James Surowieki wrote: Generations of advertisers and business gurus have banked on the premises of Sigmund Freud's ''Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,'' a slender volume with a big argument: when people assemble en masse, all the raw material making up the individual psyche (libido, aggression, whatever) is also present, but on a gigantic scale. And the power for rational thought is thereby dwarfed. The crowd is considerably dumber than its smartest members. This explains, for example, Britney Spears, irrational economic exuberance and the occasional episode of public yearning for an authority figure to do the superego's job, whether by seizing state power (the fascist dictator model) or by going on television to say ''You're fired'' (the reality TV version).
Response Jim C: Here we can get into what the bourgeois economists call--and only lightly touch on if at all in most textbooks--"social capital" (institutions, power structures/relations designed to foster trust, hope, social cohesion, allowable forms of cooperation and "values" of the dominant class "shared" on mass levels, etc.) so that under capitalism for example: a) individual forms and levels of competition do not aggregate to socially destructive levels and forms; b) individual propensities--biological and social-- are harnessed and utilized to produce manageable, predictable and "optimal" forms and levels of behavior--on individual as well as mass levels--from the perspective of expanded reproduction of the essential elements of the whole system and the system itself; c) individuals and groups buy into the system and buy into the notion that anyone can make it in that system with "right and requisite" values, attitudes and behaviors; d)core values, survival imperatives, myths, traditions, power structures/relations, institutions etc will be seen as natural and inevitable--and superior to any others--rather than products of the historical level of development and specific mode of production dominant in the social formation of a given nation; e) human behavior--individually and collectively--is more manageable, predictable, controllable and changeable from the perspective--and in accordance with interests--of the dominant class; f) the types of values and personality-types necessary for mass markets, profits for power and power for profits, saving, investment, mass consumption, etc (Homo Oeconomicus) on the one hand and yet--and contradictorily--the type of "social person" who can be counted on--and manipulated--to join-in collective jingoistic nationalism and mass participation in pseudo/anti-democratic processes and institutions; etc.; g) individual and mass acceptance of the notion of the destiny and "natural order" of global hegemony and dominance by a particular social formation or mode of production; Social formations undergoing socialist transformation and construction, especially when surrounded by other social formations dominated by capitalism or monopoly capitalism or imperialism, especially when integrated into a global economy run on capitalist principles/relations/institutions, especially when relatively poor and having to develop productive forces rapidly to handle myriad accumulated social needs and to be competitive in global markets, will inevitably have to make some concessions to capitalist-based activities and forces--domestic and global--to survive, trade and develop.But such capitalist-based institutions and forces, and their accompanying and requisite social capital, will inevitably constitute subversive and corrosive "weeds in the garden" of socialist construction; "The lamb can only lie down and 'coexist' with the lion if the lion becomes a vegetarian..." Within any given social formation, with remnants of old modes of production and embryonic forms of new and emerging modes of production, capitalism and socialism cannot ultimately "co-exist.". It is the nature of real socialism, dictatorship of the proletariat, and in order to survive, to seek and attempt to progressively extinguish all remnants (weeds in the garden) of capitalism as they are fundamentally inconsistent with socialist construction, "social capital", relations and institutions; similarly, it is the nature--and requirement of expanded reproduction of capitalism as a system and those who run it--to regard all non-capitalist relations, values, institutions and practices as inherently subversive, threatening, contradictory and inimical to capitalism and to seek to subvert and destroy such whenever possible. Markets are not simply [potentially] "value-free" or "purely technical" systems/mechanisms for posing and determining the answers to the "What How/For Whom" questions in the course of price determination, signaling and information, resource allocation, rationing, clearing surpluses and shortages and generalized commodification. They require certain requisite "social capital" characteristic of capitalism in order to function. The types of individuals or personality types that are the most profitable to have as customers under capitalism (selfish, self-absorbed, egoistic/egotistical competitive, fad-driven, ultra-individualist, narrowly "rational", calculating, materialistic, unable to delay gratification or sacrifice for a higher cause, predatory for maximum profit/utility potential, etc) represent exactly the opposite of the types of individuals or personality types necessary for sustained socialist construction and all the sacrifices that will be necessary in a social formation surrounded by hostile capitalist social formations and integration into a global economy run on capitalist principles. In Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" on page 12, he notes that Bush was given his second briefing in office detailing the "three major threats to American national security": Osama bin Laden and Al Quaeda; increasing proliferation of WMDs; rise of China, especially its military--a "problem" seen as 5 to 15 years away. Why would China, a nation that has never initiated any form of aggressive action against the U.S. ever (but was threatened repeatedly with nuclear weapons) be seen as a threat to U.S. security? I would argue that the U.S. has a clear sense that socialism and capitalism can never co-exist anywhere for any sustained period of time--domestically in a given social formation or on a global level. And for now, the U.S. has opted to allow trade and other relations, imported mass consumerism and other elements of the requisite social capital of capitalism to penetrate Chinese society and soften-up/subvert socialist construction by progressively implanting elements of the social capital of capitalism to "co-exist" with the requisite social capital of socialism--like placing the lion next to the lamb without the lion becoming a vegetarian." Meanwhile we get more and more reports of young Chinese latching on to American fads, getting into mass consumerism, watching more mindless TV and reading less, subject to more malaise and apathy, yearning to leave their homeland for the bogus promises of the West, etc. When some of the demonstrators at Tianmen Square did their protest and produced a replica of the Statue of Liberty (suggesting the U.S. as a bastion/beacon of human rights and promoting the U.S. system as one that is desirable for China, etc) I, as a Blackfoot Indian, was in rage and sick to my stomach--they had no idea what bullshit they were peddling no matter what the merits of any of their grievances; and I have said the same to Chinese students here in my classes. Jim C.
