The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological StudyMartin, Everett Dean
Science
The Behavior of Crowds: A Psychological Study
Martin, Everett Dean
Crowds
As we have seen, the crowd mind as such wills to dominate. Society is
made up of struggle groups, or organized crowds, each seeking the
opportunity to make its catchwords realities and to establish itself in
the position of social control. The social order is always held intact
by some particular crowd which happens to be dominant. A revolution
occurs when a new crowd pushes the old one out and itself climbs into
the saddle. When the new crowd is only another faction within the
existing dominant crowd, like one of our established political parties,
the succession will be accomplished without resort to violence, since
both elements of the ruling crowd recognize the rules of the game. It
will also not result in far-reaching social changes for the same reason.
A true revolution occurs when the difference between the dominant crowd
and the one which supplants it is so great as to produce a general
social upheaval. The Reformation, the French Revolution, and the
"Bolshevist" _coup d'etat_ in Russia, all were of this nature. A new
social leadership was established and secured by a change in each case
in the personnel of the ownership of such property as would give the
owners the desired control. In the first case there was a transfer of
property in the church estates, either to the local congregations, or
the state, or the denomination. In the second case the property
transferred was property in land, and with the Russian revolutionists
landed property was given to the peasants and vested capital turned
over to the control of industrial workers.
Those who lay all emphasis on this transfer of property naturally see
only economic causes in revolutionary movements. Economics, however, is
not a science of impersonal things. It treats rather of men's relations
to things, and hence to one another. It has to do with valuations and
principles of exchange and ownership, all of which need psychological
restatement. The transfer of the ownership of property in times of
revolution to a new class is not an end, it is a means to a new crowd's
social dominance. The doctrines, ideals, and principles believed by the
revolutionary crowd also serve this end of securing its dominance, as do
the social changes which it effects, once in power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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