The Italian-Abyssinian war had broken out; one event followed another precipitately. No one knew or could know how the world would change in the following months and years. The organized workers’ movement did not intervene in the events. It was internationally split. It was mute, to all intents and purposes, or it followed this or that political view in a very desultory manner. It has to be admitted that the Soviet Union did fight for peace in Geneva through Litvinov, but it was a total failure as a social pioneer. New, undreamed of catastrophes were to be expected. One had to prepare oneself for
them. A new solution to the social chaos could result from them; but they could also slip past without anything being made of them, as in 1918 and 193 3 in Germany. One had to make sure that one was structurally prepared for social upheavals. One had to be especially careful not to get entangled in the drag rope of the many confusing and contradictory political everyday views. It was necessary to isolate oneself from the daily political tumult and yet to maintain a close contact with the social processes. It seemed more important than ever to stick to one’s work on the problem of human structure. Most of all it was necessary to establish clarity on the development of the Soviet Union.
Millions upon millions of working men and women in Germany, England, America, China and elsewhere anxiously followed every step taken by the Soviet Union. Those versed in mass psychology knew that if a disappointment in the Soviet Union were added to the catastrophe in Germany, then a hard struggle for clarity would be the first precondition to survive a new war scientifically.
The European war, i.e., the Second World War in one generation was impending. There was still time to reflect upon what changes this Second World War might bring about. It was still possible for human thought - even if no longer possible for human action - to come to grips with the new massacre and to arrive at an understanding of the war psychosis, an understanding that would be deadly to the war-mongers. Those who knew this had a hard time keeping their heads clear and their blood calm. But it had to be accomplished, for this Second World War, which had begun in Africa, and was soon to encompass the whole planet, would also have to end someday. Then the answer would have to be: ‘Death to the warmongers’ and ‘Annihilation of the causes of war’. But no one had any idea how this answer would look in practice.
In 1935 it was clear that the development of the Soviet Union was about to be stricken with a severe misfortune. The democratic politicians in Germany, Scandinavia and other countries did not try to trace this misfortune to its source, though they spoke about it a great deal. They failed to go back to the genuinely democratic efforts of Engels and Lenin, to refresh their knowledge on the sociological points of departure of the Soviet society, and to proceed from there to an understanding of its later development. In Europe it was not .possible to ignore these pioneers of genuine democracy, any more than it is possible for a genuinely democratic American to ignore the American constitution and the basic ideas of American pioneers, such as Jefferson, Lincoln and others. Engels was the most outstanding exponent of German democracy, as Lenin was of Russian democracy. They had not got stuck informalities; they had gone to the core of democracy. They were avoided. It makes no difference whether they were avoided because one was afraid of being labelled a Communist or because one was afraid of losing one’s academic or political position. Engels was a well-to-do factory owner and Lenin was a well-to-do son of an official. They were descendants of the ‘ruling class’, who sought to develop a system of genuine democracy from Marxist social economy (which, incidentally, was also born in ‘bourgeois circles’).
Engels’ and Lenin’s democratic framework of ideas fell into neglect. Its demands on the conscientiousness of the Europeans were too high and, as it was later shown, on the Russian politicians and sociologists as well. It was too much for them. Today [1944] natural work-democracy cannot be described without reviewing the forms that it assumed in the socio-political ideas of Engels and Lenin from 1850 to 1920. We must also review the forms it assumed in the early developmental process in the Soviet Union from 1917 to
around 1923. The Russian Revolution was an act of extraordinary social significance. For that very reason the importance of its retardation is enormous from a sociological point of view; it is a tremendous lesson for every genuinely democratic effort. Practically speaking, there is not much to hope for from the purely emotional enthusiasm for Russia’s deeds of heroism in her war against Hitler. In 1943 the motives of this enthusiasm, which was absent between 1917 and 1923, are of a very dubious nature.
They are dictated far more by egoistic war interests than by the will to achieve genuine democracy.
The following examination of the development of the Soviet Union was first written in 1935. One will ask why it was not published at that time. This requires a brief explanation. In Europe, where it was impossible to engage in practical work on mass psychology outside of the parties, one who carried out scientific investigations undeterred by political interests and made predictions that were at variance with party politics, was very apt to be excluded from the organizations and thereby deprived of one’s contact with the masses. All parties were of one opinion on this point. It is in the nature of a political party that it does not orient itself in terms of truth, but in terms of illusions, which usually correspond to the irrational structure of the masses. Scientific truths merely interfere with the party politician’s habit of wriggling himself out of difficulties with the help of illusions. To be sure, the illusions are of no use in the long run, as was demonstrated so graphically in Europe itself from 1938 on. In the long run, scientific truths are the only reliable guidelines for social life, but these truths pertaining to the Soviet Union were still nothing more than germs, which would have been incapable of stirring public opinion, let alone mass enthusiasm. They were nothing more than pricks of conscience. It was reserved for the Second World War to intensify on a broad scale the receptiveness for facts and above all to reveal to broad circles of working humanity the basic irrational nature of all politics.
