
is, therefore, no reason to be frightened of the fact that the fam ily is in
the process o f change, and th a t outdated and unnecessary things are being
discarded and new relations betw een men and women developing. Our
jo b is to decide which aspects o f our fam ily system are outdated, and
to determ ine w hat relations betw een the men and women of the work­
ing and peasant classes and which rights and duties would best harmonise
with the conditions of life in the new workers’ Russia. T hat which is in
line with the new life should be m aintained, while all that is old and
outdated and derives from the cursed epoch of servitude and dom ination,
of landed proprietors and capitalists, should be swept aside together
with the exploiting class itself and the other enemies of the proletariat
and the poor.
T h e type of fam ily to which the urban and rural proletariat has
grown accustom ed is one o f these legacies o f the past. There was a tim e
when the isolated, firm ly-knit fam ily, based on a church wedding, w as
equally necessary to all its members. If there had been no fam ily, who
would have fed, clothed and brought up th e children? W ho would have
given them advice? In days gone by, to be an orphan w as one o f the
worst fates imaginable. In the family o f old, th e husband earns and
supports his w ife and children. The wife for her part is occupied with
housekeeping and with bringing up the children as b est she can. But
over the la st hundred years this customary family structure has been
falling apart in all the countries where capitalism is dominant, and where
the number of factories and other enterprises which employ hired labour
is increasing. The custom s and m oral principles o f fam ily life are changing
as the general conditions o f life change. It is the universal spread of

251
fem ale labour th a t has contributed m o st o f a ll to th e radical c h a n g e ? ®
in family life. Formerly only th e m an w as considered a breadwinner. But 1
Russian women have for th e past fifty or sixty years (and in o th ej |
cap italist countries fo r a som ewhat longer period of time) been forced *|
to seek paid w ork outside the fam ily and outside the home. T he wages I
of th e “ breadwinner” being insufficient for th e needs o f the family, theM 'll
woman found herself obliged to look fo r a wage and to knock at the mffj
factory door. W ith every year th e number o f working-class women start- j
ing work outside the hom e a s day labourers, saleswomen, clerks, I
washerwomen and servants increased. S tatistics show th a t in 1 9 1 4 , before T
the outbreak of the First W orld War, there were about sixty million
women earning their own living in the countries of Europe and America,
and during the war this number increased considerably. Alm ost half of
these women a re married. W h a t k ind o f fam ily life they m ust hav e can
easily b e imagined. W hat kind o f “ family life” ca n there be if th e wife
and m other is out a t work for at least eigh t hours and, counting the
travelling, is away from hom e for ten hours a day? Her home is neglected; j
the children grow up without any m aternal care, spending most of the
time out on the streets, exposed to all the dangers of this environment.
The woman who is wife, m other and w orker has to expend every ounce j
o f energy to fulfil these roles. She has to work the same hours as her
husband in som e factory, printing-house or com m ercial establishm ent and I
then on top o f that she has to find the time to attend to her household
and look a fte r her children. Capitalism has placed a crushing burden on
wom an’s shoulders: it has made h e r a wage-worker w ithout having
reduced her cares as housekeeper or m other. Woman staggers beneath
the weight of this triple load. She suffers, her face is always wet with
tears. Life has never been easy for woman, but never has her lo t been J
harder and more desperate than that of the m illions of working women
under the capitalist yoke in this heyday of factory production. |
T h e fam ily breaks down as more and more women go out to
work. How can one talk about fam ily life when the man and woman
work different shifts, and where th e wife does not even have the time
to prepare a decent m eal fo r her offspring? How can one talk o f parents
when the m other and father are ou t working all day and cannot find
the tim e to spend even a few minutes with their children? It w as quite
different in the old days. The m other remained a t home and occupied
herself w ith her household duties; her children w ere a t her side, under
her watchful eye. Nowadays the working woman hastens out of the
house early in the morning when the factory whistle blows. W hen even-
ing comes and the whistle sounds again, she hurries home to scramble

252
through the m o st pressing o f h e r domestic tasks. Then i t ’s off to work
again the next morning, and she is tired from lack o f sleep. For the
married working woman, life is as bad as the workhouse. It is n o t
surprising therefore th a t family ties should loosen and th e fam ily begin
to fall apart. The circum stances th a t held th e fam ily together no longer
exist. T h e f a m i l y i s censing to b e n e c e s s a r y e i t h e r t o i t s m e m b e r s o r t o
th e n a tio n a s a w h o le . The old family structure is now merely a hindrance.
W hat used to make the old family so strong? First, because the husband
arid fath er was the fam ily’s breadwinner; secondly, because the fam ily
economy was necessary to all its members; and thirdly, because children
were brought up by th eir parents. W hat is left o f this form er type of
fam ily? The husband, as we have just seen, has ceased to be the sole
breadwinner. T h e wife who goes to w ork earns wages. She has learned
to earn her own living, to support her children and n ot infrequently
her husband. The family now only serves as the primary econom ic unit
o f society and the supporter and educator of young children. L et us
examine the m atter in more detail, to see w hether or n ot the fam ily is
about to be relieved of these tasks as well.

Housework ceases to be necessary

There was a time when the women of the poorer classes in
city and country spent their entire lives within the four w alls of the
home. A woman knew nothing beyond the threshold of her own hom e,
and in m ost cases had no wish to know anything. After all, in her own
home, there was so much to do, and this w ork was m ost necessary and
useful n ot only for the fam ily itself but also for th e state as a whole.
The woman did everything that the modern working and peasant woman
has to do; but besides this cooking, washing, cleaning and mending, she
spun wool and linen, wove cloth and garments, knitted stocki ngs, made
lace, prepared - as far as her resources permitted - all sorts o f pickles,
jams and other preserves fo r w inter, and m anufactured her own candles.
It is difficult to make a com plete list of all her duties. T hat is how
our m others and grandmothers lived. Even today you may still come
across rem ote villages deep in th e country, fa r fro m the railroads and th e
big rivers, where1 this mode of life has been preserved and where the
mistress of th e house is overburdened with all kinds o f chores over which
the working woman of th e big cities and o f th e populous industrial
regions has long ceased to worry.
In our grandm other’s day, a ll this domestic work was necessary
and beneficial; it ensured the well-being of the fam ily. The more the
mistress of the house applied herself, the b etter the peasant or crafts­

253
m an’s fam ily lived. Even the national economy benefited from the house­
w ife's activity, fo r the woman did n ot lim it herself to making soup and
cooking potatoes (i.e. satisfying the im m ediate needs of the fam ily), she
also produced such things as cloth, thread, butter, etc. w hich had a value
as com modities that could b e sold on the market. And every man
w hether peasant or worker, tried to find a wife who had “hands 0f
gold” , for he knew th a t a family could n ot get along w ithout this
“dom estic labour”. The interests o f the whole nation were involved,
fo r th e more work th e woman and the o th er members of the fam ily put
into making cloth, leather and wool (the surplus of which was sold in
the neighbouring m arket), the greater the econom ic prosperity of the
country as a whole.
But capitalism has changed all this. All th a t was form erly pro­
duced in the bosom o f the fam ily is now being manufactured on a mass
scale in workshops and factories. The m achine has superseded the wife.
W hat housekeeper would now b other to m ake candles, spin wool or
weave cloth? All these products can be bought in the shop next door.
Formerly every girl would learn to knit stockings. Nowadays, what
working woman would think of making her own? In the first place she
doesn’t have the tim e. Tim e is money, and no one wants to w aste time
in an unproductive and useless manner. Few working women would start
to pickle cucumbers or make other preserves when all these things can
be bought in th e shop. Even if the products sold in the store are of an
inferior quality and n ot prepared with the care of the home-made equiva­
lent, the working woman has neither the time nor the energy needed
to perform these domestic operations. F irst and forem ost she is a
hired worker. Thus the fam ily economy is gradually being deprived o f all
the dom estic work without which our grandmothers could hardly have
imagined a family. W hat was formerly produced in the fam ily is now
produced by the collective labour of working m en and women in the
factories.
The family no longer produces; it only consumes. The house­
work th a t rem ains consists of cleaning (cleaning the floors, dusting*
heating water, care of the lamps etc.), cooking (preparation o f dinners
and suppers), washing and the care of the linen and clothing of the
fam ily (darning and mending). These a re difficult and exhausting tasks
and they absorb all the spare tim e and energy of th e working woman
w ho must, in addition, put in her hours a t a factory. But th is work is
different in one im portant way from th e work our grandmothers did; the
four tasks enumerated above, which s till serve to keep the famfty
together, are of no value to th e state and the national economy, for they

