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Title: Psychoanalysis and Government Author: Louis Adeane Date: 1944-1945 Language: en Topics: psychoanalysis, the State, authority, fascism Source: Now 2 (1944): 57-68; Now 3 (1945): 21-29. Notes: Apologies, here, for the presence of that homophobic discourse (identifying homosexuality with fascism) which can be found in much early/mid 20th century psychoanalytic theory.
Adeane, Louis [a.k.a. Donald Potter] (1944). "Psychoanalysis and
Government (Part I)." Now 2: 57-68.
- - - (1945). "Psychoanalysis and Government (Part II)." Now 3: 21-29.
This essay will attempt to examine organised government in the light of
psychoanalytic theory. The suggestions which will be put forward could
be applied not only to the political institution of government, but to
any authoritarian group whose existence is sanctioned by society : a
religious autocracy, for instance, or the executive committee of a
political party. The following definition by Malatesta indicates more
precisely what is meant : "Government is the aggregate of the governors,
and the governors .... are those who have the power to make laws, to
regulate the relations between men, and to force obedience to these
laws. They are those who .... judge and punish transgressors of the
laws."*
Most people have an extremely vague idea of what is meant by
psychoanalysis. "Psychoanalysis means two things and two only. The first
is the technique devised by Freud for investigating the human mind or
the subjective aspect of our life. The second is the body of theory
which has emerged from the data thus collected."* (Chrichton-Miller.)
Here we shall use the word in its second sense; but in the. description
"psychoanalysts" we include those who accept Freud's main contentions
without subscribing to them all ; as, for example, Jung and Adler.
"Anarchy" we use as meaning the type of society thought desirable by
anarchists, i.e., an organisation whose guiding purpose is the assurance
of individual freedom. "Anarchism" refers to the theories concerning
anarchy and the means of attaining it. [58]
Psycho-analysts dealing with the separate individual, and anarchists
dealing with the individual in his relation to his fellows, have a
similar point of view and a similar purpose in mind.
Anarchists do not think of other people as being merely economic or
political units, or as being no more than functions in some, collective
"higher" endeavour. They regard human beings primarily as individuals,
and they judge society by its ability to satisfy individual needs.
Broadly speaking, they infer a community's political and economic
structure from the mental and physical structure of the persons it
includes, and social movements, such as coal strikes or changing
techniques in painting or the rise of governments, they look upon as
expressions of individual desire.
Like anarchism, psycho-analysis stresses the influence of environment
upon the moulding of character while avoiding the mistake of assuming
that men are made for, as well as by, their surroundings. Its method
gives primary importance to the differentiated (as distinct for
isolated) personality, and in consequence psycho-analysts tend to look
outward from the man to the mass rather than inward from society to the
individual. Thus they speak of "good" and "bad" environments, meaning
suitable or not for the person under discussion, and never of "good" and
"bad" people. On some issues, that of sexual morality, for instance,
they have not hesitated to condemn society for its strictures on
individual necessity. Further, by bringing seemingly unrelated forms of
behaviour into a coherent framework, psychoanalysis, more than any other
system of psychology perhaps, sharpens our sense of the completeness and
value of the human personality : as Jung says : its method "reaches far
beyond the curative results that specifically concern the doctor. It
leads in the end to .... the bringing into reality of the whole human
being."*
It does this by a procedure which is singularly like that advocated by
anarchists in the social field. Its treatment is directed to the freeing
of the individual from the coercion of the past ; it desires him to
achieve an intelligent, self-critical revolution within the self. It
does not discard tradition ; by putting it under conscious control it
reintegrates it usefully into the personality. And by "tradition" it
implies communal habits having their origin far back in the life of the
race. The unconscious is the burying ground for primitive levels of
collective emotion and action, levels which have been submerged in order
to permit the growth of individualisation. In its task of releasing
these impulses psychoanalysis facilitates fellowship between men, a
commonalty which, now that we have developed self-awareness, need not be
destructive or blind. Again psychoanalysis attacks the over-evaluation
of subsidiary parts of the mind ; it desires inner balance, a free
co-operation of internal psychic processes. Perhaps Aurel Kolnai offers
the most apt summing-up of [59] the matter : "Psychoanalysis wishes to
train human beings who shall be free and individually different, but who
shall unremittingly advance toward co-operation; human beings united by
organic solidarity."*
With these facts in mind, we can expect to find in psychoanalysis many
valuable supplements to anarchist theory. And we do discover that with
regard to such subjects as revolution, propaganda, war, education,
mutual aid — the list could be lengthened almost indefinitely —
psychoanalysts have important suggestions to put forward. These are all
social phenomena, and psychoanalysis studies individuals; but it cannot
be emphasised too often that society is made up of individuals and that
in order to understand it one must fully comprehend the single human
being.
The origin of modern man's support of government is to be found in his
childhood, and the prototype of the government he will favour may be
fairly accurately defined as his parents. The parents are the first
rulers, the first gods, and the first intimations the child receives of
society. ("The family .... may be considered to be the psychological
agent of society." Fromm.*) It should be remarked in passing that it is
this fact which helps to account for the frequent confusion between the
three in later life. People talk — and think — of "Britain" wanting
whatever it is that some politician wants; both kings and societies
("the collective will of a great people," etc.) have been held to be
divine. All governments foster the belief that their interests are
identical with those of the governed, and that their existence is
therefore justified and right. It is an easy fallacy to propagate,
because unconsciously the feeling that a society, its government, and
its ethical values are the same has always survived.
