These
objective
conditions are enhanced by powerful economic and social forces which, purposely or automatically, keep the people ig- norant.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
"
The reservation of the second sentence is disavowed by the momentum of the convictions expressed in the first one.
? CHAPTER XVII
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN THE INTERVIEW MATERIAL T. W. Adorno
A. INTRODUCTION
The questionnaire findings on political and economic ideology have been analyzed in Chapter V. It is now our task to study the interview material referring to the same topics. The purpose is, first of all, to concretize our insight into these ideologies. If we investigated, in Chapter V, into the re- sponses of our subjects to a number of set, standardized political and eco- nomic ideas and slogans with which they are daily confronted, we shall now try to form a picture of "what they really think"-with the qualification that we shall also have to find out whether we are entitled to expect autonomous and spontaneous opinions from the majority of them. It is obvious that the answer to such problems, unless they should be made the very center of research, can be given only in a less rigorous way than was the case with the quantitative analysis of questionnaire responses, and that the results are of a more tentative nature. Their convincing power lies more in the con- sistency of specific interpretations with facts previously established than in any indisputable "proof" that one or the other of the ideological mechanisms under review prevail within a majority of subjects or within certain groups.
Again, our interpretations of ideology will go below the realm of sur- face opinion, and will be related to the psychological results of our study. It is not our aim merely to add some padding to our figures. As stated in? the Introductory Remarks to this part, we would rather gain insight into the links between ideological opinions and psychological determinants. We do not pretend that psychology is the cause and ideology the effect. But we try to interrelate both as intimately as possible, guided by the assumption that ideological irrationalities just as other irrationalities of overt human behavior
are concomitant with unconscious psychological conflicts. We combed through the interview material with particular attention to such irrationali-
654
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 655
ties and to statements revealing something about the dynamics of personality. The establishment of plausible configurations involving both dynamic moti- vation and ideological rationalization seems to us the foremost means of achieving that consistency on which the evidence of the discussions to follow largely depends. The data discussed so far permit at least the assumption that personality could be regarded as one determinant of ideology.
Yet it is just the area with which we are now concerned that most strongly forbids any simple reduction to terms of personality. Our construct of the~! "potentially fascist character" was largely based on the division between high and low scorers. Whereas this division retains its value for numerous topics of political and economic ideology and can be substantiated, on a deeper level, probably for all ideological issues, there appears to be at work another determinant which, in numerous issues, blurs the distinction between high and low scorers and refuses to be stated unequivocally in terms of personality. This determinant may be called our general cultural climate, and particularly the ideological influence upon the people of most media for moulding public opinion. If our cultural climate has been standardized under the impact o f social control and technological concentration to an extent never known before, we may expect that the thinking habits of individuals reflect this standardization as well as the dynamics of their own personalities. These personalities may, indeed, be the product of this very same standardization to a much higher degree than a naive observer is led to believe. In other words, we have to expect a kind of ideological "over-all pattern" in our inter- viewees which, though by no means indifferent to the dichotomy of high and low scorers, transcends its boundaries. Our data afford ample evidence that such an ideological over-all pattern exists in fact.
It is a major question for this chapter whether this over-all ideological pattern, perhaps even more than the specific susceptibility of our high scorers to fascist propaganda, does not entail the danger of a large-scale following of antidemocratic movements if they should get under way with powerful support.
The importance of this diagnosis, if it should be corroborated sufficientiy by our data, is self-evident, its most immediate implication being that the fight against such a general potential cannot be carried through only educa- tionally on a purely psychological level, but that it requires at the same time decisive changes of that cultural climate which makes for the over-all pat- tern. Methodologically, the importance of this aspect of our study lies in the fact that it relativizes, somewhat, the distinction between high vs. low scorers; this distinction, if taken as absolute, may easily lead to a "psychologizing" bias that would neglect the objective, supra-individual social forces operating in our society.
The introduction of the concept of an over-all pattern just in this ideolog-
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
ical area may appear paradoxical at first glance. Since most political and economic issues are overt and relatively simple with reference to the blunt division between progressivism and reactionism, one should expect the dif- ference to be particularly marked here. This, however, is not borne out by the facts. It is hard to escape the impression that there is much more actual
( similarity between high and low scorers in the political and economic section 'of the interviews than in more remote and complicated regions. To be sure, ? -tllere are some topics which are as clearly discriminatory as some of the more
? extreme anti-Semitic ideas discussed in the preceding chapter. One hardly
needs any research in order to establish that high scorers tend to be anti-
and low scorers pro-Roosevelt, that high scorers more often want a "strong"
foreign policy and low scorers favor reconciliation, that high scorers indig-
nantly reject communism and low scorers tend to discuss it on a more dis-
cursive plane. However, 'there is a large number of what might be called
more formal constitueirt~of political ideology which seem to permeate the
1
whole pattern while, by their own momentum, making for reactionary and
-
potentially fascist persuasions. Here belong, as will be discussed in detail, general ignorance and confusion in political matters, the habits of "ticket thinking" and "personalization," resentment of unions, of government inter- ference in business, of income limitations, and a number of other trends.
The existence of such an over-all pattern in politics need not be surprising, when the whole context of our study is considered. As a matter of fact, the problem itself is derived from our quantitative findings. After we once ad- ministered the PEC scale, no close relation between politics and anti-Semi- tism could be expected. Chapter V offered the evidence that the correlation of PEC with either anti-Semitism or ethnocentrism was never very high. There were some subjects high on PEC but low on E, others high on E but middle or low on PEC. This means that in this area particularly we cannot speak in categorical terms of high vs. low scorers. W e shall see if this is borne out by a consideration of the interviews: both what the weakening of our ? basic distinction means qualitatively and whether and how we still can dif- ferentiate successfully in this area.
If a trend that differentiates statistically between high and low scorers on E-the "highs" being higher on it-appears very commonly in the interviews of all subjects, then we must conclude that it is a trend in culture itself. In this chapter we shall be particularly concerned with these outstanding fea- tures. The evidence that they are potentially fascistic is the fact that they "go" statistically, psychologically, and in every other respect with high scale scores; if they also occur with considerable frequency in interviews of low scorers it must be because we are living in potentially fascist times.
If a subject is low on all scales, but still shows trends which look potentially fascist, then one might say that the scales and other techniques do not cover
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 657
everything, that the potential fascism of the trend is hypothetical as far as the statistical evidence goes, and that one might perform an empirical study to see if it really does go with what we know of the subject. We expect our discussion at least to shed some light on this methodological prob- lem.
As far as the differentiation between high and low scorers goes, it is obvi- ous that an over-all pattern would necessitate more differentiated character- izations than those previously employed. This can be hinted at only occa- sionally throughout this chapter. Sometimes high and low scorers are similar in what they say in politico-economic terms, but different in some more subtle way; just as sometimes they are superficially different but similar with respect to underlying trends.
