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version of Section J.
J.6 What methods of child rearing do anarchists advocate?
Anarchists have long been aware of the importance of child rearing and education.
As such, we are aware that child rearing should aim to develop "a
well-rounded individuality" and not "a patient work slave,
professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist."
[Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks, p. 108] In this section of
the FAQ we will discuss anarchist approaches to child rearing bearing
in mind "that it is through the channel of the child that the development
of the mature man must go, and that the present ideas of. . . educating
or training. . . are such as to stifle the natural growth of the child."
[Ibid., p. 107]
If one accepts the thesis that the authoritarian family is the breeding
ground for both individual psychological problems and political reaction,
it follows that anarchists should try to develop ways of raising children
that will not psychologically cripple them but instead enable them
to accept freedom and responsibility while developing natural self-regulation.
We will refer to children raised in such a way as "free children."
Work in this field is still in its infancy (no pun intended). Wilhelm
Reich is again the main pioneer in this field (an excellent, short
introduction to his ideas can be found in Maurice Brinton's The
Irrational in Politics). In Children of the Future, Reich
made numerous suggestions, based on his research and clinical experience,
for parents, psychologists, and educators striving to develop libertarian
methods of child rearing. (He did not use the term "libertarian,"
but that is what his methods are.)
Hence, in this and the following sections we will summarise Reich's
main ideas as well as those of other libertarian psychologists and
educators who have been influenced by him, such as A.S. Neill and
Alexander Lowen. Section J.6.1 will
examine the theoretical principles involved in raising free children,
while subsequent sections will illustrate their practical application
with concrete examples. Finally, in section J.6.8,
we will examine the anarchist approach to the problems of adolescence.
Such an approach to child rearing is based upon the insight that
children "do not constitute anyone's property: they are neither
the property of the parents nor even of society. They belong only
to their own future freedom." [Michael Bakunin, The Political
Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 327] As such, what happens to a child
when it is growing up shapes the person they become and the
society they live in. The key question for people interested in freedom
is whether "the child [is] to be considered as an individuality,
or as an object to be moulded according to the whims and fancies of
those about it?" [Emma Goldman, Op. Cit., p. 107] Libertarian
child rearing is the means by which the individuality of the child
is respected and developed.
This is in stark contrast to standard capitalist (and individualist
anarchist we should note) claim that children are the property
of their parents. If we accept that children are the property
of their parents then we are implicitly stating that a child's formative
years are spent in slavery, hardly a relationship which will promote
the individuality and freedom of the child or the wider society. Little
wonder that most anarchists reject such assertions. Instead they argue
that the "rights of the parents shall be confined to loving their
children and exercising over them . . . authority [that] does not
run counter to their morality, their mental development, or their
future freedom." [Bakunin, Op. Cit., p. 327] Being someone's
property (i.e. slave) runs counter to all these and "it follows
that society, the whole future of which depends upon adequate education
and upbringing of children. . . , has not only the right but also
the duty to watch over them..." [Ibid., p. 327]
Hence child rearing is part of society, a communal process
by which children learn what it means to be an individual by being
respected as one by others. In Bakunin's words, "real freedom -
that is, the full awareness and the realisation thereof in every individual,
pre-eminently based upon a feeling of one's dignity and upon the genuine
respect for someone else's freedom and dignity, i.e. upon justice
- such freedom can develop in children only through the rational development
of their minds, character and will." [Op. Cit., p. 327]
We wish to point out at the beginning that a great deal of work
remains to be done in this field. Therefore our comments should be
regarded merely as tentative bases for further reflection and research
by those involved with raising and educating children. There is, and
cannot be, any "rule book" for raising free children, because to follow
an inflexible rule book is to ignore the fact that each child and
its environment is unique and therefore demands unique responses from
its parents. Hence the "principles" of libertarian child rearing to
which we will refer should not be thought of as rules, but rather,
as experimental hypotheses to be tested by parents within their own
situation by applying their intelligence and deriving their own individual
conclusions.
Bringing up children must be like education, and based on similar
principles, namely "upon the free growth and development of the
innate forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we
hope for the free individual and eventually also for a free community,
which shall make interference and coercion of human growth impossible."
[Goldman, Op. Cit., p. 115] Indeed, child rearing and education
cannot be separated as life itself is an education and so must
share the same principles and viewed as a process of "development
and exploration, rather than as one of repressing a child's instincts
and inculcating obedience and discipline." [Martha A. Ackelsberg,
Free Women of Spain, p. 132]
Moreover, the role of parental example is very important to raising
free children. Children often learn by mimicking their parents - children
do what their parents do, not as they say. If their mother and father
lie to each other, scream, fight and so on, then the child will probably
do so as well. Children's behaviour does not come out thin air, they
are a product of the environment they are brought up in (partly by,
initially at least, copying the parent). Children can only be encouraged
by example, not by threats and commands. How parents act can be an
obstacle to the development of a free child. Parents must, therefore,
be aware that they must do more than just say the right things,
but also act as anarchists in order to produce free children.
The sad fact is that most modern people have lost the ability to
raise free children, and regaining this ability will be a long process
of trial and error and parent education in which it is to be hoped
that each succeeding generation will learn from the failures and successes
of their predecessors, and so improve. In the best-case scenario,
over the course of a few generations the number of progressive parents
will continue to grow and raise ever freer children, who in turn will
become even more progressive parents themselves, thus gradually changing
mass psychology in a libertarian direction. Such changes can
come about very fast, as can be seen from various communes all over
the world and especially in the Israel-Palestine kibbutz where society
is organised according to libertarian principles, and children are
mainly growing in their collective homes. As Reich puts it:
"We have learned that instead of a jump into the realm of the
Children of the Future, we can hope for no more than a steady advance,
in which the healthy new overlaps the sick old structure, with the
new slowly outgrowing the old." [Children of the Future,
pp. 38-39]
By means of freedom-based child rearing and education, along with
other methods of consciousness raising, as well as encouraging resistance
to the existing social order anarchists hope to prepare the psychological
foundation for a social paradigm shift, from authoritarian to libertarian
institutions and values. And indeed, a gradual cultural evolution
toward increasing freedom does seem to exist. For example, as A.S.
Neill writes in Summerhill, "There is a slow trend to freedom,
sexual and otherwise. In my boyhood, a woman went bathing wearing
stockings and a long dress. Today, women show legs and bodies. Children
are getting more freedom with every generation. Today, only a few
lunatics put cayenne pepper on a baby's thumb to stop sucking. Today,
only a few countries beat their children in school." [p. 115]
Most anarchists believe that, just as charity begins at home, so
does the anarchist revolution. As some anarchists raise their own
children in capitalist society and/or are involved in the raising
and education of the children of other parents, they can practice
in part libertarian principles even before the revolution. Hence we
think it is important to discuss libertarian child rearing in some
detail.
Let's consider the obstacles first. As Reich points out, the biggest one is
the training and character of most parents, physicians, and educators.
Based on his clinical experience, Reich maintained that virtually
all adults in our society have some degree of psychological problems,
which is manifested somatically as a rigid muscular "armour":
chronic muscular tensions and spasms in various regions of the body.
One of the main functions of this armour is to inhibit the pleasurable
sensations of life-energy that naturally "stream" or flow through
an unarmoured body. Reich postulated that there is one basic bioenergy
("orgone") in the body, identical with what Freud called "libido,"
which, besides animating the tissues and organs is also the energy
of sex and the emotions (we should note that most anarchists do not
subscribe to Reich's idea of "orgone" - the existence of which, we
may note, has not been proved. However, the idea of character armour,
by which individuals within a hierarchical society create psychological
walls/defences around themselves is one most anarchists accept. Such
walls will obviously have an effect both on the mental and physical
state of the individual, and their capacity for living a free life
and experiencing pleasure). This means that the pleasurable "streamings"
of this bioenergy, which can be felt when the muscular armour is relaxed,
have an erotic or "libidinous" quality. Thus an unarmoured organism
(such as a new-born infant) automatically experiences pleasure with
every breath, a pleasure derived from perception of the natural bioenergetic
processes within its body. Such a mode of being in the world makes
life intrinsically worth living and renders superfluous all questions
about its "meaning" or "purpose" -- questions that occur only to armoured
people, who have lost contact with their bioenergetic core of bodily
sensations (or it is distorted, and so is changed from a source of
pleasures to a source of suffering) and thus restricts their capacity
to fully enjoy life.
