I believe that
business
should be able to conduct their own business, except during the war we had to have ceiling prices.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
and so could not become: bargaining agent for the employees.
They thought if they could prevent it fron being registered for one or two years that it would die.
Because it is not the bar
gaining agent it cannot make a contract for the workers, it can only hint to th company what it would like. Although the A. I. S. only has a chapter at S. , I don' think it is company dominated, although I have no proof. (Don't the laborator: assistants get paid almost as much as the junior chemists? ) Yes, when the junio chemists were getting only $170 a month and the C. I. O. secured a raise to $180 fo the laboratory assistants, the company had to raise the junior chemists to $zoo
. .
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 709
month. The C. I. O. complains i:hat they do all the work and yet the junior chemists won't join. (Was not the raise a good thing? ) Yes, but I still would like to see what the A. I. S. could do if it were registered: maybe it wouldn't do anything. "
As to the high scorers, the key theme of their antilabor ideology is that of the racket. They regard the pressure exercised by organized labor as illegiti- mate in a way comparable to organized crime and conspiracy-the latter being one of the high scorers' favorite topics anyway. To them, whose moralism has been emphasized from time to time in this book, the concept of the free market coincides with the moral law, and any factors which introduce, as it were, an extra-economic element into the business sphere are regarded by them as irregular. Incidentally, this suspicion does not pertain to industrial monopolies and their pricing agreements but merely to the supposedly mo- nopolistic structure of unions. Here again the idea of "legitimacy"-of identi- fication with the strong-comes into play. Industrial combines seem, accord- ing to this kind of thinking, to be the outgrowth of a "natural" tendency, labor organizations a banding together of people who want to get more than their due share.
Viewed from a purely psychological angle the idea of "labor racketeering" seems to be of a nature similar to the stereotype of Jewish clannishness. It dates back to the lack of an adequately internalized identification with paternal authority during the Oedipus situation. It is our general assumption that the typical high scorers, above all, fear the father and try to side with him in order to participate in his power. The "racketeers" are those who by demanding too much (though the subject wants as much himself) run the risk of arousing the father's anger-and hence the subject's castration anxiety. This anxiety, reflecting the subject's own guilt feelings, is relieved by pro- jection. Thinking in terms of in- and outgroup, the high scorer who wants to "outgroup" the others is continuously prone to call them the ingroup. The more he tends himself, on account of his pretense to "status," to circum- vent the "normal" channels of free competition, the more he is likely to blame those he deems weak for the very same thing. Workers become "racketeers," criminals to him as soon as they organize. They appear as the guilty ones after the pattern of "peddler bites dog. " Such psychological tendencies are, of course, magnetically attracted by any elements of reality which fit irtto the projective pattern. Here, labor organizations afford a rare opportunity.
M352, a shift foreman who calls himself a "head operator," scores high on all scales.
"Well, at Standard Oil, no unions recognized. I've never been a union man. Through union there is strength, if it's run okay, but a lot of unions of today have developed into a racket, and a source of political influence. The C. I. O. Political Action Committee particularly . . . politics and unionism shouldn't become too involved. The unions shouldn't become a political organization; and the A. F. L. has
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
developed into a racket for making money. The officers keep themselves in positiom practically until they die, with no strings on how they use the money, and tha1 should be controlled . . . but if the local organization can run itself in an orderly fashion, okay, if the officers are conservative, but the minute they get too liberal use a strike as a first weapon instead of as a last resort . . . etc. "
Here, as in many instances, critique is directed against the largeness of uniom per se; with the romantic idea that purely local organization, being less insti- tutionalized, would be better automatically.
M658, the San Quentin man quoted above, goes so far as plainly to advo- cate the abolition of unions:
(Political trends today? ) "Oh, I think we are going to be ruled by a lot of clowns by a lot of labor unions. . . . Look at all these working stiffs . . . that don't know any- thing else, but how to drive a nail . . . they try to run things, because a few hundrec thousands of them get together. (What ought to be done? ) Straighten them out show them where they belong. . . . Take away their charters. (Meaning? ) Well every union has to have a charter. Abolish them. If necessary, abolish their meetings (What about strikes? ) That's what I'm thinking of . . . they're a detriment to the country. (How should strikes be handled? ) Refuse to reemploy them, or fine them I don't believe in sweat shops either, but this quittin' when you're making $rso: week anyway-kind of silly. Create inflation. " (Subject had earlier made a remarl in discussing vocation and income-which interviewer neglected to record-to the effect that he himself thinks in terms of saving perhaps $500 or so, e. g. , by theatre work, and then quitting for awhile. Note subject's highly exaggerated fantasies o wartime wages. )
A few statements of extreme anti-unionism can be found among the Lo Angeles sample. Perhaps the 2o-year-old boy, 5014, high onE and PEC anc middle on F, represents a certain kind of war veterans' anti-unionism:
When asked about organized labor he says: "I am against it. " He doesn't knov the difference between the A. F. L. and the C. I. O. but he feels "like many of the vet erans, we worked for nothing while the workers at home were on strike and mak ing good money. "
The contrast between this subject's hostility and his complete lack of infor- mation is striking.
5031-5032 are a husband and wife in a very high income group. Both arc high on PEC, low on F, and low-middle on E. For them violent anti-unionisn is concomitant again with contempt for human nature: they regard unionisn simply as a device of the lazy ones to dodge labor.
Both of them are antilabor. The husband is quite vehement about this. Althougl he expects prosperity to continue he feels it will be at the cost of a continual figh against labor's demands. He feels that labor's demands are unreasonable and tha with labor's recent victories that "even if one met labor's demands one certain! ' does not get a day's work out of carpenters, plumbers, etc. " Both of them claim t; be without prejudice with regard to various minorities. It is interesting, howeveJ that they did raise the issue of the acceptance of Jewish children in the schoc where their son went.
