One of the richer, if occasionally uneven, books in the Marxist canon; a chapter from Bukharin’s expansive 1921 work on historical materialism.

‘Social Psychology and Social Ideology’ (1921) by Nikolai Bukharin from Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. International Publishers, New York. 1925.

In our treatment of science and art, law and morality, etc., we were dealing with certain unified systems of forms, thoughts, rules of conduct, etc. Science is a unified, coordinated system of thoughts, embracing any subject of knowledge in its harmony. Art is a system of feelings, sensations, forms. Morality is a more or less rigid coordination of rules of conduct giving inner satisfaction to the individual. Many other ideologies may be similarly defined. But social life also includes a great mass of incoherent, non-coordinated material, by no means presenting an appearance of harmony, for instance, “ordinary, everyday thought” on any subject, as distinguished from “scientific thought”. The former is based on fragments of knowledge, on disorderly, scattered thoughts; it is a mass of contradictions, or incompletely digested notions, freakish conceptions. Only when this material has been subjected to the sharp test of criticism, and stripped of its contradictions, do we begin to approach science. But, alas, we live in “every-day” life! Among the countless mutual interactions between men, out of which social life is built up, there are many such non-coordinated elements: shreds of ideas (yet expressing a certain knowledge), feelings and wishes, tastes, modes of thought, undigested, “semi-conscious”, “vague conceptions of God” and “evil”, “just” and “unjust”, “beautiful” and “ugly”, habits and views of daily life; impressions and conceptions as to the course of social life; feelings of pleasure or pain, dissatisfaction and anger, love of conflict or boundless despair, many vague expectations and ideals; a sharp critical attitude toward the existing order of things, or a delighted acceptance of this “best of all worlds”; a sense of failure and disappointment, cares as to the future, a bold burning one’s bridges behind one, illusions, hopes of the future, etc., etc., ad infinitum. These phenomena, when of social dimensions, are the social psychology. The difference between the social (or “collective”) psychology and ideology is merely in their degree of systematization. The social psychology has often been apparent in bourgeois society in the mysterious envelope of the so called “popular spirit” or Zeitgeist, frequently conceived as a peculiar single social soul, in the literal sense of the word. But, of course, a folk-soul, in this sense, does not exist, any more than there can exist a society which is an organism with a single center of consciousness. Society then becomes a huge monster lying in the midst of nature

In the absence of such an organism, we can hardly speak of a mysterious folk-soul or a “popular spirit”, in this mystical sense. Yet we do speak of the social psychology, to distinguish it from the individual psychology. This apparent contradiction may be answered as follows: the mutual interaction between men produces a certain psychology in the individual. The “social” element exists not between men but in the brains of men; the contents of these brains are a product of the various conflicting influences, the various intersecting interactions. No mental life exists except that which is found in the individual “socialized” human being, who is subject to all such interactions; society is an aggregate of socialized humans and not a huge beast of whom the individual humans are the various organs.

G. Simmel excellently describes this: “When a crowd of people destroy a house, pronounce a judgment, utter a cry, we here have a summation of the actions of the individual persons, constituting a single event recognized as a realization of a single conception. A frequent confusion takes place here: the single physical result of many, subjective mental processes is interpreted as the result of a single mental process, namely, a process in the collective soul” (G. Simmel: Soziologie; Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, Leipzig, 1908, pp.559 560). Or–to use another example–when some new and greater thing than their individual aspirations or actions arises from the mutual interaction of men, “when examined closely ” we find that such cases also involve the conduct of individuals, who are influenced by the fact that each is surrounded by other individuals; this results in nervous, intellectual, suggestive, moral transformations of man’s mental constitution as compared with its operation with regard to different situations, in which such influences are absent. If these influences, mutually interacting, produce an internal modification in all the members of the group, in a like direction, their total action will no doubt have a different aspect from that of each individual, if each had been placed in a different, isolated situation” (ibid., p.560).

Yet such words as Zeitgeist, popular mood, etc., are not without meaning: they indicate the existence of two conditions that may be noted everywhere: they indicate the real existence, first, of a certain predominant current of thoughts, feelings, moods, a prevailing psychology, at any given time, giving color to the entire social life; second, the alteration of this prevailing psychology according to the “character of the epoch”, i.e., according to the conditions of social evolution.

