The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-06-09
An Apology for Sex Anarchism
Disguised as Marxism
BY H. NJ. WICKs.
Y F. CALvERTON's private pu

" F. CALVERTON'S private publ
- cation, "The Modern Quarterly"
(June-September, 1927 carries an
article labelled "The Sexual Revolu-
ton" by an individual writing under
the pseudonym "John Darmstadt."
Resorting to a most shameless distor-
ton Of Marxism the article is a low
petty bourgeois apology for sex
anarchism and reeks with hatred
against all genuine revolutionists and
Marxists. The author of the article
reserves for The DAILY WORKER
and its staff some of his choicest bits
of crude satire. According to the
Modern Quarterly" we never treat
the subject of sex seriously Outside
the reviews of books or plays" and
we can hardly speak of it at all with
out a sheer or smirk."
Otherwise" says our critic, "the
revolutionary proletarian DAILY
WORKER keeps it's columns as sweet
and clean for its young and tender
revolutionary readers as the Sunday
School Times"
THE revolutionary politicians" las
we are disdainfully called) follows
along in rather poor and servile imi-
tation the modes of treatment pre-
vailing in modern journalism, while
the real revolutionary proletarian las
distinguished from us) 'is no doc
trinaire fanatic, trying to live and
force others to live, Puritan-fashion
by rules and regulations; he is strug-
Cling to break away from those by
which he has been bound-and find
new ways Of living. He fights
to express his life" Emphasis in
Originally
The revolutionary politicians" are
scorned because they "cannot under
take anything so wild and impractical
as would hasten the breakup Of the
disintegrating bourgeois family; all
they want is to take over the day
factory and turn out the boss-noth-
ing else matters. Take over one-half
the works; leave the other half in con-
troll of the enemy!"
What sublime erudition! What I'M
surpassed scholarship and historical
perception! What matchless Marx
ism! Surely before that last burst of
profundity we stand appalled-speech-
less! Blow after blow falls upon our
unrepentant heads. But the final Gull
minating blast comes when we are adj
monished to Read the early socialist
revolutionary announcements on the
family and sex and compare the pres
ent aims and practices"
4 ONG before we ever dreamed that
IL human ingenuity could devise such
miserable apologies for social analy-
sis as Mr.. Calverton's Modern Quar-
terly," we took the pains to familiar
ize ourselves with all the early land
late) socialist pronouncements upon
the subject and we defy the editor or
any Of the contributors or admirers
of that magazine to point to one soli-
tary writer of any consequence in the
whole history of the revolutionary
movement that ever approached the
question of the family and sex in any
manner other than that expressed in
the columns of The DAILY WORK
Err.
This ridiculous screed against us
on the subject of sex is a part and
parcel of that same confusion that
imagines it is possible for the work
ing class to begin building within the
she'll of the old society the structure
of the new. The principal theoretical
difference between the anarcho-syndi-
calist and the Marxist is the fact that
the former imagines it is possible to
begin now, under capitalism, to build
the new society, while we hold that
only after we have raised the work
ing class to the popsition of ruling
class through revolution and estab-
lished our own form Of state can we
begin to build the new society.
But then the type of mind that is
capable of asserting that if we take
over the factories and do not destroy
the homogeneous family at the same
time we will face defeat, as does our
critic on page 144 of the Modern
Quarterly" cannot be expected to
comprehend Marxism. And certainly
one is no Marxist who claims that il
the working class controlled industry
and the homogeneous family still con-
tinued to exist it would leave one
half "of the works in control of the