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MATERIAL 7I I
F5043, an extremely high-scoring middle-aged housewife, belongs to that school of potential fascists who find that "everything is a mess. " She first creates in true "we-the-mothers" style the imagery of a desperate crisis and then puts the blame on the labor situation.
"I have never seen anything like this," she lamented when asked about the labor situation. "What have our boys been fighting for? Why, they come back to find that they have to go without a lot of things . . . not even a place to live . . . all because of the strikes. " Thus she blames labor for the present crises and resents the growth and strength of labor unions. She also feels that there is an irreconcilable breach between veterans and the workers and fears internal strife. She also blames the strikers for the growing trend of unemployment and is very pessimistic about the possibility of full employment. However, she does not feel that there is too much government interference and is rather vague about the role of big business and free enterprise. In fact, she seems to harbor only very strong antilabor and anti- strike feelings, without any strong convictions on other issues. "It's just a terrible mess," she repeated, and she does not think the layman should get his hands dirty by "messing with politics. "
Whereas the low scorers who generally take a "pro, but" attitude toward unions insist on the soundness of the principle but object that unions are "going too far," getting more, as it were, than their share, the typical high scorers blame them indiscriminately for the supposedly critical social situa- tion, for the standardization of life (5001 and 5003), and for forthright dic- tatorial aims. To the high scorers anti-unionism is no longer an expression of dissatisfaction with concrete conditions from which they might have suf- fered, but a plank in the platform of reactionism which also automatically includes'anti-Semitism, hostility toward foreign countries, hatred of the New Deal, and all those hostile attitudes which are integrated in the negative imagery of American society underlying fascist and semifascist propaganda.
2. BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT
As was to be expected, the general ideological pattern pertaining to govern- ment interference in business is highly consistent with that which pertains to labor. The average opinion-if such a term, without proper quantification, is allowed-seems to be that a certain degree of government control is indis- pensable, particularly in wartime, but that it contradicts basically the prin- ciple of economic liberalism. State interference still falls within the category of the necessary evil. T o the high scorers in particular the government inter- ference in business is just another aspect of the usurpation complex, a matter of dictatorial arbitrariness jeopardizing the rights of the hard-working money earners. But it should be noted again that there is no sharp line between high and low scorers with regard to government interference, whilst the how, the way in which both groups express their critical attitude, differentiates.
The following examples of a partly positive attitude toward government interference are chosen from medium and high scorers.
? 712 THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
F34oA, of the Extension Testing Class, a young clerk, is middle onE but high on F and PEC. She is interesting because of a certain attitude of intellec- tual fairness expressing itself in attempts to see also the other side of the picture: an "antiparanoid" trait of the American frame of mind which, inci- dentally, is among the strongest bulwarks against fascism as far as subjective factors are concerned.
She doesn't believe in government control of industry. Maybe it would be all right for the government to. take over transportation, gas, electricity, and water. (Why? ) Maybe they could do it cheaper; she is not sure about that. Anyway, if there was a strike, like on the Key System they would be holding up everything and the government could make them go back to work. "When the government tells you to do something, you do it. "
The quotation shows an ambiguous element in the affirmation of govern- ment interference: whereas the latter is resented as a violation of liberalism, it is, simultaneously, appreciated as a potential means to keep organized labor at bay. It should be remembered that the National Socialists always com- plained about the "Welfare State" of Weimar but later on surpassed by far any state interference ever attempted by German socialist governments.
The high-scoring parole officer, M109, is reminiscent of F340A in so far as his support for some kind of government interference is authoritarian rather than favorable to any restrictions on the anarchy of free enterprise or to rational planning for the sake of all. (Cf. quotations on pp. 676, 679. )
Those who are outspokenly set against government controls again com- prise both low and high scorers. Here, of course, the low scorers are particu- lar! y interesting.
The already quoted M711, an "easy going" low scorer, is opposed to state interference simply because he feels a fascist potential in it, apparently un~ aware of the progressive function this interference had under Roosevelt:
(Government control? ) "I don't. There, again, that could be a road to a fascist state eventually. Certain controls would have to be exercised. "
In spite of his leftist ideology this man shows symptoms of a confusion which may make him the prey of pseudoprogressive slogans of fascist propa- ganda: it is the same man who justifies his anti-union attitude with the spuri- ous assertion that Hitler was in favor of unions.
M2o4, another low scorer, a young man of the Psychiatric Clinic group, suffering from anxiety neurosis, calls himself a socialist and feels that the New Deal was too conservative, but states, nevertheless:
The government should not be completely in control of everything. Favors something like the Scandinavian system: CCF, full employment, labor government, favors cooperatives. "I think it will come that way in this country. Government control can be run wrong. Instead we should preserve individual freedom and work through education. "
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW. MA TERIAL 7I 3
To sum up: the low scorers' criticism of government interference is based on the traditional idea of freedom, the fear of an authoritarian abolition of democratic institutions and an individualistic way of living. This makes for a potential resistance against any attempts at a planned economy. There is a possibility that a good many traditional values of American democratism and liberalism, if naively maintained within the setup of today's society, may radically change their objective functions without the subjects even being aware of it. In an era in which "rugged individualism" actually has resulted in far-reaching social control, all the ideals concomitant with an uncritical individualistic concept of liberty may simply serve to play into the hands of the most powerful groups.
The statements against government control of our high scorers are of a? completely different kind. To them, unionism, New Dealism, government control are all the same, the rule of those who should not rule. Here resent- ment of government interference is fused with the "no pity for the poor" complex.
The San Quentin "tough guy," M664b:
(Political trends today? ) "Well, the way it's agoing now, I think it's a detriment to our country. (How do you mean that? ) I think a person should earn a living instead of expecting the government to give it to him. I don't believe in this New Deal and I don't believe in labor running the country. . . . If a man can't make a profit in his business, he'll close it down. . . . "
The San Quentin murderer, M651a, who is serving a life sentence, is set against government interference, his point of view being that of the business- man who talks "common sense. "
(What about government controls over business? ) "No, I believe in free enter- prise.
