The so-called "sexual revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s, hailed by bourgeois liberals and postmodern academics as a triumph of individual liberation and progressive reform, was in reality bound up with deeply reactionary phenomenon. From advancing the cause of human emancipation, it became a critical component of the broader social counterrevolution orchestrated by the ruling classes to undermine the potential of the working class. This pseudo-liberation, rooted in the decay of capitalist society, has contributed directly to profound negative impacts on public health, including the explosive proliferation of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), mental health crises, and the commodification of human relationships under the guise of "freedom."
To understand the sexual revolution's contradictory character, one must situate it within the historical context of postwar capitalism's crisis. The post-World War II economic boom in the United States and Western Europe masked deepening contradictions: imperial decline, stagflation, and intensifying class antagonisms. The 1960s saw mass upheavals - student protests, explosions of workers unrest, civil rights struggles, and anti-war movements - that threatened to coalesce into a unified challenge to the capitalist order. In response, the ruling elites promoted a series of ideological diversions, channeling discontent away from class-based politics toward individualistic and identity-focused "revolutions."
The sexual revolution, which was rooted "in-itself" in progressive developments in healthcare, was also epitomized by the rise of pornography as a multibillion-dollar industry and the cultural normalization of casual sex and became chief among these diversions. Figures like Hugh Hefner became the unwitting mouthpieces of this development. Far from liberating women or sexual minorities, as liberal historiography claims, these developments reinforced the subordination of personal life to the imperatives of profit.
Marxist analysis reveals much of the sexual revolution as an extension of bourgeois ideology, promoting atomized individualism over collective struggle. As Leon Trotsky noted in his writings on the family under capitalism, the bourgeois nuclear family, while oppressive, served as a stabilizing force for the working class. The sexual revolution helped to dismantle even this fragile remnant of collectivism, promoting individualism over collectivism and fostering a more fluid, unstable workforce better suited to the demands of late capitalism. By "abolition of the family" Marx had envisioned the free development of human relations, unobstructed by the pressures of the capitalist market. Instead, the pressures of the capitalist market only deepen on workers, while human relationships become more and more atomized/commodified. The "free love" ethos of the hippies and counterculture - often romanticized in the Woodstock mythos - dovetailed perfectly with the emerging neoliberal order, where personal fulfillment was redefined as consumer choice in the marketplace of desires.
This reactionary element is evident in the movement's alignment with identity politics, which the ruling class has weaponized to divide the working class along lines of race, gender, and sexuality. The sexual revolution paved the way for today's obsession with "sexual identity" as a substitute for class consciousness. The result? A society where sex is commodified - through apps like Tinder, pornography platforms like Pornhub, and the "gig economy" of sex work such as OnlyFans and the blind eye of authorities towards the proliferation of the "legal rape" of prostitution, while workers are left more isolated and vulnerable than ever.
The public health consequences are staggering and undeniable. The proliferation of STIs stands as a grim indictment of the sexual revolution's promises within the capitalist system. According to data from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, global STI rates have skyrocketed since the 1970s. Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis infections have reached epidemic levels in many countries, with the US alone reporting over 2.5 million cases annually in recent years. The HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, which claimed millions of lives, was exacerbated by the cultural shift toward promiscuity without corresponding social infrastructure - a direct outgrowth of the revolution's emphasis on individual "choice" over collective responsibility.
These health crises are not mere accidents but inevitable outcomes of capitalism's decay. The pharmaceutical industry profits immensely from treatments for STIs, with companies like Pfizer and Gilead raking in billions from antiretroviral drugs and antibiotics, while preventive measures like comprehensive sex education and universal healthcare are systematically underfunded. Mental health impacts are equally severe: studies link the hookup culture fostered by the sexual revolution to rising rates of depression, anxiety, and relational instability, particularly among youth. In a society where relationships are transient and exploitative, the human cost is borne disproportionately by the working class and oppressed layers, who lack access to quality healthcare and social stability.
The promotion of the sexual revolution also came to serve geopolitical ends. During the Cold War, the US imperialists contrasted their "free" society - with its permissive attitudes toward sex - against the supposed puritanism of the Soviet bureaucracy. This propaganda obscured the Stalinist betrayal of genuine socialism, which under Lenin and Trotsky had advanced progressive policies on women's rights, abortion, and family reform as part of the broader fight for workers' power.
Today, as capitalism hurtles toward catastrophe - marked by endless wars, economic inequality, and ecological collapse - the mythos of the sexual revolution must be shattered. True liberation cannot come from bourgeois individualism but only through the international unity of the working class in the struggle for socialism. The fight against STIs and other public health scourges requires not more bourgeois ideological filth or market-driven solutions, but the expropriation of the capitalist institutions which benefit from the suffering of the working class, the establishment of free universal healthcare, and the creation of a society where human relationships are based on equality and cooperation, not exploitation and individualism.
Workers and youth must reject these reactionary elements and turn to the program of social revolution, which will provide a basis for the expansion of human freedom promised by the "sexual revolution" free from the defects of capitalist society. The workers present their own independent standpoint against the arch-reactionaries and religious figures who denounce, eg, the availability of contraceptives or reproductive healthcare. It is left to the us to salvage the kernel of progressive development and fight reaction. Only through the building of a revolutionary leadership in every country can humanity achieve genuine progress, free from the chains of capitalist reaction.
