Socialism: A Psychosis

Frank Chodorov

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, November-December 1936]

Socialism is a figment of the imagination, born out of fear psychology. We read of psychopathic cases or personality cases which are characterized by dream refuges. That is, the individual, for causes which are sometimes impossible to ascertain, and of which he surely is not aware, develops a fear of realities, or certain forms of reality, which he unconsciously evades by secluding his mind in dreams. In the clouded area of this dream life his mind finds a refuge from, and a defense against, the stern facts which his consciousness is afraid to cope with. The psychologists claim that if they can discover the character of the dreams they can also ascertain the cause of the fear that first induced this subconscious running away from reality; that is, if they get the patient before this dream habit deteriorates the mental fabric to such a state as to bring on a complete break-down, or insanity.

Socialism is a mass personality case. The first cause of this dream refuge is mass fear of poverty. Note that the first symptoms of this disease developed with the increasing difficulty of making a living that accompanied the growth of landlordism, following the breakdown of the feudal system. Fear of not having a job, fear of hunger, fear of the inability to provide for old age, fear of seeing loved ones suffering from privation fear of poverty so haunted the mass mind during the middle of the nineteenth century, after the lands of Europe had become completely monopolized, that a refuge of some kind was necessary. The mentality of a bewildered civilization was prepared for the dream state of socialism. When this was invented by Karl Marx, Lassalle, and other poetic imaginators, it was avidly accepted by the harassed and desperate workers as a consoling refuge from unpleasant reality. It is important to observe that socialism found acceptance in Europe first; in America it did not gain a foothold until this century, after ail the free land in the country had been pre-empted, and poverty became a fixed national problem.

The growth of socialistic ideas is evidence of two facts: First, that the struggle for existence is becoming keener, and, secondly, that the mind of society is quickly approaching a complete breakdown. In Russia it has reached the state of insanity.

The burden of this dream is that organized society must take care of the individual. To enable organized society or government to do this, the individual must relinquish all claims to personal rights, including the right of possessing what he produces. It is manifestly impossible for government to provide for me if I insist on providing for myself. As such insistence breaks up the entire scheme of this dream state, my removal or incarceration becomes a matter of necessity. Thus, personal liberty, even the right to life, is abolished with the abolition of property rights. No matter what brand of socialism you examine, and there are many, you will find they all come to this: that property and personal rights are relinquished by the individual to government.

The silliness of this dream is not important. The important thing is that the world is adopting it. Why? Simply because the hopeless worker finds it easier to slip into this dream state than to ascertain the cause of constantly increasing poverty in the midst of plenty, and to make an effort to remove this cause.

When the enemy is at the city gates we turn over all personal rights to a captain, whom we follow blindly even unto death. We are afraid. And so with that more hideous enemy, poverty. We fear it so that we readily relinquish the cherished ideas of individual liberty for which thousands of lives have been sacrificed throughout the centuries and look to government to save us from the monster. An empty stomach obstructs reason. And so we have doles, and so-called social insurance plans, and public works projects, and regimentation, and more government and more government. And the individual becomes a slave to society. Since society consists of an aggregation of individuals, the slave mentality of the units becomes the mentality of the aggregate. Thus endeth rational civilization.

In our country the dream state of socialism has not yet vitiated our national mind. Some of us are still able to think and act sanely, because the control of wealth has not yet been entirely concentrated in a few hands, and we are still able to make a decent living. We are rational not because of the vaunted heritage of individual liberty we are told about by Fourth-of-July orators, but because the conditions of economic liberty are not entirely wiped out. But, unless we learn how and why wealth passes from the many to the few, and unless we stop this unnatural flow by permitting the natural law of the distribution of wealth to operate freely, the American mind will, under pressure of increasing economic slavery, find refuge in the dream state of socialism, just as the European mind already has.