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ECONOMICS AND SEX-ECONOMYPeter Nasselstein
(...) the anticapitalist as well as the antisexual attitudes of the masses (...). Wilhelm Reich (20:183) Money is that property that can be exchanged most easily by far. It represents a "universal key" with which all available possibilities for the satisfaction of needs can be opened; therefore everyone wants to have it. In Hans Hass and Energetic Functionalism those problems are discussed that are a concomitant of the "supernormal key stimulus," to use an ethological term. According to Hass, and also to the political economist Werner Sombart, one has to differentiate between two different kinds of luxury. The quantitative luxury is "waste" of goods while qualitative luxury comprises the use of better goods (27:85). The first destroys this planet slowly but surely, the latter is compatible with limited environmental resources. This essay is concerned with a more immediate sex-economic point of view: In sexuality (with its extremely strong "key stimuli") there is saturation (satisfaction, orgastic potency). If the money would be bound to a substance, e.g., gold, there would be accordingly a (more or less) fixed mass of the commodity money ("commodity money"), of which in competition one even theoretically can gain only a limited part because one cannot eat gold in the end. This economics of "saturation" is abrogated when new "symbolic money" flows in constantly "from nowhere." The privileged ones, i.e., those to whom it flows without having to furnish a return, become insatiable actually, and those who are on the fringes have to cope with a constantly growing money supply. The money literally runs through their hands like water. For both groups this already "supernormal" key stimulus becomes so powerful that all barriers are torn. "Saturation" is impossible; money and consumption become the only purpose in life. An economy which is based on symbolic money is literally armoured, i.e., it cannot (or rather is not allowed to) regulate itself in a central area any longer since it is subjected to a socialist planning bureaucracy ("management of the money supply"). While in the course of the development of capitalism all other goods were more and more freed from the oppressive obligation of guilds and state that property, of all properties, which makes this "free trade of goods" possible in the first place, was put in chains ever more, until it finally became "legal tender." When "commodity money," valid world-wide and grown work-democratically, was replaced by a national, nationally managed coercive money ("symbolic money"), in the centre of capitalism could spread (national-) socialist mismanagement and Mafia-like nepotism, undermining the whole of the economic process.
1. The "Sex-economy" of CapitalismSince Darwin we know that nearly everything in the animal kingdom is about sexuality. With humans this is brought to a head because here sexuality has emancipated itself from reproduction (see Biological Development from an Orgonomic Point of View). Sexuality and economics each are direct expressions of cosmic superimposition - and should therefore both be governed by it: "genitality" and "work democracy." The two central areas of human life are throughout and in every way dependent on each other. That applies not only to the vitally necessary luxury demand but all the more to the basic demand. The capitalistic "world of commodities" is a world of Eros; consumption and sexuality are functionally identical; they constitute the foundation of the evolved society.
a. Orgonotic Contact and Superimposition"Social armouring," i.e., "saharasia" (7), runs parallel within both the areas of economics and sex-economy. Think of the separation of the sexes in Islamic countries which makes a "marriage market" impossible. (One marries almost exclusively within the extended family.) It is no coincidence that this extremely disturbed sex-economy corresponds to a down-lying economy (even the oil billions are squandered senselessly). In the evolved industrial nations of the West social armouring of sexual energy has its economic counterpart in all the medieval, pre-capitalist, corporate institutions, originating from Saharasia, which make everyday life so complicated. Among these belong the bureaucracies, political representatives, trade unions, and trade corporations, politically correct "sharia laws" of gender separation and against "sexual molestation at the working place," a "regulating" and "redistributing," recently even "ecological," tax system and, not least, an arbitrarily specified "symbolic money," which did not emerge within the market but was forced upon it. Instead of supporting the functioning of the market these "Saharasian" institutions separate producers and consumers and prevent a satisfying "superimposition." Thus, similar to the field of sexuality, also in the area of economy direct bioenergetic contact is obstructed. According to Reich (free) superimposition could become "a new foundation to a new social setup" (22:69): a work-democratic one, which means a society based on pleasure. The superimposition function, which is expressed both in sex-life ("division of sex ") and in the "working group" (division of labour, "capital and work"), is identical to the function of creation that leads in the first case (sometimes) to the production of new humans, in the second case to the production of goods (see Orgonometry 1. Chapter).
b. The Economics of the Satisfaction of NeedsWithout the goods, which emerge from the division of labour by way of superimposition (e.g., accommodations that create a protected refuge, making surrender feasible), genitality would be hardly conceivable. Only human civilization provides leisure and security for us and, thus, makes the genital embrace possible while most other animals must keep this vulnerable phase extremely short since turning away attention from the external world would be lethal to them. Sexuality (or rather genitality) and civilization (and this means work) are therefore not incompatible but rather dependent on each other.(1) Apart from vitally necessary basic needs, which create the conditions for a functioning sexuality, work provides also for the satisfaction of the luxury needs that are a direct by-product of sexuality. One could even say that capitalism is an "erotic culture" almost completely. Therefore it corresponds to the bioenergetic basic nature of work because "Work originates with bioenergetic tension, which the organism experiences as feelings of longing, desire, or discomfort; physical work activity follows, and, finally, contact is established with the work product, which produces relaxation of tension felt as pleasurable gratification" (2). So, at last, the orgasm function (tension - charge - discharge - relaxation) is directly and indirectly the central pivot of the capitalistic system.
