Marxist Musings on Being a Fish Out of Water

Wood carved fish (Raphael Park)

Photo by SA/2023 

 

 

I suppose many people have felt like a fish out of water at some time or other; that is to say, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, surrounded by the wrong people [1].

 

But for some, this is far more than just an occasional feeling of discomfort due to their being in an unfamiliar environment or awkward social situation. For some people, indeed, it's essentially a state of being; they are permanently estranged (or alienated) from others and perhaps even themselves and their own lives.

 

Marx certainly knew a thing or two about individuals not being in their element, although, as far as I'm aware, he never used the English expression [2]. 

 

However, in a collection of manuscripts written in collaboration with Friedrich Engels between the autumn of 1845 and the spring of 1846, and first published as Die deutsche Ideologie in 1932, Marx does say this:

 

"The 'essence' of the freshwater fish is the water of a river. But the latter ceases to be the 'essence' of the fish and is no longer a suitable medium of existence as soon as the river is made to serve industry, as soon as it is polluted by dyes and other waste products and navigated by steamboats, or as soon as its water is diverted into canals where simple drainage can deprive the fish of its medium of existence." [3] 

 

In such circumstances, when existence no longer corresponds with 'essence', what's a poor fish to do? Quietly accept the fact that external conditions have irrevocably changed? See this in terms of an unalterable fate, or an unavoidable result of progress? 

Marx suggests otherwise: he suggests that the fish should - like the millions of proletarians in capitalist society - rise up and, by means of a revolution, bring their existence once more into harmony with their 'essence'.

 

At least, that's my understanding of Marx - which is admittedly limited and may even be mistaken - that via an active, practical alteration of material reality we can radically change the interior life of men (and fish) and end their self-estrangement. We can, in other words, not only make free but make happy and build a world in which everyone feels at home and is able to fit in (i.e., a communist society). 

 

Obviously, I have problems with this Marxist vision, as I do with every other form of utopianism. And as I looked at the above wood carving in my local park, I couldn't help but recall Michel Foucault's remark about Marxism as something out of place and unable to survive in the world today: 

 

"Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought like a fish in water: that is, it is unable to breathe anywhere else." [4] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This expression was first used by Chaucer in The Cantebury Tales (1387-1400) to describe a seaman's awkwardness when obliged to ride a horse and a monk's discomfort when in the world at large rather than safely cloistered in the monastery. 

 

[2] Although German speakers, like Marx, cerainly refer to people not being in their element - nicht in seinem Element sein - I'm not sure they use the idiomatic expression fish out of water. However, I may be wrong about this and I'm happy to be corrected if so. 

 

[3] See Karl Marx, The German Ideology, Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook, B: The Illusion of the Epoch. This can be read online by clicking here.  

 

[4] Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (Tavistock Publications, 1970), p. 262.

 

 

Well There's Nothing More Revolutionary Than Calling for Communism Then Diddling the Maid

Helene Demuth (1820-1890)

 

 

This morning, whilst reading on the subject of famous last words, I discovered that Karl Marx had little time for such death bed theatrics.

 

'Go on, get out!' he apparently barked to his housekeeper, who was pottering about his room in the hope of recording some memorable final statement: 'Last words are for fools trying to compensate for having said nothing of any significance in life!'

 

I have to say, I was shocked - not by Marx's attitude, but by the fact that he - a revolutionary socialist and author of a work calling for the establishment of a classless society - should employ a domestic servant.

 

Worse: it's alleged that his German housekeeper, Helene, [1] was impregnated by Marx and gave birth to an illegitimate son, in 1851, who was discreetly placed with a working-class foster family in London shortly afterwards [2]. 

 

If anything exposes the bourgeois hypocrisy (and the sexism) implicit within Marxism, it's this. As Elaine Benes might sarcastically note: There's nothing more revolutionary than calling for communism, then diddling the maid. [3]   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The daughter of parents belonging to the peasant class, Helene Demuth began her life as a maid in 1840, aged 20, entering into the Marx household five years later, where she stayed until Karl's death in 1883. Helene died in London in 1890, and was buried in the Marx family grave (and later re-interred in the tomb of Karl Marx at Highgate Cemetery).

 

[2] Some scholars accept that Marx was the father of the child; a view based upon surviving correspondence from the Marx family and their wider circle, as well as the fact that Marx's wife had been on a trip abroad nine months prior to the birth. The child's paternity, however, remains a subject of controversy, and there is no conclusive documentary evidence as such to prove that Marx had been diddling the maid. 