Political and economic facts are subject to rapid change. This holds par-
ticularly true for the last few years. When our material was gathered, mainly
throughout 1945, Russia was an ally; today, the tension between this country
and the Soviet Union overshadows all other issues. Such changes make a
valid interpretation of political ideology difficult and precarious. Thus, it
might well be that anti-Russian sentiments, which were in 1945 part and
parcel of a general pattern of reactionism, largely conditioned subjectively,
would be of a much more "realistic" nature today, or at least they would fall
to a greater extent within the "over-all pattern," being less differentiating
per se between high and low scorers. Moreover, in all probability the typical
high scorer has become even more articulate with regard to Russia. It is hard
to imagine that Mack would still stick to his statement that "Joe" Stalin was
all right. Our interpretation, of course, had to stick to the situation of 1945
in order to give an adequate picture of the relationship between ideology and .
,. . . . . J
personality factors. However, it should be emphasized that the PEC scale as well as its follow-up in the interviews depends to a much higher degree on external events than do the other scales. This is why we never expected that the correlations of PEC with E and F would be very high, and it is quite possible that under the new political circumstances the direction of some of the more superficial relationships might have changed. Ideology is so sensi- tive to political dynamics that even some interpretations formulated com- paratively lately, when the bulk of the chapter had been written, should be qualified at publication time. Yet we may claim that the general trend of events has been entirely in accord with the general formulations reached in the discussion to follow.
With regard to the organization of the chapter we shall deal first with the more formal constituents of political and economic ideology and later with a number of specific political issues. The problem of cultural over-all pattern vs. psychological differentiation occurs in both sections, though the presuppositions of the over-all pattern belong mainly to the first one.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
B. FORMAL CONSTITUENTS OF POLITICAL THINKING
1. IGNORANCE AND CONFUSIONt
The evaluation of the political statements contained in our interview material has to be considered in relation to the widespread ignorance and confusion of our subjects in political matters, a phenomenon which might well surpass what even a skeptical observer should have anticipated. If people do not know what they are talking about, the concept of "opinion," which is basic to any approach to ideology, loses much of its meaning. This does not imply that the material becomes insignificant but rather that it cannot be interpreted in factual categories but must be related to the sociopsychological structure of the subject being investigated. In other words, the material itself calls for that personality analysis which marks the general strategy of our research. It is in the light of this analysis that the ideology of our subjects is now to be re-evaluated.
While ignorance and confusion marks the political statements of both high and low scorers, it is, nevertheless, by no means "neutral" with regard to the problem of susceptibility to fascist propaganda. Our general impression is that ignorance and confusion is more widespread among high than among low scorers. This would be consistent with our previous observations on the general "anti-intellectual" attitude of high scorers. In addition, the official optimism of the high scorer tends to exclude that kind of critical analysis of existent conditions on which rational political judgment depends. A man who is prone to identify himself a priori with the world as it is has little incen- tive to penetrate it intellectually and to distinguish between essence and surface. The "practical" bias of the high scorers, their emotional detachment from everything that is beyond their well defined range of action, is another factor contributing to their disinterestedness in, and lack of, political knowl- edge. However this may be, there is reason to believe that ignorance itself works in favor of general reactionary trends. This belief, based on consistent observations particularly in backward rural areas everywhere, has been epit- omized by the old German social-democratic adage that anti-Semitism is the "socialism of the dolt. " All modern fascist movements, including the practices of contemporary American demagogues, have aimed at the igno- rant; they have consciously manipulated the facts in a way that could lead to success only with those who were not acquainted with the facts. Ignorance with respect to the complexities of contemporary society makes for a state of general uncertainty and anxiety, which is the ideal breeding ground for the modern type of reactionary mass movement. Such movements are always
1 After completion of the study, the writer of this chapter became acquainted with the peninent anicle by R. H. Gundlach (46).
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 659
"populist" and maliciously anti-intellectual. It is not accidental that fascism has never evolved any consistent social theory, but has persistently denounced theoretical thinking and knowledge as "alienation from the grass-roots. " The existence of such ignorance and confusion as we find in the interviews of subjects, particularly when we consider the relatively high educational level which they as a group represent, has to be regarded as ominous, no matter whether the subjects in question score high or low on our scales. The con- figuration of technical skill and the "realism" of "looking after oneself" on the one hand, and of the stubborn refusal intellectually to penetrate reality on the other, is the very climate in which fascist movements can prosper. Where this outlook prevails, a critical situation may easily lead to the general acceptance of formulae which are today still regarded as prerogatives of the "lunatic fringe. "
Sometimes ignorance is explicitly commented upon by our interviewers. But even if we do not regard their impression as sufficient proof, there is evidence enough within the material, be it that the statements betray a strik- ing lack of information, be it that the interviewee confesses his disinterested- ness in politics or his lack of knowledge. The latter attitude, incidentally, is particularly frequent with women, and often it is accompanied by self- accusing statements.
It is hard to distinguish between simple ignorance and confusedness, that is to say, between the state of simply not knowing the facts, and the state which exists when people without sufficient intellectual training grow muddle-headed under the incessant attack of all kinds of mass communica- tion and propaganda and do not know what to make of the facts they have. It seems as if confusion were the effect of ignorance: as if those who do not know but feel somehow obliged to have political opinions, because of some vague idea about the requirements of democracy, help themselves with scur- rilous ways of thinking and sometimes with forthright bluff.
The few quotations to follow are picked at random as illustrations of a phenomenon which is well-nigh universal, but for the very few exceptional cases of people who take a conscious and explicit interest in politics.
An example of ignorance, covered up by pompous phraseology, is the following statement by Mz 17, a low-scoring man from the University Ex- tension Group. He is a semi-educated sailor with high-school background and widely read, but generally muddle-headed.
(American political scene? ) "W e have a good basis for our political system. The majority of people are not interested or equipped enough to understand politics, so that the biggest proportion of U. S. politics is governed by the capitalistic system. "
To this man, the existence or nonexistence of capitalism in this country is simply a matter of "education. "
? 66o THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
A "bluffer" is the veteran M7pc, a high-scoring man with high-school education, who always starts with sentences which sound up-to-date but rarely finishes them:
(What does he think of political trends today? ) "I would say that now we're in a very sad case. Worse off than two years ago-well, the situation with Russia in Iran-and these strikes that are coming on-quite a deal of good statesmanship to fix the world up. . . . "
The subject's statements abound with qualifications and evasions:
"I feel somehow that they (i. e. , the unions) are progressing in a way but in other ways they are not. I think all things will work out for the best. But I really think they should not go into politics. . . . I am not very well versed on. . . . "
Asked about the most dangerous threats to present form of government:
"Well, let's see . . . well, we might have another war in the U. S. A. Since the U. S. itself is a huge melting pot. . . . I imagine in the U. S. there are a lot of people who hated to see Hitler die and are pro-German-and maybe one of these little groups will . . . catch on. "
A San Quentin prisoner, M621A, who scores low on theE and PEC scales and middle on F, regards Russia as the most dangerous threat. When asked what ought to be done, he answers:
"Well, people should limit political parties to at least two groups and not have all these socialists and communists, etc. (What to do with socialists and commun- ists? ) Well, they could still believe in their own ideal . . . let them have a voice in the election but should not be allowed to have any power. (You mean they should not be allowed to put up any candidates? ) No, unless they get a majority. "
One of the most extreme examples is the high-scoring woman F121, who "was never good at school work" and apparently had very little general education.