c. Value and EroticismThe direct link between and orgasm function and capitalist economy becomes evident in the problem of the value of goods, in particular. By believing that "value" is a characteristic of the goods quantitatively measurable in units of work, prices(2) or any other objective scale the mechanistical economists have, according to Curtis Barnes in The Journal of Orgonomy, committed a "biological miscalculation": "one still encounters statements, such as 'one horse is worth ten sheep,' that ignore the fact that what is being discussed is differing human feelings rather than horses and sheep (...) It is hard to imagine any exchange taking place unless the two people had different feelings about the objects exchanged. The items are not only valued differently, but such value is living and changeable; it is an emotional expression in people and their relationships, something that no examination or measurement of the work products can explain" (2). Value is not inside the goods in form of a mysterious "value-lending substance" (Marx), which we could measure somehow objectively, but results literally only from our "e-valuation." "Value" is somewhat like "eroticism": "I fell in love with this handbag. I must have it!" Also Malinowski, to whom Reich referred to again and again, states in his investigation of the "primal work-democratic" economics of the Trobriand Islanders that value arises from emotions surrounding those things "that by satisfaction of human needs are able to arouse feelings. The value of manufactured commodities also has to be explained by the emotional nature of humans (...)" (17:213). Already F.A. Lange, a further crucial influence on Reich's functionalism, had long before argued against the value theory of mechanistic economists: "There is no question that economic value develops from a number of physical conditions, among which work plays an outstanding role. Nevertheless, value is not proportional to work. The remaining circumstances, like, in particular, the need, are not only added outwardly in order to determine the result, as, e.g., wind and weather determine the speed of the ship, rather they necessarily belong to the process so that value develops, at all. Likewise the total condition of consciousness belongs to it, too, so that a stimulus becomes feeling, at all. Therefore there is no law of 'preservation of value' which would correspond, for instance, to the physical law of the preservation of work" (13:841f).
d. The "Fetish Nature of Goods"About the same time, Lange was writing this down, Marx did exactly that: he formulated an objective law of the "preservation of value" while the subjective bond to the object of desire he denounced as "fetishism" (see 5:305). This denunciation was full of racist, moralising, anti-sexual undertones for in Marx' times the term "fetish" marked the "primitive," the uncivilized. It has approximately the same emotional meaning when, today, Muslims denounce the western capitalistic world as "idolatrous." To this story of debasement of the "human animal"(3) also belong Alfred Binet who, in 1887, created the term "sexual fetishism" which latter should play a central role in Freud's theories (5:306). It is only logical that the term "fetish" was used when "Freudo-Marxist" criticized Reich with surrealist titles like "Der heilige Wilhelm Reich und sein Fetisch Genitalität" (25) ["The Holy Wilhelm Reich and his Fetish Genitality"]). It is no accident that the political economic theories of the Marxists remind one in such an astonishing way of the sado-masochist world of thought of the Freudians (and today's sexologists) who want to free us from the "tyranny of genitality." For example, Trotsky speaks of wanting "to eliminate with the help of the socialist organization the blind elementary spontaneity from economic conditions" (6:256). In the same place Trotsky demands, in the spirit of "Enlightenment," in a certain harmony with Freud, and in the crazy way typical of Trotsky, to bring autonomous bodily functions under conscious control. Socialism as "culture of yoga," determining all realms of life (see Blue Fascism). This whole anti-capitalistic discourse is deeply reactionary, drive- and life-inimical. Look how much value "fetishist" primitive peoples like the Trobriand islanders attach to clothes, decoration, and beautiful bodies. For them even nutrition has hardly anything to do with conscious preservation of the body but is nothing but appetite. According to Malinowski the Trobriand islanders are only vaguely aware of the nourishing value of meals. They know that the absence of food means hunger emergency which they fear but the most important meaning of the meal lies in the fact that it is pleasurable. A pleasure increased by delicacies (16:51). In other words: nutrition belongs, like any other luxury, to sexuality, i.e., the striving for pleasure. These "fetishist" desires for luxury are, according to Hans Hass, anything else than mere subjective "super structure," which the allegedly objective "iron law of value" only masks, but quite to the contrary the actual drive of the second half of evolution: what Hass called "human energon construction." As described in Hans Hass and Energetic Functionalism there are three kinds of "energons": first of all the single-celled organisms, secondly the multi-cellular organisms, which together determined the first half of the evolution, and thirdly the "hypercell organisms" ("professional entities" and business organisations). The sun is the energy source of plants and indirectly also of herbivores or even predators. In the second half of the evolution carried by the hyper-cell organisms the individual energon lives of the need, in particular the luxury need, of the other energons. If the luxury desires would expire, "then the gigantic energon construction created by humans would crumble like a house of cards" (10:221). Socialism is like the going cold of the sun! It represents death while capitalism, which was generated by luxury need, represents the apotheosis of the development of the energons. It is the seal of cosmic evolution, the end of history. (In the following sections it is shown that capitalism does not equal "capitalism"!)
2. Marxism, a Life-inimical Ideology of SaharasiaReich in his economic thinking was crucially influenced by Karl Marx. Yet, at the end Reich ascribed also to Marx what he called in 1943 "the biological miscalculation in the human struggle for freedom"; Reich concretely observes in Marx a "lack of comprehension of man's biological roots and the fact that he is governed by his instincts" (21:61); but after he points out this crucial gap with Marx, Reich equates Marx' concept of "living work-power" in a hardly comprehensible way with "what orgone biophysics refers to as the 'work function of biological energy.'" How unreasonable that is becomes evident when one considers the fact that Marx quasi "de-fetishized" economic dynamics, the exchange between humans, i.e., divested it of all emotional content. This was accompanied with an extremely mechanistic approach, which was at the same time extremely mystical, whereby Marxism proves to be a "Saharasian" ideology thoroughly.