The child has many desires which clamour to be satisfied; unfortunately
it is impossible to satisfy them all at one and the same time. Internal
struggle is felt as pain, and so a new craving is added to the others :
the longing for freedom from conflict. The child loves its parents
because they satisfy many of its desires — they are identified with
food, warmth, attention and protection. But it finds very quickly that
some of its activities will be met by punishment, not pleasure. It
learns to associate certain actions with pain and anxiety ; others with
a warm glow of approval and reward. It is taught that the
pleasure-bringing activities are good ; the others are bad. And so
conscience is born, a sense of right and wrong. Later the child will
love other people, and each will add, together with the gratification of
desire, a quota of disapproval, so that the original ethical system will
be elaborated and widened. On the basis of these relationships the child
will construct an ideal self by which to measure its real attainments;
an ideal self which will [60] correspond with the ethical standards of
those with whom it has been in contact. Thus, though the feelings of
guilt and self- approval retain the same characteristics from person to
person and from age to age, the things about which they are exercised do
not. People have thought it right to burn their fellows at the stake or
to rip them to pieces with machine-gun bullets ; others have felt
justified in providing food-relief or refusing to fight. Broadly
speaking, however, the ethical system adopted will be that of society as
a whole, and the social structure will not begin to disintegrate until
subsidiary systems assume the importance of the primary one.
It will be noticed that early in this process a significant change has
taken place. Law, which was originally outside the child and part of the
parents, has, now been introjected into the personality and is part of
the child. Henceforth he will carry government about with him,
inexorably judging his actions and meting out praise or blame. The
change has been accomplished for several reasons ; one of them is that
an internal discriminatory system, backed up by powerful pleasure-pain
incentives, helps to give freedom from conflict ; it reinforces the
reality-principle, which has from the first striven to achieve such an
emancipation. It is obvious that during the performance of this task a
new struggle has come into being ; a conflict between the judging
process and the lawless instinctual wishes. At the expense of a great
deal of energy, the condemned longings are repressed ; they may emerge
into consciousness later, in a social or anti-social form according
largely to the environment and training of the person involved; they may
be canalised for revolutionary purposes. One result of the struggle is a
shifting of emphasis regarding the kind of freedom demanded ; now the
child has a strengthened desire for freedom from coercion.
Two types of government have so far been distinguished. The first is the
external government of the parents; the second is the internal reign of
the ego-ideal, which includes the judging faculty and the conscience.
There are two further forms to be considered, which, like the second,
arise from their prototypes. Perhaps it should be pointed out here that
the later governments do not supersede the earlier; all four — and these
can be subdivided further — can and do exist concurrently. Thus the
child may. conscientiously condemn the parents, but he will not
necessarily cease to obey them, and if he does, he will probably feel
guilty for having done so. In some circumstances, however, one system
may acquire sufficient emotional drive to destroy the others, and then
we reach the stage previously mentioned where the breaking up of the
social system becomes possible and is felt to be desirable. But the new
society will still, in one or more of the four senses, be a governmental
structure. The third kind of government is the one projected upon the
outer world by the personality in its search for freedom from internal
compulsion.
Projection is a mechanism which we use in [61] almost all our dealings
with reality. In infancy we project our feelings upon chairs and tables
and toys ; doors open terrifyingly. teddy bears protect us at night from
the dark giant bear in the shadowy comer. Later we may identify the
"bad" parts of ourselves with sections of society — the Jews or the
negroes or the working class — so that, in conjunction with those of a
similar outlook, we may suppress them all the more thoroughly. Similarly
with the coercive law-giver within us ; the internal is externalised ;
the ideal Government, by whose law people live and for which they die,
is in being. Beneath this shining fantasy and invariably confused with
it, lurks the fourth type, government as it really is. For most men, the
advantages of belief in these latter two forms of authority are
tremendous. It is easier to deal with outer conflicts than inner; the
externalised government sets out the laws so that all may read,
distinguishes easily between the difficult degrees of lightness and
wrongness. It is not imminent as conscience is, and may be considerably
less coercive. It represses an externalised "evil", so that men can go
on being wicked in comfort. Virtuously, conscientiously, men can applaud
its ruthlessness and feel personally stronger as each tank rolls off the
production line or each assassination plot is discovered and suppressed.
If it makes a mistake, then men can blame it. (But though they blame,
they will not immediately abandon, as every anti-authoritarian knows.)
Weak men will support it because it performs the duties which they
shirk. Strong men — strong-willed, honest, consistent — ruled by a harsh
super-ego and an intolerable burden of unconscious guilt — may either
support it or become part of it in reality : Gladstone, Peel, Canning,
are examples taken from a period of expanding imperialism and increasing
governmental assurance. Governments which not only dispense law but also
control a nation's economics will have an oven greater appeal ; on the
unconscious level they represent — in the persons of their leaders — not
one but both parents ; they inherit the fused authority of the first and
most powerful of all ruling cliques. It is not difficult to understand
the psychological factors underlying the acceptance of the totalitarian
state.
"Government is the aggregate of the governors". As has just been hinted,
when we come to the consideration of the third and fourth types of
authority it is necessary to examine in some detail the fact of
leadership.
All leaders govern, though the methods of a Y.M.C.A. group-leader may
not be so explicit as those of a dictator or a party-politician ; there
is no essential difference between the leader and the governor. It is
often suggested that there is a difference in that the former
expresses.the desires of a group, whereas the latter impresses his own
desires upon the group ; in the one case the group actively supports,
and in the other passively submits. At will be implied in the following
paragraphs, these attitudes are actually only the polarities of a single
psychic complex, similar to and often identical with sado-masochism.
"Active support" by a group is due to its identification with the
leader; subjectively the followers are the leader, and when an external
community or they themselves ("passive submission") are threatened, they
obtain the vicarious satisfaction of governing. In extreme examples such
as that of Nazism, the fact that governor and leader are
indistinguishable is manifest ; in less obvious cases the fact is no
less real. Leaders of any kind can find no sanction in anarchism.
