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The author examines various aspects of the drives behind man's revolutionary movements, the struggles between 'conservative' and 'progressive' forces. He rejects the Marxist denial of a connection between revolutionary movements and sexual drives. He believes that the early Soviet authorities consciously fostered sexual anarchy in order to destroy the concepts of marriage and family, those being the structural bases of bourgeois society. It soon became evident, however, that sexual anarchy threatens the existence of any organized society. Marriage regained its legal form and sexual promiscuity became limited, after the phase of sexual anarchy had served its purpose of freeing strong revolutionary and destructive forces which shook bourgeois society to its foundations. Woolf examines the source of the preservative and stabilizing forces in society. These are operative when the group accepts and loves an object: a hero, an idea, a principle. In a capitalist society this principle is the accumulation of material wealth, with concomitant anal-sadistic coloration. Regression in such a society is analsadistic. In a decaying society there are no rewards for 'good behavior', and regression ensues: 'The superego loses its social support and protection'. If the superego bars anal-sadistic regression, another refuge is the world of mysticism and miracle.