a. Marx' Criticism of CapitalismMarx' Capital one can summarize in a few sentences: Everything turns around time running off purely mechanical. Trade does not create value since the "working hours" coagulated in one item is exchanged against the same amount of "working hours" coagulated in another item. Nothing is gained. In the socialism of the future work time is exchanged against work time directly, i.e., without "veiling" by the world of goods. The present capitalistic fetishism of goods veils the exploitation which is an inseparable part of capitalism because also the barter good human labour (e.g., 4 work hours) is accordingly exchanged against a remuneration (corresponding to the value of 4 work hours). With his wages the worker can maintain his working power. A trade like any other trade with the exception that the worker works longer (e.g., twice as long, that is 8 hours). The difference ("surplus value") pockets the capitalist. Why else he should employ the worker? Already with this one question the entire Marx theory collapses because why it should come to any economic exchange (trade), at all, if trade is not profitable ("surplus value")? It is simply not worthwhile to deal with Marx' unworldly and extremely mechanistic theory. Of interest is only the fact that Marx' "political economy," despite all references to the "living working power," contradicts Reich's basic approach in any regard.
b. The Fundamentally Mechanistic Nature of MarxismLike hardly any other Marx separated work from biology of the human animal and its "natural biological work democracy." He "de-biologized" and then reduced them to the level of mere machine activity ("work hour"). Marx represented a fundamentally different tradition of thought than Reich, i.e., the "geometrization of man," of which already LaMettrie had warned at the height of the so-called "Enlightenment" (11). This line of reasoning critical of materialism can be traced up to Henri Bergson whose philosophy had influenced the young Reich heavily. Bergson turned against the mechanistic "measurement" of man, against restricting him to the machine point of view, against what one could call "de-qualification." For the mechanist, e.g., only the rigid, objective period of time (quantity) counts in which one performs a work like a machine but not how one performs it (quality).(4) So when Reich points particularly to the living nature of work he cannot refer to Marx' work value theory. And what is about the "value-determining" influx of the work into the product? Werner Becker, an expert of idealistic and materialistic dialectics, argues that Marx, of all, cannot possibly speak of work "materializing" or "coagulates" into the product, as long as he makes the work time the basis of the measurement of value, for "time passes and disappears non-repeatable in the working process as in any other process in this world. In other words: The period of time needed to manufacture an item does not 'materialize' in that item, for sure" (3).
c. Neo-ScholasticsMarx tries to expose capitalism as a kind of "religion." As already suggested, according to Marx, only in a higher stage of development of economics, that means in socialism, the world is again put from the head on the feet again, i.e., the work value is distributed, as it were, purely without being up to mischief within the allegedly mystical "world of goods." In Capital Marx argues that work time in a socialist society would play a "double role": "Its distribution, planned by society (!), regulates the correct proportion of the different work functions to the different needs. On the other hand the work time serves also as measure of the individual portion of the producer of the common work and, therefore, of the part of the common product the individual is allowed to consume" (18:57f). With that, naturally, the abolishment of money goes hand in hand which makes the capitalistic "fetishism possible," in the first place. He argues like a Christian missionary who wants to free the primitives from their animist delusion and lift them to a higher stage of development by bringing them to the realization that the world is controlled by abstract, hidden laws. (One is reminded of the manner of the typical left-wing intellectual who want to "Enlighten" us, whom we live in a "context of delusion"!) Marx' value-determining "average social abstract general standardized homogeneous total work" is a theological construct he interprets into the "primitive" world of the goods market and wants to force upon it "in a revolutionary manner." And is the socialist utopia, propagated by him, more than a joyless medieval economics of monasteries? Marx is a representative of scholastics, indeed. His work value theory can be traced over Adam Smith down to Aristotle. The only original about it is that Marx, the unworldly ideologist, carried it to the outermost extreme and made in such a way out of an useful rule of thumb ("The more work invested on a good, the more valuable it is.") an absurd dogma. Becker criticizes that Marx work value theory postulates a "metaphysical reality" beyond the world of goods, "empirically as little presentable as, for instance, the Christian God. It is a pure product of faith" (4). The Aristotelian sources of the work value theory are identical with those of the Catholic "dogma of trans-substantiation" according to which bread and wine transform into body and blood of Christ by the benediction of the priest, i.e., change their nature while no difference is recognisable from the outside. In the consecrated wafer Christ is present in the same mysterious way as the "value-determining social work time" is present in the commodity.
