The Psychology of Socialism
Book I: The Socialistic Theories and Their Disciples:
Chapter 3: Theories of Socialism
Gustave Le Bon
Table of Contents | Next | Previous
I. The Fundamental principles of the Socialist theories: -- The theories of Socialism revert to Collectivism and Individualism-These opposing principles have always been in conflict. 2. Individualism :-The part played by it in the evolution of civilisations--Its development is possible only among peoples endowed with certain qualities --Individualism and the Revolution. 3. Collectivism :-All the contemporary forms of Socialism demand the intervention of the State--The rôle which Collectivism reserves for the State-The absolute dictatorship of the State or the community in Collectivism-The antipathy of Socialists for liberty-How the Collectivists hope to arrive at the suppression of inequalities-The common factor of all the programmes of the various Socialistic sects-Anarchism and its doctrine-The programmes of the modern Socialists are very old. 4. The Socialistic ideas of nations, like the various institutions of nations, are the consequence of their race :-Importance of the idea of race--The great difference of the social and political concepts harboured by the same words -- Nations cannot change their institutions of their own free will, and can only modify the terms by which they denote them--The differences between the Socialistic concepts of writers belonging to different races.
I. THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE SOCIALIST THEORIES.
To investigate the political and social concepts of the theorists of Socialism would be a proceeding of very little interest, if by so doing we did not often arrive at those conceptions which arc ill sympathy with tile spirit of a period, and for this reason produce a certain impression on the general mind. If, as I have so often
(24) maintained, and as 1 propose to show once more, the institutions of a people are the consequences of its inherited mental organisation, and not the product of the philosophical theories created on every hand, the small importance of Utopias and speculative constitutions can readily be conceived. But that which the philosophers and orators effect in their imaginings is often nothing other than to invest with a tangible form the unconscious aspirations of their time and race. The few writers who have really influenced the world by their books, such as Adam Smith in England, and Rousseau in France have merely condensed, into clear and intelligible form, the ideas which were already spreading on every hand. They did not create what they expressed. Only the remoteness of their time can delude us on this point.
If we limit the diverse concepts of the Socialists to the fundamental principles on which they repose the investigation will be very brief.
The modern theories of social organisation, under all their apparent diversity, lead back to two different and opposing fundamental principles- Individualism and Collectivism. By Individualism man is abandoned to himself ; his initiative is carried to a maximum, and that of the State to a minimum. By Collectivism a man's least actions are directed by the State, that is to say, by the aggregate ; the individual possesses no initiative ; all the acts of his life are mapped out. The two principles have always been more or less in conflict, and the development of modern civilisation has rendered this conflict more keen than ever. Neither has any intrinsic or absolute value of itself, but each must be judged according to the time, and above all the race, in which it manifests itself ; and this we shall see in the course of this book.
25)
2. INDIVIDUALISM.
All that has gone to make the greatness of Civilisations sciences, arts, philosophies, religions, military power, etc., has been the work of individuals and not of aggregates. It is by favoured individuals, the rare and supreme fruits of a few superior races, that the most important discoveries and advances, by which all humanity profits, have been realised. The peoples among whom Individualism is most highly developed are by this fact alone at the head of civilisation, and to-day dominate the world.
It is only in our days, and above all since the Revolution, that Individualism, at least under certain forms, has at all developed among the Latin races. These peoples are unfortunately but little adapted, by their ancestral qualities, their institutions, and their education, to rely upon themselves or to govern themselves. Extremely eager for equality, they have always shown themselves very little anxious for liberty. Liberty is competition and incessant conflict, the mother of all progress, in. which only the most capable can triumph, and the weakest, as in nature, are condemned to annihilation.
The Revolution has been reproached with having developed Individualism of an exaggerated kind; but this reproach does not seem just. It is a far cry from the form of Individualism which the Revolution has made prevalent to the Individualism practised by the Anglo-Saxons, for example, amongst other nations. The revolutionary ideal was to shatter the classes and corporations, to reduce every individual to a common type, and to absorb all these individuals, thus dissociated from their categories, into the guardianship of a strongly centralised State. Nothing could be more strongly
(26) opposed to the Anglo-Saxon Individualism, which favours the banding together of individuals, obtains everything by it, and confines the action of the State within narrow limits. The work of the Revolution was far less revolutionary than is generally believed. By exaggerating the absorption and centralisation of the State it only continued in a Latin tradition deeply rooted through centuries of monarchy, and followed by all governments alike. By dissolving the industrial, political, religious, and other corporations, it has made this absorption and centralisation still more complete, and, moreover, by so doing, has obeyed the inspirations of all the philosophers of the period.