Not interested, not informed. Thinks Roosevelt has been good and should see us through the war. Otherwise has no opinions. She had written on the side of the questionnaire, asking about political parties: "Don't know these parties. "
Again, 5016, a housewife, graduated from high school, high on F and E but middle on PEC, referred to by the interviewer as "being of moderately high intelligence," says '
"I hear that communists and socialists are both bad. "
By contrast, 5052, the Spanish-Negro entertainer, high on F and PEC, middle on E, has an opinion of his own on communism and apparently some sym- pathy with communists, but his opinion is no less startling:
"All of the people in the entertainment world who are communists are good guys. "
On further questioning it comes out that according to his opinion
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 66 I Communism seems to be a so'rt of social club wh~ch holds meetings and raises
money for worthy causes.
Somewhat exceptional is the statement of the moderately low-scoring call- house girl, 5035, who, before she chose the profession of prostitute, was a graduate of the University of California. She is strongly interested in union activities and actually lost her former job as a dancing teacher because of such activities, but refused on the questionnaire to. mark any questions with regard to political groups, for which she gives the following explanation:
"I am very confused about politics because I talk about them a great deal with our clients here and they all have different opinions. It was a struggle for me to get through economics in college. "
In practical issues, however, her views are very liberal and even radical. The self-accusing attitude of women with regard to political matters seems to be most common among medium and low scorers; this is consistent with
the latter's general introspective and self-critical attitude.
An example is the 17-year-old student of social work, Fz28, who is middle
on E and F but high on PEC:
"I am a little ashamed about this subject. I hate to be ignorant about anything but frankly, I don't know anything about politics. I am for Roosevelt, of course, but I don't think I have developed any ideas of my own. Mother and Jim talk about things, but it is mostly social work shop. I intend to read a lot and think a lot about things because I believe all intelligent people should have ideas. "
Interesting also is the low scorer, F517, a 20-year-old freshman student ma- joring in music, who accuses herself of ignorance and dependence, though her general attitude, particularly with regard to minority questions, shows that she is rather articulate and outspoken and that she differs from her parents.
"I don't know much about it. I'm quite dependent-! get my opinions from my father. He is a die-hard Republican. He did not like Roosevelt but I think he did some good things (such as making things better for the poor people). "
It would go beyond the scope of the present study to attempt a full expla- nation of political ignorance so strikingly in contrast to the level of informa- tion in many other matters and to the highly rational way in which most of our subjects decide about the means and ends of their own lives. The ultimate reason for this ignorance might well be the opaqueness of the social, eco- nomic, and political situation to all those who are not in full command of all the resources of stored knowledge and theoretical thinking. In its present phase, our social system tends objectively and automatically to produce "curtains" which make it impossible for the naive person really to see what it is all about.
These objective conditions are enhanced by powerful economic and social forces which, purposely or automatically, keep the people ig- norant. The very fact that our social system is on the defense, as it were, that
? 662 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
capitalism, instead of exparding the old way and opening up innumerable opportunities to the people, has to maintain itself somewhat precariously and to block critical insights which were regarded as "progressive" one hun- dred years ago but are viewed as potentially dangerous today, makes for a one-sided presentation of the facts, for manipulated information, and for certain shifts of emphasis which tend to check the universal enlightenment otherwise furthered by the technological development of communications.
? Once again, as in the era of the transition from feudalism to middle-class society, knowing too much has assumed a subversive touch, as it were. This tendency is met halfway by the "authoritarian" frame of mind of large sec- tions of the population. The transformation of our social system from some- thing dynamic into something conservative, a status quo, struggling for its perpetuation, is reflected by the attitudes and opinions of all those who, for reasons of vested interests or psychological conditions, identify themselves with the existing setup. In order not to undermine their own pattern of identification, they unconsciously do not want to know too much and are ready to accept superficial or distorted information as long as it confirms the world in which they want to go on living. It would be erroneous to ascribe the general state of ignorance and confusion in political matters to natural stupidity or to the mythological "immaturity" of the people. Stu- pidity may be due to psychological repressions more than to a basic lack of the capacity for thinking. Only in this way, it seems, can the low level of political intelligence even among our college sample be understood. They find it difficult to think and even to learn because they are afraid they might think the wrong thoughts or learn the wrong things. It may be added that this fear, probably often due to the father's refusal to tell the child more than he is supposedly capable of understanding, is continuously reinforced by an educational system which tends to discourage anything supposedly "speculative," or which cannot be corroborated by surface findings, and stated in terms of "facts and figures. "
The discrepancy brought about by the absence of political training and the abundance of political news with which. the population is flooded and which actually or fictitiously presupposes such training, is only one among many aspects of this general condition. With reference to the specific focus of our research, two aspects of political ignorance may be emphasized. One is that being "intelligent" today means largely to lookafter one's self, to take care of one's advantages whereas, to use Veblen's words, "idle curiosity" is discouraged. Since the pertinence of economic and political matters to private existence, however, is largely obscured to the population even now, they do not bother about things which apparently have little bearing on their fate and upon which they have, as they are dimly aware, not too much influence.
The second aspect of ignorance which has to be stressed here, is of a more psychological nature. Political news and comment like all other information
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 663
poured out by the radio, the press, and the newsreels, is generally absorbed during leisure time and falls, in a certain way, within the framework of "entertainment. " Politics is viewed in much the same way as sport or the movies, not as something directly involved with one's own participation in the process of production. Viewed within this frame of reference, however, politics is necessarily "disappointing. " It appears to people conditioned by an industrial culture and its specific kinds of "entertainment values" as drab, cold, dry-as boring. This may be enhanced by that undercurrent of Amer- ican tradition which regards politics somehow as a dirty business with which a respectable person should have but little to do. Disappointment in politics as a leisure-time activity which pays no quick returns probably makes for indifference, and it is quite possible that the prevailing ignorance is due not merely to unfamiliarity with the facts but also a kind of resistance against what is supposed to serve as a pastime and mostly tends to be disagreeable. A pattern most often to be observed, perhaps, among women, namely, skip- ping the political sections of newspapers, where information is available, and turning immediately to gossip columns, crime stories, the woman's page, and
so forth, may be an extreme expression of something more general.
To sum up, political ignorance would seem to be specifically determined by the fact that political knowledge as a rule does not primarily help to further individual aims in reality, whereas, on the other hand, it does not help
the individual to evade reality either.
2. TICKET THINKING AND PERSONALIZATION IN POLITICS
The frame of mind concomitant with ignorance and confusion may be called one of lack of political experience in the sense that the whole sphere of politics and economics is "aloof" from the subject,. that he does not reach it with concrete innervations, insights, and reactions but has to contend with it in an indirect, alienated way. Yet, politics and economics, alien as they may be from individual life, and largely beyond the reach of individual decision and action, decisively affect the individual's fate. In our present society, in the era of all-comprising social organization and total war, even the most naive person becomes aware of the impact of the politico-economic sphere. Here belongs, of course, primarily the war situation, where literally life and death of the individual depend on apparently far-away political dynamics. But also issues such as the role of unionism in American economy, strikes, the development of free enterprise toward monopolism and therewith the question of state control, make themselves felt apparently down to the most
? private and intimate realms of the individual.
