For the sociopathologist directly related area knowledge is mass psychology. This is an area of psychology, the subject of research of which is the nature, essence, patterns of emergence, formation, functioning and development of crowds and masses as specific forms of communities of people.
It was created at the end of the 19th century. French sociologist and psychologist Le Bon, Italian psychologist and lawyer S. Segele (1868-1913), etc.
The founders paid special attention to the study of the mental makeup, characteristic properties, traits, types and behavior of various crowds and masses in relatively standard and non-standard situations. The traditional subjects of research interest of the founders include various gatherings of people, demonstrations, rallies, phenomena of mass euphoria, aggression, panic, mass psychosis, mass vandalism, etc. But they not only explained the problems raised, but also to a significant extent mystified and mythologized them.
The creators of the science of mass psychology paid considerable attention to the study of ideas, motives, attitudes, moods, opinions, emotions, thinking stereotypes, mechanisms and actions of the masses, issues of behavior of people in a crowd, interaction between the individual and the mass, the individual and the crowd, etc.
And although the founders used a range of traditional methods of knowledge of psychology and sociology as research methods. Mass psychology had a significant influence on the formation of social psychology, sociology and the development of social thought; to a large extent, mass psychology turned out to be fixated on the OCHLOSE (crowd). In addition, many traits were attributed to the ochlos, which in reality are either absent from him or are inherent in a far from unique way, common to the individual and other state of the psyche.
To a very large extent, mass psychology is guided by G. Le Bon’s “ psychological law spiritual unity of the crowd,” according to which in the later phase of the formation of an organized crowd, a leveling depersonalization and deindividuation of people occurs in it, due to which, on the basis of common qualities controlled by the unconscious, a temporary “collective soul” of the crowd is formed.
Despite many very interesting observations private order in general, Le Bon and his successors, contrary to Occam’s razor, very arbitrarily carried out the MULTIPLICATION OF ENTITIES, operating with the collective statistical concept of a “crowd”, as if it were a single and living being. Le Bon’s “fad” seems very doubtful, which haunted him all his life and represented an absolutely fantastic idea of a radical transformation of the individual in the crowd, reprogramming the individual for the crowd, seemingly occurring automatically.
This formulation of the question was hidden, but clearly anti-Christian, since it questioned the central thesis of Christian psychology: ABOUT a person’s FREE WILL, the freedom of his choice and behavior both in a solitary state and in a crowd. The idea that when one gets into a crowd, a person becomes, as it were, not his own person, transforms into the “soul of the crowd”, which replaces the personal soul, goes back to the thesis of the French “Enlightenment”, to the “man-machine” of Holbach and La Mettrie. Of course, Le Bon did not advertise this connection, and perhaps did not even know about it, because it is not a matter of taste, but a logical, essential one.
The transformation of a person in a crowd “magically” leads to the thesis that a person is not personally responsible for evil, that he was “intoxicated by the crowd”, and reacted AUTOMATICALLY (after all, he is understood as a complex machine) to an algorithm-scheme predetermined by the law of the crowd. Le Bon was one of the first to try to theoretically substantiate the onset of the “era of the masses” and connect the general decline of culture with this. He believed that due to the volitional underdevelopment and low intellectual level of large masses of people, they are ruled by unconscious instincts, especially when a person finds himself in a crowd. Here the level of intelligence decreases, responsibility, independence, and criticality decrease, and the personality as such disappears.
He became famous for trying to show the commonality between the state of affairs and the laws in the psychology of the masses. American sociologist Neil Smelser writes that “despite criticism, Le Bon’s thoughts are interesting. He predicted the important role of the crowd in modern times,” and also “characterized the methods of influencing crowds that leaders like Hitler would later use, such as the use of simplistic slogans.”
However, already in the first book, “Psychology of Nations,” Le Bon seeks to prove that the basis of civilization is the soul of the race, formed by hereditary accumulations. So Le Bon introduces, in addition to the crowd, the “thinking element” of the race, without worrying too much about evidence.
According to Le Bon, the mythologized “soul of the race” is also durable and not subject to change, like the anatomical characteristics of the race. The soul of a race represents a community of feelings, interests, beliefs.
Here is how he himself wrote about it: “I have elsewhere shown the deplorable results produced by European education and institutions on lower peoples. In the same way I have set forth the results of the modern education of women, and do not intend here to return to the old. The questions that we have to study in this work will be of a more general nature. Leaving aside details, or touching upon them only insofar as they prove necessary for the proof of the principles set forth, I examine the formation and mental structure of the historical races, i.e. artificial races formed in historical times accidents of conquest, immigration and political changes, and I will try to prove that from this mental structure their history flows. I will establish the degree of stability and variability of the characters of races and will also try to find out whether individuals and peoples are moving towards equality or, on the contrary, striving to differ as much as possible from each other. Having proved that the elements out of which a civilization is formed (art, institutions, beliefs) are the direct products of the racial soul, and therefore cannot pass from one people to another, I will define those irresistible forces from whose action civilizations begin to fade and then fade away. .
This approach even smacks of primitivism! Le Bon even thought that all changes in government institutions and religions do not affect the soul of the race, but the soul of the race affects them. And therefore, for him, art and culture are not an indicator of the civilization of the people. As a rule, Le Bon’s civilizations are headed by “peoples with a poorly developed, utilitarian culture, but strong character and ideals." The strength of civilization does not lie in technical and cultural achievements, but in character and ideals - Le Bon thought completely unreasonably.
For Le Bon, the values of the Latin peoples are submission to strong, despotic power; Anglo-Saxons - the priority of private initiative. The natural tendency in the evolution of civilizations is differentiation. The panacea of democracy is achieving equality through education and imposing one’s culture superior peoples to the lower ones is a delusion. Even more unusual for the people high culture undermines its morality and destroys the values formed over centuries, which makes such a people even lower.
Le Bon wrote directly: “Almost a century and a half has passed since poets and philosophers, extremely ignorant about primitive history man, the diversity of his mental structure and the laws of heredity threw into the world the idea of equality of people and races.” And in another place: “There is not a single psychologist, not a single enlightened statesman, and especially not a single traveler who does not know how false the chimerical concept of the equality of people is.”
Needless to say, this kind of views is not only of pre-Christian origin, pagan, repeating the dense ideologies of idolatry, but also grates for the mill of reaction. Le Bon thought that in most cases, new beliefs and institutions bring only new names, without changing the essence of existing ones.
How, in this case, to deal with the Christianization of the peoples of Europe, in particular the Slavs? Isn’t it the height of anti-historicism to assert that the Christianization of the Slavs “brought only new names without changing the essence”? All history cries out to the contrary: when a new idea takes possession of the masses, the idea changes the masses, sometimes beyond recognition and its own opposite. And it does not at all adapt to the masses if it is a truly new idea.
True, Le Bon also has objective, scientific observations. For example, he wrote that in addition to hereditary feelings, the history of a people is influenced by dogma ideas. Descending into the realm of the unconscious, they have enormous power. The only enemy of faith is another faith.