It is important for those involved in child rearing and education
to understand how armouring develops in the new-born child. Reich
points out that under the influence of a compulsive, pleasure-denying
morality, children are taught to inhibit the spontaneous flow of life-energy
in the body. Similarly, they are taught to disregard most bodily sensations.
Due to Oedipal conflicts in the patriarchal family (see below), parents
usually take the most severely repressive disciplinary measures against
sexual expressions of life-energy in children. Thus, all erotic feelings,
including the erotically-tinged "streaming" sensations, come to be
regarded as "bad," "animalistic," etc., and so their perception begins
to arouse anxiety, which leads, among other bad results, to chronic
muscular tensions as a way of cutting off or defending against such
perceptions and their attendant anxiety. Shallow breathing, for example,
reduces the amount of life-energy available to flow into excitation
and emotion; tightening the muscles of the pelvic floor and abdomen
reduces sexual feelings, and so on. As these tensions become chronic
and unconscious, piling up in layer after layer of muscular armour,
the person is eventually left with a feeling of inner emptiness or
"deadness" and -- not surprisingly -- a lack of joy in life.
For those who fail to build a stable physical and psychological
armour around themselves to suppress these feelings and sensation,
they just twist them and are flooded again and again with intense
unpleasant feelings and sensations.
Muscular armouring has its most profound effect on back pains and
various respiration problems. Reich found that the "normal" man or
woman in our society cannot spontaneously take full, deep,
natural breaths, which involves both the chest and abdomen. Instead,
most people (except when making a conscious effort) restrict their
breathing through unconscious tensing of various muscles. Since the
natural response to any restriction in the ability to breathe is anxiety,
people growing up in repressive cultures such as ours are plagued
by a tendency toward chronic anxiety. As a defence against this anxiety,
they develop further layers of muscular armouring, which further restricts
their ability to breathe, and so on, in a vicious circle. In other
words, it is literally true that, as Max Stirner said, one
cannot "take breath" in our authoritarian society with its
life-denying atmosphere based on punishments, threats, and fear.
Of course sex is not the only expression of life-energy that parents
try to stifle in children. There are also, for example, the child's
natural vocal expressions (shouting, screaming, bellowing, crying,
etc.) and natural body motility. As Reich notes,
"Small children go through a phase of development characterised
by vigorous activity of the voice musculature. The joy the infant
derives from loud noises (crying, shrieking, and forming a variety
of sounds) is regarded by many parents as pathological aggressiveness.
The children are accordingly admonished not to scream, to be 'still,'
etc. The impulses of the voice apparatus are inhibited, its musculature
becomes chronically contracted, and the child becomes quiet, 'well-brought-up,'
and withdrawn. The effect of such mistreatment is soon manifested
in eating disturbances, general apathy, pallor of the face, etc. Speech
disturbances and retardation of speech development are presumably
caused in this manner. In the adult we see the effects of such mistreatment
in the form of spasms of the throat. The automatic constrictions of
the glottis and the deep throat musculature, with subsequent inhibition
of the aggressive impulses of the head and neck, seems to be particularly
characteristic." [Op. Cit., p. 128]
(And we must add, that the suppression of the urge to move all children
have is most destructive to the 15% or so of "Hyper-active" children,
whose urge to move is hard to suppress.)
"Clinical experience has taught us," Reich concludes, "that
small children must be allowed to 'shout themselves out' when the
shouting is inspired by pleasure. This might be disagreeable to some
parents, but questions of education must be decided exclusively
in the interests of the child, not in those of the adults."
[Ibid.]
Besides deadening the pleasurable streamings of life energy in the
body, muscular armouring also functions to inhibit the anxiety generated
by the presence of anti-social, cruel, and perverse impulses within
the psyche (impulses referred to by Reich as "secondary" drives)
-- for example, destructiveness, sadism, greed, power hunger, brutality,
rape fantasies, etc. Ironically, these secondary drives result from
the suppression of the primary drives (e.g. for sex, physical
activity, vocal expression, etc.) and the sensations of pleasure associated
with them. The secondary drives develop because, when muscular armouring
sets in and a person loses touch with his or her bioenergetic core
and other emotional urges, the only emotional expressions that can
get through the thick, hard wall of armour are distorted, harsh, and/or
mechanical. Thus, for example, a heavily armoured person who tries
to express love may find that the emotion is shredded by the wall
of armour and comes out in distorted form as an impulse to hurt the
person loved (sadism) -- an impulse that causes anxiety and then has
to be repressed. In other words, compulsive morality (i.e. acting
according to externally imposed rules) becomes necessary to control
the secondary drives which compulsion itself creates. By such
processes, authoritarian child-rearing becomes self-justifying. Thus:
"Psychoanalysts have failed to distinguish between primary natural
and secondary perverse, cruel drives, and they are continuously killing
nature in the new-born while they try to extinguish the 'brutish little
animal.' They are completely ignorant of the fact that it is exactly
this killing of the natural principle which creates the secondary
perverse and cruel nature, human nature so called, and that these
artificial cultural creations in turn make compulsive moralism and
brutal laws necessary" [Ibid., p. 17-18].
Moralism, however, can never get at the root of the problem of secondary
drives, but in fact only increases the pressure of crime and guilt.
The real solution is to let children develop what Reich calls natural
self-regulation. This can be done only by not subjecting them
to punishment, coercion, threats, moralistic lectures and admonitions,
withdrawal of love, etc. in an attempt to inhibit their spontaneous
expression of natural life-impulses. The systematic development of
the emphatic tendencies of the young infant is the best way to "socialise"
and restrict activities that are harmful to the others. As A.S. Neill
points out, "self-regulation implies a belief in the goodness of
human nature; a belief that there is not, and never was, original
sin." [Op. Cit., p. 103]
According to Neill, children who are given freedom from birth and
not forced to conform to parental expectations spontaneously learn
how to keep themselves clean and develop social qualities like courtesy,
common sense, an interest in learning, respect for the rights of others,
and so forth (see next section). However,
once the child has been armoured through authoritarian methods intended
to force it to develop such qualities, it becomes what Reich
calls "biopathic" -- out of touch with its living core and
therefore no longer able to develop self-regulation. In this stage
it becomes harder and harder for the pro-social emotions to shape
the developing mode of life of the new member of society. At that
point, when the secondary drives develop, parental authoritarianism
becomes a necessity. As Reich puts it:
"This close interrelation between biopathic behaviour and authoritarian
countermeasures seems to be automatic. Self-regulation appears to
have no place in and no influence upon emotions which do not come
from the living core directly but only as if through a thick hard
wall. Moreover, one has the impression that secondary drives cannot
stand self-regulatory conditions of existence. They force sharp discipline
on the part of the educator or parent. It is as if a child with an
essentially secondary-drive structure feels that it cannot function
or exist without disciplinary guidance. This is paralleled by the
interlacing of self-regulation in the healthy child with self-regulation
in the environment. Here the child cannot function unless it has freedom
of decision and movement. It cannot tolerate discipline any more than
the armoured child can tolerate freedom."
This inability to tolerate freedom, which the vast majority of people
develop automatically from the way they are raised, is what
makes the whole subject of armouring and its prevention of crucial
importance to anarchists. Reich concludes that if parents do not suppress
nature in the first place, then no anti-social drives will be created
and no authoritarianism will be required to suppress them: "What
you so desperately and vainly try to achieve by way of compulsion
and admonition is there in the new-born infant ready to live and function.
