Tea at Trianon: The Bolsheviks and the Sexual Revolution

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, July 15, 2023

The Bolsheviks and the Sexual Revolution

This explains a lot about the world we now live in. From The Irish Marxist Review:

This new sexual permissiveness was not just about pleasure or individual freedom, it was an outgrowing of the Marxist understanding of the family; the combination of strict sexual conduct with unpaid reproductive labour as the nexus of women’s oppression in class society. Engels’ seminal work Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, traced family structure and class divisions throughout history to create a historical materialist understanding of family structure and gender relations. Engels said of marriage in class society: ‘It is based on the supremacy of the man, the express purpose being to produce children of undisputed paternity; such paternity is demanded because these children are later to come into their father’s property as natural heirs’. [1] Engels goes on to outline the cultural (and legal in the case of Napoleonic Code) right men, particularly upper class men had to infidelity. He contrasts this to the harsh punishments faced by female adulterers. Marxists understood that this sexist double standard was not just the product of antiquated ideas about gender roles but rather it was a result of the family’s role as an economic unit. Women’s chastity and monogamy were required for the smooth transition of accumulated wealth across generations. The family’s function as an economic unit under capitalism represents the root of women’s oppression. Trotsky said of this: ‘You cannot abolish the family; you have to replace it.’ [2] The Bolsheviks set about to do just that; undermining the economic necessity of the family, the sexual morality it enforced and providing a collective alternative to ‘women’s work’ by establishing collective kitchens, laundries and childcare facilities. Alexandra Kollontai said that sexual freedom meant that relationships would be ‘purified of all material elements, of all money consideration’ [3] for the first time attraction, affection and choice would be the sole constituents of partnership. (Read more.)