Chapter 16
Chapter.Wilhelm Reich and thePolitics of Proletarian Sexuality
Sexuality
In sexual relations and sexual intercourse, the man is the bourgeois and the woman the
proletarian.Ottoand AliceRühle,SexualanalyseSince the October Revolution, the proletarian fantasy has been haunted by the
problem of sex: asasourceofcompetinginterests,adistraction from political
commitments,and athreat to the strength and unity of the workingclass. But
what if sexual desire could be seen not asaproblem butasolution to the prob-
lem of class consciousness?What if the promise of sexual fulfillment would be-
come inseparable from the fight foraclassless society?Thiswas preciselythe
political strategysuggested byWilhelm Reich (1897–1957), the controversialAus-
trian-bornpsychoanalyst,sex reformer,and communist activist.Enlisting the
Freudian theory of libidoinananalysis of class society,Reich formulatedhis
theories while workingasatrained analyst,sex educator,and political activist
in Vienna and, later,Berlin where he started the so-called Sex-Pol (or Sexpol)
movement.Against communist calls for discipline and self-control, he insisted
on the productive qualityofwhat he calledLust(lust), an all-encompassing
term that signifies desire, pleasure, and joy in theirwidest senses.Andagainst
the socialreformers’diagnosis of widespread sexual misery in the workingclass,
he promised the panacea of fullgenital health. Through the convergence of sex-
uality and politics in Sex-Pol, he insisted, proletarians could bereleased from
the double lack of sexual desire and classconsciousness. Moreover,lust,in
both the narrowly sexual sense that betraysReich’sbackground in psychoanal-
ysis and the expandedsense that attests to the influenceofLebensphilosophie(or
vitalism), could be turned intoadriving forcebehind the largerproject of revo-
lution.
Reich’scalls foraliberated proletarian sexualityand hisgendered theories
of sexual and politicalrepression draw attentiontoafrequentlyneglected aspect
in the making of the proletarian dream and are bound to increaseawareness of
its libidinal sources, including through the project of sociosexual liberation that
accounts for the later reception of his writingsinthe United Statesand Western
Europe. The aboveepigraph by Otto and AliceRühle, two influentialWeimarsex
activists, confirms the pervasive influenceofMarxist theory and socialist praxis
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110550863-020