Let it grow as nature requires, and change our institutions accordingly"
[Ibid., p. 47, emphasis in original].
As Alexander Lowen points out in Fear of Life, parents are
particularly anxious to suppress the sexual expressions of life energy
in their children because of unresolved Oedipal conflicts within themselves.
Hence, in order to raise psychologically healthy children, parents
need to acquire self-knowledge, particularly of how Oedipal conflicts,
sibling rivalry, and other internal conflicts develop in family relationships,
and to free themselves as much as possible from neurotic forms of
armouring. The difficulty of parents acquiring such self-knowledge
and sufficiently de-conditioning themselves is obviously another obstacle
to raising self-regulated children.
However, the greatest obstacle is the fact that armouring and other
twisting mechanisms set in so very early in life, i.e. soon after
birth. Reich emphasises that with the first armour blockings, the
infant's self-regulatory powers begin to wane. "They become
steadily weaker as the armouring spreads over the whole organism,
and they must be replaced by compulsive, moral principles if
the child is to exist and survive in its given environment." [Ibid.,
pp. 44-45] Hence it is important for parents to obtain a thorough
knowledge of what armouring and other rigid suppressions are and how
they function, so that from the beginning they can prevent (or at
least decrease) them from forming in their children. Some practical
examples of how this can be done will be discussed in the next
section.
Finally, Reich cautions that it is crucial to avoid any mixing of
concepts. "One cannot mix a bit of self-regulation with a bit of
moral demand. Either we trust nature as basically decent and self-regulatory
or we do not, and then there is only one way, that of training by
compulsion. It is essential to grasp the fact that the two ways of
upbringing do not go together." [Ibid., p. 46]
According to Reich, the problems of parenting a free child actually begin
before conception, with the need for a prospective mother to free
herself as much as possible from chronic muscular tensions, especially
in the pelvic area, which may inhibit the optimal development of a
foetus. As Reich points out, the mother's body provides the environment
for the child from the moment the embryo is formed until the moment
of birth, and strong muscular armouring in her pelvis as a result
of sexual repression or other emotional problems is very detrimental.
Such a mother will have a bioenergetically "dead" and possibly spastic
uterus, which can traumatise an infant even before it is born by reducing
the circulation of blood and body fluids and making the energy metabolism
inefficient, thus damaging the child's vitality.
Moreover, it has been found in many studies that not only the physical
health of the mother can influence the foetus. Various psychological
stresses influence the chemical and hormonal environment, affecting
the foetus. Even short ones, when acute, can have significant effects
on it.
Immediately after birth, it is important for the mother to establish
contact with her child. This means, basically, constant loving attention
to the baby, expressed by plenty of holding, cuddling, playing, etc.,
and especially by breast feeding. By such "orgonotic" contact
(to use Reich's term), the mother is able to establish the initial
emotional bonding with the new born, and a non-verbal understanding
of the child's needs. This is only possible, however, if she is in
touch with her own internal processes - emotional and cognitive -
and bioenergetic core, i.e. is not too neurotically armoured (in Reich's
terminology). Thus:
"The orgonotic sense of contact, a function of the . . . energy
field of both the mother and the child, is unknown to most specialists;
however, the old country doctor knew it well. . . . Orgonotic contact
is the most essential experiential and emotional element in the interrelationship
between mother and child, particularly prenatally and during the
first days and weeks of life. The future fate of the child depends
on it. It seems to be the core of the new-born infant's emotional
development." [Ibid. p. 99] It is less crucial but still
important for the father to establish orgonotic contact as well, although
since fathers lack the primary means of establishing it -- namely
the ability to breast feed -- their contact can never be as close
as the mother's (see below).
A new-born child has only one way of expressing its needs: through
crying. Crying has many nuances and can convey much more than the
level of distress of the child. If a mother is unable to establish
contact at the most basic emotional ("bioenergetic," according
to Reich) level, she will be unable to understand intuitively what
needs the child is expressing through its crying. Any unmet needs
will in turn be felt by the child as a deprivation, to which it will
respond with a wide array of negative emotions and deleterious physiological
processes and emotional tension. If continued for long, such tensions
can become chronic and thus the beginning of "armouring" and
adaptation to a "cruel" reality.
The most important factor in the establishment of bonding is the
tender physical contact between mother and infant is undoubtedly breast
feeding. Thus:
"The most salient place of contact in the infant's body is the
bioenergetically highly charged mouth and throat. This body organ
reaches out immediately for gratification. If the nipple of the
mother reacts to the infant's sucking movements in a biophysically
normal manner with sensations of pleasure, it will become strongly
erect and the orgonotic excitation of the nipple will become one with
that of the infant's mouth, just as in the orastically gratifying
sexual act, in which the male and female genitals luminate and fuse
orgonotically. There is nothing 'abnormal' or 'disgusting' in
this. Every healthy mother experiences the sucking as pleasure and
yields to it. . . . However, about 80 percent of all women suffer
from vaginal anaesthesia and frigidity. Their nipples are correspondingly
anorgonotic, i.e. 'dead.' The mother may develop anxiety or loathing
in response to what would naturally be a sensation of pleasure aroused
in the breast by the infant's sucking. This is why so many mothers
do not want to nurse their babies." [pp. 115-116]
Reich and other libertarian psychologists therefore maintain that
the practice of bottle feeding is harmful, particularly if it completely
replaces breast feeding from the day of birth, because it eliminates
one of the most important forms of establishing bioenergetic contact
between mother and child. This lack of contact can then contribute
in later life to "oral" forms of neurotic character structure
or traits. (For more on these, see Alexander Lowen, Physical Dynamics
of Character Structure, Chapter 9, "The Oral Character"].
Lowen believes that the practice of breast feeding should be continued
for about three years, as it usually is among "primitive" peoples,
and that weaning before this time is experienced as a major trauma.
"[I]f the breast is available to a child for about three years,
which I believe to be the time required to fulfil a child's oral needs,
weaning causes very little trauma, since the loss of this pleasure
is offset by the many other pleasures the child can then have."
[Depression and the Body, p. 133]
Another harmful practice in infant care is the compulsive-neurotic
method of feeding children on schedule, invented by Pirquet in Vienna,
which "was devastatingly wrong and harmful to countless children."
Frustration of oral needs through this practice (which is fortunately
less in vogue now than it was fifty years ago), is guaranteed to produce
neurotic armouring in infants.
As Reich puts it, "As long as parents, doctors, and educators
approach infants with false, unbending behaviour, inflexible opinions,
condescension, and officiousness, instead of with orgonotic contact,
infants will continue to be quiet, withdrawn, apathetic, 'autistic,'
'peculiar,' and, later, 'little wild animals,' whom the cultivated
feel they have to 'tame.'" [Op. Cit. p. 124]
Another harmful practice is allowing the baby to "cry itself out."
Thus: "Parking a baby in a baby carriage in the garden, perhaps
for hours at a time, is a dangerous practice. No one can know what
agonising feelings of fear and loneliness a baby can experience on
waking up suddenly to find himself alone in a strange place. Those
who have heard a baby's screams on such occasions have some idea of
the cruelty of this stupid custom." [Neill, Summerhill,
p. 336] Indeed, in The Physical Dynamics of Character Structure,
Lowen has traced specific neuroses, particularly depression, to this
practice. Hospitals also have been guilty of psychologically damaging
sick infants by isolating them from their mothers, a practice that
has undoubtedly produced untold numbers of neurotics and psychopaths.
Also, as Reich notes, "the sadistic habit of circumcision will
soon be recognised as the senseless, fanatical cruelty it truly is."
[Op. Cit., p. 68] He remarks that he has observed infants who
took over two weeks to "recover" from the trauma of circumcision,
a "recovery" that left permanent psychological scars in the form of
chronic muscular tensions in the pelvic floor. These tensions form
the first layer of pelvic armouring, to which sexual repression and
other inhibitions (especially those acquired during toilet training)
later add.