d. PogromsEach form of mysticism has a sadistic dark side, Marx' work value theory, too. Marx speaks of a "value-forming substance" which lends the exchange value to the goods. A process, however, not seen through by the masses who are dazzled by the goods world. Like animistic savages they remain sticking to the material exterior and do not realize that on the market their own blood is sold off, i.e., the surplus value pressed out of them by the capitalists. Here the picture of a kind of "vampire" (the capitalist) becomes apparent who "pumps" the "value-forming substance" out of the producers (the workers), as Marx expresses it (MEW 25.829 quoted after 5:289), and then sells off the blood of the workers recklessly. Reich himself points to the ritual murder legends and to the image of the Jew who circumcises infants. "Only a person desiring to steal all pleasure for himself (especially sexual pleasure) could engage in such practices. Thus Jews, having castrated the men, proceed to rob the Aryans of their women. Jews are always taking something away. Since, in addition, they suffered the misfortune of having to practice trade, due to previous persecutions, they are robbers of money. Carried just one step further, they become the prototype of the 'capitalist.' Thus, through highly skillfull use of the sexual fear of the 'kosher butcher,' the entire emotional mass hatred for usurers, in other words 'capitalists,' can be transferred onto the Jews. The Jews become the object of both socialistic hatred of capitalists and ingrained sexual anxiety" (21:166f). With that Reich wanted to describe the thinking of National Socialism but rather hit upon the core of Marxism. Didn't Reich know Marx' writing On the Jewish Question where Marx had equated capitalism and Judaism?(5) Reich attached always great importance to the fact that Marx never played with the hate against capitalists. It was so important to him that he placed a corresponding Marx quotation from the preface of Capital above his essay "The Living Productive Power, 'Work-Power' of Karl Marx" (21:48). Reich considered "red fascism" almost defined by the fact that the emotional plague, in shape of Marxist politicians, had linked Marx' (allegedly scientific) value theory to a resentment against the capitalist class (21:49). Hadn't Reich registered that Marx at the end of the same book portrays the capitalist as inhuman vampire? And in this connection does speak about the "drive structure" of man, indeed: "The expropriation of the direct producers (proletarians) is achieved with ruthless vandalism and under the impulse of the most infamous, dirtiest, petty spiteful passions" (MEW 23.790 quoted after 15:30, emphases added). Did Reich occupy himself with Marx or was he taken in by the "humanist" and communist propaganda? (see 14). Otherwise Reich would have had noted Marx' hate of the capitalist (which was inseparably linked with Marx' well-known burning hate of the Jew)! For example a contemporary witness remembered "the cutting, sneering, I would like to say, spitting tone," when Marx uttered the word "bourgeois" (26:144). Obviously Reich did not want to see that from the outset it was all about the extermination of the capitalist class, about lynching, and naked terror. For example Marx wrote in 1856: "In the Middle Ages there was a secret court in Germany, called Vehmgericht. It existed in order to avenge the atrocities of the ruling class. When there was a house marked with a red cross one knew that the owner was condemned by the Vehmgericht. All houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross. History is the judge – its executor is the proletarian" (quoted after 15:320). Marxism is something like "neo-scholastics" inclusive of the pertinent pogroms against the Jews, i.e., the revenge of Saharasia against that institution which endangered and still endangers Saharasia like nothing else: the "dastardly," according to Marx and Hitler, "Jewish" capitalism in general and the (goods-) money in special.
3. The Overcoming of Saharasia by CapitalismFrom the point of view of sex-economy and the Saharasia theory Werner Sombart's book Love, Luxury and Capitalism (27), which appeared for the first time 1913 under the title Luxury and Capitalism dictated by the publishing house (second edition 1922), is perhaps the most important paper on economics ever published. Sombart traces capitalism back to "luxury" (which he defines as that expenditure "going beyond the essentials" [27:85]) and then luxury further back to sexuality. Capitalism is a function of, as Sombart expresses it, "fundamental and radical" emancipation of sexuality – which was simultaneously emancipation from pleasure-inimical Saharasia (as illustration think of the Islamic "alternative culture" in our cities). Although capitalism was an "artificial" product of the rule of the princes it set free work democracy. It was a "revolution from above" negatively expressed by the picture of the respective ruler impressed on the work-democratic goods money which, thus, became so slowly but surely destructive symbolic money.
a. The "Decline in Moral Standards"Sombart sets out that all personal luxury arises from a purely sensuous joy in consumption. That which stimulates our senses "is in an ever more perfect way manifested in customs of any kind. These customs constitute expenditure of luxury. All desire for refinement and increase of the means of sensory stimuli has, however, its foundation in our sex life: Sensuous pleasure and eroticism are, in the final analysis, one and the same. So that, in the large majority of all cases, the first momentum to some display of luxury is certainly to be attributed to the workings of some conscious or unconscious feeling of love. Therefore everywhere where wealth is developing and where love-life unfolds naturally and free (or impudently) also luxury prevails" (27:86). Luxury is "unrestrained" not only in the sexual but also in the egoistic sense. About this Sombart writes with an undertone loaded with resentment: "Since the individual had pulled himself out of the community, which was outlasting him, his life span becomes the yardstick of his enjoyment. The single human being wants to experience as himself as much as possible of the changing times. Even a king becomes too much himself: he wants to inhabit the palace himself that he begins to build. And as the rule of this world turned into the hands of the female the speed, in which the means were brought for the satisfaction of the luxury need, was accelerated again. The female cannot wait. The man fallen in love, however, cannot wait at all. What a change in the way of life" (27:120f). (One is reminded of the "post-modern" discussion about the "acceleration of life"!)
