RECIPROCAL POLYGAMY
In the previous chapter whores reminded us of the fact that
there
is not only
one-sided polygamy, but also reciprocal polygamy. Whores are
polyandrous because they go to bed with many men, but the whore-hoppers
are polygynous when they are married or return to the same whores. Up
to now, we had to conceive of polyandry and polygyny as of opposites. Only thanks to the splitting of lover and worker could both be
reconciled
in a formation consisting of a harem
condensed with a kingdom (see chapter II). In the brothel, a
perfect marriage of polygyny and polyandry can be realised because whores nor
whore-hoppers claim exclusivity: they accept each other's polygamy.
Out of sheer necessity. And that raises the
question whether there is also reciprocal polygamy that is freely
desired. From Plato onwards, a positive answer has been given by an
avalanche of authors, compared with which the advocates of polygyny like
Freud dwindle into nothingness, not to mention advocates of polyandry
like McLennan.
ATLANTIS AND UTOPIA
Reciprocal polygamy
is often proclaimed as a
heavenly utopia with peoples that have a different practice on earth.
With some Indian tribes the harem women are compensated in that
they are allowed to have sex at their heart's content. Also in the
Islamic heaven there is ample sexual
commerce between many men and many girls.
Other utopias are more 'diesseitig' and serve as directives for a future
practice. The oldest known is Plato's 'The State' that
lies at the base of many later utopias in the West. We therefore
proclaim it to the third paradigm for human relations, next to that of
Freud for polygyny and that of McLennan for polyandry. Ideas about the
community of goods, extended tothe community of women under
inspiration of Plato, circulated among many early Christians, although
cloaked in the veil of universal Christian love: love your neighbour as
you love yourself. Later examples are 'The city of the sun' of Campanella where the community of women is propagated. The Anglican
bishop Petty advocated the 'Californian marriage', whereby six men marry six
women not only to further reproduction, but above all to heighten the level
of sexual pleasure. There soon appeared socialist versions of these
utopias, as with Fourier, who regards his'marriage composé' as the
highest form of free love. A remarkable variant is Schopenhauer 'tetragamy':
two young man share one young women, and when they grow older,
they take a second young wife. In the time of the hippies, capitalism and monogamy
were expected to disappear: the future
belonged to communism and the commune (see Kommune 2 in Berlin).
The counterpart of these utopias are theories that project that
community of women in primeval times. The Greeks believed that Kekrops,
the first King of Athens, put and end the community of women. The theory
is revived with Lucretius en Ovid.
With pope Clemens, third successor of Peter, it is coupled with the
Christian doctrine of the Fall. Clemens, explicitly referring to Plato, holds that everything in the
world 'should have been shared by everybody', but that evil forces are
responsible for the fact that some proclaimed themselves proprietors.
This old theory gets a new impulse with Fourier, who holds that in
primeval times the 'beautiful and strong savage did not recognise any
limitation in matters of love, and hence practiced free love.
But it is above all Bachofen that gave the ancient model its modern shape.
He calls the first phase of matriarchy 'Aphrodisian'. In this stage, there
is an exclusive bond only between mother and child, whereas between the
sexes there is an 'unregulated hetaerism'. The males join together in a
spirit of general brotherhood and share their women, who, as we have seen
'are not adorned by Nature with all her charms to pine away in the arms
of a single man'. Nietzsche rechristens Bachofen's 'Aphrodisian phase'
into 'Dionysian' and opposes it to an 'Apollonian', so that the
opposition between matriarch y and patriarchy is replaced with an
opposition of two male gods. The affinity between Nietzsche 'Dionysian'
and Bachofen's 'Aphrodisian' is apparent from the nearly concealed hints on
a 'general promiscuity', of which it is not clear whether it has to be
understood as a festive outburst (on which we shall return in the
chapter on the orgy) or rather as an enduring state of 'primeval
communism' .
Bachofens idea of 'heta
irical' primeval times is taken over by McLennan en Lubbock.
Especially the work of Morgan forced a breakthrough. Whereas Bachofen
relied on historical sources, Morgan proceeded to the study of existing
societies. He was an admirer of Bachofen and sent him his book. For
Morgan, the oldest form of marriage was 'group marriage' ('the punalua
family').
