"Sexual Revolution and Loving Comradeship" Discussion

Pursuing his consideration of questions of the personal as political in relation to anarchism (see previous post) MPT Acharya took issue not only with traditional morality but with some manifestations of apparent permissiveness in the prevailing customs of the mid 1930s.

From translations of articles in l'en dehors, April 1935 

Translator's Note: 
Several terms which evidently had a particular meaning in the context of the time (and/or place) are especially difficult to translate appropriately. Thus 'bon-bourgeois' - Respectable Middle-class Male, Normal Upstanding Gent - has  been retained as being largely self-explanatory.  On the other hand, the phenomenon of 'partouzisme' and its practitioners, partouzards (root partout = everywhere), has been rendered inconsistently in various ways to try to convey its apparent nuances. A fairly large French-English dictionary translates partouse/partouze as 'orgy', which doesn't quite fit; here it carries possible connotations of promiscuity, multiple partners, group sex parties... but in a semi-organised and (to and for some sections of society) borderline-acceptable fashion. All very French, as the British would no doubt have said (to invoke both stereotypes).

The Struggle Against Jealousy:

Body Ownership, Exclusivity in Love

and For an Alternative Sexual Ethic

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The Bon-Bourgeois

"Sexual Revolution and Loving Comradeship" 

In the Mercure de France of 15 March, Mr Saint-Alban set down a critique of "Sexual Revolution and Loving Comradeship" which is not a critique but a rehash of the reflections that such a work can trigger in a bon-bourgeois (alias bourgeois getting past it).

For a start, he accuses me of writing, all by myself, "355 pages of ravings", which shows that this critic hasn't read the book he claims to be reviewing. More than half the volume is taken up with extracts from letters, articles not penned by my poor hand, as well as by the transcription of  an investigation looking precisely at the "loving comradeship" theory. In this investigation I see the names of Manuel Devaldès and Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers, colleagues on the review journal in which this character set down his wafflings. Clearly not a shining example of generosity to one's co-writers. But what can you expect from a bon-bourgeois?

You'll understand I'm not going to play the game of arguing with Saint-Alban on the subjects of sexual ethics, erotic phenomenology, biology or physiology. He wouldn't understand a word, poor chap. Frankly I consider him unworthy to do up the shoelaces of the least Carpocratian, legalist or perfectionist [adherents of ancient sects]. Their members included women and men who not only ran the risk of persecution, they died under terrible torments for the sake of their ideas. This is of course beyond the comprehension of a bon-bourgeois, more likely to expire from insufficient mental capacity.

Apart from this calling to order, let's look at the four objections or propositions presented by Saint-Alban.

1) This bon-bourgeois would have liked it if instead of my "335 [sic, 355 above] pages of ravings" I had published a "handbook of pleasure". No doubt something on the lines of the "32 positions", "L'examen de Flora", or I don't know what else. An exciting, spicy, satisfying handbook. He doesn't understand that the book is purely about ideas, and he has read so little of what he purports to criticise that he takes me up specifically on something I've come back to several times, in that I can only conceive of the loving-comradeship idea being put into practice in the context of a developed, selective milieu in which "comradeship" has been raised to a very high concept and is not considered complete unless it includes the ways in which feelings and sexuality are experienced. Practice as a consequence of theory and not the other way round. Ethics before instruction. I keep trying to get across the point about loving comradeship only being comprehensible at a high level, that it can only be absorbed by those who breathe the air of the peaks and not by those creeping about in the swamps. Waste of time. You'll tell me Saint-Alban is incapable of grasping those things. Of course! But still!

2) This bon-bourgeois starts talking right away about 'houses of ill repute' and 'watching through the key-hole'. Naturally. Never having visited such a house, I don't know if one feels jealous there or not, but what I do know is that in order to write what he does, my critic must necessarily be familiar with a social scene that has nothing in common with one where you might find people capable of belonging to a loving comradeship cooperative. But for pity's sake, look at the mentality: I propose "loving comradeship" and this character's mind immediately leaps to "brothel" and "voyeur"!!

