The subject of this post is a little further on in the Preface of “Who Shall Survive?”. It is in a section called 1913-1914, Genesis of Group Psychotherapy. (xxviii) I’ve broken the selected passage into three sections each with my comment.
Here is the first…
Vienna had at that time a red light district, a ghetto for prostitutes, in its first borough, located in the famous Am Spittelberg. Here was an entire class of people segregated from the rest of society, not because of their religious or ethnic character, but because of their occupation. They were not acceptable either to the bourgeois or to the Marxist, not even to the criminal. The criminal, after he had stayed his prison sentence is again a free agent; but these women were eternally lost, they had no rights, there were no laws established to protect their interests. This was in 1913 when I began to visit their houses, accompanied by a physician, Dr. Wilhelm Gruen, a specialist in venereal disease and Carl Colbert, the publisher of a Viennese newspaper, Der Morgen. These visits were not motivated by the desire to “reform” the girls, nor to “analyze” them.
Moreno, Who Shall Survive? (1978) p xxix
I believe Moreno when he says that these people were not acceptable to the bourgeoisie or to the Marxist, not even to the criminal. They were marginalised, and he has a take on that. That he did not wish to reform or analyse them reveals Moreno ahead of his time. If Marxists in Vienna didn’t have a perspective on it, it was partly due to the time, 1913. Alexandra Kollontai, did not write her piece about prostitution till 1921, and she laments: “the question of prostitution is a difficult and thorny subject that has received too little attention…”.
There are two main points to note from this passage relevant to the investigation in this monograph:
One is that Moreno went beyond his philosophy of encounter into action. That is an amazing step, that is the beginning of his philosophy of action and that alone aligns him with Marx. The two are aligned in praxis.
The second is the a subtle sneer at the Marxist.
Moreno continues…
I had in mind that what La-Salle and Marx had done for the working class, leaving aside the revolutionary aspect of the labor movement, was to make the workers respectable, to give the working man dignity; to organize them into labor unions in order to raise the status of the entire class. Aside from the anticipated economic achievements it was accompanied by ethical achievements. I had in mind that perhaps something similar could be done for the prostitute.
Leaving revolution aside
By asking the reader to “leave aside the revolutionary aspect,” Moreno isn’t just misunderstanding Marxism; he’s against it. It’s a move to domesticate Marxism, stripping it of its transformative power and reducing it to something palatable within bourgeois values: respectability, status, and “ethical” uplift. The sneer becomes explicit. He’s not critiquing the system—he’s reinforcing it. That’s why it’s infuriating: it’s not a failure to understand Marx, it’s a rejection.
This makes his intentions with prostitutes troubling. If revolution is off the table, then what remains? A project of assimilation: raising marginalized groups within the existing system. It’s individualistic, focused on dignity as conferred by bourgeois standards, rather than on collective transformation.
To “leave aside the revolutionary aspect,” when speaking of Marx and Lassalle’s work equates their work. If revolution is not left aside Marx and Lassall were opposites, as this passage from Origins of the German Workers Movement shows.
For anyone who invokes “Marxism”, especially in Germany, Lassalle has been a model of detestable “reformism” for more than a century. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the history of the Marxist tradition has always presented the Lassallian movement as the evil opposed to the good incarnated by Marx’s supporters in Germany. Undoubtedly imperfect, but ultimately revolutionaries, it was men like Liebknecht and A. Bebel who would constitute the real socialist movement, as opposed to the traitor Lassalle who secretly negotiated with Bismarck.
Gilles Dauvé / Denis Authier 1976
All that said , it means Moreno & Lassalle are much like the Labour parties around the world today; reform trumps revolution.
The third and final passage from Moreno …
I suspected to begin with that the “therapeutic” aspect would be here far more important than the economic, because the prostitutes had been stigmatized as despicable sinners and unworthy people for so long in our civilization that they had come to accept this as an unalterable fact. It was easier to help the working class.
Therapeutic vs “economic”
This section reveals much about the foundations of psychodrama and group psychotherapy—and the contradictions at its core. Right there, at the genesis, Moreno prioritizes the therapeutic over the economic. That’s not a small choice; it’s a turn toward individualism. He sees the stigma prostitutes carry as psychological, something to be “helped,” but without addressing the material and social conditions that create and sustain that stigma in the first place.
Moreno isn’t dismissing the economic dimension—he’s dismissing Marxism. He reduces Marxism to the economic as a shorthand critique. As I covered in an earlier post, Marx’s analysis isn’t just economic—it’s about the totality of human relations: material conditions, ideology, class struggle, and lived experience.
