And we were not
interested
in stopping that.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
Theory is wonderful and would hate to see them abolished, but too much tendency to level all men, all standards of workmanship and effort by equalizing pay.
Other objection is not enough democratic attitude by the membership, generally con- trolled by minority group.
" Subject emphasizes the compulsion imposed upon men to join but not to participate with the results of ignorant union leaders.
He empha- sizes the need to raise the standards of voting by members and to require rotation of office and high qualifications for officers.
He compares these adversely with business leaders.
(Government control? ) "There is too much tendency to level everything, doesn't give man opportunity to excel. " Subject emphasizes the mediocrity of government
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 667
workers, pay is insufficient to. attract the best calibre of men and no incentive
plans, etc.
(Threats to present government? ) "Probably most dangerous threat to our
government today, and that also applies to union org~nization, and life in general, 1s disinterest, the tendency to let the other fellow do 1t on the part of great num- bers of people so that things go on the way a few selfish men determine. "
The decisive twist is achieved by jumping from the very abstract idea of "equality and justice for all men" to the equally formalistic condemnation of "running the country by the party in power"-which happens to be the party of the New Deal. The vague cliche of an all-comprising democracy serves as an instrument against any specific democratic contents. It should not be overlooked, however, that some of his statements on unions-where he has some experience-make sense.
M122sa, a medium scorer who has been eighteen months at sea and is strongly interested in engineering, is a good example of stereotypy in politics employed by otherwise moderate people, and of its intimate relationship to ignorance. To this man one of the greatest political problems today is "the unions. " Describing them, he applies indiscriminately and without entering into the matter three current cliches-that of the social danger, that of gov- ernment interference, and that of the luxurious life of union leaders-simply by repeating certain formulae without caring much about their interconnec- tion or their consistency:
"For one thing they have too much power. Cross between the socialistic part of the union and the government . . . seems to go to the other extreme. Government inv:estigation . . . (subject seems rather confused in his ideas here). The unions . . . socialistic form in there. I know, I belonged to a few unions. They get up there and then call you brother and then drive off in a Cadillac. . . . Nine times out of ten the heads of the unions don't know anything of the trade. It's a good racket . . . "
Most of his subsequent answers are closely in line with a general pattern of reactionism, formulated mostly in terms of "I don't believe in it" without discussing the issue itself. The following passages may suffice as an illus- tration.
($zs,ooo limit on salaries? ) "I don't believe in that. "
(Most dangerous threats to present form of government? ) "I believe it's in the government itself. Too many powers of its own. "
(What ought to be done? ) "Going to have to solve a lot of other problems first. Get goods back on the market. "
(\Vhat about this conflict. between Russia on the one hand and England and this country on the other? ) "I don't particularly care for Russia and I don't particularly
'care for England. "
In this case, cli. ches are manifestly used in order to cover up lack of infor- mation. It is as if each question to which he does not know any specific answer conjures up the carry-overs of innumerable press slogans which he repeats in order to demonstrate that he is one of those who do not like to be
? 668 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
told and do like to think. Underlying is only a rigid pattern of yeas and nays. He is aware of how a man of his general political outlook should react to each political issue but he is not aware of the issues themselves. He therefore supplements his plus and minus marks by phrases which more often than not are mere gaucheries.
F z39 belongs to the type which is to be characterized in Chapter XIX as "rigid low. " Her most outstanding trait is her violent hatred of alcohol- which suggests deeper-lying "high" trends. Liquors are her Jews, as it were. She regards herself as a Christian Socialist and solves most problems not by discussing them but referring to what the religious socialist should think.
The break between her opinions and any kind of substantial experience is evidenced by the following statement:
"My favorite world statesman is Litvinov. I think the most dramatic speech of modern times is the one he made at the Geneva Conference when he pleaded for collective security. It has made us very happy to see the fog of ignorance and distrust surrounding the Soviet Union clearing away during this war. Things are not settled yet, though. There are many fascists in this country who would fight Roosevelt if they could. "
She has a ready-made formula for the problem of nonviolence in interna- tional affairs:
"Of course, I am an internationalist. Would I be a true Christian if I weren't? And I have always been a pacifist. Wars are completely unnecessary. This one was. That is, it could have been avoided if the democratic people had recognized their own interest early enough and taken the proper steps. But they did not. And now we ask ourselves: would the interests of the people of the world be advanced by a fascist victory? Obviously they would not. So we must support this war com- pletely because we are faced with a clear choice and cannot avoid it. "
She offers a clear example of the association of stereotypy and personaliza- tion. Whereas her political persuasion should induce her to think in objective socioeconomic terms, she actually thinks in terms of favorite people, prefer- ably famous ones, of humans who are public institutions as it were-of "human stereotypes. "
"My second favorite world statesman is our own President although, perhaps, I should say Mrs. Roosevelt. I don't think he would have been anything without her. She really made him what he is. I believe the Roosevelts have a very sincere interest in people and their welfare. There is one thing that bothers me about them though- specially Mrs. Roosevelt-that is-liquor. She is not against it and it seems to me she should know how much we would be improved as a people without it. "
She exhibits a significant characteristic of the low scorers' political stereo- typy: a kind of mechanical belief in the triumph of progress, the counterpart to the high scorers' frequent references to impending doom which is also a keynote of the above-quoted political statements of M359?
"All one has to do is look backward to feel optimistic. I would not be a true
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 669
Christian if I did not believe that man's progre~s is upward. W e are so much farther along than we were a century ago. Social legislation that was only a dream is an accomplished fact. "
b. ExAMPLES OF PERSONALIZATION. The tendency towards personalization feeds on the American tradition of personal democracy as expressed most strikingly by the power delegated to the executive branch of the government by our Constitution, and also on that aspect of traditional American liberalism which regards competition as a contest between men, where the better man is likely to conquer. Cause and effect seem to be somewhat reversed: whereas in market economy the supposedly "better man" is defined by competitive success, people have come to think that success falls to the better man. Con- sistent with this is the highly personalized character of political propaganda, particularly in electioneering where the objective issues at stake are mostly hidden behind the exaltation of the individuals involved, often in categories which have but very little to do with the functions those individuals are supposed to fulfill. The ideal of a democracy, where the people have their immediate say, is frequently misused under conditions of today's mass so- ciety, as an ideology which covers up the omnipotence of objective social tendencies and, more specifically, the control exercised by the party machines.
The material on personalization is both abundant and monotonous. A few examples may suffice.
