I still haven't read Marcuse, and I don't intend to. He was, after all, a CIA operative during WWII and after. So I don't look to him for guidance. On the contrary, critiques are more than welcome.
Even so, let's at least try to be accurate, eh Claude? In the quote you presented, Marcuse is stating that the suppression of infantile sexuality is a precondition for the reduction of the individual to the status of a cog in the capitalist machine, enslaved to monogamy and procreation. This is a description, not a prescription for recovery. Perhaps it's possible to recover some sensitivity and appreciation for the "pleasure principal" without reverting to a purely infantile (i.e. small and helpless) state?
Engels discusses the anthropological findings of his time, resulting from studies of Iroquois and Hawaiian native American tribes. He says it was found that these tribes had a different understanding of consanguinity or family relations. "The Iroquois calls not only his own children his sons and daughters, but also the children of his brothers; and they call him father." The argument is that such language could only develop if at some earlier time, men who were brothers shared wives among themselves; or perhaps, women who were sisters shared their husbands; or, the entire tribe enjoyed promiscuous sexual relations.
The text continues:
Lately it has become fashionable to deny the existence of this initial stage in human sexual life. Humanity must be spared this “shame.” It is pointed out that all direct proof of such a stage is lacking, and particular appeal is made to the evidence from the rest of the animal world; for, even among animals, according to the numerous facts collected by Letourneau (Evolution du manage et de la faults, 1888), complete promiscuity in sexual intercourse marks a low stage of development. But the only conclusion I can draw from all these facts, so far as man and his primitive conditions of life are concerned, is that they prove nothing whatever.
Next there is a discussion of the apes, which is admittedly and sadly lacking in factual grounding. Today we know that the bonobo chimps are indeed promiscuous, while gorillas tend more towards polygamy.
With the benefit of another century of anthropological studies, it seems safe to say that we never are going to find a tribe of people who are as promiscuous as bonobo chimps. But on the other hand, we also know that tribes adapt to their situation, and become polyandrous or polygamous when the circumstances warrant it.
The phenomenon of "partible paternity" is an accepted fact: some tribes do not recognize the idea that each child has only one father. Instead, these tribes believe that a woman could have sexual relations with several men at the same time, and persuade each of those men to take responsibility for the child.
As far as I can tell, the "conflict" has occurred because some giggly teenage girls told Margaret Mead that they had been sleeping around. Those same girls grew up to be old responsible women who told an uptight male anthropologist that they'd been lying.
So who knows what the truth is? Do teenage girls ever have sex with the boys, and then lie about it later?? I think this happens in every culture, authoritarian or not.
Last edited: