Record of a Friendship

W.D. is an existing fact, and not a political program. Not being a
politician, I have no answer to the question as to how to clean the
natural W.D. from its irrational entanglements and political mess. As
to the ability of a socialistic regime to carry through this clean-up, I
have my well-founded doubts. Maybe that I am wrong, but experience
and consideration both leave no hope in regard to socialism, this word
understood in its everyday meaning. The only hope I see is a sudden,
rational upheaval of the greater part of the people who carry the
burden of work and social interrelations upon their shoulders. It is
interesting to note that it is just the socialist leader who is most averse
to such a turn of events.
In spite of all, I have the definite feeling that once the fact of natural
W. Democratic interrelationships is revealed and has entered the arena
of human thought, it will not disappear again and will possibly develop
its own course of logic. It is beyond me to feel responsible for this de­
velopment. But I may add that the organization of the existing working
groups of our Institute proves that a work-democratic orderly function­
ing, without politics and red tape, is possible.
I was impressed by your remarks about what the Summerhill School
means to the world and the way it is not mentioned by plagiarists.
People are stealing progressive ideas and revolutionary knowledge not
in order to carry them through and defend them. If that were the case,
they would gladly and with the humbleness of the decent worker
mention the origin of their information. If they do not do so, it is for
the sole reason that they take the raisins out of the cake, and leave the
dirty work and the dangerous statements to the pioneer, not caring
whether he or his work live or die. Thus the thief has all good hope to
survive any change of social structure, to sneak in with his irresponsible
thievery into any kind of job, in order to determine the course of
society backward, just in the reverse direction which you showed him,
i.e., forward. In that way he appears modern and revolutionary without
danger. The Russians now acknowledge the fact that it is the masses who
make Hitler and not vice versa, a fact which they fought like devils IS
years ago, on the basis of higher proletarian values. But in acknowledg­
ing this fact, finally, they leave out the main thing, namely the question
why the masses are Hitlerian. The fact that it is the rotten sex-economy
of the masses which renders them capable of submitting to every politi­
cal crook. Some psychoanalysts stole my principle of character-analysis
without mentioning me, because to mention me as the originator of the
character-analytic technique would mean to defend the orgasm theory,