The low-scoring man, Mzz6, prefers Wallace to Dewey because
"Wallace is the better man and I usually vote for the better man. "
Here personalization is the more striking since these two figures are actually defined by objectively antagonistic platforms, whereas it is more than doubt- ful whether the interviewee, or, for that matter, the great majority of the American people, is in any position to say what they are like "as men. "
The high-scoring man, M 102, employs almost literally the same expression as Mzz6:
". . . put down D~mocratic, but I never thought much about the party. I don't vote for the party but for the best man. "
Professed belief in political theories is no antidote for personalization. Mz 17, another "low" man, regards himself as a "scientific socialist" and is full of confidence in sociological psychology. But when asked about American
? parties, he comes out with the following statement:
"I don't know about that. I'm only interested in the man and his abilities. I don't care what party he belongs to. (What man do you like? ) F. D. R. is one of the greatest. I did not like him when he was elected but I admit I was wrong. He did a marvelous job. He was concerned with the benefit of the country. Truman is doing a good job so far. The senators and congressmen are run-of-the-mill. Dewey
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
is outstanding, I think; he has potentialities. He is apparently sincere and honest and concerned with the whole country. He did a good job as District Attorney. "
More aspects of personalization will be described when our interviewees' attitudes towards Roosevelt are under consideration. Here, we content our- selves with suggesting two qualities which seem to play a great role in the personalization complex and which recur regularly in our high scorers' statements about Dewey: Honesty and Sincerity.
F114, a high-scoring woman, knows that Dewey "is strong, young, cour- ageous, honest. He may have faults, but they're useful faults. I felt he was a strong, young person. " Obviously, this statement is linked to the adulation of strength that plays so large a role in the psychology of our high scorers
(cf. Chapter VII). The honesty of the former D. A. is derived from his much- advertised drive against political racketeering and corruption. He is sup- posed to be honest because he has exterminated, according to his propa- gandist build-up, the dishonest. Honesty seems largely to be a rationalization for vindictiveness. Speaking psychologically, the image of Dewey is a projec- tion of the punitive superego, or rather one of those collective images which replace the superego in an externalized, rigid form. The praise of his honesty, together with the repeated emphasis on his strength and youth, fall within the "strong man" pattern.
Fu7, another high scorer, of the Professional Women group, has a maximal score on A-S and is generally extremely conservative. Her similarly personalized appraisal of Dewey strikes a slightly different note but fits within the same pattern: ?
She feels that Dewey knows the value of money better than Roosevelt, because he came from a family that did not have too much.
The punitiveness behind the praise of the honest man shows itself in this example as hatred against comfortable living, against the "snobbish upper class" who supposedly enjoy the things which one has to deny to oneself. Dewey, per contra, is the symbol of one's own frustrations and is uncon- sciously, i. e. , sadomasochistically, expected to perpetuate frustration. What he seems to stand for within the minds of the high-scoring subjects is a state of affairs in which everybody has "learned the value of a dollar. " Identifica- tion with him is easy because as a prospective President he has the halo of power whereas his frugality is that of the middle-class subject herself.
Perhaps it is not accidental that infatuation with honesty is particularly frequent among women. They see life from the consumer's side; they do not want to be cheated, and therefore the noisy promise of honesty has some appeal to them.
As to the differentiation between high and low scorers with regard to per- sonalization, an impression may tentatively be formulated which is hard to substantiate but consistent with our clinical findings. The element of per-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 67 I
sonalization that counts most heavily with the low scorers seems to be con- fidence, the idea that public figures are good, friendly fathers who take care of one, or of the "underdog. " It seems to be derived from an actual life relationship to one's parents, from unblocked positive transference. This observation will be given relief when the attitude of our subjects towards Roosevelt is discussed. Conversely, the personal trait most appreciated by the high scorer seems to be strength. Social power and control, the ultimate focus of their identification, is translated by the personalization mechanism into a quality inherent in certain individuals. The symbols of the powers that be are drawn from the imagery of a stern father to whom one "looks up. "
One last aspect of personalization may be mentioned. To know something about a person helps one to seem "informed" without actually going into the matter: it is easier to talk about names than about issues, while at the same time the names are recognized identification marks for all current topics. Thus, spurious eersonalization is an ideal behavior pattern for the semi- erudite, a device somewhere in the middle between complete ignorance and that kind of "knowledge" which is being promoted by mass communica- tion and industrialized culture.
To sum up: ever more anonymous and opaque social processes make it in- creasingly difficult to integrate the limited sphere of one's personal life experi- ence with objective social dynamics. Social alienation is hidden by a surface phenomenon in which the very opposite is being stressed: personalization of political attitudes and habits offers compensation for the dehumanization of the social sphere which is at the bottom of most of today's grievances. As less and less actually depends on individual spontaneity in our political and social organization, the more people are likely to cling to the idea that the man is everything and to seek a substitute for their own social impotence in the supposed omnipotence of great personalities.
3. SURFACE IDEOLOGY AND REAL OPINION
The alienation between the political sphere and the life experience of the individual, which the latter often tries to master by psychologically deter- mined intellectual makeshifts such as stereotypy and personalization, some- times results in a gap between what the subject professes to think about poli- tics and economy and what he really thinks. His "official" ideology conforms to what he supposes he has to think; his real ideas are an expression of his more immediate personal needs as well as of his psychological urges. The "official" ideology pertains to the objectified, alienated sphere of the political,
'the "real opinion" to the subject's own sphere, and the contradiction between the two expresses their irreconcilability.
Since this formal structure of political thinking has an immediate bearing upon one of the key phenomena of susceptibility to fascism, namely upon pseudoconservatism, it may be appropriate to offer a few examples here.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Fzz6, a prejudiced woman of the University Extension Group, offers an example of a conflict between surface ideology and real attitude through her somewhat deviate pattern of scale scores: she is middle on E and F but low on PEC. In her case, the deeper determinants are doubtless potentially fascist as evidenced particularly by her strong racial prejudice against both Negroes and Jews. In other political issues the picture is highly ambivalent. Charac- teristically, she classes herself as a Democrat, but voted for Willkie and then for Dewey. She "wasn't against Roosevelt," but her statement that "no man is indispensable" thinly veils her underlying hostility. She
"knew what Hoover stood for, and I had no use for him. But that didn't mean I had to worship Roosevelt. He was a good man, but when I heard people weeping and wailing over his death, I was just disgusted. As though he were indispensable. "
The amazing irregularity is an emphatically pro-Russian statement and an outspokenly antifascist attitude in international politics:
"Now, I am a great admirer of Russia. Perhaps I shouldn't say it out loud, but I am. I think they are really trying to do something for all the people. Of course there was a lot of suffering and bloodshed but think of what they had to struggle against. My husband really gets disturbed about this. He says I ought to go to Russia if I like communism so much. He says that to admire communism is to want a change and he thinks it is very wrong for me to even sound as though I wanted any change when we have enough and are comfortable and are getting along all right. I tell him that is very selfish and also that some people under the Czar might have felt that way but when the situation got so bad there was a revolution they got wiped out too. (American Communists? ) Well, I couldn't say because I don't really know anything about them.
