Reich and Marcuse

Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse were contemporaries and each sought to understand the workings of humankind as sociologists and political theorists. Both men were Jewish and were born a year apart in Eastern Europe: Reich in 1897 in a Galician village, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Marcuse in 1898 in Berlin. Both came from affluent families. Both served in the First World War--in 1916 Reich joined the Austrian Army and ultimately became a lieutenant at the Italian front. Also in 1916 Marcuse was drafted into the German Army but did not see combat. When Hitler came to power in the 1930s, both men fled Germany, Marcuse coming to the United States in 1934, and Reich in 1939. 

Wilhelm Reich, in his lab 1944.

Although very different in their interests, approach and the scope of their work, Reich and Marcuse each, in their own way, felt sex was a key to human liberation and both advocated non-repressive societies. The ideas of Reich and Marcuse were embraced by young radicals in the 1960s. Both men have been maligned, heralded as saviors, dismissed as insignificant, and--even recently--blamed for the decline in modern America*. They share the distinction of having their complex ideas reduced to simple axioms by those who do not have the desire or patience to really read them, and both are remembered, in large part, for their discussions of human sexuality.                

In my last post, I wrote of an upcoming lecture by David Brahinsky, Ph.D. titled The Relevance of Wilhelm Reich’s “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” to the Struggle Against Fascism, a Project Shared by Herbert Marcuse. The lecture was given at the 2011 conference of the International Marcuse Society. It is now my pleasure to publish this important document online, in its entirely. 

Herbert Marcuse

Marcuse was highly critical of Reich. In his preface to the 1998 edition of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization, Douglas Kellner says, during a 1978 interview, that Marcuse stated he and others within his intellectual circle believed Reich “moved too fast from subjective conditions to objective conditions” and “vastly oversimplified” fascism in claiming that sexual repression created personalities that were susceptible to fascism, and in explaining that fascism succeeds by manipulating repressed personalities and providing sexual surrogates. Indeed, in Eros and Civilization Marcuse states: “Reich’s notion of sexual repression remains undifferentiated; he neglects this historical dynamic of the sex instincts and of their fusion with the destructive impulses....Consequently, sexual liberation per se becomes for Reich a panacea for individual and social ills.”  

For Marcuse, the value of Reich’s work lies only in his early writings in so far as they are an attempt, as he puts it, to develop the critical social theory implicit in Freud. Even so, Marcuse feels this effort falls short because of Reich’s “sweeping primitivism” which he says foreshadows “the wild and fantastic hobbies of Reich’s later years.” (See Eros and Civilization.)

Like so many others, Marcuse diminishes and then dismisses Reich. Also, like others, he refuses to even entertain Reich’s idea that there exists a biologic energy that determines how humans function. But Brahinsky sets the record straight in his important paper. He begins by explaining that Reich and Marcuse had the shared goal of attempting to understand the roots and functioning of fascism. He goes on to state, “neither Marcuse himself nor Marcuse scholars, as far as I can tell, have shown that they understand or appreciate the full measure of Reich’s contribution to this important project.” Brahinsky then explains in stepwise fashion the development of Reich’s key ideas, correctly refutes Marcuse’s assertion that Reich saw sexual liberation as a panacea, and effectively demonstrates the importance of Reich’s later scientific work, namely that biological factors determine social and political conditions.

In addition to being of interest to Reich and Marcuse scholars, The Relevance of Wilhelm Reich’s “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” to the Struggle Against Fascism, a Project Shared by Herbert Marcuse also serves as a splendid overview of Reich’s work. I consider it an excellent addition to today’s scholarship on Wilhelm Reich and the science of orgonomy.


*See Patrick J. Buchanan's New York Times bestseller "The Death of the West" (2002).