Date: Wed, 17 Apr 96 08:33:13 GMT
Subject: Re: Lenin, Zetkin, Marx on sex?



I believe Lenin was a bit of a prude. He stayed married and I assume
faithful to Krupskaya for his whole life, I think. They had a close
political relationship as well. He didn't like modern art either !

There is a story that gets told in SWP meetings on such subjects
that Lenin was shocked at the level of sexual activity amongst
the Bolsheviks during 1917 - I don't know on what basis the story 
is told.

In contrast, Trotsky had at least 3 wives, and no such story
circulates about him.

There's something by Engel's I think in the back of OFPPS,
where he says something to the effect that how men and women
arrange their sexual lives after the revolution will be up to 
them. Engels lived a double life, one as a respectable capitalist,
one with two working class Irish sisters ( can't remember their names.
Lenox ? ). One was his partner until she died, the other became his
partner after that.

I think there was a big contrast between hypocritical bourgois morals 
and a more open working class morality at that time. The classic
nuclear familly as ideology and practise didn't really establish itself
itself until later on. This explains why the suffragettes and the 1960's
womens movement were so different, why anti gay prejudice is today
a serious way of dividing workers whereas it never has been in the past
( unlike, say, racism ).

Marx, I don't know. But there's the bit in the Communist Manifesto
where he talks about the bourgeios attack on the Communist oposition
to marriage - but Engels may have been responsible for that passage ?

The Bolsheviks in power legalised homosexuality, made divorce simple.
They also took steps to reduce the oppression of women in the
countryside. Alexandra Kollontai both attacked bourgeois feminism
and took a "liberal" view on sex etc.

Adam.

Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
UK


---------------------------------------------------------------









     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---