The development of Individualism, as its necessary consequence, leaves the individual isolated amidst the competition of eager appetites. Young and vigorous races, such as the Anglo-Saxon, in which the mental inequalities between individuals are not too great, accommodate themselves very well to such a state of things. The Anglo-Saxon and American workers are perfectly able, by means of trades-unions, to contend with the demands of capitalism, and to escape its tyranny. Every interest has thus been able to establish itself. But among older races, whose initiative has been exhausted by their systems of education and the march of time, the consequences of individualism have ended by becoming severe in the extreme.
The philosophers of the last century, and the Revolution, in breaking or trying to break up all the religious and social ties which served as a support to man, and which were established on a solid basis, whether that basis were the Church, family, caste, guild, or corporation, certainly thought to effect a thoroughly democratic work. What they really favoured, without foreseeing it, was the birth of an
(27) aristocracy of financiers of formidable power, reigning over a mob of individuals possessing neither cohesion nor defence. The feudal seigneur did not use his serfs more hardly than the modern industrial seigneur, the king of a workshop, sometimes uses his mercenaries. Theoretically the latter enjoy every liberty ; theoretically, again, they are the equals of their master. Practically they feel weighing on them the heavy chains of misery and dependence, in menace if riot in fact.
The idea of remedying the unforeseen consequences of the Revolution was bound to germinate, and the adversaries of Individualism have had no lack of sound pretexts for attacking it. It was easy for them to maintain that the social organism was of greater importance than the individual organism, and most often strongly opposed to it, and that the latter must give way before the former ; that the weak and incapable have a right to be protected, and that the inequalities created by nature must be corrected by a new partition of wealth made by society itself. Thus was born the Socialism of the present day, the offspring of the ancient Socialism, and which, like the old, wishes to change the division of wealth by depriving the rich for the benefit of the poor.
Theoretically, the means of annihilating social inequalities are very simple. The State has only to intervene and proceed to the distribution of wealth, and to establish in perpetuity the equilibrium destroyed for the profit of the few. From this idea, so little novel and yet so seductive, have issued the Socialistic concepts of which we are about to treat.
3. COLLECTIVISM.
Modern 'Socialism presents itself in a number of forms greatly differing in detail. By their general characteristics they rank themselves under the head of Collec-
28)-tivism. All would invariably have recourse to the State to repair the injustice of destiny, and to proceed to the re-distribution of wealth. Their fundamental propositions have at least the merit of extreme simplicity : confiscation by the State of capital, mines, and property, and the administration and re-distribution of the public wealth by an immense army of functionaries. The State, or the community, if you will-for the Collectivists now no longer use the word State-would manufacture everything, and permit no competition. The least signs of initiative, individual liberty, or competition, would be suppressed. The country would be nothing else than an immense monastery subjected to a strict discipline. The inheritance of property being abolished, no accumulation of fortune would be possible.
As for the needs of the individual, Collectivism scarcely regards anything else than his alimentary necessities, and only occupies itself with satisfying them. M. Rouanet, cited by M. Boilley, writes as follows :-
"According to the Marxist explanation the necessities of nutrition are at the summit as well as at the base of human development. Humanity would be at the end, as at the beginning, a stomach. Nothing but an enormous stomach, whose physical necessities would constitute the sole motive of all mental activities. The stomach would be the prime cause and the end of humanity. As a Marxist has maintained, Socialism is in effect nothing but the religion of the stomach."
It is evident that such a régime implies the absolute dictatorship of the State, or, what comes to exactly the same thing, of the community, with regard to the distribution of wealth, and a no less absolute servitude on the part of the workers. But the latter are not affected by this argument. They are not at all eager for liberty, as is proved by the enthusiasm with which they have
(29) acclaimed all the Caesars when a Caesar has arisen ; and they care as little for all that goes to make the greatness of a civilisation : for arts, sciences, literature, and so forth, which would disappear at once in such a society; so that the Collectivist doctrine has nothing in it that could seem antipathetic to them.
In exchange for their rations, which the theorists of Socialism promise him, "the worker would perform his work under the surveillance of State functionaries, like so many convicts under the eye and hand of the warder. All individual motive would be stifled, and each worker would rest, sleep, and eat at the bidding of headmen put in authority over matters of food, work, recreation, and the perfect equality of all."
All stimulus being destroyed, no one would make an effort to ameliorate or to escape from his position. It would be slavery of the gloomiest kind, without a hope of enfranchisement. Under the domination of the capitalist the worker can at least dream of becoming, arid sometimes does become, a capitalist in his turn. What dream could lie indulge in under the anonymous and brutally despotic tyranny of a levelling State which should foresee all his needs and direct his will? M. Bourdeau has remarked that the Collectivist organisation would be very like that of the Jesuits of Paraguay. Would it not resemble rather the organisation. of the negroes on the old slave-plantations ?