This, against the background of ignorance and confusion, makes for
anxiety on the ego level that ties in only too well with childhood anxieties. The individual has to cope with problems which he actually does not under- stand, and he has to develop certain techniques of orientation, however crude
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
and fallacious they may be, which help him to find his way through the dark, as it were. 2 These means fulfill a dual function: on the one hand, they provide the individual with a kind of knowledge, or with substitutes for knowledge, which makes it possible for him to take a stand where it is expected of him, whilst he is actually not equipped to do so. On the other hand, by themselves they alleviate psychologically the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty and provide the individual with the illusion of some kind of intellectual security, of something he can stick to even if he feels, underneath, the inadequacy of his opinions.
The task of how to understand the "ununderstandable," paradoxical in itself, leads toward a paradoxical solution, that is to say, the subjects tend to employ two devices which contradict each other, a contradiction that expresses the impasse in which many people find themselves. These two devices are stereotypy and personalization. It is easy to see that these "devices" are repe- titions of infantile patterns. The specific interaction of stereotypy and prej- udice has been discussed in detail in the preceding chapter. It may now be appropriate to review ideological stereotypy and its counterpart, personal- ization, in a broader context, and to relate it to more fundamental principles long established by psychology. Rigid dichotomies, such as that between "good and bad," "we and the others," "I and the world" date back to our earliest developmental phases. While serving as necessary constructs in order to enable us to cope, by mental anticipation and rough organization, with an otherwise chaotic reality, even the stereotypes of the child bear the hallmark of stunted experience and anxiety. They point back to the "chaotic" nature of reality, and its clash with the omnipotence fantasies of earliest infancy. Our stereotypes are both tools and scars: the "bad man" is the stereotype par excellence. At the. same time, the psychological ambiguity inherent in the use of stereotypes, which are both necessary and constricting forces, stimulate regularly a countertendency. We try, by a kind of ritual, to soften the otherwise rigid, to make human, close, part of ourselves (or the family) that which appears, because of its very alienness, threatening. The child who is afraid of the bad man is at the same time tempted to call every stranger "uncle. " The traumatic element in both these attitudes continuously serves as an obstacle to the reality principle, although both also function as means of adjustment. When transformed into character traits, the mechanisms in- volved make more and more for irrationality. The opaqueness of the present political and economic situation for the average person provides an ideal opportunity for retrogression to the infantile level of stereotypy and person- alization. The political rationalizations used by the uninformed and confused are compulsive revivals of irrational mechanisms never overcome during the
2 This has been pointed out with regard to the imagery of the Jews. See Chapter XVI, p. 618f.
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 665
individual's growth. This seems to be one of the main links between opinions and psychological determinants.
Once again, stereotypy helps to organize what appears to the ignorant as chaotic: the less he is able to enter into a really cognitive process, the more stubbornly he clings to certain patterns, belief in which saves him the trouble of really going into the matter.
Where the rigidly compulsive nature of the stereotype cuts off the dialec- tics of trial and error, stultification enters the picture. Stereotypy becomes- to use J. F. Brown's term-stereopathy. This is the case in the political area where a firm bulk of ignorance and lack of any relation to the objective material forbids any real experience. In addition, industrial standardization of innumerable phenomena of modern life enhances stereotypical thinking. The more stereotyped life itself becomes, the more the stereopath feels in the right, sees his frame of thinking vindicated by reality. Modern mass com- munciations, moulded after industrial production, spread a whole system of stereotypes which, while still being fundamentally "ununderstandable" to the individual, allow him at any moment to appear as being up to date and "knowing all about it. " Thus, stereotyped thinking in political matters is almost inescapable.
However, the adult individual, like the child, has to pay a heavy price for the comfort he draws from stereotypy. The stereotype, while being a means of translating reality in a kind of multiple-choice questionnaire where every issue is subsumed and can be decided by a plus or minus mark, keeps the world as aloof, abstract, "nonexperienced" as it was before. Moreover, since it is above all the alienness and coldness of political reality which causes the individual's anxieties, these anxieties are not fully remedied by a device which itself reflects the threatening, streamlining process of the real social world. Thus, stereotypy calls again for its very opposite: personalization. Here, the term assumes a very definite meaning: the tendency to describe objective social and economic processes, political programs, internal and external ten- sions in terms of some person identified with the case in question rather than taking the trouble to perform the impersonal intellectual operations required by the abstractness of the social processes themselves.
Both stereotypy and personalization are inadequate to reality. Their inter- pretation may therefore be regarded as a first step in the direction of under- standing the complex of "psychotic" thinking which appears to be a crucial characteristic of the fascist character. It is obvious, however, that this sub- iective failure to grasp reality is not primarily and exclusively a matter of the psychological dynamics of the individuals involved, but is in some part due to reality itself, to the relationship or lack of relationship between this reality and the individual. Stereotypy misses reality in so far as it dodges the concrete and contents itself with preconceived, rigid, and overgeneralized
? 666 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
ideas to which the individual attributes a kind of magical omnipotence. Con- versely, personalization dodges the real abstractness, that is to say, the "reifi- cation" of a social reality which is determined by property relations and in which the human beings themselves are, as it were, mere appendages. Stereo- typy and personalization are two divergent parts of an actually nonexperi- enced world, parts which are not only irreconcilable with each other, but which also do not allow for any addition which would reconstruct the picture of the real.
a. CAsEs OF PoLITICAL TICKET THINKING. W e limit ourselves to describing a few cases of political stereotypy. ?
M359 from the University Extension Testing Class is departmental man- ager for a leather company. He is high onE and PEC but middle on F. While imbued with authoritarian ideas he shows a certain imaginativeness and gen- eral disposition to discursive argumentation somewhat different from the typical high scorer's mentality. It is thus the more striking to find that the political section of his interview is completely abstract and cliche-like. Just because this subject is by no means a fanatic, his statements serve well to illustrate how ignorance is covered up by phraseology, and how the stereo- types, borrowed from the vernacular of current newspaper editorials, make for the acceptance of reactionary trends. In order to give a concrete picture of how this mechanism works, his political statements are given in full. This
may also supply us with an example of how the various topics with which we shall have to deal in detail afterwards form a kind of ideological unit once a person is under the sway of political semi-information:
(Political trends? ) "I am not very happy by the outward aspect of things, too much politics instead of a basis of equality and justice for all men. Running of the entire country is determined by the party in power, not very optimistic outlook. Under Roosevelt, the people were willing to turn entire schedule of living over to the government, wanted everything done for them. (Main problem? ) No question but the problem of placing our servicemen back into employment, giving them a degree of happiness is a major problem. If not handled soon, may produce a serious danger. More firm organization of servicemen. "
(What might do? ) "Boycott the politicians and establish the old-time govern- ment that we should have had all along. (What is this? ) Government of, by, and for the people. " Subject emphasizes the moderate, average man is the serviceman. (Unions? ) "Not satisfied with them. One characteristic is especially unsatisfactory. 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.