The people owe all their successes to only a handful of chosen ones who implement events prepared for centuries - Le Bon argued, clearly exaggerating the role of the individual in history, and without even trying to explain how a “handful” of chosen ones could influence anything if the masses were not ready understand and accept their “chosenness”.
Le Bon does not think at all about the unfortunate fate of the “lonely geniuses” - people who were ahead of their time (and the masses) and therefore powerlessly look at the environment, unable to somehow influence it.
Book two, “Psychology of the Masses,” asserts a certain profanation history of the 19th century. Le Bon argues that in the 19th century, mob rule replaced elite rule. His strange belief that until the 19th century power belonged to elites, not crowds, is completely powerless to explain, for example, the phenomenon of “military democracy” in the early Middle Ages. Is the screaming of an armed crowd on the Field of Mars the power of the elites? And what is the power of the crowd in this case?
In fact, of course, with the development of culture and civilization, power does not transfer from the elite to the crowds, but, on the contrary, moves from the crowds to the elites. In the early Middle Ages, power belonged to the one with the heaviest club, and feudal titles (in which Le Bon sees the special charm of “elitism”) were actually handed out to the most ferocious brawlers, and nothing more. The power of the crowd was most clearly manifested precisely in the most archaic eras, and not in the 19th and not in the 20th century, which should be considered centuries of conspiracies and secret lodges rather than centuries of omnipotence of crowds.
Le Bon attributed to the crowd the qualities of limited and stupid man, not taking into account that a stupid person remains stupid even outside the crowd, and a smart person will remain smart even in the crowd. Le Bon thought that the main properties of the crowd: anonymity (impunity), contagion (spread of opinion), suggestibility (the crowd can be made to see even what is not in reality), the desire to immediately put their ideas into practice. But these are the qualities of stupidity and stupidity, what does solitary or mass character have to do with it?!
In Le Bon, the psychology of the crowd is similar to the psychology of savages, women and children: impulsiveness, irritability, inability to think, lack of reasoning and criticism, exaggerated sensitivity. He further notes that the behavior of the crowd is changeable as it reacts to impulses. He writes that there is no doubt in the crowd. It falls into extremes, in which any suspicion can turn into undeniable evidence, the masses respect only force (as if the Robinsons despise it), the ideas of the crowd are held only by categoricality and have no connection.
Le Bon came up with the idea that crowd reasoning is primitive and based only on associations. His crowd is capable of perceiving only images, and the brighter the image, the better the perception. The miraculous and legendary are perceived better than the logical and rational.
Le Bon wrote that formulas put into words relieve the crowd of the need to think. Formulas are unchanged, but the words in which they are enclosed must correspond to the time. The most terrible things, called with euphonious words (brotherhood, equality, democracy), are accepted with reverence.
Everything that Le Bon said about the crowd should have been said about a person who has lost the faith of his fathers, a frustrated individual, about a person (and not at all a crowd) who is confusedly rushing about in life, not knowing what to lean against. Judge for yourself.
Le Bon sought to prove that the crowd is directed not to those who give it evidence, but to those who give it the illusion that seduces it. Lebon's crowd needs a leader. A leader is not necessarily smart, since intelligence gives rise to doubts. He is active, energetic, fanatical. Only a leader who blindly believes in his idea can infect others with faith. The main quality of a great leader is a stubborn, persistent will.
Le Bon saw such a leader in Muhammad, the founder of Arab expansion. In the book “The Civilization of the Arabs” (1899) by Le Bon, he emphasized the enormous influence of Muslim civilization, which, in his opinion, contributed to the cultivation of the barbarian peoples who destroyed the Roman Empire and opened for Europe the world of scientific and philosophical knowledge, the world of literature, with which it had not was familiar. In short, according to Le Bon, it was the Muslims who gave Europe civilization again!
At the same time, apparently, having given civilization to Europe, Muslims themselves were left without it, because history proves the opposite to Le Bon, and his statement smacks of an anti-Christian spirit a mile away. Le Bon wrote: “So now we can say that Mohammed was one of the greatest men that history has known. Some historians have belittled the greatness of the prophet due to their own religious prejudices, but today even Christian writers pay tribute to him.”
G. Lebon and G. Tarde are the creators of the classic version of the socio-psychological approach to the study and explanation of the “mass”. Perhaps their main merit is the scientific description, characterization of the phenomenon of the “crowd” - a kind of primary, “elementary” form of social mass, identification of the “laws of the crowd” (“spiritual unity of the crowd”) and the mechanisms of political leadership. G. Tarde was also one of those who first drew attention to the evolution of the urban masses to a new, predominantly “contactless” form of its integration - the “public”, a phenomenon closely related to the emergence of the media and the growing atomization of the urban community. G. Tarde, and after him G. Le Bon, were the first to talk about the fact that human life among large crowds of people proceeds according to special laws; that you need to know these laws and handle the “cash mass”, the crowd, with knowledge and due caution.
The essence of the approach of G. Tarde and G. Le Bon can be briefly interpreted as follows: in social communities associated with the “direct” interaction of people, the behavior of the latter is determined not so much by one or another form of consciousness, but by emotional-psychic, unconscious empathy, that is, common to all , similar mental experiences. G. Tarde expresses the idea that, unlike the “public”, within which the spiritual connection dominates, the “crowd” is, first of all, “a bundle of contagious influences exerted precisely by the physical contact” of the individuals included in it. For him, the social interaction of individuals represents, in general, a lower type of organization than its constituent elements. As proof, he cites the opinion of Solon, who said about the Athenians: “Each of them is as cunning as a fox, and if you combine them, you get something stupid.”
G. Lebon, analyzing in detail the “transformations” of an individual in a crowd, lists his new qualities: disappearance conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the same direction of feelings and ideas determined by suggestion, the desire to turn inspired ideas into actions. In his opinion, in the crowd the individual achievements of individuals are erased and their originality disappears. The racial unconscious comes to the fore, the heterogeneous is drowned in the homogeneous. 3. Freud comments on this in this way: the psychic superstructure, developed so differently in individual people, is demolished and weakened, and the unconscious foundation, the same for everyone, is exposed and brought into action.
Le Bon and Tarde identify three main reasons (“laws”) for the formation of new qualities of an individual in a crowd:
1. awareness of numbers, the illusion of the omnipotence of the crowd and its anonymity also lead to the disappearance of the individual’s sense of responsibility in the crowd;
2. “infectivity” - in a crowd every action, every feeling is contagious, and to such an extent that the individual easily sacrifices his personal interest in favor of the general (G. Tarde also speaks of “intensification” - “opinions, drawing closer and mutually intensifying, turn into beliefs and faith, beliefs into fanaticism" ;
3. the susceptibility of an individual in a crowd to suggestion (3. Freud regards this thesis as Le Bon’s recognition of the hypnotic state of an individual in a mass).