The prevailing social psychology involves two principal elements: first, general psychological traits, perhaps found in all classes of society, for the situations of the various classes may have certain common elements in spite of class differences; second, the psychology of the ruling class, which enjoys such prominence in society as to set the pace for the entire social life and subject the other classes to its influence. The former case is illustrated in the feudal eras, in which the feudal lord and the peasant present certain common psychological traits: love of traditional practices, routine, submission to authority, fear of God, generally backward ideas, suspicion of innovation, etc. This results from the fact that both classes live in a stagnant and almost inert society; the more mobile psychology is later developed in the cities. Another cause of this condition is the unlimited authority enjoyed by the feudal lord on his estate and by the peasant in his family. The family then was an organized labor unit; in fact, the labor bond remains an important element in the peasant family to this day. The authority of the feudal lord is therefore found paralleled in the patriarchal order of labor relations in the family, as expressed in the complete submission to the “head of the family”: “the old man knows!” At a certain stage of social evolution, the Zeitgeist was a conservatism of feudal nobility and peasant serf. In addition, of course, the prevailing social psychology also presents factors characteristic of the feudal lords alone, which were disseminated only by virtue of the dominant position of the feudal nobility.

Much oftener, however, we encounter cases in which the social ‘psychology, i.e., the prevailing social psychology, is that of the ruling class. In the second chapter of the Communist Manifesto, Marx says: “The prevailing ideas of a period have always been simply the ideas of the ruling class.” The same might be said of the social psychology prevalent at a given time. Our discussion of ideologies has already shown a number of examples of feelings, thoughts, moods, predominant in society. Let us examine a specific case: the psychology of the Renaissance, with its highly developed pursuit of pleasure, its parading of Latin and Greek words, its ingenious erudition, its love of distinguishing one’s own ego from the “mob”; its elegant contempt for medieval superstition, etc.; this psychology obviously has nothing in common with that of the Italian peasantry of the same epoch; but was a product of the commercial cities, and of the financial cities, of the financial-commercial aristocracy in those cities. At precisely this period, the city began to control the provinces; the cities were ruled by bankers, who married into the families of the prominent nobility. The psychology of this class was the ruling psychology; it is expressed in many monuments – literary and other monuments – of the epoch. The development of the productive forces among the ruling class causes mighty levers to be fashioned for molding the psychology of the other classes. “The three or four metropolitan sheets will, in our future, determine the opinion of the provincial papers and therefore the popular will“, is the frank statement of Oswald Spengler, the philosopher of the German bourgeoisie of the present day.

Yet, it is obvious that no permanent, uniform, integral “social psychology” may exist in a class society; at most there are certain common traits, whose importance should not be exaggerated.

The same applies to so called “national characteristics”, “race psychology”, etc. It goes without saying that Marxists do not “in principle” deny the possibility of certain common traits in all the classes of one and the same nation. In one passage, for instance, Marx even allows for a certain influence of race, in the following words: “The same economic basis – the same in its principal conditions – may present infinite variations and gradations in their manifestation, owing to countless different empirical circumstances, natural conditions, racial relations, historical influences working from without, etc., which cannot be understood without analyzing these empirically given circumstances” (Marx: Capital, vol, iii). In other words, if any two societies are passing through the same stage of civilization (feudalism, let us say), they will nevertheless present certain (perhaps unimportant special traits. These special traits are the result of certain deviations: in the conditions of evolution, as well as of the special conditions of evolution in the past, It would be absurd to deny such peculiarities, as it is impossible to deny certain peculiarities in the “national character,” “temperament,” etc. To be sure, the presence of a class psychology may by no means be taken as a proof of certain special “national” traits (Marx, for instance, spoke of the philosophy of Bentham as a “specifically English” phenomenon; Engels described the socialism of the economist Rodbertus as a “Prussian junker socialism,” etc.). We may therefore also agree with Dr. E. Hurwicz–now Cunow’s companion-in-arms in the noble task of destroying the Bolsheviks–when he writes: “Vocational psychology does not exclude the possibility of national psychology”, and “the psychology of caste does not differ in this respect from the local psychology: neither precludes the possibility of a national psychology” (E. Hurwicz: Die Seelen der Völker, Gotha 1920, pp.14, 15). But the facts are these: Marxists explain these national traits on the basis of the actual course of social evolution; they do not merely point at them; in the second place, they do not overestimate these peculiarities, or remain oblivious of the forest because of its many trees, while the worshipers of “national psychology,” etc., lose sight of the forest altogether; in the third place, they do not set down the absurd things cooked up by learned and unlearned babblers and philistines on the subject of the “national soul”. Everyone knows, for example, that any Russian philistine considers philistinism to be a permanent and immutable quality of the Germans; yet the German workers are now proving that such is not the case. We all know also how much humbug has been written about the “Slavic spirit”. When Hurwicz exclaims with rapture that Bolshevism is merely a topsy-turvy Tsarism, that the government methods in both cases are the same, etc., he reveals to us not the properties of the “Russian spirit”, allegedly responsible for this similarity, but the qualities of the spirit of an international petty bourgeois, now serving as a prop to the Social-Democratic parties.