3) This bon-bourgeois offers as a basis for relationships "present-day multi-partnering" (partouzisme - pluralism, for short). Naturally. We can see how his ideal is the hypocritical, arrogant, vain pluralist male looking down from his motor-car on the comrade who, often more sensitive and educated than him, doesn't flaunt a tailor-made suit and neither has a car nor can afford sea- or sun-bathing. Not to mention that in order to look good among his own set, the pluralist will often provide himself with a companion in the form of some old bat disguised as a woman of the world, supplied by a corner meeting-house and paid handsomely. Thanks for the - "liaison".

4) And as if that wasn't enough, the bon-bourgeois suggests I might be the high priest of a sexual cult whose priestesses would share with me the gleanings from pious offerings (sic)! How's that for "healthy and new".

I also note in passing the customary stupid remarks: bringing in the "very orthodox but very old and very repulsive female companion". That reminds me of the objection made to Tolstoy a thousand times to counter his doctrine of not resisting evil with violence:  "But what if you were out walking with a little girl and a mad dog jumped at her?" Moreover, in Saint-Alban's mind, the fact that someone doesn't need the state to agree a contract and respect its clauses, or doesn't give a tuppenny damn [stronger in French] about bourgeois moral values, means that they would have no notion of personal care and hygiene, they wouldn't wash or clean themselves. Looking after one's body is only something for prostitutes and pluralists (partouzards), of course.

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"Loving comradeship" or "partouzisme" [Editorial comment, l'en dehors]

Some of our readers may be surprised at first sight to find us being so hostile to "promiscuity" whereas we have sometimes referred to it under the heading of reaction against sexual conformism. If we have happened to mention sleeping around, as a matter of fact, we see it for what it is and what it's worth: an offshoot of bourgeois sexual morality. Admittedly, it seems to allow for a sort of sexual free-for-all (I'm not saying "sexual communism", which is a quite different thing) but.looking closely it quickly becomes apparent that this promiscuity is confined to a certain class, most often full of contempt and presumptions, with no ideological concept - which may be fair enough - but practising social hypocrisy in its most repellent aspects. Apart from their assignations, the pluralists behave like respectable observers of family traditions and customs and established morals... Don't try talking to them about scientists or learned research concerned with sexual matters or focused on the problem of erotic fantasies, for example. They'd laugh in your face. They have no long-term view and no perspective...  'Pluralism' is in no way aimed at reinforcing friendly connections among its participants. It's a free brothel available to "men of the world".
What a gulf between that and the idea of loving or erotic comradeship, even putting aside all ideology, in which the participants are aiming to strengthen the comradely links that already join them, by completing and making them whole....

- E.A.

"April Fool" (April 1936)

And another from the same:-

Nude Cabarets

In a recent issue of Candide, Mr. Jacques Fayard tries to show that there is nothing harmful or immoral about women displaying themselves in the attire of Eve, and that they're not doing anything different from what other women do. They're earning an honest living - at least, the vast majority of them are.

The purpose of nude cabarets is the one pursued by any cattle show or exhibition of prize animals - it's about making money from the capital invested by the owner, i.e. turning a profit. The women on display are doing it to order, taking up such and such a pose, making such and such a gesture, in return for a "fair wage". Respectable spectators go into the establishment where they are appearing, pay the set rate of entry, partake, and the show supplies the desired sensations to their overheated brains, but that's the only place where they can satisfy their desires. Furthermore, it is perfectly possible that they haven't bothered to think about what would bring them pleasure, and it's quite simply the cabaret's owner or manager who takes the trouble to imagine the sensation or pleasure to match the cost of entry.

Nude cabarets have nothing in common with voluntary associations of nudists. If the young women were showing off their bodies for their own pleasure, or even from vanity, there would be nothing corrupt in that, even if curious persons handed over an entrance fee to them or to the owner of the place where they expose themselves. Well, the shows in nude cabarets are necessarily and purely mercenary. As is the work of typists. As is the basis of our life as a whole. But then, why stigmatise prostitution as immoral or incompatible with ethics? It is in this sense that the young women showing their nakedness in the cabarets are as respectable as any wage-earning woman.

The prostitute who says she "hasn't worked today" is in the same position as the merchant or shopkeeper saying he "hasn't sold anything today". Both are trying to earn money. It is solely from this point of view that young women who display themselves naked in cabarets should be judged. To see them as happy good-time girls is incorrect, even when they are proud of their profession. To speak about morality or respectability in our communal life is purely and simply hypocritical and perverse. The same goes for immorality or depravity of anyone in the society we're working in.

- M. ACH.