Such group marriage is characterised not only by the community of women,
but by the community of goods as well. The trend is continued by Engels,
who regards group marriage as the primeval communism. The success of
this theory is unstoppable: Giraud Teulon, Letourneau, Lippert, Spencer
formulate ever new versions. Westermarck emphatically denies that there ever has been such a
thing as a primeval
communism, but his attack is countered by new evidence from Australia,
gathered by Spencer en Gillen and by Howitt. Primeval communism is
defended by Kohler,
Wilken, Kropotkin, Bloch, Frazer en Rivers. Let us recall especially 'The Mothers'
of Briffault, who assumes a group marriage of all the brothers of the
clan with all the woman of another clan. There is a revival of these
theories during the era of the New Left, the commune and feminism. Thus,
Borneman refers to a 'libertarian life stile' in the period before the
advent of patriarchal cultures.
Foremost the development of primatology after the Second World War
gave new impulses to the idea of reciprocal polygamy. With many apes and
primates, a group of polygynous males struggles for a dominant position
in a kind of collective harem. This can lead to the formation of a one-male group or
of a multi-male group,
but since the position of the leader in a one-male group is constantly
contested, there is no talk any more of a sovereign potentate as with Atkinson.
This implies that the polyandry of the females is recognised: the have
sex with more than one male. The idea of a polygynous harem is replaced
with the idea of reciprocal polygamy. That gives a new impetus to
speculation about the sexual nature of primeval man. As a reaction against researchers like Tiger en Fox, Barasch, R. Smith, Shepher,
who believe in polygyny, other authors stress the concomitant polyandry
of the females. Sherfey holds that women in the pre-agricultural era
were sexually to hot to restrict themselves to one single male. Hrdy
holds that is was beneficial for a woman to 'nymphomanically' have sex
with as much males as possible, and to keep the males in uncertainty
about fatherhood, so that the potential fathers had no choice but to to protect
and feed all her children.Smith describes how the increasing reliance
on hunting of homo erectus went hand in hand with a replacement of the
exclusive harem with reciprocal polygamy: left behind by
their hunting husbands, the females could no longer be protected against
solitary males. Margulis
follows Smith in the idea that the vegetarian Australopithecus kept
relatively faithful women in his harem, whereas homo erectus tended to be promiscuous. Margulis
talks in quasi Nietzschian terms about a communal 'feast of love', where
nobody belonged to nobody. Also here, the idea of primeval communism is
coupled with the idea of the orgy.
REALLY EXISTING COMMUNES
Already the Greeks assessed the
existence of reciprocal polygamy with
other peoples (Herodotos, Strabo). Christian authors mention its
existence with the heathen Slaves. Especially after the Age of the
Discoverers the sexual relations of the 'savages' are interpreted in
terms of primeval communism. A good example is Campanalla's 'City of the
Sun', a story inspired by the first anthropological records from Sumatra
and Ceylon. Authors like Morgan, Engels, Frazer and Briffault interpret
marriage classes as group marriage. Unjustifiably so: marriage classes determine the candidates among whom one may choose his
(monogamous, polygynous or polyandrous) partner. But it is not because
Christians are expected to marry with other Christians that they would
belong to one giant commune. Not only marriage classes, also kinship
terminology, such as the extension of the term 'brother' or 'sister' to
other members of the group, was a source of confusion (with Morgan
for instance). In all these cases, we are dealing with a mistaken
interpretation of the anthropological evidence.
There seems to be some truth in the story that it is the custom to share not
only the table with visitors, but also the bed. Lowie reports how the Chuckchee in Siberia
sleep with each other's wives during their long travels. Because Lowie
does not define marriage in terms of sexual relations, he nevertheless
comes to the conclusion that we are not dealing here with 'group marriage' but
with a temporal extension of the sexual rights of the husband. According
to Lowie, Howitt is wrong in applying the term 'group marriage' to the Dieri in Australia:
the principal husband has to give his consent. Lowie is only prepared to
grant the existence of 'sexual communism'.
But also sexual communism is reciprocal polygamy. Group marriage and
primeval communism certainly refer also to sexual relations, and not
only to the economical contract, to which Lowie wants to reduce the
institution of marriage. Thus, the triumphant denial of the existence of
'group marriage' is a good piece of anthropological sophistic
reasoning. Also Malinowski brushes the problem aside by excluding sexual
relations from his definition of marriage. Murdock mentions group
marriage with the Kiangang in
Brasilia, but holds, just like Lowie that there is no group marriage
with the Chuckchee and the Dieri, because there is only sexual, and no
economical cooperation. Forms of group marriage can be found with the
youngsters that are excluded from marriage by the harem keeping elders.
