In an earlier post on the Nazis’ efforts to collectivize sex and family life, I quoted from Dr. Franz Hamburger’s address to the German Medical Profession.
As further evidence that National Socialists and Communist socialists are two variations on a common theme, here are some excerpts from Alexandra Kollontai’s Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations (1921).
Kollontai joined Lenin’s Bolshevik Party in 1915 and was part of the central committee of the Bolsheviks that authorized the insurrection in October of 1917. She was later the Soviet ambassador to various nations, including Norway, Mexico, and Sweden, and she was honored with a postage stamp (pictured at right).
As a good communist, Kollantai identifies the enemies as individualism and capitalism. Especially in capitalist societies, individualism encourages the free pursuit of one’s own values. This means that families are organized to satisfy self-interested needs and wants — pleasure, love, economic and psychological support, and so on. That is bad, Kollantai argues, because“the family teaches and instils egoism thus weakening the ties of the collective.”
In contrast, Kollantai declares, “The communist economy does away with the family.” Under communism, economic organization is collective, including the creation and development of human capital: “responsibility for the care of the children and their physical and spiritual education is assumed by the social collective.”
What of women in particular, as the primary producers of human capital? After a woman has given birth to a child, “she no longer belongs to herself, she is serving the collective, producing from her own flesh and blood a new social unit of labor.” Accordingly, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, “the law ought to emphasise the interest of the workers’ collective in maternity,” thereby regulating the woman’s reproductive habits — from the quantity and quality of her sexual intercourse, to her relationship to the biological father, to how she behaves while an expectant or nursing mother, and to the education of the children she produces.*
For more, read Kollontai’s full essay.
Again: communist “International Socialism” and fascist “National Socialism” are not opposed on fundamentals; they are variations on the same anti-individualist and anti-freedom themes.
Sources and notes: All quotations above are from Alexandra Kollontai, Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations, first published in Kommunistka, No. 12 (1921). Also in Alexandra Kollontai, Selected Writings (Allison & Busby, 1977), translated by Alix Holt. * Kollantai subscribes to some tenets of eugenics. To protect the collective interest, for example, “those with illnesses etc. that might be inherited should not have children.” Note also Wilhelm Reich‘s “Politicizing the Sexual Problems of Youth” (1932). Reich tried to integrate psychoanalysis and Marxism, arguing that one’s “sex life is not a private affair if it preoccupies you, and in the form in which it has existed hitherto, it interferes with the political struggle.”
Related: Kollontai’s intellectual master, Karl Marx, in the Philosophers, Explained series.
Wow! A postmodern feminist.
Was it not Sigmund Freud who originally attacked the family unit, and substituted the Oedipus complex for simple mother love? The concept of love was another biological event, although he adored his daughter Anna, that was fine. Similar programs of “mass marriages” or, illegitimacy pure and simple, were part of the Fascist programs, in this respect : Mussolini asked families to have more babies to strengthen the country and in Germany, Himmler created SS “stud farms” for the propagation of pure Aryan stock. Plans were made to integrate the Norse peoples and Iceland, where almost everyone was 100% Viking, was to be a veritable factory of beautiful folks. “Aryan” children were kidnapped from countries like Poland and resettled with “Aryan” families in the Reich. Two major homes, one in Norway and the other in Germany, were established so that illegitimate children born to errant German ladies could be raised according to National Socialism. One must note that these ideas were propagated by Himmler as part of his ill-informed view of genetics, and that Hitler later forbade the practice of illegitimacy and these stud farms, and Hitler always opposed abortion, save for German women raped by Russians, Jews, &c. Most of the extreme “Endlosung” emanated from Himmler (and Heydrich) and hatred in general was fanned by Goebbels, who was by his nature a “hater.” Hitler himself was a “Mommah’s boy” and kept a portrait of his (doubtless remarkable) mother by his bed all his life. David Irving’s book HITLER’S WAR fairly well establishes that Hitler spent virtually all his time running the military and in war strategy. His record on civil policy was mediocre, as he trusted old friends too far. Nonetheless, he was responsible for the policy of euthanasia for deformed and retarded people, but “eugenics” at that time was also practiced in the USA and most of the Western world. In antiquity, deformed or sickly children were exposed to die, but many were adopted secretly. The only two ancient cultures which raised ALL their children were the Teutons, and, ironically, the Israelites. A source of future friction? The Catholic Church opposed birth control and supported adoption (through nunneries). However, in WWII the war in Italy disclosed a hidden tunnel which connected a monastery with a nunnery. It was filled with baby skeletons.
Interesting difference between the Nazis and the Communist though. The Communist wanted to ban the family. The Nazis wanted to enshrine it. The Nazis seem to me to be ultra social Conservatives, but not really Christian ones. The Nazis, no matter what lip service they paid to Christianity, seemed to construct their own race religion. They rejected atheism but wanted the devotion and cohesiveness that religion can provide. I think ultimately they wanted to create a new Pagan religion that set up a race worship to replace Christianity. And they definitely would never have allowed female sexual liberation, abortion or contraceptives. Having Aryan babies was central to their worldview.
Yes, by pro-liberty standards both were anti-liberty. But the Nazi system at least recognized the value of family life and motherhood. In that sense it was recognizably human. The Communists on the other hand were attempting to create something totally outside the bounds of humanity. They were waging a war against family itself which is to wage a war against the human animal. I think that the Cultural Marxists today, i.e. the Left, still are waging a war against the family and motherhood. In other words, today’s liberals have the same evil inside them as the Communists of old.
Horrifying. A mother “…producing from her own flesh and blood a new social unit of labor.” I suggest a less cumbersome term for “a new social unit of labor” is “a new slave.”
From a purely practical point of view it’s worth to note the gross economic inefficiency of such units of social labor organized under the communist paradigm.
In terms of purpose and ends it carries the absurdity of Monty Python’s Kamikaze Scotsmen “who can jump off a five hundred foot cliff and then be buried!”
Collectivism: like a pro-forest advocate being anti-tree. When will society at large learn that a million zeros equals zero, not collective rights and happiness?
Your understanding of Kollontai in this article is not accurate. I believe that your claim that she had “anti-individualist and anti-freedom themes” completely ignores the ideals she had as a politician and working class feminist. Her autobiography makes it very clear that her work was done to free women from a chauvinistic world, therefore making her an important advocate of freeing women in Russian society. Communism, as she saw it, was her chance to provide this freedom. The communism that Stalin changed and manipulated, moved away from the original Marxists ideals as well as Kollontai’s work on empowering women in Russia.
Hi Rachel: Being opposed to some forms of authoritarianism (e.g., Czarism or traditional sexism) is not the same as being opposed to authoritarianism. Kollontai’s system clearly substitutes a new authoritarian system (a communist one).