As a result, according to Le Bon, after a certain state of excitement, the crowd is able to turn into a simple unconscious automaton, obeying suggestions, into an instrument of a demagogue leader (due to the instinct to look for their own kind, the crowd follows chimerical and superficial minds). The crowd spirit, under the influence of certain phenomena, can cover entire nations. An analysis of the content of G. Le Bon’s works leads to the conclusion that he uses the term “crowd” overly broadly, which turns out to be fraught with far-reaching scientifically untenable and politically conservative, bordering on reactionary, conclusions.
The terminologies of G. Tarde and G. Le Bon do not completely coincide. For the first, the terms “public” and “crowd” capture various degrees and forms of interaction between people: indirect, “non-contact” (“public”) and direct, “physical” (“crowd”). At the same time, the “crowd” for him is both random, heterogeneous and unorganized socially homogeneous formations. This “amorphous group,” according to Tarde, appears in four different forms (states): as a crowd waiting, listening, manifesting or acting.
In G. Le Bon, the crowd appears not only in a narrow sense (street, anonymous crowd), but also in an expanded one. Thus, he calls various deliberative assemblies - parliamentary, jury trials - “not anonymous, heterogeneous crowds”; the varieties of “homogeneous crowd” include sects, castes and classes. If X. Ortega y Gaset distinguishes between “mass” and classes (and the best representatives of the working classes are classified among the elite), then for G. Le Bon the crowd and the masses are practically synonymous - “popular classes”. The transfer of the properties of the “primary” crowd to entire classes and organized associations turns out, in our opinion, to be untenable; Revolutionary actions may include episodes of “mass hysteria”, but, contrary to Le Bon’s opinion, they are not limited to them. Both Ortega y Gaset and Le Bon are driven by anxiety for the fate of civilization, but the first acts as an anti-primitivist and anti-utilitarian, anticipating the tread of the “iron heel” of mass culture, while the second sometimes reaches the point of outright antidemocratism. The modern Russian sociologist B.A. also reproaches G. Lebon and his followers for not drawing boundaries between the crowd and classical social groups. Grushin: “: the phenomenon of the crowd, extremely narrow in its actual position in the life of society, began to be interpreted in an inadmissibly broad way, identified with the mass as such, with gigantic sectors in the structure of society (working classes, nations) and even ... society as a whole.”
G. Le Bon's final assessment of social and historical role the masses is very categorical: the crowd can be anything, it serves as “a playground for all external excitations”, “slavishly submits to the impulses it receives”, but the real role of the crowd (“mass”) in social life, especially in politics, is predominantly destructive, it is a means, an instrument in the hands of irresponsible political talkers and charlatans. He is frightened by the prospect of the 20th century turning into the “era of the crowd.” G. Tarde’s forecast is different: he believes that, thanks to the development of means of communication, the “public” will become “ social group future."
The concept of "public" was introduced in scientific circulation namely G. Tardom. Tarde's "public" is not the same as an audience, a theatrical audience. This is a “purely spiritual collectivity”, a collection of individuals separated from each other physically and connected only “mentally”; common, the connection between them is the unity of beliefs, community of feelings. As a rule, such a “sort of association” is formed initially between readers of the same newspaper.
According to G. Tarde, the public is smarter and more enlightened than the crowd, acts much more fruitfully, and is more tolerant: “The crowd in anger demands heads and heads. The activity of the public, fortunately, is less primitive and just as easily turns to the ideal of reforms and utopias as to the ideas of ostracism, persecution, etc. Nevertheless, it has much in common with the crowd: its varieties are intolerant and under the guise public opinion they demand that everything yield to them, “even the truth”; like the crowd, the public is more easily united by negative emotions and ideas: discovering a new major object of hatred for it is one of the surest ways to get into the “kings of journalism”.
G. Tarde’s “public” appears, in our opinion, as a kind of “two-faced” social subject-object: on the one hand, as a set of solidary groups of public opinion that differ from each other (subject social activity), on the other hand, as a spatially dispersed audience of the media (an object of ideological influence). Tarde is not talking about a certain “uniform” public (as, for example, in Sorokin), but, most likely, about “publics”, that is, various groupings, sectors of public opinion.
In Western sociology and socio-psychological science, as well as in political practice, the research of G. Tarde and G. Le Bon received significant response and development. In particular, they served as an impulse or directly formed the basis for a number of scientific works by Z. Freud. However, the modern vision of this approach is not, of course, limited to just quoting the ideas of its “classics”. A great contribution to the further development of the complex of ideas of the socio-psychological approach was made by representatives of modern Western, and, starting from the 60s, domestic socio-philosophical and socio-psychological science.
Psychology of peoples and masses
G. Lebon
Psychology of peoples and masses
Introduction. MODERN IDEAS OF EQUALITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORY
The emergence and development of the idea of equality. - The consequences it produced. - How much did her application cost? Its current influence on the masses. -- The tasks outlined in this work. -- Study of the main factors general evolution peoples --Does this evolution arise from institutions? — Don’t the elements of every civilization—institutions, art, beliefs, etc.—contain certain psychological foundations characteristic of each individual people? -- The significance of the case in history and unchangeable laws. - Difficulty in changing hereditary ideas in a given subject.
Ideas, ruling institutions peoples undergo a very long evolution. Forming very slowly, they also disappear very slowly. Having become obvious delusions for enlightened minds, they remain undeniable truths for the crowd for a very long time and continue to exert their effect on the dark masses of the people. If it is difficult to inspire new idea, then it is no less difficult to destroy the old one. Humanity constantly clings in despair to dead ideas and dead gods.
Almost a century and a half has passed since poets and philosophers, extremely ignorant of the primitive history of man, the diversity of his mental structure and the laws of heredity, threw into the world the idea of equality of people and races.
Very seductive for the masses, this idea soon became firmly entrenched in their souls and was not slow to bear fruit. It shook the foundations of old societies, produced one of the most terrible revolutions and threw the Western world into a series of violent convulsions to which it is impossible to foresee an end.
No doubt some of the inequalities separating individuals and races were too obvious to require any serious challenge; but people easily calmed down on the fact that these inequalities were only consequences of differences in upbringing, that all people were born equally smart and kind, and that only institutions could corrupt them. The remedy against this was very simple: rebuild institutions and give all people the same education. Thus institutions and education have become the great panaceas of modern democracies, the means for correcting inequalities that are offensive to the great principles that are the only deities of modernity.
However, the latest advances in science have revealed all the futility of egalitarian theories and have proven that the mental abyss created by the past between people and races can only be filled by very slow hereditary accumulations. Modern psychology, together with the harsh lessons of experience, has shown that education and institutions adapted to famous people and to known peoples, can be very harmful to others. But it is not in the power of philosophers to withdraw from circulation the ideas they launched into the world when they are convinced of their falsity. Like a river overflowing its banks, which no dam can hold back, the idea continues its devastating, majestic and terrible flow.