I believe that business should be able to conduct their own business, except during the war we had to have ceiling prices. . . . But competitive business makes low prices. . . . "
It may be noted that the feeling, even of the high scorers, with regard to government control as such, though it represents to them the hated New Deal, does not seem to be as "violent" as their anti-unionism. This may be partly due to the authoritarian undercurrent which, somehow, makes them respect, to a certain extent, any strong government, even if it is built on lines different from their own, partly from the rational insight into the necessity of some government interference. Many of our interviews were conducted during or shortly after the war, at a time when it was obvious that nothing
could be achieved without government control, and it is this fact to which reference is frequently made, mostly as a qualification of the rejection of government control. This, however, certainly depends largely on the situa- tion, and if interviews should be conducted today, the picture would very probably be different.
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THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
There is one particular issue which deserves some attention in this con- nection, the attitude of our subjects toward monopolism. On the one hand, monopolies are the outgrowth of free enterprise, the consummation of rugged individualism; on the other hand, they tend to assume that kind of noncompetitive control which is rejected when exercised by the government. Probably no "public opinion" concerning monopoly has crystallized so far, mainly because much fewer people are aware of the anonymous and objec- tive power of big combines than are aware of official legal measures of the state. However, a few examples may illustrate how the problem of insti- tutionalized superbusiness is reflected in the minds of some of our subjects.
M IIJ, a conventional but nonfascistic fraternity man, who scores low on
E and F but high on PEC, is set against "this Marxian stuff," but nevertheless,
"Big business should be controlled when it gets too large. In some fields, like Jtransponation, power, etc. , large-scale organization is necessary. The main thing
1
I there is to prevent monopoly, and to have limitations on profits. "
The unresolved contradiction between this man's strongly antisocialist and equally outspoken antimonopoly attitudes, is in all probability charac- teristic of a very large section of the population. In practice, it amounts to an artificial "holding up" of economic developmental tendencies, rather than to a clear-cut economic concept. Those layers of the European middle class which were finally enlisted by fascism were also not infrequently set, in ideology, against the big combines.
Mzz8, a low-scoring man of the University Extension Testing Class, sees the problem but is still so deeply imbued with traditional economic concepts that he is prevented from following his logic to its conclusions.
"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 same man criticizes Wallace for being "too impractical. " One cannot escape the impression that monopolism is used as a vague negative formula but that very few subjects are actually aware of the impact of monopoliza- tion on their lives. The union issue, in particular, plays a much bigger role in over-all ideology.
3. POLITICAL ISSUES CLOSE TO THE SUBJECTS
It has been pointed out in the early part of this chapter that political con- fusion and ignorance, and the gap between surface ideology and concrete reactions, are partly due to the fact that the political sphere, even today, seems to most Americans too far away from their own experiences and their
. .
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 7I 5
own pressing interests. Here we go briefly into a discussion of some political and economic topics of the interview schedule which, for imaginary or actual reasons, are closer to the hearts of our subjects, in order to form at least an impression on how they behave with regard to these matters, and whether their behavior differs markedly from that in the field of "high politics. "
First, an illustration of what may be called "imaginary closeness. " Our interview schedule contained at least one question which was, in the middle of its realistic surroundings, of a "projective" nature. It was concerned with the $z5,ooo income limit. Neither is this question a pressing political issue nor could many of our interviewees be expected to have any immediate personal interest in limitations of income on such a high level. The answers to this question, which would deserve a thoroughgoing analysis of its own, are indicative of an element of the American dream much more than of political attitudes. There were exceedingly few among our subjects who wanted to accept such an income limitation. The utmost concession they made was the acknowledgment that one can live on this amount. The pre- vailing view, however, was that, in a free country, every person should be allowed. to earn as much as he can, notwithstanding the fact that the chance to make as much today has become largely illusory. It is as if the American kind of utopia was still much more that of the shoeshine boy who becomes a railroad king, than that of a world without poverty. The dream of unre- stricted happiness has found its refuge, one might almost say its sole refuge, in the somewhat infantile fantasy of infinite wealth to be gathered by the individual. It goes without saying that this dream works in favor of the status quo; that the identification of the individual with the tycoon, in terms of the chance to become one himself, helps to perpetuate big business control.
Among those subjects who are outspokenly in favor of the income limit is the San Quentin check-writer, M664C, a high-scoring man, so full of fury and envy against everything that he does not even like the wealthy.
(What about $zs,ooo limit on salaries? ) "What the hell is that for? That's no more than fair; hell, that's too much money anyway. "
The apparent radicalism of this man can be appreciated only if one recol- lects that it is he who is outraged by the idea of feeding starving countries. The very widespread feeling of our subjects on the $z5,ooo income limit can be summed up in the eager plea of M62zA, of the San Quentin Group,
a low scorer on E and F but a high scorer on PEC.
"They shouldn't do that. If a man has the ability, more power to him. "
The next few topics are characteristic of the aforementioned tendency of our subjects to become more rational and "progressive" as soon as institutions or measures of a supposedly "socialistic" nature, from which the individual feels he can draw immediate benefits, are brought into the discussion. OPA and health insurance are examples.
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Our interviews seem to show that OPA, also a "bureaucratic" agency of government interference, is very generally accepted. Here are a few exam- ples, picked at random:
Again M621A:
(OPA? ) "I think it's done a very wonderful thing in this country. May have gone too far, e. g. , in the housing situation in San Diego. " (Subject thinks the OPA should have solved the housing situation. )
One of the few exceptions is the wealthy Los Angeles couple, 5031 and 5032, who are "disgusted and fed up with the New Deal, priorities, and all this damn red tape created by OPA. "
Most others are in favor of OPA, sometimes, however, with a certain strain of punitiveness, such as the San Quentin low scorer, M627, already quoted:
"Well, the OPA is doing a good job if they control this black market. "
This comes out most strongly in the interview of the San Quentin high
scorer M658, the man who wants to abolish labor unions.
