Socialism will fail if sex is not used for group cohesion
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In the book "Sex At Dawn" by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jentha, the authors show that we humans have spent most of our existence( like 95%) as hunter gatherers living in egalitarian groups that were like communes where people shared everything material resources, women and also responsibilites.It was just the most efficient strategy for survival.
The thing is sex was used more often for group cohesion than for reproduction. Like 99% of the time we were having sex for social bonding than to reproduce. I dont think those communes would have remained egalitarian and peacefully cooperated if they practiced things like monogamy which severely restricts pleasure seeking behavior.
Now James W. Prescott in his article "Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" shows that almost every human society he studied had high levels of violence if physical pleasure seeking behavior was discouraged which is true in every monogamous society. The reverse was also true that they were more peaceful much less drawn to violence if physical pleasure seeking behavior wasnt looked down on. People were getting lot more physical pleasure in these places from their adolescence, both premarital and extramarital sex was tolerated. In "Sex At Dawn" the authors even highlighted societies that encouraged promiscous behavior.
The thing is we are not monogamous beings at all as the book "Sex At Dawn" shows convincingly. So if you encourage physical pleasure seeking behavior or tolerate it you might find the average woman is having sex with several males at any given time and the average man is having sexual relationship with several females at any given time.
Now socialism is trying to scale up the communes of 100-150 people that existed 10,000 years ago to communes involving millions of people. The thing is the females were shared in the communes to make them work as was parental responsibilities. I dont think people will be inclined to share material resources if the females arent shared. The ideal situation I can think of is where every female is accessible to all men and parental resposibility is shared communally.
Discouraging accessibility will also discourage peaceful cooperation and sharing among men, instead men will go violent as James W. Prescott shows the solution isnt monogamy either as it too discourages accessibility to females. We will never have an egalitarian society with men peacefully cooperating with each other if they have to fight over access to females, society will forever remain an unequal place with unequal rights and privileges.
If we do decide to tolerate or encourage physical pleasure seeking behavior how we may go about it, the authors of "Sex At Dawn" highlight several communities that do just that often having rituals that encourage female accessibility and discouraging men from behaving possessively / selfishly. Ultimately trying to create conditions where every female is accessible to all men.
Ultimately I suppose its about encouraging or discouraging certain tendencies to bring about peaceful cooperation among people and I think sex will play a big part in it. I mean sex can be used to bring about group cohesion or divide it.
You're speaking about women as though they were objects.People will do whatever they choose, as they do now.
Subhaditya wrote:In the book "Sex At Dawn" by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jentha, the authors show that we humans have spent most of our existence( like 95%) as hunter gatherers living in egalitarian groups that were like communes where people shared everything material resources, women and also responsibilites.It was just the most efficient strategy for survival.The thing is sex was used more often for group cohesion than for reproduction. Like 99% of the time we were having sex for social bonding than to reproduce. I dont think those communes would have remained egalitarian and peacefully cooperated if they practiced things like monogamy which severely restricts pleasure seeking behavior.Now James W. Prescott in his article "Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" shows that almost every human society he studied had high levels of violence if physical pleasure seeking behavior was discouraged which is true in every monogamous society. The reverse was also true that they were more peaceful much less drawn to violence if physical pleasure seeking behavior wasnt looked down on. People were getting lot more physical pleasure in these places from their adolescence, both premarital and extramarital sex was tolerated. In "Sex At Dawn" the authors even highlighted societies that encouraged promiscous behavior.The thing is we are not monogamous beings at all as the book "Sex At Dawn" shows convincingly. So if you encourage physical pleasure seeking behavior or tolerate it you might find the average woman is having sex with several males at any given time and the average man is having sexual relationship with several females at any given time.Now socialism is trying to scale up the communes of 100-150 people that existed 10,000 years ago to communes involving millions of people. The thing is the females were shared in the communes to make them work as was parental responsibilities. I dont think people will be inclined to share material resources if the females arent shared. The ideal situation I can think of is where every female is accessible to all men and parental resposibility is shared communally.Discouraging accessibility will also discourage peaceful cooperation and sharing among men, instead men will go violent as James W. Prescott shows the solution isnt monogamy either as it too discourages accessibility to females. We will never have an egalitarian society with men peacefully cooperating with each other if they have to fight over access to females, society will forever remain an unequal place with unequal rights and privileges.If we do decide to tolerate or encourage physical pleasure seeking behavior how we may go about it, the authors of "Sex At Dawn" highlight several communities that do just that often having rituals that encourage female accessibility and discouraging men from behaving possessively / selfishly. Ultimately trying to create conditions where every female is accessible to all men.Ultimately I suppose its about encouraging or discouraging certain tendencies to bring about peaceful cooperation among people and I think sex will play a big part in it. I mean sex can be used to bring about group cohesion or divide it.I take it you've never actually had an adult relationship with a woman. Honestly they're not as scary as they seem, just try talking to one or two of them in a pleasant manner.