And look at the invincible power of an idea! There is not a single psychologist, not a single enlightened statesman, and especially not a single traveler who does not know how false the chimerical concept of the equality of people is, which turned the world upside down, caused a gigantic revolution in Europe and threw America into bloody war for the separation of the Southern States from the North American Union; no one has the moral right to ignore how disastrous our institutions and education are for the lower peoples; and for all this, there is not a single person - at least in France - who, having achieved power, could resist public opinion and not demand this education and these institutions for the natives of our colonies. The application of a system derived from our ideas of equality ruins the mother country, and gradually reduces all our colonies to a state of lamentable decline; but the principles from which the system originates have not yet been shaken.
Although far from declining, the idea of equality continues to grow. In the name of this equality, socialism, which, apparently, should soon enslave the majority of the peoples of the West, strives to ensure their happiness. In his name, a modern woman demands the same rights and the same upbringing as a man.
About political and social upheavals, produced by these principles of equality, and about those much more important ones that they are destined to give rise to, the masses do not care at all, but political life government people is too short for them to worry about it anymore. However, the supreme ruler of modern times is public opinion, and it would be absolutely impossible not to follow it.
There is no truer measure of the social importance of an idea than the power it exercises over minds. The amount of truth or falsehood contained in it can be of interest only from a philosophical point of view. When a true or false idea has become a feeling among the masses, then all the consequences arising from it must gradually appear.
So, through education and institutions, the modern dream of equality must begin to be realized. With their help, we try, by correcting the unjust laws of nature, to cast into one mold the brains of blacks from Martinique, Guadeloupe and Senegal, the brains of Arabs from Algeria, and finally the brains of Asians. Of course, this is a completely impossible chimera, but hasn’t the constant pursuit of chimeras been the main occupation of humanity until now? Modern man cannot evade the law to which his ancestors obeyed.
I have elsewhere shown the deplorable results produced by European education and institutions on the lower peoples. In the same way I have set forth the results of the modern education of women, and do not intend here to return to the old. The questions that we have to study in this work will be of a more general nature. Leaving aside details, or touching upon them only insofar as they prove necessary for the proof of the principles set forth, I examine the formation and mental structure of the historical races, i.e. artificial races formed in historical times by the accidents of conquest, immigration and political changes, and I will try to prove that from this mental structure their history flows. I will establish the degree of stability and variability of the characters of races and will also try to find out whether individuals and peoples are moving towards equality or, on the contrary, striving to differ as much as possible from each other. Having shown that the elements out of which a civilization is formed (art, institutions, beliefs) are the direct products of the racial soul, and therefore cannot pass from one people to another, I will define those irresistible forces under whose action civilizations begin to fade and then fade away. These are the questions that I have already had to discuss more than once in my writings on the civilizations of the East. This small volume should be viewed only as a brief synthesis of them.
The most striking impression I have gained from my long travels through various countries is that every people has a mental structure as stable as its anatomical features, and from it come its feelings, its thoughts, its institutions, his beliefs and his art. Tocqueville and other famous thinkers thought to find in the institutions of backgammon the reason for their development. I am convinced of the opposite, and I hope to prove, taking examples from precisely those countries that Tocqueville studied, that institutions have an extremely weak influence on the development of civilizations. They are most often effects, but very rarely causes.
Without a doubt, the history of peoples is determined by very different factors. It is full of special events, accidents that happened, but might not have happened. However, next to these accidents, these secondary circumstances, there are great immutable laws that govern in general every civilization. These unchangeable, most general and most basic laws flow from the mental structure of the races. The life of a people, its institutions, its beliefs and arts are only the visible products of its invisible soul. In order for any people to reform their institutions, their beliefs, and their art, they must first reform their soul; In order for him to be able to transfer his civilization to another, he must also be able to transfer his soul to him. Without a doubt, this is not what history tells us; but we can easily prove that by writing down contrary statements, she is deceiving herself with empty appearances.
I once had occasion to present before a large congress some of the ideas developed in this work. The meeting consisted of all kinds of prominent people: ministers, colonial governors, admirals, professors, scientists, belonging to the flower of various nations. I expected to find in such a meeting some unanimity regarding the main issues. But he was not there at all. The opinions expressed turned out to be completely independent of the degree of culture of those who expressed them. These opinions were conveyed mainly by what constituted hereditary feelings different races, to which the members of the said congress belonged. It has never been so clear to me that people of every race have, despite their differences, social status, an indestructible store of ideas, traditions, feelings, ways of thinking that constitute an unconscious inheritance from their ancestors, against which all arguments are completely powerless.
In reality, people's thoughts are not transformed by the influence of reason. Ideas begin to have their effect only when, after very slow processing, they have been transformed into feelings and, therefore, penetrated into the dark region of the unconscious where our thoughts are developed. Books have no more power to inspire ideas than words. In the same way, philosophers spend their time writing not with the goal of persuading, but most often with the goal of entertainment. As soon as a man leaves the ordinary circle of ideas of the environment in which he has to live, he must in advance renounce all influence and be content with a narrow circle of readers who have independently arrived at ideas similar to those he defends. Only the convinced apostles have the power to force themselves to listen, to swim against the tide, to change the ideal of an entire generation, but this is most often due to the narrowness of their thoughts and a certain dose of fanaticism, for which they cannot be envied. However, it is not by writing books that they bring triumph to any belief. They sleep in the ground for a long time before the writers, busy fabricating legends about them, decide to make them speak.
First department. PSYCHOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF RAS
Chapter first. SOUL OF RAS
How naturalists classify species. -- Application of their methods to man. -- Weak side modern classifications human races. -Bases psychological classification. -- Average types of races. - To what extent does observation allow them to be established? -- Psychological factors, defining the average type of race. - Influence of ancestors and immediate parents. -- A common psychological property that all individuals of a known race possess. -- The enormous influence of deceased generations on modern ones. -- Mathematical basis of this influence. -- How the collective soul spreads from the family to the village, city, province. -- Advantages and dangers arising from the formation of a city as a separate whole. -Circumstances under which the formation of a collective soul is impossible. -Example of Italy. —How natural races gave way to historical races.
Naturalists base their classification of species on the presence of known anatomical features, which are reproduced by heredity with regularity and consistency. We now know that these characteristics are modified by the hereditary accumulation of imperceptible changes; but if we consider only short period historical times, then we can say that the species are unchanged.
When applied to man, the classification methods of naturalists made it possible to establish a certain number of completely different types. Based on purely anatomical features, such as skin color, shape and capacity of the skull, it became possible to establish that human race consists of many quite distinct species and is probably very of various origins. To scholars who reverence mythological traditions, these species are nothing more than races. But, as someone thoroughly said, “if the Negro and the Caucasian were snails, then all zoologists would unanimously assert that they constitute different species, which could never have descended from the same pair, from which they gradually moved away.” .
These anatomical features, at least those of them that are relevant to our analysis, admit only general, very crude, divisions. Their differences appear only in human species that are completely different from each other, such as whites, blacks and yellows. But the peoples are very similar in their appearance, may differ greatly in their ways of feeling and acting, and consequently in their civilizations, their beliefs and their arts. Is it possible to combine a Spaniard, an Englishman and an Arab into one group? Isn't it obvious to everyone that there exist between them? mental differences and are they not read on every page of their history?
