The central problem of the psychologist would evidently lie in the
question whether the socialistic reformer calculates with right ideas
about the human mind. There might, to be sure, be a little
psychological side-show not without a peculiar interest at the
entrance gate of socialism. We might turn the question, what is the
psychology of the socialist, so as to mean, not with what psychology
does the socialist operate, but what goes on in the socialist's mind.
No doubt the motives have gone through deep changes even in the mind
of the cultured leaders. When Karl Marx laid the foundations of
socialism, he was moved solely by the desire to recognize a necessary
development. It was the interest of the theorist. He showed that the
things which the socialist depicted simply had to come. He did not ask
whether they are good or bad. They were for him ultimately natural
events which were to be forestalled. The leaders to-day see it all in
a new light. The socialistic state is to them a goal to the attainment
of which all energies ought to be bent. Not their theoretical
knowledge, but their practical conscience, leads them to their
enthusiasm for a time without capitalism. In the minds of the masses,
however, who vote for the socialist here or abroad, the glory of moral
righteousness is somewhat clouded by motives less inspiring in
quality. The animosity against the men of wealth rushes into the
mental foreground, and if it is claimed that the puritans disliked the
bear baiting not because it gave pain to the bears, but because it
gave pleasure to the onlookers, it sometimes seems as if the
socialists, too, desire the change, not in order that the poor gain
more comfort, but in order that the rich be punished. And many cleaner
motives have mixed in, which resulted from the general change of
conditions. The labourer lives to-day in a cultural atmosphere which
was unknown to his grandfathers. He reads the same newspaper as his
employers, he thinks in the same catch phrases, and has essentially
the same foundation of education. Moreover the publicity of our life
in this era of print too easily teaches the workingman that his master
may be neither better nor wiser than he and his comrades. And finally,
the political and economic discussions of the last half century have
made it perfectly clear to him that the removing of the material
misery lies in the realm of practical possibility, and that even
without bombs a new economic order may be created almost as easily as
a new tariff law or an income tax or an equal suffrage. Hence it is
not surprising that all these motives combined turn the imagination of
millions to the new panaceas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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