"If (the OP A) had an iron glove underneath their kid gloves, be all right. They
fine a guy $wo-for making $wo,ooo. "
The general appreciation of OPA is the more interesting since this insti- tution has been under constant newspaper attacks for many years. But here the advantages, particularly with regard to the housing situation, are so obvi- ous that ideological invectives apparently lose some of their impact on the population. To demand the abolition of OPA because of the "damn red tape" in Washington may mean that one has no roof over one's head.
Something similar holds true of health insurance. High and low scorers, with very few exceptions, concur in its appreciation. M656A, a high scorer of the San Quentin Group, serving a term for second-degree murder, after having stated that a person can live on $2s,ooo a year but should be allowed to make what he is capable of making, and who certainly cannot be called a socialist, answers to the question about public health insurance, "I'm for it. "
The above quoted easy-going, low-scoring man, M711, is enthusiastic: "Public health insurance? Unqualifiedly yes . . . important as almost any meas-
ure of ideal society. "
Finally, our attention should be directed toward an economic area which is of the utmost importance for the formative processes of fascism. This is taxes. It is perhaps the point at which pent-up social fury is most freely given vent. With the high scorers, this fury is never directed overtly against basic con- ditions but has nevertheless the undertone of desired violent action. The man who bangs his fist on the table and complains about heavy taxation is a "natural candidate" for totalitarian movements. Not only are taxes associated with a supposedly spendthrift democratic government giving away millions to idlers and bureaucrats, but it is the very point where people feel, to put it
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 7 I7
in the words of one of oui subjects, that this world does not really belong to the people. Here they feel immediately that they are required to make sacrifices for which they do not get any visible returns, just as one of our subjects complains that he cannot see what he can get out of the war. The indirect advantages each individual may draw from taxes paid are obscure to him. He can only see that he has to give something without getting anything back, and this, in itself, seems to contradict the concept of exchange upon which the free market idea of liberalism is built. However, the extraordinary amount of libido attached to the complex of taxes, even in a boom period, such as the years when our subjects were interviewed, seems to confirm the hypothesis that it draws on deeper sources of the personality as much as on the surface resentment of being deprived of a considerable part of one's income without visible advantages to the individual. The rage against the rational tax system is an explosion of the irrational hatred against the irrational taxation of the individual by society. The Nazis knew very well how to exploit the complex of the "taxpayer's money. " They went so far as to grant, during the first years of their rule, a kind of tax amnesty, publicized by Goering. When they had to resort to heavier taxation than ever before they camouflaged it most skilfully as charity, voluntary donations, and so forth, and collected large amounts of money by illegal threats, rather than by offi- cial tax legislation.
Here are a few examples of the antitaxation complex:
The high-scoring man, M 105, who is violently anti-Semitic and associated with the "lunatic fringe," says:
"It is the taxpayer's money that has been put into South America; other countries will think we are fools. "
M345, a radar engineer of the Extension Testing Class, who scores middle onE, low on F, but high on PEC, believes:
(What about government control of business? ) "It has gotten to the point where it is requiring too much of the citizens' tax money and time. "
Again, the taxpayer's complex is not limited to high scorers. The low- scoring man, Mzz6, the deviate case of a conformist, conventional conserva- tive definitely opposed to prejudice, strongly identified with his father, accepts his Republican views:
". . . also because businessmen generally don't like the taxes. "
In case of a new economic crisis, where unemployment would necessitate high taxation of people whose incomes have shrunk, this complex would un- doubtedly play an exceptionally dangerous role. The threat is the more seri- ous since, in such a situation, a government which would not impose taxes would fail, while one which would take steps in this direction would invari-
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ably antagonize the very same group from which totalitarian movements most likely draw their support.
4. FOREIGN POLICY AND RUSSIA
Lack of information on the part of our subjects prevails, even more than anywhere else, in the area of foreign politics. There are usually rather vague and misty ideas about international conflicts, interspersed with morsels of information on some individual topics with which the subjects either happen to be familiar or to which they have taken a fancy. The general mood is one of disappointment, anxiety, and vague discontent, as symbolically epitomized by the medium-scoring woman, F340B: "Seems we haven't got any foreign policy. "
This may easily be a mere echo of newspaper statements frequently made at the time of the study by columnists such as Walter Lippman and Dorothy Thompson. Repeating them transforms the feeling of insecurity and dis- orientation of many of our subjects into the semblance of critical superiority. More than in any other political sphere, our subjects live "from hand to mouth" in the area of international affairs.
There is a striking lack of a sense of proportion, of balanced judgment, considering the importance or unimportance of topics of foreign politics.
One illustration, stemming from the "easy going" low scorer M7zz:
(Major problems facing country? ) "Hard question to answer . . . Perhaps the main one is how we're going to fit in with the rest of the world. . . . I'm a little concerned about what we seem to be doing in China. . . . If we are a carrier of the torch of the Four Freedoms, I think we are a little inconsistent in our maneuver- ings in China and Indonesia. "
This statement seems to be a "day residue" of continuous newspaper read- ing rather than the expression of autonomous thinking. Yet it should be noted that it remains within the anti-imperialist frame of reference of the low scorer.
The symbol of political uneasiness is the atom bomb which is dreaded everywhere. The stand taken toward the atom bomb seems to differentiate the high from the low scorers. As is to be expected, also for psychological reasons, the high scorers are all out for secrecy. Here, as elsewhere, "they want to keep what we have. "
M662A, the San Quentin "tough guy," high on all scales:
(Threats to present form of government? ) "Atom bomb. If these other countries get it, they're going to use it on us and we're going to have to look out for Russia. . . . I'm for Russia, but . . . I think sooner or later we're going to go to war with them. "
As to the prospect of a devastating war, this man seems to take a fatalistic view as if it were a natural catastrophe rather than something dependent on
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 719
humans. This is in keeping with our clinical knowledge of the male high scorers' psychological passivity (cf. p. 575).