For the lack of anatomical features they wanted to rely on for classification famous peoples on various elements, such as languages, beliefs and political institutions; but such classifications do not stand up to serious criticism. On occasion, we will show that many peoples have managed to assimilate, transforming foreign languages, beliefs and institutions so that they can be consistent with their mental make-up.
The basis for classification, which anatomy, languages, environment, political groupings cannot provide, is given to us by psychology. The latter shows that behind institutions, arts, beliefs, political upheavals of every nation there are known moral and intellectual features, from which its evolution follows. These features in their totality form what can be called the soul of the race.
Each race has a psychic organization as stable as its anatomical organization. It is difficult to doubt that the first depends on the structure of the brain. But since science has not yet advanced enough to show us the details of its mechanism, we cannot take it as a basis. However, a close acquaintance with it cannot in the least change the description of the mental organization that follows from it and which observation reveals to us.
Moral and intellectual characteristics, the totality of which expresses the soul of a people, represent a synthesis of its entire past, the inheritance of all its ancestors and the motivating reasons for its behavior. In certain individuals of the same race they appear as variable as the features of the face; but observation shows that the majority of individuals of this race always possess a certain number of common psychological characteristics, as solid as the anatomical characters by which the species are classified. Like these latter, psychological characteristics are reproduced by heredity with accuracy and constancy.
This aggregate of general psychological characteristics constitutes what is reasonably called national character. Their totality forms an average type, which makes it possible to define a people. A thousand Frenchmen, a thousand Englishmen, a thousand Chinese, taken at random, must, of course, differ from each other; However, due to the heredity of their race, they have common properties, on the basis of which it is possible to recreate the ideal type of a Frenchman, an Englishman, a Chinese, similar to the ideal type that a naturalist imagines when he general outline describes a dog or horse. In the appendix to different varieties of a dog or a horse, such a description can only contain characteristics common to all, but not at all those by which their numerous breeds can be distinguished.
If only the race is sufficiently ancient and, therefore, homogeneous, then its average type is sufficiently clearly defined to quickly take hold in the mind of the observer.
When we visit a foreign people, only the features that strike us can be recognized as common to all the inhabitants of the country we are visiting, because they alone are constantly repeated.
Individual differences are rarely repeated and therefore elude us; and soon we are not only able to distinguish at first glance an Englishman, an Italian, a Spaniard, but we begin to notice in them certain moral and intellectual characteristics that constitute precisely those basic features that we spoke about above. The Englishman, the Gascon, the Norman, the Flemish, correspond in our minds to a very definite type, which we can easily describe. When applied to a single individual, the description may be very insufficient and sometimes incorrect; but when applied to the majority of individuals of a known race it gives the truest picture of it. The unconscious brain work by which the physical and mental type of a people is determined is completely identical in essence with the method that enables the naturalist to classify species.
This identity of the mental organization of the majority of individuals of a known race has very simple physiological foundations. Each individual is in reality a product not only of his immediate parents, but also of his race, i.e. the whole series of his ancestors. Scientist economist Chayson calculated that in France, if we count three Generations per century, each of us has in our veins the blood of at least 20 million contemporaries of any millennium... “All inhabitants of the same area, the same province of necessity have common ancestors, are made of the same clay, bear the same imprint, and are constantly being brought back to the average type by that long and heavy chain of which they are only the last links. We are at the same time the children of our parents and of our race. Not only a feeling, but also physiology and heredity make the fatherland a second mother for us.”
If we translate into the language of mechanics the influences to which an individual is exposed and which govern his behavior, then we can say that they are of three kinds. The first and probably most important is the influence of ancestors; second - the influence of immediate parents; the third, which is usually considered the most powerful and which, however, is the weakest, is the influence of the environment. This latter, if we understand by it the various physical and moral influences to which a person is exposed throughout his life and, of course, during his upbringing, produces only very weak changes. Environmental influences begin to exert real action only when heredity accumulated them in the same direction over a very long time.
Whatever a person does, he is always and first of all a representative of his race. That stock of ideas and feelings which all individuals of the same race bring into the world with birth forms the soul of the race. Invisible in its essence, this soul is very visible in its manifestations, since in reality it controls the entire evolution of the people.
One can compare race to a combination of cells that forms a living being. These billions of cells have a very short existence, while the duration of existence of the creature formed by their union is relatively very long; cells, therefore, simultaneously have a personal life and a collective life, the life of the being for which they serve as a substance. In the same way, each individual of any race has a very short individual life and a very long collective life. This latter is the life of the race into which he was born, to whose continuation he contributes and on which he always depends.
Race must therefore be regarded as a permanent being, not subject to the effects of time.
This permanent being consists not only of the living individuals who constitute it at the moment, but also of the long line of dead ones who were their ancestors. To understand the true meaning of race, one must extend it simultaneously into the past and into the future. They control the immeasurable region of the unconscious, that invisible region which holds under its power all manifestations of the mind and character. The fate of the people is controlled in much to a greater extent deceased generations than living ones. They alone laid the foundation of the race. Century after century they created ideas and feelings and, consequently, all the motivating reasons for our behavior. Deceased generations pass on to us not only their physical organization; they also inspire us with their thoughts. The dead are the only undisputed masters of the living. We bear the weight of their mistakes; we receive the reward of their virtues.
The formation of the mental makeup of a people does not require, like the creation of animal species, those geological periods whose enormous duration defies our calculations. However, it takes quite a long time. To create in a people like ours, and even then to a rather weak degree, that community of feelings that forms its soul, it took more than ten centuries.
This period, very long for our chronicles, is actually quite short. If such a relatively limited period of time is sufficient to consolidate certain features, then this is due to the fact that some cause acting for a certain time in one direction quickly produces very large results. Mathematicians have proven to us that when this cause continues to produce the same effect, then the causes grow in arithmetic progression (1, 2, 3, 4, 5...), and the effects grow in geometric progression (2, 4, 8 , 16, 32...).
Causes are logarithms of effects. In the well-known problem of doubling grains of bread on a chessboard, the corresponding number of the chess square is the logarithm of the number of grains of grain. In the same way for capital allocated to compound interest, the law of increase is such that the number of years is the logarithm of the increased capital. These considerations explain the fact that most social phenomena can be expressed by rapidly increasing geometric curves.
In another paper I had to prove that they can be expressed analytically by the equation of a parabola or a hyperbola.