"I don't hold the United States blameless. I think we have lots of faults. We talk now as though we had always hated war and tried to stop this one. That isn't true. There were ways to stop this war if they had wanted to. I remember when Mus- solini moved on Ethiopia. I always think of that as the real beginning of this war.
And we were not interested in stopping that. My husband doesn't like me to criti- cize the United States. "
The frequent interspersion of this statement with reference to disagreements with her husband, from whom she is "very much different politically" and with whom she has "terrible arguments" leads us to assume that her "progres- sive" political views in areas apparently not highly affect-laden by her are rationalizations of her strong resentment of the man of whom she says "I don't think we can live for ourselves alone. " One is tempted to hypothesize that she wants him to get mad at her when she speaks in favor of Russia. In her case, the broad-mindedness and rationality of surface opinion seems to be conditioned by strong underlying, repressed irrationalities:
Interviewer did not have much success with very personal data. She turned aside questions that came close to her deeper feelings. There was no depth to the discus- sion of her husband.
When it comes, however, to political topics which, for some reason unex-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 673
plored in the interview, really mean something to this subject, she forgets all about her own rationality and gives vent to her vindictiveness though with a bad conscience, as evidenced by her previously quoted statement (Chap-
ter XVI) that "she is not very proud of her anti-Semitic bias. "
Mpo, of the University Extension Testing Class, is a low-scoring man, hesitant, apologetic, shy, and unaggressive. He wants to become a landscape architect. His political views are consciously liberal and definitely nonpreju- diced. He struggles to maintain his liberalism continuously, but this is not easy for him wi\:h regard to certain political matters, his impulses in many instances disavowing what he states. He begins with the typical low scorer's
statement:
"I am afraid I don't have as many ideas about politics and government as I should, but I think-a lot of people are more liberal now than they have been recendy. Possibly some like the change that is taking place in England-I don't know. "
He first takes a mildly antistrike attitude:
"I don't know, I cannot see that, as just a straight demand, without taking into consideration the company and its ties and all that. I have not read much about that but . . . in a large company . . . maybe they might be able to take it, all right, but in little shops . . . and if it did go through, and even if it did not have disastrous (effects) on business closing . . . price rises would make it come out even anyway. I guess I am really not in favor of strikes but I can see it just about. . . . "
Then he talks himself into a more definite stand against strikes, introduced by the still democratic "getting together" formula.
"They ought to get together and give, maybe, a 20 per cent or 30 per cent raise, then maybe kinda split it . . . and these strikes . . . just start at the wrong end . . . because if the strike is setded . . . they still have to come to some sort of agreement . . . and it's gonna be forced and men'll be driven . . . I guess human nature just is not that way but. . . ? "
The last statement, rather confused, actually belongs to the high-scorer pat- tern concerning the inhert badness of human nature (cf. Chapter VII).
After he has made this turn, he goes on with the usual high scorer's con- demnation of P AC, government control, etc. , and ends up with an ambivalent statement about minimum wage-hour legislation:
"Well, things like that I guess if-1 guess they are necessary-! guess maybe I am an idealist-! don't think there should have been a minimum wage law because I think the employer should pay his employee a living wage and if he cannot pay that, well, the person does not have to work there but if the employer cannot pay that, he is not going to stay in business. . . . "
It is the general trend rather than any specific statement which bears wit- ness to the wish to be politically progressive and the very definite changes of mind as soon as concrete issues are raised. This man's "political instincts" -if this term is allowed-are against his official progressiveness. One might
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
well infer from this observation that one can differentiate better between po- litical potentials by looking at deeper psychological impulses than by look- ing at avowed ideology.
Something similar can be observed with the medium-scoring man Mzz8, of the Extension Psychology Class group, a registered Democrat. He was middle on A-S but low on F and low-middle on E. It is the interviewer's im- pression that he is potentially "low" but that certain personality factors prevent him from going all the way. The exceptional aspect about him may well be explained through the conflict between different opinional layers. In terms of "big" and comparatively abstract political issues, he comes out with a "progressive" statement.
"There is a trend toward socialism, I don't know how modified. The conflict between labor and business will probably be mediated . by the government. The government will probably hold the balance of power in labor-business conflicts. The emphasis now is on free enterprise but that often results in monopoly, the big concerns squeezing the little guys to death. There is too much of a gap between the rich and the poor. People climb up by pushing others down, with no regulation. For this reason, government should have more influence, economically, whether or not it goes as far as socialism. "
The interviewer happened to ride with the subject from Berkeley to San Francisco and continued the discussion in a more informal, unofficial way, touching the subject matter of unionism. In this context a classic example of the gap between official ideology and political thinking in terms of one's own immediate interests occurred:
He thinks the C. I. 0 . is better than the A. F. of L. and he thinks that unions ought to extend their functions even more in political and educational and higher manage- ment brackets, but he himself won't join the Federal Workers Union which he would be eligible to join because he feels they are not enough concerned with the problems of the higher level incomes, that they are too much interested in keeping the wages of the poorer groups above a certain minimum. He wishes they would be concerned with promotions and upgrading and developing good criteria by which people could be promoted.
-~ The Canadian M 934, again a "medium" of the Public Speaking Class, is studying to become a minister. He calls himself "very far over on the left wing" but qualifies this immediately by the statement: .
". . . I'm of a practical nature and I would not vote for the socialists . . . espe- cially if I thought they would get in. "
To him, the practical is irreconcilable with socialism. The latter is all right as an idea, as a stimulant, as it were, but heaven forbid that it should ma- terialize.
"I would vote . . . only to maintain socialist opposition . . . to keep the existing government from going too far to the right . . . but don't think they have the
? . .
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 675 experience to . . ? put their. socialist program into, effect . . . and I think their
program has to be modified. "
He praises the British Labour Government but actually only because it has not carried through a socialist program, an abstinence interpreted by the interviewee as a sign of "political experience. "
"Well . . . I think they were ready for the job . . . aren't trying to change social order in one fell swoop . . . I think that is an evidence of their maturity. "
This subject wants to be endowed with the prestige of a left-wing intellectual while at the same time, as an empirical being, he is manifestly afraid of a concrete materialization of ideas to which he subscribes in the abstract.
