Letter from Germany, August 1932

From translation of an article by MPT Acharya in l'en dehors, 15-8-1932

Letter from Germany

 written before the result of the elections

Comrade Styr-Nhair asks what readers of l'en dehors think of the crisis - I answer that it's the crisis of all crises, of all the thinking of the past, including socialist and anarchist ideas, the supreme crisis of human civilissation, the birth of a new humanity and a new civilisation.

It is preferable to observe the crisis here in Germany, as a crisis of civilisation and of humanity, rather than that of any other country in the same financial or agricultural situation.

The workers are responsible for the crisis, however, because in the midst of capitalism they think in the capitalist way, as sellers of their labour power, their merchandise.

Today those who hold power and those who hold merchandise are caught in the same crisis: the difficulty, I should say the impossibility, of selling. But like the capitalists, the workers think there must be a way of selling, whereas there is none, either for the workers or for the capitalists.

That is why I am firmly convinced that the birth of a new civilisation and of a new humanity is in the offing, in spite of the workers and capitalists and of the state socialists who are trying to prevent it and striving to have them aborted.

This civilisation will involve neither buying nor selling, nor employers, nor employees, which is clearly indicated by the tendency of the present crisis.

The only possible solution, as an inevitable consequence, is to bring about this transformation consciously; but the workers, including the anarchists, think that this state of affairs is not on the way and is not possible. And all of them clamour for wages for their labour - new masters (their "comrades") who won't be that any more (Russia is reckoned to have 16 1/2 million waged workers [figures and exact meaning of statistic unclear]).

They demand insurance against unemployment, and higher wages - for some, the ones in unions - which they could only get by increased prices, when there was trade with other countries. In Germany, millions of workers who paid union dues all their lives are deprived of the expected benefits, such that only those who have worked continuously for a year can receive an allowance that lasts a few weeks and even that on condition that they will not refuse to work in whatever conditions.

The other day an old comrade told me that if he had kept all the dues paid over to the union he would have several thousand marks. Latterly, a leader of the metalworkers' union stated proudly that when business is going well, the union has plenty of money. If not, the coffers are empty. I pointed out to him in a public meeting that the interests of his union are inexorably tied to capitalist commerce (as is the case in Russia). He got angry and retorted that I was a Brahmin who exploited the Untouchables. I answered that he was the Brahmin of workers and exploited them by hiring out labourers to capitalism in the capacity of intermediary, and pocketing the surplus (i.e. the difference between the pay of unionised workers and those in the union), thanks to the combination of one set of workers against the interests of the working class as a whole. He couldn't answer me.

Unionised workers' wages are actually brought down to that of the non-unionised, once their contribution is paid. The dues are handed over to the union, in the way of an employment agency, monopolising jobs in factories and offices.

The employers use those "workers' leaders" to discipline the real workers, while the workers for their part think their interests are being served. The workers' leaders have no right or possibility of struggling to save the workers' jobs, even those of their members, since the employers have the right to put them out the door when they want to, under a pretext or for some reason or other.

The whole trade-union system is a corruption of the capitalist system, but in an idealised form. Unfortunately, the unions are being dissolved by the lack of disposability of products, work and money. At the present time German unemployed who can't pay their dues are pushed out of their old unions like outcasts - so much the better! That will make them think, and feel.

The situation in Germany is different from the description given of it by all political parties, and even by the anarchist papers, which still think in the capitalist political way. Fear of fascism and hope for Bolshevism are still held among us, even by the opponents of fascism and Bolshevism. Anarchists and syndicalists are themselves obsessed by those two fears, preferring the second as "the lesser evil". But clear-sighted observation shows that neither is possible in the situation of 1932, which is different from that of Russia in 1917 and Italy in 1922.

KPD (Spartakusbund) Poster
against militarism, capitalism and the upper class

SPD (Social Democratic Party) poster 1932:
 "The worker in the Reich of the Swastika"

The spirit of the people is too realistic and too materialist for fascism and bolshevism to satisfy it, and the situation in Germany and the world is getting worse daily, without the fascists or Bolsheviks  being able to do a thing. Just as in 1917, when everyone in Russia expected no solution but monarchy or a republic, it was a third thief that grabbed power - marxism - so in Germany where everyone is obsessed by the idea that history can have only two outcomes, fascism or bolshevism, they will find themselves side-by-side with anarchy, and that without the anarchists having even suspected or made preparation for the situation. All forms of the State will become impossible in the present crisis, which is not simply that of lack of money and commerce, but also the impossibility of getting any financial system to work in the world.