Perhaps the most important thing of the French Revolution was that it accelerated this formation by the almost complete destruction of the small nationalities: Picardians, Flemings, Burgundians, Gascons, Bretons, Provencals, etc., between which France was once fragmented. It is necessary, however, for the unification to be complete, and precisely because the French consist of too different races and, therefore, have too different ideas and feelings, they become victims of discord, such as more homogeneous peoples, for example, the English, do not know. Among these latter, the Anglo-Saxon, the Norman, the ancient Breton, finally merging, formed a very homogeneous type, and therefore their mode of action is the same. Thanks to this merger, they eventually firmly acquired the following three main foundations: people's soul: common feelings, common interests, common beliefs. When a nation has achieved this unification, an instinctive agreement is established among all its members on all major issues, and serious disagreements can no longer arise within its depths. This community of feelings, ideas, beliefs and interests, created by slow hereditary accumulations, gives the mental makeup of the people great similarity and great strength, providing it at the same time with enormous strength. It created the greatness of Rome in antiquity, the supremacy of the English in our days. From the time it disappears, nations fall apart. Rome's role ended when he ceased to have it.
This interweaving of hereditary feelings, ideas, traditions and beliefs has always existed to a greater or lesser extent among all peoples and in all centuries, forming the soul of a community of people, but its progressive expansion was extremely slow. Limited at first within the family and gradually spreading to the village, city, province, the collective soul embraced all the inhabitants of the country only in relatively recent times. Only then did the concept of the fatherland arose in the sense that we understand it today. It becomes possible only when it is formed national soul.
The Greeks never rose above the concept of a city, and their cities were always at war with each other, because they were always very alien to each other.
India for 2000 years did not know any other form of unity other than the village, and that is why for two thousand years it always lived under the rule of foreign rulers, whose ephemeral monarchies were destroyed as easily as they arose.
The concept of the city as an exclusive fatherland, which was very weak from the point of view of military power, was, on the contrary, always very strong in relation to the development of civilization. Less extensive than the soul of the fatherland, the soul of the city was sometimes more fertile. Athens in antiquity, Florence and Venice in the Middle Ages, show us to what degree of civilization small concentrations of people can achieve.
Crowd, masses, politics Heveshi Maria Akoshevna
Study of the crowd as a single entity (Lebon)
The founder of “crowd psychology” is considered to be Gustav Le Bon (1841–1931). IN modern literature His views are described in sufficient detail. And yet, we cannot help but dwell on their presentation in the light of the historical and philosophical essay we propose.
Le Bon's starting position is the idea that modern era- an era of significant changes. AND the most important factor These changes are a powerful influence of the masses on society, unprecedented in history. The entire development of civilization, all great historical revolutions are associated with changes in people's thoughts. The power of inspired ideas is extremely great; it is precisely this that controls the actions of people. And at the same time, the French Revolution showed that it is impossible to remake society only on instructions pure reason. New ideas related to the interests of the masses are spreading in society, and the growth of the power of the masses is explained precisely by the spread of these new ideas. But the masses do not just become aware of ideas through their organizations, they strive to influence the authorities, trying to put their ideas into practice. “While all our ancient beliefs waver and disappear, the ancient pillars of society are crumbling one after another, the power of the masses is the only force that is not threatened and whose importance is ever increasing. The coming era will truly be the era of the masses.”
If previously the main role of the masses was the destruction of outdated civilizations, because the power of the crowd is always aimed at destruction, now the masses dictate their behavior to politicians. “The Divine Right of the Masses must replace the Divine Right of Kings.”
Le Bon's main contribution is that he showed that a crowd is not a collection of individuals, but that it is something fundamentally different. The crowd is a single formation, a single being, endowed with its own collective soul. The traits of a crowd have nothing in common with the traits endowed with the individuals who compose it. This is not the sum of individuals, not some average of these individuals education. The lifestyle of the individuals who make up the crowd, their activities, mental development do not have any impact on the character of the crowd, for the crowd has a collective soul, which determines its actions, feelings, thoughts, and all this has nothing to do with how it would behave how any individual would feel on his own. The crowd is a temporary organism endowed with a collective soul. This is a spiritualized crowd formed from heterogeneous elements. “The most dissimilar people in their minds may have the same passions, instincts and feelings... Between a great mathematician and his shoemaker there may be a whole gulf from the point of view of intellectual life, but from the point of view of character there is often no or very little difference between them. These general qualities character, controlled by the unconscious... unite together in a crowd... the heterogeneous is buried in the homogeneous, and unconscious qualities take over.” It is the disappearance of the conscious personality in the crowd and the general orientation of the feelings of people united in the crowd that constitute features crowds. In other words, we are talking about specific traits that the crowd is endowed with, and which differ from the traits of the individual.
The question posed by Le Bon seems completely justified: what happens to a person that she renounces her only inherent traits, her characteristic behavior? He highlights the following points: an individual in a crowd, thanks to its largeness, acquires the consciousness of an irresistible force. The crowd is anonymous, therefore, is not responsible for its actions, and a person who does not feel his responsibility allows his instincts to take precedence over reason. Further, in a crowd, every feeling is contagious. Having succumbed, according to Le Bon, to a hypnotic feeling, a person behaves in a way that is not typical for him. He can sacrifice his personal interests to the interests of the crowd. Thirdly, paralysis of consciousness occurs, a person becomes a slave unconscious activity. In a crowd, some abilities of an individual disappear, others find themselves in a state of extreme tension. In this case, the role of suggestion is very important. People in a crowd are unable to be guided by the rules associated with theoretical justice. They can only be captivated by impressions that have sunk into their souls and are instilled in them. Being in a crowd, a person strives to turn inspired ideas into immediate actions, turning into a kind of automaton. Immersed in the depths of the crowd, he finds himself in a state very similar to hypnotic. And Le Bon concludes: a person in a crowd descends several steps lower on the ladder of civilization, he becomes an instinctive creature, that is, a barbarian. “He shows a tendency towards arbitrariness, riotousness, ferocity, but also towards enthusiasm and heroism... a person in a crowd very easily obeys words and ideas... An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand among a mass of other grains of sand, raised and carried away by the wind... In his ideas and a change must take place in feelings, and so profound that it can turn a stingy person into a spendthrift, a skeptic into a believer, honest man- into a criminal, a coward - into a hero."
Le Bon does not have a blanket negative attitude towards any crowd. He emphasizes that everything depends on what suggestion the crowd obeys. And although he proceeds from the fact that intellectually the crowd is always inferior to the isolated individual, in its feelings and actions it can be very noble, selfless, and heroic. It is through often unconscious heroism that history is made. “The crowd will go to death for the triumph of some belief or idea; You can awaken enthusiasm in the crowd and force it, for the sake of glory and honor, to go without bread and weapons, as during the Crusades, to liberate the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidels, or, as in 93, to defend their native land. This heroism is somewhat unconscious, of course, but it is with its help that history is made.” In his other book, “The Psychology of Socialism,” he emphasizes that the crowd easily turns into both a victim and an executioner. The crowd rarely obeys selfish motives, but, as a rule, is selfless and submissive public interest. Reasoning and reflection most often lead to egoism, but since the crowd does not reason or reflect, egoism is not inherent in it. Therefore, he believes, general interest associated with the absence of egoism, with blind devotion, self-sacrifice, i.e. with everything that is inherent in the crowd. “Governed by their unconscious instincts, the crowd has a moral disposition and generosity, always striving for manifestation in action.”
