Socialism makes no economic or intellectual sense. How, then, do we explain its continuing appeal?
"Thanks to its promise of regeneration, thanks to the hope it flashes before all the disinherited of life, socialism is becoming a belief of a religious character rather than a doctrine." Thus concluded French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon in a book entitled The Psychology of Socialism, published at the turn of the last century. The dream of socialism is "to substitute itself for the ancient faiths," said Le Bon. It seeks to do so by appealing to "the sentiments of envy and hatred which it creates in the hearts of the multitudes. To the crowd, no longer satisfied with political and civic equality, it proposes equality of condition."
Socialism is a form of collective fatigue, a kind of mass despair. Energetic peoples have no use for it. Thriving cultures are characterized by "a considerable extension of what is confided to personal initiative, and a progressive reduction of all that is left to the state to perform." In worn- out cultures, that is, cultures on the decline, "the government is always a power absorbing everything, manufacturing everything, and controlling the smallest details of the citizen's life."
Le Bon argued that all forms of government enshrine one or the other of "two different and opposing fundamental principles -- individualism and collectivism. By individualism, man is left 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 . . . the individual possesses no initiative; all the acts of his life are mapped out." Le Bon had no difficulty determining which of these two conflicting principles leads to greater results. "The peoples among whom individualism is most highly developed are by this fact alone at the head of civilization," he said, "and today dominate the world."
Socialism has no appeal for a vigorous, self-confident people. It begins to gain ground, however, when the middle and upper classes lose their moorings, when they are "no longer sure of their rights. Or rather, they are not sure of anything, and they do not know how to defend anything." Once they succumb to what Le Bon called a "vague humanitarianism," their days as free men are numbered. "Under the unconscious but disintegrating influence of this humanitarianism, the directing classes [lose] all confidence in the justice of their cause. They surrender more and more to the leaders of the opposing party, who merely despise them in proportion to their concessions."
To avert the triumph of socialism, Le Bon counseled his countrymen to "give up our perpetual prospects of reform, and also the idea that we must always be changing our constitutions, our institutions, and our laws. Above all we ought to limit, and not constantly extend, the intervention of the state, so as to force the citizens to acquire a little of the initiative and the habit of self-government" of which they have been deprived by pandering and paternalistic programs.
