The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

continue to exist as long as the masses of people continue to lack responsibility and to crave authority.
Sex-economic structural psychology adds the characterological and biological to the purely economic
comprehension of society. The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by
state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of
the masses of people.
Furthermore, the political ideology of the European Marxist parties operated with purely economic conditions
characteristic of a span of about two hundred years of mechanical development from the end of the 17th to the
19th century. Fascism of the 20th century, on the other hand, threw into focus the basic questions of the human
character, of mysticism and the craving for authority, problems pertaining to a span of 4-6000 years. Here also,
vulgar Marxism tried to put a square peg into a round hole. Sex-economic sociology deals with a human structure
which did not develop during the past two hundred years, but which reflects a patriarchal-authoritarian
civilization of thousands of years' standing. More than that, it asserts that the excesses of the capitalist era of the
past three hundred years (predatory imperialism, exploitation of workers, racial suppression, etc.) would not have
been possible at all without that typical structure of the masses which is expressed in their longing for authority,
their mysticism and their incapacity for freedom. The fact that this structure is not naturally given but produced
by social and educational factors does not change its effects but points to the possibility that it can be changed.
Thus, the standpoint of sex-economic biophysics is, in the best and strictest sense of the word, infinitely more
radical than that of the vulgar Marxists, if by being radical one means "going to the root of things."
From all this it is obvious that the fascist mass pestilence, with its background of thousands of years, cannot be
mastered with social measures corresponding to the past three hundred years.
[xxiv] The discovery of the natural biological work democracy in international human intercourse is the answer
to fascism. This will be no less true even if not one of the living sex-economists, orgone biophysicists or work
democrats should live to see its general functioning and its victory over the irrationalism in social life.
August 1945
[1]
CHAPTER I
IDEOLOGY AS MATERIAL POWER
1. THE DIVERGENCE OF IDEOLOGY AND ECONOMIC SITUATION
The German revolutionary movement before Hitler was based on the economic and social theory of Karl Marx;
an understanding of German fascism, therefore, presupposes an understanding of Marxism.
Shortly after National Socialism came to power in Germany, doubts about the correctness of the Marxist
concepts of the social process were voiced even by people who for many years had actively proved their
revolutionary convictions. These doubts were caused by a fact which, though at first unintelligible, was
nonetheless beyond doubt: fascism, the most extreme exponent of political and economic reaction, had become an
international phenomenon and in many countries had clearly gained the upper-hand over the socialist
revolutionary movement. The problem was accentuated by the fact that this phenomenon was most pronounced in
the highly industrialized countries. The international growth of nationalism was accompanied by a failure of the
workers' movement; this during a phase of modern history which the Marxists called "economically ready for an
overthrow of the capitalist mode of production." In addition to this failure, there was the burning memory of the
failure of the Workers' International at the beginning of the first world war and of the revolutionary movement
outside of Russia between 1918 and 1923. Thus the doubts about the correctness of the Marxian theories seemed
W.R.