The reservation of the second sentence is disavowed by the momentum of the convictions expressed in the first one.
? CHAPTER XVII
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN THE INTERVIEW MATERIAL T. W. Adorno
A. INTRODUCTION
The questionnaire findings on political and economic ideology have been analyzed in Chapter V. It is now our task to study the interview material referring to the same topics. The purpose is, first of all, to concretize our insight into these ideologies. If we investigated, in Chapter V, into the re- sponses of our subjects to a number of set, standardized political and eco- nomic ideas and slogans with which they are daily confronted, we shall now try to form a picture of "what they really think"-with the qualification that we shall also have to find out whether we are entitled to expect autonomous and spontaneous opinions from the majority of them. It is obvious that the answer to such problems, unless they should be made the very center of research, can be given only in a less rigorous way than was the case with the quantitative analysis of questionnaire responses, and that the results are of a more tentative nature. Their convincing power lies more in the con- sistency of specific interpretations with facts previously established than in any indisputable "proof" that one or the other of the ideological mechanisms under review prevail within a majority of subjects or within certain groups.
Again, our interpretations of ideology will go below the realm of sur- face opinion, and will be related to the psychological results of our study. It is not our aim merely to add some padding to our figures. As stated in? the Introductory Remarks to this part, we would rather gain insight into the links between ideological opinions and psychological determinants. We do not pretend that psychology is the cause and ideology the effect. But we try to interrelate both as intimately as possible, guided by the assumption that ideological irrationalities just as other irrationalities of overt human behavior
are concomitant with unconscious psychological conflicts. We combed through the interview material with particular attention to such irrationali-
654
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 655
ties and to statements revealing something about the dynamics of personality. The establishment of plausible configurations involving both dynamic moti- vation and ideological rationalization seems to us the foremost means of achieving that consistency on which the evidence of the discussions to follow largely depends. The data discussed so far permit at least the assumption that personality could be regarded as one determinant of ideology.
Yet it is just the area with which we are now concerned that most strongly forbids any simple reduction to terms of personality. Our construct of the~! "potentially fascist character" was largely based on the division between high and low scorers. Whereas this division retains its value for numerous topics of political and economic ideology and can be substantiated, on a deeper level, probably for all ideological issues, there appears to be at work another determinant which, in numerous issues, blurs the distinction between high and low scorers and refuses to be stated unequivocally in terms of personality. This determinant may be called our general cultural climate, and particularly the ideological influence upon the people of most media for moulding public opinion. If our cultural climate has been standardized under the impact o f social control and technological concentration to an extent never known before, we may expect that the thinking habits of individuals reflect this standardization as well as the dynamics of their own personalities. These personalities may, indeed, be the product of this very same standardization to a much higher degree than a naive observer is led to believe. In other words, we have to expect a kind of ideological "over-all pattern" in our inter- viewees which, though by no means indifferent to the dichotomy of high and low scorers, transcends its boundaries. Our data afford ample evidence that such an ideological over-all pattern exists in fact.
It is a major question for this chapter whether this over-all ideological pattern, perhaps even more than the specific susceptibility of our high scorers to fascist propaganda, does not entail the danger of a large-scale following of antidemocratic movements if they should get under way with powerful support.
The importance of this diagnosis, if it should be corroborated sufficientiy by our data, is self-evident, its most immediate implication being that the fight against such a general potential cannot be carried through only educa- tionally on a purely psychological level, but that it requires at the same time decisive changes of that cultural climate which makes for the over-all pat- tern. Methodologically, the importance of this aspect of our study lies in the fact that it relativizes, somewhat, the distinction between high vs. low scorers; this distinction, if taken as absolute, may easily lead to a "psychologizing" bias that would neglect the objective, supra-individual social forces operating in our society.
The introduction of the concept of an over-all pattern just in this ideolog-
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
ical area may appear paradoxical at first glance. Since most political and economic issues are overt and relatively simple with reference to the blunt division between progressivism and reactionism, one should expect the dif- ference to be particularly marked here. This, however, is not borne out by the facts. It is hard to escape the impression that there is much more actual
( similarity between high and low scorers in the political and economic section 'of the interviews than in more remote and complicated regions. To be sure, ? -tllere are some topics which are as clearly discriminatory as some of the more
? extreme anti-Semitic ideas discussed in the preceding chapter. One hardly
needs any research in order to establish that high scorers tend to be anti-
and low scorers pro-Roosevelt, that high scorers more often want a "strong"
foreign policy and low scorers favor reconciliation, that high scorers indig-
nantly reject communism and low scorers tend to discuss it on a more dis-
cursive plane. However, 'there is a large number of what might be called
more formal constitueirt~of political ideology which seem to permeate the
1
whole pattern while, by their own momentum, making for reactionary and
-
potentially fascist persuasions. Here belong, as will be discussed in detail, general ignorance and confusion in political matters, the habits of "ticket thinking" and "personalization," resentment of unions, of government inter- ference in business, of income limitations, and a number of other trends.
The existence of such an over-all pattern in politics need not be surprising, when the whole context of our study is considered. As a matter of fact, the problem itself is derived from our quantitative findings. After we once ad- ministered the PEC scale, no close relation between politics and anti-Semi- tism could be expected. Chapter V offered the evidence that the correlation of PEC with either anti-Semitism or ethnocentrism was never very high. There were some subjects high on PEC but low on E, others high on E but middle or low on PEC. This means that in this area particularly we cannot speak in categorical terms of high vs. low scorers. W e shall see if this is borne out by a consideration of the interviews: both what the weakening of our ? basic distinction means qualitatively and whether and how we still can dif- ferentiate successfully in this area.
If a trend that differentiates statistically between high and low scorers on E-the "highs" being higher on it-appears very commonly in the interviews of all subjects, then we must conclude that it is a trend in culture itself. In this chapter we shall be particularly concerned with these outstanding fea- tures. The evidence that they are potentially fascistic is the fact that they "go" statistically, psychologically, and in every other respect with high scale scores; if they also occur with considerable frequency in interviews of low scorers it must be because we are living in potentially fascist times.
If a subject is low on all scales, but still shows trends which look potentially fascist, then one might say that the scales and other techniques do not cover
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 657
everything, that the potential fascism of the trend is hypothetical as far as the statistical evidence goes, and that one might perform an empirical study to see if it really does go with what we know of the subject. We expect our discussion at least to shed some light on this methodological prob- lem.
As far as the differentiation between high and low scorers goes, it is obvi- ous that an over-all pattern would necessitate more differentiated character- izations than those previously employed. This can be hinted at only occa- sionally throughout this chapter. Sometimes high and low scorers are similar in what they say in politico-economic terms, but different in some more subtle way; just as sometimes they are superficially different but similar with respect to underlying trends.
