ISAAC ROSENFELD
11
Chicago. As Ba rrett reca ll s, Philip Rahv had come to feel tha t Rosen–
feld was no longer a "winner," and had withdrawn from him the
support he so badl y needed. But the inner necessities of Rosenfeld 's
turmo il , in which his pass ion was piued against his irony and deepl y
ingrained ha bits of caution , were drawing him out of the
Partisan
orbit, as hi s devotion to the po litics of instinct left no room for
formul a ti ons about politics or culture o r history tha t did not drive
ri ght
to
the sexual heart of the issue.
Yet, the style in whi ch Rosenfeld took up Reich after the still
moment of Dostoevski an depress ion refl ected the suppressed revolu–
ti oni sm of hi s youth. As a teenager in Chicago, emerging from the
supercharged environment of freethinking Russian Jews who were
satura ted with rebelli on and socialism and for whom the Russian
Revoluti on was the grea t watershed of European history and Western
politi cs, Rosenfeld had been active in the Trotskyist movement
through the Spartacus Youth Leagu e and the Young People's Socialist
League during its Tro tskyi st phase, when it was known as " YPSL
Fourth ," after the Fourth Interna tional. It is diffi cult in retrospect to
imagine Rosenfeld having much of anything to do with politics, and it
is p robabl y the case tha t his teenage Trotskyism was less a ma tter of
doctrine than of a tmosphere, of being born a Jew in a certain place at a
certain moment in history. Be tha t as it may, I believe there was a part
of him that was always devoutl y revo luti onary, and tha t hi s Marxi sm,
such as it was, was a phase to be passed through on the way
to
a
revoluti on ism tha t more suited his na ture and for which Reich 's
promise of redemption through orgasm supplied the program. In
Reich 's sexual mill ena ri ani sm one can see something of the Trotskyist
mentalit y stripped of its political and hi storical points of reference.
Like Revo luti onary Ma rxi sm , Reichi ani sm was an ideology of libera–
ti on with uncompromi sing va lues, a world integra ti ve view of rea lity
that a rmed its adherents with bas ic interpreta tions, and rigid internal
di alecti cs tha t po int the way to freedom onl y by submissi on to a stern
agenda of trea tment. It was, then, both a dogma and a discipline, and
Rosenfeld 's journals give a full and di sheartening picture of how the
feveri sh pursuit of openness and spontaneity could develop its own
mechani sm and ri gidity, until the recoil against routine became itself a
routine. Of course, Rosenfeld ma intained a high degree of skepticism
about Reich's more metaphysica l doctrines, especiall y as they became
more reli ant u pon the "orgone," the cosmic unit of biologi cal potency
that became, aft er the war, the mana of the system, but he held fast to
the earl y ideas a bout the redempti ve power of unbl ocked libido,