 

[3] In the season 9 episode of Seinfeld entitled 'The Maid' - dir. Andy Ackerman (1998) - Jerry forms a sexual relationship with his maid, Cindy (played by Angela Featherstone). Although he tries to convince Elaine that the arrangement is somewhat sophisticated, the latter is not convinced. Click here to watch the scene on YouTube.  

    

To read an earlier post on the erotic fascination with maids in the pornographic imagination, click here. 

 

 

I Still Dream of Orgonon: Notes on the Strange Life and Times of Wilhelm Reich (Part 1: The European Years)

Wilhem Reich (1897-1957)

Photo possibly by A. A. Brill (c. 1922)

 

Once we open up to the flow of energy within our body, 

we can also open up to the flow of energy in the universe.

I. Opening Remarks

 

I could have featured Reich in my recent series on the grand perverts of Austria, but decided that he is such a unique figure that he deserves a post in his own right. 

 

I'm not, however, very familiar with his work: I once read an English translation of Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus  (1933) [1] and a funny little book entitled Listen, Little Man! (1948), in which he outlined his political philosophy (an idiosyncratic form of libertarian socialism). 

 

Mostly I know of Reich due to the fact that he's mentioned with admiration by Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus (1983) [2]. 

 

That, and the fact that Kate Bush once wrote a song inspired by him [3].

 

 

II. The European Years

 

Wilhelm Reich was born in 1897, in Dobzau, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but now in western Ukraine and awaiting the arrival of Russian bombs and soldiers. 

 

Although both his parents were Jewish, Wilhelm was brought up to speak only German and punished for using Yiddish expressions, or playing with the local Yiddish-speaking children. Oy vey! 

 

Wilhelm was homeschooled until the age of twelve. But when his mother was discovered having an affair with his live-in tutor and soon afterwards committed suicide, he was sent off to an all boys' school. Reich would later write about these events in his first published paper, detailing his shame and guilt, but also expressing his own incestuous fantasies involving his mother.

 

After the War, in which he served on the Italian front, Reich headed for Vienna, where he enrolled in law at the University. However, he found the subject tedious and so switched to medicine. Although he found this much more to his liking, he rejected the mechanistic concept of life which then dominated in favour of a more vitalist philosophy.

 

In 1919, he had a fateful first meeting with Freud, from whom he had requested a reading list for a seminar on sexology. Interestingly, it seems they left an equally strong impression on one another and Freud smoothed the younger man's way into the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and encouraged him to start meeting with patients of his own; one of whom, 19-year-old Lore Kahn, he was soon fucking, even though Freud had advised not to get romantically involved with patients.

 

Sadly, she became seriously ill and died shortly after the affair with Reich began [4]. Swiftly putting his grief to one side, he then seduced another patient, Annie Pink - an 18-year-old medical student and friend of Frl. Kahn's - though he did eventually do the decent thing and marry her, at the insistence of her father, and she went on to become a well-known shrink in her own right.    

 

Despite what would now be regarded as gross professional misconduct (at the very least), Reich was apppointed deputy director of Freud's outpatient clinic and he worked there until 1930, forming his own theories on human psychology to do with repetitive patterns of behaviour, speech, and physical posture serving as ego defence mechanisms, or what he termed character armour.     

 

Reich was highly regarded by his contemporaries and colleagues at this time and many found his lectures and seminars spellbinding. His first book was also well received and won him further professional recognition, including from Freud, who in 1927 arranged for his appointment to the executive committee of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.   

 

Thus, everything was coming up Rosen for Reich and he seemed to have a bright future ahead; despite one of his early patients protesting that Reich was, in fact, a psychopath; and despite the fact that Freud was increasingly concerned about the theory that psychic health depended upon the full discharge of libidinal energy. 

 

Such ideas, tolerated at first within the psychoanalytic community, would later be ridiculed. And when Reich tried to reconcile his new theories with Marxism, he would increasingly be regarded as part sexual revolutionary and part sexual lunatic (although, to be fair, he was certainly not the only intellectual attempting to marry psychoanalysis and Marxism at this time).     

 

In 1927, Reich opened half-a-dozen Sex-Pol clinics in Vienna, where members of the proletariat could receive free psychoanalysis, political instruction, and contraceptives. These proved so popular that Reich also took to the streets in a mobile clinic and began distributing sex-education pamphlets door to door.