In his detailed analysis of the feelings and morality of the crowd, Le Bon proceeds from the fact that it is controlled by the unconscious. The crowd does not reason, it does not have the ability to suppress its reflexes, it obeys the most varied impulses from the most brutal bloodthirstiness to absolute heroism, because it is under momentary excitement. Therefore, one of the properties of the crowd is its variability and impulsiveness. For her there is no concept of the insurmountable, the impossible. The crowd, due to its large numbers, perceives itself as powerful, intolerant of objections and obstacles, and, moreover, feels unpunished.
It is the unconscious actions of the crowd that determine its gullibility, the fact that it is easily suggestible. One of its main differences is its inability to critical thinking. The crowd thinks not in categories, but in images, and these images can be very far from reality. Moreover, Le Bon talks about collective hallucinations well famous history. Visibility, he believes, has always played a role in history big role than reality. Great events were born from the irrational, it is this that directs history. “The unreal here dominates the real.” And the point is not in the mental qualities of the individuals who make up the crowd; the ignoramus and the scientist in the crowd are equal. They are equally susceptible to illusions and erroneous observations, do not know doubts and hesitations. Special attention Le Bon focuses on the crowd's lack of sense of responsibility. This is precisely what her intolerance and authoritarianism are connected with. “The masses respect only strength, and kindness touches them little, since they look at it as a form of weakness. The sympathies of the crowd are always on the side of the tyrants who subjugate them, and not on the side of the good rulers, and the crowd is always the first to erect the highest statues, and not the last.”
Le Bon does not believe in the predominance of revolutionary instincts among the crowd. Moreover, he considers her conservative. Being under the power of the unconscious, she finds herself at the mercy of centuries-old heredity. She is tired, he believes, of her own turmoil. And although history knows of violent revolutions organized by the crowd, its need for change is expressed, in his opinion, very superficially. The crowd experiences a deep horror of all kinds of innovations, because it is very deeply connected with traditions. The revolutionary instincts of the crowd are momentary. She very quickly begins to demand the restoration of the idols that she destroyed. He demonstrates his point hundred years of history France, in which revolution was repeatedly replaced by counter-revolution.
Speaking about morality, Le Bon shows that although destructive instincts very often manifest themselves in the crowd, for these instincts are generally characteristic of individuals as a remnant of primitive times, nevertheless, the crowd is also characterized by selflessness, devotion, unselfishness, self-sacrifice, and a sense of justice. The crowd is capable of a very sublime manifestation of these feelings, even to the point of self-sacrifice.
He analyzes in detail the influence of ideas on the crowd, showing that any ideas can have an impact on the crowd only if they are expressed in the simplest and most categorical form. It's not the ideas in them rational form, but ideas-images that are not necessarily logically connected with each other. Therefore, he notes, ideas of the most contradictory kinds coexist in the crowd. To become accessible to the crowd, ideas always have a “simplifying and downgrading character. That is why, from a social point of view, there is in reality no ideological hierarchy, that is, more or less sublime ideas. The very fact of the penetration of an idea into the crowd and its expression in actions is enough to deprive the idea of everything that contributed to its sublimity and greatness, no matter how true and great it may have been at its inception... Philosophical ideas that led to French Revolution, took a whole century to gain a foothold in the soul of the crowd. It is known what irresistible force they acquired after they became stronger. The desire of an entire people to acquire social equality, to realize abstract rights and liberties, shook all thrones and deeply shook the Western world... Europe experienced such hecatombs that could have frightened Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. Never before has the world witnessed to such a degree the results of the dominion of any idea.”
Without denying the crowd the ability to reason, he believes that this kind of reasoning is characterized by immediate generalization of particular cases and the connection together of disparate things. There is no ordinary logic in these arguments. Therefore, the crowd is characterized by false, or rather, imposed judgments.
The crowd is driven to action not by reasoning, but by images; Le Bon defines beliefs based on them as a religious feeling in which the supernatural and miraculous merge. “The crowd unconsciously bestows a mysterious power on the political formula or the victorious leader who at the moment excites its fanaticism... intolerance and fanaticism are a necessary accessory to every religious feeling and are inevitable in those who think they have the secret of earthly or eternal bliss.” Comparing the beliefs of the crowd with religious feeling, he shows that in both cases we are talking about blind submission, ferocious intolerance, and frantic propaganda of one’s beliefs. The hero whom the crowd worships is truly a god for them. Instead of altars, statues are built to the great soul winners and they are given the same honors as in ancient times. The number of fetishes is only increasing. St. Bartholomew's Night, religious wars, terror - all these, according to Le Bon, are identical phenomena, for the methods of the Inquisition are the methods of all convinced people. The events listed would not have been possible if the soul of the crowd had not caused them. The most despotic tyrant can only speed them up or slow them down. “It was not the kings who created St. Bartholomew’s Night, the religious wars, and it was not Robespierre, Danton or Saint-Just who created the terror. The soul of the crowd, and not the power of kings, participated in all these events.” All the power historical events was associated with faith. And as soon as faith changes, believers furiously smash the statues of their former gods.
The laws and institutions that exist in society, as a rule, cannot, according to Le Bon, be changed by force, because they correspond to the specific needs of the race and people. Only illusions and “especially words, chimerical and strong,” affect the crowd. The power of words, their impact on the crowd is completely independent of their real meaning. Words are endowed with magical powers, appearing as mysterious deities, their true meaning has long been lost and changed. “The power of words is so great that it is worth coming up with elegant names for some of the most disgusting things so that the crowd will immediately accept them.”
The main factor in the evolution of peoples, according to Le Bon, has never been truth, but always error. He primarily considers these delusions to be illusions that have always dominated the crowd. We can talk about religious, philosophical, social illusions. Trampling on certain illusions, the masses build new ones on their ruins. Of all the factors of civilization, the most powerful are illusions. It was illusions that brought into being the pyramids of Egypt and the construction of gigantic cathedrals. Humanity has spent most their efforts not in pursuit of truth, but in pursuit of lies, illusions. Progress was made in pursuit of chimerical goals. “Despite all its progress, philosophy has not yet given the crowd any ideals that could seduce it... And if socialism is so powerful at the present time, it is only because it represents the only surviving illusion... social illusion reigns at the present time above all the wreckage of the past and the future belongs to her. The crowd... turns away from evidence that it does not like, and prefers to worship error, if only error seduces it.” The success of a creed does not depend on the amount of truth or error contained in it, but only on the degree of confidence that it inspires. Beliefs endow the masses with common feelings, give them common forms of thinking, and therefore the same ideas.
And Le Bon sees the danger of his contemporary times in the absence of great common beliefs. Socialism is ready to provide such a belief. But unlike all previous religions, it promises heaven on earth. Therefore, the moment of the establishment of socialism, according to Le Bon, will also be the beginning of its fall, despite the fact that he offers a new ideal. Not subject to logic, beliefs control history, because the masses, hypnotized by one or another belief, are ready to do anything in the name of the reign of their faith, the establishment of their ideal.