Despite his unique perspective he could not escape the era’s growing anti-Marxist superstructure: Freud, individual souls, the focus on psyche rather than structure. Therapy becomes a way of reconciling individuals to their suffering rather than confronting the systemic forces at play—patriarchy, class, ideology, conditions.
And that word therapeutic—yes, that disturbs me too. It carries passivity at its root, even while Moreno insists on action. Sitting down in a chair. It makes me wonder if, for all its brilliance and magic—and I’ve given half my life to this work—psychodrama itself remains trapped in a bourgeois endeavour. Is it a tool for integration rather than transformation?
Sociodrama may hold more potential, even that—I don’t know yet. Can it move beyond “therapeutic” into something revolutionary? That’s where the work lies.
That’s why this moment of genesis is so important to revisit. It shows exactly where psychodrama risks falling short—and why rethinking it through sociodrama or a more collective lens is urgent.
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René F. Marineau (Moreno’s biographer) identifies a tension in Moreno:
… he was to be both a champion of individualism, ‘We are all Gods’ and communism, ‘We all need to share our wealth and support encounters’. … When he decided to leave Vienna in 1925, we can therefore understand why he hesitated, even agonised, between Russia and the United States.
(Marineau, 1985, p 61)
It is no surprise then, as we uncover his perspectives , that he chose the USA.
Note on “sharing wealth”
Is it Marineau or Moreno who miss the Marxist understanding of ownership?
Note on Marxism and Russia
Moreno often conflates Marxism, socialism and communism with the Soviet Union or Russia. Moreno missed seeing the value in the revolution of 1917 and Lenin’s contribution. He was able to see the decline in the USSR, but equated that with a failure of socialism and Marxism. All of this makes him of his time. I read an an analysis written this week by Richard Seymour (2024) that could never have been made at the time.
The USSR was a state of violent ‘primitive accumulation’ driven by military and industrial competition and with its own bureaucratic class system. The societies that modeled themselves on the USSR hoping, as Milovan Djilas put it, to “skip over centuries of slavery and backwardness”, emulated that class system. In none of these states had the working-class taken and retained political power, and in none of them were production decisions based on the needs of the majority let alone the finer points of Marxist theory.
Of course Marxists are learning from the Russian revolution of 1917. History is still unfolding. Marxists have split into groups with different takes on that history.
Marx did not write a blueprint for the future. He too used the word spontaneity.
Moreno lived at the time of the Russian Revolution and the German Revolution—two pivotal events in human history. Both altered Marxist thought, and the fate of the world. These revolutions were interconnected: the survival of the Russian Revolution relied on the success of the German Revolution, which faltered. Instead, a semi-bourgeois revolution emerged in Germany, leading to the betrayal and murder of socialist leaders, and the foundation of fascism.
In both contexts, Soviets, or workers’ councils, played a role. These councils were direct expressions of democratic, collective action. It’s striking that Moreno, despite his brilliance in developing small-group dynamics through psychodrama, seems to show no curiosity in the functioning of these politically active small groups. How might his methods intersect with social conflicts or structures like Soviets? This blind spot diminishes the actual but not the potential revolutionary application of his work.
What Moreno achieved is progressive and groundbreaking, his apparent indifference to these broader struggles leaves one wondering if, in those moments of upheaval, he might have aligned more with reaction than revolution.
References
Dauvé, G. and Authier, D. (1976). Origins of the German Workers Movement https://www.marxists.org/subject/germany-1918-23/dauve-authier/ch02.htm#h3 Accessed 17 December 2024
Kollontai, A (1921). Prostitution and Ways of Fighting It. https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1921/prostitution.htm
Marineau, R. F. (1994) In Chapter 4, Psychodrama Since Moreno, Holmes, P. Ed. Routledge. https://psychodrama.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/PSM-Chapter-4-Marineau-Morenos_Origins.pdf. ccessed, 16 December 2024
Moreno, J. L. (1953) 1978. Who Shall Survive? Foundations of Sociometry, Group Psychotherapy and Sociodrama. Beacon House. Beacon N.Y. Pdf accessed https://www.scribd.com/doc/239341240/Who-Shall-Survive-J-L-Moreno-1978-879pgs-PSY-sml PDF accessed 19 October 2024
Seymour, R. (1924). Illusions of growth and degrowth
https://www.patreon.com/posts/illusions-of-and-117922836 Accessed 16 December 2024
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This post is part of a series.
See Intro Marx and Moreno Monograph