The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German EditionBloch, Iwan
Philosophy
The Sexual Life of Our Time in Its Relations to Modern Civilization: Translated from the Sixth German Edition
Bloch, Iwan
Sex; Sexual ethics
Free love is simply love liberated from the dominion of the state and of
capital. It can, therefore, be realized only by an economic revolution,
which will put an end to the economic struggle for existence. Free love
means the independence of the sexual from the material life. =Economic
reform= is the only way to the higher love. This is the author’s
conviction. But he is not subject to any deceptive delusion that with
this all will become beautiful and good; with this all problems will be
solved, all incompleteness at an end.
“We do not,” Albert continues, “regard the province of the sexual life
in the society of the future as an Eden, wherein those individuals
best suited one to the other will come together with mathematical
certainty, to lead a cloudless existence. Just as to-day, there will
be unrequited love, uncertain search and endeavour, errors and
deceptions, misunderstandings, satiety, aberrations, and sorrows.
However great the material prosperity may be which mankind in the
future will enjoy, the life of feeling will always remain the source
of incalculable disturbances, and love will not be the rarest cause of
such disturbances; but still a large proportion of the existing causes
of pain can and must disappear.”
The indispensable preliminary to free love is the complete equality of
man and woman. This, however, can only be attained by means of
communism--that is to say, by that ordering of society in which property
and wages cease to exist, in which not only the means of production, but
also all the articles of consumption, are appropriated to the common
use, and woman will no longer possess a commercial value, as she does at
the present day.
Like Albert, Ladislaus Gumplowicz[199] also believes that free love can
only be realized in a collectivist community.
However important it is to draw attention to the economic point of view,
as was done before Albert and Gumplowicz by Bebel, in his celebrated
“Woman and Socialism” (thirty-fourth edition, Stuttgart, 1903), still,
it appears to me that the communistic solution is not the only possible
solution, and that free love can very well be associated with the
preservation of private property.[200]
While the progressive changes in the economic structure of society
powerfully influence sexual relationships and lay down the rules for
their existing forms, still, physiological individual factors play a
great part also in the matter. The first to insist on this fact were the
Englishman Carpenter and the Swedish writer Ellen Key.[201]
Edward Carpenter,[202] at one time a priest in the Anglican Church, in
his study of the question of free love, without ignoring the economic
factor, lays stress above all on the psychical factor, the inward
spiritual relationship between man and wife.
He writes (_op. cit._, p. 120):
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account