Political and economic facts are subject to rapid change. This holds par-
ticularly true for the last few years. When our material was gathered, mainly
throughout 1945, Russia was an ally; today, the tension between this country
and the Soviet Union overshadows all other issues. Such changes make a
valid interpretation of political ideology difficult and precarious. Thus, it
might well be that anti-Russian sentiments, which were in 1945 part and
parcel of a general pattern of reactionism, largely conditioned subjectively,
would be of a much more "realistic" nature today, or at least they would fall
to a greater extent within the "over-all pattern," being less differentiating
per se between high and low scorers. Moreover, in all probability the typical
high scorer has become even more articulate with regard to Russia. It is hard
to imagine that Mack would still stick to his statement that "Joe" Stalin was
all right. Our interpretation, of course, had to stick to the situation of 1945
in order to give an adequate picture of the relationship between ideology and .
,. . . . . J
personality factors. However, it should be emphasized that the PEC scale as well as its follow-up in the interviews depends to a much higher degree on external events than do the other scales. This is why we never expected that the correlations of PEC with E and F would be very high, and it is quite possible that under the new political circumstances the direction of some of the more superficial relationships might have changed. Ideology is so sensi- tive to political dynamics that even some interpretations formulated com- paratively lately, when the bulk of the chapter had been written, should be qualified at publication time. Yet we may claim that the general trend of events has been entirely in accord with the general formulations reached in the discussion to follow.
With regard to the organization of the chapter we shall deal first with the more formal constituents of political and economic ideology and later with a number of specific political issues. The problem of cultural over-all pattern vs. psychological differentiation occurs in both sections, though the presuppositions of the over-all pattern belong mainly to the first one.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
B. FORMAL CONSTITUENTS OF POLITICAL THINKING
1. IGNORANCE AND CONFUSIONt
The evaluation of the political statements contained in our interview material has to be considered in relation to the widespread ignorance and confusion of our subjects in political matters, a phenomenon which might well surpass what even a skeptical observer should have anticipated. If people do not know what they are talking about, the concept of "opinion," which is basic to any approach to ideology, loses much of its meaning. This does not imply that the material becomes insignificant but rather that it cannot be interpreted in factual categories but must be related to the sociopsychological structure of the subject being investigated. In other words, the material itself calls for that personality analysis which marks the general strategy of our research. It is in the light of this analysis that the ideology of our subjects is now to be re-evaluated.
While ignorance and confusion marks the political statements of both high and low scorers, it is, nevertheless, by no means "neutral" with regard to the problem of susceptibility to fascist propaganda. Our general impression is that ignorance and confusion is more widespread among high than among low scorers. This would be consistent with our previous observations on the general "anti-intellectual" attitude of high scorers. In addition, the official optimism of the high scorer tends to exclude that kind of critical analysis of existent conditions on which rational political judgment depends. A man who is prone to identify himself a priori with the world as it is has little incen- tive to penetrate it intellectually and to distinguish between essence and surface. The "practical" bias of the high scorers, their emotional detachment from everything that is beyond their well defined range of action, is another factor contributing to their disinterestedness in, and lack of, political knowl- edge. However this may be, there is reason to believe that ignorance itself works in favor of general reactionary trends. This belief, based on consistent observations particularly in backward rural areas everywhere, has been epit- omized by the old German social-democratic adage that anti-Semitism is the "socialism of the dolt. " All modern fascist movements, including the practices of contemporary American demagogues, have aimed at the igno- rant; they have consciously manipulated the facts in a way that could lead to success only with those who were not acquainted with the facts. Ignorance with respect to the complexities of contemporary society makes for a state of general uncertainty and anxiety, which is the ideal breeding ground for the modern type of reactionary mass movement. Such movements are always
1 After completion of the study, the writer of this chapter became acquainted with the peninent anicle by R. H. Gundlach (46).
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 659
"populist" and maliciously anti-intellectual. It is not accidental that fascism has never evolved any consistent social theory, but has persistently denounced theoretical thinking and knowledge as "alienation from the grass-roots. " The existence of such ignorance and confusion as we find in the interviews of subjects, particularly when we consider the relatively high educational level which they as a group represent, has to be regarded as ominous, no matter whether the subjects in question score high or low on our scales. The con- figuration of technical skill and the "realism" of "looking after oneself" on the one hand, and of the stubborn refusal intellectually to penetrate reality on the other, is the very climate in which fascist movements can prosper. Where this outlook prevails, a critical situation may easily lead to the general acceptance of formulae which are today still regarded as prerogatives of the "lunatic fringe. "
Sometimes ignorance is explicitly commented upon by our interviewers. But even if we do not regard their impression as sufficient proof, there is evidence enough within the material, be it that the statements betray a strik- ing lack of information, be it that the interviewee confesses his disinterested- ness in politics or his lack of knowledge. The latter attitude, incidentally, is particularly frequent with women, and often it is accompanied by self- accusing statements.
It is hard to distinguish between simple ignorance and confusedness, that is to say, between the state of simply not knowing the facts, and the state which exists when people without sufficient intellectual training grow muddle-headed under the incessant attack of all kinds of mass communica- tion and propaganda and do not know what to make of the facts they have. It seems as if confusion were the effect of ignorance: as if those who do not know but feel somehow obliged to have political opinions, because of some vague idea about the requirements of democracy, help themselves with scur- rilous ways of thinking and sometimes with forthright bluff.
The few quotations to follow are picked at random as illustrations of a phenomenon which is well-nigh universal, but for the very few exceptional cases of people who take a conscious and explicit interest in politics.
An example of ignorance, covered up by pompous phraseology, is the following statement by Mz 17, a low-scoring man from the University Ex- tension Group. He is a semi-educated sailor with high-school background and widely read, but generally muddle-headed.
(American political scene? ) "W e have a good basis for our political system. The majority of people are not interested or equipped enough to understand politics, so that the biggest proportion of U. S. politics is governed by the capitalistic system. "
To this man, the existence or nonexistence of capitalism in this country is simply a matter of "education. "
? 66o THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
A "bluffer" is the veteran M7pc, a high-scoring man with high-school education, who always starts with sentences which sound up-to-date but rarely finishes them:
(What does he think of political trends today? ) "I would say that now we're in a very sad case. Worse off than two years ago-well, the situation with Russia in Iran-and these strikes that are coming on-quite a deal of good statesmanship to fix the world up. . . . "
The subject's statements abound with qualifications and evasions:
"I feel somehow that they (i. e. , the unions) are progressing in a way but in other ways they are not. I think all things will work out for the best. But I really think they should not go into politics. . . . I am not very well versed on. . . . "
Asked about the most dangerous threats to present form of government:
"Well, let's see . . . well, we might have another war in the U. S. A. Since the U. S. itself is a huge melting pot. . . . I imagine in the U. S. there are a lot of people who hated to see Hitler die and are pro-German-and maybe one of these little groups will . . . catch on. "
A San Quentin prisoner, M621A, who scores low on theE and PEC scales and middle on F, regards Russia as the most dangerous threat. When asked what ought to be done, he answers:
"Well, people should limit political parties to at least two groups and not have all these socialists and communists, etc. (What to do with socialists and commun- ists? ) Well, they could still believe in their own ideal . . . let them have a voice in the election but should not be allowed to have any power. (You mean they should not be allowed to put up any candidates? ) No, unless they get a majority. "
One of the most extreme examples is the high-scoring woman F121, who "was never good at school work" and apparently had very little general education.