And Tannahil points to the fact that in Egypt the poor often live in a
kind of commune.
Also levirate (a woman marries a man and his
brothers) and sororate
(a man marries a woman and her sisters) are often regarded forms of group marriage. Both
customs are widespread, but occur mostly independently. Only the
combination of both in a marriage of all the brothers with all the
sisters would be reciprocal polygamy. Other variants can be found with
the Banyoro in Uganda where every brother has sexual rights on the women
of his brothers. In other cases we are dealing with one sided polygamy:
sororal polygyny of sororal polyandry.
As opposed to the purely economical group marriage, sexual communism has
been a widespread practice, especially where its was not
forbidden to have sexual contact outside marriage. In
little communities like hordes and tribes, the same men have of
necessity to restrict
themselves to a limited number of available women, so that their
behaviour can be classified as reciprocal polygamy. But we should ponder
whether we are dealing here with reciprocal polygamy as a desired form
of marriage. The same holds for the free contacts between youngsters in
many tribes: these relations end up in monogamous relations..
Voluntary reciprocal polygamy, on the other hand, is not at
all 'primeval' communism, but rather a late phenomenon in history. The
first traces appear only after the advent of commerce and the
first states. Community of women has often been legitimated with
Christian ideology. In many communities of early Christians, the
community of goods was extended to the community of women.
Although the community was initially understood in the economical sense, in many
cases it also comprised sexual community. Also in many later Christian
communes ('cooperatives') the sexual community was either negated - as
with the Shakers - or openly advocated - as with the Spiritualists in the
13th century, the Ranters after the decapitation of Charles I in 1649,
and in the commune that was founded in 1849 in by the 'Perfectionists'
of John Humphrey Noyes, where the 'complex marriage' lasted for some
thirty years, and finally the Bible Communists.
Soon also socialist communes appear, inspired by theories from
antiquity (Plato) or from anthropology (Bachofen, Morgan).
Where communism and anarchism went hand in hand with feminism, that
could not but result in theories on reciprocal polygamy. No wonder that only in the
socialist communes economic communism (as cooperation with collective
ownership of the means of production and/or equal remuneration) was
openly coupled with sexual communism. In 1826, Frances Wright founded 'Nashoba',
an agrarian commune in the neighbourhood of Memphis. Around 1840 Fourierian
communes were spreading in the United States. The members were supposed
to unite in erotic 'quartets, sextets, or octets', if not in entire 'orchestras
of passion'. Also after the Russian Revolution, there have been countless
experiments with sexual communes, and he Zionist Meir Yaari advocates a
combination of sexual and erotic communism during the foundation of the
commune Bitania in
1920. It should be remarked that many stories about 'free love' belong
to the realm of fantasy (Beth Alfa). Also anarchistically inspired
artists tended to live in communes. There was a revival of Bachofens
ideas around 1900 with the 'Münchener
Kosmiker', a group op poets, philosophers and artist, among them Klages
and Woflkehl . Also the painters of ''Die Brücke' lived in a sexual and
economical commune. The socialist and feminist inspiration was revived
in the sixties. In the United States we had the communes of Victor
Branco, Alex Comfort, the agricultural community of Lama in New Mexico,
the hippie commune of Oz and that of Twin Oaks, the anarchistic commune
of Red Clover and the (Reichian) commune of Bryn Athin, the commune
of the 'Living Theatre'. On the European continent we had the Reichian commune
of Otto Mühl in
Vienna. This commune functioned as a centre of pilgrimage
for groups in other countries, like the commune 'Vol Sap' in Amsterdam (see: 'Otto
Mühl: from the happening to the commune). There were also countless
communes in other countries of Europe: France, Germany, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan and India.
Advocates of reciprocal polygamy mostly think of reciprocal polygamy in
terms of a kind of 'group marriage', where a number of men and women
have free sexual access to each other. It is also conceivable that the
women from a harem keep polyandrous harems themselves, the males of
which keep polygynous harems in their turn, and so on. This variant of reciprocal
polygamy - asymmetric reciprocal polygamy - should be discerned from
the symmetric reciprocal polygamy of the commune. With the symmetric
variant, the asymmetric variant has in common that one man has many
wives and that one woman has many, but it differs from it in that they do
not belong to one single closed group. When for instance a man is
allowed to sleep with the sisters of his wife and a woman with the
brothers of her husband, the brothers of the husband are not
allowed to sleep with the sisters of his wife, and the sisters of his
wife have no free access to his brothers. Such a pattern occurs with
the 'polyandrous' people in the Himalaya and North India. On a more
modest scale, we find the asymmetric variant also in 'free love' and in
the so-called 'open marriage', where each partner is allowed to have
relations with other partners. 'Open Marriage' has been preached by the O'Neills.
