The New Left’s Sexual Revolution And Liberation From Moral Order
The New Left’s Sexual Revolution And Liberation From Moral Order
Whereas classical Marxism argued that capitalism oppresses the working class, the philosophers of the Frankfurt School, after combining Freudian hypotheses into their societal analysis, concluded that Western culture represses individuals.
With the work of Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, they postulated the concept of “sexual alienation” – understood as oppression through subjugation to moral values – to supplant the concept of “economic alienation” rooted in orthodox Marxist theories. Therefore, they believed that in addition to the political revolution that would overthrow capitalism, a cultural revolution would overthrow the (oppressive) mores.
Erich Fromm joined the Frankfurt School as their psychology expert in 1929. He greatly influenced the institute’s research agenda. Subsequently, in 1955, Herbert Marcuse published his bestseller “Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud” in which he called for the liberation of the “procreative Eros” (i.e. Eliminating the repressive sexual constraint to emancipate the humanities). Then, in 1956, Fromm planted the intellectual foundations of the sexual revolution in “The Art of Loving”.
During the Student Movements of the ’60s, Marcuse, the figure of authority for the new left, revived Fromm’s theories. He provided an academic justification for promiscuity. After abandoning the social (economic) for the societal (gender, sexuality, race etc), the dream of a Marxist revolution was supplanted by the dream of a hedonistic liberation.
And so, to succeed, all forms of restrictions, customs, and institutions that governed sexual relationships needed to be abolished. From the deconstruction of the cultural, contractual, or even moral obligations would supposedly emerge a magnificent world in which frustration, gender conflict, inequality, jealousy, and envy no longer exist. The utopia of sexual communism.
According to thinkers such as Marcuse, an unhindered sexuality is the secret of happiness, and the carnal repressions, embodied by the model of the bourgeois family, only lead to psychological pathology.
Correspondingly, the counterculture of the 1960s and the hippie movement blithely mocked the nuclear family deemed oppressive in the (sub) cultural media (films, songs, fashion, etc.) of the time. The traditional model was negatively stereotyped with the images of dominant, restrictive, reactionary fathers and schizophrenic, hysterical, anxious mothers.
In reality, the liberation from the supposed repressive familial unit promoted by the cultural elites has been disastrous for the masses, especially the working classes. It led to the destruction of marriage, an increased divorce rate, a rise in single-parent families, neglected children’s education, and an economic precariousness that fell more heavily on women.
The introduction of the contraceptive pill and the legalization of abortion were celebrated as an advancement for the emancipation of women from household duties, perceived as constituent functions of the patriarchy, and their rights to fulfill a career by delaying pregnancy.
In truth, women have been plunged into salaried employment mostly in the tertiary sector. They entered into competition with their male counterpart. The so-called liberation came to be in reality the subjection to the labor market.
Simultaneously, the traditional model of family business in which husband and wife work in cooperation in a natural division of tasks (e.g. bakery or restaurant where men handle the production, such as cooking, and women supervise bookkeeping responsibilities, oversee the register for instance) progressively disappeared in profit of an economical apex egalitarianism, in which men and women are interchangeable.
Similarly, egalitarian feminist ideologies promoted the idea that it is empowering for a woman to have sex like a man i.e. rampant promiscuity should be preferred over long-lasting monogamous relationships. Subsequently, sexual attraction became the driving force in the romance between genders. In the realm of seduction, physical appearances took more importance than work, intellectual, conversational abilities, culture, etc.
The monogamous marriage in the West was a strategy to “distribute” women more equally and contain hypergamy (i.e. the tendency observed among women to seek a partner superior sociologically, economically, educationally, or even physically).
Indeed, according to the Pareto Principle, 80% of women want to have sex with only the top 20% of men. For that reason, the sexual liberalism born from the sexual revolution accentuated the sexual competition which, similarly to economic liberalism, provoked an “extension of the domain of struggle” to paraphrase the French author Michel Houellebecq.
Therefore, the egalitarian utopia of sexual liberation has actually led to an increase in loneliness among the population, depression, infidelity, divorce, frustration, jealousy, violence, emotional chaos, and above all the destruction of the family. What is the incentive to marry when you can spend your life enjoying hedonistic pleasures? Why assume the duty of raising a child when it goes against flattering individualistic gratifications?
This liberalization of sexuality reaches its paroxysm with dating apps such as Tinder which accelerated the commodification of bodies and feelings. They also encouraged the quest for quantity over quality and the decline of commitment by fear of missing out.
Besides, the withdrawal of love and the reproductive function from copulation gave rise to the constant search for fulfilling new perversion, which turned sex into a transgressive performance, the satisfaction of narcissistic desires, depraved fantasies, and extreme fetishes.
And with the absence of norms and moral reasoning, nothing can be regarded as deviant or abnormal anymore. As such, the social stigma attached to sexual behavior considered reprehensible progressively disappeared and mutual consent became the only criterion governing the acceptability of such practices.
As an example, in the 60s and ’70s, postmodern intellectuals argued that pedophilia was nothing more but a sexual orientation, a “preference” vilified by the oppressive morals of the time and punishable by retrograde and patriarchal legislation. Therefore, activist groups such as the paedophile information exchange petitioned to change the law.
In the name of individual freedom, the taboos, the prohibitions imposed by religion, moral regulations, and common values necessary for social cohesion needed to be abolished. When all vices are not only treated with consideration but celebrated, the permissive and transgressive market inherent to neoliberal capitalism can deploy its full scope.
Lascivious advertisements promise to increase our sexual capital. Sex entered the realm of consumerism – you can buy it, you can sell it – with all its dreadful derivatives (surrogacy, human trafficking etc). Undeniably, each erotic kink corresponds to a service or good (pornography, toys, outfits, Onlyfans etc).
Satiating all our impulses was supposed to bring us happiness; however, hyper-consumption imposed itself as a means to indulge our compulsion and avoid frustration. The meaningless world born from the deconstruction of traditions and cultures, decency, and social conventions, did not allow the satisfaction of personal desires but, on the contrary, increased frustration.
The hedonistic paradise promoted by the new left – pleasure, short-term gratification, individualistic caprice – has atomized the society into millions of identical Homo consumericus libertarians seeking happiness via the liberation from the moral order, but only accomplishing their needs for realization and differentiation through materialism.
The notion of freedom, confused with emancipation from (oppressive) norms and social values, was narrowed down to the fulfillment of personal desires, which in turn was narrowed down to the consumption of manufactured goods.
The sexual revolution paved the way for the domination of neoliberal capitalism while the left, from being the protector of the productive classes, redefined itself as the enabler of a global multicultural and multi-gendered orgy.
 | A guest post by
|
You tie things together so well. Tinder is now running ads encouraging hookups and it is the man woefully wondering if the woman has snuck off. It is so grotesque. Camille Paglia said in an interview with Jordan Peterson, that it is as if they believe history only started with the printing press. I have come back to this statement again and again as it is truly profound. Neo-Marxists look at the world solely through the lense of western culture as if other cultures were irrelevant.