The diaphragm, however, is perhaps the most important area to protect
from early armouring. After observing infants for several years in
a research setting, Reich concluded that armouring in babies usually
appears first as a blocking of free respiration, expressed as harsh,
rough, uneven, or laboured breathing, which may lead to colds, coughs,
bronchitis, etc.
"The early blocking of respiration seemed to gain importance
rapidly as more children were observed. Somehow the diaphragmatic
region appeared to respond first and most severely to emotional, bioenergetic
discomfort." [Ibid., p. 110] Hence the infant's breathing
is a key indicator of its emotional health, and any disturbance is
a signal that something is wrong. Or, as Neill puts it, "The sign
of a well-reared child is his free, uninhibited breathing. It shows
that he is not afraid of life." [Op. Cit., p. 131]
Neill sums up the libertarian attitude toward the care of infants
as follows: "Self-regulation means the right of a baby to live
freely without outside authority in things psychic and somatic.
It means that the baby feeds when it is hungry; that it becomes clean
in habits only when it wants to; that it is never stormed at nor spanked;
that it is always loved and protected." [Op. Cit. p. 105]
Obviously self-regulation doesn't mean leaving the baby alone when
it heads toward a cliff or starts playing with an electrical socket.
Anarchists do not advocate a lack of common sense. We recognise that
adults must override an infant's will when it is a question of protecting
its physical safety. As Neill writes, "Only a fool in charge of
young children would allow unbarred bedroom windows or an unprotected
fire in the nursery. Yet, too often, young enthusiasts for self-regulation
come to my school as visitors, and exclaim at our lack of freedom
in locking poison in a lab closet, or our prohibition about playing
on the fire escape. The whole freedom movement is marred and despised
because so many advocates of freedom have not got their feet on the
ground." [Ibid., p. 106]
Nevertheless, the libertarian position does not imply that a child
should be punished for getting into a dangerous situation.
Nor is the best thing to do in such a case to shout in alarm (unless
that is the only way to warn the child before it is too late), but
simply to remove the danger without any fuss. As Neill says, "Unless
a child is mentally defective, he will soon discover what interests
him. Left free from excited cries and angry voices, he will be unbelievably
sensible in his dealing with material of all kinds." [Ibid.,
p. 108] Provided, of course, that he or she has been allowed self-regulation
from the beginning, and thus has not developed any irrational, secondary
drives.
The way to raise a free child becomes clear when one considers how an unfree
child is raised. Thus imagine the typical infant, John Smith, whose
upbringing A.S. Neill describes:
"His natural functions were left alone during the diaper period. But when
he began to crawl and perform on the floor, words like naughty and
dirty began to float about the house, and a grim beginning was made in
teaching him to be clean.
"Before this, his hand had been taken away every time it touched his genitals;
and he soon came to associate the genital prohibition with the acquired
disgust about faeces. Thus, years later, when he became a travelling
salesman, his story repertoire consisted of a balanced number of sex
and toilet jokes.
"Much of his training was conditioned by relatives and neighbours.
Mother and father were most anxious to be correct -- to do the proper
thing -- so that when relatives or next-door neighbours came, John
had to show himself as a well-trained child. He had to say Thank
you when Auntie gave him a piece of chocolate; and he had to be
most careful about his table manners; and especially, he had to refrain
from speaking when adults were speaking." [Summerhill,
p. 97]
When he was little older, things got worse for John. "All his
curiosity about the origins of life were met with clumsy lies, lies
so effective that his curiosity about life and birth disappeared.
The lies about life became combined with fears when at the age of
five his mother found him having genital play with his sister of four
and the girl next door. The severe spanking that followed (Father
added to it when he came home from work) forever conveyed to John
the lesson that sex is filthy and sinful, something one must not even
think of." [Ibid.]
Of course, parents' ways of imparting negative messages about sex
are not necessarily this severe, especially in our allegedly enlightened
age. However, it is not necessary for a child to be spanked or even
scolded or lectured in order to acquire a sex-negative attitude. Children
are very intuitive and will receive the message "sex is bad" from
subtle parental cues like facial expressions, tone of voice, embarrassed
silence, avoidance of certain topics, etc. Mere "toleration" of sexual
curiosity and play is far different in its psychological effects from
positive affirmation.
Based on the findings of clinical psychiatry, Reich postulated a
"first puberty" in children, from the ages of about 3 to 6,
when the child's attention shifts from the satisfaction of oral needs
to an interest in its sexuality -- a stage characterised by genital
play of all kinds. The parents' task at this stage is not only to
allow children to engage in such play, but to encourage it. "In
the child, before the age of four or five, genitality has not yet
fully developed. The task here plainly consists of removing the obstacles
in the way of natural development toward full genitality. To fulfil
this task, we must agree that a first puberty in children exists;
that genital games are the peak of its development; that lack of genital
activity is a sign of sickness and not of health, as previously assumed;
and that healthy children play genital games of all kinds, which should
be encouraged and not hindered." [Children of the Future,
p. 66]
Along the same lines, to prevent the formation of sex-negative attitudes
means that nakedness should never be discouraged. "The baby should
see its parents naked from the beginning. However, the child should
be told when he is ready to understand that some people don't like
to see children naked and that, in the presence of such people, he
should wear clothes." [Neill, Summerhill, p. 229]
Neill maintains that not only should parents never spank or punish
a child for genital play, but that spanking and other forms of punishment
should never be used in any circumstances, because they instil
fear, turning children into cowards and often leading to phobias.
"Fear must be entirely eliminated -- fear of adults, fear of punishment,
fear of disapproval, fear of God. Only hate can flourish in an atmosphere
of fear." [Ibid., p. 124]
Punishment also turns children into sadists. "The cruelty of
many children springs from the cruelty that has been practised on
them by adults. You cannot be beaten without wishing to beat someone
else. . . Every beating makes a child sadistic in desire or practice."
[Ibid., p. 269, 271] This is obviously an important consideration
to anarchists, as sadistic drives provide the psychological ground
for militarism, war, police brutality, and so on. Such drives are
undoubtedly also part of the desire to exercise hierarchical authority,
with its possibilities for using negative sanctions against subordinates
as an outlet for sadistic impulses.
Child beating is particularly cowardly because it is a way for adults
to vent their hatred, frustration, and sadism on those who are unable
to defend themselves. Such cruelty is, of course, always rationalised
with excuse like "it hurts me more than it does you," etc., or explained
in moral terms, like "I don't want my boy to be soft" or "I want him
to prepare him for a harsh world" or "I spank my children because
my parents spanked me, and it did me a hell of a lot of good." But
despite such rationalisations, the fact remains that punishment is
always an act of hate. To this hate, the child responds in kind by
hating the parents, followed by fantasy, guilt, and repression. For
example, the child may fantasise the father's death, which immediately
causes guilt, and so is repressed. Often the hatred induced by punishment
emerges in fantasies that are seemingly remote from the parents, such
as stories of giant killing -- always popular with children because
the giant represents the father. Obviously, the sense of guilt produced
by such fantasies is very advantageous to organised religions that
promise redemption from "sin." It is surely no coincidence that such
religions are enthusiastic promoters of the sex-negative morality
and disciplinarian child rearing practices that keep supplying them
with recruits.
What is worse, however, is that punishment actually creates
"problem children." This is so because the parent arouses more and
more hatred (and diminishing trust in other human beings) in the child
with each spanking, which is expressed in still worse behaviour, calling
for more spankings, and so on, in a vicious circle. In contrast, "The
self-regulated child does not need any punishment," Neill argues,
"and he does not go through this hate cycle. He is never punished
and he does not need to behave badly. He has no use for lying and
for breaking things. His body has never been called filthy or wicked.
He has not needed to rebel against authority or to fear his parents.
