Introduction

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the
human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us
who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have
made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led
to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical
suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The
continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will
certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater
damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social
disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical
suffering even in “advanced” countries.

2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it
survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological
suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of
adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many
other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social
machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be
inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to
prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But
the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown
will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than
later.

4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This
revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be
a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of
that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who
hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for
a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL
revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic
and technological basis of the present society.

5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments
that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such
developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean
that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons
we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient
public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since
there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have
written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of
wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM

6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of
the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism,
so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to
the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.

7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could
have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is
fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we
speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists,
collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability
activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is
associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to
get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as
a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we
mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of
leftist psychology. (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)

8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than we
would wish, but there doesn’t seem to be any remedy for this. All we are
trying to do here is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two
psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving force of modern
leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist
psychology. Also, our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We
leave open the question of the extent to which our discussion could be
applied to the leftists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call
“feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization.” Feelings of inferiority
are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is
characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment
is highly influential.

FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY

10. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the
strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; low self-esteem,
feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-
hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings
(possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in
determining the direction of modern leftism.

11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him
(or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has
inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among
minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups
whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to
designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities.
The terms “negro,” “oriental,” “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an
Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory
connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of
“guy,” “dude” or “fellow.” The negative connotations have been attached to
these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have
gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by
“animal companion.” Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid
saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be
interpreted as negative. They want to replace the world “primitive” by
“nonliterate.” They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest
that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply
that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the
hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are
not the average black ghetto- dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or
disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even
belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society.
Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who
have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom
are heterosexual white males from middle- to upper-middle-class families.

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups
that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians),
repel