…
We are living not in a simple and complete civilization,
but in a conflict of at least two civilizations, based on entirely different
fundamental ideas, pursuing different methods and with different aims and ends.
 |
| Margaret Sanger in 1922 |
In The Pivot of
Civilization Sanger explains her ‘conversion’ from Marxism to the ideology
of eugenic birth control. She argues that, instead of pursuing violent revolution,
those who seek to realise ‘the glorious vision of a new world, of a
proletarian world emancipated, a Utopian world’ should pursue eugenic birth
control.[4]
Sanger, as we saw in the first part of this series, began as a socialist
revolutionary. In The Pivot she
explains how she lost faith in the standard Marxist narrative and began to
associate the problems of poverty with ‘overpopulation’. ‘In spite of all my
sympathy with the dream of liberated Labor’, she writes, ‘I was driven to ask
whether this urging power of sex, this deep instinct, was not at least
partially responsible, along with industrial injustice, for the widespread
misery of the world.’[5] She
travelled throughout Europe meeting with
leading revolutionaries, including some of the most extreme anarchists such as
Enrico Malatesta. It was in Britain
however, amongst members of the Neo-Malthusian League and writers such as H. G.
Wells, that she found a philosophy most congenial to her tastes. “I was
encouraged and strengthened in this attitude” she recalls, “ by the support of
certain leaders who had studied human nature and who had reached the same
conclusion: that civilization could not solve the problem of Hunger until it
recognized the titanic strength of the sexual instinct.”[6] Indeed
she dedicated the The Pivot of
Civilisation to Alice Drysdale Vickery (see picture to the right), a leading figure in the
Neo-Malthusian league. This dedication, taken with Wells’ foreword and the
appearance of a quote by Havelock Ellis on the title page, supports our
conclusion that eugenics, birth control, abortion and disordered forms of
sexuality are all closely connected.
We saw in the last post that Sanger was given millions of
dollars by wealthy industrialists, and particularly by J. D. Rockefeller III,
whose assassination she had called for not many years earlier. This
‘conversion’ from Marx to Malthus might seem surprising but it is not in fact
very remarkable if we look a little deeper. It is a very common phenomena for
revolutionaries to pass from one ideology to another even when the latter
stands in contradiction to the former on central points. This occurs because a
revolutionary like Sanger is really seeking the formula that will enable
mankind, of its own efforts, to create a paradise on earth.[7]
When a revolutionary no longer feels that their current methods will achieve
their ends they will simply move on to another ideological position, often
excoriating those who were until recently their allies.[8]
This political messianism obviously stands in stark contrast to the doctrines
of Christianity, which most ideologues therefore vociferously reject.[9]
Why then did Sanger adopt this particular ideology? In The Pivot of Civilisation she tells us
that she felt that the progress of the working class was being held back by
‘the burden of their ever-growing families’.[10]
‘Something more’ she realised ‘than the purely economic interpretation was
involved.’[11] This
‘something more’ was the ‘driving power of instinct, a power uncontrolled’.[12]
Sanger believed that the inability of the working classes to control their
sexual desires was the main cause poverty. It could be argued that her language
in the The Pivot manifests a fear or
disgust of healthy sexuality.[13]
We know that Sanger’s own promiscuity was notorious. Is it possible that Sanger
is projecting her fears about her own lack of self control onto working class
women? Her awareness of her own sexual conduct and her consequent ‘need’ for
birth control perhaps drove her to advocate that other women subject
themselves, or be subjected, to the same control. It is surely of interest that
her lover H. G. Wells presents a similar paradox. He also was a notorious
adulterer, with at least one illegitimate child, and yet he argued that the
reproduction of others needed to be controlled and that people who lacked
‘self-control’ were a threat to society. It has also been suggested by E.
Michael Jones that Sanger’s zeal in advocating birth control was partially the
result of the guilt she felt at having abandoned her daughter to the care of
others while she was in England.
[14]
Peggy died shortly after Sanger returned to America and Jones argues that it
was by convincing herself that she was working for the greater good of future
generations of women that she was able to ease the pain suffered by her conscience,
which accused her of betraying her own daughter. In any case, it is certainly
true that many more mothers and children were about to suffer as a result of
the life and crimes of Margaret Sanger.
To be continued…
[1] Margaret
Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, (New
York, 1922)
[2] Ibid
[3] Quoted
in Angela Franks, Margaret Sanger’s
Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility, (Jefferson, 2005) p5
[4] Sanger, Pivot
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[7] In The Pivot of Civilization Sanger argues
that men and women must ‘light their way to self-salvation’, the Catholic
Church being ‘organized to exploit the ignorance and the prejudices of the
masses.’ She saw birth control as a way to ‘triumph finally in the war for
human emancipation.’
[8] Much of The Pivot of Civilization is dedicated
to attacking Marxism, but see Chapter VII in particular.
[9] For a
classic example see Sanger’s attack on the Catholic Church in Chapter IX of The Pivot of Civilization.
[10] Sanger, Pivot
[11] Ibid
[13] E.g.
‘blind and irresponsible play of the sexual instinct’, ‘sex as a factor in the
perpetuation of poverty’, ‘the
fundamental relation between Sex and Hunger’, ‘the sexual and racial chaos into
which the world has drifted’, ‘chance and chaotic breeding’, ‘the trap of
compulsory maternity’, ‘the mother remains the passive victim of blind
instinct’, and so on.
[14] E. Michael Jones, Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control, (2005)
[14] E. Michael Jones, Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control, (2005)