It is hardly accidental that in these cases the overt ideology is always pro- gressive, the real opinion of an opposite character. This would seem to have something to do with established democracy in this country, which makes the expression of democratic ideas the thing to be done, while the opposite is, ? in a certain way, unorthodox. There ,is reason to believe that the fascist potential today shows itself largely in the maintenance of traditional ideas which may be called either liberal or conservative, whereas the underlying "political instinct," fed largely by unconscious forces of the personality, is completely different. :This will be elaborated in the following section.
4. PSEUDOCONSERV A TISM
Our analysis of the questionnaire findings on PEC (Chapter V) has led to a differentiation between those who are high on PEC but low on E, and those who are high on both. This distinction was interpreted in terms of genuine and pseudoconservatives, the former supporting not only capitalism in its liberal, individualistic form but also those tenets of traditional Ameri- canism which are definitely antirepressive and sincerely democratic, as indi- cated by an unqualified rejection of antiminority prejudices. Our interview material allows us to give more relief to this construct and also to qualify it in certain respects. Before we go into some details of the pseudoconserva- tive's ideology, we should stress that our assumption of a pseudoconservative pattern of ideology is in agreement with the total trend of our psychological findings. The idea is that the potentially fascist character, in the specific sense given to this concept through our studies, is not only on the overt level but throughout the make-up of his personality a pseudoconservative rather than a genuine conservative. The psychological structure that corresponds to pseudoconservatism is conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness on the ego level, with violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. These contradictory trends are borne out particularly in those sections of our study where the range between the two poles of the unconscious and the conscious is widest, above all, where the T. A. T. is con- sidered in relation to the clinical parts of the interviews. Traits such as au-
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
thoritarian aggressiveness and vindictiveness may be regarded as inter- mediary between these antagonistic trends of the prejudiced personality. When turning to ideology which belongs in the context of psychological determinants here under discussion, to the realm of rationalization, it should be remembered that rationalizations of "forbidden" impulses, such as the drive for destruction, never completely succeed. While rationalization emas- culates those urges which are subject to taboos, it does not make them disap- pear completely but allows them to express themselves in a "tolerable," modified, indirect way, conforming to the social requirements which the ego is ready to accept. Hence even the overt ideology of pseudoconservative persons is by no means unambiguously conservative, as they would have us believe, not a mere reaction-formation against underlying rebelliousness; rather, it indirectly admits the very same destructive tendencies which are held at bay by the individual's rigid identification with an externalized super- ego. This break-through of the nonconservative element is enhanced by cer- tain supra-individual changes in today's ideology in which traditional values, such as the inalienable rights of each human being, are subject to a rarely articulate but nevertheless very severe attack by ascendent forces of crude repression, of virtual condemnation of anything that is deemed weak. There is reason to believe that those developmental tendencies of our society which point into the direction of some more or less fascist, state capitalist organiza- tion bring to the fore formerly hidden tendencies of violence and discrimina- tion in ideology. All fascist movements officially employ traditional ideas and values but actually give them an entirely different, antihumanistic meaning. The reason that the pseudoconservative seems to be such a characteristically modern phenomenon is not that any new psychological element has been added to this particular syndrome, which was probably established during the last four centuries, but that objective social conditions make it easier
for the character structure in question to express itself in its avowed opinions. It is one of the unpleasant results of our studies, which has to be faced squarely, that this process of social acceptance of pseudoconservatism has gone a long way-that it has secured an indubitable mass basis. In the opinions of a number of representative high scorers, ideas both of political conservatism and traditional liberalism are frequently neutralized and used as a mere cloak for repressive and ultimately destructive wishes. The pseudoconservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institu- tions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.
The pattern of pseudoconservatism is unfolded in the interviewer's de- scription of M zag, another high-scoring man, a semifascist parole officer:
On his questionnaire, this man writes down "Republican" as the political party of his preference, and then scratches it out. He agrees with the anti-New Deal Democrats and the Willkie-type Republicans and disagrees with the New Deal
. .
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 677
Democrats and the traditional Republicans. This is cleared up in his interview when he says that the party does not mean anything, the candidate is the thing. 3
Asked what is his conception of the Willkie-type Republican, he says he thinks of the Willkie supporters as the same as the Dewey supporters. Big business favored both Willkie and Dewey.
The score 67 on PEC is high-middle. An examination of the individual items seems to show that he is not a true conservative in the sense of the rugged indi- vidual. True, he agrees with most of the PEC items, going to plus 3 on the Child- should-learn-the-value-of-the-dollar and the Morgan and Ford items, but marking most of the others plus 1 or plus 2, but, be it noted, he does not agree that depres- sions are like headaches, that businessmen are more important than artists and professors; and he believes the government should guarantee everybody an income, that there should be increased taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, and that socialized medicine would be a good thing. He goes to plus 3 on the last item. Thus, it appears that he favors some kind of social function on the part of the government, but believes that the control should be in the proper hands. This is cleared up by the interview. Before becoming a policeman 6~{! years ago, this man was in the hospital insurance business. He says he had first to battle with the A. M. A. , who did not favor any kind of medical insurance; and later he thought it wise to give up the business because state medicine was in the offing.
In summing up his position concerning medical insurance, he says:
"I like the collectiveness of it, but believe private business could do it better than the government. The doctors have butchered the thing and the politicians would do worse. People need this sort of thing and I like it in theory if it is run right. "
Thus it becomes clear, according to the interviewer, that he has some kind of collectivistic value system but believes that the control should be in the hands of the group with whom he can identify himself. This is clearly the Ford and Morgan sort of group rather than labor unions which he opposes.
The decisive thing about this man is that he has, in spite of his general re- actionism and his all-pervasive ideas of power-which are evidenced by most of the other sections of the interview-socialistic leanings. This, however, does not refer to socialism in the sense of nationalizing the means of production but to his outspoken though inarticulate wish that the system of free enter- prise and competition should be replaced by a state-capitalist integration where the economically strongest group, that is to say, heavy industry, takes control and organizes the whole life process of society without further inter- ference by democratic dissension or by groups whom he regards as being in control only on account of the process of formal democracy, but not on the basis of the "legitimate" real economic power behind them.
This "socialist," or rather, pseudosocialist, element of pseudoconservatism, actually defined only by antiliberalism, serves as the democratic cloak for antidemocratic wishes. Formal democracy seems to this kind of thinking to
3 Personalization, as indicated by these sentences, has an obvious fascist potential. It enhances the individual as against any objective anonymous system of checks and bal- ances, against democratic control. Behind the adulation of the "great man" looms, in the present situation, the readiness to "follow the leader. "
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
be too far away from "the people," and the people will have their right only if the "inefficient" democratic processes are substituted by some rather ill- defined strong-arm system.