A special variant is the 'swinger phenomenon', analysed in Bartell's
book 'Group marriage'.
How often and how enthusiastically reciprocal polygamy may have been advocated,
it cannot pride upon a record of enduring realisations. Only seemingly
is the list of communes impressive: in fact, it dwindles into nothingness
when compared with other forms of marriage. What is more: many
experiments with symmetric polygamy in the commune or asymmetric
polygamy in the 'open marriage' turned out to be short lived and
unstable. The community of women turns out to be the utopian or Atlantic
dream par excellence. It is merely a program, the implementation of
which is doomed to failure. Before examining why, we have to remind of
the fact that there are many forms of communes.
KINDS OF COMMUNES
In the above, we already distinguished economical and sexual communes.
We know that the relation between man and woman consists of seduction,
making love, parenthood and cooperation. Because these moments can be
isolated as a consequence of the perverse trend, we can distinguish four
kinds of communes.
Most appealing to the imagination is the sexual commune. Less obvious
for a Western mind is the idea of a fertile commune consisting of
fathers and mothers. The communes of Plato and Campanella were set up
with reproductive and educative aims. Especially since the advent of
eugenetics in the wake of the Malthus and Darwin, purely reproductive
relations are separated from (infertile) sexual relations. Russell pleads for the separation of love and
parenthood and to reserve reproduction for the most appropriate parents. The
Nazi Lebensborn project can be considered as a reproductive and
educatory commune, whe
re illegal
child
ren of parents who could submit an
appropriate 'Ahnentafel' were entrusted to the care of the Nazistate. The reproductive communes are the scientific counterparts of the
harems as reproductive machines: the harem keeper and the wives in
the
harem are not necessarily the bearers of the best genes. The primeval
father has to give up his role to candidates who owe their position not to
economic or political power, but rather to genetic supremacy. Hitler,
who is said to have had only one testicle, had to make room for an array
of elect blond Germans, and to content himself with delivering
certificates to German mothers.
Next, there is the commune where men and women engage in a purely
economical communism, like otherwise husband and wife in a 'marriage de raison'.
We already pointed to the phenomenon that is such communes (think also of
cloisters) the sexual aspect is often fiercely repressed. The reason is
that sexuality is often associated with the monogamous couple that threatens to
undermine the economic communism of the community. In other cases,
economic polygamy is combined with sexual monogamy. Only in a minority
of cases do economic and sexual polygamy go hand in hand.
We finally have to ask ourselves whether there is also reciprocal
polygamy of seduction??. where all the women would exhibit themselves
for all the men and that these men were prepared to look at all those
women (and vice versa). We have seen that this kind of reciprocal
polygamy does not exist, for the simple reason that men are not out at
admiring all the women, but only the most beautiful ones (and vice
versa): one-sided polygamy is the rule here. Simultaneity of one sided
polyandry and polygyny can be seen on nude beaches, where many men
admire the most beautiful women and many women the most beautiful men.
MORE IS LESS
After this survey of the various kinds of communes, we can ponder why
reciprocal polygamy is so scarce and doomed to failure. At first sight,
this seems rather strange. Reciprocal polygamous desires do not exclude
one another, so that there is no conflict between the polygynous desires
of m
an and polyandrous desires of woman as with one-sided
polygamy. And reciprocal polygamy is in accordance with the ration of
males to females. Nothing seems to prevent its smooth realisation.
Were it not for the iron law that the quality of relations decreases in
proportion to the increase in numbers. Precisely the multiplication of
relations that is desired by so many men and women, does not precisely lead to an
intensification of love, but rather to its evaporation. That is above all
evident on the sexual level. Reciprocal polygamy supposes an equal
frequency of the urge to make love in both sexes. Let us suppose that
two partners have coordinated their frequency of making love. When the
couple is extended to a commune of four members, they have the choice:
either they double the frequency and have to make love with half the
usual enthusiasm, or everybody maintains the usual frequency and has
to halve the frequency of his sexual contact with each partner. In both cases, the
quality of the separate sexual relation decreases.
