The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

The fusion of scientific and social process into the unity of a basic new social order fails to come about if the
process of scientific insight does not grow from old concepts as organically as the social process grows from the
misery of practical life. I say, "growing organically"; for one cannot "think out" or "plan" a new order; it must
grow organically, in closest contact with the practical and theoretical facts of human life. For this reason, all
attempts to [182] "reach the masses politically," to "give them revolutionary ideas," are bound to fail and to end in
nothing but noisy and harmful party politics.
Insight into the nature of fascism which could not be comprehended by any economistic concept of social living,
and insight into the authoritarian nationalistic structure of the Soviet Union of 1940, developed spontaneously
everywhere, without any "party guidance." That fascism had no more to do with the class rule of the
"bourgeoisie" than the "Soviet democracy" of Stalin has to do with the social democracy of Lenin was general,
though latent, knowledge. It was noted everywhere that the old concepts no longer covered the new processes.
Those who worked with life as it is, who had come to know, through medical and pedagogical work, people of all
professions in various countries, were in little danger of getting caught in the toils of political slogans. This was
particularly true of those who had always been "unpolitical" and had lived only for their work. It was precisely
these "unpolitical" people, given over to their work, who were accessible to the sociological insights which were
so decisive in Europe then. Those, on the other hand, who had identified themselves, economically and
ideologically, with this or that party machine, were not only rigid and inaccessible to any new insight; more than
that, they fought with irrational hatred against any attempt to make comprehensible the basically new
phenomenon of the authoritarian, totalitarian dictatorship. Considering, furthermore, that the party organizations
had a purely economistic orientation while the dictatorships originated not in economic processes but in irrational
attitudes of the masses, one can readily see how cautiously a social scientist working in the field of mass
psychology had to proceed. In fact, all he had to do was to register conscientiously whether the social
development confirmed or contradicted his biopsychic insights. He found that it confirmed them. There grew, in
many physicians, teachers, writers, social workers, adolescents, industrial workers, etc., the deep conviction that
political irrationalism would one day run its course, and that one day the demands of [183] natural work, of love
and of knowledge, would become part of the consciousness of the broad masses and would lead to action on their
part, without any necessity for propagandizing a corresponding theory. True, one could not foresee the degree of
catastrophe which political irrationalism would have to produce before it would be halted by the natural feeling
for life of the working masses and would drown in its own deeds.
After the catastrophe in Germany in 1933, the Soviet Union found itself regressing rapidly to authoritarian and
nationalistic social forms. That it was a matter of "nationalism" was clear to a great many scientists, journalists
and workers' officials; but it was not clear whether it was a matter of nationalism of the fascist pattern.
The word "fascism" is no invective, no more than the word "capitalist." It is a term which connotes a definite
way of leading and influencing the masses: authoritarian, one-party-system, therefore totalitarian, might comes
before real interests, political falsification of facts, etc. Consequently, there are "fascist Jews" and "fascist
democrats."
If one had published such facts, the Soviet Union would immediately have branded them as "counterrevolutionary,"
as "Trotskyite-fascist." At that time, the Soviet population still enjoyed the impetus of the
revolution of 1917. Consumption was increasing, unemployment was practically nonexistent. The people enjoyed
the newly created institutions—sports, theater, literature, etc. Those who had experienced the German catastrophe
knew that these so-called cultural enjoyments of a population mean nothing with regard to the character and
development of a society. To see movies and plays, to read books, to engage in sports, to brush one's teeth and to
go to school is important, it is true, but it does not make the difference between a dictatorship and a democratic
society. In either of the two, "culture is being enjoyed." It was a typical and basic error of the Socialists and
Communists to consider the building of an apartment house, a subway or a school a "socialistic" achievement.
Apartment buildings, subways [184] and schools have to do with the technical development of a society but do
not indicate whether the members of this society are serfs or free workers, rational or irrational human beings.