Human Egalitarian Sexuality as the Progressive Norm
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
Author’s Note: Marxist and Marxist-Leninist groups that express anti-gay, bisexual and transexual attitudes are acting in a ‘non-dialectical' and non-Marxist manner. Classical Marxism – being the intellectual outpouring of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels – clearly recognises the true multifaceted reality of human sexual evolution and sexual practice. The ideological problem appears to occur within Marxist-Leninism and the development of culture in the USSR. Many modern leftists align themselves with certain bourgeois misinterpretations of Soviet culture and assume that such distortions are ‘real’ reflections of the reality of everyday culture within Soviet Russia. This is incorrect and a false reading of material history. I have written elsewhere why I think the USSR was not ‘anti-gay’ - but the USSR only lasted 74 years – and this is not enough time to eradicate ALL the polluting ideas of prejudice and discrimination that permeates the human mind and regulate human behaviour. Marxist-Leninism is not a religious dogma and should not be allowed to become a religious dogma. Marxist-Leninist ideology must be used anew and interpreted with a fresh perspective by each arriving generation. Mistakes of the past must be understood and put right as human society progresses towards Socialism and Communism. As Marxist-Leninism is ‘scientific’ in essence, the science of human development clearly reveals that human sexuality routinely involved heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual activity as normal, collective activities. These modes of behaviour were not ‘aberrant’ choices made by ‘vile’ and ‘perverted’ individuals – but rather functional modes of ‘primitive communistic’ society. Monogamy and heterosexual activity are the products of the ‘unnatural’ and ‘selfish’ individuality that has given rise to the corrupt, capitalist system. As such, logic dictates that just as this capitalist ‘individualism’ must be abandoned and transcended through Revolutionary activity – so should the out-dated and out-moded activity of ‘monogamy’ and ‘heterosexuality’. To ‘defend’ ‘monogamy’ and ‘heterosexuality’ is to be ‘reactionary’ and to embrace bourgeois, counter-Revolutionary activity! Such attitudes are fascistic because they oppose the understanding of established science. Bisexuality and homosexuality are not perverted activities – but the re-emerging of more or less ‘standard’ human sexual activity. I suspect that ‘transgenderism’ is human sexuality filtered through the remit of modern science – which expand the horizons of human aspiration. Transgenderism, then, becomes something akin to transhumanism. Scientific ‘facts’ should be recognised, considered and accepted as such – and not conflated with (or reduced to) mere one-sided moral judgements.
ACW (24.12.2020)
ACW (24.12.2020)
The scientific designation is ‘Homo sapien sapiens’ - and this refers to anatomically ‘modern’ humans – which comprise one of the five categories of the existing great apes, namely Bonobos, Chimpanzees, Gorillas and Orangutans. Although Gibbons are often confused with great apes – they are usually placed in a different category. This means that science places ‘modern’ humans firmly within the animal kingdom and does not ascribe any theological ‘specialness’ to its existence. This is an important observation to establish straightaway in this essay. There is no objective, scientifically derived (or valid) evidence that the physical body (or ethereal mind) of a ‘modern’ human-being is the product of any other process other than evolution through natural selection. This suggests that the complex machinations of ‘theology’ are entirely produced within the mind and are devoid of any genuine scientific knowledge of the functionality of the material world. Theology – even in its most compelling comfort-giving and fear-enhancing – is nothing other than the product of the genius-capacity associated with the human imagination.
I am working from two books that are remarkably similar – although from starkly different historical and ideological backgrounds – or so it would seem:
1) Friedrich Engels: The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
2) C Ryan & C Jetha: Sex At Dawn – Why We Stray – and What it Means for Modern Relations, (2010)
Both books make reference to the excellent (1877) research of ground-breaking American academic ‘Lewis H Morgan’, entitled ‘Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lives of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarian to Civilisation’. In a note to his work in 1884, Engels explains that Morgan had ‘died a few years ago’. Indeed, this great thinker passed away in 1881 aged 63-years-old. What is interesting is that this research of Lewis H Morgan is still relevant today, and has not been usurped or dislodged by any contemporary scientific evidence. All up-to-date research supports Morgan’s findings rather than detracts from it. Morgan understood that the development of ‘agriculture’ within human social and cultural organisation was nothing but the ‘privatisation’ of the land and the human bodies that lived upon that land. This process changed everything for human existence.
1) Friedrich Engels: The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884)
2) C Ryan & C Jetha: Sex At Dawn – Why We Stray – and What it Means for Modern Relations, (2010)
Both books make reference to the excellent (1877) research of ground-breaking American academic ‘Lewis H Morgan’, entitled ‘Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lives of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarian to Civilisation’. In a note to his work in 1884, Engels explains that Morgan had ‘died a few years ago’. Indeed, this great thinker passed away in 1881 aged 63-years-old. What is interesting is that this research of Lewis H Morgan is still relevant today, and has not been usurped or dislodged by any contemporary scientific evidence. All up-to-date research supports Morgan’s findings rather than detracts from it. Morgan understood that the development of ‘agriculture’ within human social and cultural organisation was nothing but the ‘privatisation’ of the land and the human bodies that lived upon that land. This process changed everything for human existence.