Not interested, not informed. Thinks Roosevelt has been good and should see us through the war. Otherwise has no opinions. She had written on the side of the questionnaire, asking about political parties: "Don't know these parties. "
Again, 5016, a housewife, graduated from high school, high on F and E but middle on PEC, referred to by the interviewer as "being of moderately high intelligence," says '
"I hear that communists and socialists are both bad. "
By contrast, 5052, the Spanish-Negro entertainer, high on F and PEC, middle on E, has an opinion of his own on communism and apparently some sym- pathy with communists, but his opinion is no less startling:
"All of the people in the entertainment world who are communists are good guys. "
On further questioning it comes out that according to his opinion
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 66 I Communism seems to be a so'rt of social club wh~ch holds meetings and raises
money for worthy causes.
Somewhat exceptional is the statement of the moderately low-scoring call- house girl, 5035, who, before she chose the profession of prostitute, was a graduate of the University of California. She is strongly interested in union activities and actually lost her former job as a dancing teacher because of such activities, but refused on the questionnaire to. mark any questions with regard to political groups, for which she gives the following explanation:
"I am very confused about politics because I talk about them a great deal with our clients here and they all have different opinions. It was a struggle for me to get through economics in college. "
In practical issues, however, her views are very liberal and even radical. The self-accusing attitude of women with regard to political matters seems to be most common among medium and low scorers; this is consistent with
the latter's general introspective and self-critical attitude.
An example is the 17-year-old student of social work, Fz28, who is middle
on E and F but high on PEC:
"I am a little ashamed about this subject. I hate to be ignorant about anything but frankly, I don't know anything about politics. I am for Roosevelt, of course, but I don't think I have developed any ideas of my own. Mother and Jim talk about things, but it is mostly social work shop. I intend to read a lot and think a lot about things because I believe all intelligent people should have ideas. "
Interesting also is the low scorer, F517, a 20-year-old freshman student ma- joring in music, who accuses herself of ignorance and dependence, though her general attitude, particularly with regard to minority questions, shows that she is rather articulate and outspoken and that she differs from her parents.
"I don't know much about it. I'm quite dependent-! get my opinions from my father. He is a die-hard Republican. He did not like Roosevelt but I think he did some good things (such as making things better for the poor people). "
It would go beyond the scope of the present study to attempt a full expla- nation of political ignorance so strikingly in contrast to the level of informa- tion in many other matters and to the highly rational way in which most of our subjects decide about the means and ends of their own lives. The ultimate reason for this ignorance might well be the opaqueness of the social, eco- nomic, and political situation to all those who are not in full command of all the resources of stored knowledge and theoretical thinking. In its present phase, our social system tends objectively and automatically to produce "curtains" which make it impossible for the naive person really to see what it is all about.
These objective conditions are enhanced by powerful economic and social forces which, purposely or automatically, keep the people ig- norant. The very fact that our social system is on the defense, as it were, that
? 662 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
capitalism, instead of exparding the old way and opening up innumerable opportunities to the people, has to maintain itself somewhat precariously and to block critical insights which were regarded as "progressive" one hun- dred years ago but are viewed as potentially dangerous today, makes for a one-sided presentation of the facts, for manipulated information, and for certain shifts of emphasis which tend to check the universal enlightenment otherwise furthered by the technological development of communications.
? Once again, as in the era of the transition from feudalism to middle-class society, knowing too much has assumed a subversive touch, as it were. This tendency is met halfway by the "authoritarian" frame of mind of large sec- tions of the population. The transformation of our social system from some- thing dynamic into something conservative, a status quo, struggling for its perpetuation, is reflected by the attitudes and opinions of all those who, for reasons of vested interests or psychological conditions, identify themselves with the existing setup. In order not to undermine their own pattern of identification, they unconsciously do not want to know too much and are ready to accept superficial or distorted information as long as it confirms the world in which they want to go on living. It would be erroneous to ascribe the general state of ignorance and confusion in political matters to natural stupidity or to the mythological "immaturity" of the people. Stu- pidity may be due to psychological repressions more than to a basic lack of the capacity for thinking. Only in this way, it seems, can the low level of political intelligence even among our college sample be understood. They find it difficult to think and even to learn because they are afraid they might think the wrong thoughts or learn the wrong things. It may be added that this fear, probably often due to the father's refusal to tell the child more than he is supposedly capable of understanding, is continuously reinforced by an educational system which tends to discourage anything supposedly "speculative," or which cannot be corroborated by surface findings, and stated in terms of "facts and figures. "
The discrepancy brought about by the absence of political training and the abundance of political news with which. the population is flooded and which actually or fictitiously presupposes such training, is only one among many aspects of this general condition. With reference to the specific focus of our research, two aspects of political ignorance may be emphasized. One is that being "intelligent" today means largely to lookafter one's self, to take care of one's advantages whereas, to use Veblen's words, "idle curiosity" is discouraged. Since the pertinence of economic and political matters to private existence, however, is largely obscured to the population even now, they do not bother about things which apparently have little bearing on their fate and upon which they have, as they are dimly aware, not too much influence.
The second aspect of ignorance which has to be stressed here, is of a more psychological nature. Political news and comment like all other information
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 663
poured out by the radio, the press, and the newsreels, is generally absorbed during leisure time and falls, in a certain way, within the framework of "entertainment. " Politics is viewed in much the same way as sport or the movies, not as something directly involved with one's own participation in the process of production. Viewed within this frame of reference, however, politics is necessarily "disappointing. " It appears to people conditioned by an industrial culture and its specific kinds of "entertainment values" as drab, cold, dry-as boring. This may be enhanced by that undercurrent of Amer- ican tradition which regards politics somehow as a dirty business with which a respectable person should have but little to do. Disappointment in politics as a leisure-time activity which pays no quick returns probably makes for indifference, and it is quite possible that the prevailing ignorance is due not merely to unfamiliarity with the facts but also a kind of resistance against what is supposed to serve as a pastime and mostly tends to be disagreeable. A pattern most often to be observed, perhaps, among women, namely, skip- ping the political sections of newspapers, where information is available, and turning immediately to gossip columns, crime stories, the woman's page, and
so forth, may be an extreme expression of something more general.
To sum up, political ignorance would seem to be specifically determined by the fact that political knowledge as a rule does not primarily help to further individual aims in reality, whereas, on the other hand, it does not help
the individual to evade reality either.
2. TICKET THINKING AND PERSONALIZATION IN POLITICS
The frame of mind concomitant with ignorance and confusion may be called one of lack of political experience in the sense that the whole sphere of politics and economics is "aloof" from the subject,. that he does not reach it with concrete innervations, insights, and reactions but has to contend with it in an indirect, alienated way. Yet, politics and economics, alien as they may be from individual life, and largely beyond the reach of individual decision and action, decisively affect the individual's fate. In our present society, in the era of all-comprising social organization and total war, even the most naive person becomes aware of the impact of the politico-economic sphere. Here belongs, of course, primarily the war situation, where literally life and death of the individual depend on apparently far-away political dynamics. But also issues such as the role of unionism in American economy, strikes, the development of free enterprise toward monopolism and therewith the question of state control, make themselves felt apparently down to the most
? private and intimate realms of the individual.
