Marxist political program. He proposed that the separate sexual organizations should form
a united front with cultural representatives from the German Communist Party. The
Communist leadership agreed to the setting up of such an organization; it was called the
German Association for Proletarian Sex-Politics (GAPSP), and Reich became one of its
directors.
The executive body of the World League for Sexual Reform rejected Reich’s pro-
posal as “too communistic.” But many of the individual organizations found his sex-politi-
cal program very attractive. Representatives of eight organizations representing some 20,000
people attended the first Congress of the GAPSP, which was held in Dusseldorf in the fall
of 1931. There Reich presented a seven-point program, proposing^6 :
- Free distribution of contraceptives to those who could not obtain them through
normal channels; massive propaganda for birth control. - Abolition of laws against abortion. Provision for free abortions at public clinics;
financial and medical safeguards for pregnant and nursing mothers. - Abolition of any legal distinctions between the married and the unmarried.
Freedom of divorce. Elimination of prostitution through economic and sex-eco-
nomic changes to eradicate its causes. - Elimination of venereal diseases by full sexual education.
- Avoidance of neuroses and sexual problems by a life-affirmative education.
Study of principles of sexual pedagogy. Establishment of therapeutic clinics. - Training of doctors, teachers, social workers, and so on, in all relevant matters of
sexual hygiene. - Treatment rather than punishment for sexual offenses. Protection of children
and adolescents against adult seduction.
Reich noted that the Soviet Union had made considerable strides in implementing
such a program,although he did not express his uneasiness about certain unwelcome
changes in their progressive position. Rather, he concentrated on the incompatibility, in his
view, of progressive sexual legislation and capitalism.
Representatives of the organizations at the Congress joined Reich’s Association,
and many members of other sex reform organizations were enthusiastic about his efforts.
Branches ofGAPSP were formed in Stettin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Charlottenburg; within
a short time, 40,000 members were affiliated. Reich was soon traveling extensively through-
out the country, meeting with groups and helping to set up clinics.
Reich’s furious activity was in part stimulated by the growing threat of Nazism. It
was already late in 1931; he was appalled that so many on the left still tended to underesti-
mate the appeal of Hitler and the Nazis and to dismiss Nazism as a passing aberration. Few
studied carefully what Hitler was saying or why so many Germans were taken in by his prop-
aganda.Reich took Hitler very seriously as a mass psychologist.
Reich’s analysis of Hitler’s propaganda and why the average German was receptive
13 : The Sex-political Furor: 1930-1934 157