Today in History: Gustave Le Bon died on this day in 1931. He is best known for his 1895 work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology. This book became very influential, though he was ignored in his lifetime because he was critical of democracy and socialism. He wrote, "The Socialists of every school are loathe to admit the importance of intellectual superiority. Their high priest Marx understands by the term work nothing but manual labour, and relegates the spirit of invention, capacity, and direction, which has nevertheless transformed the world, to a second place. This hatred of intelligence on the part of the Socialists is well founded, for it is precisely this intelligence that will prove the eternal obstacle on which all their ideas of equality will shatter themselves."
Despite this, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini used his book to learn how to incite a mob.
Gustave le Bon has been reborn these past 2 years with the resurgence of civil unrest.
"Gustave Le Bon, the French philosopher who 126 years ago in The Psychology of Crowds, was the first thinker systematically to outline how herd psychology differs from that of the individual. Le Bon it was who observed that the consciousness bestowed by membership of a crowd can be transformative, possessing individual members with ‘a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think and act in a manner quite differently from that in which each individual would feel, think and act were that person in a state of isolation.’ In such a ‘psychological crowd’, individual personality disappears, brain activity is replaced by reflex activity: a lowering of intelligence, provoking a complete transformation of sentiments, which collectively may manifest as better and worse than those of the crowd’s constituent members. A crowd may just as easily become heroic or criminal, but is generally disposed towards destruction. ‘The ascendancy of crowds,’ wrote Le Bon, ‘indicates the death throes of a civilisation.’ The upward climb to civilisation is an intellectual process driven by individuals; the descent is a herd in stampede.
‘Crowds are only useful for destruction.’"~John Waters
His brilliance in understanding mobs is displayed in the following quotes:
"All the civilizations we know have been created and directed by small intellectual aristocracies, never by people in the mass. The power of crowds is only to destroy."
"In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated."
"The role of the scholar is to destroy chimeras, that of the statesman is to make use of them."
"If atheism spread, it would become a religion as intolerable as the ancient ones."
"One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it."
“Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instills them with fear.”
"In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest."
"A chain of logical argumentation is totally incomprehensible to crowds"
"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste."
"The leaders [of crowds] are not gifted with keen foresight, nor could they be, as this quality generally conduces to doubt and inactivity."
"The majority of men, especially among the masses, do not possess clear and reasoned ideas on any subject whatever outside their own speciality."
Of Socialism he wrote: "One nation, at least, will have to suffer . . . for the instruction of the world. It will be one of those practical lessons which alone can enlighten the nations who are amused with the dreams of happiness displayed before their eyes by the priests of the new [socialist] faith."
The Crowd, and Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds are two of the greatest texts from the 19th century that deal with crowd psychology and the irrational behavior that characterizes large groups of people acting en masse.
See also:
The Religious Madness of Mobs and Crowds by Gustave Le Bon 1896
Intelligence and Socialism by Gustave Le Bon 1899
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