This message sounds like a citation from Bible which indicates that women were created in order to have babies like a rabbit, or an incubator, and for sexual pleasure only.We are not going to be real liberated ( man, women, child, elderly, youth ) based on sex, sexual preferences, religion, or national divisions, on the contrary, those fictitious things have kept us divided for centuriesIn a socialist society where we are going to have from freedom than this stupid one, sexual relationship are going to have a different character, and peoples will do whatever they want, and we are going to have a state to intervene in our affairs, and religion is going to be a matter of personal incumbencies.One of the major problem of the feminist movement, is that they think that our problem is sex relationship, or sexual preferences, or that racism is the major problem of mankind, the real problem is capitalism. A society based on social production is what is going to bring real cohesion among human beings, it is going to be a natural relationship ( the unification of human beings with nature ) among all human beings around the worldThis article written by the PG will clarify all those wrong conceptions: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/women-and-socialism Women and socialism
Maybe we can join the Hippie movement
mcolome1 wrote:A society based on social production is what is going to bring real cohesion among human beings, it is going to be a natural relationship ( the unification of human beings with nature ) among all human beings around the worldlindanesocialist wrote:mcolome1 wrote:Maybe we can join the Hippie movementThey weren't that bad comrade
I did not say they were bad. It just an ironic statement. My only problem in this world is capitalism, the capitalist class, and the madnes of their society
Subhaditya wrote:Now socialism is trying to scale up the communes of 100-150 people that existed 10,000 years ago to communes involving millions of people. The thing is the females were shared in the communes to make them work as was parental responsibilities. I dont think people will be inclined to share material resources if the females arent shared. The ideal situation I can think of is where every female is accessible to all men and parental resposibility is shared communally.And.
Quote:If we do decide to tolerate or encourage physical pleasure seeking behavior how we may go about it, the authors of "Sex At Dawn" highlight several communities that do just that often having rituals that encourage female accessibility and discouraging men from behaving possessively / selfishly. Ultimately trying to create conditions where every female is accessible to all men.As DJP pointed out, the OP seems to give the impression that women are objects.