 

This same year also saw publication of Die Funktion des Orgasmus, which he dedicated to Freud. Unfortunately, the latter was not overly impressed and took two months before sending a short thank you note (which didn't go down too well with Reich). Freud's view, essentially, was that it was an oversimplification to view everything in terms of orgastic potency.   

 

In 1930, Reich and his wife moved to Berlin, where he continued his work and set up more Sex-Pol clinics. Although he joined the German Communist Party, his new comrades were troubled by his promotion of sexual freedom for everybody - including adolescents - and they eventually refused to publish his material. 

 

And so Reich discovered that moral puritanism belongs as much on the radical left as the reactionary right. 

 

Having said that, it was the Nazis who, in 1933, most vociferously attacked his work and forced him to flee Germany with his mistress, a dancer called Elsa Lindenberg. The couple initially retreated to Vienna, then moved to Denmark, Sweden, and finally settled in Norway, where he and Lindenberg were to remain for five years [5].

 

It was whilst in Oslo, that Reich attempted to ground his orgasm theory in biology, exploring whether the libido was in fact a form of bio-electricity or a chemical substance [6]. These investigations led on to his bion experiments, where he played Dr. Frankenstein and sought to create rudimentary new forms of life (and explain the origin of cancer). 

 

Unsurprisingly, many within the scientific community in Norway expressed their scepticism regarding Reich's work. Whilst some simply dismissed his theories on bions as nonsense, others accused him of being ignorant of even basic scientific procedures and micro-biological facts. When in 1938 his visa expired, several scientists argued against this being renewed and his case became something of a cause célèbre in Norway [7]. 

 

When Reich eventually left Norway, he did so feeling a little humiliated and full of anger for those who had denounced him and ridiculed his work. The scandal - and his various love affairs - had also taken its toll on his relationship with Lindenberg. And thus when Reich asked her to accompany him to the United States, she declined, leaving him to set sail all on his lonesome. 

 

Details of Reich's American years can be found in part two of this post: click here.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] It was the 1983 Pelican edition, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, trans. Vincent R. Carfagno.

 

[2] For Deleuze and Guattari, Reich deserves credit for being the first to address the question of the relationship between desire and the social field (and for daring to go further in this direction than Marcuse). Whilst admitting his work has its problematic aspects, they find Reich's comparison of sexuality with cosmic phenomena, such as electrical storms or sunspot activity, preferable to Freud's "reduction of sexuality to the pitiful little familialist secret" and it was Reich, more than anyone else, who upheld the great perverse truth of psychoanalysis, i.e., "the independence of sexuality with regard to reproduction".

      See: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane, (University of Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 291-92.

 

[3] Kate Bush, 'Cloudbusting', a single release from Hounds of Love, (EMI, 1985): click here to play and watch the offical video, dir. Julian Doyle, and ft. Donald Sutherland in the role of Wilhelm Reich.

 

[4] Lore Kahn's parents claimed that their daughter had died after a botched illegal abortion, possibly performed by Reich himself. Whilst recognising the tragedy of what happened, Reich also found his role within the young woman's death and subsequent suicide of her mother absurdly amusing, noting in his diary: 'I am acting out a comedy, while causing the people around me to die!'   

 

[5] Hopes that he might be able to set up shop in London were dashed when it became clear that support from the psychoanalytic circle in England was not going to be forthcoming. It had been decided that Reich had unresolved hostility issues and was living in a world of his own. 

      The unique form of treatment Reich developed from 1930 onwards also caused eyebrows to be raised and alarm bells to sound. Based on touch, it involved patients stripping off and allowing him to perform a special type of massage in order to loosen their body armour (i.e., their muscular and characterological rigidity). In the hope of retrieving repressed childhood memories and triggering genuine feelings, Reich would also ask patients to physically simulate certain emotions (such as anxiety, rage, and ecstasy). If the session was successful, he claimed to see waves of pleasure move through the bodies of his patients (what he called the orgasm reflex or streaming). Initially wanting to call this new treatment orgasmotherapy, Reich evetually settled on the name of vegetotherapy (i.e., arousal therapy).  

 

[6] In 1935, Reich also bought an oscillograph and attached it to student volunteers at the University of Oslo, who agreed to touch and kiss each other while he monitored the results. As you do ...

 

[7] The affair generated a good deal of press coverage throughout 1938, with more than 165 articles and letters appearing in Norwegian newspapers, the vast majority of which attacked Reich and his work. 