This, against the background of ignorance and confusion, makes for
anxiety on the ego level that ties in only too well with childhood anxieties. The individual has to cope with problems which he actually does not under- stand, and he has to develop certain techniques of orientation, however crude
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
and fallacious they may be, which help him to find his way through the dark, as it were. 2 These means fulfill a dual function: on the one hand, they provide the individual with a kind of knowledge, or with substitutes for knowledge, which makes it possible for him to take a stand where it is expected of him, whilst he is actually not equipped to do so. On the other hand, by themselves they alleviate psychologically the feeling of anxiety and uncertainty and provide the individual with the illusion of some kind of intellectual security, of something he can stick to even if he feels, underneath, the inadequacy of his opinions.
The task of how to understand the "ununderstandable," paradoxical in itself, leads toward a paradoxical solution, that is to say, the subjects tend to employ two devices which contradict each other, a contradiction that expresses the impasse in which many people find themselves. These two devices are stereotypy and personalization. It is easy to see that these "devices" are repe- titions of infantile patterns. The specific interaction of stereotypy and prej- udice has been discussed in detail in the preceding chapter. It may now be appropriate to review ideological stereotypy and its counterpart, personal- ization, in a broader context, and to relate it to more fundamental principles long established by psychology. Rigid dichotomies, such as that between "good and bad," "we and the others," "I and the world" date back to our earliest developmental phases. While serving as necessary constructs in order to enable us to cope, by mental anticipation and rough organization, with an otherwise chaotic reality, even the stereotypes of the child bear the hallmark of stunted experience and anxiety. They point back to the "chaotic" nature of reality, and its clash with the omnipotence fantasies of earliest infancy. Our stereotypes are both tools and scars: the "bad man" is the stereotype par excellence. At the. same time, the psychological ambiguity inherent in the use of stereotypes, which are both necessary and constricting forces, stimulate regularly a countertendency. We try, by a kind of ritual, to soften the otherwise rigid, to make human, close, part of ourselves (or the family) that which appears, because of its very alienness, threatening. The child who is afraid of the bad man is at the same time tempted to call every stranger "uncle. " The traumatic element in both these attitudes continuously serves as an obstacle to the reality principle, although both also function as means of adjustment. When transformed into character traits, the mechanisms in- volved make more and more for irrationality. The opaqueness of the present political and economic situation for the average person provides an ideal opportunity for retrogression to the infantile level of stereotypy and person- alization. The political rationalizations used by the uninformed and confused are compulsive revivals of irrational mechanisms never overcome during the
2 This has been pointed out with regard to the imagery of the Jews. See Chapter XVI, p. 618f.
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individual's growth. This seems to be one of the main links between opinions and psychological determinants.
Once again, stereotypy helps to organize what appears to the ignorant as chaotic: the less he is able to enter into a really cognitive process, the more stubbornly he clings to certain patterns, belief in which saves him the trouble of really going into the matter.
Where the rigidly compulsive nature of the stereotype cuts off the dialec- tics of trial and error, stultification enters the picture. Stereotypy becomes- to use J. F. Brown's term-stereopathy. This is the case in the political area where a firm bulk of ignorance and lack of any relation to the objective material forbids any real experience. In addition, industrial standardization of innumerable phenomena of modern life enhances stereotypical thinking. The more stereotyped life itself becomes, the more the stereopath feels in the right, sees his frame of thinking vindicated by reality. Modern mass com- munciations, moulded after industrial production, spread a whole system of stereotypes which, while still being fundamentally "ununderstandable" to the individual, allow him at any moment to appear as being up to date and "knowing all about it. " Thus, stereotyped thinking in political matters is almost inescapable.
However, the adult individual, like the child, has to pay a heavy price for the comfort he draws from stereotypy. The stereotype, while being a means of translating reality in a kind of multiple-choice questionnaire where every issue is subsumed and can be decided by a plus or minus mark, keeps the world as aloof, abstract, "nonexperienced" as it was before. Moreover, since it is above all the alienness and coldness of political reality which causes the individual's anxieties, these anxieties are not fully remedied by a device which itself reflects the threatening, streamlining process of the real social world. Thus, stereotypy calls again for its very opposite: personalization. Here, the term assumes a very definite meaning: the tendency to describe objective social and economic processes, political programs, internal and external ten- sions in terms of some person identified with the case in question rather than taking the trouble to perform the impersonal intellectual operations required by the abstractness of the social processes themselves.
Both stereotypy and personalization are inadequate to reality. Their inter- pretation may therefore be regarded as a first step in the direction of under- standing the complex of "psychotic" thinking which appears to be a crucial characteristic of the fascist character. It is obvious, however, that this sub- iective failure to grasp reality is not primarily and exclusively a matter of the psychological dynamics of the individuals involved, but is in some part due to reality itself, to the relationship or lack of relationship between this reality and the individual. Stereotypy misses reality in so far as it dodges the concrete and contents itself with preconceived, rigid, and overgeneralized
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ideas to which the individual attributes a kind of magical omnipotence. Con- versely, personalization dodges the real abstractness, that is to say, the "reifi- cation" of a social reality which is determined by property relations and in which the human beings themselves are, as it were, mere appendages. Stereo- typy and personalization are two divergent parts of an actually nonexperi- enced world, parts which are not only irreconcilable with each other, but which also do not allow for any addition which would reconstruct the picture of the real.
a. CAsEs OF PoLITICAL TICKET THINKING. W e limit ourselves to describing a few cases of political stereotypy. ?
M359 from the University Extension Testing Class is departmental man- ager for a leather company. He is high onE and PEC but middle on F. While imbued with authoritarian ideas he shows a certain imaginativeness and gen- eral disposition to discursive argumentation somewhat different from the typical high scorer's mentality. It is thus the more striking to find that the political section of his interview is completely abstract and cliche-like. Just because this subject is by no means a fanatic, his statements serve well to illustrate how ignorance is covered up by phraseology, and how the stereo- types, borrowed from the vernacular of current newspaper editorials, make for the acceptance of reactionary trends. In order to give a concrete picture of how this mechanism works, his political statements are given in full. This
may also supply us with an example of how the various topics with which we shall have to deal in detail afterwards form a kind of ideological unit once a person is under the sway of political semi-information:
(Political trends? ) "I am not very happy by the outward aspect of things, too much politics instead of a basis of equality and justice for all men. Running of the entire country is determined by the party in power, not very optimistic outlook. Under Roosevelt, the people were willing to turn entire schedule of living over to the government, wanted everything done for them. (Main problem? ) No question but the problem of placing our servicemen back into employment, giving them a degree of happiness is a major problem. If not handled soon, may produce a serious danger. More firm organization of servicemen. "
(What might do? ) "Boycott the politicians and establish the old-time govern- ment that we should have had all along. (What is this? ) Government of, by, and for the people. " Subject emphasizes the moderate, average man is the serviceman. (Unions? ) "Not satisfied with them. One characteristic is especially unsatisfactory. 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
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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
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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.