Herbert Read, in discussing this matter, says of the "expressive" leader
: " It is this second kind of leader, and only this kind of leader, who
has a place in a community of free people. And who is the leader who
expresses the thoughts, feelings and desires of the people — who but the
poet and artist?" * Perhaps by examining this suggestion our own
definition can be clarified. The artist differs in many important
respects from the governor-leader; he does more than express the
feelings and thoughts and desires of the people ; he refines and
elaborates, he interprets creatively. He displaces his need to impress
from people to things. Within the context of past and present he
comprehends the future. The leader, however, derives his driving power
from a past he cannot escape. He is capable only of destruction, never
of creation. In large and highly specialised groups like the modern
national state, the technical business of government is carried on by a
bureaucracy — the Civil Service in this country — and the political
leader acts as its representative. In less complex communities the two
functions are fused. But from the point of view of the led this is not a
very evident distinction : behind the governor they see the bureaucracy
: like the parents, the two are the omniscient They. This makes it very
easy for a powerful leader to take over the bureaucracy and destroy its
neutrality, for it is he who is seen the most clearly and it is he who
is followed. Similarly, economic control may be taken over with the
approval of the group. In the same way as the idea of government is
modelled on the child's ideas concerning its parents, so the ideal
leader is built out of the early relationship with the father. As with
government also, there are three intervening stages of development,
roughly corresponding with those we have already traced in the preceding
section. The third and fourth types are the two aspects of leadership —
the fantasy projection and the objective human beings whose shabby
inadequacy it clothes. The points of difference in development and the
original emotional tangle upon which a Hitler or a Stalin may depend,
need elucidation. The infant, of course, develops its ambivalent
love-hate attitude first in relation to the mother, who gratifies or
frustrates [63] its desires for food and warmth and protection; when the
father enters the field of consciousness he comes usually as the tyrant
(we are adopting the primitive viewpoint of the child), the one who
punishes, frequently in accordance with the requests of the mother.
Consequently a good deal of hatred is displaced upon him from the
latter, and this tends to stabilise the mother-relationship. Love as
well as anger is felt for the father, not only because he gives
pleasure, but because he is the beloved of the mother, with whom the
infant has identified itself. He is in addition, however, a rival for
her love and attention, so that while hating, the child would like to
step into his shoes, to be the governor himself. Thus it is natural for
him to wish for the father's death ; the guilt felt because of this is
the root of submission to leadership. In making such a reparation the
child (and unconsciously the adult) is not only punishing himself as his
conscience demands, but also placating his mother and establishing an
even firmer love relationship with her : that is, by submitting to the
father he takes over the function of the father. The father, in
impressing his authority over the child, simultaneously expresses the
child's own desires. The end-result in a normal process is the complete
repression of the death-wish, leaving the individual conscious only of
love and a desire for submission. The frequent striving to be like one's
father is a compromise between unconscious reparation (keep the father
alive, eternal) and an unconscious death-wish (steal from the father his
position and power) ; a compromise which satisfies both sides and the
conscience.
Let us briefly compare this picture of the subjective world of the
infant with the fantasy picture later projected upon the real world by
the adult. Here the leader is the father of his people; he acts as the
executive of the group, punishing on behalf of the group and therefore
justified in punishing. Leaders come and go; the group (mother-country,
motherland, source of food and life and warmth) remains. The leader is
masculine, the group feminine ; the leader protects ("Peace in our
time") or is subtly threatening ("Blood, toil, tears and sweat"). The
group loves the leader and imitates him; by following him the individual
can become one with the group. Everybody has wanted to be the leader ;
the leader speaks for the group and the individual.
Jung says that "As the father represents the collective consciousness,
the traditional mind, so the mother represents the collective
unconscious. . . . ."* The femininity of a group as compared with its
leader explains why, in a sense, the group is always a little ahead of
its government. The government represents yesterday's public opinion,
not to-day's. In this connection also it is interesting that Germany
should be infused with homosexuality. (Karl Abraham estimated that in
post-war Berlin three to four per cent, of the population was openly
homosexual.)* [64]
What stages of development intervene between the childhood and adult
fantasies? There is, firstly, the introjection of the father-image into
the personality, where it becomes part of the ego-ideal, carrying with
it the sadistic impulses. If these impulses are unusually strong, the
inner struggle between ego-ideal and instinct is felt to be intolerable,
so that an externalisation of the whole system becomes imperative. In
any case a partial externalisation will take place and the socially
modified fantasy will be projected upon reality. The importance of the
father-worship in this connection is, that it gives greater precision
and drive to the projection of government. There is a fusion of
government and leadership. Nevertheless there is a difference between
them : broadly speaking, the former is concerned with the problems of
right and wrong, good and evil ; though the latter has a share in the
ethical system which will emerge, it need not be a very great share ;
government is diffused with the ideals derived from the mother, of
gentleness and kindness, and as we have seen, it has greater depth and
stability than leadership. Consequently, given critical awareness, the
idea of authority can be displaced fairly easily to the abstract ideals
of justice, truth and so on, whereas the idea of leadership cannot. The
significance of this will be made clear in our conclusion.
The first person upon whom leadership will be projected is the father.
Later in life others will be chosen, school teachers, club
personalities, political leaders, etc., and a part-externalisation be
established. If the internal complex is comparatively weak, it may be
satisfied with this. A culture which strengthens the desire, however,
will automatically compel its groups to expand competitively, for there
is no permanent satisfaction in the sado-masochistic process once it is
roused to activity. We will concern ourselves with this point in the
next section.
The ties which bind the group to the leader bind also the leader to the
group. The leader is not irresponsible or concerned with private
ambitions unrelated to group aspiration ; the more tyrannical he is, the
more dependent is he on those he tyrannises. From his own point of view,
he is sincere. Despots often talk of the benefits which their policy
will bring, and it is obvious that they believe what they say. (Napoleon
and Hitler are good examples.) The leader, at any rate, thinks himself
an instrument of the people's will. It may be objected that the
"impression-expression" characteristic of leadership is only one
characteristic,† or that too much emphasis has been placed on its
sado-masochistic element. The reply would
†F. C. Bartlett, for instance, categorises leaders as the dominant, the
persuasive, and the institutional. But this does not weaken our analysis
here, though the last of his subdivisions is interesting from the point
of view of the revolutionary.
