For Procommunist Anticommunists – Folha de S. Paulo, June 4, 1969
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
According to a Moscow dispatch in the daily press, Agitator, a Soviet magazine with a typical title, has published an article about communist doctrine on sexual matters.
The Agitator makes classic Marxist ideas more understandable. The simplicity—I’d call it crudeness—of the magazine’s explanations led me to share them here so that many people who are genuinely opposed to communism might unknowingly agree with it on many key points. I therefore challenge them to reconsider their stance on sexual morality seriously.
The article begins by justifying “trial marriages” and similar practices that are becoming more common in Western countries. In fact, when summarizing the Agitator’s text, the report states: “In communist society … sexual relations before marriage are not considered immoral when based on sincerity and affection. … Thus, it is enough for a young man and a young woman to have a romantic interest to pursue the natural consequences without delay. If their relationship endures over time and they wish to marry, that’s ideal. But they can also stay together without criticism if they choose not to. And if either (or both) grow tired of the union, the solution is simple: they just say goodbye.”
Someone might wonder: What good is marriage from this point of view? Nothing at all. “There is a new moral criterion for condemning or approving sex. It is not about classifying [sexual] relationships as marital or premarital, but about determining whether they are based on mutual love,” says the Agitator. It couldn’t be clearer. It is so evident that it even raises a question: how does marriage survive under Soviet law? It doesn’t. What it calls “marriage” has nothing to do with what civilized societies understand by that term. Soviet “marriage” is simply a registration for civil purposes of a union lacking moral content, which either party can dissolve if they choose.
Perhaps to counteract the impact of these claims on “reactionary” readers, the Agitator aims to clear up the misconception that the communist ideal in sexual matters closely resembles henhouse law. To do this, it quotes a lofty phrase from Lenin, which at first glance seems to suggest some stability to Marxist “marriage”: in communist society, sexual relations are based “on mutual love, respect, sincerity, and identity of views.” However, you only need to look around to see how unstable “mutual love” often is. L’amour est un enfant de Bohême, qui n’a jamais connu de loi (Love is a child of Bohemia, who has never known a law).
Incidentally, the Agitator doesn’t try very hard to hide the truth. It quotes another phrase from Lenin: “communism should not lead to asceticism, but to the enjoyment of life.”
Indeed, in sexual matters, the image of a truly communist society is precisely that of a life enjoyed in the worst sense of the word.
Here, the extremes meet. Isn’t this the kind of life many people who oppose communism approve of, desire, and work toward?
Here’s the clear result: those in Western societies who celebrate or endorse immorality are paving the way for communism.
For this reason, the Agitator cheerfully and hopefully notes: “The West’s so-called sexual revolution is weakening family ties, tossing numerous traditional taboos in relations between the sexes, and leading to free love.” Free love, mind you, is the communist position on sexual matters.
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Some people think the word “property” in the TFP motto is unnecessary and off-putting. They argue there’s no connection between family and property, so they can strongly support family while opposing property.
Communists do not see it that way. To them, property and family are interconnected institutions. As a result, the Agitator consistently attributes the West’s moral decline to the weakening of property rights. The magazine states that the “erosion” of Western social values is caused by the decline of the “principle of private property, on which capitalist society is built.”
The Agitator exaggerates because the main cause of the moral crisis in the West is a crisis of faith. However, a clear link between family and property exists. Those who support communal ownership and reject the idea of saying “my savings,” “my assets,” or “my house” are consistent when they oppose saying “my home,” “my spouse,” or “my children.” The communists aim to strip the “evolved” 21st-century individual of the personal right to anything considered their own—whether it’s savings from work, the unbreakable fidelity of a spouse, or the warm affection of a child.
* * *
And now, here’s something I don’t understand. If this is what communism is, how can a Catholic layman, priest, or bishop imagine a peaceful existence under a communist regime? Will he stand passively in the face of institutionalized corruption, betraying his mission? Or does he believe he will be allowed to challenge the corrupt regime with the right level of severity without facing a firing squad?