254
do not create any new values or m ake any contribution to the prosperity
of the country. The housewife may spend all day, from morning to
evening, cleaning her home, she m ay w ash and iron th e linen daily,
make every effort to keep her clothing in good order and prepare w hat­
ever dishes she pleases and her modest resources allow, and she will still
end the day without having created any values. Despite her industry she
would n ot have m ade anything th a t could be considered a commodity.
Even if a working woman were to live a thousand years, she would stil]
have to begin every day from the beginning. There would always be a
new layer of dust to be removed fro m the m antelpiece, her husband
would always come in hungry and her children bring in mud on their
shoes.
W om en’s w ork is becoming less useful to the community as a
whole. I t is becoming unproductive. The individual household is dying.
It is giving way in our society to collective housekeeping. Instead of th e
working woman cleaning her flat, the com munist society ca n arrange
for men and women whose job it is to go round in the morning cleaning
rooms. The wives o f the rich have long s’rnce been freed from these
irritating and tiring d om estic dudes. Why should working woman con ­
tinue to be burdened w ith them ? In Soviet Russia the working woman
should b e surrounded by the same ease and light, hygiene and beauty
that previously only the very rich could afford. Instead of the working
woman having to struggle with the cooking and spend her la st free hours
in the kitchen preparing dinner and supper, com munist society will
organise public restaurants and communal kitchens.
Even under capitalism such establishm ents have begun to appear.
In fa ct over the last h alf a century the number o f restaurants and cafgs
in all the great cities of Europe has been grow ing daily; they are spring­
ing up like mushrooms a fte r the autumn rain. But under capitalism only
people with well-lined purses can afford to take th eir m eals in restaur­
ants, while under communism everyone w ill b e able to eat in the com ­
munal kitchens and dining-room s. The working woman w ill not have to
slave over th e washtub any longer, or ruin h e r eyes in darning her
stockings and mending her linen; she w ill sim ply take these things to the
central laundries each week and collect the washed and ironed garments
later. That will be another jo b less to do. Special clothes-mending centres
will free the working woman from the hours spent on mending and give
her the opportunity to devote her evenings to reading, attending meetings
and concerts. Thus th e four categories o f housework are doomed to
extinction with the victory o f communism. And th e working woman will

255
surely have no cause to regret this. Communism liberates woman from
her dom estic slavery and makes her life richer and happier.

The state is responsible fo r th e upbringing of children

But even if housework disappears, you may argue, there are still
the children to look after. B u t here too, the workers’ state will come to
replace the family; society will gradually take upon itself all the tasks
that before the revolution fell to the individual parents. Even before the
revolution, the instruction o f th e child had ceased to be the duty o f the
parents. O nce the children had attain ed school age the parents could
breathe more freely, fo r they were no longer responsible fo r the intellec­
tual development of their offspring. But there were still plenty of obliga­
tions to fulfil. There was still the m atter of feeding the children, buying
them shoes and clothes and seeing that they developed into skilled and
honest workers able, when the tim e came, to earn their own living and
feed and support their parents in old age. Few w orkers' fam ilies, how­
ever, were able to fulfil these obligations. Their low wages did not enable
them to give the children enough to eat, while lack of free tim e pre­
vented them from devoting the necessary attention to the education of
the rising generation. The fam ily is supposed to bring up the children,
but in reality proletarian children grow up on the streets. Our fore­
fath ers knew some fam ily life, but the children of the proletariat know
none. Furthermore, the parents’ sm all income and the precarious position
in which the fam ily is placed financially often force the child to become
an independent w orker a t scarcely ten years of age. And when children
begin to earn their own money they consider themselves their own
masters, and the words and counsels of the parents are no longer law;
the authority o f th e parents weakens, and obedience is a t an end.
Ju st as housework withers away, so the obligations o f parents
to their children wither away gradually until finally society assumes the
full responsibility. Under capitalism children were frequently, too fre­
quently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian fam ily. Com­
m unist society will come to the aid o f the parents. In Soviet Russia the
Com m issariats of Public Education and o f Social W elfare are already
doing much to assist the family. W e already have homes for very small
babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals
and health resorts for sick children, restaurants, free lunches at school
and free distribution o f text books, warm clothiiig and shoes to school­
children. All this goes to show th a t the responsibility for the child is
passing from the fam ily to th e collective.
The parental care of children in the fam ily could be divided into
three parts: (a) th e care o f th e very young baby, (b) th e bringing up of
the child, and (c) tbe instruction o f the child. Even in capitalist society
rhe education of the child in primary schools and later in secondary and
higher educational establishm ents becam e the responsibility of the state.
Even in cap italist society the needs o f the workers were to some extent
m et by the provision of playgrounds, kindergartens, play groups, etc. The
more the workers becam e conscious of th eir rig hts and the better tbey
were organised, the m ore society had to relieve the family o f th e care
o f the children. But bourgeois society w as afraid of going too fa r towards
meeting the interests of the working class, lest this contribute to the
break-up o f the fam ily. F o r the capitalists a re w ell aware th a t the old
type o f fam ily, where the woman is a slave and where the husband is
responsible for th e well-being o f h is wife and children, constitutes the
b est weapon in the struggle to stifle the desire of the working class for
freedom and to weaken the revolutionary spirit c f the working man and
working woman. The worker is weighed down by his family cares and
is obliged to com prom ise with capital, T h e fath er and m other are ready
to agree to any terms when their children are hungry. Capitalist society
has not been able to transform education into a truly social and state
m atter because the property owners, the bourgeoisie, have been against
this.
Com m unist society considers the social education of the rising
generation to b e one of the fundamental aspects of the new life. The
old fam ily, narrow and petty, where the parents quarrel and are only
interested in their own offspring, is not capable o f educating the “ new
person". The playgrounds, gardens, homes and other am enities where
the child will spend the greater part o f the day under the supervision of
qualified educators will, on the other hand, offer an environment in
which the cbild can grow up a conscious com munist who recognises the
need for solidarity, comradeship, m utual help and loyalty to th e c o l­
lective. W h a t responsibilities a re left to th e parents, when they no longer
have to take charge of upbringing and education? The very small baby,
you m igbt answer, while it is still learning to walk and clinging to its
m other’s skirt, still needs her attention. Here again the com munist state
hastens to the aid o f the working m other. No longer w ill there be any
women who are alone. The workers’ state aims to support every m other,
married or unmarried, while she is suckling her child, and to establish
maternity hom es, day nurseries and other such facilities in every city and
village, in order to give women the opportunity to com bine w ork in
society with m aternity.
W orking mothers have no need to be alarmed; com munist