When one establishes a fact, one is not concerned whether it is welcome or not, but only whether it applies. Thus, one always gets involved in a sharp conflict with politics, which is not concerned whether a fact is applicable or not, but solely whether it interferes with this or that political group. Hence, the scientific sociologist has no easy time of it. On the one hand it is his task to discover and to describe the actual process; on the other hand he has to remain in contact with the vital social movement. In publishing embarrassing factual material, therefore, he must consider very carefully what effect his correct statements will have on the masses of people who are predominantly under the influence of political irrationalism. A social scientific view having some intellectual range can push through and become social practice only if it is spontaneously absorbed by the masses in life itself. Outdated political systems of thought and institutions inimical to freedom must be totally exhausted politically before rational views on the vital necessities of society can be generally and spontaneously assimilated. But the exhaustion of these systems and institutions must be perceptible to everyone. In the United States, for example, the fuming and fussing of the politicos has popularized the general, not at all very scientifically comprehended knowledge that the politician constitutes a cancerous growth on the social body. In the Europe of 1935 one was far removed from this knowledge. It was the politician who determined what was to be regarded as true and what as false.
Usually an important social awareness begins to assume a more or less clear form among the population long before it is expressed and represented in an organized way. Today, 1944, the hatred of politics, a hatred based on concrete facts, has undoubtedly become general. If, now, a group of social scientists has made correct observations and formulations, i.e., observations and formulations that clearly reflect the objective social processes, then the ‘theory’ must of necessity be in agreement with the vital feelings of the masses of people. It is as if two independent processes moved in a convergent direction and came together at one point, a point at which the social process and the will of the masses became one with sociological knowledge. This seems to hold true for important social processes everywhere. The American emancipation from England in 1776 followed this process, just as the emancipation of the Russian society from the czarist state followed it in 1917. The absence of correct sociological work can have a catastrophic effect. In such a case, the objective process and the will of the masses have reached a point of maturity; but if there is no simple scientific principle to consolidate them, this maturity is lost again. That is what happened in Germany in 1918 when the kaiserdom was overthrown but no genuine democracy developed.
The fusion of the scientific and social processes into the unity of a fundamentally new social order fails to result if the process of scientific awareness does not grow out of the old views just as organically as the social process grows out of the misery of practical life. I say, to grow out of, organically, because it is not possible to ‘contrive’, ‘think out’ or ‘plan’ a new order. It has to grow organically, in close connection with the practical and theoretical facts of the human animal’s life. It is for this reason that all attempts ‘to get at the masses politically’, to impose ‘revolutionary ideas’ on them, fail and lead only to noisy and harmful fuming and fussing.
The awareness of the peculiar nature of fascism, which could not be explained by any purely economic view of social life, and the awareness of the authoritarian and nationalistic structure of the Soviet Union of 1940 developed spontaneously everywhere; no political party had anything to do with it. It was general, latent knowledge that fascism had as little to do with the class rule of the ‘bourgeoisie’ as the ‘Soviet democracy’ of Stalin had to do with the social democracy of Lenin. It was noted everywhere that the old concepts were no longer applicable to the new processes. Those who were directly involved with man’s vital life, those who - as physicians and educators - had acquired an exact knowledge of men and women of all walks of life and various nationalities were not easily taken in by political slogans. Those who had always been non-political and had lived solely for their work were in an especially good position. It was precisely these ‘non-political’ circles in Europe, men and women who were totally absorbed by their work, who were accessible to important social insights; whereas those who had been economically and ideologically identified with this or that party apparatus at one time or another were rigid and inaccessible to every new insight. As a rule, they defended themselves with irrational hatred against every attempt to elucidate the fundamentally new phenomenon of the authoritarian, ‘totalitarian’, dictatorial regime. When one also takes into consideration that all the party organizations, regardless of their tendencies, had a purely economic orientation, whereas the dictators based their policies not on economic processes but on the irrational attitudes of the masses, then it is easily understood that a social scientist working in the field of mass psychology was forced to proceed with the utmost caution and circumspection. All he could do was to register
conscientiously whether the social development was confirming or refuting his biopsychic insights. It confirmed them! Many physicians, educators, writers, social workers, adolescents, industrial workers and others became more and more convinced that political irrationalism would one day gallop itself to death, and that the demands of natural work, love and knowledge would become part of mass consciousness and mass action. There would be no need to carry out a propaganda campaign to sell the theory. However, it was impossible to know just how great a catastrophe political irrationalism would have to cause before it was arrested by the natural feelings for life of the toiling masses, to know how long it would take before it was choked by its own acts.