b. Capitalism Against SaharasiaThe "national socialist" Sombart does not have anything to do with "sex-economy." To us he is of interest only in his capacity as an important historian of economics and even this only regarding his remarks about luxury, which in his complete work (where he formulated many different theories of capitalism) has a rather peripheral position. With the conclusions, which we draw from the material presented by him, he would not have agreed for sure: he advocated an almost opposite opinion. Nevertheless, Sombart's economic considerations in Love, Luxury and Capitalism have a sex-economic core: "I could not say," Sombart writes, "which event for the entire way of life of the old and new society would have been more important than the transformations which the relationship of the sexes toward each other went through from the Middle Ages to the time of Rococo. The understanding for the genesis of modern capitalism in particular is closely connected to a correct appreciation of those fundamental and radical changes of this most important matter" (27:65). According to Sombart capitalism could develop only where Eros freed itself from the stranglehold of Saharasia. Naturally Sombart does not use these words but, nevertheless, his book looks like a special investigation within the framework of the Saharasia theory. That becomes clear in particular when Sombart presents the humanist Lorenzo Valla (1405-1457) whose outlook on life (according to the quotations presented by Sombart) reminds one of the LSR project and, especially, of LaMettrie.(6) Valla was, according to Sombart, one of the first who lent expression to the "carnal" ideology of pleasure which gave birth to capitalism. Sombart quotes from Valla's Dialogue on Pleasure of 1431: "Is there anything sweeter, more delightful and lovable than a beautiful face? Also the entrance to heaven cannot look lovelier, for sure." Valla is, according to Sombart, indignant that women do not display their most beautiful parts of the body naked. Valla: "Love is nothing but pleasure; like I love wine, game, science, I love women, too; that means: I am amused by wine, game, science, and women. Pleasure is, however, the meaning of life: one does not enjoy only because of some purpose behind it: pleasure is the purpose itself" (27:68). According to Sombart's theory the condition of the development of capitalism is that marriage and love have very little to do with one another but that the latter can unfold within its own realm which in the future became the stronghold of luxury, the wellspring of the striving for luxury. Lorenzo Valla is, according to Sombart, one of the first who, from his natural view of love, drew the conclusion and condemned "morality" from the relationship of the sexes. "It is of no interest, at all," Valla says, "whether the woman has intercourse with the husband or the lover." If two want to love each other this is nobody else business: "If the woman pleases me and I please the woman why you try to disturb by stepping between us?" (27:72). Sombart's Love, Luxury and Capitalism is of so extreme importance because it, among other things by its reference to the proto-LSRian Valla, makes clear that capitalism developed out of the overcoming of Saharasia! By referring to Max Weber one could object something Sombart emphasizes, too: that "the love-life of the bourgeois fundamentally developed in the opposite direction as that of the gentleman" and that this spirit of bourgeois asceticism at the end gave birth to the capitalistic entrepreneur (27:65). Here, in the bourgeois sphere, where love-life atrophied, wealth "does not lead to spending but only to the collection of goods: thus to the amassment of goods" (27:86). But the "dissolute life" of the upper classes was finally, nevertheless, always model for all other layers of society and, meanwhile, has spread to practically the entire society. (7) Capitalism could form in Europe only since here alone and for the first time in world history women gained a determining position at the court. How world-historically unique this role was and is incomparable with anything in other advanced cultures becomes, e.g., clear when Schopenhauer, a "Buddhist" ideologue of Saharasia and prophet of National Socialism denounces western civilization as follows: "In such a way the old and the eastern peoples (...) assigned [to women] the appropriate position much more correctly than we do with our old-French gallantry and fatuous veneration of women, this highest bloom of Christian-Germanic stupidity, which only served to make them sometimes so arrogant and inconsiderate that one is reminded of the holy apes in Benares which, aware of their holiness and inviolability, believe that everything is permitted" (Parerga and Paralipomena II, paragraph 369, quoted after 29:118). Only in Europe the "female who wants to live in luxury" took a high and above all self-confident social status and could thus boost the need for luxury. The innumerable courtesans ("ladies-in-waiting"), which were more than mere "ladies of the night" by far and had to be "kept" with enormous sums, created indirectly and maintained directly whole branches of industry. And in the course of time the courtesan became even the ideal of society, i.e., in matters of taste the model for the "respectable woman." (One only thinks of the opera!)
c. Capitalism as a Breaking Open of Repressive StructuresThe influence of the women on the ruling class of men - or said differently: sexuality was the driving force behind the urge for personal, egoistic luxury. Sombart proves that the luxury need developing thus was satisfied from the outset in a manner which was organized industrially and capitalistically. Meanwhile the vitally necessary "raw need" was still satisfied by the various trades (which, one could add, can still be observed in the Third World today), until also this was pulled in into the mealstrom of capitalism and industrialization initiated by luxury need. Sombart explains that the very nature of the luxury goods pushed for "capitalistic organization": they were based on expensive raw materials, which came usually from far away countries, they represented the most high-quality and above all most labour-intensive products, and they were the first goods which came in larger quantities to the market place (27:159). The luxury industries were initiated by the princes and, as Sombart calls them, "enterprising aliens" (for instance the Huguenots in Prussia) who in their new homeland almost exclusively founded factories for luxury goods before the benevolent eyes of their new rulers. "All of these industries, however, which were founded well thought out by aliens get a rational character from the beginning. Usually they develop outside of the old barriers of guild and often in opposition to the old-established interests of the local craftsmen. Their establishment expresses no consideration for anybody but only grounds of usefulness and, therefore, above all they are also the basis on which the new, economically higher economic system [capitalism] unfolded first" (27:193f). Rightfully one may ask what should be so "natural" work democratic about "artificial" capitalism. This can be answered by pointing out that specialized knowledge was in demand in the luxury industry especially; that against all outdated conventions and restrictions of the trade guilds the "naked rationality" and business initiative could get a look-in; that here for the first time humans were pulled out from the old guild, political and, not least, religious obligations. In a word, for the first time the "work function" (together with sexuality) was emancipated. (8) Historical evidence shows that sooner or later capitalism does not only go hand in hand with democracy but also has a tendency to set free work democracy. According to Reich's concept of work democracy "No matter how sadistic, mystical, gossipy, unscrupulous, fickle, armoured, superficial, and given to idle chatter human animals may be, they are naturally predisposed to be rational in their work functions" (23:380). Capitalism, as a kind of "social orgone therapy," carried this rationality into a decrepit, armoured world of guilds and casts: a liberated sexuality released the work function and vice versa (as described in the 1. section). The organized emotional plague (communism which today appears with an ecological, feminist, peace-moved, "money-reform," and "anti-globalization" face) does everything in order to put sexuality and work into chains anew.