25 7
society is n o t intending to take children away from their parents or to
tear th e baby from th e b rea st o f its m other. and neither is it planning
to take violent measures to destroy th e fam ily. No such thing! The aims
of com munist society are quite d iferen t. Communist society sees that
th e old type o f fam ily is breaking up. and th a t a l th e old pillars which
supported th e fam ily as a social unit a re being removed: th e domestic
economy is dying, and working-class parents are unable to take care of
their children or provide them with sustenance and education. Parents
and children suffer equally from this situation. Communist society has
this to sa y to the working woman and working m an : "You a re young,
you love each other. Everyone has the right to happiness. Therefore live
your life. Do not flee happiness. Do not fear marriage, even tbough under
capitalism marriage was truly a cbain o f sorrow. Do n ot be afraid of
having children. Society needs m o re workers and rejoices a t th e birth of
every child. You do n o t have to worry about the future o f your child: ■
your child will know neither hunger nor cold.” Communist society takes
care of every child and guarantees botb and his m other m aterial
m oral support. Society will feed, bring up and educate the child. At the
sam e time, those parents w ho desire to participate in th e education of
their children will b y no m eans b e prevented fro m doing so. Communist
society take upon itse lf all the duties involved in the education o f the
child, but the joys o f parenthood will not be taken away from those who
are capable of appreciating them . Such are the plans o f communist
society and they can hardly be interpreted as the forcible destruction of
th e fam ily and the forcible separation o f child from m other.
There is no escaping th e fa ct: the old type o f fam ily has had
its day. The fam ily is withering away n ot because it is being forcibly
destroyed b y th e state, b u t because th e fam ily is ceasing to b e a necessity.
The state does n ot need the fam ily, because the domestic economy is
no longer profitable: th e fam ily distracte th e worker from more useful
and productive labour. The members of the family do not need the
family either, because the task of bringing up the children which was
formerly theirs is passing more and more into the hands o f the collective.
In place o f the old relationship betw een m en and women. a new one
is developing: a urn'on of affection and comradeship, a union o f w o
equal m em bers o f com munist society. both o f them free, both o f them
independent and b oth o f them workers. No more dom estic bondage for
women. No m o re inequality within the fam ily. N o need for women to feat
being left w ithout support and with children to bring up. The woman
in com munist society no longer depends upon her husband but on b et
work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she
258
1 find support. She need have no anxiety about her children. T h e workers’
■ state will assume responsibility for them. Marriage will lose all the
elements of material calculation which cripple fam ily life. Marriage will
be a union of two persons who Jove and tru st each other. Such a union
promises to the working men and women who understand themselves
;md the world around them the m ost com plete happiness and the m axi­
mum satisfaction. Instead o f the conjugal slavery of the past, communist
" society offers women and men a free union which is strong in the
comradeship which inspired it. Once the conditions o f labour have been
transformed and the m aterial security of the working women has
increased, and once m arriage such as the church used to perform it -
this so-called indissoluble m arriage which at bottom merely a fraud —
has given place to th e free and honest union o f m en and women w ho are
j lovers and comrades, prostitution disappear. This evil, w hich is a
1 stain on hum anity and th e scourge o f hungry working women, has its
roots in commodity production and the institution o f private property.
| Once these econom ic forms are superseded. the trade in women
I automatically disappear. The women o f th e working class, therefore,
need n ot worry over the fa ct th at the fam ily is doomed to disappear.
j They should. on the contrary, welcome the dawn of a new society which
j will liberate women from dom estic servitude, lighten th e burden of
motherhood and finally put an end to the terrible curse of prostitution.
The woman who takes up the struggle fo r the liberation o f the
working class must le^ to understand th at there is no more room for
the old proprietary attitude which says: “ These are my children. I owe
them all my maternal solicitude and affection: those are your children,
j they are no concern o f mine and I don't care if they go hungry and
( cold _ I have no tim e for other children.” The worker-m other must learn
not to differentiate between yours and m ine; she must remember th a t
j there are only our children, the children of Russia's com munist workers.
The w orkers' state needs new relat i ons betw een the sexes.
j Ju st as the narrow and exclusive affection o f the m other fo r her own
| children m ust expand until it extends to all the children o f the great
j proletarian family, the indissoluble m arriage based on the servitude of
' women is replaced by a free union o f two equal members of th e workers’
j state who are united by love and mutual respect. In place o f the
individual and egoistic fam ily. a great universal fam ily o f workers
t develop, in which a ll th e workers, m en and women, ^ 1 above a ll be
j comrades. This is w h at relations betw een men and women in the
j Communist society will be like. T hese new relations ensure fo r
| humanity all th e jo y s o f a love unknown in the com m ercial society of
i 259
capitalism , a love th a t is free and based on the true social equality of
happy young people, free in th e ir feelings and affections. In the nam e of
Communist society wants bright, healthy children and s trong
th e partners. Prostitution and ways of fighting it‘
equality, liberty and the com radely love of the new m arriage we c a l
Comrades, th e question o f prostitution is a difficult and thorny
upon the working and peasant m en and women, to apply them selves
subject th a t has received too little attention in Soviet Russia. This
courageously and w ith fa ith to the work of rebuilding human society. in
sinister legacy of our bourgeois capitalist past continues to poison the
order to render it more perfect, m ore ju st and m ore capable o f ensuring
atmosphere of the w orkers' republic and affects the physical and moral
the individual the happiness which he or she deserves. The red flag of
health o f th e working people o f Soviet Russia. I t is true th at in the
the socia l revolution which flies above Russia and is now being hoisted
three years o f the revolution the nature of prostitution has, under the
aloft n other countries of the world proclaim s the approach of the heaven
pressure o f th e changing econom ic and social conditions, altered som e­
on earth to which humanity has been aspiring for centuries.
what. But we are s till fa r fro m being rid o f this evil. Prostitution can-
tinues to exist and threatens the feeling of solidarity and comradeship
between working men and women, the m em bers of the workers’ republic.
And this feeling is the foundation and the basis of the com munist society
we are building and m aking a reality. I t is tim e th a t we faced up to this
problem. I t is tim e th a t we gave thought and attention to the reasons
behind prostitution. I t is tim e th a t we found ways and m eans of ridding
ourselves once and for all of this evil, which has no place in a workers’
republic.
Our workers’ republic has so far passed no laws directed at the
elim ination of prostitution, and has n o t even issued a clear and scientific
formulation of th e view th a t prostitution is som ething th a t injures the
collective. W e know th a t prostitution is an evil, we even acknowledge
th a t a t th e mom ent, in this transitional period w ith its many problems,
I
prostitution has become extrem ely widespread. B u t we have brushed the
1 issue aside, we have been silent about it. Partly this is because of the

f hypocritical attitudes we have inherited from the bourgeoisie, and partly

it is because o f our reluctance to consider and come to terms with the
harm which the widespread mass scale of prostitution does to th e work
collective. And our lack of enthusiasm in the struggle agai nst prostitution
has been reflected in our legislation.
W e have so fa r passed no statu tes recognising prostitution as
a harmful social phenomenon. W hen the old tsarist laws were revoked
by the Council of People's Commissars, all the statutes concerning prosti­
tution were abolished. But no new measures based on the interests of
the work collective were introduced. Thus the p o litics o f the Soviet
authorities towards prostitutes and prostitution has been ch aractersed

