The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

was these struggles which created the science of the suppressed people's striving for freedom, and not the other
way around, as the fascist character believes. Between 1918 and 1938, that is, in a period of gigantic social
events, the socialists suffered the most severe defeats. Precisely during a period which should have demonstrated
the maturity and rationality of a socialist movement for freedom, the workers' movement split up and became
bureaucratic, and increasingly lost the striving for freedom and truth to which it owed its origin.
The socialist longing of the millions was a longing for freedom from suppression of every kind. But this longing
for freedom appeared in the form of a compromise with the fear of responsibility. This fear of social
responsibility forced the socialist movement in the direction of the state. In the scientific sociology of Marx,
which describes the economic prerequisites of human freedom, we find nothing about the "state" as a goal of
socialist freedom. The "socialist state" is an invention of party bureaucrats. It, the state, was now supposed to
introduce freedom; mind you, [193] not the masses of people, but the state. I shall have to show that not only has
the socialistic idea of the state nothing to do with the theory of the early socialists, but more than that, it
represents a falsification of the socialist movement, based on the structural helplessness of the masses longing for
freedom. In the Soviet Union, the mixture of longing for freedom and structural fear of responsible selfgovernment
created a form of state which corresponded less and less to the original program of the Communists
and which finally assumed authoritarian, totalitarian and dictatorial forms.
Let us try to summarize briefly the basic socialist character of the most important social movements for
freedom.
Primitive Christianity is often, and rightly, called "socialistic." Similarly, the slave rebellions of antiquity and
the peasant wars of the middle ages were considered precursors of the socialist movement of the 19th and 20th
centuries. They failed because of the lack of industry and international communications as well as because of the
lack of a sociological theory. "Socialism," according to the sociology of its founders, was conceivable only in
international terms. A national or even nationalistic socialism (= National Socialism, fascism) is sociological
nonsense and, in the strict sense of the word, mass deceit. Imagine a physician who discovers a means of fighting
a certain disease and who calls it "therapeutic serum." Imagine, further, a clever crook who decides to capitalize
on the people's illness and who invents a poison which creates in them the longing to get well and which he now
calls "medicine." He would be the National Socialist heir of this physician, just as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin
have become the National Socialist heirs of Marx's international socialism.
The crook who wants to make money from people's illness calls his poison "medicine" because he knows very
well that he could not sell it if he called it poison. The same applies to the words "social" and "socialist."
Arbitrary use of terms which have been coined to have a definite connotation results inevitably in confusion.
The concept of "socialism" was strictly linked with the concept of "international." [194] The theory of socialism
demanded a certain degree of maturity in the international economy: the imperialistic struggle for markets, natural
resources and strategic outposts must have assumed the character of greedy wars. The economic chaos must have
become the most essential factor in the inhibition of the development of social productivity. The chaos must have
become clear to everyone, from such facts, for example, as that excess goods are destroyed in order to prevent
price slumps, while at the same time masses of people are starving. The private appropriation of collectively
produced goods must have come in sharp conflict with the needs of society. International trade must have begun
to feel the tariff boundaries of national states and the market principle as insurmountable barriers.
The objective socio-economic prerequisites of an international attitude have grown tremendously since 1918.
The airplane has bridged spaces which previously maintained cultural differences of thousands of years.
International traffic increasingly obliterates differences in civilization. An Arab of the 19th century was infinitely
farther removed from an Englishman of the 19th century than is an Arab from an Englishman today. Capitalistic
pirates have been more and more held in check. In brief, the socio-economic prerequisites of internationalism
have grown by leaps and bounds, and this process was speeded up tremendously by the second world war. But
this economic maturing was not accompanied by a structural and ideological maturing. While internationalism
continued to grow in the economic field, it came to naught structurally and ideologically. This was shown not