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diff --git a/books/psychology/mass-psychology-of-fascism.md b/books/psychology/mass-psychology-of-fascism.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3aa1366 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/psychology/mass-psychology-of-fascism.md @@ -0,0 +1,204 @@ +[[!meta title="The Mass Psychology of Fascism"]] + +### Excerpts + + Revolutionary activity in every area of human existence will come about by itself + when the contradictions in every new process are comprehended; it will consist of + identification with those forces that are moving in the direction of genuine progress. To + be radical, according to Karl Marx, means’ getting to the root of things’. If one gets to the + root of things, if one grasps their contradictory operations, then the overcoming of + political reaction is assured. If one does not get to the root of things, one ends, whether + one wants to or not, in mechanism, in economism or even in metaphysics, and inevitably + loses one’s footing. Hence, a critique can only be significant and have a practical value if + it can show where the contradictions of social reality were overlooked. What was + revolutionary about Marx was not that he wrote this or that proclamation or pointed out + revolutionary goals; his major revolutionary contribution is that he recognized the + industrial productive forces as the progressive force of society and that he depicted the + contradictions of capitalist economy as they relate to real life. The failure of the workers’ + movement must mean that our knowledge of those forces that retard social progress is + very limited, indeed, that some major factors are still altogether unknown. + + [...] + + It was this very vulgar Marxism that maintained that the economic crisis of 1929-33 + was of such a magnitude that it would of necessity lead to an ideological Leftist + orientation among the stricken masses. While there was still talk of a ‘revolutionary + revival’ in Germany, even after the defeat of January 1933, the reality of the situation + showed that the economic crisis, which, according to expectations, was supposed to entail + a development to the Left in the ideology of the masses, had led to an extreme + development to the Right in the ideology of the proletarian strata of the population. The + result was a cleavage between the economic basis, which developed to the Left, and the + ideology of broad layers of society, which developed to the Right. This cleavage was + overlooked; consequently, no one gave a thought to asking how broad masses living in + utter poverty could become nationalistic. Explanations such as ‘chauvinism’, ‘psychosis’, + ‘the consequences of Versailles’, are not of much use, for they do not enable us to cope + with the tendency of a distressed middle class to become radical Rightist; such + explanations do not really comprehend the processes at work in this tendency. In fact, it + was not only the middle class that turned to the Right, but broad and not always the worst + elements of the proletariat. One failed to see that the middle classes, put on their guard by + the success of the Russian Revolution, resorted to new and seemingly strange + preventative measures (such as Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’), which were not understood at + that time and which the workers’ movement neglected to analyse. One also failed to see + that, at the outset and during the initial stages of its development to a mass movement, + fascism was directed against the upper middle class and hence could not be disposed of + ‘merely as a bulwark of big finance’, if only because it was a mass movement. Where + was the problem? + + [...] + + The Marxist thesis to the effect that originally ‘that which is materialistic’ (existence) + is converted into ‘that which is ideological’ (in consciousness), and not vice versa, leaves + two questions open: (i) how this takes place, what happens in man’s brain in this process; + and (2) how the ‘consciousness’ (we will refer to it as psychic structure from now on) + that is formed in this way reacts upon the economic process. Character-analytic + psychology fills this gap by revealing the process in man’s psychic life, which is + determined by the conditions of existence. By so doing, it puts its finger on the + ‘subjective factor’, which the vulgar Marxist had failed to comprehend. Hence, political + psychology has a sharply delineated task. It cannot, for instance, explain the genesis of + class society or the capitalist mode of production (whenever it attempts this, the result is + always reactionary nonsense - for instance, that capitalism is a symptom of man’s greed). + Nonetheless, it is political psychology - and not social economy -that is in a position to + investigate the structure of man’s character in a given epoch, to investigate how he thinks + and acts, how the contradictions of his existence work themselves out, how he tries to + cope with this existence, etc. To be sure, it examines individual men and women only. If, + however, it specializes in the investigation of typical psychic processes common to one + category, class, professional group, etc., and excludes individual differences, then it + + [...] + + Hence, we are not saying anything new, and we are not revising Marx, as is so often + maintained: ‘All human conditions ‘, that is, not only the conditions that are a part of the + work process, but also the most private and most personal and highest accomplishments + of human instinct and thought; also, in other words, the sexual life of women and + adolescents and children, the level of the sociological investigation of these conditions + and its application to new social questions. With a certain kind of these ‘human + conditions’, Hitler was able to bring about a historical situation that is not to be ridiculed + out of existence. Marx was not able to develop sociology of sex, because at that time + sexology did not exist. Hence, it now becomes a question of incorporating both the purely + economic and sex-economic conditions into the framework of sociology, of destroying + the hegemony of the mystics and metaphysicians in this domain. + + + [...] + + The ideology of every social formation has the function not only of reflecting the + economic process of this society, but also and more significantly of embedding this + economic process in the psychic structures of the people who make up the society. Man is + subject to the conditions of his existence in a twofold way: directly through the + immediate influence of his economic and social position, and indirectly by means of the + ideological structure of the society. His psychic structure, in other words, is forced to + develop a contradiction corresponding to the contradiction between the influence + exercised by his material position and the influence exercised by the ideological structure + of society. The worker, for instance, is subject to the situation of his work as well as to + the general ideology of the society. Since man, however, regardless of class, is not only + the object of these influences but also reproduces them in his activities, his thinking and + acting must be just as contradictory as the society from which they derive. But, inasmuch + as a social ideology changes man’s psychic