• Speech to the third all-Russian conference o f heads

of the Regional Women's Departments, 1921.
 Make way for Winged Eros:
A Letter to Working Youth
Love as a sod o-ps >chological facto r
You ask me, my young friend, w hat place proletarian ideology
gives to love? You are concerned by the fa c t th a t at the present time
young workers are occupied more w ith love and related questions than
w ith the tremendous tasks o f construction which face the workers’
republic. It is difficult for me to judge events from a distance, b u t let
us try to find an explanation fo r this situation, and then i t will b e easier
to answer the first question about the place of love in proletarian
ideobgy.
There can be no doubt th a t Soviet Russia has entered a new
phase o f the civil war. The main theatre o f struggle is now the front ,
where the two ideologies, the two cultures - the bourgeois and the I
proletarian - do battle. The incom patibility of these two ideologies is
becoming increasingly obvious, and the contradictions between th ese two
fundamentally different cultures are growing m ore acute. Alongside the
victory of com munist principles and ideals in the sphere of politics and
econom ics, a revolution in the outlook, emotions and the inner world of
working people is inevitably taking place. A new attitu de to life, society,
work, art and to the rules of living (i.e. m orality) can already be observed.
The arrangem ent of sexual relationships is one aspect o f these rules of
living. Over the five years of the existence o f our labour republic, the J
revolution on this non-m iiitary front has been accom plishing a great shift (
in the way men and women think. T h e fiercer th e b attle betw een th e two J
ideologies, the greater the significance it assumes and the more inevit-
ably it raises new “riddles of life” and new problem s to which only the J
ideology of the working class can give a satisfactory answer. |
The “ riddle o f love" th at interests us here is one such problem. '
This question o f the relationships between the sexes is a mystery as
old as human society itself. At different levels o f historical development
mankind has approached th e solution o f this problem in different ways. j
The problem remains the same; the keys to its solution change. The ,
keys are fashioned by the different epochs, by the classes in power and |
by the “sp irit” of a particular age (in oth er words by its culture). I
In Russia over the recent years of intense dvil war and general !
dislocation there has been little interest in the nature of the riddle. The \
m en and w om en of the working classes w ere in the grip o f other
em otions, passions and experiences. In those years everyone walked in
the shadow o f death, and it was being decided whether victory would
belong to the revolution and progress or to counter-revolution and
reaction. In face of the revolutionary threat, tender-winged Eros fled
from the surface of life. There was neither tim e nor a surplus of
inner strength for love’s “joys and pains”. Such is the law o f the
preservation of humanity’s social and psychological energy. As a whole,
this energy is always directed to the m ost urgent aims o f the historical
moment. And in Russia, for a time, the biological instin ct o f reproduction,
the natural voice of nature dominated the situation. Men and women
came together and men and women parted much more easily and much
more simply than before. They cam e together w ithout great com m it­
m ent and parted without tears or regret.
P rostitution disappeared, and the number of sexual relationships
where the partners were under no obligation to each other and w hich
were based on the instinct of reproduction unadorned by any em otions
of love increased. T his fa ct frightened some. But such a development
was, in those years, inevitable. Either pre-existing relationships con­
tinued to exist and unite men and women through com radeship and
long-standing friendship, w hich was rendered more pred ou s by the
seriousness of the moment, or new relationships were begun for the
satisfaction of purely biological needs, both partners treating the affair
as incidental and avoiding any com m itm ent that might hinder their
work for the revolution.
The unadorned sexual drive is easily aroused but is soon spent;
thus "w ingless E ros” consum es less inner strength than “ winged Eros”,
whose love is woven of delicate strands of every kind o f emotion.
“ Wingless Eros” does not make one suffer from sleepless nights, does not
sap one’s will, and does n ot entangle the rational workings of the mind.
The fighting class could not have fallen under the power of “winged
E ros” at a tim e when the clarion call of revolution was sounding. It
would n o t have been expedient a t such a tim e to w aste th e inner strength
of the members of the collective on experiences that did not directly
serve the revolution. Individual sex love, which lies a t th e heart o f the
pair marriage, demands a great expenditure of inner energy. The working
class was interested n ot only in econom ising in terms of material wealth
but also in preserving the intellectual and em otional energy of each
person. For this renson, at a tim e of heightened revolutionary struggle,
the undemanding instinct of reproduction spontaneously replaced the all-
em bracing “winged Eros’’.

277
 But now the picture changes. The Soviet republic and th e whole
of toiling humanity are entering a period of temporary and comparative
calm. The complex task of understanding and assim ilating the achieve-
ments and gains that have been made is beginning. The proletariat, the
creator o f new forms o f life, must be able to leam from ail social and
psychological phenomena, grasp the significance o f these phenomena and
fashion weapons from them for the self-defence o f the class. Only when
the proletariat has appropriated the laws not only o f the creation of
material wealth but also o f inner, psychological life is it able to advance
fully armed to fight the decaying bourgeois world. Only then wiJl toiling
humanity prove itself to be the victor, not only on the m ilitary and
labour front but also on the psychological-cultural front.
Now that the revolution has proved victorious and is in a
stronger position, and now th a t the atmosphere o f revolutionary 61an
has ceased to absorb men and women completely, tender-winged Eros
has emerged from the shadows and begun to demand his rightful place.
“W ingless Eros” has ceased to satisfy psychological needs. Emotional
energy has acctunulated and men and women, even of the working class,
have not yet learned to use it for the inner life of th e collective. This
extra energy seeks an ou tlet in the love-experience. The many-stringed
lyre of the god o f love drowns the m onotonous voice of “wingless
Eros”. Men and women are now not only united by the momentary
satisfaction of the sex in stin ct but are beginning to experience “love
affairs” again, and to know all the sufferings and all the exaltations of
love’s happiness.
In the life o f the Soviet republic an undoubted growth o f intel­
lectual and emotional needs, a desire for knowledge, an interest in
scientific questions and in a rt and the theatre can be observed. This
movement towards transform ation inevitably em braces the sphere of
love experiences too. Interest is aroused in the question o f the psychology
o f sex, th e mystery o f love. Everyone to some extent is having to face
up to questions o f personal life. One notes with surprise that party
workers who in previous years had time only for Pravda editorials and
minutes and reports are reading fiction books in which winged Eros is
lauded.
W hat does th is mean? Is this a reactionary step? A sym ptom of
the beginning of the decline o f revolutionary creativity? Nothing of the
sort! It is time we separated ourselves from the hypocrisy o f bourgeois
thought. It is time to recognise openly that love is not only a powerful
natural factor, a biological force, but also a social factor. Essentially
love is a profoundly social emotion. At all stages o f human development
]ove has (in different forms, it is true) been an integral part o f culture.
Even the bourgeoisie, who saw love as a “private m atter”, was able to
channel the expression of love in its class intetests. The ideology o f the
working class must pay even greater attention to the significance o f love
as a facto r which can, like any other psychological or soci'al pheno­
menon, be channelled to the advantage o f the collective. Love is not in
the least a “private” m atter concerning only the tw o loving persons:
love possesses a uniting elem ent which is valuable to the collective, l i i s
is clear from th e fa c t th a t at all stages o f historical development so d ety
has established norms defining when and under w hat conditions love is
“legal” (i.e. corresponds to th e in terests o f the given social collective),
and when and under w hat conditions love is sinful and criminal (i.e.
contradicts the tasks of the given society).