Tantrums he will usually have, but they will be short-lived and not
tend toward neurosis." [Ibid., p. 166]
We could cite many further examples of how libertarian principles
of child-rearing can be applied in practice, but we must limit ourselves
to these few. The basic principles can be summed up as follows: Get
rid of authority, moralism, and the desire to "improve" and "civilise"
children. Allow them to be themselves, without pushing them around,
bribing, threatening, admonishing, lecturing, or otherwise forcing
them to do anything. Refrain from action unless the child, by expressing
their "freedom" restricts the freedom of others and explain
what is wrong about such actions and never mechanically punish.
This is, of course, a radical philosophy, which few parents are
willing to follow. It is quite amazing how people who call themselves
libertarians in political and economic matters draw the line when
it comes to their behaviour within the family -- as if such behaviour
had no wider social consequences! Hence, the opponents of children's
freedom are legion, as are their objections to libertarian child rearing.
In the next few sections we will examine some of the most common of
these objections.
Obedience that is based on fear of punishment, this-worldly or otherworldly,
is not really goodness, it is merely cowardice. True morality (i.e.
respect for others and one-self) comes from inner conviction based
on experience, it cannot be imposed from without by fear. Nor can
it be inspired by hope of reward, such as praise or the promise of
heaven, which is simply bribery. As noted in the previous
section, if children are given as much freedom as possible from
the day of birth and not forced to conform to parental expectations,
they will spontaneously learn the basic principles of social behaviour,
such as cleanliness, courtesy, and so forth. But they must be allowed
to develop them at their own speed, at the natural stage of
their growth, not when parents think they should develop them. And
what is "natural" timing must be discovered by observation, not by
defining it a priori based on one's own expectations.
Can a child really be taught to keep itself clean without being
punished for getting dirty? According to many psychologists, it is
not only possible but vitally important for the child's mental
health to do so, since punishment will give the child a fixed and
repressed interest in his bodily functions. As Reich and Lowen have
shown, for example, various forms of compulsive and obsessive neuroses
can be traced back to the punishments used in toilet training. Dogs,
cats, horses, and cows have no complexes about excrement. Complexes
in human children come from the manner of their instruction.
As Neill observes, "When the mother says naughty or dirty
or even tut tut, the element of right and wrong arises. The
question becomes a moral one -- when it should remain a physical
one." He suggests that the wrong way to deal with a child
who likes to play with faeces is to tell him he is being dirty. "The
right way is to allow him to live out his interest in excrement by
providing him with mud or clay. In this way, he will sublimate his
interest without repression. He will live through his interest; and
in doing so, kill it." [Summerhill, p. 174]
Similarly, sceptics will probably question how children can be induced
to eat a healthy diet without threats of punishment. The answer can
be discovered by a simple experiment: set out on the table all kinds
of foods, from candy and ice cream to whole wheat bread, lettuce,
sprouts, and so on, and allow the child complete freedom to choose
what is desired or to eat nothing at all if he or she is not hungry.
Parents will find that the average child will begin choosing a balanced
diet after about a week, after the desire for prohibited or restricted
foods has been satisfied. This is an example of what can be called
"trusting nature." That the question of how to "train" a child to
eat properly should even be an issue says volumes about how little
the concept of freedom for children is accepted or even understood,
in our society. Unfortunately, the concept of "training" still holds
the field in this and most other areas.
The disciplinarian argument that that children must be forced
to respect property is also defective, because it always requires
some sacrifice of a child's play life (and childhood should be devoted
to play, not to "preparing for adulthood," because playing is what
children spontaneously do). The libertarian view is that a child should
arrive at a sense of value out of his or her own free choice. This
means not scolding or punishing them for breaking or damaging things.
As they grow out of the stage of preadolescent indifference to property,
they learn to respect it naturally.
"But shouldn't a child at least be punished for stealing?" it will
be asked. Once again, the answer lies in the idea of trusting nature.
The concept of "mine" and "yours" is adult, and children naturally
develop it as they become mature, but not before. This means that
normal children will "steal" -- though that is not how they regard
it. They are simply trying to satisfy their acquisitive impulses;
or, if they are with friends, their desire for adventure. In a society
so thoroughly steeping in the idea of respect for property as ours,
it is no doubt difficult for parents to resist societal pressure to
punish children for "stealing." The reward for such trust, however,
will be a child who grows into a healthy adolescent who respects the
possessions of others, not out of a cowardly fear of punishment but
from his or her own self-nature.
Most parents believe that, besides taking care of their child's physical needs,
the teaching of ethical/moral values is their main responsibility
and that without such teaching the child will grow up to be a "little
wild animal" who acts on every whim, with no consideration for others.
This idea arises mainly from the fact that most people in our society
believe, at least passively, that human beings are naturally bad and
that unless they are "trained" to be good they will be lazy, mean,
violent, or even murderous. This, of course, is essentially the idea
of "original sin." Because of its widespread acceptance, nearly all
adults believe that it is their job to "improve" children.
According to libertarian psychologists, however, there is no original
sin. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that there is "original
virtue." As we have seen, Reich found that externally imposed, compulsive
morality actually causes immoral behaviour by creating cruel
and perverse "secondary drives." Neill puts it this way: "I
find that when I smash the moral instruction a bad boy has received,
he becomes a good boy." [Summerhill, p. 250]
Unconscious acceptance of some form of the idea of original sin
is, as mentioned previously, the main recruiting tool of organised
religions, as people who believe they are born "sinners" feel a strong
sense of guilt and need for redemption. Therefore Neill advises parents
to "eliminate any need for redemption, by telling the child that he
is born good -- not born bad." This will help keep them from falling
under the influence of life-denying religions, which are inimical
to the growth of a healthy character structure.
As Reich points out, "The Church, because of its influence on
the sexuality of youth, is an institution that exerts an extremely
damaging effect on health." [Children of the Future, p.
217] Citing ethnological studies, he notes the following:
"Among those primitive peoples who lead satisfactory, unimpaired
sexual lives, there is no sexual crime, no sexual perversion, no sexual
brutality between man and woman; rape is unthinkable because it is
unnecessary in their society. Their sexual activity flows in normal,
well-ordered channels which would fill any cleric with indignation
and fear, because the pale, ascetic youth and the gossiping, child-beating
woman do not exist in these primitive societies. They love the human
body and take pleasure in their sexuality. They do not understand
why young men and women should not enjoy their sexuality. But when
their lives are invaded by the ascetic, hypocritical morass and by
the Church, which bring them 'culture' along with exploitation, alcohol,
and syphilis, they begin to suffer the same wretchedness as ourselves.
They begin to lead 'moral' lives, i.e. to suppress their sexuality,
and from then on they decline more and more into a state of sexual
distress, which is the result of sexual suppression. At the same time,
they become sexually dangerous; murders of spouses, sexual diseases,
and crimes of all sorts start to appear." [Ibid., p. 193]
Such crimes in our society would be greatly reduced if libertarian
child rearing practices were widely followed. These are obviously
important considerations for anarchists, who are frequently asked
to explain how crime can be prevented in an anarchist society. The
answer is that if people are not suppressed during childhood there
will be far less crime, because the secondary-drive structure that
leads to anti-social behaviour of all kinds will not be created in
the first place. In other words, the solution to the so-called crime
problem is not more police, more laws, or a return to the disciplinarianism
of "traditional family values," as conservatives claim, but depends
mainly on getting rid of such values.
There are other problems as well with the moralism taught by organised
religions. One danger is making the child a hater. "If a child
is taught that certain things are sinful, his love of life must be
changed to hate. When children are free, they never think of another
child as being a sinner." [Neill, Op. Cit., p. 245] From
the idea that certain people are sinners, it is a short step to the
idea that certain classes or races of people are more "sinful" than
others, leading to prejudice, discrimination, and persecution of minorities
as an outlet for repressed anger and sadistic drives -- drives that
are created in the first place by moralistic training during early
childhood. Once again, the relevance for anarchism is obvious.
A further danger of religious instruction is the development of
a fear of life. "Religion to a child most always means only fear.
