Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 12
How the Alienating Features of the
Socialist/Progressive Movement Contribute to Its Failure
(page 2)

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The Security of the Sect and Clique, and the Lack of Dialogue

Under these psychological features of the leaders genuine objective dialogue that leads to the narrowing of differences and to unity against capitalism is impossible. What happens is that the demagogic and manipulative leaders take advantage of the members’ emotional insecurities, that is, the need to be loyal to the herd and not lose touch with it. Such members are encouraged to view other socialists and progressive people who do not share the precise ideology of their group with deep hostility; thus, the emotional security of the members is shackled to the security of their specific herd. With such infantile mentality, political meetings and mobilizations against the common capitalist enemy often become bickering sessions where the egos of the parties involved is more important than a genuine dialogue to achieve clarity and unity in action. This may be the case even when the parties and groups agree on the basic ideas.

Under such conditions, the members of such parties and organizations always mix the justified anger against the system with the security of the herd, which is provided by such parties or organizations. Most members of these groups do not create a clear boundary between the political line of the group and their emotional needs that accompany a dependency on the group. Thus their emotional needs determine their adherence to the line even when it becomes irrational. The group uses such emotional dependency and channel the anger against the system toward a specific ideology and actions; they become beliefs and actions which the members have not arrived necessarily through independent and objective reasoning. Thus, the people in such organizations and parties are internally weak, insecure, and unable to relate to each other in a loving humanistic way. The bottom line is that the internal psychological life in such groups is not different than the life in other groups in bourgeois society. The social relationships within the socialist and the progressive movement is based most of the time on the establishment of cliques, friction, suspicion, bickering, subjective liking and disliking, and alienated hostility between people — all which booster the ability of the main enemy to penetrate and manipulate the movement.

By objective discussion I mean a real dialogue where people really listen, errors are admitted and assessed by objective reasoning; when this takes place common experience in action combined with dialogue leads to the narrowing of differences and to fusions of groups and parties. In general, objective discussion and common experience can lead to the enrichment of the socialist ideology, and to a higher unity of all the parties and groups who want to fight the system. But with alienated personalities dominating the progressive movement and the left, no objective discussions and practice that lead to real learning and better actions against the main enemy is possible. Dialogue becomes irrational and thoroughly subjective. I have seem situations where organizations had almost the same political lines, but discussion for unity always ended up in a bitter fight with accusations and counter accusations. When loyalty to a group and the leaders — who are always more right than the people of the other groups — plays the decisive role under the surface, no rational dialogue that leads to a change of position is possible. Neither is it possible to build solidarity and real camaraderie between such “socialists”, not to talk about deep personal connections and love.

While I have seen the above patterns over and over for many years, I am not trying to minimize the validity of different historical roots and programs of different socialist and progressive organizations. The subjective interpretation of different programs reflects the different historical roots of different groups. But unfortunately different programs also reflect different pressures to accommodate to capitalist society. Such pressures aggravates the friction between groups from different roots and programs; the political friction is exacerbated many times by the alienated hostile relationships between different groups and parties.

The specific ways in which the alienated interaction within the parties and the groups occurs depend on the political and historical background of the organizations. For example, in the Stalinists or pro-Stalinist parties and groups, oppositions are generally expelled without any discussions; and where the Stalinists held state power oppositions were imprisoned or killed. In the so called Trotskyist movement, on the other hand, oppositionists are debated. But the leadership normally degrade and belittle them psychologically; then the leaders de-facto ostracize them from the group by creating a psychological wall between the opposition and the rest of the members. The opposition is expelled after the hostility between the opposition and the rest of the organization reached a no returning point, that is, after the leaders managed to contain the loyal members who are driven by the fears of irrational belonging. The members, who are terrified to lose contact with the herd and for becoming isolated and ostracized, would support the expulsion of the opposition even when they have rational and objective doubts about the ouster. If you ask such members for the reasons for the expulsion — which many times is not based on justified wide principled differences — they would repeat the leaders’ rationalization for the expulsion. But if you carefully observe the emotional tone and the emotional expression on the face, you could see that such members did not arrive at an independent conclusion of their own; they rather rationalize their emotional dependence on the group.

The psychological features of the herd mentality, that is, the fear to feel and think differently than the rest of the herd, is a key psychological features of class society by which the people in power maintain control over the rest of society. The significance of the extension of such features into life of socialist parties and progressive organizations can hardly be exaggerated. It is impossible to overemphasize how harmful it is for the cause the so called marxists and socialists, and that they must start dealing with this seriously. Most socialists and marxists keep their critique of capitalism confined to the economy and politics. Yet to be a true socialist one must understand the significance of the alienating psychological traits, and how such traits interact with the fundamental political and economic features.

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