Le Bon's work does not limit itself to crowd analysis. He explores in no less detail the mechanism that exists between the crowd and the authorities, showing how the crowd, in order to somehow function, submits to the authority of the leader. The leader, the leader acts as a nucleus that crystallizes the crowd into one. He very rarely goes ahead of public opinion, he follows it, assimilating all its delusions. Usually these are people of action, with a strong will, but not at all with a strong mind, people who have no doubts. “The great leaders of all times, and especially the leaders of revolutions, were distinguished by their extreme limitations, and even the most limited of them enjoyed predominantly the greatest influence.” Their convictions cannot be shaken by any arguments of reason. Therefore, the power of suggestion in such people is great. It is this power of suggestion that helps them instill faith in the crowd. And, as you know, faith moves mountains. Preachers of any faith, including socialism, master the art of convincing and making an impression. Like the crowd, they deny all doubts, admit or completely deny only extreme opinions or statements. These are the apostles of the faith, hypnotized by it, they are ready to do anything to spread it. Blind fanaticism makes them “considerably more dangerous than wild beasts.” The actions of Torquemada, Marat, and Robespierre are cited as examples. Unconsciously, the souls of the leader and the follower penetrate each other through some mysterious mechanism.
We are, Le Bon believes, witnesses to the tyranny of the new rulers, to which the crowd obeys even more than the government. Due to strife, public power is increasingly losing its importance. A statesman must understand the dreams of the crowd and present them as absolute truths. The main thing is to captivate the crowd, and then the most opposite regimes, the most intolerable despots, cause their delight. The crowd cast their votes for Marat, Robespierre, and for the Bourbons, Napoleon, and for the republic.
He sees the following ways in which leaders influence the masses: affirmation, repetition and infection. A simple, brief statement is taken, not supported by any special evidence. And this statement is repeated often and in the same expressions. From frequent repetition, it cuts into the deepest areas of the unconscious, which influence our actions. In a crowd, from this constant repetition of the same simple statements, an infection arises, according to Le Bon’s definition, similar to certain microbes. “In a crowd, all emotions also quickly become contagious, which explains the instant spread of panic. Mental disorder, such as insanity, is also contagious... Imitation, which is attributed such a large role in social phenomena(Le Bon gives the example of the revolution of 1848), in essence constitutes only one of the manifestations of the infection.” He imagines such a spread of infection in the following way: one or another leader falls under the influence of a certain idea or belief. He creates a sect where these ideas are distorted and spread among the masses. And in such a perverted form, they become a popular idea and affect society, including its upper strata. Beliefs, as we know, control people. A tyrant can expose and oppose a conspiracy, but he is powerless against a firmly established belief. Therefore, the true tyrants turned out to be illusions created by humanity. The leader of the people always embodies his dreams, his illusions. Moses personified the thirst for the liberation of the Jews, Napoleon embodied the ideal of military glory and revolutionary propaganda, which then influenced the French people. The world is driven by ideas and the people who implement them.
The obvious absurdity of some modern beliefs cannot in any way prevent them from taking possession of the souls of the crowd. The dogma of the sovereignty of the crowd, according to Le Bon, is not defensible from a philosophical point of view. At present, this kind of dogma has absolute force, therefore, it is as inviolable as our religious ideas were once inviolable.
From the point of view of the crowd and its characteristics, Le Bon also considers the parliamentary system, especially the electoral system. For him, voters are as diverse a crowd as any other crowd. The casting of votes by forty academicians is no better than the casting of forty water-bearers. As he puts it, the dogma of universal suffrage now has the same force as religious dogmas once had. And yet he recognizes parliamentary assemblies as the best that nations have so far been able to find for self-government.
He interprets parliament as a heterogeneous, non-anonymous crowd, which is also indoctrinated and led by leaders. But nevertheless, it has its own characteristics. He includes one-sided interpretations among them, which explains the extreme opinions that take place in parliament. Further, parliament is very suggestible, but this suggestibility has sharp boundaries. The parliamentary assembly becomes a crowd only at certain moments. In most cases, the people who make it up retain their individuality.
The strength of democracy, Le Bon believes, is that it makes it possible for society to exist without constant government intervention and promotes the manifestation of initiative and willpower. But democracy can also give rise to arbitrariness, ignorance and other vices if it spreads among weak-willed peoples, which, according to his opinion, are the peoples of the Latin republics of America. But the greatest danger to democracy comes, according to Le Bon, from the masses. For as soon as the crowd begins to suffer from the strife and anarchy of its rulers, it begins to dream of strong personality, dictator. Bonaparte followed the Convention, and Napoleon III followed in 1848. “And all these despots, the sons of universal suffrage of all eras, were always deified by the crowd.”
Le Bon's work “Psychology of Socialism”, written at the very beginning of the 20th century. Although the book, in our opinion, very simplistically sets out the essence of the teachings of socialism, especially the views of Marx himself, it is interesting in its approach to socialism as a belief. For him, socialism appears as a set of aspirations, beliefs and reform ideas. Like any belief, socialism offers and relies on the magical power of hope. “The legions of the dissatisfied (and who doesn’t belong to them now?) hope that the triumph of socialism will improve their lot. The sum total of all these dreams, all these discontents, all these hopes gives the new faith an undeniable strength.” The idea of eliminating inequality in social status has existed since time immemorial.
Recently, he writes, socialism has been able to acquire the power of belief because it arose during a period when old beliefs had lost their influence and, as a result, a need arose for new gods, for new beliefs that would embody dreams of happiness. Any discussion about socialism is of no importance to the crowd, because it proceeds from one thought: that the worker is a victim of exploitation due to a bad social structure. It is enough to change this device and all dreams of justice will come true.
The socialist system, with its desire to eliminate competition and the general equation, represents, according to Le Bon, an irreconcilable contradiction to the principles of democracy. There is nothing less democratic than the ideas of the socialists about the abolition of competition, the consequences of freedom through unlimited despotic rule and the assignment of equal wages to both the able and the incapable. Democracy indirectly gave birth to socialism and may perish from socialism.
In the past there were also violent fights in society, but then the crowd did not have such political power. Now it is organized into powerful unions, syndicates that have very great influence. To establish democracy, it is necessary to limit, and not expand, government intervention; only these conditions can help the development of initiative and self-government. Already at the beginning of the century, Le Bon foresees, with socialism in mind, that “this terrible regime cannot be avoided. It is necessary for at least one country to experience it for the edification of the whole world. This will be one of those experimental schools, which at the present time alone can sober up the peoples infected with a painful delusion about happiness at the mercy of the false suggestions of the priests of the new faith... Since socialism must be tested somewhere, because only such an experience will heal the peoples from their chimeras, then all our efforts must be are aimed at ensuring that this experience is carried out outside our fatherland rather than here.”
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