The low scorers either want to outlaw the atom bomb or to make the secret public:
M627, the alcoholic sex-offender, low onE and PEC but high on F:
(Major problems facing this country? ) "Well, I think this atom bomb. (Solu- tion? ) . . . Well, it ought to be outlawed and money appropriated to see if we can't use that power for good. "
F515, the "genuine liberal" who is to be discussed in detail in Chapter XIX (p. 782), pleads for international atomic control:
"Truman doesn't want ~o give away the secret of the atom bomb-1 think he should. It's already out anyway. "
Although the over-all ideology is fear of war, the high scorer's attitude indicates that, while deeming war inevitable, they have some underlying sympathy for war-making, such as that found in the Los Angeles high-scoring radio writer 5003 characterized as highly neurotic:
As for the world state, he expects anything at the present time. "Why shouldn't we have further wars? W e are animals and have animal instincts and Darwin showed us it is the survival of the fittest. I'd like to believe in the spiritual brotherhood of men, but it's the strong man who wins. "
This kind of phrasing, "why shouldn't we have further wars," is indicative of his agreement with the idea, in spite of his talk of spiritual brotherhood. The use that is often made of the Darwinian slogan of the survival of the fit- test in order to rationalize crude aggressiveness, may be significant of the fascist potential within American "naturalism," although it is supposedly linked to progressive ideals and enlightenment.
5009, a p-year-old teaching principal in a small California town, who scores high on all scales, rationalizes his belief in a forthcoming war dif- ferently:
He expects no warless world and thinks that the next war will be with Russia. "The United States has always ranged itself against dictatorship. "
While he shows the typical high scorers' attitude-psychologically linked to cynicism and contempt for man-of regarding war as unavoidable, he justifies a policy which actually may lead to war with a democratic ideal: the stand to be taken against dictatorships.
A third aspect of subscribing to the war idea comes up in the interview of the aforementioned 5031, a wealthy building contractor. He
feels that perhaps we had better go to war with Russia now and get it over with.
Here the high scorer's typical cynicism, a fusion of contempt for man, exag- gerated down-to-earthness, and underlying destructiveness, is allowed
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uncensored expression. Whereas in the sphere of private morale such psycho- logical urges are held at bay by the acceptance of more or less convention- alized humane standards, they are let loose in the sphere of international politics where there seems to be as little of a collective superego as there is of a truly powerful supranational control agency.
The all-too-ready assumption that war cannot be abolished-which, accord- ing to this man, could be hoped for only if military men ran the UNO-is, fused with the administrative, quasi-technical, idea that one "should get it over with" as soon as possible, that Russia should be taken care of. War and peace become matters of technological expediency. The political conse- quence of this way of thinking is self-explanatory.
As with many other political topics, attitude toward Russia, whether for or against, does not by itself differentiate with any sharpness between high and low scorers. There is, first, a kind of "pseudo-low" attitude toward Russia. It falls in line with the general admiration of power in high scorers and is positive only as far as Russian military successes are concerned. It turns into hostility where Russian strength is presented as potentially dangerous. This happens with the San Quentin inmate M62zA, who scores low onE and F but high on PEC. He expresses his true anti-Russian feelings by means of personalization:
(Major problems facing country today? ) "I think Russia. . . . (Subject fears a war with Russia sooner or later over the atom bomb. ) Russia wants control of territory in China, so do the United States and England. (What do you dislike most about Russia? ) Well, a little bit too aggressive. Of course, they've done some won- derful things. Five year plan, educated themselves. (What good things about Russia? ) Lots of stamina to stand up under hardship. (Objections? ) I met quite a few Russians. Don't like them, because they seem to be overbearing. (How do you mean?
gaining agent it cannot make a contract for the workers, it can only hint to th company what it would like. Although the A. I. S. only has a chapter at S. , I don' think it is company dominated, although I have no proof. (Don't the laborator: assistants get paid almost as much as the junior chemists? ) Yes, when the junio chemists were getting only $170 a month and the C. I. O. secured a raise to $180 fo the laboratory assistants, the company had to raise the junior chemists to $zoo
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month. The C. I. O. complains i:hat they do all the work and yet the junior chemists won't join. (Was not the raise a good thing? ) Yes, but I still would like to see what the A. I. S. could do if it were registered: maybe it wouldn't do anything. "
As to the high scorers, the key theme of their antilabor ideology is that of the racket. They regard the pressure exercised by organized labor as illegiti- mate in a way comparable to organized crime and conspiracy-the latter being one of the high scorers' favorite topics anyway. To them, whose moralism has been emphasized from time to time in this book, the concept of the free market coincides with the moral law, and any factors which introduce, as it were, an extra-economic element into the business sphere are regarded by them as irregular. Incidentally, this suspicion does not pertain to industrial monopolies and their pricing agreements but merely to the supposedly mo- nopolistic structure of unions. Here again the idea of "legitimacy"-of identi- fication with the strong-comes into play. Industrial combines seem, accord- ing to this kind of thinking, to be the outgrowth of a "natural" tendency, labor organizations a banding together of people who want to get more than their due share.
Viewed from a purely psychological angle the idea of "labor racketeering" seems to be of a nature similar to the stereotype of Jewish clannishness. It dates back to the lack of an adequately internalized identification with paternal authority during the Oedipus situation. It is our general assumption that the typical high scorers, above all, fear the father and try to side with him in order to participate in his power. The "racketeers" are those who by demanding too much (though the subject wants as much himself) run the risk of arousing the father's anger-and hence the subject's castration anxiety. This anxiety, reflecting the subject's own guilt feelings, is relieved by pro- jection. Thinking in terms of in- and outgroup, the high scorer who wants to "outgroup" the others is continuously prone to call them the ingroup. The more he tends himself, on account of his pretense to "status," to circum- vent the "normal" channels of free competition, the more he is likely to blame those he deems weak for the very same thing. Workers become "racketeers," criminals to him as soon as they organize. They appear as the guilty ones after the pattern of "peddler bites dog. " Such psychological tendencies are, of course, magnetically attracted by any elements of reality which fit irtto the projective pattern. Here, labor organizations afford a rare opportunity.