Having abstracted the concept of the Governors and examined it, we can
replace and henceforth include it in the term Government.
Now that we have outlined the psychological processes which underlie the
structure of government, it is necessary to illumine a little more
clearly the factors which make for its growth and expansion. These
factors are the same as those which have alreaoy been discussed, namely,
individual desires ; but desires whose outlet has been unduly restricted
so that they demand ever more forcible representation to the fantasies
and realities of leadership and authority. The restricting agency may be
economic breakdown or the impact of an invading group or a narrowing
tradition or a hundred other things, but it will almost certainly be
what is usually called "external." When the individual meets with
insuperable obstacles in the path of his development, there is a danger
of regression to an earlier phase: the problem will be artificially
simplified and carried back to a point in personal evolution where it
can be overcome — apparently — by more primitive modes of action. In
society to-day we see such a regression taking place in face of a
collapsing economic structure ; not one, but millions of individuals are
retreating to a distorted version of the primitive primal horde, to
unrestrained violence and power. Society is like a great wave curling
back from the rocks of unemployment and hunger and insecurity to fall
amongst the toy soldiers on the hearthrug and the childhood oaths of
obedience in the coalshed.
A community which permits on the one hand only a de- sexualised
conception of love and on the other encourages sadomasochism (education,
films, war, mechanisation) is one which will inevitably become more and
more authoritarian. The sadomasochistic components of group-formation
can remain fairly stable up to a point ; if repression becomes too
strong, however — masochism on the part of the group — the individuals
concerned feel an intenser desire for domination. Further repression
within the group is impossible and so it becomes aggressive, dynamic ;
it expands. Its sadistic drive demands a weak opponent, and accordingly
the neighbouring groups are seen as weak (the "decadent" democracies or
the "cowardly" Italians). This is one reason for the failure of
appeasement. There are few social groups today who do not strive with a
greater or lesser degree of subtlety to forcibly widen their boundaries
so that they may eventually include all the "love"-objects available.
[66] In this connection it should be remembered that sado-masochism is
closely allied to homosexuality. Consider the homosexual background to
modern Germany or militant Sparta.
A third factor is a decline in family feeling. A decrease in the
security and importance of the family robs the individual of many of the
socially useful forms of submission and domination. Accordingly, he
seeks an alternative unit, the State.
Finally, we must recognise the desire, as strong as the need for
freedom, for solidarity with one's fellows. Reference has already been
made to the rise of individualisation from the pre-selfconscious
collectivity — repeated in the individual identification with the mother
and surrounding objects. The impulses which are usually called "social
instincts" have a specific contact here and must be satisfied. A free,
individual man is a lonely man unless he can somehow achieve a
spontaneous, creative fellowship. If he cannot do so, if society while
offering "freedom" also crushes spontaneity and treats men as isolated
units, then there is a danger that he will renounce his liberty in
favour of subservience to a group and its government, where he can enjoy
for a short time an illusory solidarity. A community without purpose,
meaning or security, though it may make the individual "free" also makes
him a slave. The words of Erich Fromm, who has dealt at length with this
last factor in government* are especially relevant here :".... man, the
more he gains freedom in the sense of emerging from the original oneness
of man and nature and the more he becomes an 'individual,' has no choice
but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and
productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the
world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self."*
We see then that men accept government because they want to be free from
internal conflict and coercion. They will support government only so
long as it succeeds in satisfying this desire. To recapitulate, the
"government" in question is a fusion of two different things, the human
beings who actually rule, and the subjective idea of Authority which the
individual displaces (in part) from his childhood conception of the
parents and superimposes via projection upon the objective reality. This
reality is to-day a political one. In seeking freedom over the last
three decades, whole societies have enslaved themselves either to an
omnipotent, all-seeing Leader or to a committee of smaller Leaders,
which, equipped with all the devices of applied science, effectively
suppresses any liberty which may remain. Previous theological systems
have been even more efficient. It is reassuring to reflect that their
rule did not last, and that this was due to the contradictions inherent
in government [67] itself, contradictions which are even now hastening
the disintegration of political authority.
For in order to survive for more than a very short space of time, the
objective, fourth-type government must live up to the standards expected
of the third. In the long run this is impossible ; in the short run
expedients can be adopted whose operation exposes further contradictions
and lays the government open to even more disastrous consequences. The
whole history of government is a record of its attempts to solve this
problem, or, having failed, to divert the people's anger to some other
object. The expedient usually put into practice is the erection of a
facade corresponding to the fantasy picture of Authority. When this
facade manifestly fails any longer to deceive, it can be changed, the
change being accompanied by a tremendous bustle of whitewash and
scaffolding — a general election or a "revolution" — in which the
dissatisfaction of the governed can be temporarily assuaged. In the
democracies this altering mirage is a succession of leaders ; in other
countries the switchover is superficially — to a different kind of
government, a dictatorship. (A good example is the de Rivera coup d'etat
in Spain. The most stable of all authoritarian systems, the Roman
Catholic Church, placed its façade unassailably in Heaven.) A
dictatorship becomes necessary when the line of lesser governors has
become a little too thin to support the burden of public belief any
longer. The results of this expedient are to increase the amount of
external conflict and compulsion to a degree no longer controllable
either by the government or the governed. This is contradiction number
two. And as a flood of terrorism, political murder, famine and war rises
to swamp more and more of the individuals concerned, the third
contradiction emerges : the second-type government is roused to revolt.
People begin to re-apply ethics to the external world, to talk uneasily
of the individual's social responsibility; secondary systems of right
and wrong, accompanied by appropriate political ideologies, come into
prominence, and the governmental structure faces collapse. At this point
persecution of rebellious groups will only serve to strengthen them ;
they will move into a position of overt sado-masochism which will not be
abandoned until the object is (temporarily) eliminated.