M6pA, another high-scoring man, a San Quentin prisoner, convicted of first-degree murder, is a good example of pseudodemocratism as a particular aspect of pseudoconservatism.
(What do you think of political trends today? ) "We have got a persecutor in California for governor . . . don't put that in.
(Government control? ) "There is too much tendency to level everything, doesn't give man opportunity to excel. " Subject emphasizes the mediocrity of government
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 667
workers, pay is insufficient to. attract the best calibre of men and no incentive
plans, etc.
(Threats to present government? ) "Probably most dangerous threat to our
government today, and that also applies to union org~nization, and life in general, 1s disinterest, the tendency to let the other fellow do 1t on the part of great num- bers of people so that things go on the way a few selfish men determine. "
The decisive twist is achieved by jumping from the very abstract idea of "equality and justice for all men" to the equally formalistic condemnation of "running the country by the party in power"-which happens to be the party of the New Deal. The vague cliche of an all-comprising democracy serves as an instrument against any specific democratic contents. It should not be overlooked, however, that some of his statements on unions-where he has some experience-make sense.
M122sa, a medium scorer who has been eighteen months at sea and is strongly interested in engineering, is a good example of stereotypy in politics employed by otherwise moderate people, and of its intimate relationship to ignorance. To this man one of the greatest political problems today is "the unions. " Describing them, he applies indiscriminately and without entering into the matter three current cliches-that of the social danger, that of gov- ernment interference, and that of the luxurious life of union leaders-simply by repeating certain formulae without caring much about their interconnec- tion or their consistency:
"For one thing they have too much power. Cross between the socialistic part of the union and the government . . . seems to go to the other extreme. Government inv:estigation . . . (subject seems rather confused in his ideas here). The unions . . . socialistic form in there. I know, I belonged to a few unions. They get up there and then call you brother and then drive off in a Cadillac. . . . Nine times out of ten the heads of the unions don't know anything of the trade. It's a good racket . . . "
Most of his subsequent answers are closely in line with a general pattern of reactionism, formulated mostly in terms of "I don't believe in it" without discussing the issue itself. The following passages may suffice as an illus- tration.
($zs,ooo limit on salaries? ) "I don't believe in that. "
(Most dangerous threats to present form of government? ) "I believe it's in the government itself. Too many powers of its own. "
(What ought to be done? ) "Going to have to solve a lot of other problems first. Get goods back on the market. "
(\Vhat about this conflict. between Russia on the one hand and England and this country on the other? ) "I don't particularly care for Russia and I don't particularly
'care for England. "
In this case, cli. ches are manifestly used in order to cover up lack of infor- mation. It is as if each question to which he does not know any specific answer conjures up the carry-overs of innumerable press slogans which he repeats in order to demonstrate that he is one of those who do not like to be
? 668 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
told and do like to think. Underlying is only a rigid pattern of yeas and nays. He is aware of how a man of his general political outlook should react to each political issue but he is not aware of the issues themselves. He therefore supplements his plus and minus marks by phrases which more often than not are mere gaucheries.
F z39 belongs to the type which is to be characterized in Chapter XIX as "rigid low. " Her most outstanding trait is her violent hatred of alcohol- which suggests deeper-lying "high" trends. Liquors are her Jews, as it were. She regards herself as a Christian Socialist and solves most problems not by discussing them but referring to what the religious socialist should think.
The break between her opinions and any kind of substantial experience is evidenced by the following statement:
"My favorite world statesman is Litvinov. I think the most dramatic speech of modern times is the one he made at the Geneva Conference when he pleaded for collective security. It has made us very happy to see the fog of ignorance and distrust surrounding the Soviet Union clearing away during this war. Things are not settled yet, though. There are many fascists in this country who would fight Roosevelt if they could. "
She has a ready-made formula for the problem of nonviolence in interna- tional affairs:
"Of course, I am an internationalist. Would I be a true Christian if I weren't? And I have always been a pacifist. Wars are completely unnecessary. This one was. That is, it could have been avoided if the democratic people had recognized their own interest early enough and taken the proper steps. But they did not. And now we ask ourselves: would the interests of the people of the world be advanced by a fascist victory? Obviously they would not. So we must support this war com- pletely because we are faced with a clear choice and cannot avoid it. "
She offers a clear example of the association of stereotypy and personaliza- tion. Whereas her political persuasion should induce her to think in objective socioeconomic terms, she actually thinks in terms of favorite people, prefer- ably famous ones, of humans who are public institutions as it were-of "human stereotypes. "
"My second favorite world statesman is our own President although, perhaps, I should say Mrs. Roosevelt. I don't think he would have been anything without her. She really made him what he is. I believe the Roosevelts have a very sincere interest in people and their welfare. There is one thing that bothers me about them though- specially Mrs. Roosevelt-that is-liquor. She is not against it and it seems to me she should know how much we would be improved as a people without it. "
She exhibits a significant characteristic of the low scorers' political stereo- typy: a kind of mechanical belief in the triumph of progress, the counterpart to the high scorers' frequent references to impending doom which is also a keynote of the above-quoted political statements of M359?
"All one has to do is look backward to feel optimistic. I would not be a true
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 669
Christian if I did not believe that man's progre~s is upward. W e are so much farther along than we were a century ago. Social legislation that was only a dream is an accomplished fact. "
b. ExAMPLES OF PERSONALIZATION. The tendency towards personalization feeds on the American tradition of personal democracy as expressed most strikingly by the power delegated to the executive branch of the government by our Constitution, and also on that aspect of traditional American liberalism which regards competition as a contest between men, where the better man is likely to conquer. Cause and effect seem to be somewhat reversed: whereas in market economy the supposedly "better man" is defined by competitive success, people have come to think that success falls to the better man. Con- sistent with this is the highly personalized character of political propaganda, particularly in electioneering where the objective issues at stake are mostly hidden behind the exaltation of the individuals involved, often in categories which have but very little to do with the functions those individuals are supposed to fulfill. The ideal of a democracy, where the people have their immediate say, is frequently misused under conditions of today's mass so- ciety, as an ideology which covers up the omnipotence of objective social tendencies and, more specifically, the control exercised by the party machines.
The material on personalization is both abundant and monotonous. A few examples may suffice.