God is a mighty man with holes in his eyelids: He can see you wherever
you are. To a child, this often means that God can see what is being
done under the bedclothes. And to introduce fear into a child's life
is the worst of all crimes. Forever the child says nay to life; forever
he is an inferior; forever a coward." [Ibid., p. 246] People
who have been threatened with fear of an afterlife in hell can never
be entirely free of neurotic anxiety about security in this
life. In turn, such people become easy targets of ruling-class propaganda
that plays upon their material insecurity, e.g. the rationalisation
of imperialistic wars as necessary to "preserve jobs" (cited, for
example, by US Secretary of State James Baker as one rationale for
the Gulf War).
Another common objection to self-regulation is that children can only be taught
to be unselfish through punishment and admonition. Again, however,
such a view comes from a distrust of nature and is part of the common
attitude that nature is mere "raw material" to be shaped by human
beings according to their own wishes. The libertarian attitude is
that unselfishness develops at the proper time -- which is not
during childhood. Children are primarily egoists, generally until
the beginning of puberty, and until then they usually don't have the
ability to identify with others. Thus:
"To ask a child to be unselfish is wrong. Every child is an egoist
and the world belongs to him. When he has an apple, his one wish is
to eat that apple. The chief result of mother's encouraging him to
share it with his little brother is to make him hate the little brother.
Altruism comes later -- comes naturally -- if the child is not
taught to be unselfish. It probably never comes at all if the
child has been forced to be unselfish. By suppressing the child's
selfishness, the mother is fixing that selfishness forever." [Neill,
Op. Cit., pp. 250-251]
Unfulfilled wishes (like all "unfinished business") live on in the
unconscious. Hence children who are pressured too hard - "taught"
- to be unselfish will, while conforming outwardly with parental demands,
unconsciously repress part of their real, selfish wishes, and these
repressed infantile desires will make the person selfish (and possibly
neurotic) throughout life. Moreover, telling children that what they
want to do is "wrong" or "bad" is equivalent to teaching them to hate
themselves, and it is a well-known principle of psychology that people
who do not love themselves cannot love others. Thus moral instruction,
although it aims to develop altruism and love for others, is actually
self-defeating, having just the opposite result.
Moreover, such attempts to produce "unselfish" children (and so
adults) actually works against developing the individuality
of the child and their abilities to develop their own abilities (in
particular their ability of critical thought). As Erich Fromm puts
it, "[n]ot to be selfish implies not to do what one wishes, to
give up one's own wishes for the sake of those in authority. . . Aside
from its obvious implication, it means 'don't love yourself,' 'don't
be yourself', but submit yourself to something more important than
yourself, to an outside power or its internalisation, 'duty.' 'Don't
be selfish' becomes one of the most powerful ideological tools in
suppressing spontaneity and the free development of personality. Under
the pressure of this slogan one is asked for every sacrifice and for
complete submission: only those acts are 'unselfish' which do not
serve the individual but somebody or something outside himself."
[Man for Himself, p. 127]
While such "unselfishness" is ideal for creating "model citizens"
and willing wage slaves, it is not conducive for creating anarchists
or even developing individuality. Little wonder Bakunin celebrated
the urge to rebel and saw it as the key to human progress! Fromm goes
on to note that selfishness and self-love, "far from being identical,
are actually opposites" and that "selfish persons are incapable
of loving others. . . [or] loving themselves..." [Op. Cit.,
p. 131] Individuals who do not love themselves, and so others, will
be more willing to submit themselves to hierarchy than those who do
love themselves and are concerned for their own, and others, welfare.
Thus the contradictory nature of capitalism, with its contradictory
appeals to selfish and unselfish behaviour, can be understood as being
based upon lack of self-love, a lack which is promoted in childhood
and one which libertarians should be aware of and combat.
Indeed, much of the urge to "teach children unselfishness" is actually
an expression of adults' will to power. Whenever parents feel the
urge to impose directives on their children, they would be wise to
ask themselves whether the impulse comes from their own power drive
or their own selfishness. For, since our culture strongly conditions
us to seek power over others, what could be more convenient than having
a small, weak person at hand who cannot resist one's will to power?
Instead of issuing directives, libertarians believe in letting social
behaviour develop naturally, which it will do after other people's
opinions becomes important to the child. As Neill points out,
"Everyone seeks the good opinion of his neighbours. Unless other
forces push him into unsocial behaviour, a child will naturally want
to do that which will cause him to be well-regarded, but this desire
to please others develops at a certain stage in his growth. The attempt
by parents and teachers to artificially accelerate this stage does
the child irreparable damage." [Neill, Op. Cit., p. 256]
Therefore, parents should allow children to be "selfish" and "ungiving",
free to follow their own childish interests throughout their childhood.
And when their individual interests clash with social interests (e.g.
the opinion of the neighbours), the individual interests should take
precedence. Every interpersonal conflict of interest should be grounds
for a lesson in dignity on one side and consideration on the other.
Only by this process can a child develop their individuality. By so
doing they will come to recognise the individuality of others and
this is the first step in developing ethical concepts (which rest
upon mutual respect for others and their individuality).
No. This objection confuses the distinction between freedom and license. To
raise a child in freedom does not mean letting him or her walk all
over you; it does not mean never saying "no." It is true that free
children are not subjected to punishment, irrational authority, or
moralistic admonitions, but they are not "free" to violate the rights
of others. As Neill puts it, "in the disciplined home, the children
have no rights. In the spoiled home, they have all the
rights. The proper home is one in which children and adults have equal
rights." Or again, "To let a child have his own way, or do
what he wants to at another's expense, is bad for the child.
It creates a spoiled child, and the spoiled child is a bad citizen."
[Summerhill, p. 107, 167]
There will inevitably be conflicts of will between parents and children,
and the healthy way to resolve them is to come to some sort of a compromise
agreement. The unhealthy ways are either to resort to authoritarian
discipline or to spoil the child by allowing it to have all the social
rights. Libertarian psychologists argue that no harm is done to children
by insisting on one's individual rights, but that the harm comes from
moralism, i.e. when one introduces the concepts of right and wrong
or words like "naughty," "bad," or "dirty," which produce guilt.
Therefore it should not be thought that free children are free to
"do as they please." Freedom means doing what one likes so long as
it doesn't infringe on the freedom of others. Thus there is a big
difference between compelling a child to stop throwing stones at others
and compelling him or her to learn geometry. Throwing stones infringes
on others' rights, but learning geometry involves only the child.
The same goes for forcing children to eat with a fork instead of their
fingers; to say "please" and "thank you;" to tidy up their rooms,
and so on. Bad manners and untidiness may be annoying to adults, but
they are not a violation of adults' rights. One could, of course,
define an adult "right" to be free of annoyance from anything
one's child does, but this would simply be a license for authoritarianism,
emptying the concept of children's rights of all content.
As mentioned, giving children freedom does not mean allowing them
to endanger themselves physically. For example, a sick child should
not be asked to decide whether he wants to go outdoors or take his
prescribed medicine, nor a run-down and overtired child whether she
wants to go to bed. But the imposition of such forms of necessary
authority is compatible with the idea that children should be given
as much responsibility as they can handle at their particular age.
For only in this way can they develop self-assurance. And again, it
is important for parents to examine their own motives when deciding
how much responsibility to give their child. Parents who insist on
choosing their children's' clothes for them, for example, are generally
worried that little Tommy might select clothes that would reflect
badly on his parents' social standing.
As for those who equate "discipline" in the home with "obedience,"
the latter is usually required of a child to satisfy the adults' desire
for power. Self-regulation means that there are no power games being
played with children, no loud voice saying "You'll do it because I
say so, or else!" But, although this irrational, power-seeking kind
of authority is absent in the libertarian home, there still remains
what can be called a kind of "authority," namely adult protection,
care, and responsibility, as well as the insistence on one's own rights.
As Neill observes, "Such authority sometimes demands obedience
but at other times gives obedience. Thus I can say to my daughter,
'You can't bring that mud and water into our parlour.' That's no more
than her saying to me, 'Get out of my room, Daddy. I don't want you
here now,' a wish that I, of course, obey without a word" [Op.