And that goes even more so for one-sided polygamy. When talking of the 3.333
wives of an Ashanti chief, Lubbock lets slip the remark that nobody can
possibly love so many women and that it is unthinkable that so many
women can show the least affection for one single men.
CHASE, CASTRATE, KILL
...
Let us suppose, for a moment, that the quality of the relations begins
to decrease only from a certain number of partners onward and that
initially the pleasure is only increasing. Then, a new problem looms up:
the presence of pyramids of
desirability.
In the foregoing, we have seen how men monopolised economic power in an
effort to overcome their submission to female beauty. The asymmetric
exchange of beauty for wealth (resources) led to a complex social
architecture with polygynous harems at the top, monogamous
couples in the middle and a multitude of unmarried singles on the basis. In
order to realise reciprocal polygamy, we would have to restore the
attractiveness of both sexes on all levels: beauty, sexuality,
parenthood and economic potential. Not for nothing do proposals for
reciprocal polygamy always coincide with the demand for economic
equality. To the extent that equality could be realised, the one-sided
economic interest of women would decrease and be redistributed over all
the facets of man's diverse nature. Conversely, the interest of the male
would become less one-sided than interest in her beauty alone.
Then, a new problem arises: economic equality - in the supposition that
such a thing could ever be realised - does not annihilate the differences on
other domains. Both sexes continue to classify each other on different
levels of different pyramids. And, as soon as the partners proceed to
choosing, that has to result in factual monogamy also here. Under the
sign of reciprocal polygamy the most desirable man may grant his wife many
lovers, but he himself will only be content with the most desirable woman,
and the other way round,
and so the whole way down to the base of the pyramid. Needless to
mention that there are many domains where one can distinguish himself
from other people and that he who excels on one domain does not
necessarily excel on all the other domains. But that does not alter the
fundamental dynamics.
Pleas for reciprocal polygamy obviously tend to overlook that people are
not equally desirable. That is why reciprocal polygamy is doomed to
remain
utopian. That is
evident from the exaggerated feelings
of 'brotherhood' and 'peaceful togetherness. In all descriptions of
communes the stress is on the way in which the men share their women brotherly
and the women their men sisterly. We remind of the 'Aphrodisian'
with Bachofen, the 'Dionysian orgy' with Nietzsche and the
'feast of love' of Margulis' homo erectus. The
reinterpretation of pyramids of desirability to egalitarian and peaceful
commune is a result of the repression of the way in which men and women
use to eclipse the less desirable without any open aggression.
In the theories on reciprocal polygamy, we find the traces of the repressed everywhere. In Plato's
state the partners are allocated by (manipulated) drawing lots, which
implies that free choice is suspended. Campanella bluntly denies that
there would be less desirable women in his City of the Sun. In his state
the masters nevertheless play the role of Plato's drawing lots: Commerce
with educated and beautiful women is reserved for well educated and
beautiful men, commerce with fat women for skinny men, and commerce with
skinny women for fat men, question of obtaining a good average. Luckily,
there is also provided in the need of bookworms: they have right to
young and strong
woman as compensation. Also Fourier sweeps the problem under the carpet
with the contention that in the future everybody will be rich,
cultivated, honest, desirable, virtuous and beautiful.
A bad conscience about such repression is reflected in the institution
of the 'angelicate', whereby the most beautiful couples were supposed to
practice 'amorous philanthropy' on behalf of the less desirable and
the elders! Not only the decrease in quality of the relations with
the increase in quantity, also the existence of pyramids of desirability
is responsible for the tendential presence decrease of the community of women to ever smaller communities of the
elect, and finally to monogamy. Many religious and socialist communes (think
of the commune of Humpfrey Noyes in Oneida) eventually dissolved in a
series of monogamous relations, and swinging often ended up in the
remarriage of the best placed partners.
In eugenetic reproductive communes, the existence of pyramids of
desirability is openly recognised in the nature of the enterprise itself.
With Russell and in Hitler
's 'Lebensborn' only the elect breeding bulls
and dito wombs are allowed to participate in the reproductive feast,
whereas the less fortunate are excluded. they have to restrict
themselves to purely sexual commerce with their monogamous partner or
are excluded from reproduction altogether, in as far as they are spared
the even worse fate of castration or gasification. Even in the concealed
eugenetics of sperm banks the exclusion is reflected in the selection of
sperm donors or the demands of the women that are to be fertilised with
this elect sperm (for instance the demand for white sperm with black
women).