Blinded as they are by their dreams, and convinced though they be of the superiority of institutions over economic laws, the more intelligent of the Socialists have been obliged to understand that the great objections to their system are those terrible natural equalities against which no amount of recrimination has ever been able to prevail. Except there were each generation a systematic massacre of all individuals surpassing by however little
(30) the lowest imaginable average, social inequality, the child of mental inequality, would quickly re-establish itself.
The theorists meet this objection by assuring us that, in the new social environment thus artificially created, individual capacity would quickly equalise itself, and that the stimulant of personal interest, which has hitherto been the great motive of human nature and the source of all progress, would become useless, and would be replaced by the sudden formation of altruistic instincts which would lead the individual to devote himself to the Collective interest. It cannot be denied that religions, at least during the short periods of ardent belief ensuing on their birth, have obtained some analogous result ; but they had Heaven to offer to their believers, with an eternal life of rewards, while the Socialists propose to their disciples, in exchange for the sacrifice of their liberty, only a hell of servitude and hopeless baseness.
To suppress the effects of natural inequality is theoretically an easy thing, but to suppress these inequalities themselves will always be impossible. They, with death and age, form a part of these eternal fatalities to which a man must submit himself.
But so long as we keep within the frontiers of dreamland it is easy to promise all ; easy, like the Prometheus of -,Eschylus, " to make blind hopes inhabit mortal souls." So man will change to adapt himself to the new society created by the Socialists. The differences that divide individual from individual will disappear, and we shall have only the average type so well described by the mathematician Bertrand "Without passions or vices, neither mad nor wise, with average ideas, average opinions, he will die at an average age, of an average Malady invented by the statisticians."
The methods of realisation proposed by the various Socialist sects differ in form, though all tending to a
(31) common end. They aim finally at obtaining an immediate State monopoly of the soil, and of wealth in general, either by simple decree or by enormously increasing the death duties, so as to lead to the suppression of family property in a few generations.
The enumeration of the programmes and theories of these various sects would be without interest, for at present Collectivism prevails over them all, and alone exerts any influence, Most of them have dropped into oblivion ; " in this manner Christian Socialism, which was pre-eminent in 1848, now marches in the rear," as Léon Say justly remarks. As for State Socialism, only its name has changed ; it is nothing else than the Collectivism of to-day.
It has with reason been said of Christian Socialism that it meets the modern doctrines at many points. 11 Like Socialism," writes M. Bourdeau, " the Church allows no merit to anything that partakes of genius, talent, grace, originality, or personal gift. Individualism, for the Church, is the synonym of egoism ; and that which it has always sought to impose on the world is precisely the end of Socialism : fraternity under authority. The same international organisation, the same reprobation of war, the same sentiments as to suffering and social necessities. According to Bebel it is the Pope who, from the heights of the Vatican, sees most clearly the gathering storm which is upheaving itself upon the horizon. The Papacy might even be in danger of becoming a dangerous competitor with revolutionary Socialism if it were resolutely to place itself in the van of the universal democracy."
To-day the programme of the Christian Socialists differs very little from that of the Collectivists. But the other Socialists repudiate them ill their hatred of all religious ideas, and if revolutionary Socialism were to triumph the Christian Socialists would assuredly be its first victims.
(32) Assuredly also they would find no one to take pity on their fate.
Among the various sects that are born and die every day Anarchism deserves to be mentioned. Theoretically the Anarchists appear to come under the heading of Individualists, since they desire to allow the individual an unlimited liberty ; but in practice we must consider them as merely the Extreme Left of the Socialist party, for they are equally intent oil the destruction of the present social system. Their theories are characterised by that extreme simplicity which is the keynote of all Socialist Utopias : " Society is worthless ; let us destroy it by steel and fire ! " Thanks to the natural instincts of man they will form a new society, of course perfect. By what train of astonishing miracles would the new society differ from those that have preceded it ? That is what no Anarchist has ever told us. It is evident, on the contrary, that if the present civilisations were to be completely destroyed, humanity would once again pass through all the forms it has, perforce, successively outgrown : savagery, slavery, barbarism, etc. One does not very well see what the Anarchists would gain by this. Admit the immediate realisation of all their dreams ; that is to say, the execution of all the bourgeois en bloc, the reunion of all capital in one immense heap, to which every man can resort as he wills : how will this heap renew itself when it has become exhausted, and all the Anarchists have become momentary capitalists in their turn ?
