|
|
In the theories on reciprocal polygamy, we find the traces of the repressed everywhere. In Plato's state the partners are allocated by (manipulated) drawing lots, which implies that free choice is suspended. Campanella bluntly denies that there would be less desirable women in his City of the Sun. In his state the masters nevertheless play the role of Plato's drawing lots: Commerce with educated and beautiful women is reserved for well educated and beautiful men, commerce with fat women for skinny men, and commerce with skinny women for fat men, question of obtaining a good average. Luckily, there is also provided in the need of bookworms: they have right to young and strong woman as compensation. Also Fourier sweeps the problem under the carpet with the contention that in the future everybody will be rich, cultivated, honest, desirable, virtuous and beautiful. A bad conscience about such repression is reflected in the institution of the 'angelicate', whereby the most beautiful couples were supposed to practice 'amorous philanthropy' on behalf of the less desirable and the elders! Not only the decrease in quality of the relations with the increase in quantity, also the existence of pyramids of desirability is responsible for the tendential presence decrease of the community of women to ever smaller communities of the elect, and finally to monogamy. Many religious and socialist communes (think of the commune of Humpfrey Noyes in Oneida) eventually dissolved in a series of monogamous relations, and swinging often ended up in the remarriage of the best placed partners.
|