Cit., p. 156]. Therefore there will still be "discipline" in the
libertarian home, but it will be of the kind that protects the individual
rights of each family member.
Raising children in freedom also does not imply giving them a lot
of toys, money, and so on. Reichians have argued that children should
not be given everything they ask for and that it is better to give
them too little than too much. Under constant bombardment by commercial
advertising campaigns, parents today generally tend to give their
children far too much, with the result that the children stop appreciating
gifts and rarely value any of their possessions. This same applies
to money, which, if given in excess, can be detrimental to children's'
creativity and play life. If children are not given too many toys,
they will derive creative joy out of making their own toys out of
whatever free materials are at hand -- a joy of which they are robbed
by overindulgence. Psychologists point out that parents who give too
many presents are often trying to compensate for giving too little
love.
There is less danger in rewarding children than there is in punishing
them, but rewards can still undermine a child's morale. This is because,
firstly, rewards are superfluous and in fact often decrease
motivation and creativity, as several psychological studies have shown
(see section I.4.10). Creative people
work for the pleasure of creating; monetary interests are not central
(or necessary) to the creative process. Secondly, rewards send the
wrong message, namely, that doing the deed for which the reward is
offered is not worth doing for its own sake and the pleasure associated
with productive, creative activity. And thirdly, rewards tend to reinforce
the worst aspects of the competitive system, leading to the attitude
that money is the only thing which can motivate people to do the work
that needs doing in society.
These are just a few of the considerations that enter into the distinction
between spoiling children and raising them in freedom. In reality,
it is the punishment and fear of a disciplinarian home that spoils
children in the most literal sense, by destroying their childhood
happiness and creating warped personalities. As adults, the victims
of disciplinarianism will generally be burdened with one or more anti-social
secondary drives such as sadism, destructive urges, greed, sexual
perversions, etc., as well as repressed rage and fear. The presence
of such impulses just below the surface of consciousness causes anxiety,
which is automatically defended against by layers of rigid muscular
armouring, which leaves the person stiff, frustrated, bitter, and
burdened with feelings of inner emptiness. In such a condition, people
easily fall victim to the capitalist gospel of super-consumption,
which promises that money will enable them to fill the inner void
by purchasing commodities -- a promise that, of course, is hollow.
The neurotically armoured person also tends to look for scapegoats
on whom to blame his or her frustration and anxiety and against whom
repressed rage can be vented. Reactionary politicians know very well
how to direct such impulses against minorities or "hostile nations"
with propaganda designed to serve the interests of the ruling elite.
Most importantly, however, the respect for authority combined with
sadistic impulses which is acquired from a disciplinarian upbringing
typically produces a submissive/authoritarian personality -- a man
or woman who blindly follows the orders of "superiors" while at the
same time desiring to exercise authority on "subordinates," whether
in the family, the state bureaucracy, or the corporation. In this
way, the "traditional" (e.g., authoritarian, disciplinarian, patriarchal)
family is the necessary foundation for authoritarian civilisation,
reproducing it and its attendant social evils from generation to generation.
Irving Staub's Roots of Evil includes interviews of imprisoned
SS men, who, in the course of extensive interviews (meant to determine
how ostensibly "normal" people could perform acts of untold ruthlessness
and violence) revealed that they overwhelmingly came from authoritarian,
disciplinarian homes.
One of the biggest problems of adolescence is sexual suppression by parents
and society in general. The teenage years are the time when sexual
energy is at its height. Why, then, the absurd demand that teenagers
"wait until marriage," or at least until leaving home, before becoming
sexually active? Why are there laws on the books in "advanced" countries
like the United States that allow a 19-year-old "boy" who makes love
with his 17-year-old girlfriend, with her full consent, to be arrested
by the girl's parents (!) for "statutory rape?"
To answer such questions, let us recall that the ruling class is
not interested in encouraging mass tendencies toward democracy and
independence and pleasure not derived from commodities but instead
supports whatever contributes to mass submissiveness, docility, dependence,
helplessness, and respect for authority -- traits that perpetuate
the hierarchies on which ruling-class power and privileges depend.
We have noted earlier that, because sex is the most intense form
of pleasure (one of the most prominent contributors for intimacy and
bonding people) and involves the bioenergy of the body and emotions,
repression of sexuality is the most powerful means of psychologically
crippling people and giving them a submissive/authoritarian character
structure (as well as alienating people from each other). As Reich
observes, such a character is composed of a mixture of "sexual
impotence, helplessness, a need for attachments, a nostalgia for a
leader, fear of authority, timidity, and mysticism." As he also
points out, "people structured in this manner are incapable
of democracy. All attempts to build up or maintain genuine democratically
directed organisations come to grief when they encounter these character
structures. They form the psychological soil of the masses in which
dictatorial strivings and bureaucratic tendencies of democratically
elected leaders can develop. . . . [Sexual suppression] produces the
authority-fearing, life-fearing vassal, and thus constantly creates
new possibilities whereby a handful of men in power can rule the masses."
[The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-Regulating Character Structure,
p. 82, emphasis added]
No doubt most members of the ruling elite are not fully conscious
that their own power and privileges depend on the mass perpetuation
of sex-negative attitudes. Nevertheless, they unconsciously sense
it. Sexual freedom is the most basic and powerful kind, and every
conservative or reactionary instinctively shudders at the thought
of the "social chaos" it would unleash -- that is, the rebellious,
authority-defying type of character it would nourish. This is why
"family values," and "religion" (i.e. discipline and compulsive sexual
morality) are the mainstays of the conservative/reactionary agenda.
Thus it is crucially important for anarchists to address every aspect
of sexual suppression in society. And this means affirming the right
of adolescents to an unrestricted sex life.
There are numerous arguments for teenage sexual liberation. For
example, many teen suicides could be prevented by removing the restrictions
on adolescent sexuality. This becomes clear from ethnological studies
of sexually unrepressive "primitive" peoples. Thus:
"All reports, whether by missionaries or scholars, with or without
the proper indignation about the 'moral depravity' of 'savages,' state
that the puberty rites of adolescents lead them immediately into a
sexual life; that some of these primitive societies lay great emphasis
on sexual pleasure; that the puberty rite is an important social event;
that some primitive peoples not only do not hinder the sexual life
of adolescents but encourage it is every way, as, for instance, by
arranging for community houses in which the adolescents settle at
the start of puberty in order to be able to enjoy sexual intercourse.
Even in those primitive societies in which the institution of strict
monogamous marriage exists, adolescents are given complete freedom
to enjoy sexual intercourse from the beginning of puberty to marriage.
None of these reports contains any indication of sexual misery or
suicide by adolescents suffering from unrequited love (although the
latter does of course occur). The contradiction between sexual maturity
and the absence of genital sexual gratification is non-existent."
[Ibid., p. 85]
Teenage sexual repression is also closely connected with crime.
If there are hundreds of teenagers in a neighbourhood who have no
place to pursue intimate sexual relationships, they will do it in
dark corners, in cars or vans, etc., always on the alert and anxious
lest someone discover them. Under such conditions, full gratification
is impossible, leading to a build-up of tension, frustration and stagnation
of bioenergy (sexual stasis). Thus they feel unsatisfied, disturb
each other, become jealous and angry, get into fights, turn to drugs
as a substitute for a satisfying sex life, vandalise property to let
off "steam" (repressed rage), or even murder someone. As Reich notes,
"juvenile delinquency is the visible expression of the subterranean
sexual crisis in the lives of children and adolescents. And it may
be predicted that no society will ever succeed in solving this problem,
the problem of juvenile psychopathology, unless that society can muster
the courage and acquire the knowledge to regulate the sexual life
of its children and adolescents in a sex-affirmative manner."