There is a further point to be noted. This is that the first-type
authority is usually supported, both materially and emotionally, by the
fourth. A weakening of the one may damage the prestige of the other. In
some circumstances this fact may be of great importance ; such a
situation will be noticed in the next section.
There is no solution to the problem faced by the fourth-type authority.
Government in the objective sense will not work because it is bound to
conflict with the subjective — but not less real — systems of authority
set up by the individual. It will not work because man has now outgrown
his identification with the herd; he demands [68] freedom as an
individual. It will not work because it draws its support from a mental
process which is now itself inappropriate to fully developed thinking
and action. Projection "... is one of the oldest of mental mechanisms,
it serves a useful purpose in emergencies, but its retention as an adult
mechanism is one of the greatest dangers to existing civilisation." *
When individuals learn to understand and accommodate the tendencies of
the unconscious, they will no longer be misled by the tactics of
governments, and external authority will finally lose its power.
Definitions
(1) Malatesta "Anarchy" p. 5.
(2) Crichton-Miller "Psychoanalysis and its Derivatives" p. i.
Relevance of Psychoanalysis
(1) Jung "Modern Man in .Search of a Soul" p. 31.
(2) Aurel Kolnai "Psychoanalysis and Sociology"
Government
(1) Erich Fromm "The Fear of Freedom" p. 245.
The Governors
(1) Herbert Read "The Politics of the Unpolitical."
(2) Jung "The Integration of the Personality" p. 113.
(3) Quoted in Peter Nathan's "Psychology of Fascism."
Extension of Government
(1) Fromm "Fear of Freedom" p. 118.
Collapse of Government
(1) Glover "War, Sadism and Pacifism" p. 27.
Hitherto the problem of government has been treated from a merely
theoretical standpoint. It is. time to examine the reality and see
whether our hypotheses, derived from facts known about the individual,
do actually make more understandable the movement of society and its
governments. Such a survey must necessarily be inadequate, and every
point considered should be regarded as being only the approach to a
ramification which cannot be pursued here. The case of post-war Germany
is well-adapted to our purpose, for a glance at its historical context
will show it to be not an isolated phenomenon but the epitome of modern
social development.
Previous to the first world war the governments of Europe were
principally concerned with external aggression, the acquisition of
colonies abroad. The governments in question were not yet even
politically representative of the people they purported to rule; in fact
they were the leaders of a minority group within each of their borders.
For the average person; the State, symbolised by coronets and carriages,
directly affected only a small part of life, where it stood for security
and a righteous respectability; [22] since it had not yet turned its
whole attention inward to the society it was supposed to symbolise its
pretensions were still accepted. The fundamental social unit was the
family, and larger groups were subsidiary to the nation as a whole —
governments even judged the disputes between these groups in an
apparently neutral way. Not only had the individuals in society not
displaced their allegiance from the many external authorities to the
single one, but — for internal problems were as yet unaccentuated by
external frustration — they had not yet projected these problems with
any unusual force upon the objective world. Society had not yet reached
the phase of which Mussolini could say: "The State becomes the
conscience and will of the people." (1)
For the comparatively restricted groups who were intimately bound up
with government, the overseas colonising was of considerable
psychological — as well as economic — importance. It provided an outlet
for a stream of potential discontents whose disaffection would have
immediately threatened the group-structure and therefore the State. The
channel hardened into a basis for a group way of life, a miniature
society preoccupied with the Army or planter or merchant career; in the
pre-war decade the disciples of this way of life joined (in Germany) the
Navy League or some similar militarist organisation. In England its
influence contributed to education, particularly the training of those
who later became public figures. The public outside these ruling-class
groups were prepared for the future by a mass of popular fiction which
became almost saga-history.
The relatively stable state of affairs was rapidly being undermined by
economic and other social changes. Imperialism was reaching its climax;
it is unnecessary to retrace the familiar outlines of the process or
dwell upon its psychological results at home. A factor which is usually
underestimated was the closing of those fields for the otherwise
frustrated which nave been mentioned above, a factor especially
important after the wur for me Germans, whose colonies were confiscated
and whose middle-class, which had taken over the ideology of the
previous generation's upper class, was simultaneously threatened by
events nearer home. The strength of the cry for lebensraum, economically
unjustifiable except for minority interests, becomes explicable when the
psychological necessities of these groups are taken into account, Far
more important was the fall in the birthrate and the rise in the
expectation of life, which for most European communities meant that the
older age groups were moving into a strengthened position of dominance
and the younger, hampered in development by an increased economic
burden, becoming more tightly bound to infantile behaviour patterns and
therefore to dependence on the old. Taking the standpoint of the young,
and referring the position to our previous terms, we can see the
first-type authority, and therefore the second, gaining power and depth;
consequently we may expect, a generation later, an increased drive in
favour of strong external government and appropriate changes in the
objective casting of society. If in addition external events show the
first type to be more than usually inadequate, then the over-evaluated
second will react all the more violently; while displaying a contempt
for whatever form of objective authority is associated with the first,
it will demand the setting up of a government even harsher than the [23]
one it despises. In Europe the process has been repeated in political
terms twice, ending in each case with war. The deepened ferocity of the
second pendulum swing is due to the intervention of the 1929-33
depression, which brought to Germany's middle class the disillusionment
with the first-type authority mentioned above. In other countries the
process was slower but no less sure.
In all the combatant countries the psychological concomitants of the
first world war were the destruction of the security and prestige of the
family and a weakening of the individual's ties with sectional,
political and religious groups. Lonely, insecure, lacking means of
expression, the ordinary man transferred his instinctive desires to the
all-accommodating national unit and there achieved a distorted
satisfaction. Government grew strong, and when the war ended it not only
preserved many of the new material positions it had won, but also its
hold on men's minds. Thus though the national groups had apparently
fallen apart and the energies of their members been absorbed in
subsidiary interests, the functioning of the latter was now clearly seen
in a national-unit context, so that the extension of a subsidiary group
might threaten a government while strengthening Government itself.