M352, a shift foreman who calls himself a "head operator," scores high on all scales.
"Well, at Standard Oil, no unions recognized. I've never been a union man. Through union there is strength, if it's run okay, but a lot of unions of today have developed into a racket, and a source of political influence. The C. I. O. Political Action Committee particularly . . . politics and unionism shouldn't become too involved. The unions shouldn't become a political organization; and the A. F. L. has
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developed into a racket for making money. The officers keep themselves in positiom practically until they die, with no strings on how they use the money, and tha1 should be controlled . . . but if the local organization can run itself in an orderly fashion, okay, if the officers are conservative, but the minute they get too liberal use a strike as a first weapon instead of as a last resort . . . etc. "
Here, as in many instances, critique is directed against the largeness of uniom per se; with the romantic idea that purely local organization, being less insti- tutionalized, would be better automatically.
M658, the San Quentin man quoted above, goes so far as plainly to advo- cate the abolition of unions:
(Political trends today? ) "Oh, I think we are going to be ruled by a lot of clowns by a lot of labor unions. . . . Look at all these working stiffs . . . that don't know any- thing else, but how to drive a nail . . . they try to run things, because a few hundrec thousands of them get together. (What ought to be done? ) Straighten them out show them where they belong. . . . Take away their charters. (Meaning? ) Well every union has to have a charter. Abolish them. If necessary, abolish their meetings (What about strikes? ) That's what I'm thinking of . . . they're a detriment to the country. (How should strikes be handled? ) Refuse to reemploy them, or fine them I don't believe in sweat shops either, but this quittin' when you're making $rso: week anyway-kind of silly. Create inflation. " (Subject had earlier made a remarl in discussing vocation and income-which interviewer neglected to record-to the effect that he himself thinks in terms of saving perhaps $500 or so, e. g. , by theatre work, and then quitting for awhile. Note subject's highly exaggerated fantasies o wartime wages. )
A few statements of extreme anti-unionism can be found among the Lo Angeles sample. Perhaps the 2o-year-old boy, 5014, high onE and PEC anc middle on F, represents a certain kind of war veterans' anti-unionism:
When asked about organized labor he says: "I am against it. " He doesn't knov the difference between the A. F. L. and the C. I. O. but he feels "like many of the vet erans, we worked for nothing while the workers at home were on strike and mak ing good money. "
The contrast between this subject's hostility and his complete lack of infor- mation is striking.
5031-5032 are a husband and wife in a very high income group. Both arc high on PEC, low on F, and low-middle on E. For them violent anti-unionisn is concomitant again with contempt for human nature: they regard unionisn simply as a device of the lazy ones to dodge labor.
Both of them are antilabor. The husband is quite vehement about this. Althougl he expects prosperity to continue he feels it will be at the cost of a continual figh against labor's demands. He feels that labor's demands are unreasonable and tha with labor's recent victories that "even if one met labor's demands one certain! ' does not get a day's work out of carpenters, plumbers, etc. " Both of them claim t; be without prejudice with regard to various minorities. It is interesting, howeveJ that they did raise the issue of the acceptance of Jewish children in the schoc where their son went.
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F5043, an extremely high-scoring middle-aged housewife, belongs to that school of potential fascists who find that "everything is a mess. " She first creates in true "we-the-mothers" style the imagery of a desperate crisis and then puts the blame on the labor situation.
"I have never seen anything like this," she lamented when asked about the labor situation. "What have our boys been fighting for? Why, they come back to find that they have to go without a lot of things . . . not even a place to live . . . all because of the strikes. " Thus she blames labor for the present crises and resents the growth and strength of labor unions. She also feels that there is an irreconcilable breach between veterans and the workers and fears internal strife. She also blames the strikers for the growing trend of unemployment and is very pessimistic about the possibility of full employment. However, she does not feel that there is too much government interference and is rather vague about the role of big business and free enterprise. In fact, she seems to harbor only very strong antilabor and anti- strike feelings, without any strong convictions on other issues. "It's just a terrible mess," she repeated, and she does not think the layman should get his hands dirty by "messing with politics. "
Whereas the low scorers who generally take a "pro, but" attitude toward unions insist on the soundness of the principle but object that unions are "going too far," getting more, as it were, than their share, the typical high scorers blame them indiscriminately for the supposedly critical social situa- tion, for the standardization of life (5001 and 5003), and for forthright dic- tatorial aims. To the high scorers anti-unionism is no longer an expression of dissatisfaction with concrete conditions from which they might have suf- fered, but a plank in the platform of reactionism which also automatically includes'anti-Semitism, hostility toward foreign countries, hatred of the New Deal, and all those hostile attitudes which are integrated in the negative imagery of American society underlying fascist and semifascist propaganda.
2. BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT
As was to be expected, the general ideological pattern pertaining to govern- ment interference in business is highly consistent with that which pertains to labor. The average opinion-if such a term, without proper quantification, is allowed-seems to be that a certain degree of government control is indis- pensable, particularly in wartime, but that it contradicts basically the prin- ciple of economic liberalism. State interference still falls within the category of the necessary evil. T o the high scorers in particular the government inter- ference in business is just another aspect of the usurpation complex, a matter of dictatorial arbitrariness jeopardizing the rights of the hard-working money earners. But it should be noted again that there is no sharp line between high and low scorers with regard to government interference, whilst the how, the way in which both groups express their critical attitude, differentiates.
The following examples of a partly positive attitude toward government interference are chosen from medium and high scorers.