The class psychology is based on the aggregate of the conditions of life in the classes concerned, and these conditions are determined by the position of the classes in the economic and social political environment. But the intricacy of any social psychology must not be overlooked. For example, similarities of form may be found in quite different class psychologies; thus, two classes engaged in a life and death struggle with each other of course represent an entirely different content of feelings, aspirations, impressions, illusions, etc., while the form of their psychology may quite similar: passionate zeal, furious and fanatical aggression, even their specific forms of heroic psychology.

The fact that the class psychology is determined by the totality of the conditions of the class life, based on the general economic situation, should not lead us to ascribe the class psychology to selfish interest, which is a very frequent error. No doubt class interest is the main sinew of the class struggle, but class psychology includes many other elements. We have already observed that the philosophers of the ruling class in the period of the decline of the Roman Empire preached self-extermination with some success, because their preaching was an outgrowth of the psychology of this class, a psychology of repletion, satiety, of disgust with life. The causes for this psychology may be definitely traced; we have already found its roots in the parasitic rô1e of the ruling class, which did nothing and merely lived in order to consume, to try out, to surfeit itself with all things, as was natural in view of its economic situation, its function (or lack of function) in the general economy. The psychology of satiety and necromania was a class psychology. Yet we may not say that Seneca, when he preached suicide, was expressing the interest of his class. The hunger strikes in the Tsarist prisons, for example, were acts in the class struggle, a protest in order to fan the flame of conflict, a symbol of solidarity, a device to maintain the ranks of the fighters, and this struggle was dictated by class interests. At times, despair seizes the masses or certain groups, after a great defeat in the class struggle, which is of course connected with class interest, but the connection is somewhat peculiar: the conflict went on under the impulse of the hidden springs of interest, but now the fighting army has been defeated; the result is: disintegration, despair, a longing for miracles, a desire to escape mankind; thoughts turn heavenward. After the defeat of the great insurrections in Russia in the Seventeenth Century, which had taken the form of religious dissent, “protest assumed many varied forms under the influence of defeat and despair”: retirement to the wilderness, self-incineration. “Hundreds, even thousands, seek their death in the flames…ecstatic dreamers clothe themselves in pure funereal raiment and lie down in the coffins that have already been prepared, to wait for the crack of doom.” This psychology also finds expression in the two contemporary poems quoted by Melgunov

Dear Mother Desert,
Release me from earth’s sufferings,
Receive me in your arms,
Dear Mother Desert,
Kind Mother, keep me.

and:

Coffin of pine-wood,
There will I lie,
Waiting for the last trump.

It is obvious that the phenomenon of class psychology is of very complicated nature, not capable of direct interpretation as interest only, but always to be explained by the concrete environment in which the specific class has been placed.

In the psychological structure of society, i.e., among the various forms of the social psychology, we must not omit to mention the psychologies of groups, occupations, etc. There may be several groups within one class; thus, the bourgeoisie includes a bourgeoisie of high finance, a trading bourgeoisie and an industrial bourgeoisie; the working class includes the aristocracy of skilled labor, together with slightly skilled labor and wholly unskilled labor. Each of these groups has special interests and special characteristics; thus, the highly skilled worker likes his work and is even proud of being superior, as a worker, to the others; on the other hand, he is ambitious, and assumes certain bourgeois inclinations, together with his high collar. Each occupation bears its mark; when we berate the bureaucrats, we mean a certain professional psychology of negative virtue: routine, red-tape delays, precedence of form over substance, etc. Vocational types of psychology arise, their mental traits a direct result of the character of their activity, whence follows also a corresponding tinge in their ideology. Friedrich Engels says: “Among the practical politicians and the theorists in jurisprudence, and among the jurists in particular, this fact is first completely lost sight of. Since in each single instance the economic facts must take the form of juristic motives so as to be sanctioned in the form of law, and since, therefore, a backward view must be taken over the whole existing system of law, it follows therefrom (in the opinion of these persons, N. B.) that the juristic form appears to be the whole and the economic content nothing at all.” His trade psychology will quickly betray a man; a minute’s conversation will tell you whether you are dealing with a clerk, a butcher, a reporter, etc. It is a characteristic fact that all these traits are international; you find them everywhere. By the side of the class psychology, which is the plainest, most pregnant and most significant form of the social psychology, we find a group psychology, a vocational psychology, etc.; being determines consciousness. In this sense we may say that each grouping of men–even in an amateur chess club or chorus–imparts a certain-sometimes almost imperceptible–stamp on its members. But since the existence of a certain grouping of persons is nevertheless always associated with the economic structure of society, being ultimately dependent on the latter, it follows that all the varieties of the social psychology are quantities to be explained by the social mode of production, the economic structure of society.