The spotlights on the fraternal harmony in the temple of the commune
only hide from view what is happening outside the walls. Primeval
fathers and primeval mother close the ranks fraternally and sisterly to
chase, castrate or kill the less desired - albeit this time communally:
fraternally or sisterly rather than like primeval fathers and primeval
mothers.
JEALOUSY
Equally
exaggerated as the stress on fraternity in the commune is the
emphasis with which every jealousy is denied. Community of women seems
to be synonymous absence of very claim on property and possessive jealousy.
That is a double illusion.
In the first place, it is overlooked that there is jealousy of intruders
in a every form of sexual relation. Jealous is not the privilege - let alone the
fundament - of monogamous relations. The harem wives react
jealously to any extension of the harem with a female intruder. In the
Chinese harems there were fixed procedures to cope with these outburst
of jealousy. The eunuchs are the silent witnesses of the jealousy of the
harem holder. And also with reciprocal
polygamy in the commune, intruders are not welcome. We already described
how the brothers and sisters communally exclude the less fortunate. In
the same vein marriage classes, unjustifiably considered to be the remnants of group
marriage, determine not only with which partners one is supposed to
marry, but which partners are excluded from the beginning in the first
place. They circumscribe the pool of potential sexual partners and
prescribe on which intruders one will react jealously or aggressively. No member
of a clan would be prepared to hand over a potential partner to a member
of another clan, let alone an enemy. And the same goes for communities
the members of which are supposed to marry among each other (endogamy):
this leads to collective jealousy of outsiders.
It suffices to refer to the jealousy of white men of the blacks who come
to seduce their daughters, or of all kinds of native of
immigrants. A special variant of such collective jealousy is the
phenomenon that in many countries native whores are not at the
disposition of strangers, or in the religious prescriptions that
Christian whores are forbidden to serve Jews or Muslims.
Every form of sexual relation jealously protects itself against
intruders or
dissidents. To spare themselves this insight,
many authors conceive of the community of women as of a universal
community, so that there are no outsiders at all. One cannot escape the
impression that Bachofen, McLennan and Morgan thought that the whole of
humanity was engaged in once gigantic hetaerism. The idea of a universal
brotherhood survives in the very term 'primeval communism' that
happens to be as ineradicable as patriarchy or matriarchy. The universal
ban of the last decades on everything that smells even faintly of
communism, leads to the search for poor alternatives, like Borneman's
'libertarian life style' without jealousy.
Second, it is not unimportant to remind of the fact that there is also
jealousy within the various polygamous sexual formations, just like
among the children in a family, even when most of the partners learn to
live with it, again just like the children in a family. In every harem,
women are struggling for the highest position or the status of mother of
the successor. Since not all can be the one and only, in concrete harems,
not otherwise than in concrete families, we are facing the problem of
distributive justice. In practice, this is implemented through strict
regulations according to Freud's motto from the nursery: when nobody is
allowed to be the favourite, then all must be treated equally. We refer
to the love calendars in the Chinese harems and with the Mormons, and to
the already mentioned Confucian and Islamic prescription that no wife
should be neglected in the harem. The Confucian book Li Tshi prescribes
that one should have sex at least once in a week with an older concubine.
The problem is dealt with in the film 'Raise the red lantern. One master, four wives'
...
THE FRATERNAL HORDE
(1)
The above raises a number of questions. whence the emphasis on fraternal
brotherhood? Whence the systematic denial of every jealousy? Whence the
stubborn coupling of sexual and economic communism?
One cannot escape the impression that the commune is a reaction of those
who are the denied the access to what others monogamically of
polygamically possess. A harem holder does not conceal his jealousy: his
eunuch are the living witnesses to it. And that cannot but provoke the
jealousy of those who find themselves on the lower steps of the ladder.
That are precisely those that would have an interest in others not being
jealous: the monogamous middle bracket who would like to have a taste of
other people's women; or still lower on the pyramid: those who are not
able to keep a women altogether, let alone a beautiful women. To get
access to the property of other people, the have to resign themselves
from every property claim and to deny every jealousy in themselves. And
since they do not own anything desirable or nothing at all, they do not
find that difficult....
