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The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Reich, Wilhelm
Year Published:  1970   First Published:  1933
Pages:  400pp  
Resource Type:  Book

Wilhelm Reich's class study, written during the years of the German crisis. Reich repudiates the concept that fascism is the ideology or action of a single individual or nationality, or any ethnic or political group. He understands fascism as the expression of the irrational character structure of human beings whose needs and impulses have been suppressed.

Abstract: 
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Table of Contents

Preface

I. Ideology As A Material Force
The cleavage
Economic and ideological structure of the German society, 1928-1933
How mass psychology sees the problem
The social function of sexual repression

II. The Authoritarian Ideology of the Family in the Mass Psychology of Fascism
Fuhrer and mass structure
Hitler's background
On the mass psychology of the lower middle class
Family ties and nationalistic feelings
Nationalistic self-confidence
The "domestication" of the industrial workers

III. The Race Theory
Its contents
The objective and subjective functions of ideology
Racial purity, blood poisoning, and mysticism

IV. The Symbolism of the Swastika
V. The Sex-Economic Presuppositions of the Authoritarian Family
VI. Organized Mysticism as an International Anti-Sexual Organization
The interest in the church
The fight against "cultural Bolshevism"
The appeal to mystical feelings
The goal of the cultural revolution in light of fascist reaction

VII. Sex-Economy in the Fight Against Mysticism
The three basic elements of religious feelings
Anchoring of religion by means of sexual anxiety
Healthy and neurotic self-confidence

VIII. Some Questions of Sex-Political Practice
Theory and Practice
The struggle against mysticism until now
Sexual happiness contra mysticism
The individual uprootment of the religious feeling
The practice of sex-economy and objections to it
The non-political man

IX. The Masses and the State
1936: Speak the truth- but how and when?
"What takes place in the masses of people?"
The "socialist yearning"
The "withering away of the state"
The program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Eight Party Congress, 1919)
The "introduction of Soviet democracy"
The development of the apparatus of the authoritarian state from rational social relationships
The social function of state capitalism

X. Biosocial Function of Work
The problem of "voluntary work discipline"

XI. Give Responsibility to Vitally Necessary Work!
What is "work-democracy"?
What is new in work-democracy?

XII. The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom
Our interest in the development of freedom
Biologic rigidity, incapacity for freedom, and mechanical authoritarian view of life
The arsenal of human freedom

XIII. On Natural Work-Democracy
Investigation of the natural social forces for the purpose of overcoming the emotional plague
Work in contrast to politics
Notes on objective criticism and irrational cavilling
Work is inherently rational
Vitally necessary and other work

Index

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