1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have
been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly
increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in
“advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society,
have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings
to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and
have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The
continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human being to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world,
it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical
suffering even in “advanced” countries.
2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it
may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve
a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but
only after passing through a long and very painful period
of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to
engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine.
Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will
be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying
the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of
dignity and autonomy.
3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still
be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more
disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is
to break down it had best break down sooner rather than
later.
4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use
of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively
gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict
any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the
measures that those who hate the industrial system should
take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against
that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments
but the economic and technological basis of the present
society.
5. In this article we give attention to only some of
the negative developments that have grown out of the
industrial-technological system. Other such developments
we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not
mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For
example, since there are well-developed environmental
and wilderness movements, we have written very little
about environmental degradation or the destruction of
wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly
important.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM
6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply
troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society
in general.
7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th
century leftism could have been practically identified with
socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it is not
clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak
of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists,
collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and
disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But
not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a
psychological type, or rather a collection of related types.
Thus, what we mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly
in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology. (Also,
see paragraphs 227-230.)
8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good
deal less clear than we would wish, but there doesn’t seem
to be any remedy for this. All we are trying to do here is
indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving
force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our
discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We
leave open the question of the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th and early
20th centuries.
9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of
modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism;
but this segment is highly influential.
FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY
10. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum
of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred,
1
etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such
feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these
feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.
11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom
he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings
or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among
minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the
minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities
and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The
terms “negro”, “oriental”, “handicapped” or “chick” for an
African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick”
were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy”, “dude” or
“fellow”. The negative connotations have been attached
to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal
rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word
“pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal companion”. Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid
saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the
word “primitive” by “nonliterate”. They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive
culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply
that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely
point out the hyper sensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)
12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghettodweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not
even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from
privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its
stronghold among university professors, who have secure
employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority
of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to
upper-middle-class families.
13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the
problems of groups that have an image of being weak
(women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel
that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to
themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they
identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest
that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)