Sorry if I gave the impression that women are objects… I meant for an ideal situation where every person always has several people they can turn to to release their tensions… women can seek physical pleasure / tension release from whoever they like and get it… gay men can turn to men and get it… thats what I was trying to mean a situation where several people are willing to release the tensions a person is feeling so the average person always has several people they can turn to to release their tensions… this person may be old, young, man or a woman doesnt matter.I am just reminded of what James W. Prescott said about violent societies are almost always ones that try to deny physical pleasure to its people from adolescence onwards and the reverse is also true that is societies are more peaceful when people are allowed to seek physical pleasure from their adolescence onwards. Its just physical affection given to a child that makes it feel good that starts looking very sexual from adolescence onwards. Its just something that makes a person feel good. Getting this feels way better than doing violent things. It also promotes sharing and caring. Invariably violent people are ones being denied this from their adolescence.British soldiers in India used to sing of "a lass and lakh a day" while drinking where lakh is 100,000 rupees. It was money and sex they were looking for not just money.To me its clear sex is as important a need as money and people will go to war over it just as much as they would for money. And you dont even have to look at foreign shores for it there is plenty to be had right there in the local community so men in the community will just get busy killing each other sort of competing for a vital resource that in this case is sex. Hence the violent societies are made of men who arent getting enough.Some people have also pointed at our closest living relatives chimps and bonobos and shown the same thing…That the more sex starved chimps are killing each other all the time and machiavellian power struggles are going on among the chimpanzee males where a few males are always trying to take over power and even the alliances are temporary. And what one big thing they do if they succeed they try to exclude the other males from the limited sex that is available. Sex is much more limited as the females only have sex when they are ovulating.In contrast the bonobo females like humans conceal their estrus and are having sex all the time even when they are not fertile… so much so the males cant even tell if they are the father when a baby is born… heres the thing bonobos have yet to be observed killing each other within the group in 50 years of intensive observations. When two groups of bonobos meet and tensions start rising they often release that tension not by killing each other but by an impromptu orgy. They are using sex to prevent violence and promote sharing. It helps that the bonobo environment has plenty of food for everyone.I forgot where I read it but the article talked of an experiment where a pile of food was given to an adult chimp, what did he do… he kept it for himself. When it was given to an adult bonobo it called the others and started sharing the food with them.Chimps and bonobos are showing the same pattern James W. Prescott noticed in human societies where to turn a society violent you deny it physical pleasure and to subdue violent behavior you enhance physical pleasure people are getting. Here is the thing he included monogamous societies among violent ones… clearly one man / woman isnt enough for most.In "Sex At Dawn" the authors even gave anatomical evidence to show that we are not at all a monogamous species. And personally I have never felt like a monogamous being and now I dont think we are either as a species. The picture of every person being able to turn to several people to release their tensions is just an idealized vision if you think of us as promiscuous beings.I know powerful men with huge properties want their kids to benefit from the wealth they own. These men will never encourage promiscuity among women, a situation where they cant tell if a child is theirs or not which I suspect is what will happen if their wives and daughters werent punished for promiscuous behavior. They control religion and mass media and through them they promote these attitudes that make people do things like 'slut shaming' and worse, they dont want a woman to be a respected member of society if she is promiscuous. The more wealth seems to concentrate at the top the more strongly female promiscuity seems to get discouraged… not a recipe for a happy content peaceful place.Its why I dont have much faith in capitalism… its full of hypocrisy and shame… I mean a wealthy powerful man can create a harem in his factory/ office or his home if he wants to and no amount of laws seem to be able to stop him from doing it as long as he is turning a profit and doing it discreetly. So while the class discourages promiscuous behavior individuals in it can create their own harems if they like as long as they do it discreetly. Reading allegations about Gaddafi, Jimmy Saville or Sir Edward Heath it seems to me that the laws on morality are only meant to be followed by plebeians not those who live in palaces. If you are powerful / important enough the state will instead help you satisfy your passions no matter how coercive or violent they are as long as it can be done discreetly.In India while you were advised by the gods to have total control over a female from birth to death to ensure her chastity… in the sacred scriptures a king is given the right to have sex with whichever woman he desires as long as she is part of his kingdom.I think if power is needed to get enough sex a socialist place wont remain socialist for too long. And no way monogamy will keep a place socialist for too long either.
Talking of India, a comrade there drafted a leaflet a few years ago which contained the following (in English translation):
Quote:As humans, everybody has the right to live, to get a partner, lead a happy life, go anywhere in the world and discover new and striking facts.No doubt it would be good if every human (man or women) could "get a partner" but it is difficult to see how the exercise of this "right" could be implemented (quite apart from whether this would be a temporary partner or one for life). Maybe the writer was thinking that partnerships could be arranged somehow, as I think has been the case in most human societies before the coming of capitalism and its ideology of individualism which has left individuals to fend for themselves.