Consequently society found itself moving toward centralisation;
authoritarian politics — the disciplined party and the dominated Trade
Union — trod heavily on to the European stage, It is possible now to
narrow our survey to Germany itself.
The attitude of the victorious powers had prolonged artificially the
national-unit consciousness mentioned above. In consequence the economic
crash which followed had a similar effect on the middle classes to that
of the war. They saw their class frustration in terms of national
frustration, and blamed, eve"n more that the working class or the
possessing class, the Versailles Treaty. Simultaneously, however, the
slump caused a further decline in. the value of those national symbols
which were rooted emotionally in the past, i.e. the idea of the
monarchy. Adults with families, that first-type authority which had
drawn so much of its support from the third and fourth, now weakened as
they weakened, and the younger generation found it easy to disregard
them. With equal readiness, it seemed, they could ignore the claims of
the ego-ideal which had been moulded upon the first- type standards;
actually these claims were sucked into the idealistic under-current of
fascism. Thus the way was opened for a group which would combine a
retaliatory nationalism with a hatred for the past and the old; which
would threaten both the hereditary and the monopolistic owning class,
and which would permit an initial lawlessness for the individual within
a framework of ascetic devotion to an externalised ideal. The last
condition was the basis for the two previous ones, and reflected amongst
other things the difference between the real and imagined strengths of
the second-type authority. Hitler rose to power by offering to satisfy,
for his class, the distorted desires by which he himself was driven.
The position for the working class had been rather different. The
tendency to submerge their separate aims in the war's collective effort
had been less marked than that of the middle class, for their political
activity had made them more conscious of themselves as a group existing
within, but distinct from, the nation. The fall of the monarchy was
already a desirable event for them; they came out of the war without any
particular bitterness against the Allies but with their separatist
feelings intensified by the apparent successes of the workers abroad.
The depression strengthened this tendency: whereas the middle classes
identified themselves with Germany, and their frustration with national
defeat, the workers inclined rather to project their problems in terms
of the future of the international working class, and to place the
responsibility for their difficulties upon the capitalist owners. These
difficulties, it should be pointed out, were not as overwhelming for
them as for the bourgeoisie, which had been used to a higher living
standard, and more important, an emotional oasis for security.
Comparatively considered, the workers were less a prey to a sense of
individual helplessness and the disintegration of family life, though
the almost unbroken series of political defeats which had followed the
revolution urged them also towards support of a powerful group which
would if necessary override parliamentary methods in order to
expropriate the possessing class and set up a worker's state.
On the whole, therefore, the middle class was psychologically the most
dynamic in Germany. Its depression into the working class weakened the
latter as a group and strengthened its own influence in the working
class political organisations. These, while receiving new energy,
received also an increased bias towards the authoritarian aspect of
their programme. During the years preceding the Hindenburg election the
left-wing's internationalism was diluted also by the Nazi threat at
home, the group-cathexes of its members being forced to contract to
overcome the immediate danger. Through these years of street-fighting,
assassination, and private torture, the sado-masochism of each side was
being widened and deepened. By 1933 the essential psychological issue,
that of authority, was being faced in a similar way by 'both communist
and fascist; both were united in hatred of the social-democrats, both
desired a "strong" government in power. On many secondary issues they
differed only in their slogans. When one remembers also the tendency,
referred to in section three of this essay, to identify the group in
power with society as a whole, it is not surprising that the Left
crumpled so readily before the Nazi attack.
It is unnecessary to pursue the history of German totalitarianism
further; its characteristics are already familiar enough. The necessity
felt by authoritarian groups in general to persecute others explains
most of its atrocities and its pogroms; this necessity has already been
dealt with. Its attitude to women is to some extent peculiar to the
German between-wars period. But by setting its manifestations against
the theoretical framework outlined in this essay, it will be seen that
large-scale torture, minority persecution, the sacrifice of the
individual to the group, and the other reversals of civilised behaviour
are symptoms not merely of fascism, but of Government as such. They are
inherent in the tension between ruler and ruled. In essence the
following quotations could have emerged from not only modem Germany, but
any authoritarian group in society:
"Like an illumination it comes over them that the divinity they are
seeking lies in their people, hidden somewhere deep in their blood and
their destiny." (2)
"You, our Feuhrer, walk among your people as their Redeemer." (3)
(Note the masochistic reference to something greater than the ego and
overpowering it— blood, divinity, destiny. The guilt implicit in [25]
the idea of redemption. The mutual awe of ruler and ruled. The divinity
of people and leader.)
"Leader is the opposite of magistrate: who leads does not determine the
objective arbitrarily, by himself; that is done by the led. The led are
the people. But the Leader knows the goal and knows the direction . . .
who carries the spirit in him, who knows the direction, that person is
the Leader." (4)
(The mutual ties of leader and led: the two aspects of leadership,
impressive-expressive.)
"Like a woman . . . who will submit to the strong man rather than
dominate the weakling, thus the masses like the ruler rather than the
suppliant. . . ." (5)
(The group as feminine. The sadistic attitude implied.)
Such quotations could be multiplied endlessly. What is important,
however, is their coincidence with the neurotic attitudes which
distinguish authoritarianism, that submission to Government which is
characteristic of the ordinary man everywhere in western civilisation
today.
Having satisfactorily related the rise of German fascism to the
theoretical considerations previously advanced, it will be profitable to
turn our attention to the parallel extension of government in Britain.