H istorical notes
From the very early stages of its social being, hum anity has
sought to regulate n ot only sexual relations but love itself.
In the kinship com munity, love for one’s blood relations was
considered the highest virtue. The kinship group would not have
approved of a woman sacrificing herself for the sake of a beloved hus­
band; fraternal or sisterly attach m en t were the m ost highly regarded
feelings. Antigone, who according to the Greek legend risked her life
to bury the body of her dead brother, was a heroine in the eyes of her
contem poraries. M odem bourgeois society would consider such an action
on the part of a sister as highly curious. In the times of tribal rule, when
the state was still in its embryonic stage, the love held in greatest
respect was the love between tw o members o f the same trib e. In an era
when th e social collective had only ju st evolved from th e stage o f k in ­
ship community and was still n ot firmly established in its new form , i t
was vitally im portant th at its members were linked b y m ental and
emotional ties. Love-friendship w as the m ost suitable type o f tie, since
a t th a t tim e the in te rests o f the collective required the growth and
accumulation o f contacts n ot betw een th e m arriage pair but between
fellow -m em bers of the tribe, betw een the organisers and defenders o f the
tribe and state (th at is to say, betw een th e men of the tribe, of course;
women at th a t time had no role to play in social life, and there was no
talk of friendship among women). “Friendship” was praised and con­
sidered far more im portant than love betw een m an and wife. Castor
and Pollux were fam ous for their loyalty to each other and their un-
shakeable friendship, rather than for the feats they performed fo r their
country. For the sake of friendship or its sem blance a m an m ight offer

2 79
his wife to an acquaintance or a guest.
The ancient world considered friendship and “loyalty until the
grave” to be civic virtues. Love in the modem sense of the word had
no place, and hardly attracted the attention either o f poets or o f writers.
The dominant ideology of that time relegated love to the sphere of
narrow, personal experiences with which society was not concerned;
marriage was based on convenience, n ot on love. Love was just one among
other amusements; it was a luxury which only the citizen who had
fulfilled all his obligations to th e state could afford. W hile bourgeois
ideology values the “ability to love” provided it confines itself to the
lim its set down by bourgeois morality, the ancient world did n ot con­
sider such emotions in its categories of virtues and positive human
qualities. The person who accom plished great deeds and risked his life
for his friend was considered a hero and his action “m ost virtuous",
while a man risking him self for the sake o f a woman he loved would
have been reproached or even despised.
The m orality of the an cien t world, then, did n ot even recognise
the love th a t inspired men to great deeds - the love so highly regarded
in the feudal period - as w orthy of consideration. The ancient world
recognised only those emotions which drew its fellow-members close
together and rendered the emerging social organism more stable. In sub­
sequent stages of cultural development, however, friendship ceases to be
considered a moral virtue. Bourgeois society was built on the principles of
individualism and com petition, and has no p lace for friendship as a moral
factor. Friendship does n ot help in any way, and may hinder the achieve­
m ent o f class aims; it is viewed as an unnecessary m anifestation of
“sentim entality” and weakness. Friendship becomes an object of derision.
Castor and Pollux in the New York or London o f today would only
evoke a condescending smile. This was not so in feudal society, where
love-friendship was seen as a quality to be taught and encouraged.
The feudal system defended the interests of the noble family.
Virtues were delined with reference not so much to relations between
the members o f th a t society as to th e obligations o f the individual to his
or her fam ily and its traditions. M arriage was contracted according to
the interests of the family, and any young man (the girl had no rights
whatever) who chose him self a wife against these in terests was severely
criticised. In the feudal era the individual was not supposed to place
personal feelings and inclinations above the interests of family, and he
who did so “ sinned”. M orality did not demand th a t love and marriage
go hand in hand.
Nevertheless, love betw een the sexes was n ot neglected; in fact.

28 0
foe th e first tim e in the history of humanity it received a certain recog­
nition. It may seem strange th a t love was first accepted in this age of
strict asceticism , o f crude and cruel morals, an age o f violence and rule
by violence; b u t the reasons for acceptance becom e clear when we take
a closer look. In certain situations and in certain circum stances, love
can act as a lever propelling the m an to perform action s of which he
would otherwise have been incapable. The knighthood demanded of
each m em ber fearlessness, bravery, endurance and great feats of indi­
vidual valour on the battlefield. Victory in war was in those days
decided not so m uch by the organisation o f troops as by the individual
qualities of the participants. The knight in love w ith the inaccessible
"lady of his heart” found it easier to perform m iracles of bravery, easier
to win tournam ents, easier to sacrifice his life. The knight in love was
m otivated by th e desire to “shine” and thus to win the atten tion o f his
beloved.
The ideology o f chivalry recognised love as a psychological
state that could be used to the advantage o f the feudal class, but never­
theless it sought to organise em otions in a definite framework. Love
between man and wife was not valued, for the family th a t lived in the
knightly castle and in the Russian boyar’s t e r e m was n ot held together
by emotional ties. The social factor of chivalrous love operated where
the knight loved a woman outside the fam ily and was inspired to m ilitary
and other heroic feats by this emotion. The more inaccessible the woman,
the greater the knight’s determ ination to win her favour and the greater
his need to develop in him self the virtues and qualities w hich were
valued by his social class. Usually the k n ig h t chose as his lady the
woman least accessible, the wife of his suzerain, or often the queen.
Only such a “platonic” love could spur the knight on to perform
miracles of bravery and was considered virtuous and worthy. The knight
rarely chose an unmarried woman as the o b ject of his love, for no
matter how far above him in statio n and apparently inaccessible the girl
might be, the possibility of m arriage and the consequent removal of the
psychological lever could n ot be ruled out. Hence feudal m orality com ­
bined recognition o f the ideal o f asceticism (sexual restraint) with recog­
nition o f love as a moral virtue. In his desire to free love from all th at
was carnal and sinful and to transform it into an ab stract em otion com ­
pletely divorced from its biological base the knight was prepared to go
to great lengths, choosing as his lady a woman he had never seen or
joining the ranks of the lovers of the Viigfn Mary. Further he could
not go.
Feudal ideology saw love as a stimulus, as a quality assisting

281
in so d a l cohesion: spiritual love and th e knight’s adoration o f h is'
lady served th e interests of the noble class. The knight who would have
thought nothing of sending his wife to a m onastery or of slaying her
for unfaithfulness would have been flattered if she had been chosen by
another knight as his lady, and would have made no objections to het
platonic friendships. But while placing so m uch emphasis on spiritual
love, feudal m orality in no way demanded that love should determine
legal marriage relationships. Love and marriage were kept separate by
feudal ideology, and were only united by the bourgeois class th a t emerged
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The exalted sophistication of
feudal love existed, therefore, alongside indescribably crude norm s of
relations betw een the sexes. Sexual intercourse b oth within and outside
marriage lacked the softening and inspiring elem ent of love and remained
an undisguisedly physiological act.
The church pretended to wage war on depravity, but by en­
couraging “spiritual love” it encouraged crude animal relations between
the sexes. The knight who would not be parted from the emblem of the
lady of his heart, who composed poetry in her honour and risked his life
to win her smile, would rape a girl of the urban classes without a second
thought or order his stew ard to bring him a beautiful p easan t fo r his
pleasure. T h e wives of the knights, fo r their part, did n ot le t slip the
opportunity to enjoy the delights of the flesh with the troubadours and
pages of the feudal household.
W ith the weakening of feudalism and the growth of new con­
ditions of life dictated by the interests of the ris'mg bourgeoisie, a new
moral ideal of relations betw een the sexes developed. Rejecting platonic
love, the bourgeoisie defended the violated rights of the body and
injected the com bination of the spiritual and physical into the very
conception of love. Bourgeois m orality did not separate love and
m arriage: marriage was the expression of the mutual attractio n of the
couple. In practice of course the bourgeoisie itself, in the nam e of con­
venience, continually sinned against this moral teaching, but the recogni­
tion of love as the pillar of marriage had a profound class basis.
Under the feudal system the family was held together firm ly by
the traditions of nobility and birth. The married couple was held in place
by the power o f the church, the unlimited authority o f the head of the
fam ily, the strength o f family trad ition and th e will o f the suzerain:
m arriage was indissoluble. The bourgeois fam ily evolved in different
conditions; its basis was n ot th e co-ownership of fam ily w ealth b u t the
accum ulation of capital. The family was th e guardian o f this capital:
in order that accum ulation m ight take place as rapidly as possible, it was