Quote:It's not what it looks like, I was just helping establish a society of common ownership!Somehow, I don't think it'll catch on.I don't think sexual liberation needs socialism and I dread to think how this might be imposed on the unwilling. Like Gerry Healy in the WRP? Like the 'horizontal recruiters' in the 'Revolutionary Workers League'? At least there is no suggestion that Sheridan's shenanigans were anything other than consensual and at least not prevented by the morality of the Pope or Rupert Murdoch or any other media mogul.
Jondwhite can you name one inegalitarian patriarchal society where property passes from father to son that is sexually liberated.I cant think of one rich father who is ok if his 'wife' gives birth to someone else's kid. If he is not ok with his wife giving birth to someone else's kid how will he be comfortable with his wife having sex with another man. I see him only trying to discourage his wife from having sex with other men. He will only be comfortable with monogamy or polygamy since there his paternity is gauranteed, and he will be pushing for such a setup.He is not pushing for monogamy because he is only attracted to his wife he is pushing for it as he doesnt want his wife to have sex with others.How are you going to have a sexually liberated place if no one is comfortable with their wives having sex with other men.In all the promiscous communities I heard of either the 'husbands' werent powerful that is the place seemed egalitarian or it was a matrilineal place where mother to daughter property transfer took place where knowing the father is immaterial and sometimes there wasnt even a concept of a husband, the brothers acted as fathers along with other elders from the mothers family. Or they were hunter gatherers with no concept of private property.It seems to me the moment men start to own property and become richer than others all sorts of sexual restrictions are put in place to discourage the women(their wives I think) from behaving promiscously. Its curious that the powerful men themselves often create exceptions for themselves like the concept of 'temporary marriage' the muslims have or secretly well not being all that monogamous.In the 'Kamasutra' it says at the beginning that happiness comes from experiencing pleasure and 'Kama' that is love and intense physical pleasure is the greatest pleasure there is, but you need to be rich to trully experience it. Why ?… a poor man only has his wife. Rest of the book mostly advises men how to seduce married women and courtesans how to make their clients fall in love with them.That is the thing you need to be rich to be happy in a place where men own the property. Or you can go down the suicidal path of renounciation and hope to god you dont come back to live on this wretched world again.Its why I dont think we will be able to liberate ourselves sexually in an inegalitarian place where property is mostly owned by men. And thats how capitalism always seems to look like with its inequality and ultra rich men at the top owning most of the wealth of the land. Worse is the machiavellian power struggles that seems to be a perennial feature of capitalism.Maybe if capitalism somehow managed to become very egalitarian things will change but I only see the reverse happening at the moment.
ALB wrote:Talking of India, a comrade there drafted a leaflet a few years ago which contained the following (in English translation):Quote:As humans, everybody has the right to live, to get a partner, lead a happy life, go anywhere in the world and discover new and striking facts.No doubt it would be good if every human (man or women) could "get a partner" but it is difficult to see how the exercise of this "right" could be implemented (quite apart from whether this would be a temporary partner or one for life). Maybe the writer was thinking that partnerships could be arranged somehow, as I think has been the case in most human societies before the coming of capitalism and its ideology of individualism which has left individuals to fend for themselves.
Who constitutes a 'partner'?Say for the matrilineal Mosuo in China is the brother who helps bring up the children the woman's partner or are the unknown number of men she sleeps with the partners, I dont know.Women like Dossie Easton, Janet W. Hardy, Dr. Susan Block I think are already showing how we can go about it.Books like "The Ethical Slut" by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy or "The Bonobo Way: The Evolution Of Peace Through Pleasure" by Dr. Susan Block can lead us to that idealized place I was talking about where every person can have several people they can turn to to release their tensions. All we need is enough people taking to it.Mass media could have helped but its controlled by the capitalist class who seem to prefer promoting monogamy and hatred of promiscuous females, come to think of it religion also seems to promote the same thing.Its the same way it will come about as communal control of resource generation… when most people start wanting it.We must encourage this… discouraging this will be same as discouraging socialism.I dont think socialism can succeed as long as men continue to fight with each other over women.
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