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F34oA, of the Extension Testing Class, a young clerk, is middle onE but high on F and PEC. She is interesting because of a certain attitude of intellec- tual fairness expressing itself in attempts to see also the other side of the picture: an "antiparanoid" trait of the American frame of mind which, inci- dentally, is among the strongest bulwarks against fascism as far as subjective factors are concerned.
She doesn't believe in government control of industry. Maybe it would be all right for the government to. take over transportation, gas, electricity, and water. (Why? ) Maybe they could do it cheaper; she is not sure about that. Anyway, if there was a strike, like on the Key System they would be holding up everything and the government could make them go back to work. "When the government tells you to do something, you do it. "
The quotation shows an ambiguous element in the affirmation of govern- ment interference: whereas the latter is resented as a violation of liberalism, it is, simultaneously, appreciated as a potential means to keep organized labor at bay. It should be remembered that the National Socialists always com- plained about the "Welfare State" of Weimar but later on surpassed by far any state interference ever attempted by German socialist governments.
The high-scoring parole officer, M109, is reminiscent of F340A in so far as his support for some kind of government interference is authoritarian rather than favorable to any restrictions on the anarchy of free enterprise or to rational planning for the sake of all. (Cf. quotations on pp. 676, 679. )
Those who are outspokenly set against government controls again com- prise both low and high scorers. Here, of course, the low scorers are particu- lar! y interesting.
The already quoted M711, an "easy going" low scorer, is opposed to state interference simply because he feels a fascist potential in it, apparently un~ aware of the progressive function this interference had under Roosevelt:
(Government control? ) "I don't. There, again, that could be a road to a fascist state eventually. Certain controls would have to be exercised. "
In spite of his leftist ideology this man shows symptoms of a confusion which may make him the prey of pseudoprogressive slogans of fascist propa- ganda: it is the same man who justifies his anti-union attitude with the spuri- ous assertion that Hitler was in favor of unions.
M2o4, another low scorer, a young man of the Psychiatric Clinic group, suffering from anxiety neurosis, calls himself a socialist and feels that the New Deal was too conservative, but states, nevertheless:
The government should not be completely in control of everything. Favors something like the Scandinavian system: CCF, full employment, labor government, favors cooperatives. "I think it will come that way in this country. Government control can be run wrong. Instead we should preserve individual freedom and work through education. "
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To sum up: the low scorers' criticism of government interference is based on the traditional idea of freedom, the fear of an authoritarian abolition of democratic institutions and an individualistic way of living. This makes for a potential resistance against any attempts at a planned economy. There is a possibility that a good many traditional values of American democratism and liberalism, if naively maintained within the setup of today's society, may radically change their objective functions without the subjects even being aware of it. In an era in which "rugged individualism" actually has resulted in far-reaching social control, all the ideals concomitant with an uncritical individualistic concept of liberty may simply serve to play into the hands of the most powerful groups.
The statements against government control of our high scorers are of a? completely different kind. To them, unionism, New Dealism, government control are all the same, the rule of those who should not rule. Here resent- ment of government interference is fused with the "no pity for the poor" complex.
The San Quentin "tough guy," M664b:
(Political trends today? ) "Well, the way it's agoing now, I think it's a detriment to our country. (How do you mean that? ) I think a person should earn a living instead of expecting the government to give it to him. I don't believe in this New Deal and I don't believe in labor running the country. . . . If a man can't make a profit in his business, he'll close it down. . . . "
The San Quentin murderer, M651a, who is serving a life sentence, is set against government interference, his point of view being that of the business- man who talks "common sense. "
(What about government controls over business? ) "No, I believe in free enter- prise.
I believe that business should be able to conduct their own business, except during the war we had to have ceiling prices. . . . But competitive business makes low prices. . . . "
It may be noted that the feeling, even of the high scorers, with regard to government control as such, though it represents to them the hated New Deal, does not seem to be as "violent" as their anti-unionism. This may be partly due to the authoritarian undercurrent which, somehow, makes them respect, to a certain extent, any strong government, even if it is built on lines different from their own, partly from the rational insight into the necessity of some government interference. Many of our interviews were conducted during or shortly after the war, at a time when it was obvious that nothing
could be achieved without government control, and it is this fact to which reference is frequently made, mostly as a qualification of the rejection of government control. This, however, certainly depends largely on the situa- tion, and if interviews should be conducted today, the picture would very probably be different.
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There is one particular issue which deserves some attention in this con- nection, the attitude of our subjects toward monopolism. On the one hand, monopolies are the outgrowth of free enterprise, the consummation of rugged individualism; on the other hand, they tend to assume that kind of noncompetitive control which is rejected when exercised by the government. Probably no "public opinion" concerning monopoly has crystallized so far, mainly because much fewer people are aware of the anonymous and objec- tive power of big combines than are aware of official legal measures of the state. However, a few examples may illustrate how the problem of insti- tutionalized superbusiness is reflected in the minds of some of our subjects.
M IIJ, a conventional but nonfascistic fraternity man, who scores low on
E and F but high on PEC, is set against "this Marxian stuff," but nevertheless,
"Big business should be controlled when it gets too large. In some fields, like Jtransponation, power, etc. , large-scale organization is necessary. The main thing
1
I there is to prevent monopoly, and to have limitations on profits. "
The unresolved contradiction between this man's strongly antisocialist and equally outspoken antimonopoly attitudes, is in all probability charac- teristic of a very large section of the population. In practice, it amounts to an artificial "holding up" of economic developmental tendencies, rather than to a clear-cut economic concept. Those layers of the European middle class which were finally enlisted by fascism were also not infrequently set, in ideology, against the big combines.
Mzz8, a low-scoring man of the University Extension Testing Class, sees the problem but is still so deeply imbued with traditional economic concepts that he is prevented from following his logic to its conclusions.
"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 same man criticizes Wallace for being "too impractical. " One cannot escape the impression that monopolism is used as a vague negative formula but that very few subjects are actually aware of the impact of monopoliza- tion on their lives. The union issue, in particular, plays a much bigger role in over-all ideology.