Naturally, even syndicalists and anarchists hope that capitalism can be revived by fascism or Bolshevism, via inflation and international money markets, with or without the gold standard. This shows that they have no faith in their own "isms", however certain of their realisation they were wont to appear.

With Germany in a state of impossibility of having a government, the whole of Europe will gradually fall into the crater, first eastern Europe, then Russia, then the West. There is no hope of struggling against the avalanche, however prepared all governments may be at present.

What will the anarchists do? They'll mutter against all governments and against the Marxists in particular for having led everyone into this impasse, as if the latter were responsible for the anarchists themselves refusing to prepare for the situation, refusing to make plans or to discuss what they would need to do, or to spread their ideas for fear of ridicule or of being with respectable people who can only shake their heads..!

I think the present government will be the last in Germany, the same in Britain, with or without accompanying civil war. It's not surprising that (Ramsay) Macdonald is afraid, even though he adopts an attitude of calm and certainty about the solution. - Perhaps Hitler will be thrown out? Perhaps the labour leaders will be hanged? Because neither can supply the work and cash they promise and they are sure to disappoint their supporters - when the latter ask them to fulfil their pledges.

It's a volcano with everyone putting on a dancing show on top of it; since they feel they can do nothing about the situation, they pile up crises - to divert their supporters' attention from their own inadequacies, for fear they'll be discovered to be mistaken or to promise more than they can deliver, or because they're madmen going for broke. Personally, I think all the parties are afraid that the burden will fall on them, and want to be defeated. There cannot be any union between the different workers' parties in the crisis of power, because each tries to establish its own authority over the others as is logical in the struggle to seize power.

As Marxists, they can't profess anarchism outright; even if they unite on some sort of "democratic" basis they could not by themselves supply work, or bread, or revitalise trade, or revive finances, the only condition on which their government would work. Therefore anarchy is very close to carrying the day in Germany. But what is the proletariat going to do?

- M. ACHARYA

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_1932_German_federal_election

 Federal elections were held in Germany (Weimar Republic) on 31 July 1932, following the premature dissolution of the Reichstag. They saw great gains by the Nazi Party, which for the first time became the largest party in parliament but without winning a majority.

"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

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

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.

********************

"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.

Freeing Feelings (or Liberating Libido) in Soviet Russia

Freeing Feelings in Russia

From translation of an article by M P T Acharya in l'en dehors, July 1932

Pursuing an argument in the pages of the French anarchist paper l'en dehors, Indian anarchist writer M P  T Acharya (as featured on earlier post) explored questions that were to come to the fore in discussions among libertarians and others decades later, notably women's liberation  and the politics of the personal. In attempting to demystify the supposed brave new world of the Soviet Union in this regard, he may have exaggerated the positive in the pre-revolutionary situation of Russian women, but made valid points, for example about the necessarily limited capacity of the state to prescribe for personal fulfilment.

Comrade Eliézer Fournier is mistaken in thinking that liberation of women and of marriage were due to the Soviet government. Before the war, Russian women had more freedom than the women of western Europe. Being married wasn't considered necessary in order to live together, even for people of 'good reputation'. It was not held to be indecent if a person went into another's room without being fully dressed. The universities, in and outside Russia, had a higher number of women students of Russian nationality than from the countries of western Europe. The immensely significant and risky part played by women in the liberation movement is well known. Even women of the upper class had gone over to the workers, and stayed, like (Alexandra) Kollontai and Vera Figner. People from the democratic countries who came to live under the Tsarist régime had found more democracy and less prudery among men and women in Russia than in parts of Europe with more advanced ideas.

Alexandra Kollontai, in the year the article was published.
From the biography by Cathy Porter. 

   After the Revolution, it was noted that women from Muslim regions of Russia were more active in agitating for female emancipation than those of Moscow, who only cared about attending to their appearance and going dancing - just like the 'leaders' in fact.

   The communists tried to arrange their own homes in the bourgeois style current in other countries, and to keep their wives in a bourgeois frame of mind. As one communist said: 'The first act of the Revolution, for communists, was to get divorced from their proletarian wives and marry aristocrats.' (Numerous instances could be cited in support of this assertion). The sum total of women's activity is to join the public services and become bureaucrats - which is happening now in western Europe. If to become members of the police, soldiers, prison warders or torturers constitutes 'liberation', the Bolsheviks gave them the opportunity, no question. But the US and other countries do the same. China has its women's battalions too. Amanullah [Khan]'s father had female gendarmes as his bodyguards in the harem.

