Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 15:20:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Lenin, Zetkin, Marx on sex?


On Tue, 16 Apr 1996, Lisa Rogers wrote:

> 
> Did Marx have anything to say specifically about sex, sexuality,
> sexual orientation, etc?

As far as I know Marx wrote practically nothing about sex and absolutely
nothing about sexual orientation. He was a typically prudish and rather
conservative Victorian in his own sexual mores, complete with the affair
with the maid and the illegitimate son, Freddie Demuth, whose paternity
the far more free-thinking Engels pretended to knowledge to spare Marx and
more particularly Jenny embarassment and trouble. Raised Freddie, too.
Engels, like Mill, was far advanced of Marx and in fact lived "in sin"
with his lover, something Marx disapproved of rather sternly, not that he
minded boffing the help. This difference was the source of the only major
conflict between them. Marx was rather chilly when Engels' lover died and
this nearly led to a break between them. 

Engels writes about sex in the
context of the family, or at least about gender, Marx's few remarks are,
e.g., in the comments on bourgeois and proletarian marriage in the
Manifesto, where, ironically enough, Marx criticizes the bourgeois men for
pursuing affairs with the lower classes and each other's wives. There are
also remarks in Capital about how modern industry is reshaping the
relation between the sexes by involving women in wage work. There's
nothing about sexual activity, beyond the Manifesto stuff, or nothing I
know of

Zetkin, like a lot of people in the 2d International, was concerned with
the "woman question." She was what we would today call a feminist, though
she wouldn't call her self that: for the Social Democrats, "feminist"
meant bourgeois suffragettes. She may have said something about sex that
got Lenin excited. L himself apprantly pursued an affair with Inessa
Armand, but if it bothered Krupskaya she never let on. The old Bolsheviks
were pretty free about these things. The most interesting and extreme
position was held by Kollontai, who thought sex should be liking drinking
water, do it when and with whomever you feel the need. She wrote a lot
about sex inclusind a novel, The Fable of the Workers Bees.

--Justin




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