Record of a Friendship

The way how my own thoughts and publications have become under­
standable to others and are affecting them is a very peculiar one. I had
to learn that this knowledge about life and its laws cannot be conferred,
as you confer the knowledge of the technique of an injection. Somehow
everyone has to refind it himself amidst the varying life process. He
cannot learn it, he can read and understand what is written, but he
does not understand it really. There are very few only at this time who
have gone through our famous mill and have found themselves in the
reality that I have found first about 18 years ago. You know, for instance,
and they know too-and many others know it without being able to
formulate it-that real true work democracy is going to come. I would
not call it socialism because this word has been dishonored by politicians.
Why not call it "Work Democracy"? But we cannot bring it about; it
will be the task accomplished by those who will have to build up and to
secure it, that means: no political party and no special organization
apart from the work and the consumers organizations.
I have tried to work out some ideas and phantasies about a possible
outcome of this war into work democracy. But I would like to empha­
size, as I often did, that I do not have the ambition, and that I even hate
the idea of being looked upon or regarded as the one responsible for,
as you call it, the new socialism.
Now to your questions: You are quite right saying that the orgasm
reflex brings about the problem that so few partners can be found if
you are perfectly healthy. But just that was the point which made me
break through into the field of sociology and sex politics in 1927. It was
the fact that a sick world is fitted for sick human beings and not for
healthy ones; that healthy ones are lost in this world and very often
despised and condemned. Your suggestion about the difference in the
sexual structure in the adolescent and the grown-up is also correct. The
problem of women being in the army is very difficult. It is quite clear
that, as you write and everyone can observe, the army spoils the
character because of sexual starvation and the roughness of the
soldiers. Women in the army would settle the problem, but, on the other
hand, every militarist will tell you that women in the army could mean
a hampering of the most characteristic habit of the army and that is
automatic, mechanical discipline. Here again, the incapability of life to
be mechanized or organized hits against an institution in the mechanized
civilization which is based (and by necessity) upon stiff stomachs, re­
tracted behinds, high chests, rigid musculature.
The essence of all those things is a belief that the natural life process