The low-scoring man, Mzz6, prefers Wallace to Dewey because
"Wallace is the better man and I usually vote for the better man. "
Here personalization is the more striking since these two figures are actually defined by objectively antagonistic platforms, whereas it is more than doubt- ful whether the interviewee, or, for that matter, the great majority of the American people, is in any position to say what they are like "as men. "
The high-scoring man, M 102, employs almost literally the same expression as Mzz6:
". . . put down D~mocratic, but I never thought much about the party. I don't vote for the party but for the best man. "
Professed belief in political theories is no antidote for personalization. Mz 17, another "low" man, regards himself as a "scientific socialist" and is full of confidence in sociological psychology. But when asked about American
? parties, he comes out with the following statement:
"I don't know about that. I'm only interested in the man and his abilities. I don't care what party he belongs to. (What man do you like? ) F. D. R. is one of the greatest. I did not like him when he was elected but I admit I was wrong. He did a marvelous job. He was concerned with the benefit of the country. Truman is doing a good job so far. The senators and congressmen are run-of-the-mill. Dewey
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
is outstanding, I think; he has potentialities. He is apparently sincere and honest and concerned with the whole country. He did a good job as District Attorney. "
More aspects of personalization will be described when our interviewees' attitudes towards Roosevelt are under consideration. Here, we content our- selves with suggesting two qualities which seem to play a great role in the personalization complex and which recur regularly in our high scorers' statements about Dewey: Honesty and Sincerity.
F114, a high-scoring woman, knows that Dewey "is strong, young, cour- ageous, honest. He may have faults, but they're useful faults. I felt he was a strong, young person. " Obviously, this statement is linked to the adulation of strength that plays so large a role in the psychology of our high scorers
(cf. Chapter VII). The honesty of the former D. A. is derived from his much- advertised drive against political racketeering and corruption. He is sup- posed to be honest because he has exterminated, according to his propa- gandist build-up, the dishonest. Honesty seems largely to be a rationalization for vindictiveness. Speaking psychologically, the image of Dewey is a projec- tion of the punitive superego, or rather one of those collective images which replace the superego in an externalized, rigid form. The praise of his honesty, together with the repeated emphasis on his strength and youth, fall within the "strong man" pattern.
Fu7, another high scorer, of the Professional Women group, has a maximal score on A-S and is generally extremely conservative. Her similarly personalized appraisal of Dewey strikes a slightly different note but fits within the same pattern: ?
She feels that Dewey knows the value of money better than Roosevelt, because he came from a family that did not have too much.
The punitiveness behind the praise of the honest man shows itself in this example as hatred against comfortable living, against the "snobbish upper class" who supposedly enjoy the things which one has to deny to oneself. Dewey, per contra, is the symbol of one's own frustrations and is uncon- sciously, i. e. , sadomasochistically, expected to perpetuate frustration. What he seems to stand for within the minds of the high-scoring subjects is a state of affairs in which everybody has "learned the value of a dollar. " Identifica- tion with him is easy because as a prospective President he has the halo of power whereas his frugality is that of the middle-class subject herself.
Perhaps it is not accidental that infatuation with honesty is particularly frequent among women. They see life from the consumer's side; they do not want to be cheated, and therefore the noisy promise of honesty has some appeal to them.
As to the differentiation between high and low scorers with regard to per- sonalization, an impression may tentatively be formulated which is hard to substantiate but consistent with our clinical findings. The element of per-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 67 I
sonalization that counts most heavily with the low scorers seems to be con- fidence, the idea that public figures are good, friendly fathers who take care of one, or of the "underdog. " It seems to be derived from an actual life relationship to one's parents, from unblocked positive transference. This observation will be given relief when the attitude of our subjects towards Roosevelt is discussed. Conversely, the personal trait most appreciated by the high scorer seems to be strength. Social power and control, the ultimate focus of their identification, is translated by the personalization mechanism into a quality inherent in certain individuals. The symbols of the powers that be are drawn from the imagery of a stern father to whom one "looks up. "
One last aspect of personalization may be mentioned. To know something about a person helps one to seem "informed" without actually going into the matter: it is easier to talk about names than about issues, while at the same time the names are recognized identification marks for all current topics. Thus, spurious eersonalization is an ideal behavior pattern for the semi- erudite, a device somewhere in the middle between complete ignorance and that kind of "knowledge" which is being promoted by mass communica- tion and industrialized culture.
To sum up: ever more anonymous and opaque social processes make it in- creasingly difficult to integrate the limited sphere of one's personal life experi- ence with objective social dynamics. Social alienation is hidden by a surface phenomenon in which the very opposite is being stressed: personalization of political attitudes and habits offers compensation for the dehumanization of the social sphere which is at the bottom of most of today's grievances. As less and less actually depends on individual spontaneity in our political and social organization, the more people are likely to cling to the idea that the man is everything and to seek a substitute for their own social impotence in the supposed omnipotence of great personalities.
3. SURFACE IDEOLOGY AND REAL OPINION
The alienation between the political sphere and the life experience of the individual, which the latter often tries to master by psychologically deter- mined intellectual makeshifts such as stereotypy and personalization, some- times results in a gap between what the subject professes to think about poli- tics and economy and what he really thinks. His "official" ideology conforms to what he supposes he has to think; his real ideas are an expression of his more immediate personal needs as well as of his psychological urges. The "official" ideology pertains to the objectified, alienated sphere of the political,
'the "real opinion" to the subject's own sphere, and the contradiction between the two expresses their irreconcilability.
Since this formal structure of political thinking has an immediate bearing upon one of the key phenomena of susceptibility to fascism, namely upon pseudoconservatism, it may be appropriate to offer a few examples here.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Fzz6, a prejudiced woman of the University Extension Group, offers an example of a conflict between surface ideology and real attitude through her somewhat deviate pattern of scale scores: she is middle on E and F but low on PEC. In her case, the deeper determinants are doubtless potentially fascist as evidenced particularly by her strong racial prejudice against both Negroes and Jews. In other political issues the picture is highly ambivalent. Charac- teristically, she classes herself as a Democrat, but voted for Willkie and then for Dewey. She "wasn't against Roosevelt," but her statement that "no man is indispensable" thinly veils her underlying hostility. She
"knew what Hoover stood for, and I had no use for him. But that didn't mean I had to worship Roosevelt. He was a good man, but when I heard people weeping and wailing over his death, I was just disgusted. As though he were indispensable. "
The amazing irregularity is an emphatically pro-Russian statement and an outspokenly antifascist attitude in international politics:
"Now, I am a great admirer of Russia. Perhaps I shouldn't say it out loud, but I am. I think they are really trying to do something for all the people. Of course there was a lot of suffering and bloodshed but think of what they had to struggle against. My husband really gets disturbed about this. He says I ought to go to Russia if I like communism so much. He says that to admire communism is to want a change and he thinks it is very wrong for me to even sound as though I wanted any change when we have enough and are comfortable and are getting along all right. I tell him that is very selfish and also that some people under the Czar might have felt that way but when the situation got so bad there was a revolution they got wiped out too. (American Communists? ) Well, I couldn't say because I don't really know anything about them.
