5. On the Discourse of the “New Sexual Morality” in the German Empire: Robert Michels’ Sexual Ethics between Women’s Movement, Social Democracy, and Sociology

Abstract

Research on Robert Michels (1876– 1936) tends to think of the sociologist from the end. In the reception of the public, Michels appears predominantly as an elite theorist, whose classic Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy1 of 1911 reflects his disappointment with representative democracy on the one hand, and in which, on the other hand, the “nucleus of an authoritarian understanding of politics” is laid out, which predestined him as Benito Mussolini’s (1883– 1945) later Fascism apologete. This study, read as a disappointment in Michels’ former democratic hopes, would have led him ultimately from social democracy via syndicalism to Italian Fascism.2 Other works and thus different strands of interpretation are largely unknown compared to Political Parties. In the same year as Michels’ classic, however, another work was published, which is the focus of this article and has the potential to shake up the previous reception, namely Sexual Ethics: A Study of Borderland Questions.3 This “sexual-