Be it as it may, the Anarchists and the Collectivists are the only sects possessing any influence to-day. The Collectivists imagine their theories were created by the German Karl Marx. As a matter of fact, we find them in detail in the writers of antiquity. Without going back so
(33) far, we may remark with Tocqueville, who wrote more than fifty years ago, that all the Socialist theories are exposed at length in the Code de la Nature, published by Morelly in 1755.
"You will there find, together with all the doctrines asserting the omnipotence of the State and its unlimited rights, several of the political theories by which France has been most frightened of late, and whose birth we flatter ourselves to have witnessed : the community of goods, the right to work, absolute equality, uniformity in everything, mechanical regularity in all the movements of the individual, regulated tyranny, and the complete absorption of the personality of the citizen into the body of society :
" 'In this society nothing will belong to ally person as his personal property,' says Article i of the Code. 'Every citizen will be fed, maintained, and occupied at the expense of the public,' says Article 2. 'All products will be amassed in the public magazines, thence to be distributed to all citizens and to supply their vital need. At five years of age every child will be taken from his family and educated in common, at the expense of the State, in a uniform manner,' etc."
4. THE SOCIALISTIC IDEAS OF NATIONS, LIKE THE VARIOUS INSTITUTIONS OF NATIONS, ARE THE CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR RACE.
The Racial idea, so little understood a few years ago, is becoming more and more widely spread, and is tending to dominate all our historical, political, and social concepts.[1]
(34)
I dedicated my penultimate work[2] to showing how the various peoples, mingled and united by the hazard of migration or conquest, came to form the nations known to history, the only ones existing to-day : for pure races, anthropologically speaking, are scarcely to be found except among savages. This idea being thoroughly established, I indicated the limits of variation of character among these races ; that is to say, how variable and mobile characteristics become superimposed upon a fixed substratum. I then demonstrated that all the elements of a civilisation--language, arts, customs, institutions, beliefs-were the consequences of a certain mental constitution, and therefore could not pass from one nation to another without undergoing profound transformations.
It is the same with Socialism ; this law of transformation being general, Socialism also must be subject to it. Despite the deceptive labels which in politics, as in religion and morals, often cover very dissimilar things, there are often hidden behind identical words very different social or political concepts, just as the same concept is often sheltered by very different words. Some Latin nations live under monarchies, some under republics, but under these constitutions, so nominally opposed, the political rôle of the State and the individual remains the same,
(35) and represents the invariable ideal of the race. Be the nominal government of a Latin people what it may, the action of the State will always be preponderant, and that of the private person very small Among the Anglo-Saxons the same constitution, republic or monarchy, realises absolutely the opposite of the Latin ideal. Instead of being carried to a maximum, the rôle of the State is with them reduced to a minimum, while the political or social part reserved for private initiative reaches, on the contrary, a maximum.
From the preceding facts it results that the nature of institutions plays a very Small part ill the life of nations. it will probably be several centuries before such a notion can penetrate the popular imagination ; but only when it has done so will the futility of constitutions and revolutions clearly appear. Of all the errors that history has given birth, the most disastrous, that which has uselessly shed the most blood and heaped up the greatest ruin, is this idea that a people, that any people, can change its institutions as it pleases. All that it can do is to change the names of its institutions, to clothe with new words old conceptions, which represent the natural outcome of a long past.
The foregoing assertions can be justified only by examples, and I have furnished several in my preceding works ; but the study of Socialism among the various races, to which part of the ensuing chapters will be dedicated, will present us with many others. I shall show, first of all, by taking a given nation, how the advent of Socialism has been prepared in that nation by the mental constitution and history of its race. We shall then see how it is that Socialistic doctrines have been unable to succeed among oilier people, of different race.
In order to discover to what extent our social concep-
36) -tions are truly the resultants of race one might even confine oneself to comparing the works of the Socialist writers of various races. The most eminent of English Socialist writers (Herbert Spencer, for example), are partisans of the liberty of the citizen and the limitation of the rôle of the State. The Socialist writers of Latin race profess, on the contrary, a perfect disdain of liberty, and invariably clamour for extended action on the part of the State, and the utmost State regulation. One must run through the works of all the theorists of Latin race -- those of Auguste Comte, for example-in order to see to what extent the disdain of liberty and the desire to be governed may be carried. " The energetic preponderance of a central power " appeared indispensable to the latter. The State must intervene in all questions economic, industrial, and moral. The people have no rights, but only duties. It must be directed by a dictatorial Government composed of scientists, having at their head an absolute Positivist Pope. Stuart Mill said with reason of these conceptions that they formed the most complete system of spiritual and temporal despotism that had ever issued from the brain of man, except perhaps from that of Ignatius Loyola. Of all modern conquests the most precious was liberty. How much longer shall we keep it ?