"I don't hold the United States blameless. I think we have lots of faults. We talk now as though we had always hated war and tried to stop this one. That isn't true. There were ways to stop this war if they had wanted to. I remember when Mus- solini moved on Ethiopia. I always think of that as the real beginning of this war.
And we were not interested in stopping that. My husband doesn't like me to criti- cize the United States. "
The frequent interspersion of this statement with reference to disagreements with her husband, from whom she is "very much different politically" and with whom she has "terrible arguments" leads us to assume that her "progres- sive" political views in areas apparently not highly affect-laden by her are rationalizations of her strong resentment of the man of whom she says "I don't think we can live for ourselves alone. " One is tempted to hypothesize that she wants him to get mad at her when she speaks in favor of Russia. In her case, the broad-mindedness and rationality of surface opinion seems to be conditioned by strong underlying, repressed irrationalities:
Interviewer did not have much success with very personal data. She turned aside questions that came close to her deeper feelings. There was no depth to the discus- sion of her husband.
When it comes, however, to political topics which, for some reason unex-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 673
plored in the interview, really mean something to this subject, she forgets all about her own rationality and gives vent to her vindictiveness though with a bad conscience, as evidenced by her previously quoted statement (Chap-
ter XVI) that "she is not very proud of her anti-Semitic bias. "
Mpo, of the University Extension Testing Class, is a low-scoring man, hesitant, apologetic, shy, and unaggressive. He wants to become a landscape architect. His political views are consciously liberal and definitely nonpreju- diced. He struggles to maintain his liberalism continuously, but this is not easy for him wi\:h regard to certain political matters, his impulses in many instances disavowing what he states. He begins with the typical low scorer's
statement:
"I am afraid I don't have as many ideas about politics and government as I should, but I think-a lot of people are more liberal now than they have been recendy. Possibly some like the change that is taking place in England-I don't know. "
He first takes a mildly antistrike attitude:
"I don't know, I cannot see that, as just a straight demand, without taking into consideration the company and its ties and all that. I have not read much about that but . . . in a large company . . . maybe they might be able to take it, all right, but in little shops . . . and if it did go through, and even if it did not have disastrous (effects) on business closing . . . price rises would make it come out even anyway. I guess I am really not in favor of strikes but I can see it just about. . . . "
Then he talks himself into a more definite stand against strikes, introduced by the still democratic "getting together" formula.
"They ought to get together and give, maybe, a 20 per cent or 30 per cent raise, then maybe kinda split it . . . and these strikes . . . just start at the wrong end . . . because if the strike is setded . . . they still have to come to some sort of agreement . . . and it's gonna be forced and men'll be driven . . . I guess human nature just is not that way but. . . ? "
The last statement, rather confused, actually belongs to the high-scorer pat- tern concerning the inhert badness of human nature (cf. Chapter VII).
After he has made this turn, he goes on with the usual high scorer's con- demnation of P AC, government control, etc. , and ends up with an ambivalent statement about minimum wage-hour legislation:
"Well, things like that I guess if-1 guess they are necessary-! guess maybe I am an idealist-! don't think there should have been a minimum wage law because I think the employer should pay his employee a living wage and if he cannot pay that, well, the person does not have to work there but if the employer cannot pay that, he is not going to stay in business. . . . "
It is the general trend rather than any specific statement which bears wit- ness to the wish to be politically progressive and the very definite changes of mind as soon as concrete issues are raised. This man's "political instincts" -if this term is allowed-are against his official progressiveness. One might
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
well infer from this observation that one can differentiate better between po- litical potentials by looking at deeper psychological impulses than by look- ing at avowed ideology.
Something similar can be observed with the medium-scoring man Mzz8, of the Extension Psychology Class group, a registered Democrat. He was middle on A-S but low on F and low-middle on E. It is the interviewer's im- pression that he is potentially "low" but that certain personality factors prevent him from going all the way. The exceptional aspect about him may well be explained through the conflict between different opinional layers. In terms of "big" and comparatively abstract political issues, he comes out with a "progressive" statement.
"There is a trend toward socialism, I don't know how modified. The conflict between labor and business will probably be mediated . by the government. The government will probably hold the balance of power in labor-business conflicts. The emphasis now is on free enterprise but that often results in monopoly, the big concerns squeezing the little guys to death. There is too much of a gap between the rich and the poor. People climb up by pushing others down, with no regulation. For this reason, government should have more influence, economically, whether or not it goes as far as socialism. "
The interviewer happened to ride with the subject from Berkeley to San Francisco and continued the discussion in a more informal, unofficial way, touching the subject matter of unionism. In this context a classic example of the gap between official ideology and political thinking in terms of one's own immediate interests occurred:
He thinks the C. I. 0 . is better than the A. F. of L. and he thinks that unions ought to extend their functions even more in political and educational and higher manage- ment brackets, but he himself won't join the Federal Workers Union which he would be eligible to join because he feels they are not enough concerned with the problems of the higher level incomes, that they are too much interested in keeping the wages of the poorer groups above a certain minimum. He wishes they would be concerned with promotions and upgrading and developing good criteria by which people could be promoted.
-~ The Canadian M 934, again a "medium" of the Public Speaking Class, is studying to become a minister. He calls himself "very far over on the left wing" but qualifies this immediately by the statement: .
". . . I'm of a practical nature and I would not vote for the socialists . . . espe- cially if I thought they would get in. "
To him, the practical is irreconcilable with socialism. The latter is all right as an idea, as a stimulant, as it were, but heaven forbid that it should ma- terialize.
"I would vote . . . only to maintain socialist opposition . . . to keep the existing government from going too far to the right . . . but don't think they have the
? . .
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 675 experience to . . ? put their. socialist program into, effect . . . and I think their
program has to be modified. "
He praises the British Labour Government but actually only because it has not carried through a socialist program, an abstinence interpreted by the interviewee as a sign of "political experience. "
"Well . . . I think they were ready for the job . . . aren't trying to change social order in one fell swoop . . . I think that is an evidence of their maturity. "
This subject wants to be endowed with the prestige of a left-wing intellectual while at the same time, as an empirical being, he is manifestly afraid of a concrete materialization of ideas to which he subscribes in the abstract.
It is hardly accidental that in these cases the overt ideology is always pro- gressive, the real opinion of an opposite character. This would seem to have something to do with established democracy in this country, which makes the expression of democratic ideas the thing to be done, while the opposite is, ? in a certain way, unorthodox. There ,is reason to believe that the fascist potential today shows itself largely in the maintenance of traditional ideas which may be called either liberal or conservative, whereas the underlying "political instinct," fed largely by unconscious forces of the personality, is completely different. :This will be elaborated in the following section.