d. Capital and WorkAnd finally about the role of the "exploiters": Hans Hass explains that Marx saw abuses and in his delusion believed "that for their recovery the extermination of a whole section of function carriers is necessary: the extermination of the entrepreneurs" he overlooked, however, "the great functional importance of this humans prepared to take risk and to build organizational structures. The idea of a 'surplus value' created by the worker which (...) lined the pockets of the entrepreneurs dazzled him in such a way that he ignored the complementary 'surplus value' created by the entrepreneur. The latter is, however, of no small importance - not only for the individual factory but, beyond that, as an impulse for the entire economy of a people" (9:252f). The "surplus value," created by the entrepreneur, corresponds to his "vision," his strategic calculation, his "spirit." This is his true capital. "Intellectual capital is the purposeful, organizational, and entrepreneur element which activates intellectual forces and realizes wanting by ability. Wanting is a condition for new solutions of problems or the 'strategy in the realm of desires'; wanting converts enterprises and institutions to systems which use purposefully and flexibly intelligence, work, soil, and capital (...) The entrepreneur is characterized by the intellectual capital which processes knowledge and includes the courage to the risk of wanting" (8). Reich's corresponding attitude to the "surplus value" produced by the entrepreneur can be deduced from his introduction to orgonometry where he says that "the qualities of functions have for our purpose priority over the quantity of functions. This is in accordance with even practical engineering. Before any measurements for the future building can be taken, its shape and layout must be determined. We cannot start building a home by measuring the length of a wall. The general idea of the properties of the home must be there first" (19). And exactly this is the functional task of the entrepreneur, the "enterprising alien" who breaks open decrepit structures, has a vision, and "makes something." See also Reich's remarks in The Mass Psychology of Fascism (23:385) on the "vitally necessary work of capitalists." As examples of "the entrepreneur who himself works, plans, and produces" (23:385, translation improved) he mentions the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Junkers, Reichert, and Zeiss. Those capitalists who did not gain their fortunes by way of the third element of Reich's "love, work and knowledge," i.e., productive business initiative, by their "intellectual capital" but, completely contrary to this, by "anti-work-democratic" white-collar crime (the nepotism characteristic of Saharasia which is connected inseparably with the printing of paper money) we consider in the following.
4. The Destruction of Capitalism by SaharasiaThe old "Saharasian," anti-sexual spirit settled in the very life blood of capitalism, the gold equals money (in German "Gold = Geld"). Money is a commodity like any other commodity too, i.e., it grew organically out of the needs in order to satisfy them. Special about this commodity, which is a monkey-wrench for all needs, is that it got very soon in the clutches of the state and that in the course of time, unlike with all other goods, this "nationalization" became stronger ("legal tender"). Thus money was not released from the clutches of Saharasia but, quite to the contrary, the constraints became stronger ever more. Meanwhile even on a transnational (Euro) and global level (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc.). Therefore the present money economy is a prime example of the emotional plague, i.e., the urge to control the life of one's fellow men. Not only the present monetary system is life-inimical, in particular the Keynesian policy of the American Federal Reserve (which European Leftists like Oskar Lafontaine praise as model), but one finds it partly also with the "money reformists" who want to bungle at the money even more in order to contain the devastating consequences of the bungling of the past.
a. Money and Sex-economyBefore money was introduced one took goods, which were cherished by each market participant and were evaluated highly accordingly (and which, nevertheless, were goods divisible arbitrarily): salt, cowrie shells, spices, etc. Finally gold (and silver) became generally accepted as general "articles of exchange" or, in other words, as "money" (Geld = Gold) on the free world market. In this way money, as any other commodity, arise organically from a bioenergetic function: it is to lend expression to the desires and feelings of the market participants. Manipulating the money, which work democracy gave itself, means, therefore, to touch this expansive vital function (= sexuality) of one's fellow men. The sex-economic background especially of money becomes also obvious if one looks at countries without functioning money. There spontaneously goods are used for universal exchange which solely serve luxury, e.g., cigarettes, coffee, whisky, nylon socks, condoms, etc. As Sombart showed these are exactly those goods which constitute the core of the economic system of capitalism: they are extremely work- and capital-intensive products and/or they come from far away countries, e.g., coffee.
b. The Socialist System of Sham BanknotesIt is evident that money is instinctively identical with sexuality(9) - and it becomes all too evident why pestilent characters such as Marx and Hitler are fascinated by "haggling" and hate everything which is "contaminated" by money. But money does not make "dirty," as the sex-inimical ideologists of Saharasia would have us to believe, but quite to the contrary: money is "soiled" by Saharasia and its ideologists. Actually one may consider the (sham-) money, as we know it today, Saharasia's Trojan horse. This "soiling" occurred by transforming money into something else than a completely usual commodity which serves the satisfaction of needs. In order to set out this point further in the following I sketchily refer to Murray Newton Rothbard's book What has the Government done to our Money? which first edition appeared in 1963 (24). Rothbard stands in the tradition of the "Austrian school" whose central figures were Ludwig von Mises and F.A. von Hayek.(10) Rothbard describes (naturally in other terms) how Saharasia, in shape of something one could call "monetary socialism," undermines capitalism. Everything began with the fact that of all people those who stood at the crib of capitalism impressed their countenance on gold coins and such made out of the state-free, universal world money (which unit were the units of weight of the various regions that were convertible into one another without problem) a kind of "branded article" which monopolistic manufacturer could manipulate at will. The people was fobbed off with coins, containing fewer gold (or silver) than its original unit. The difference flowed to the princes. This "forgery" by the state became even simpler after notes were issued. First the "covering" of the cash notes suffered from the same consumption as the content of coins in precious metals until in the 20th century the gold reserve was given up completely so that we have today a "progressive" paper currency. Now "money" is created simply out of nothing. This modern forgery one can visualize as follows: In work democracy, in which everything arises in a self-evident way from natural functions, banks are bare depots for the conceivably unmanageable gold of their customers. What else should they be! Banks issue receipts which must be covered exactly the same to accurately 100 per cent as the pieces of evidence of every other depot, too.(11) One can regard these receipts as money (Geld = Gold). The fraud begins when these banks issue receipts which are not covered by gold. The issuing banks do nothing but this when they issue "money." Actually central banks do nothing but common counterfeiters. When counterfeiters buy goods and services with their "money" they obtain a profit, just as their immediate business partners, their business partner and so on. But since the additional money, which flows into the economy, "dilutes" the already existing money, i.e., causes inflation, those pay the bill who must deal with rising prices before the falsified money reaches them - if it reaches them at all. This means that the common man, who does not sit directly at the fleshpots of the issuing banks, has to work for what the privileged beneficiaries of the system rake in. Our economic system is thus a kind of "pyramid" in which in a nearly inscrutable way those, who are furthest away from the counterfeiters, finance the point of the pyramid (the nomenclature of pseudo capitalism). It is about the redistribution of wealth past the market mechanism in favour of certain politically influential interest groups: the network of major banks, big industry (in particular the large energy and pharmaceutical interests) and state bureaucracy. It is about exactly those "hoodlums in government" and Mafia-like circles of the money aristocracy who in America brought Reich into prison with the help of the Food and Drug Administration.