2 82
im portant th a t a m a n s savings should be handled with care and skill:
in other words, th at the woman should n ot only be a good housewife but
also the helper and friend of her husband. W ith the establishm ent of
capitalist relations and o f th e bourgeois social system, the family, in
order to remain stable, had to be based not only on economic considera­
tions but also on the co-operation of all its members, who had a jo in t
interest in the accumulation of wealth. And co-operation could serve as
a more powerful factor when husband and wife and parents and children
were held together by strong em otional and psychological bonds.
At the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth
centuries, the new economic way of life gave rise to a new ideology.
The conceptions of love and marriage gradually changed. The religious
reformer, Luther, and the other thinkers and public figures of the
Renaissance and the Reform ation, understood the social force of love
perfectly. Aware th at the stability of the fam ily - the economic unit on
which th e bourgeois system rests - required th a t its members be linked
by more than econom ic ties alone, the revolutionary ideologists of the
rising bourgeoisie propagated the new moral ideal of a love th a t em­
braced both the flesh and the soul. The reformers of the period challenged
the celibacy of the clergy and made m erciless fun of the “spiritual love”
of chivalry th at kept the knight in a continual state of aspiration but
denied him the hope of satisfying his sensual needs. The ideologists of
the bourgeoisie and the reform ation recognised the legitim acy of the
body’s needs. Thus, while the feudal world had divided love in to the
sexual act {relations within m arriage or with concubines) on the one
hand, and spiritual, platonic love (the relations betw een the knight and
the lady o f his heart) on the other, the bourgeois class included b o th the
physical attraction betw een the sexes and emotional attachm ents in its
concept o f love. T h e feudal ideal had separated love from marriage; the
bourgeoisie linked the two. The bourgeoisie made love and marriage
inseparable. In practice, of course, this class has always retreated from
its ideal; but while the question of mutual inclination was never raised
under feudalism, bourgeois m orality requires th a t even in m arriages of
convenience, th e partners should practise hypocrisy and pretend affection.
Traces of feudal tradition and feudal attitudes to marriage and
love have come down to us, surviving the centuries and accom modating
themselves to the m orality of the bourgeois class. Royal fam ilies and
the higher ranks of the aristocracy still live according to these old
norm s. In these circles it is considered “am using” but ra th er “ awkward”
when a m arriage is concluded on the basis of love. The princes and
princesses o f th is world still have to bow to th e demands of birth and

283
politics, joining themselves for life to people they do n ot care for.
In peasant families one also finds that fam ily and econom ic
considerations play a big part in marriage arrangem ents. The peasant
family differs from tb a t of the urban industrial bourgeoisie chiefly in
that it is an econom ic labour unit; its members are so firmly held
together by econom ic circum stances that inner bonds are of secondary
importance. For the medieval artisan, love likewise had no role in
marriage, for in the context of the guild system the fam ily was a pro­
ductive unit, and this econom ic rationale provided stability. The ideal
of love in marriage only begins to appear when, with the emergence of
the bourgeoisie, the family loses its productive functions and remains a
consumer unit also serving as a vehicle fo r th e preservation o f accumu­
lated capital.
But though bourgeois m orality defended the rights of two
"loving hearts” to conclude a union even in defiance of tradition, and
though it criticised "spiritual love” and asceticism , proclaiming love as
th e basis of marriage, it nevertheless defined love in a very narrow way.
Love is permissible only when it is within marriage. Love outside legal
marriage is considered immoral. Such ideas were often dictated, of
course, by econom ic considerations, by the desire to prevent the dis­
tribution of capital among illegitim ate children. The entire m orality
of the bourgeoisie -wTas directed towards the concentration o f capital.
The ideal was the married couple, working together to improve their
welfare and to increase the wealth of their particular family unit,
divorced as it was from society. W here the interests o f the fam ily and
so d ety were in conflict, bourgeois m orality decided in the interests of
the family (cf. the sym pathetic attitude o f bourgeois m orality - though
n ot the law - to deserters arid to those who, for the sake of their
fam ilies, cause the bankruptcy o f their fellow shareholders). This m orality,
w ith a utilitarianism typical o f the bourgeoisie, tried to use love to its
advantage, making it the main ingredient of marriage, and thereby
strengthening the family.
Love, o f course, could not be contained within the limits set
down by bourgeois ideologists. Emotional conflicts grew and multiplied,
and found their expression in the new form of literature - the novel -
which th e bourgeois class developed. Love constantly escaped from the
narrow framework o f legal m arriage relations set for it, into free rela­
tionships and adultery, w hich were condemned but which were practised.
The bourgeois ideal of love does not correspond to the needs o f the
largest section of the population - the working class. Nor is it relevant
to the life-style of the working intelligentsia. This is why in highly

2 84
developed capitalist countries one finds such an interest in the problems
of sex and love and in th e search for the key to its m ysteries. How, it is
asked, can relations between th e sexes be developed in order to increase
the sum of both individual and social happiness?
The working youth o f Soviet Russia is confronting this question
a t th is very moment. This brief survey of the evolution of the ideal o f
love-marriage relationships w ill help you, my young friend, to realise
and understand th at love is n ot the private m atter it m ight seem to be
a t a first glance. Love is an im portant psychological and social factor,
which society has always instinctively organised in its interests. W ork­
ing m en and women, armed w ith the science of marxism and using the
experience o f the past, must seek to discover the place love ought to
occupy in the new social order and determine the ideal o f love that
corresponds to their class interests.

