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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 a 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 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 century.

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 strictest sense but a whole spectrum of related traits: low
self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies,
defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend
to have 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 advocates, whether or not they belong to the
minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about
the words used to designate 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 advocates have gone so far as to reject
the word "pet" and insist on its replacement by "animal companion."
Leftist 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
hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

12. Those who are most sensitive about "politically incorrect"
terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, 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-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
it 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 suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE
inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong
as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT
be as strong and as capable as men.

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization,
they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists
give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real
motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike,
imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same
faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the
leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that
they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly
exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization.
Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist's real motive for
hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they
are strong and successful.

16. Words like "self-confidence," "self-reliance," "initiative",
"enterprise," "optimism," etc. play little role in the liberal and
leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic,
pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone's needs for them,
take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense
of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy
his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition
because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to focus
on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone,
throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing
anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to
immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science,
objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative.
It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of
scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective
reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftist
philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically
analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved
emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these
concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their
attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is
successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the
leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain
beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false
(i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist's feelings of inferiority run so
deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as
successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also
underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental
illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to
genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such
explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to
others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an
individual's ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is "inferior" it is
not his fault, but society's, because he has not been brought up properly.

19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of
inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a
ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in
himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he
can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and
his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1]
But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority
are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually
strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel
strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with
which he identifies himself.

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest
by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or
racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but
many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER
masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or
by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist
of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be
the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a
component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much
leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the
people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one
believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make
sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms?
Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and
conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic
concessions to white people who think that affirmative action
discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an
approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping
black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an
excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for
power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the
activists' hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify
race hatred.

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would
have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse
for making a fuss.

23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate
description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a
rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.

OVERSOCIALIZATION
24. Psychologists use the term "socialization" to designate the process
by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A
person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the
moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that
society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are
over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel.
Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such
rebels as they seem.

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think,
feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed
to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or
other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly
socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a
severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they
continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find
moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a
non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe such
people. [2]

26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of
powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by
which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of
behavior or speech that is contrary to society's expectations. If this
is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such
feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of HIMSELF. Moreover the thought
and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by
society's expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person.
The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty
behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws,
they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things or
they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The
oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he
generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The
oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or
feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think
"unclean" thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality;
we are socialized to confirm to many norms of behavior that do not fall
under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on
a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society
has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a
sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We
suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that
human beings inflict on one another.

27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern
left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of great
importance in determining the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of
the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the
upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals (3) constitute
the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most
left-wing segment.

28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his
psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he
is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society.
Generally speaking, the goals of today's leftists are NOT in conflict
with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted
moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream
society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality
of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence
generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More
fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty
of society to take care of the individual. All these have been deeply
rooted values of our society (or at least of its middle and upper
classes (4) for a long time. These values are explicitly or implicitly
expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the
mainstream communications media and the educational system. Leftists,
especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel
against these principles but justify their hostility to society by
claiming (with some degree of truth) that society is not living up to
these principles.

29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized
leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our
society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists
push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high-prestige
jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such
schools; the way of life of the black "underclass" they regard as a
social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system,
make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like
upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last
thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white man;
instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what
does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can
hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening
to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a
black-style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only
in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects more leftists of the
oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white,
middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects,
become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status
ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to
make black fathers "responsible." they want black gangs to become
nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the
industrial-technological system. The system couldn't care less what kind
of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what
religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a
respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a "responsible" parent, is
nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the
oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system
and make him adopt its values.

30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the oversocialized
type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our society. Clearly
they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have gone so far as to
rebel against one of modern society's most important principles by
engaging in physical violence. By their own account, violence is for
them a form of "liberation." In other words, by committing violence they
break through the psychological restraints that have been trained into
them. Because they are oversocialized these restraints have been more
confining for them than for others; hence their need to break free of
them. But they usually justify their rebellion in terms of mainstream
values. If they engage in violence they claim to be fighting against
racism or the like.

31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing
thumb-nail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is complex,
and anything like a complete description of it would take several
volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim only to have
indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies in the
psychology of modern leftism.

32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our
society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and defeatism
are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially noticeable in
the left, they are widespread in our society. And today's society tries
to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society. We are
even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how to make love, how
to raise our kids and so forth.