c. Control of Money SupplyAfter 1913, when the Federal Reserve was founded on initiative of J.P. Morgan, Rockefeller, and Kuhn Loeb, and, in particular, after 1945 under the auspice of the "Bretton Woods system" the Dollar suffered unrestrained inflation. It is true that since the beginning of the 1980s the (visible) inflation in America, Europe, and Japan was contained slowly but the "pyramid play" continued in the background in an even more perfidious way because the surplus money flowed on the one hand to South America and Southeast Asia (later also to Russia), where in each case it came promptly to exactly that monetary collapse that was spared us thus far - on the other hand the money flowed into the exploding national debt and the stock market which, because blown up by fresh money from the issuing bank, uncoupled itself from material economics very soon. When around the turn of the century the surreal stock exchange boom burst the bounced small investors and the working people had to pay the bill without suspecting that they had fallen victim to the same mechanisms as the victims of the monetary disasters in South America, Southeast Asia, and Russia. Everywhere it becomes already apparent that unreal pseudo capitalism with its planned-economy management of money will collapse on its corrupt mismanagement like Soviet Socialism before. Exactly as in Soviet Socialism, with its fictitious production numbers, also in pseudo capitalism ever less profit is drawn from material production but from "money production" (e.g., by foreign exchange transactions, purchase of profitable government loans, etc.). Money is made with money. And it is sad that even more socialism is offered, e.g., by "opponents of globalization," as the only cure against these evils of "capitalism." In general, suggestions of reform aim at a further politicalization of money. Only a hundred percent gold currency guarantees that no longer political influence (whether "democratical" or not) can be exerted on the money - that work democracy can function again unhindered from politicians and crazy "money reformers." In work democracy the quantity of the money depends completely on the respective total weight of the property that was chosen as preferential article of exchange (gold, silver, platinum, iron, or whatever became generally accepted on the market as "money"). A change of this quantity, e.g., by opening new gold mines or hoarding by evil cheapskates, does not have any effect on national economy since the general price level becomes higher or lower accordingly. The usual objection against this theory reads that then the money supply does not fit the quantity of the produced goods no more, so as if the money on the one hand and the goods on the other hand would belong to two entirely different spheres. Exactly the tuning of these two spheres is the task of the issuing banks. To any clearly thinking human it should be obvious that wanting to indicate the "correct" money supply is imbecilic. Any money supply fulfils its function like any other conceivable money supply, too. As indicated, prices rise with more money and fall with fewer money - and nothing changed. One saw this after the introduction of the Euro when Germans had nominally only half as much money in the purse.
d. Money ReformAlso the "third ways" and alternatives to capitalism have "money supply control" on their agenda. With them everything turns around the problem of "hoarding" which extracts the money from the economy and thereby is allegedly draining it. Rothbard writes about this: "Economists err when they believe there is something wrong when the money is not in a constant 'active' circulation. It is correct that money is useful due to its exchange value but it is not only useful at the time of actual exchange. This truth was ignored frequently. Money is just as useful when it lies 'dormant' in some cashbox, even in the 'hoard' of a cheapskate. For this money is kept now in expectation of possible future exchange actions: It exactly now provides for its owner the use to be able to make the exchange actions at any time - in the present or the future - he would like" (24:35f). Especially this aspect of money indicates the proximity of economics and sex-economy. In his depiction of sex-economy Elsworth F. Baker equates money and sexual energy when he describes the orgasm theory as follows: "In the normal course of events, more energy is built up than can be used. Energy is stored in the body like money in a bank for emergency situations. During such emergencies as battle, worry, or exhausting work, this excess energy is used up and the organism is asexual" (1:xxii). The structurally pleasure-inimical "money reformers" would like to transfer (in the name of an "unobstructed cash flow" respectively "living work") the respective condition (asexual "chronic sympatheticotonia") from the sex-economic sphere to that of national economy. In contrast to Marx' barracks yard socialism they do not want to abolish the money and to replace it by receipts for executed working hours but they want to convert it into "shrinkage money": the money is devalued by the authorities at regular intervals. Instead of wanting to obtain money and, thus, be solvent the market participants will be concerned to pass the banknotes on as fast as possible so that not them but the fellow man will suffer the fate of the inevitable monetary depreciation. Under these circumstances who would like to participate in the market if he is not forced to do so? This doctrine of salvation is so perfidious because it gives an opposite impression. One pretends to keep the money in motion and to represent a dynamic economy but behind this "parasympathetic" fassade hides the ultimate "sympatheticotonia" (the standstill of society) itself. For money cannot "flow" at all but can only be transferred from one cashboth into the other. The existence of money depends, thus, on the fact that humans want to "hoard" money! And they want it hoard it because the future is not predictable. If there would be a perfect security about what would happen in the future, i.e., "the time would stand still," nobody would "hoard" money any longer and the money system would collapse (24:36). Bioenergetically that corresponds to the barracks yard socialism mentioned in which everything is fixed by the plan and there is no longer economic and sexual "intercourse" which could create "disorder."
