ed in the structure of patriarchal societies. Making these insightsavailableto
class analysis allows Reich to proposeamodel of sexual economic self-regula-
tion that,incontrasttothe moral prohibitions inrepressive societies, develops
its ethical standards withaview towardthe sociosexual health of the collective.
Of course, the proposed integration of natureand culture, and of individual and
society,into another kind of human history whose ultimategoal nonetheless re-
mains communism further highlights the unresolvabletensions between libera-
tionist andauthoritariantendencies in Reich’sthought that would become only
more pronounced duringhis life and work in theUnited States.
No passagecaptures his belief in communist revolution and his bioenergetic
view of life better than the conclusion ofWasist Klassenbewußtsein?(1934,What
is ClassConsciousness?),ashort treatise thatcalls on the workers to“learn not
how to reject the personal but to politicize it.”²⁵Their most powerful weapons
against the forces of politicalreaction, Reich insists once more,are the individ-
ual pursuit of happiness and the collective demand for satisfaction of theirneeds
and desires.Given the centralityofthe personal and political to his communist
and postcommunist commitments,the final list of demands, offered in the spirit
of antifascism, but alreadymoving towardthe languageofpsychotherapy,de-
serves to be quoted at length:
The class consciousness of the masses is not knowledge of the historical and economic
laws thatgovern the life of human beings,but it is:- knowledge of one’sown vital needs in all areas;
- knowledge of the means and possibilities of satisfyingthem;
- knowledge of the obstacles thatasocial order based on privateproperty puts in the way
of their satisfaction; - knowledge of one’sown inhibitions and anxieties that prevent one from understanding
the necessities of one’slife; [...] - knowledge that individuals unified as the masses make an invincible forceagainst the
power of the oppressors.²⁶
Removed from the organizational and ideological frameworks that had inspired
and sustainedSex-Polduring theWeimaryears, Reich’semancipatory project in
exile became entirelyfocused on the individual, with theradicalizing forceof
lust now limitedto the therapeutic project of self-discovery within capitalist so-
ciety.Without the mutuallyconstitutive analysis of political and sexual economy,
Wilhelm Reich,“Reformingthe Labor Movement,”inSex-PolEssays: 1929– 1934 ,ed. Lee
Baxandall, intro.Bertell Ollmann, trans. AnnaBostock (NewYork: Random House, 1972), 367.
Reich,Wasist Klassenbewußtsein?,65. Translated into English as“What is Class Conscious-
ness?,”inSex-PolEssays,275–358.
298 Chapter16