structure, it has not only reproduced itself in + man but, what is more significant, has become an active force, a material power in man, + who in turn has become concretely changed, and, as a consequence thereof, acts in a + different and contradictory fashion. It is in this way and only in this way that the + + + [...] + + Thus, the statement that the ‘ideology’ changes at a slower pace than the economic basis + is invested with a definite cogency. The basic traits of the character structures + corresponding to a definite historical situation are formed in early childhood, and are far + more conservative than the forces of technical production. It results from this that, as + time goes on, the psychic structures lag behind the rapid changes of the social conditions + from which they derived, and later tome into conflict with new forms of life. This is the + basic trait of the nature of so-called tradition, i.e., of the contradiction between the old + + + [...] + + result. Social psychology sees the problem in an entirely different light: what has to be + explained is not the fact that the man who is hungry steals or the fact that the man who is + exploited strikes, but why the majority of those who are hungry don’t steal and why the + majority of those who are exploited don’t strike. Thus, social economy can give a + complete explanation of a social fact that serves a rational end, i.e., when it satisfies an + immediate need and reflects and magnifies the economic situation. The social economic + explanation does not hold up, on the other hand, when a man’s thought and action are + inconsistent with the economic situation, are irrational, in other words. The vulgar + Marxist and the narrow-minded economist, who do not acknowledge psychology, are + + [...] + + thinking. Both assertions, because they failed to see the complexities of the issue, were + rigidly mechanistic. A realistic appraisal would have had to point out that the average + worker bears a contradiction in himself; that he, in other words, is neither a clear-cut + revolutionary nor a clear-cut conservative, but stands divided. His psychic structure + derives on the one hand from the social situation (which prepares the ground for + revolutionary attitudes) and on the other hand from the entire atmosphere of authoritarian + society - the two being at odds with one another. + + [...] + + concrete results solely through the activities of the masses subjected to them. + To be sure, the freedom movements of Germany knew of the so-called ‘subjective + factor of history’ (contrary to mechanistic materialism, Marx conceived of man as the + subject of history, and it was precisely this side of Marxism that Lenin built upon); what + was lacking was a comprehension of irrational, seemingly purposeless actions or, to put + it another way, of the cleavage between economy and ideology. We have to be able to + explain how it was possible for mysticism to have triumphed over scientific sociology. + This task can be accomplished only if our line of questioning is such that a new mode of + action results spontaneously from our explanation. If the working man is neither a clear- + cut reactionary nor a clear-cut revolutionary, but is caught in a contradiction between + reactionary and revolutionary tendencies, then if we succeed in putting our finger on this + + [...] + + contradiction, the result must be a mode of action that offsets the conservative psychic + forces with revolutionary forces. Every form of mysticism is reactionary, and the + reactionary man is mystical. To ridicule mysticism, to try to pass it off as ‘befogging’ or + as ‘psychosis’, does not lead to a programme against mysticism. If mysticism is correctly + comprehended, however, an antidote must of necessity result. But to accomplish this task, + the relations between social situation and structural formation, especially the irrational + ideas that are not to be explained on a purely socio-economic basis, have to be + comprehended as completely as our means of cognition allow. + + [...] + + a number of new insights. It proceeds from the following presuppositions: + Marx found social life to be governed by the conditions of economic production and + by the class conflict that resulted from these conditions at a definite point of history. It is + only seldom that brute force is resorted to in the domination of the oppressed classes by + the owners of the social means of production; its main weapon is its ideological power + over the oppressed, for it is this ideology that is the mainstay of the state apparatus. We + have already mentioned that for Marx it is the living, productive man, with his psychic + and physical disposition, who is the first presupposition of history and of politics. The + character structure of active man, the so-called ‘subjective factor of history’ in Marx’s + sense, remained uninvestigated because Marx was a sociologist and not a psychologist, + and because at that time scientific psychology did not exist. Why man had allowed + + [...] + + himself to be exploited and morally humiliated, why, in short, he had submitted to + slavery for thousands of years, remained unanswered; what had been ascertained were + only the economic process of society and the mechanism of economic exploitation. + Just about half a century later, using a special method he called psychoanalysis, Freud + discovered the process that governs psychic life. His most important discoveries, which + had a devastating and revolutionary effect upon a large number of existing ideas (a fact + that garnered him the hate of the world in the beginning), are as follows: + Consciousness is only a small part of the psychic life; it itself is governed by psychic + processes that take place unconsciously and are therefore not accessible to conscious + control. Every psychic experience (no matter how meaningless it appears to be), such as a + dream, a useless performance, the absurd utterances of the psychically sick and mentally + deranged, etc., has a function and a ‘meaning’ and can be completely understood if one + can succeed in tracing its etiology. Thus psychology, which had been steadily + deteriorating into a kind of physics of the brain (‘brain mythology’) or into a theory of a + mysterious objective Geist, entered the domain of natural science. + Freud’s second great discovery was that even the small child develops a lively + + [...] + + given in the way of progressive and revolutionary impetus. This is not the place to prove + this. Psychoanalytic sociology tried to analyse society as it would analyse an individual, + set up an absolute antithesis between the process of civilization and sexual gratification, + conceived of destructive instincts as primary biological facts governing human destiny + immutably, denied the existence of a matriarchal primeval period, and ended in a + crippling scepticism, because it recoiled from the consequences of its own discoveries. Its + hostility towards efforts proceeding on the basis of these discoveries goes back many + years, and its representatives are unswerving in their opposition to such efforts. All of this + has not the slightest effect on our determination to defend Freud’s great discoveries + against every attack, regardless of origin or source.
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