Love-comradeship
The new, communist society is being b u ilt on the principle of
com radeship and solidarity. Solidarity is n ot only an awareness of
common interests; it depends also on the intellectual and em otional ties
linking th e members o f th e collective. F or a social system to be built on
solidarity and co-operation it is essential th a t people should be capable
of love and warm em otions. The proletarian ideology, therefore, attem pts
to educate and encourage every member of the working class to be
capable o f responding to the distress and needs of oth er m em bers of the
class, of a sensitive understanding of others and a penetrating con­
sciousness o f the individual’s relationship to the collective. All these
"w arm em otions” - sensitivity, com passion, sympathy and responsive­
ness - derive from one source: they are aspects o f love, not in the
narrow, sexual sense but in the broad meaning o f the word. Love is an
emotion th at unites and is consequently o f an organising character. The
bourgeoisie was well aware of this, and in the attem pt to create a stable
family bourgeois ideology erected "m arried love” a s a m o ral virtue; to
be a "good family m an” was, in the eyes of th e bourgeoisie, an im portant
and valuable quality. The proletariat should also take into account the
psychological and social role th a t love, both in the broad sense and in
the sense of relationships betw een the sexes, can and must play, n ot in
strengthening fam ily-marriage ties, b u t in the development o f collective
solidarity.
W hat is the proletariat’s ideal of love? We have already seen
that each epoch has its ideal; each class strives to fill the conception
of love w ith a moral content th a t suits its own interests. Each stage of

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cultural development, with its richer intellectual and emotional experi­
ences, redefines the im age of Eros, W ith the successive stages in the
development of the econom y and social life, ideas of love have changed;
shades of em otion have assumed greater significance or, on the other
hand, have ceased to exist.
In the course of the thousand-year history o f human society,
love h as developed from the simple biological instin ct - th e urge to
reproduce which is inherent in all creatures from th e highest to the
low est - into a m ost complex em otion th a t is constantly acquiring new
intellectual and em otional aspects. Love has becom e a psychological and
social factor. Under the im pact o f econom ic and social forces, the bio­
logical instinct for reproduction has been transform ed in tw o diam etric­
ally opposed directions. On the one hand the healthy sexual instinct has
been turned by m onstrous social and econom ic relations, particularly
those o f capitalism, into unhealthy carnality. The sexual act has become
an aim in itself - just an other way o f obtaining pleasure, through lust
sharpened with excesses and through distorted, harmful titillations o f the
flesh. A m an does n ot have sex in response to healthy instincts which
have drawn him to a particular woman; a man approaches any woman,
though he feels no sexual need for her in particular, with the aim of
gaining his sexual satisfaction and pleasure through her. P rostitution is
th e organised expression o f this distortion o f the sex drive. If intercourse
w ith a woman does n ot prom pt the expected excitem ent, the m an will
turn to every kind of perversion.
This deviation towards unhealthy carnality takes relationships
far from their source in the biological instinct. On the other hand, over
the centuries and with the changes in human social life and culture, a
w eb o f em otional and intellectual experiences has come to surround the
physical attraction of the sexes. Love in its present form is a complex
state of mind and body; it has long been separated from its primary
source, the biological in stin ct for reproduction, and in fact it is frequently
in sharp contradiction with it. Love is intricately woven from friendship,
passion, m aternal tenderness, infatuation, mutual com patibility, sym­
pathy, admiration, fam iliarity and many other shades o f emotion. W ith
such a range of emot ions involved, it becomes increasingly difficult to
distinguish direct connection between the natural drive o f “wingless
Eros” and “winged Eros”, where physical attraction and emotional
warm th are fused. The existence o f love-friendship where the element of
physical attraction is absent, of love for one’s work or for a cause, and
of love for the collective, testify to the extent to which love has become
“spiritualised” and separated from its biological base.

2 86

j
 In m odem sodety, sharp contradictions frequently arise and
battles are waged betw een the various m anifestations of em otion. A
deep intellectual and emotional involvement in one’s work may n o t be
com patible with love for a particular m an or woman, love for the
collective m ight conflict w ith love for husband, wife or children. It m ay
be difficult fo r love-friendship in one person to coexist with passion in
another; in the one case love is predominantly based on intellectual
com patibility, and in the other case on physical harmony. “Love“ has
many faces and aspects. The various shades of feeling th a t have developed
over the ages and which are experienced by contem porary men and
women cannot be covered by such a general and inexact term.
Under the rule of bourgeois ideology and the capitalist way of
life, the com plexity o f love creates a series of complex and insoluble
problems. By the end o f the nin eteen th century the many-sidedness of
love had becom e a favourite them e fo r writers w ith a psychological b en t
Love fo r two or even three has interested and perplexed m any of the
more thoughtful representatives o f bourgeois culture. In the six ties of
the last century our Russian thinker and w riter Alexander Herzen tried
to uncover this com plexity o f th e inner world and th e duality o f emotion
in his novel W ho Is G uilty?, and Chemyshevsky tackled the same ques­
tions in h is novel W hat is to be D o n e?. P o e tic geniuses such as Goethe
and Byron, and bold pioneers in th e sphere o f relations betw een the
sexes such as George Sand, have tried to com e to term s with these
issues in th e ir own lives; the author o f Who Is Guilty? also knew o f the
problems from his own experience, as did many other great thinkers,
poets and public figures. And at this present m om ent many “sm all”
people are weighed down by the difficulties of love and vainly seek fo r
solutions within the framework of bourgeois thought. But the key to
the solution is in the hands o f the proletariat. Only the ideology and
the life-style o f the new, labouring hum anity can unravel this complex
problem o f em otion.
W e are talking here of the duality of love, o f the com plexities of
“winged E ros” ; th is should n ot be confused w ith sexual relations “w ith­
out E ros”, where one man goes w ith many women or one wom an w ith a
number o f m en. Relations where no personal feelings are involved can
have unfortunate and harm ful consequences (the early exhaustion of
the organism, venereal diseases etc.), but however entangled they are,
they do n ot give rise to ’’em otional dramas”. These “dram as” and con­
flicts begin only where the various shades and m anifestations o f love
are present. A woman feels close to a m an whose ideas, hopes and
aspirations m atch her own; she is attracted physically to another. For

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one woman a m an m ight feel sympathy and a protective tenderness, and
in another he m ight find support and understanding for the strivings of
his intellect. T o which of the two must he give his love? And why m ust
he tear him self ap art and crippple his inner self, if only th e possession
o f both types o f inner bond affords the fullness o f living?
Under the bourgeois system such a division of the inner
em otional world involves inevitable suffering. F o r thousands o f yeats
human culture, which is based on the institution of property, has been
teaching people that love is linked w ith the principles o f property. Bour­
geois ideology has insisted th a t love, mutual love, gives the right to
the absolute and indivisible possession of the beloved person. Such
exclusiveness was the natural consequence of the established form of
pair m arriage and of the ideal o f “all-em bracing love” between husband
and wife. But can such an ideal correspond to the interests of the work­
ing class? Surely it is important and desirable from the proletariat’s
point o f view th a t people’s emotions should develop a wider and richer
range? And surely the com plexity of the human psyche and the many-
sidedness of em otional experience should assist in the grow th o f the
emotional and intellectual bonds betw een people which make the col­
lective stronger? The more numerous these inner threads drawing people
to g eth er, the firm er th e sense o f solid arity and the sim pler th e realisa­
tion of the working-class ideal of comradeship and unity.
P roletarian ideology cannot accept exclusiveness and “ all-
em bracing lo v e ” . The proletariat is n o t filled with horror and moral
indignation at the many forms and facets of “ winged Eros” in the way
th at the hypocritical bourgeoisie is; on th e contrary, it tries to direct
these em otions, which it sees , as the result o f com plex social circum ­
stances, into channels which are advantageous to the class during the
struggle for and the construction o f communist society. The complexity
of love is not in conflict with the interests o f the proletariat. On the con­
trary, it facilitates the triumph of the ideal o f 3ove-comradeship which
is already developing.
At the tribal stage love was seen as a kinship attach m en t (love
betw een sisters and brothers, love for parents). The ancient culture of
the pre-christian period placed love-friendship above all else. The feudal
world idealised platonic courtly love betw een members of the opposite
sex outside marriage. T he bourgeoisie took monogamous m arital love as
its ideal. T h e working class derives its id eal from the labour co-operation
and inner solidarity th a t binds th e men and women o f the proletariat
together; the form and content of this ideal naturally differs from
th e conception o f love that existed in other cultural epochs. The

