The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

mass-psychologically correct investigation of work must be based on the relationship of the worker to the product
of his work. This relationship has a socio-economic background and refers to the pleasure which the individual
derives from his work. Work is a fundamental biological activity, based, like life in general, on pleasurable
pulsation.
The pleasure in work of an "independently" working academician cannot be made the yardstick of work in
general. Seen in social terms, work in the 20th century is governed entirely by duty and the necessity of making a
living. The work done by hundreds of millions of workers in the world provides neither pleasure nor biological
gratification. It is of the type of compulsive work and at variance with the biological need for pleasure. It is done
out of duty or conscience, in order not to starve, and is, as a rule, done for others. The worker has no interest in
the product of his work, consequently the work is devoid of pleasure and is a burden. Any work based on
compulsion instead of pleasure is not only uneconomical biologically, but also relatively unproductive
economically.
The problem is gigantic and obscure. It is clear that mechanistic, biologically ungratifying work is a product of
the general mechanistic view of life and of machine civilization. Can the biological and the social work function
be reconciled? Yes, but not without a radical correction of well-established concepts and institutions.
In the trades of the past centuries, the worker still had a full relationship to his product. If, however, as in an
automobile factory, a worker, year in and year out, executes the same manipulation on a mere detail of the
product, without ever seeing the total product, gratifying work is clearly out of the question. As a result of the
specialized and mechanized division of labor, to-[246]gether with the system of wage labor, the worker has no
relationship with the product.
One may object here that there is a need for work, an enjoyment of work which is intrinsic in the activity of
work. True, there is a biological enjoyment of activity, but the forms into which this activity is forced in a market
economy smother and obliterate this enjoyment in work. It is a primary task of work democracy to harmonize the
conditions and forms of work with the need of and enjoyment in work, in other words, to eliminate the
contradiction between joy in life on the one hand and work on the other. This problem opens a vast field for
human thinking: Would it be possible to retain the rationalization and mechanization of work and yet not to kill
the enjoyment in work? It is entirely conceivable that the worker might have contact with the total product of his
labor without eliminating the division of labor. Enjoyment in work is an essential and indispensable element in
the alteration of human structure from work slave to master of production. If people again have an immediate
relationship to the product of their work they will also joyfully take the responsibility for the work.
One might point to the Soviet Union and say: "You work democrats are Utopians and daydreamers even though
you claim to look at reality unsentimentally. Where, in the workers' paradise of the Soviet Union, is 'elimination
of the division of labor,' or enjoyment in work? Or the elimination of the wage system or of market economy?
You can see from the results of the workers' revolution how impossible and illusory are Epicurean work
concepts!"
The answer to these arguments is the following: True, the mysticism of the masses is today, in spite of the
progress in natural science, stronger than before. However, if a striven-for goal—in this case, the rationality of the
masses—is not attained, that is no argument against the possibility of attaining it. The basic question remains
whether the goal of joyful work is correct or not. If so, if it is what everybody longs for, then we must ask what
obstacles are in the path of this rational goal. This is the same in [247] the realm of technic as in that of science. If
Mount Everest has not been climbed to date, that does not mean that it cannot be climbed at all. What matters is
the top 800 meters.
It is at this point that the sharp clash between work democracy and politics reveals itself clearly and simply: Our
newspapers are full of political debates which do not take into consideration one single problem of the work
process. Imagine that a work-democratic community would close the columns of its newspapers to irrationalism
and would give them over to the discussion of the conditions of joyful work. The working masses would come
forth with suggestions so numerous that they would make politiciandom impossible. Imagine how joyfully