Upon the earlier phases of this development it is unnecessary to dwell;
as in the case of Germany, economic insecurity and the threat of
neighbouring states, plus American "cultural" penetration, were rapidly
undermining the personality of the individual and increasing its
dependence on the group long before the war. The stress of the latter
has carried the process to a stage almost indistinguishable from that
existing under dictatorships elsewhere. Simultaneously the economic
basis for totalitarianism is swiftly coming into being, and plans for
its efficient functioning and control, together with appropriate systems
of education and technical training, are already prepared, Our attempt
here is to estimate the depth of these social currents and indicate the
kind of leadership which is most likely to give them expression in the
future.
The society with which we are dealing is bound together by the usual
group-ties. There is general agreement on the basic psychological
issues, an agreement manifested by the common beliefs in victory,
national unity, no disarmament after the war, planning, increased
production, etc. It has a common leader in Mr. Churchill, whose
determination, virility, and energy are carefully emphasised by
propaganda. Its unity and strength of purpose ("collective will" would
be too allusive a phrase) is continually insisted upon. Since the
beginning of the war it has had various small groups at home whom it
could' persecute, ranging from the conscientious objectors to Mosley. It
has ritual occasions, religious and otherwise. (Two very striking
tendencies in the popular dance tune have been the fusion of religious
and military sentiment — "Praise the Lord," and "Target for Tonight" —
and the emergence of nursery refrains as in "Jingle Jangle Jingle" and
"Johnny Zero". Since dance music appeals to an overwhelming majority of
the young, its influence in moulding and canalising group emotion is
tremendous.) The group is of course wider than the political attitudes
included in it, but its quintessential tendencies are expressed
politically by its Conservative and reactionary wing. [26]
Within this general group is a distinguishable body which includes the
Trade Union outlook and the emotional drive of the Communist Party, has
its own leaders in the persons of Bevin and Morrison, and is responsible
for most of the emphasis on planning and production. Almost outside the
society altogether move the uneasy little collections of people whose
influence, political or otherwise, is only effective if it is aligned
with some fairly strong trend already existing in the general group. The
attitude of the latter toward these satellites is usually one of
hostility.
By briefly examining the beliefs listed above we may detect the
emotional drives of which they are the expression. The urge to victory
has had several vicissitudes, and is strongly associated with
over-evaluated images of a powerful, fascinating, and at the time of the
Blitz, terrifying nature. The slogan Victory, and the "V" sign, has
almost a magical, as well as a directly sexual significance. Its
emotional undertones derive from the sadistic foundations of
authoritarianism, and only its superficial manifestations are likely to
disappear. Already these emotions have been widened to include a
conscripted and vigilant future, indicating a temporarily weakened
second-type authority. It should be remarked in general that the paucity
of war-aims is not so much a sign of ruling class bankruptcy as an
indication of group strength; "national unity" is an accurate phrase.
The emphasis on planning is a reaction from the feeling of insecurity,
Which in turn is closely bound to the masochistic element in the
totalitarian structure. It reflects also the general pessimism regarding
the future. Since this pessimism will probably be justified by a
post-war trade slump, the drive towards the planned, regimented, and
stable society will almost certainly 'be continued. The other
contribution of the Left, "increased production", has no such firm
foundation. It is in itself a neat displacement of personal virility on
to the group, and points to a sharing of the leader's masculine role and
a lagging behind the government. (Compare with the feminine masochism of
the Blitz period, when the group was enormously in advance of the
government over nearly every social issue.) It is extremely unlikely
that this position will be sustained, though it is of importance for our
survey here.
To sum up, we may expect an immediate future whose values will be these
of totalitarianism, whose dynamic will (be aggressive, whose
preparedness is for militarism. It will be a planned society, with
probably a ritualistic outlet for the inevitable revolt of the
second-type authority. It will, early in its development, find a
compromise between the present production drive and the factors
operating against it — probably the compromise of mechanisation. The old
authority-symbols (royalty, etc.) which have already lost most of their
power, will degenerate to the entertainment level. We may assume further
that since Russia has now become a subsidiary authority-symbol for most
individuals, parallel in its overwhelming power to "national unity",
there will be a political swing to the Left; such a swing, by weakening
the reactionary element in the group structure, would also help canalise
the rebellion of the individual conscience mentioned above.
This outline of tomorrow's psychological tendencies is endorsed by what
we may expect of economic development. Planning and a large degree of
public ownership will be essential if industrial disorganisation and
trade depression are not to follow the war. The recovery of "export
markets, and the restoring of a pre-war living standard, necessitate
mechanisation; the enormous wartime output of machine tools also points
in this direction. In his book, "The Managerial Revolution", Mr. James
Burnham has advanced the thesis that a new type of society is in
formation, and a new type of ruling class is rising to a position of
power. He gives as examples of this new society Russia, Germany and
Italy; the ruling class he means is that of the managers, who have been
described as "production managers, operating executives,
superintendents, administrative engineers, and in Government as
commisars, bureau heads and administrators generally." (1) He says
little about the psychology of such societies, contenting himself with
the following description: "In place of the individual, stress turns to
the ‘state’, the people, the folk, the race. In place of gold, labour
and work. In place of private enterprise, ‘socialism’ or ‘collectivism’.
In place of ‘freedom’ and ‘free initiative’, planning. Less talk about
‘rights’ and ‘natural rights’, more about ‘duties’, and ‘order’ and
‘discipline’. Less about ‘opportunities’, and more about ‘jobs’. In
addition, in these early decades of managerial society, more of the
positive elements that were once part of capitalist ideology in its
rising youth, but have left it in old age: destiny, the future,
sacrifice, power. . . ." (2) It is obvious, that this fits almost
exactly our suggestions in this section. By turning to a Fabian Research
Series pamphlet, "Management in Transition" by Austin Albu, a more
precise description of the managerial class in this country may be
gained: "The salaries of these officials vary from five figures down to
the smaller hundreds, and their authority varies over as many
individuals. By class origin they vary also — some having come from the
ranks of the artisans and some from universities, or direct from middle
class business families; their class loyalty, however, is predominantly
with the employers." (3) During the war, the writer says, this class
“has come much more directly into the service of the State, responsible
to Government departments and with its actions open to public
examination.” (4) He goes on to point out how the managers are tending
now to co-operate with the Trade Unions and to swing Leftward in their
social outlook, and he gives a list of institutions, including the
Ministry of Labour, whose business it is to train this class for its
duties. The Orthodox Marxist would claim that the managers, since they
are not identified with a new mode of production, are not a class.
