Sex Under Communism
Tags: Socialism, Communism, Friedrich Engels, Sex, Sexuality

I’d like to broach a topic which I don’t see often talked about, which is sex under communism. Before I start though, I think it is important to detail why this specific topic. Like many I tend to spend a lot of time online, usually in communist circles on social media. If you are in these circles long enough you will eventually come across many silly discussions where many espouse wrong or ill-thought ideas. One of these has to do with relationships and sex work. It should be obvious that the sex-industry is one that is inherently exploitative. Obviously this kind of industry should not appear under socialism, yet many otherwise good comrades advocate the opposite and insist that like any other industry that it should be owned and controlled by the workers. This is absurd of course, but I think it provides a good jumping off point to examine what did actually happen under socialism.

Thankfully, Friedrich Engels already had some words to say about this in his book The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State. After exploring the history of marriage and the family, Engels arrives at the current era of civilization, which he says is characterized by “monogamy, supplemented by adultery and prostitution.” He explains that over time women are increasingly deprived of sexual freedom and that adultery and promiscuity by the man is considered to be only a small moral blemish, while in women it bears legal and social consequences, however this culture tends to degrade women less than men and actually degrades the whole male world.

“Monogamy,” he explains, “arose from the concentration of considerable wealth in the hands of single individuals and from the need to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man and of no other. For this purpose, the monogamy of the woman was required, not that of the man, so this monogamy of the woman did not in any way interfere with open or concealed polygamy on the part of the man. But by transforming by far the greater portion, at any rate, of permanent, heritable wealth — the means of production — into social property, the coming social revolution will reduce to a minimum all this anxiety about bequeathing and inheriting.”

He then speculates about whether or not monogamy will not disappear under socialism. “For with the transformation of the means of production into social property there will disappear also wage-labor, the proletariat, and therefore the necessity for a certain — statistically calculable — number of women to surrender themselves for money. Prostitution disappears; monogamy, instead of collapsing, at last becomes a reality — also for men… With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not. This removes all the anxiety about the “consequences,” which today is the most essential social — moral as well as economic — factor that prevents a girl from giving herself completely to the man she loves… Full freedom of marriage can therefore only be generally established when the abolition of capitalist production and of the property relations created by it has removed all the accompanying economic considerations which still exert such a powerful influence on the choice of a marriage partner. For then there is no other motive left except mutual inclination… But what will quite certainly disappear from monogamy are all the features stamped upon it through its origin in property relations; these are, in the first place, supremacy of the man, and, secondly, indissolubility… If only the marriage based on love is moral, then also only the marriage in which love continues… But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual — and that will be the end of it.”

The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State, was first published in 1884. It is important to remember that Engel’s approach to socialism was scientific in that he made an observation, gathered evidence and formed a hypothesis, and he was not a fortune-teller or a soothsayer. Since the publication of this book a number of Communist countries have risen and fallen, and we actually have the ability to explore how his hypothesis fared with the material reality. To keep things short, I’m going to draw mainly on the experience of the German Democratic Republic.

After WW2, West Germany women gave up their jobs to the men who came back from war and returned to the household and were taught how to be good housewives. By contrast, in East Germany few soldiers returned and so there was a smaller workforce which prompted women to join it. Men in East Germany were caricatured as being housebroken for having to take up an equal share of the housework.

In East Germany, sex education was discussed in depth on children’s TV. Public education helped to fill educational and moral gaps left by parents. The government actually supported premarital sex as long as it was healthy, and parents were told not to obstruct it or make it difficult. By contrast, in West Germany Sex-ed was extremely conservative.

In East Germany, the cost of living was low, making children not a financial burden. Women did not always choose to marry if they became pregnant. Women also had children at younger ages than West Germany, with the average age of childbearing was around 20. The government wanted to support stable and healthy families and so if marriage was not working out divorce was considered a perfectly viable and healthy option. Divorce costed almost nothing, was easier to do, and happened more frequently. Typically, all a woman had to say was that her husband was unbearable and that was it.

West Germany, immediately stigmatized birth control after it was invented and the women who took it were said to have low morals. Even the name of the pill was different. In West Germany it was called the Anti-baby pill and in East Germany it was called the Wanted Baby Pill, and was free of charge. East Germany also legalized abortion in 1972 after International Women’s Day. They blessed the new innovations in family planning on TV in order to dispel worries it would lead to a moral degradation. Young people also became more openly promiscuous before marrying.

In East Germany sex was talked about in the open frequently. Books and movies were made to tell men how to give women an orgasm. As a result of all this, women had double the amount of orgasms as their counterparts in West Germany.

East Germany banned pornography as well as prostitution. Despite this pornography still circulated in secret and it was characterized as sensual instead of exploitative. The people who did create and circulate pornography in East Germany generally had positive feelings about the experience. However, one of the curious byproducts of the ban on pornography and the elimination of capitalism was the unconscious creation of a culture of nudism, which began at home with the family and was accelerated by women into becoming a public phenomenon. Nudism was common in camping sights and beaches, and about 90% of people had some experience with it. This was attributed to people’s freedom with their bodies which wasn’t alienated by capitalism and the sex-industry.

So, what can we take away from all this? Like Engels said, women became economically independent and thus sexually independent. The monogamous relationship lasted only as long as both partners were willing and Men shared an equal responsibility in the household. There was also something new and unexpected in the creation of a nudist culture in the GDR, which could be an unreproduceable feature of the time and the place, but nonetheless came about. The invention of birth control also did wonders to expand women’s already significant sexual freedom under socialism. Interestingly, prostitution and the sex-industry disappeared, but not pornography. In the case of the latter, there was however no industry or enterprise built around it and was of a different character than in West Germany. Also, we can’t be one hundred percent sure that prostitution completely disappeared either. As Michael Parenti recalls from a trip to Moscow, he was told that there was no prostitution in the USSR. He said, “There may be no prostitution in your country, but there’s a hell of a lot of it in this hotel.” The woman he was speaking to responded, “Well, those women also have regular jobs during the day, I’d like you to know.” I think the conclusion we can draw from these peculiarities is that human beings are messy and imperfect. While it may be possible to destroy the sex-industry and the exploitation of people’s bodies, eliminating these behaviors and tendencies all together is a much tougher proposition. With the advancement of science, particularly in regards to photography, film and even digital art, this has potential to be a mainstay of any society. Erotica has been a facet of society since ancient times and it could very well stay, though in a vastly limited capacity and again, in a different manner and context. This is just my observation though and I could also very well be wrong.

In summary, what we can be sure will disappear under socialism are the patriarchal institutions and relationships that were formed by the concentration of capital and the dominion of class society.

For more information, I suggest you check out the documentary, “Do Communists have better sex?”

https://youtu.be/9cMccZG-dGc