Following the German catastrophe in 1933, the Soviet Union regressed rapidly to authoritarian and nationalistic forms of social leadership. It was clear to a large number of scientists, journalists and workers’ functionaries that it was a regression to ‘nationalism’. It was not clear whether it was nationalism patterned after fascism.
The word fascism is not a word of abuse any more than the word capitalism is. It is a concept denoting a very definite kind of mass leadership and mass influence: authoritarian, one-party system, hence totalitarian, a system in which power takes priority over objective interests, and facts are distorted for political purposes. Hence, there are ‘fascist Jews’, just as there are ‘fascist Democrats’.
If one had published such observations at that time, the Soviet government would have cited them as an example of ‘counter-revolutionary tendencies’ and ‘Trotskian fascism’. The masses of the Soviet population were still enjoying the impetus of the 1917 Revolution. Their material situation was still improving, and there was no unemployment to speak of. The population enjoyed the reintroduction of sports for everybody, the theatre, literature and other things. Those who had experienced the German catastrophe knew that these so-called cultural enjoyments of a people do not tell us much about the nature and development of its society. In short, they did not tell us anything about the Soviet society. Going to the movies, visiting the theatre, reading books, playing sports, brushing one’s teeth and attending school are of course important, but they do not constitute a difference between a dictatorial state and a genuinely democratic society. ‘Culture is enjoyed’ in the one as well as in the other. It has been a typical and basic error on the part of Socialists and Communists to extol an apartment building, a public transportation system, or a new school as ‘socialistic’ achievements. Apartment houses, public transportation and schools tell us something about the technical development of a society. They did not tell us whether the members of that society are suppressed subjects or free workers, whether they are rational or irrational men and women.
Since the Soviet Russians extolled every technical innovation as a ‘specifically communist’ achievement, the Soviet population got the impression that such things did not exist in the capitalist countries. Therefore, it was not to be expected that the population would understand the deterioration of Soviet democracy to nationalism, or become aware of this deterioration on its own. It is one of mass psychology’s basic tenets that it does not proclaim an’ objective truth’ simply because it is a truth. It first asks itself how the average person of the working population will react to an objective process.
This approach automatically precludes political abuse. If, namely, someone feels that he has discovered a truth, he is obliged to wait until it has been objectively and
independently manifested. If this manifestation does not take place, then his truth was not a truth after all, and it is better remaining as a possibility in the background.
The catastrophic regression in the Soviet Union was anxiously followed in Europe and elsewhere. Thus, only about one hundred copies of this examination of the relationship between’ the masses and the state’ were sent to various friends of sex-economy and mass psychology in Europe, Russia and America. The prediction in 1929 that Soviet democracy would deteriorate into a totalitarian dictatorship was based on the fact that the sexual revolution in the Soviet Union had not only been checked, but almost intentionally suppressed.3* Sexual suppression serves, as we know, to mechanise and enslave the masses. Thus, wherever we encounter authoritarian and moralistic suppression of childhood and adolescent sexuality, suppression backed up by the law, we can infer with certainty that there are strong authoritarian-dictatorial tendencies in the social development, regardless of which slogans the ruling politicians use. On the other hand we can infer genuine democratic social tendencies wherever we encounter a sympathetic, life-affirmative attitude on the part of the important social institutions towards the sexuality of children and adolescents; but only to the extent to which such attitudes are present. Thus, as early as 1929, when reactionary sexual attitudes became more and more prevalent in the Soviet Union, one was justified in drawing the conclusion that an authoritarian, dictatorial development in the social leadership was in progress. I went into this very thoroughly in The Sexual Revolution. My predictions were confirmed by the official legislation passed from 1934 on, i.e., by the reintroduction of reactionary sexual laws.
At that time I did not know that a new attitude towards sex-economic questions had developed in the United States, an attitude that would later facilitate the acceptance of sex-economy.
We requested the friends to whom we had sent copies of this unofficial pamphlet to think it over carefully and, if they agreed with it oh the whole, to pass it on to other sociologists in their immediate vicinity who were in a position to understand the contradiction in the development of the Soviet Union. In no case whatever were the contents of this pamphlet to be printed in any newspaper or read at a mass meeting. The events themselves would determine when it was to be discussed in public. Between 1935 and 1939 the cause of the regression to authoritarian forms in the Soviet Union was understood from the point of view of mass psychology by an increasing number of leading sociological circles. This understanding replaced the fruitless indignation one felt about the ‘regression’; one learned to understand that the Soviet Union’s further development foundered on the authority-craving structures of the masses of people, a fact that was not discerned by the Soviet leadership. This was an enormously important insight.
Copyright © 2022-2025 by Michael Maardt. You are on a33.dk • Contact