[Ibid., p. 271]
For these reasons, it is clear that a solution to the "gang problem"
also depends on adolescent sexual liberation. We are not suggesting,
of course, that gangs themselves suppress sexual activity. Indeed,
one of their main attractions to teens is undoubtedly the hope of
more opportunities for sex as a gang member. However, gangs' typical
obsessiveness with the promiscuous, pornographic, sadistic, and other
"dark" aspects of sex shows that by the time children reach the gang
age they have already developed unhealthy secondary drives due to
the generally sex-negative and repressive environment in which they
have grown up. The expression of such drives is not what anarchists
mean by "sexual freedom." Rather, anarchist proposals for teenage
liberation are based on the premise that unrestricted sexuality in
early childhood is the necessary condition for a healthy sexual
freedom in adolescence.
Applying these insights to our own society, it is clear that teenagers
should not only have ample access to a private room where they can
be undisturbed with their sexual partners, but that parents should
actively encourage such behaviour for the sake of their child's
health and happiness (while, of course, encouraging the knowledge
and use of contraceptives and safe sex in general as well as respect
for the other person involved in the relationship). This last point
(of respecting others) is essential. As Maurice Brinton points out,
attempts at sexual liberation will encounter two kinds of responses
from established society - direct opposition and attempts at recuperation.
The second response takes the form of "first alienating and reifying
sexuality, and then of frenetically exploiting this empty shell for
commercial ends. As modern youth breaks out of the dual stranglehold
of the authoritarian patriarchal family it encounters a projected
image of free sexuality which is in fact a manipulatory distortion
of it." This can be seen from the use of sex in advertising to
the successful development of sex into a major consumer industry.
However, such a development is the opposite of the healthy sexuality
desired by anarchists. This is because "sex is presented as something
to be consumed. But the sexual instinct differs from certain other
instincts... [as it can be satisfied only by] another human being,
capable of thinking, acting, suffering. The alienation of sexuality
under the conditions of modern capitalism is very much part of the
general alienating process, in which people are converted into objects
(in this case, objects of sexual consumption) and relationships are
drained of human content. Undiscriminating, compulsive sexual activity,
is not sexual freedom - although it may sometimes be a preparation
for it (which repressive morality can never be). The illusion that
alienated sex is sexual freedom constitutes yet another obstacle on
the road to total emancipation. Sexual freedom implies a realisation
and understanding of the autonomy of others." [The Irrational
in Politics, p. 60, p. 61]
Therefore, anarchists see teenage sexual liberation as a means of
developing free individuals as well as reducing the evil effects
of sexual repression (which, we must note, also helps dehumanise individuals
by encouraging the objectification of others, and in a patriarchal
society, particularly of women).
It would be insulting to teenagers to suggest that sexual freedom is, or should
be, their only concern. Many teens have a well-developed social
conscience and are keenly interested in problems of economic exploitation,
poverty, social breakdown, environmental degradation, and the like.
However, it is essential for anarchists to guard against the attitude
typically found in Marxist-Leninist parties that spontaneous discussions
about the sexual problems of youth are a "diversion from the class
struggle." Such an attitude is economistic (not to mention covertly
ascetic), because it is based on the premise that the economy must
be the focus of all revolutionary efforts toward social change. No
doubt restructuring the economy is important, but without mass sexual
liberation no working class revolution be complete. In a so called
free society, there will not be enough people around with the character
structures necessary to create a lasting worker-controlled
economy -- i.e. people who are capable of accepting freedom with responsibility.
Instead, the attempt to force the creation of such an economy without
preparing the necessary psychological soil for its growth will lead
to a quick reversion to some new form of hierarchy and exploitation.
Moreover, for most teenagers, breaking free from the sexual suppression
that threatens to cripple them psychologically is a major issue in
their lives. For this reason, not many of them are likely to be attracted
to the anarchist "freedom" movement if its exponents limit themselves
to dry discussions of surplus value, alienated labour, and so forth.
Instead, addressing sexual questions and problems must be integrated
into a multi-faceted attack on the total system of domination. Teens
should feel confident that anarchists are on the side of sexual pleasure
and are not revolutionary ascetics demanding self-denial for the "sake
of the revolution." Rather, it should be stressed that the capacity
for full sexual enjoyment is the an essential part of the revolution.
Indeed, "incessant questioning and challenge to authority on the
subject of sex and of the compulsive family can only complement the
questioning and challenge to authority in other areas (for instance
on the subject of who is to dominate the work process - or the purpose
of work itself). Both challenges stress the autonomy of individuals
and their domination of over important aspects of their lives. Both
expose the alienated concepts which pass for rationality and which
govern so much of our thinking and behaviour. The task of the conscious
revolutionary is to make both challenges explicit, to point out their
deeply subversive content, and to explain their inter-relation."
[Maurice Brinton, Op. Cit., p. 62]
We noted previously that in pre-patriarchal society, which rests
on the social order of primitive communism, children have complete
sexual freedom and that the idea of childhood asceticism develops
as matricentric clan societies turn toward patriarchy in the economy
and social structure (see section B.1.5).
This sea-change in social attitudes toward childhood sexuality allows
the authority-oriented character structure to develop instead of the
formerly non-authoritarian ones. Ethnological research has shown that
in pre-patriarchal societies, the general nature of work life in the
collective corresponds with the free sexuality of children and adolescents
-- that is, there are no rules coercing children and adolescents into
specific forms of sexual life, and this creates the psychological
basis for voluntary integration into the collective and voluntary
discipline in work. This historical fact supports the premise that
widespread sex-positive attitudes are a necessary condition of a viable
libertarian socialism.
Psychology also clearly shows that every impediment to infantile
and adolescent sexuality by parents, teachers, or administrative authorities
must be stopped. As anarchists, our preferred way of doing so is by
direct action. Thus we should encourage teens to feel that they have
every chance of building their own lives. This will certainly not
be an obstacle to or a distraction from their involvement in the anarchist
movement. On the contrary, if they can gradually solve the problem
of (e.g.) private rooms themselves, they will work on other social
projects with greatly increased pleasure and concentration. For, contrary
to Freud, Reichian psychologists argue that beyond a certain point,
excess sexual energy cannot be sublimated in work or any other purposeful
activity but actually disturbs work by making the person restless
and prone to fantasies, thus hindering concentration.
Besides engaging in direct action, anarchists can also support legal
protection of infantile and adolescent sexuality (repeal of the insane
statutory rape laws would be one example), just as they support legislation
that protects workers' right to strike, family leave, and so forth.
However, as Reich observes, "under no circumstances will the new
order of sexual life be established by the decree of a central authority."
[Ibid., p. 279] That was a Leninist illusion. Rather, it will
be established from the bottom up, by the gradual process of ever
more widespread dissemination of knowledge about the adverse personal
and social effects of sexual suppression, which will lead to mass
acceptance of libertarian child-rearing and educational methods.
A society in which people are capable of sexual happiness will be
one where they prefer to "make love, not war," and so will
provide the best guarantee for the general security. Then the anarchist
project of restructuring the economic and political systems will proceed
spontaneously, based on a spirit of joy rather than hatred and revenge.
Only then can it be defended against reactionary threats, because
the majority will be on the side of freedom and capable of using it
responsibly, rather than unconsciously longing for an authoritarian
father-figure to tell them what to do.
Therefore, concern and action upon teenage sexual liberation (or
child rearing in general or libertarian education) is a key
part of social struggle and change. In no way can it be considered
a "distraction" from "important" political and economic issues as
some "serious" revolutionaries like to claim. As Martha A. Ackelsberg
notes (in relation to the practical work done by the Mujeres
Libres group during the Spanish Revolution):
"Respecting children and educating them well was vitally important
to the process of revolutionary change. Ignorance made people particularly
vulnerable to oppression and suffering. More importantly, education
prepared people for social life. Authoritarian schools (or families),
based upon fear, prepared people to be submissive to an authoritarian
government [or within a capitalist workplace]. Different schools and
families would be necessary to prepare people to live in a society
without domination." [Free Women of Spain, p. 133]
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