The USSR and Homosexuality Part V – Maxim Gorky: Proletarian Humanism (1934)

‘Humanism’ in our day, when the bourgeoisie is organizing fascism, itself ejects its own humanism as a worn-out mask that no longer covers the face of a predatory beast – it expels it because humanism is now perceived as one of the reasons for splitting and rotting. The facts mentioned above suggest that every time sensitive people are alarmed by the spectacle of the abominations in this world, they preach to humanity through a naïve desire to soften these abominations or cover them with eloquence – these are the masters of life, or shopkeepers- who allow this sermon only as an attempt to reassure people irritated by poverty, lack of rights, oppression and other inevitable results of the world ‘cultural’ activities preferred by the shopkeepers. As soon as this irritation of the working masses took on social-revolutionary forms, the bourgeoisie responded to this ‘(progressive) action with (regressive) reaction’.

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