The study of tribal people in the world today – particularly those who have remained isolated from the polluting influence of modern religion and cultural norms – exhibit cultural interactions very similar to that observed within Bonobo groupings. Bonobos are, of course, the closest genetic relative that ‘modern’ humans possess in the animal kingdom. Human females – like their Bonobo counter-parts – broadcast a continuous ‘yes’ availability for sexual activity modulated by the occasional ‘no’. The females inhabiting the other three primate groups continuously broadcast a ‘no’ signal of availability – punctuated by the available ‘yes’. As a consequence, this availability and non-availability has an effect upon the behaviour of the males in the groupings. Chimp males are often violent toward one another (and others) when females are in mating season – whilst Bonobo males – whilst continuously having access to ongoing sexual stimulation and fulfilment do not exhibit any violent tendencies. Bonobos have sexual relations with one another throughout the day – taking little notice whether the partner of the moment is young or old, or male or female.
Ancient human-beings – as opposed to their ‘modern’ counter-parts – inhabit a psychological and socio-economic space within which the development of agriculture has not yet occurred. These ancient humans, therefore, are scavengers and hunter-gatherers, as all their individual and collective needs are met through this activity. In this early model of human existence, the ‘collective’ well-being of the group supersedes any obsession with hyper-individuality. For the chances of the survival of the individual to increase – the well-being of the collective must be both ‘maintained’ and ‘enhanced’. The contemporary scientific study of early modern human culture supports this position – which is, of course, also the Marxist position. From these observations, it is clear that early modern humans evolved from a group that pursued an egalitarian culture very similar to that which is still practiced by Bonobos and human-beings still living within primitive tribal groupings. This is the sexual milieu within which human behaviour was both conditioned and developed. The development of ‘agriculture’ is often presented as progressive by most historians, but it had a devastating effect upon human behaviour and psychological and emotional well-being.
The development of agriculture changed a balance of power within human tribal groupings that favoured the female, and switched the onus toward the ‘male’. Whereas the female had maintained dominance through the providing of sexual gratification – the male now retained dominance through control of the ‘ownership’ of economic factors. Whereas as the entirety of ‘nature’ was owned by the entirety of humanity- agriculture ensure this ‘entirety’ was cut-up into small pieces and allotted-out to the dominant males only. At this juncture in human society – the human female lost control of her body – as it became the property of the male. Tribal (collective) sexuality was abandoned, as males sought to compete to ‘control’ the access to the body of women they had ‘purchased’ through marriage contracts (which the women’s family paid-for). Whereas sexual activity had once been a free enterprise of tribal well-being and cohesion – it now became a ‘private’ activity moved to ‘behind the scenes’ of everyday life, where it became viewed as ‘dirty’ and a ‘taboo’ subject. The males who were empowered by the development of agriculture understood that females retained power in society through the control and regulation of sexual activity. As a consequence, the new dominant males had to disparage sexuality and turn it into something that should be despised and attacked as somehow ‘unnatural’ - and yet the sexual act remained the biological essence of all human life.
What does this mean for Marxist-Leninists? Well, for a start it exposes transphobia and homophobia for the fascist ideologies they are. From a strict scientific and biological perspective, it is clear that in the realms of ‘primitive communism’ - that is the socio-economic level of development that early modern humans existed within (which reflected the animalistic milieu from which they evolved) - all forms of sexual behaviour were ‘normal’. This can be observed within the behaviour of primitive tribal groupings today, and has been recorded in the diaries and reports of early European explorers to remote parts of the world around the last five-hundred years. Needless to say, ‘modern’ conditioned ‘sensitivities’ toward sexuality (much of it ‘religious’ in origin) had no place in the original psychological and physiological blue-print that defined human behaviour. Furthermore, the observance of the behaviour of Bonobos reinforces these assessments. The capacity for human-beings to feel physical pleasure (as well as psychological and emotional well-being) evolved from the experience of the entire scale of sexual activity. This includes mutual masturbation (female-male, female-female, male-female and male-male), as well as ‘sexual coupling’ or ‘penetrative sexual activity’ between female-male, female-female, male-female and male-male. Penetrative sexual activity includes vaginal, anal and oral, etc, with the ‘collective’ participating all day long. Stimulation can be to the point of sexual orgasm, or for the sake of experiencing the sexual pleasure and intimacy of ‘touch’ - due to the security and comfort such interaction provides. As males cannot tell which females they have made pregnant – they tend to assume a ‘caring-role toward ALL new-borns – providing for every mothers’ well-being rather than a chosen individual.
Modern humans have experienced the trauma of agricultural privatisation which has radically altered their culture away from a selfless ‘collectivity’ toward a selfish ‘individualism’. Sexual activity is often perceived as unfulfilling within modern life because it deviates from the cultured promiscuity of the past. Modern, religiously derived morality is ‘unnatural’ and has nothing in common with the culture of ‘ancient’ humans. Indeed, religion has tended to ‘support’ and not ‘oppose’ the agricultural distortion of human existence. Religious attitudes and beliefs have made the situation worse and not better. Marx acknowledged the ‘primitive communism’ from which humans evolved – and stated that eventually humanity would further ‘evolve’ into the state of ‘progressive Communism’. This appears to be a recapturing of the past filtered through all the advantages of modern science and evolutionary development – so that human society transcends its own limitations and becomes something altogether different!
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2020.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2020.