We have endeavoured to show that the psychological tendencies existing
today will demand expression tomorrow, and we have suggested that the
managers will be identified with these new modes of expression. Their
class-ideology exists already; their class-consciousness is coming into
being now. They will be as ruthless as any previous ruling class in its
acquisition, not necessarily of wealth, but of power. "A subtle danger
exists in the very nature of the methods that the good manager must use.
If he uses his personality and psychological knowledge and experience to
lead and direct the activities of those over whom he has authority he
may find that his powers of persuasion and mass appeal are as forceful
weapons of coercion as fear of the sack. . . ." (5)
But this very ruthlessness of the rulers, this very unity of the ruled,
only [28] makes louder the protest of the internal government,
intensifies the struggle of the individual against the authoritarian
group. "The quest for freedom is not a metaphysical force and cannot be
explained by natural law; it is the necessary result of the process of
individuation and the growth of culture. The authoritarian systems
cannot do away with the basic conditions that make for the quest for
freedom; neither can they exterminate the quest for freedom that springs
from those conditions." (6) History is on the side of anarchism.
Many of the problems which have been skirted in this essay — the problem
of freewill is obviously the most important — cannot be dealt with here.
But we are now in a position to bring together those lines of thought
which were abandoned earlier and to contribute them to the anarchist
discussion of government and society.
We have seen that government is not merely an objective force which is
imposed on men from without; on the contrary, men impose government on
themselves; it exists within them and they establish it in the external
world. A desirable organisation of society would be one in which not
merely the institutions of authority were absent, but in which there
were alternative outlets for those psychological factors making for
their support. support. The attack on government is therefore a
double-pronged attack; it must be accomplished both within and without
the individual. External authority, as we have shown, is forever
collapsing. Though advances towards anarchy may be made at other times,
it will not be completely achieved until the fall of the outer
government coincides with the weakening of the government within.
The weakening of the subjective authority may best be accomplished at
its source - the child. The child's position within the family is of the
utmost importance in this context, for upon it depends the future of an
anarchist society. A culture which substituted a sympathy tempered with
knowledge for the pity mingled with sentimentality which is the current
adult attitude towards infancy would be desirable; further, it is
probable that children who are allowed to mix with others at an early
age, as in the creches of the Jewish Collectives in Palestine, are less
inclined towards domination and submission in later life. In these
creches the infants are cared for by their own parents, who take it in
turns to work there. Thus the source of authority, for the child,
becomes diffused until it includes all adults and ultimately the whole
society; to prevent social opinion becoming too dominant, however,
nursery life would have to be complemented by family life; we have
already remarked that for the adult the latter is a safety valve for
many impulses which might otherwise be expended functionally - instead
of creatively - in a larger group. Creches of this description could
only be workable in a decentralised community with perhaps the commune
as a unit. "Collective parentage" is of course a feature of many
peaceable primitive societies.
The projection of the subjective authority is dangerous because it
imputes superhuman powers to other men or to natural processes. If the
idea of authority is displaced, however, to ideals, to the abstractions
concerned with social living and complete individuality, then its
emotional [29] drive can serve a useful purpose. History has shown how
easy it is for this displacement to take place; ordinary life presents
examples of the successful dissociation of the abstraction and the men
representing it at a particular time.
Reference has been made to the position of the artist in society. If, as
the work of Jung suggests, the attachment to authority proceeds not
merely from childhood but also from the collective unconscious, then the
artist's function as mythmaker and interpreter becomes pre-eminently
important. Divorced from instituted authority and become part of the
common life, his work will, like an abstract ideal, serve in part as a
magnet attracting and patterning the iron filings of otherwise dangerous
impulses.
The most important theme suggested here is concerned with individuality.
Men are no longer merely parts of the group. Consequently anarchism must
deal with two kinds of freedom : freedom tor the individual in society,
and freedom for the individual as a separate unit. The authoritarian
State provides the first by robbing men of the second. Only anarchy can
offer them both.
". . . is there a state of positive freedom in which the individual
exists as an independent self and yet is not isolated but united with
the world, with other men, and nature?
"We believe that there is a positive answer, that the process of growing
freedom does not constitute a vicious circle, and that man can be free
and yet not alone, critical and yet not filled with doubts, independent
and yet an integral part of mankind. This freedom man can attain by the
realisation of his self, by being himself. . . . We believe that the
realisation of the self is accomplished not only by an act of thinking,
but also by the realisation of man's total personality, by the active
expression of his emotional and intellectual potentialities. These
potentialities are present in everybody: they become real only to the
extent to which they are expressed. In other words, positive freedom
consists in the spontaneous activity of the total, integrated
personality." (1)
Government in Practice
(1) Mussolini "Il Fascismo." Quoted G. D. H. Cole "Guide to Modern
Politics," p. 175.
(2) Hitler "Zwischenspiel." Quoted "Germany puts the Clock Back." p.
202.
(3) Hitler Youth member. Quoted "Germany puts the Clock Back." p. 249.
(4) Duetsches Kulturrecht, Hamburg, 1936, p. 5. Quoted "Spirit and
Structure of German Fascism," Chap. 3.
(5) Hitler "Mein Kampf," p. 56.
(6) Fromm "Fear of Freedom," p. 206.
Constructive Anarchism
(1) Fromm "Fear of Freedom," p. 222.