28 8
advocacy o f love-comradeship in no way implies that in th e m ilitant
atm osphere o f its struggle fo r th e dictatorship o f the proletariat the
working class has adopted a stra it-ja ck et ideology and is m ercilessly
trying to remove all traces of tender emotion from relations between the
sexes. The ideology o f the working class does not seek to destroy “winged
Eros” but, on the contrary, to clear the way fo r the recognition o f the
value of love as a psychological and social force.
The hypocritical m orality of bourgeois culture resolutely
restricted the freedom of Eros, obliging him to visit only the “ legally
married couple”. Outside marriage there was room only for the “wing­
less Eros” of momentary and joyless sexual relations which were bought
{in the case of prostitution) or stolen (in the case of adultery).
The m orality of the working class, on the other hand, in so fa r as i t
has already been formulated, definitely rejects the external form s of
sexual relations. The social aims of th e working class are n ot affected
one b it by w hether love takes the form o f a long and official union or
is expressed in a temporary relationship. The ideology of the working
class does not place any form al lim its on love. But a t the same tim e th e
ideology of the working class is already beginning to tak e a thoughtful
attitude to the content of love and shades o f emotional experience. In
this sense th e proletarian ideology will persecute “ wingless Eros” in a
much more strict and severe way than bourgeois morality. “W ingless
Eros” contradicts the interests of the working class. In the first place it
inevitably involves excesses and therefore physical exhaustion, which
lower the resources of labour energy available to society. In the second
place it impoverishes the soul, hindering the development and strengthen­
ing of inner bonds and positive emotions. And in the third place it usually
rests on an inequality of rights in relationships betw een the sexes, on
th e dependence o f the woman on th e m an and on male complacency
and insensitivity, which undoubtedly hinder the development of com ­
radely feelings. “Winged Eros” is quite different.
Obviously sexual attractio n lies a t the base of “winged Eros”
too, but the difference is th a t the person experiencing love acquires the
inner qualities necessary to the builders o f a new culture — sensitivity,
responsiveness and the desire to help others. Bourgeois ideology
demanded that a person should only display such qualities in their
relationship with one partner. The aim of proletarian ideology is th at
men and women should develop these qualities n o t only in relation to
the chosen one but in relation to all the members of the collective. The
proletarian class is not concerned as to which shades and nuances of
feeling predominate in winged Eros. The only stipulation is th a t these

2 89
em otions facilitate the development and strengthening o f comradeship.
T h e id eal o f love-comradeship, which is being forged by proletarian
ideology to replace th e all-em bracing and exclusive m arital love o f bour­
geois culture, involves th e recognition of the rights and integrity of the
other’s personality, a steadfast mutual support and sensiti ve sympathy,
and responsiveness to the other’s needs.
The ideal of love-comradeship is necessary to the proletariat in
th e im portant and difficult period o f the struggle for and the consolida­
tion o f the dictatorship. But there is no doubt th a t with the realisation
o f com munist society love will acquire a transformed and unprecedented
aspect. By th a t tim e the “sym pathetic ties” betw een all the members
o f the new society will have grown and strengthened. Love potential will
have increased, and love-solidarity will becom e the lever th a t com petition
and self-love were in th e bourgeois system . Collectivism o f spirit can
then d efeat individualist self-sufficiency, and the "co ld o f inner loneli­
ness”, from which people in bourgeois culture have attem pted to escape
through love and marriage, will disappear. The many threads bringing
men and women into close em otional and intellectual con tact will develop,
and feelings will emerge from the private into the public sphere. In­
equality betw een the sexes and the dependence of women on m en will
disappear without trace, leaving only a fading memory o f p ast ages.
In the new and collective society, where interpersonal relations
develop against a background o f joyful unity and com radeship, Eros will
occupy an honourable place as an em otional experience multiplying
human happiness. W hat will be the nature of this transform ed Eros? N ot
even the bold est fantasy is capable o f providing the answer to this
question. But one thing is clear: th e stronger the intellectu al and
em otional bonds o f the new humanity, the less the room for love in the
present sense o f the word. M odem love always sins, because it absorbs
the thoughts and feelings o f “loving hearts” and isolates the loving
pair from the collective. In the future society, such a separation will
n ot only become superfluous b u t also psychologically inconceivable.
In the new world the accepted norm of sexual relations will probably be
based on free, healthy and natu ral attraction (w ithout distortions and
excesses) and on “ transform ed E ro s”.
But a t the present m om ent we stand betw een tw o cultures.
And at this turning-point, with the attendant struggles of the tw o worlds
on all fronts, including the ideological one, the p roletariat’s interest is
to do its b e s t to ensure th e quickest possible accum ulation o f “ sym­
pathetic feelings”. In this period the moral ideal defining relationships
is not the unadorned sexual in stinct but the many-faceted love experi­

29 0
ence o f love-comradeship. In order to answer the demands formulated
by the new proletarian m orality, these experiences must conform to
three basic principles: 1. Equality in relationships (an end to m asculine
egoism and the slavish suppression o f the fem ale personality). 2. Mutual
recognition o f the rights of the other, of the fa c t th a t one does not own
the heart and soul of the other (the sense of property, encouraged by
bourgeois culture). 3. Comradely sensitivity, the ability to listen and
understand the inner workings o f th e loved person (bourgeois culture
demanded this only fro m the woman). But in proclaim ing the rights of
“winged E ros”, the ideal of the working cla ss a t the sam e tim e subordin­
ates this love to the m ore powerful em otion of love-duty to the collective.
However great the love between two m em bers of the coliective, the ties
binding the tw o persons to the collective will always take precedence,
will be firm er, more com plex and organic. Bourgeois m orality demanded
all for the loved one. The m orality of the proletariat demands all for the
collective.
But I can hear you objecting, my young friend, th a t though it
may b e true th at love-comradeship will becom e the ideal o f th e working
class, will this new “m oral m easurem ent” o f emotions not place new
constraints on sexual relationships? Are we n o t liberating love from the
fetters o f bourgeois m orality only to enslave it again? Yes. my young
friend, you are right. The ideology o f the proletariat rejects bourgeois
“m orality” in the sphere o f love-marriage relations. N evertheless, it
inevitably develops its own class morality, its own rules o f behaviour,
which correspond more closely to the tasks o f the working class and
educate the em otions in a certain direction. In this way it could be
said th a t feelings are again in chains. The proletariat will undoubtedly
clip the w ings o f bourgeois cu lture. But it would be short-sighted to regret
this process, since th e new class is capable o f developing new fa c e ts of
emotion w hich possess unprecedented beauty, strength and radiance.
As the cultural and econom ic base o f hum anity changes, so will love
be transformed.
The blind, all-embracing, demanding passions will weaken;
the sense of property, the egoistical desire to bind the partner to one
“forever", th e complacency o f the m an and th e self-renunciation o f the
woman will disappear. At the same time, th e valuable aspects and
elements of love will develop. Respect for the right o f the other’s per­
sonality will increase, and a mutual sensitivity will be learned; men and
women will strive to express their love not only in kisses and embraces
but in jo in t creativity and activity. The task of proletarian ideology is
not to drive Eros from social life b u t ro rearm him according to the

291
new social form ation, and to educate sexual relationships in the spirit
of the great new psychological force o f comradely solidarity.
I hope it is now clear to you th a t the in terest among young
workers in the question o f love is n o t a symptom o f “d eclin e". I hope
th at you can now grasp th e p lace love m ust occupy in the relationships
betw een young workers.