Date: Thu, 18 Apr 1996 22:19:43 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: marxism & sexual revolution



There's been comment on the relative paucity of citations on sexuality in 
Marx's writings. Among the few I'm familiar with are the famous passage 
about the "community of women" in the *Communist Manifesto* and a statement 
(from *1844 Manuscripts*?) to the effect that the relation between man 
and woman is the most natural or basic human relationship.

It is curious in light of the fact that sexual liberation, particularly 
of women, was a major concern of Charles Fourier, who was held in rather 
high regard by Marx and Engels. As others here have pointed out 
already, orthodox strains of marxism have tended to view sexual concerns 
with suspicion, as utopian (in the pejorative sense). Even so, it is 
remarkable how far sexual revolution went in Russia in the early years of 
Bolshevism, Lenin's fuddy-duddiness about it notwithstanding. 

BTW, Lenin's letters of 1915 chiding Inessa Armand appear in a 
Progress Publishers collection titled *Lenin on Literature and Art*.



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