SummaryIn the scholastic world of Marx (say) ten hours invested on the field are exchanged against ten working hours in the fishery so that there is a balance. A more or less senseless event so that Marx believed that trade does not create value. But in the reality of the market, exchange occurs because the product of one participant is considered of higher value by the other participant so that in the total balance more value is created than was present before (24:15). In this sense "creation of value" is a direct expression of the anti-entropic characteristics of the orgone energy. Similar to the genital embrace or in the orgone energy accumulator a mutual excitation of two orgone energy fields occurs mutually exciting each other to higher levels of lumination. The sexual nature of this "value law" becomes evident by the close connection between capitalistic trade and luxury. Issuing banks (and their predecessors, the princes minting coins) stand for the "orgastic impotence" of the economic system. Money is constantly pumped into the economy but there will be no saturation ever. Quite to the opposite the "life blood" of the economy is thinned out more and more. Therefore at the alleged "edges" of the economic system must be produced hectically (e.g., the jungles of Indonesia have to be cleared) in order to escape economic asphyxia. The "excesses" of capitalism are literally cancer ulcers of a basically socialist ("anorgonotic") system. The solution is very easy! We do not need a new artificial money system, e.g., (of all things!) "shrinkage money" with a complicated bureaucracy. Completely to the opposite everything, what must be done, is really the abolishment of the present obligation to use legal tenders. (Naturally everyone is free to use the past compulsory money further, these worthless shreds of paper.) Work democracy will find suitable commodity money completely by itself (as at present it happens daily in countries destroyed by civil wars). Most probably it will be gold. Either one opens the way to the state-free commodity money from higher insight or it will succeed inevitably due to bowing to necessity. The market creates its money itself! In the final analysis our needs create the "monkey-wrench," necessary to their satisfaction, themselves. Wanting to control this corresponds to the restriction of free sexual exchange. The issuing banks and their surroundings, living on "free money," are a functional equivalent of the martial hordes of Saharasia fallen upon peaceful, productive matrist peoples, and built their short-lived empires from the stolen property.
Literatur
Footnotes
(1) A central topic of Reich's early, socialistic sexual reform writings is the question of housing ("[adolescents] nowhere to go when in love" [21:91-92]) - meanwhile solved in the developed capitalistic countries.
(2) "Money does not 'measure' prices or values; it is the common denominator to express them. Prices are expressed in money not measured by money" (24:21).
(3) Reich: "'Away from the animal; away from sexuality!' are the guiding principles of the formation of all human ideology" (23:339).
(4) Marx solves the question of quality quantitatively: "Complicated work is considered only as simple work raised to the power or rather multiplied, so that a small quantity of complicated work equals a larger quantity of simple work" (18:26).
(5) There in 1944 Marx talks drivel, quite like Hitler's later Mein Kampf: "Lets look at the real mundane Jew not at the Jew of Sabbath ... but the Jew of everyday. Lets look for the secret of the Jew not in his religion but lets look for the secret of religion in the real Jew. What is the mundane fundament of Jewry? The practical need, the self-interest. What is the mundane cult of the Jews? Horse-trading. What is his real God? Money. Now then! The emancipation from horse-trading and from money thus from the practical, real Jewry would be the self-emancipation of our time ... Thus we recognize in Jewry a general and present anti-social element which, by the historical development in which the Jews eagerly cooperated in this bad respect, was driven to its current height, to a height at which it must dissolve necessarily. The emancipation of the Jew in its final meaning is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry. ... The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish way not only by acquiring the financial power but also that by him and without him money became the world power and the practical spirit of the Jew became the practical spirit of the Christian peoples. The Jews have themselves emancipated to that extent as the Christians became Jews ... The God of the Jews secularized, he became the God of the mundane world. The bill of exchange is the real God of the Jew. His God is only the illusory bill of exchange" (MEW 1,372ff quoted after 15:205f).
(6) LaMettrie's The Art of Experiencing Sensuality fits the center of the social life at that time, the opera, this "temple of voluptuousness" (12:68).
(7) Reich primarily analyzed the "ascetic," as it were, "bourgeois" capitalism during his "Marxist" period (misled by the absurd historical fairy tales of "historical materialism"). Twenty years before Sombart had been already very much further when he recognized that capitalism was perfectly different in its genesis and in its basic nature than Reich believed.
(8) Still today one can see the conflict between irrational, thoroughly politicized obligation to join a guild and rational capitalism if one looks at the excrescences of the German guild order - which one trace back to the National Socialists. In The Mass Psychology of Fascism Reich discusses the reactionary influence of "guild economy" on the human structure and differentiates it from the revolutionizing and sexuality-liberating influence of the industrial way of production (cf. Political Irrationalism from an Orgonomic Point of View).
(9) All genital peoples, the Trobriand Islanders, for instance, know the "love present" of the man to the woman. Chimpanzee males establish love relations with the females of the group with animal protein hunted (28:96). As Sombart showed, out of this perhaps oldest element of culture capitalism developed!
(10) A libertarian, "anarchic capitalistic" ideology shall not be defended here because there is 1. the structural inability of the population to deal with liberty, i.e., with capitalism (in an armored world liberty means chaos and, therefore, more bondage in the end); and 2. the character structure of the "libertarians" themselves: although they defend an arch-capitalistic ideology they are, as outlined in Political Irrationalism from an Orgonomic Point of View, to a great extant modern liberals, i.e., communists according to their characterological structure, who do everything in order the further the decomposition of society (liberty for drugs, all perversions imaginable, etc.). Rothbard's central call for the re-establishment of the gold standard is naturally conservative, however.
(11) Beside this activity, i.e., its actual core activity (storing gold for a fee), banks are active as a kind of "broker" who (likewise against a fee) mediate between those who want to invest their gold and those who do not possess sufficient gold for their projects and need therefore a "bank credit."
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Peter Nasselstein