Customer Reviews

The Pivot of Civilization

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Listening to a discussion of Mrs. Sanger recently on the Diane Rehm Show, I learned that this book could be attained free simply by downloading it from the web. I downloaded it initially only to browse it to get a general gist of what Mrs. Sanger had to say. However, it turned out to be such an interesting, engrossing and easy read book, that I read right through to the end. It reads like a well-prepared PhD thesis by a very bright student.

As a passionate feminist of the 30s and 40s Eugenics movement, she took a very general and (as her adherents would probably argue) a non-political view of the need for the world to take a more careful look at the role birth control plays in shaping human civilization and its progress. Her argument, not at all an illogical one for the times, in a nutshell is that in a world where the threat of overpopulation and poverty are stalking civilization in every direction, it is man's sexual urges that most need to be controlled, especially among the lesser races, enfeebled and unfit masses.

Her first answer to this dilemma proved to be both prescient and seminal one. It was to put women "front and center" in the public debate about population control. Her second answer came in two parts, both parts having to do with re-education. The first part was in recognizing generally (and then acknowledging) that the old order of the Christian Church (mostly Catholics) was anachronistic and primarily responsible for mass ignorance about sexual practices generally, and about birth control practices in particular. This "practiced ignorance" she claimed had consequences for civilization's survival as a whole.

For if procreation is left to the whims of the most ignorant - meaning to Church orthodoxy and to the poor and racial misfits - then civilization would be in peril because then due primarily to demographics it would become a mal-adaptive process, and thus according to her, would not survive Malthus' draconian mathematical edict. The other part, required education of poor people and poor women in particular about the importance of birth control as a mechanism for taking their lives and their destiny into their own hands. This of course led to the development of "Planned Parenthood."

As a purely academic matter, Mrs. Sanger's passionate preaching's make eminent good sense. However, as a practical sociological matter (at least for the time the book was written), she hit a buzz saw of resistance across the political landscape that she was never quite able to recover from. Leaving aside the ethical issues about the Eugenics movement itself (of which she was a staunch supporter) and the heavy undertone of racism that accompanied her ideas (although she was acutely sensitive to both and tried as best she could to steer clear of them), what is most remarkable about this book is that it takes a systemic and scientific approach to a general human problem; advances a cogent thesis and a cogent set of hypotheses; that she then solves. No small feat for any era.

Disagreeing with her politics or her worldview is not quite the same as saying that her analysis -- or her argument -- is without merit. Whether the racist paradigm she used (which was just a few millimeters West of Adolph Hitler's "Final Solution," itself later patterned after the American Eugenics Movement), was wise or not, each reader will have to decide for himself. I just think she was a woman ahead of her times, the wrong times. Four stars

Sanger wrote in Pivot of Civilization, "Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated."

Eugenics: The study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, esp. by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits.

Yes this is an important book, important for racists.

I tried to read this book, here in Brazil.This book available to read (free) on internet.From the preface, to the last page this is a classic of eugenism and old feminism.
The preface of this book was writen by H. G. Wells, then a famous communist and english writer.Like ecologism today, eugenics was a left's political movement, dressed as science.And a very popular movement in America and every protestant country in the planet.
Such as eclogy today, then eugenics was a left and feminist pseudo-science.
This book was writen by Margaret Sanger, an american woman.This woman a feminist and popular among leftists and feminists, in his times.She was also a deep racist and eugenist.On the book "The War Against the Weake", Mrs. Sanger is described as a good person.In this book you can see how Margaret Sanger, really was.She was a bigot, a liar, a faker,a racist and a bad prophetess.
To exemple, while Lenin was exterminating more than 35 million russians, Mussolini was begining his dictatorship in Italy and Hitler was preaching his speachs in Germany; what kind of menace to the future Mrs. Sanger described in this book?She described a case of an american black woman who had a son, who was a robber!
Except if you are a mad or a bigot, the only real value for this book is to see how bad ideas were belived in America, when this bad book was writen, about 80 years ago.
Margaret Sanger wrote an entire chapter against charity,in this book.The chapter V "The Cruelty of Charity".
Yes, she claims that colored people are human weeds.
Margaret Sanger hated not just colored persons, but also poors and sicks.
There's nothing against jews in this book, but also there's nothing against communists, nazist or facists.

Any open mind who studies the life and contemporaries of Margaret Sanger must conclude that she (like the Nazi's that she admired) was entrenched in the concept that "her kind" was superior to "their kind" and something must be done to control "them". She does not mention abortion, but the ex-slaves were a problem that contraception would help control. It is legalized genocide and it continues today. The book is well written to support her claims, but is hideous in it's intent.

Pastor Howard Cameron, author of:
The Eternal Purpose of God: The Why of Who You Are

I am shocked that my prestigious university never exposed me to this book. I am even more shocked that I only recently came across it in my dilettantish study of important philosophical and socio-political ideas

But perhaps I shouldn't be. After all, the Christian Right has linked her name with baby-killing (she founded Planned Parenthood, although this book at least never even discusses abortion, only contraception), and our other thought police--the politically-"correct" left--must be aghast at her blatantly discussing human genetics, and the role that selective (mis)-breeding plays in determining the future of the human species.

This is not merely a "good" book. It is a great book, an important early 20th Century historical/political document, one that is almost as relevant today as it was in the 1920s.

The battle that she waged to legalize birth control, and make it readily available (especially) to poor women has been won, but not the battle to remove religious zealotry from the equation. Because sex is still seen as evil, most if not all of the concerns she eloquently (if in language that will seem old-fashioned to many of today's readers) raises haven't changed.

Read it, and be prepared to confront unsettling topics like the application of natural selection to human breeding, and the right of women to exercise dominion over their own bodies. There is, in fact, a little something to offend every rigid idealist of the 21st Century.

I found it inspirational, and it was wonderful to see my own conclusions expressed far more eloquently than I ever could.

As an aside, I have heard Ms. Sanger accused of racism. This book holds not even the barest hint of her distinguishing between the indiscriminate breeding taking place among impoverished whites from that taking place among impoverished non-whites.

One final note, this particular edition of the book has a "text-book" feel to it, meaning the type is small and unappealing, and not particularly easy to read.