What is the relation between the social psychology and the social ideology? The social psychology is a sort of supply-chamber for ideology; or, it may be compared with a salt solution out of which the ideology is crystallized. At the beginning of this section, we stated that the ideology is distinguished by the great coordination of its elements, i.e., the various feelings, thoughts, sensations, forms, of which it is composed. The ideology systematizes that which has hitherto been not systematized, i.e., the social psychology. The ideologies are a coagulated social psychology. For example, early in the history of the workers’ movement, there was a certain crude discontent among the working class, a sense of the “injustice” of the capitalist order, a vague desire to replace this system by some other system; we could not call this an ideology. Later, however, this vague tendency was definitely formulated. Things were coordinated, a set of demands (a program, platform) arose, a specific “ideal” began to appear, idealism, etc.; here we have an ideology. Or, we may find that the discomforts of a situation, and the aspiration to cast it off, find expression in a work of art; here also we have an ideology. It is sometimes difficult to draw the line sharply; the actual process is a slow solidification, consolidation, crystallization of the social ideology out of the social psychology. A change in the social psychology will of course result in a corresponding change in the social ideology, as we have pointed out above. The social psychology is constantly changing, simultaneously with the alterations in the economic conditions from which they grow, for the latter bring about a constant regrouping of these social forces, a growth of new relations, based on the successively altered levels of the productive forces as has been already point out.

Having given a number of examples in our discussion of ideology, we need not dwell upon the alterations in social psychology as connected with the alterations in ideology; we shall merely point out that the latest books are now devoting considerable attention to the question of the so called “spirit of capitalism”, ix., the psychology of the entrepreneurs. For instance, the works of Werner Sombart (Der Bourgeois, etc.), Max Weber, and more recently Professor Dr. Hermann Levy (Soziologische Studien über das englische Volk, Jena 1920). Marx wrote, in the First Volume of Capital: “Protestanism, by changing almost all the traditional holidays into workdays, plays an important part in the genesis of capital” (Chicago, 1915, p.303, footnote) Marx repeatedly points out that the bigoted, frugal, parsimonious, and at the same time energetic and persistent mentality of Protestanism, abhorring the pomp and luxury of Rome, is identical with the mentality of the rising bourgeoisie. People poked fun at this statement; but now prominent bourgeois scholars are developing this very theory of Marx, of course without giving credit to its originator. Sombart proves that the most varied traits (avarice for gold, untiring lust for adventure, inventive spirit, combined with calculation, reason, sobriety) gave rise to the so called capitalist spirit” by reason of their united presence. It goes without saying that this spirit could not have developed out of itself, but was shaped by an alteration in the social relations; parallel with the growth of the capitalist “body” proceeded a growth of the capitalist “spirit”. All the fundamental traits of the economic psychology are reversed: in the pre-capitalist era, the basic economic notion of the nobility was that of a “decent” life, “according to station”. “Money exists in order to be spent,” wrote Thomas Aquinas; things were managed poorly, irrationally, without proper bookkeeping; tradition and routine predominated; the tempo of life was slow (almost every other day a holiday) initiative and energy were lacking. On the other hand, the capitalist psychology, which replaced the feudal-chivalrous psychology, is based on initiative, energy, briskness, rejection of routine, rational calculation and reflection, love of accumulating riches, etc. The complete upheaval in men’s minds proceeded simultaneously with the complete upheaval in the production relations.

International Publishers was formed in 1923 for the purpose of translating and disseminating international Marxist texts and headed by Alexander Trachtenberg. It quickly outgrew that mission to be the main book publisher, while Workers Library continued to be the pamphlet publisher of the Communist Party.

PDF of full book: https://archive.org/download/dli.ministry.13983/E00417_Historical%2520Matrialism_text.pdf