The Mass Psychology of Fascism [Paperback]

Wilhelm Reich (Author), Vincent Carfagno (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1980

In this classic study, Reich provides insight into the phenomenon of fascism, which continues to ravage the international community in ways great and small.

Drawing on his medical expereinces with men and women of various classes, races, nations, and religious beliefs, Reich refutes the still generally held notion that fascism is a specific characteristic of certain nationalities or a political party ideology that is imposed on innocent people by means of force or political manneuvers. "Fascism on only the organized political expression of the structure of the average man's character. It is the basic emotional civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life."—Wilhelm Reich

Responsibility for the elimination of fascism thus results with the masses of average people who might otherwise support and champion it.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Wilhelm Reich, a native of Austria, was born in 1897. His many other works include Listen, Little Man!, Function of the Orgasm, and Character Analysis. He died in 1957.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 3 edition (November 1, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374508844
• ISBN-13: 978-0374508845
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1.4 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Behavioral Sciences > Behavioral Psychology

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 60 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The role of sexual morality in a fascist/capitalist state May 20, 2000

By Greg Klassen

This book will force the reader to reflect on their own presupposed sexual morality. Reich inadvertently develops a formula for the Nietzschian over-man. As the first, and probably the most thought-out of the Freudian Left, Reich criticizes "dogmatic Marxism" and (to the joy of Marx) gives Maxism a new look without the dictation of unfounded morality. Not to be misunderstood as a nihilist, Reich calls for the reader to sever the ambilical cord of morality and take responsiblity for his or her desires.

Reich undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the capitalist identity, or a dictatoriship like such as the Nazis: a hardened and repressed character, incapable of understanding its desires apart from destruction and conquest. It is also clear that he intended this analysis to be applied to the American way of life.

Few authors are as capable of making both psychoanalysis and Marxism as accessible as Reich. However, this results in no compromise of depth. The reader will undergo a devestating re-evaluation of the role of sexual morality in everday life that is continually overlooked by both layman and acadamics.

In his early years, while under the wing of Freud, Reich learned some bad habits in the overuse of metaphor. Taking this in stride however, "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" is one of the most usefull tools for understanding the inherent relations between fascism, capitalism and morality. In it, he forsees the comodification of the body image and the development of the consumer identity through the corruption of human sexuality.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Reich's book stimulating, thought-provoking... October 6, 1997

By A Customer

Definitely a must-read for anyone concerned with freedom of thought and the development of a rational, just society. Reich is superb, delivering radical thoughts with rational explanations that force one to think even if one doesn't agree. Starting with the basic question of why the National Socialists came to power in Germany in the 1930s, Reich continues with a critique of modern society in general and examines the cultural implications of our attitudes towards sex, religion, the family, and the state. This is one of the few books that everyone should read at least once (if not twice).

57 of 65 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Great Political and Pyschological Works of the 20th Century June 22, 2005

By Tony Thomas

Amazon Verified Purchase

If you want to read an outstanding analysis of why conservative "family values" politics are essential to capitalist society and how they can be defeated by a struggle for women's rights, sexual freedom, and true liberation, read The Mass Pyschology of Fascism.

This work is a product of the marriage of the revolutionary political spirit that erupted in Central Europe with the Bolshevik revolution and the series of near revolutions in the countries Reich lived in until the Hitler Victory in 1933--Hungary, Austria, and Germany--with the great discovery by the Freudians that pathology was a product of patriarchial society and its sexual repression.

In the 1920s and 1930s Reich took Freudianism a step further by pointing out that all the non-materialist, drives, complexes, and factors Freud invented to reconcile his discovery of sexual repression and family produced insanity with conservative views about "family values" were invalid ideologically driven pseudoscience. Reich pointed to the fact that Marxists and anthropologists from Morgan in the 19th Century to Malinowski in Reich's time had discovered a pre Patriarchal stage of development predating patriarchy and had also discovered in these socieities or remnants of them, little of the sexual repression Freud postulated was required to maintain society.

So Reich set out in his study of pyschology and in his intervention in the working class political movement of Central Europe to fight for sexual freedom, for women's rights, and for the ending of imperialist and capitalist society. As his struggle brushed up against the growing adoption of bourgeois antisexual morality in the Soviet Union under Stalin and against the ultraleft and opportunist policies of the Comintern infected with Stalinism, Reich's critique turned on the Stalintern and the degenerated Soviet Union as well. Though he built a Sexpol movement of thousands of youth, women, and workers fighting against Hitler in Germany, Reich was expelled from the German Communist party as a "Trotskyist" in 1933.

Sadly, with the victory of Hitler followed by the Moscow Trials, Reich withdrew from active working class politics, then despaired of revolution, and became obessed to the point of his insanity in the 1950s with the idea of "orgone energy" a basic natural universal energy released among other places in good sex. This bogus theory, observed by no other scientist, grew together with a raging paranoia. In the end it aided the witchhunting govenrment of the US put him in jail as a medical quack, and had all of his books including this great work burned and banned in the USA.

In this book, a product of Reich's active struggle against Hitler, Reich traces the links between sexual repression, patriarchal society, and conservative and right wing ideology. He explains how patriarchy attempts to create the neurotic mental health that dominates modern capitalist society to use it to reign over working people. He shows the etiology of religion as a pathological outgrowth of patriarchy, and how conservative "family values" are decisive to conservatism.

Reich, who built a real movement in Germany for sexual freedom and women's rights, is adamant about how fighters for human freedom and socialism cannot simply dismiss issues of women's rights and sexual freedom, but must embrace them if they are to have a chance to defeat fascists among women and youth. He explains that attempts to compete with fascists about who is the best defender of "family values" only strengthens conservatism among working men, working women, and farmers who could be won for the struggle. He cites the sad tactics of the German Communist and Social Democratic parties who tried to outdo Hitler in the fight for "family values' while shrinking away from campaigns for abortion rights, equal pay for equal work, and sexual freedom of the youth, that Reich used to win them away from the Nazis.

There is so much rich thought here about the nature of ideology, family life, and psychology in modern society, and how that can be defeated.

As Reich's orgone theory progressed in the 1940s and 1950s, this book was reedited to include allusions to organe theory and other ideas that were a sad fall from Reich's brilliant vision of the 1930s. I remember reading a bootleg edition of this book in the late 1960s--Reich's books were actually banned and burned by the US government after they framed him up for quackery in the 1950s!--without any of the orgone mumbo jumbo.

However, evenwith the addition of orgone theory, Reich's political and psychological vision is clear here.

No doubt, a prescient reader will dectect a kind of theoretical loop in even the original Reich who overplays the power of social pathology to build politically and social compliant mentalities in working people, but underplays the ability of great events in history, social struggles, and the efforts of vanguard fighters like the Reich of the early 1930s, to help millions to come to the kind of realizations that Reich had reached.

Yet, with this weakness, this a book matched by few others in its disection of capitalist ideology, social pathology, and the potential to struggle for a better world. You must read this book!