The history of the Munzer commune is related inconsistently, in a hostile fashion and by the very same forces against which the Anabaptist revolution was directed. There is even a western movie with many fires, wild passions and the Anabaptist society is presented on the limit of pornography. A reckless, lustful John rushes about among his queens in bourgeois nightshirts, like a rock star.
Four hundred and something years later it happened that many political radicals, RAF members and other terrorist German organizations came out from the communes of the 60s. Of often very radical communes, where an unrestricted sexual freedom was largely practiced (on the base of the hippie movement)- promiscuity and generality of property. “The commune 1 (the terrorists Fritz Teufel, Rainer Langhans and Dieter Kunzelmann came from it) appeared on summer 1967 in Berlin. In 1968 in Berlin appeared “The commune of Viland” a lot more politicized on comparison with the Kommune 1. In the communes, apart from group sex, people were also occupied by the regular conducting of political actions, meetings and discussions, “happenings” – writes the researcher of left movements A. Kolpakidi. Is also interesting the fact that the No 1 figure of the RAF, Ulrike Meinhof completed… Munzer University! And she was born in 1934, exactly 400 years from 1534 when John of Leyden and his warriors-Anabaptists captured the city of Munzer and created the first communist state. Strange, isn’t it? The influence of Thuringia?
On the example of medieval revolutionaries Dolcino and his “apostolic brothers” and the Anabaptists of John of Leyden it becomes clear that religious extremism served as a cover for political extremism and sexual extremism. All medieval social movements were simultaneously religious. I.e. the political party implied the religious component as well, the sects rebelled and fought for a different life on Earth. This universality should be returned to the modern party – the religious and erotic components. The mix will be more explosive, tougher.
Lecture 11
And so, communism as a doctrine originated in medieval orgiastic sects that preached the community of property and women. As for capitalism, it was born from puritan asceticism. It is the child of syphilis for real.
Let us recall Luther. Martin Luther nails his theses to the door of a church (still a catholic one). 1517. Luther accuses the Catholic Church in insufficient severity, in corruption, particularly in the selling of indulgencies. This is a criticism from the positions of asceticism. Munzer – a scholar-intellectual joins Luther in 1519. But they don’t stay together because they have different critics of the Catholic Church. Luther’s is clear, as for Munzer he does not want to reform anything, his doctrine: the chosen ones have by force of arms to clean the way for the new Coming. Everyone is his own God, everything is common. It is clear that Luther called Munzer’s army “a band of thugs”. They are directly opposite.
It is Luther who did not encroach on medieval society, who can be considered the true predecessor and the first prophet of capitalism. Protestants and puritans, they all came from his 94 theses. It is precisely the ascetic radicalism, the ascetics-extremists who created capitalism. Max Weber wrote well and conclusively about this in the books “Puritan Ethic” and “Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism”. The essence of Weber’s idea comes to the fact that the new puritan ethic of an acute kinship, virtuous way of life, constant labor, money accumulation, thrift, that the protestants permitted themselves to give capitals on interests (until that the Church forbade this activity), created possibilities for the apparition of capital and business activity. The economic successes of French puritans – Huguenots are well known (and their miseries: expulsion from France, etc.). The economical successes of English Puritans are well known: the first industrial revolution took place in England. The political successes of English protestants-puritans are also known. (The puritans – the movement for the cleaning of the English Church. The English puritans acquired a huge influence in Great Britain during the Civil war of 1640-1660 when the Parliament fought with the kings Charles I (he was executed) and Charles II. Then Oliver Cromwell, a puritan, became the commander of the English army and the Lord General in 1653. As for the Puritans they became the first colonizers of North America where they organized theocratic communes-villages and finally created their State: The United States of America, the capitalist State par excellence. The United States of America are still today the flagman of capitalism. The modern world was created under the pressure of the puritan ethic – the world of production and consumption trade.
All this is far from being known to all worlds’ citizens, but the most inquisitive ones know. What is unknown is why it is precisely in 1517 that Luther came out with his ascetic calls for reformation. What, is it at that very year that the Catholic Church pissed him off? And why not later or not earlier?
The answer is simple. It is at this very time that syphilis reached Spanish and Portuguese harbors, where it was introduced by the sailors of Columbus (from America! More precisely from the Trinidad Island) in 1498-1500. Slowly (since then people traveled slowly, on horseback and in coaches, also very few people traveled), it took 15-20 years per country for the disease, syphilis started to cross Europe. The peak of puritan sentiments and sects in Europe happens to be exactly during the syphilis epidemic in Europe. From there come the tight family ties: intercourse with a single sexual partner and severe punishments for disobeying, after all it was a matter of life and death, since people learned how to treat syphilis only in the beginning of the XX century! From there the families went into work, into economy, since once you start to party, you drink and you meet some loosen girls and syphilis and your nose has fallen off. In short, the ideals of everyday life became different. It did not happen that straightforwardly, “syphilis!” and the scared Luther hurries to hang his theses on the church door. But if one is to look carefully on a geographic map, then Holland’s busy harbors are very close to this very same church and its doors.
The Protestants afraid by syphilis hardened their customs and thus the cult of labor was born. It is paradoxical but it turns out that the yoke of labor in the name of productivity, under which the modern world suffocates was given birth and stimulated by a venereal disease! Puritanism is the legitimate child of a venereal disease!
We, the contemporaries of AIDS were just recently the witnesses – in the middle of the 90s – of the influence of the AIDS epidemic on the moral shape of the United States of America. I had lived in the United States for the entire second half of the 70s and I can testify: the manners were so loose that to make love with the first encountered object was as easy as to drink some water. Drugs circulated freely, they were offered on streets and in friends’ apartments. When after a big break of ten years I arrived in 1990 to the United States from France I found a totally different country: contained, cold, the ideas of the New Christians were spread and girls with an iron will insisted on long-term relationships, serious intentions and the use of contraception. AIDS inspired terror, the 70s were considered by society as shameful and blasphemous times of Sodom and Gomorra. People with AIDS were buried quietly. One can imagine what kind of terror and panic reigned in XVI century Europe, when it was invaded by syphilis if at the end of the XX century another venereal disease – AIDS – brought a mythical terror in peoples’ relations! Since this was still a completely undeveloped Europe, there was no medical service, people were still burned on stakes. How did they get scared! One understands that there was cholera, plague epidemics then. But an epidemic of a venereal disease was a Divine scourge multiplied by three, it touched birth giving as well. By the testimonies of contemporaries the terror before syphilis was indescribable. And even in the end of the XIX, the beginning of the XX centuries the terror remained, it was treated with mercury, it did not heal, the cases were dissimulated. At the turn of the XIX and the XX century syphilis became a disease of intellectuals. Supposedly Nietzsche and Wilde suffered from syphilis, Lautrec died from syphilis. A parallel suggests itself with AIDS but a parallel the other way round because AIDS appeared as an intellectuals’ disease, came out of the narrow circle of the New-York-Paris highly refined homosexual circles and only then became popular, came into the people. By the way such coryphees as Michel Fouquet, Rudolph Nuriev and many others had the time to die from AIDS.