4. PSEUDOCONSERV A TISM
Our analysis of the questionnaire findings on PEC (Chapter V) has led to a differentiation between those who are high on PEC but low on E, and those who are high on both. This distinction was interpreted in terms of genuine and pseudoconservatives, the former supporting not only capitalism in its liberal, individualistic form but also those tenets of traditional Ameri- canism which are definitely antirepressive and sincerely democratic, as indi- cated by an unqualified rejection of antiminority prejudices. Our interview material allows us to give more relief to this construct and also to qualify it in certain respects. Before we go into some details of the pseudoconserva- tive's ideology, we should stress that our assumption of a pseudoconservative pattern of ideology is in agreement with the total trend of our psychological findings. The idea is that the potentially fascist character, in the specific sense given to this concept through our studies, is not only on the overt level but throughout the make-up of his personality a pseudoconservative rather than a genuine conservative. The psychological structure that corresponds to pseudoconservatism is conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness on the ego level, with violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. These contradictory trends are borne out particularly in those sections of our study where the range between the two poles of the unconscious and the conscious is widest, above all, where the T. A. T. is con- sidered in relation to the clinical parts of the interviews. Traits such as au-
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
thoritarian aggressiveness and vindictiveness may be regarded as inter- mediary between these antagonistic trends of the prejudiced personality. When turning to ideology which belongs in the context of psychological determinants here under discussion, to the realm of rationalization, it should be remembered that rationalizations of "forbidden" impulses, such as the drive for destruction, never completely succeed. While rationalization emas- culates those urges which are subject to taboos, it does not make them disap- pear completely but allows them to express themselves in a "tolerable," modified, indirect way, conforming to the social requirements which the ego is ready to accept. Hence even the overt ideology of pseudoconservative persons is by no means unambiguously conservative, as they would have us believe, not a mere reaction-formation against underlying rebelliousness; rather, it indirectly admits the very same destructive tendencies which are held at bay by the individual's rigid identification with an externalized super- ego. This break-through of the nonconservative element is enhanced by cer- tain supra-individual changes in today's ideology in which traditional values, such as the inalienable rights of each human being, are subject to a rarely articulate but nevertheless very severe attack by ascendent forces of crude repression, of virtual condemnation of anything that is deemed weak. There is reason to believe that those developmental tendencies of our society which point into the direction of some more or less fascist, state capitalist organiza- tion bring to the fore formerly hidden tendencies of violence and discrimina- tion in ideology. All fascist movements officially employ traditional ideas and values but actually give them an entirely different, antihumanistic meaning. The reason that the pseudoconservative seems to be such a characteristically modern phenomenon is not that any new psychological element has been added to this particular syndrome, which was probably established during the last four centuries, but that objective social conditions make it easier
for the character structure in question to express itself in its avowed opinions. It is one of the unpleasant results of our studies, which has to be faced squarely, that this process of social acceptance of pseudoconservatism has gone a long way-that it has secured an indubitable mass basis. In the opinions of a number of representative high scorers, ideas both of political conservatism and traditional liberalism are frequently neutralized and used as a mere cloak for repressive and ultimately destructive wishes. The pseudoconservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institu- tions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.
The pattern of pseudoconservatism is unfolded in the interviewer's de- scription of M zag, another high-scoring man, a semifascist parole officer:
On his questionnaire, this man writes down "Republican" as the political party of his preference, and then scratches it out. He agrees with the anti-New Deal Democrats and the Willkie-type Republicans and disagrees with the New Deal
. .
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 677
Democrats and the traditional Republicans. This is cleared up in his interview when he says that the party does not mean anything, the candidate is the thing. 3
Asked what is his conception of the Willkie-type Republican, he says he thinks of the Willkie supporters as the same as the Dewey supporters. Big business favored both Willkie and Dewey.
The score 67 on PEC is high-middle. An examination of the individual items seems to show that he is not a true conservative in the sense of the rugged indi- vidual. True, he agrees with most of the PEC items, going to plus 3 on the Child- should-learn-the-value-of-the-dollar and the Morgan and Ford items, but marking most of the others plus 1 or plus 2, but, be it noted, he does not agree that depres- sions are like headaches, that businessmen are more important than artists and professors; and he believes the government should guarantee everybody an income, that there should be increased taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, and that socialized medicine would be a good thing. He goes to plus 3 on the last item. Thus, it appears that he favors some kind of social function on the part of the government, but believes that the control should be in the proper hands. This is cleared up by the interview. Before becoming a policeman 6~{! years ago, this man was in the hospital insurance business. He says he had first to battle with the A. M. A. , who did not favor any kind of medical insurance; and later he thought it wise to give up the business because state medicine was in the offing.
In summing up his position concerning medical insurance, he says:
"I like the collectiveness of it, but believe private business could do it better than the government. The doctors have butchered the thing and the politicians would do worse. People need this sort of thing and I like it in theory if it is run right. "
Thus it becomes clear, according to the interviewer, that he has some kind of collectivistic value system but believes that the control should be in the hands of the group with whom he can identify himself. This is clearly the Ford and Morgan sort of group rather than labor unions which he opposes.
The decisive thing about this man is that he has, in spite of his general re- actionism and his all-pervasive ideas of power-which are evidenced by most of the other sections of the interview-socialistic leanings. This, however, does not refer to socialism in the sense of nationalizing the means of production but to his outspoken though inarticulate wish that the system of free enter- prise and competition should be replaced by a state-capitalist integration where the economically strongest group, that is to say, heavy industry, takes control and organizes the whole life process of society without further inter- ference by democratic dissension or by groups whom he regards as being in control only on account of the process of formal democracy, but not on the basis of the "legitimate" real economic power behind them.
This "socialist," or rather, pseudosocialist, element of pseudoconservatism, actually defined only by antiliberalism, serves as the democratic cloak for antidemocratic wishes. Formal democracy seems to this kind of thinking to
3 Personalization, as indicated by these sentences, has an obvious fascist potential. It enhances the individual as against any objective anonymous system of checks and bal- ances, against democratic control. Behind the adulation of the "great man" looms, in the present situation, the readiness to "follow the leader. "
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be too far away from "the people," and the people will have their right only if the "inefficient" democratic processes are substituted by some rather ill- defined strong-arm system.
M6pA, another high-scoring man, a San Quentin prisoner, convicted of first-degree murder, is a good example of pseudodemocratism as a particular aspect of pseudoconservatism.
(What do you think of political trends today? ) "We have got a persecutor in California for governor . . . don't put that in.