Class Sketch

Mssrs. Cleese, Barker, and Corbett in the Class Sketch 

Written by Marty Feldman and John Law

The Frost Report (7 April 1966)

I.

If I remember my political theory correctly, then class consciousness refers to an individual's knowledge of their socio-economic status which allows them to judge where their own best interests lie. For Marxists, the hope is that by raising awareness of inequality and injustice, etc., one increases the chances of collective action and, ultimately, revolution.      

However, whilst I've always been aware of myself as working class and fully conscious of what that entails - and whilst I've always had a certain level of mistrust for the middle classes - I've never been motivated to join the Labour Party or align myself with those on the far left who long for power and to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.  

In the end, I just don't care enough about even my own interests; certainly not when these are conceived in material terms of ownership. According to my Armenian friend, Vahe, that's because I'm too other-worldly, suffer from a form of false consciousness, don't fully understand the historical process, blah, blah, blah ...


II.    

In a short essay written in 1927, D. H. Lawrence argues that the gulf between social classes is very real and very deep, though there are now, he says, only two great classes: middle and working; the aristocratic upper class having entirely been absorbed into the bourgeoisie.

Indeed, notes Lawrence, even the working class share in the aspirations of the middle class; to be successful and to have a lot of money in the bank. However, there remains a very real difference and division which is rooted in feeling and in the politics of touch:

"What is the peculiar repugnance one feels, towards entering the middle class world? [...]
      What is the obstacle? I have looked for it in myself, as a clue to this dangerous cleavage between the classes. And I find it is a very deep obstacle. It is in the manner of contact. The contact, among the lower classes [...] is much more immediate, more physical, between man and man, than it ever is among the middle classes. The middle class can be far more intimate, yet never so near to one another. It is the difference between the animal, physical affinity that can govern the lives of men, and the other, the affinity of culture and purpose, which actually does govern the mass today.
      But the affinity of culture and purpose that holds the vast middle class world together seems to me to be an intensification today, of the acquisitive and possessive instinct." [39]

       
III.

Like Lawrence, I was  born among the working class. My father too went down the mines when he left school - though unlike Lawrence's father, he hated it and didn't last long as a collier. After the War, he and my mother - at her instigation - moved south, to London, leaving their old life in the north east of England behind. Eventually, they ended up in Essex in a newly built two-up, two-down council house, where I was born.

My father was employed in a non-managerial position at the Bank of England printing works in Debden. My mother was a traditional housewife, who occasionally did part-time jobs outside the home if money was particularly tight. She had hopes for me and my sister, but nothing too grand or ambitious: some kind of clean office job that paid well. Like the Lawrence household, ours was absolutely working class: tabloid-reading, football-loving, and ITV-watching. 

Of course, one is never entirely shaped by or a prisoner to the past, to one's background, to one's class. But one can never quite escape it either. Or - in my case as in Lawrence's - one never really wants to escape and move up in the world, or get on in life. Why? Well, according to Lawrence, it's because this involves too great a cost; one has to sacrifice something vital and vibrate at a different pitch of being, as it were.

For between the classes exists "a peculiar, indefinable difference" that determines the way the heart beats. This might sound like nonsense, but I know exactly what Lawrence means. And I understand entirely why it is he never quite managed (or wanted) to climb up the social ladder, even when offered a helping hand to do so:

"No one was unfriendly. [...] But it was no good. Unless one were by nature a climber, one could not respond in kind. The middle class seemed quite open, quite willing for one to climb into it. And one turned away, ungratefully. [...]
      And that I have not got a thousand friends, and a place [...] among the esteemed, is entirely my own fault. The door to 'success' had been held open to me. The social ladder had been put ready for me to climb. I have known all kinds of people, and been treated quite kindly by everyone [...] whom I have known personally.
      Yet here I am, nowhere, as it were, and infinitely an outsider. And of my own choice." [37-38]

Precisely: here I am nowhere, with nowhere left to go.

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Which Class I Belong To', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 33-40. 

See also 'Myself Revealed' in the above text, pp. 175-81, which is essentially a variant of 'Which Class I Belong To', that concludes: "I cannot make the transfer from my own class into the middle class. I cannot, not for anything in the world, forfeit my passional consciousness and my old blood-affinity with my fellow-men and the animals and the land, for that other thin, spurious mental conceit which is all that is left of the mental consciousness once it has made itself exclusive." [181] 

Note: 'Myself Revealed' was included in Assorted Articles (1930) under the title 'Autobiographical Sketch'.