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
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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-
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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 word “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 hyper sensitivity 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), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise
inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to
themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as
inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians,
etc. are inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)
14. Feminists are desperately an