ON REVOLUTIONARY SADISM
45
ened in his heart by the October Revolution has today turned
against himself. This too is the conclusion forced upon one by a
reading of Silone's
Bread and Wine,
that most terrible of all indict–
ments, so far as I know, of the moral decay of the masses in Fascist
Italy. Economic and political slogans are no longer enough to pro–
duce the transformation which the proletariat needs so badly; it is
necessary to complement them with affective slogans
(i.e. touching
the affectivity of the emotions-translator).
Against fascist love
we must oppose revolutionary love, against fascist sadism we can
no longer oppose Communist masochism or Social-Democratic
humanism.
Revolutionaries should be sadists!
To win over those men whom fascism has enlisted in implac–
able warfare by appealing to the sado-masochistic element in life,
we, in our turn, have to act upon the same emotive centers with
means just as direct and just as vi.olent. As the class struggle pene–
trates deeper and deeper strata of life, emotional conflicts begin
to grow violent.
If
the overthrow of fascism is not to become a vain
desire, it will be necessary to mobilize against fascism the totality
of man's powers: his physical strength, his economic force, his
intellectual acquisitions and his emotive energy.
Fascism, therefore, must be fought with Freudian as well as
Marxist weapons. And like fascism, communism will have to call
on sadistic and masochistic love. Masochistic tendencies must be
excited in the fascist masses, and sadistic tendencies among com–
munists. Sadistic love must be directed against the father, and
hatred of the father and of the FUhrer must be expressed as sadistic
love. The masochistic element of the communists' sado-masochistic
complex should be turned, not towards another chief, towards a
Stalin or a Thorez, hut towards the brother. The dialectical anti–
thesis opposes to the father-lover of the fascist, a brother and not
simply another Fuhrer. The communist should detest the fascist
leader to the point of wanting to exterminate him, and should love
his communist brother to the point of self-sacrifice. But we must
never forget that the dominant of the revolutionary complex is to
be sadistic. This means that hatred of the father should always be
stronger than love of the brother, for the desire to transform our
environment should be greater than any other. For the fascist, on
the contrary, love of the father-lover is stronger than any other