In that sense, we could well imagine that the sons of the primeval
father were jealous of the monopoly of the primeval father and how their
jealousy made them condemn every form of ownership. Let us suppose that
the fraternal horde killed the primeval father. They then could not
claim the rights for which they had murdered their father. Nothing was
left to them but to fraternally share the pleasure in the females of
their father. In such scenario the murder on the primeval father would
have led to the foundation of .... the primeval commune!
We know that this story could never have occurred, simply because a
primeval father is no match for his grown up sons, so that he never
could have monopolised a harem. We have meanwhile constructed the
historical counterpart of this mythical primeval father: the wealthy
men, who, as slave holder, feudal lord or capitalist is able to collect
the most beautiful women is his harem. He does so as an old man that
lays hands upon the young women and thus bereaves the youngster of what
rightfully belongs to them.
In this historical version of the story of the primeval father, the
dominance of the 'father' over his 'sons' is really assured. To out rule
the old wealthy 'father', the 'sons' will first have to become as old
and rich as him. But, since the richness of the ones is the poverty of
the others??, they surely will become old, but not necessarily rich.
Only such historical 'primeval father' is able to castrate his grown up
sons, albeit merely economically. Only the son that grows up under the
protection of his mother will be able to be the successor of his dying
father, as we have.
The historical counterparts of the primeval sons are the excluded
slaves, serfs and proletarians. The historical primeval father bereaves
them not only of the most beautiful girls,, but also of the means of
buying them. These excluded sons can unite in a rebellious horde
revolting against the jealous possessiveness of the primeval father
and bereaving him of his harem and his treasures. Also these historical
brothers will have to remain faithful to their slogans and resign
themselves from every possessive greed. No revolutionary is allowed to
monopolise his wife, if he has one, and the primeval father's wives have
been freed from the primeval fathers dominance only to join the
universal commune of the people. This pattern survives is the group rape
of women of elders through youngsters in medieval cities, in the sexual
practices of Taoists in China, the French Revolution and the wave of
free love that swept over Russia after the Russian Revolution. Rossiaud
is right when he is talking about the dream of a Golden Age that lies
dormant in the deepest unconscious of the poor, the longing to return to
a primitive community, that expresses itself in every revolt.
Not
only the women have to join the universal community.
This fate is in store for private property of goods as well :
everybody has to resign from private property and the property of the
primeval father has to be distribute to the community. The dismantling
of the harem and the redistribution of private property with each
revolution is the late revenge of the preliminary conquest of land and
property and of the abduction of women.
In expectance of this historical patricide, there is another possibility
that was not at the disposition of the mythical fraternal horde. The historic
'primeval father' reaches his goal foremost through economical
castration of his 'sons'. The historical 'sons' can protect themselves
in the complex network of society by no longer working for him, but for
each other. They then found an economical fraternal horde, the members
of which work together and become rich together. And in such fraternal
horde, the women are (accepted) as sisters: they are no longer abducted
or bought, but acquire the means of their existence on the same footing
as their brothers. Of course, they all resign from individual claims on
each other and on each other's goods, and, as in one universal family,
they share each other's bodies and the fruit of each other's labour.
Only against this background can the emphasis on fraternity and the
taboo on jealousy be explained, but foremost the coexistence (coupling)
of economical and sexual communism. Only against this background
can we understand why the idea of the commune invariably pops up in the
lower and reformative regions of the sexual-economical architecture and
never in the economically and sexually privileged at the top. Has
anybody heard of a
harem holder ever threw away his females for the rabble? In the lower
regions of the beehive or the termite hill, the commune is the
counterpart of the merger of kingdom and harem in the higher regions.
In that sense, the story of the primeval father turns out to be the
psychoanalytical or mythical version of a competing theory: that of
socialism.
The fraternal horde is the mythical name for the revolutionaries in the
industrial society, the bourgeois and the proletarian, in case:
socialists of all plumage. Whereas the bourgeois propagated
monogamy against the feudal harem (as we shall describe in chapter IX),
the less fortunate proletarians dreamed of a universal commune of the
people. Under the flag of socialism, five years after the formulation of
the story of the primeval father by Freud, patricide was perpetrated
against the Tsar in
1917. The story of the primeval father is in fact a early reflection of
Freud on socialism, with which the psychoanalytical movement had
been confronted, first by Adler, and then by Reich. The successes of
socialism and of the later perverted fascist variant have been a
forceful motive for Freud to deepen out his story time and again. We can
suffice with pointing to the fact that the mythical version of Freud has
un unexpected charm. It condenses the means - the struggle for the
collective ownership of the means of production - with the goal - the
struggle for the access to the women. But this charm is at the same time
a weakness. Whereas, in Freud's 'Totem
and Taboo' the struggle for the means soft production disappears behind
the goal, in Marx' Das Kapital' the goal disappears behind
the means. Both reductions of the problematics are a special case of the
reduction of conflicts in society to conflicts between classes or
conflicts between the sexes, that we analysed at the end of the second
chapter of this book. And they testify to a similar failure to
understand the totality of the complex sexual-economical architecture of
society.