   Russian women were always free in the best sense of the word, and were consequently considered 'shameless' in western Europe. The number of their substantial literary productions was greater than at present; there were even more doctors pre-war than today.

   But Tatar women always had the benefit of being free of the veil and liberated from illiteracy; they were more advanced than emancipated Turkish women.

   What the Bolsheviks did in the name of liberation was to assume no responsibility as far as women's economic situation was concerned, even while invoking liberty and responsibility. It's true that their laws state all women are free to marry and divorce as they like. But they were used to doing that in the time of the Tsars. As for insurance provision for divorced mothers, the same law exists in the capitalist countries. The State does not provide for the needs of divorced mothers, but it makes the man or men indicated by the mother pay maintenance. - I recently heard of a young man who had to pay nine-tenths of his wages to feed nine children.

   As for those women who are not economically indispensable (like working women), they can do a lot of things they couldn't have done before. They can accuse four or more men of being the father of their only child and get payments for upkeep from them all. If that's freedom, it's also engendering and encouraging corruption among women - without the Russian state taking on the responsibility as it claims. Similar corruption is practised professionally with the protection of the State in all countries, including Russia.

   The only good thing the Soviet government has done is to free women from being forced to bring children into the world, but without supplying them with means of contraception. But other countries are coming round to the idea of the need for a right to abortion. In the prevailing conditions, the cost of abortion is as prohibitive in the USSR as it would be in other countries, if it was allowed. Preventive methods are cheaper and better for health, it's true. But in either case, they have to be purchased. Hence the necessity for abortion, costly and dangerous as it is, in Russia as in other countries.

   The Soviet government has not abolished prostitution, as in its original banning of it on pain of prosecution, it even derives a source of revenue from it. It has even set up 'houses of sexual satisfaction in the interests of the people's health' - based squarely on those unfortunate women. Even in capitalist countries, brothels are considered physically, morally and intellectually dangerous... We only read the Soviets' propaganda line about sexual regulation and regularising, we don't think about hunger.

   In fact, the Soviet government is like any capitalist system or the Catholic religion: it can only exist by doing business. It can authorise and legalise certain freedoms in matters of sexuality, but its business and its interest are at the same time to punish and to encourage the 'evil' as in capitalist regimes, it cannot liberate women from economic worries and harassments.

   As long as the government does not supply the means of everyone's existence, no law and no regulation in favour of liberty, health and ethics can secure those things. Poor people will have to profit from those corrupting laws, simply in the interests of their continued existence. The best laws are powerless against debauchery and poverty because decrees are the result of the misery created by the law-makers. No government, however well-intentioned, can obtain food and life for all, with or without work. It can only prevent millions of people from eating and working and punish those who infringe those limitations and restrictions (called law and order). To make generous laws without granting the means to use them is to act in a contradictory way, to neutralise and prevent the realisation of 'good intentions'. Laws and 'good intentions' (or arrangements) are mutually destructive. Laws are incompatible with freedom, but they are necessary faced with the force majeure of statist economics.

    Hence so many shameful contradictions and abolition of laws 'to make freedom stronger' such as one even finds in a soviet state. Suppress or abolish the State and no law is of any use, and liberty and the economy generally will benefit from their disappearance.

   However, there cannot be any authorised or imposed communism in sexual relations. Sexual matters are part of individual freedom, as between the partners. In this case, you cannot train people up to partake of sexual pleasures without denying freedom and pleasure. Responsibility from the sexual viewpoint cannot either be made instantaneous by 'improving' or 'regularising' sexual freedom, a system which seems to arouse the enthusiasm of Comrade Eliézer Fournier. But blind admiration for Russian Soviet marriage laws is rooted in the capitalist habit of thinking (or rather not thinking) that the Bolsheviks are going too far. That can only please the bourgeois who are blind in sexual matters, who make no difference between liberty and libertinism and condemn both. -

M. ACHARYA

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(From RaHN Blogger). 

Some readers may be reminded of certain preoccupations and publications of the London 'Solidarity' group in the 1970s:

"Between 1920 and about 1933 the situation gradually regressed to the point where the sexual ideology of the leading groups in the USSR could no longer be distinguished from that of the leading groups in any conservative country." - M. Brinton, The Irrational in Politics (1970).