The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

The democratic thought system of Engels and Lenin became forgotten. It was too hard to swallow, it made too
high demands on the conscientiousness of the European and, as was shown later, also of the Russian politicians
and sociologists.
It is not possible today to present natural work democracy without studying the forms in which it was present in
the thought of Engels and Lenin between 1850 and 1920, and in the early developmental processes in the Soviet
Union between 1917 and about 1923. The Russian revolution was a gigantic deed of social progress. Its
inhibition, therefore, is a highly important sociological experience, a tremendous lesson for any true democratic
endeavor. Little indeed can be expected of the purely emotional enthusiasm for Russia's heroic deeds in the war
against Hitler. The motives of this enthusiasm which were present in 1943 but not between 1917 and 1923 are
more than dubious; they are based far more on egoistic war interests than on the will to arrive at true democracy.
[180] The examination of the development of the Soviet Union to follow was first written in 1935. One may ask
why it was not published at that time. The reason is the following: In Europe, where practical mass-psychological
work outside of the parties was not possible, it often happened that one was expelled from the organizations and
thus deprived of contact with the masses if one made scientific investigations regardless of political interests and
if one made predictions which were at variance with party politics. This was the same with all parties. It is of the
essence of any party to gain its orientation not from truths but from illusions which usually correspond to the
irrational mass structure. Scientific truths only interfered with the habit of the party politicians of avoiding
difficulties with the aid of illusions. True, in the long run illusions do not help, as events in Europe after 1938 so
clearly showed; true, in the long run scientific truths are the only reliable guiding lines in social life; but these
truths with regard to the Soviet Union were as yet no more than germs, incapable of influencing public opinion or
even of evoking mass enthusiasm. It remained for the second world war to increase the receptivity to facts
everywhere and, what is more, to disclose the basically irrational nature of politics to great numbers of working
people.
The finding of facts does not ask whether the facts are welcome or not, but only whether they are correct or not.
For this reason, it always comes into sharp conflict with politics which does not ask whether a fact is correct or
not, but only whether or not it serves this or that political purpose. This makes things very difficult for the
scientific sociologist. On the one hand, he must find and describe actual processes; on the other hand, he must
remain in contact with actual social movements. In publishing painful findings, therefore, he must think over
carefully what will be the effect of his correct statements on the masses of people who are predominantly under
the influence of political irrationalism. A sociological concept of any considerable weight can penetrate and
become practically important only if it has already been spontaneously acquired by the masses in their own lives.
Outworn [181] systems of political thought and institutions inimical to freedom must, in the feelings of everyone,
have been ruined by political machination before rational insights into the vital necessities of society can break
through spontaneously and generally. In the United States, for example, the doings of the politicians have brought
about a rather general realization that the politician is a cancer in the body social. In the Europe of 1935, one was
far from such a realization. The politician was the one who determined what was to be considered true or false.
Important social insights usually develop in the people long before they are explicitly stated or can find
organizational expression. Today, in 1945, hatred of politics, based on well-known facts, has become more or less
general. If, now, a group of social scientists has observed facts and formulated them well, facts which really
correspond to the objective social process, then the "theory" will inevitably meet with the feeling for life on the
part of the masses of people. It is as if two independent processes converged in one point, where the social
process and the mass will become one with the sociological insight. This seems to be the case in all decisive
social processes. It was so in the American emancipation from England in 1776 as well as in the emancipation of
Russian society from the Tsarist state in 1917. The lack of correct sociological work may have catastrophic
effects. In that case, objective process and mass will have matured, it is true, but they get lost again if the simple
scientific concept is lacking which should unite them and carry them further. This was the case in Germany in
1918 when, though imperialism was overthrown, no true democracy developed.