THE COMMUNE AND THE
BROTHEL
Before proceeding to
the next chapter, we should dwell somewhat on a terminological question.
What we refer to with the unequivocal term 'reciprocal polygamy' sails
under the most diverse flags: 'hetaerism', 'primeval
communism', 'punalua marriage',
'community of women', 'group marriage', 'sexual communism', 'panmixy',
'polygynandry' or 'commune'.
Such terminological confusion is a result of a failure to grasp the
difference between one-sided and reciprocal polygamy. In our
terminology, polyandry and polygyny as two forms of one-sided polygamy
are clearly discerned from reciprocal polygamy.
Whoever fails to make the required distinction, threatens to forget that
with one-sided polygamy only one sex is polygamous: polygyny presupposes
female monandry and polyandry male monogyny.
The insight that the husbands of a polyandrous women are monogynous runs
up against the conviction that men happen to be polygynous. But whoever
imagines the husbands of a polyandrous women to be polygamous,
inconspicuously converts the harem into a commune.
We should beware when diverse authors are talking about
'polyandry'. With Bachofen and Briffault, we often have the impression
that the existence of polyandry suffices to conclude on?? 'primeval
communism'. Also in the mind of McLennan both formations are not clearly
distinguished ion his saying that the desirable women in the horde are
surrounded with a host of admirers. That implies that, in absence of
scarcity of women, several men are living together with several women in
on single commune. Only scarcity of women can safeguard the monopoly of
one woman over several men. Most apparent is the confusion with Robertson Smith
who opposes polyandry to 'mona
ndry' without introducing the corollary 'monogyny'
and who under the heading of
'polyandry' sleeves describes reciprocal polygamy. The same goes for
Weininger. It seems as if men can only face the existence of polyandry
when they are allowed to be polygynous.
The confusion between polyandry and reciprocal polygamy betrays also how much the brothel stood at the cradle of the theory of primeval
communism. It suffices to refer to Bachofen's terminology:
he is talking about'hetaerism'
en 'Aphroditism'. The same goes for Bloch. The confusion is this time fed
by the fact that, with asymmetric polyandry, the harem of the other
party is all too easily lost from view: to be sure, hetaires and other
servants of Aphrodite gathered many men around them in what was
apparently a polyandrous harem, but the males in those harems flutter
around from one beauty to another . Other authors link (primeval)
communism and whoredom indirectly. Referring to prostitution and
unfaithfulness, Marx writes that bourgeois marriage comes down to the
community of married women. At best, one could blame the communists of
introducing an open instead of a hypocrite concealed version of the
community of women. McLennan holds that the savages felt no objection to
share their sexual pleasures, not otherwise than civilised men and their
'sin of the cities'. Westermarck jokingly remarks that the existence of
(temple)prostitution does not testify to primeval communism, no less
than brothels for communism in the industrial age. With Robertson
Smith, polyandry seems to be a civilised term for prostitution, and the
same holds for Lowie. Whoredom as described at the beginning of
this chapter has its reciprocal character in common with primeval
communism. The most important difference is that communism is voluntary
and not forced through economic productivity, as with whores - remind of
the difference between desired and factual relations. The difference
between a commune on the one hand and a brothel with habitual customers
on the other hand is that in the commune, the desired relations fall
together with factual relations, whereas it is the question whether the
behaviour of whores corresponds to their desires...
We already pointed to the fact that relations with whores are polygamous
in as far as a who
re-hopper repeatedly visit
the same whore, and that is especially the case with the most desired
whores at the top. the commune is the voluntary version of this form of
reciprocal polygamy. At the base another scheme prevails: a series of
men have casual unique encounters with always different whores. There is
a voluntary version also of this version of whoredom: reciprocal
promiscuity. This counterpart of the commune will be dealt with in the
second panel of this third diptych.