Thinking of “free love” may invoke Woodstock imagery rather than early 20th century Soviet Russia, but it was the early communist regime that undertook perhaps the most ambitious attempt at unleashing human sexuality—with predictable results.
As soon as Communists took power in 1917 in Russia, they began systematically to enact policies following the doctrines of Karl Marx. Their dream of materialistic utopia could be attained “only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions,” Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto.
That not only included confiscating “means of production,” like factories and land, but also disintegrating the institution of the family. Communists saw commitment to family as an obstacle to people’s devotion to the pursuit of their utopia. Instead, people were to live in “free unions,” mating at will.
Masses of Russians, especially urbanites, were sold on the party line that moral restraint on sexual desire, rooted in family ethics, had no benefits and was instead harmful…
At the time, Vera Lebedeva, the head of the Department for the Protection of Maternity and Infancy, said: “The weakness of the marital tie and divorce create masses of single women who carry the burden of child care alone…
Oftentimes, the women ended up on the streets…
Some could have blamed the failure of “free love” on a lack of contraception, but natality was already low, not to mention massive war and Red Terror casualties. With a demographic disaster looming, Russia actually needed more children, not fewer.
Notice how Marx had no idea where his urges came from. He just knew that when he saw K-selected behaviors, they were somehow problematic, and they had to be eradicated. Why does a guy worried about class warfare worry about getting random men and women to bang each other in short term relationships? Why does he feel parents shouldn’t waste too much time rearing kids, and the kids should be sent out to the state early?
Basically he advocated for all of the themes of r-selection, without knowing why.
It did not produce a real r-strategy in the sense of what biology describes, however. There was universal provision of equal resources, and destruction of monogamy, and low rearing. But low natality happened too, which really means low child-production due to lack of a desire to rear offspring. That was new, and there was a reason it showed up.
These were human r-strategists, many of whom were purposely engaging in promiscuous sexual activity in such a way that would spare them the experience of having offspring. Due to the mixture of intellect and understanding about how babies were made, they were actually fulfilling their r-urges better than they could have in nature absent that understanding, even as they were short-circuiting the strategy and limiting the reproduction of their r-selected kind.
The big monkey wrench in the human r-strategy is the intellectual realization of how children are made. The r-strategy depends on animals having sex for the pleasure of the moment, and then having offspring unexpectedly foisted upon them later, which they will eject as quickly as possible due to their diminished rearing urges. Once humans realized how to have the sex without the offspring being produced, the r-strategy was immediately limited, and until it evolves around that, the direction of the species’ evolution will be unalterably shifted toward K.
I increasingly suspect that were it not for that aspect of human intellect and understanding affecting the r-strategy’s effectiveness, our species would have gone far more r-selected far faster than even what we see today. This quirk of the strategy has incredibly limited it’s reproduction. Interestingly, it would seem that may be a feature of every intelligent, forward-thinking species’ evolution. When they reach the point they can plan future outcomes, and understand biology, r-selection as a quality will diminish in proportion with those traits. Maybe that is chance, but it feels so coincidental that it feels like more than that – as if it were a part of a guided path to greatness.
There is no idea in politics that could explain why all of these different urges are linked, or why they travel together so predictably. r/K Selection will one day be seen as the biggest reveal in the history of political science. Nobody will know how we went so long without seeing it. It just needs to get out there, and be recognized enough that people have to talk about it.
We are not there yet, but we are getting there.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because nobody understands politics without it
[…] Communists Were r-strategists […]
I’ve often wondered why the 1917 Revolution happened in the first place. What was driving it? other than Lenin and German bankers. Was some critical mass of peasants reached? Or did the nobility of Imperial Russia become debauched? Why did the industrialization of Russia cause the workers to revolt, when this almost, but didn’t happen in other European nations which also had noble classes. And why was America seemingly immune to this? As for humanity- AC, I think early humans did go through massive r/K cycles- its just earlier r strategists were so prolific and stupid that they exhausted resources faster than they could physically flee. And this drove subsequent K advances, notable of which was likely the intelligence related to weapons development. Violent competition has likely shaped human societies and development, more than decent people would care to admit. Caveman versions of “evil” geniuses, just more forward thinking than evil.
Nothing on the ethnic dimension on the conflict. You should research it.
Funnily enough Stalin restored traditional sex roles. And he killed almost all of the communists who were his former comrades including most especially Trotsky and his family.
”Once humans realized how to have the sex without the offspring being produced, the r-strategy was immediately limited, and until it evolves around that, the direction of the species’ evolution will be unalterably shifted toward K.”
I read an anecdotes and forgotten the links but that there are tramps that want a big family which they cannot afford but they do it anyway.
Relying on foodstamps and other forms of assistance.
Thank you for that, though I will need to brood on it. It is at least a partial answer to a question which grew on me on first reading of the Book. In an email exchange I mentioned that I might have a couple of points to raise, but would leave it until after a second reading.
It may be well be that my questions are not properly formed yet…
As women were viewed as property, abolishing property meant wife-swapping. This goes back to Shabatey Zwi and his successor Jacob Frank, both claiming to be the Messiah of the Jews, Frank being the founder of Frankism. Frankists wanted to violate all 10 commandments to destroy creation and so force the appearance of God on earth.
The Frankist/Marxist wife-swapping then was repeated in the Israeli Kibbuzim before it came as the Free Love movement to the West, promoted by Marcuse in America and Horkheimer and Adorno in Germany, all three being Frankfurt School founders.
How much of this is confirmation bias? There is a theory that there was a particular ethnic/religious group that formed a majority of the Bolsheviks (Putin has stated this as well), who were oppressed at the time. Did this particular group lack the stimuli to be K? Is it possible that their advocacy of low rearing has more to do with keeping the population of another ethnic and religious group down (which may have also coincided with the mass genocide of that same group)?
I searched this blog specifically for any posts on Marxism, since I cannot tell if it is Marxism in particular that has tainted the West, or if it’s r-selection that is at the root of liberalism. Did the ideology come first, or did “r” come first? And is the poisonous ideology mainly to blame? Or maybe it’s somewhere in the middle, where rabbits are more inclined to adopt it?