PARTISAN RE VIEW
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scientific thinker. Orgonomy amounts to what Michael Polanyi, in his
book
Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy,
thinking of Marxism, defined as a dynamo-objective coupling, in
which "Alleged scientific assertions, which are accepted as such be–
cause they satisfy moral passions, will excite these passions further,
and thus lend increased convincing power to the scientific affirmations
in question - and so on, indefinitely." As Polanyi adds, "such a dy–
namo-objective coupling is also potent in its own defence. Any criti–
cism of its scientific part is rebutted by the moral passion behind it,
while any moral objections to it are coldl y brushed aside by invoking
the inexorable verdict of its scientific findings."
The analogy with Marxism is not a casual one. Reich was among
other things a theorist of dialectical materialism who, for a while at
least, reflected a ll the sanguine historicism of the original Marxist vi–
sion. Like his o ld Berlin comrade Arthur Koestler, he didn't simply
evolve into a fervent anti-Communist when history failed to obey the
script, but alsQ sublimated his transcendent expectations into "revo–
lutionary" scientific doctrine. The exit from history that Marx had
posited in temporal terms as the proletariat'S eventual triumph was
transposed into a repeal of the laws of physical necessity, and the now–
dubious power of the masses became the power - sexual, perceptual,
even mystical - of the sufficient self. Unlike Koestler, however, Reich
continued to present himself as an explicitly political revolutionary,
thus sparing his followers the necessity of choosing between Tambur–
la'ine and Faust. Somehow the spread of erotic freedom and the har–
nessing of orgone energy would result in an end to capitalism and
patriarchy - the very outcome that seemed unreachable through tradi–
tional means of struggle. Meanwhile the secondary benefits of revolu–
tionism, such as elite membership, privileged insight, a sense of evan–
gelical mission, and faith in the future, cou ld be found in a movement
organized around supposed truths about nature.
The rallying point of Reich's new creed was the orgasm, an elo–
quent choice on several counts. In the first place, the experience is a
private one, in marked contrast to the proletariat'S assumption of state
power. In a time of shallered public expectations, local orgastic success
or the illusion of it can be taken as proof that the revolution is going
forward after all. Again, as an immediate and total release of tension,
the orgasm is an ideal vehicle for a drastically compressed historicism:
the fulfillment that was to have worked itself out through decades of