3. POLITICAL ISSUES CLOSE TO THE SUBJECTS
It has been pointed out in the early part of this chapter that political con- fusion and ignorance, and the gap between surface ideology and concrete reactions, are partly due to the fact that the political sphere, even today, seems to most Americans too far away from their own experiences and their
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own pressing interests. Here we go briefly into a discussion of some political and economic topics of the interview schedule which, for imaginary or actual reasons, are closer to the hearts of our subjects, in order to form at least an impression on how they behave with regard to these matters, and whether their behavior differs markedly from that in the field of "high politics. "
First, an illustration of what may be called "imaginary closeness. " Our interview schedule contained at least one question which was, in the middle of its realistic surroundings, of a "projective" nature. It was concerned with the $z5,ooo income limit. Neither is this question a pressing political issue nor could many of our interviewees be expected to have any immediate personal interest in limitations of income on such a high level. The answers to this question, which would deserve a thoroughgoing analysis of its own, are indicative of an element of the American dream much more than of political attitudes. There were exceedingly few among our subjects who wanted to accept such an income limitation. The utmost concession they made was the acknowledgment that one can live on this amount. The pre- vailing view, however, was that, in a free country, every person should be allowed. to earn as much as he can, notwithstanding the fact that the chance to make as much today has become largely illusory. It is as if the American kind of utopia was still much more that of the shoeshine boy who becomes a railroad king, than that of a world without poverty. The dream of unre- stricted happiness has found its refuge, one might almost say its sole refuge, in the somewhat infantile fantasy of infinite wealth to be gathered by the individual. It goes without saying that this dream works in favor of the status quo; that the identification of the individual with the tycoon, in terms of the chance to become one himself, helps to perpetuate big business control.
Among those subjects who are outspokenly in favor of the income limit is the San Quentin check-writer, M664C, a high-scoring man, so full of fury and envy against everything that he does not even like the wealthy.
(What about $zs,ooo limit on salaries? ) "What the hell is that for? That's no more than fair; hell, that's too much money anyway. "
The apparent radicalism of this man can be appreciated only if one recol- lects that it is he who is outraged by the idea of feeding starving countries. The very widespread feeling of our subjects on the $z5,ooo income limit can be summed up in the eager plea of M62zA, of the San Quentin Group,
a low scorer on E and F but a high scorer on PEC.
"They shouldn't do that. If a man has the ability, more power to him. "
The next few topics are characteristic of the aforementioned tendency of our subjects to become more rational and "progressive" as soon as institutions or measures of a supposedly "socialistic" nature, from which the individual feels he can draw immediate benefits, are brought into the discussion. OPA and health insurance are examples.
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Our interviews seem to show that OPA, also a "bureaucratic" agency of government interference, is very generally accepted. Here are a few exam- ples, picked at random:
Again M621A:
(OPA? ) "I think it's done a very wonderful thing in this country. May have gone too far, e. g. , in the housing situation in San Diego. " (Subject thinks the OPA should have solved the housing situation. )
One of the few exceptions is the wealthy Los Angeles couple, 5031 and 5032, who are "disgusted and fed up with the New Deal, priorities, and all this damn red tape created by OPA. "
Most others are in favor of OPA, sometimes, however, with a certain strain of punitiveness, such as the San Quentin low scorer, M627, already quoted:
"Well, the OPA is doing a good job if they control this black market. "
This comes out most strongly in the interview of the San Quentin high
scorer M658, the man who wants to abolish labor unions.
"If (the OP A) had an iron glove underneath their kid gloves, be all right. They
fine a guy $wo-for making $wo,ooo. "
The general appreciation of OPA is the more interesting since this insti- tution has been under constant newspaper attacks for many years. But here the advantages, particularly with regard to the housing situation, are so obvi- ous that ideological invectives apparently lose some of their impact on the population. To demand the abolition of OPA because of the "damn red tape" in Washington may mean that one has no roof over one's head.
Something similar holds true of health insurance. High and low scorers, with very few exceptions, concur in its appreciation. M656A, a high scorer of the San Quentin Group, serving a term for second-degree murder, after having stated that a person can live on $2s,ooo a year but should be allowed to make what he is capable of making, and who certainly cannot be called a socialist, answers to the question about public health insurance, "I'm for it. "
The above quoted easy-going, low-scoring man, M711, is enthusiastic: "Public health insurance? Unqualifiedly yes . . . important as almost any meas-
ure of ideal society. "
Finally, our attention should be directed toward an economic area which is of the utmost importance for the formative processes of fascism. This is taxes. It is perhaps the point at which pent-up social fury is most freely given vent. With the high scorers, this fury is never directed overtly against basic con- ditions but has nevertheless the undertone of desired violent action. The man who bangs his fist on the table and complains about heavy taxation is a "natural candidate" for totalitarian movements. Not only are taxes associated with a supposedly spendthrift democratic government giving away millions to idlers and bureaucrats, but it is the very point where people feel, to put it
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in the words of one of oui subjects, that this world does not really belong to the people. Here they feel immediately that they are required to make sacrifices for which they do not get any visible returns, just as one of our subjects complains that he cannot see what he can get out of the war. The indirect advantages each individual may draw from taxes paid are obscure to him. He can only see that he has to give something without getting anything back, and this, in itself, seems to contradict the concept of exchange upon which the free market idea of liberalism is built. However, the extraordinary amount of libido attached to the complex of taxes, even in a boom period, such as the years when our subjects were interviewed, seems to confirm the hypothesis that it draws on deeper sources of the personality as much as on the surface resentment of being deprived of a considerable part of one's income without visible advantages to the individual. The rage against the rational tax system is an explosion of the irrational hatred against the irrational taxation of the individual by society. The Nazis knew very well how to exploit the complex of the "taxpayer's money. " They went so far as to grant, during the first years of their rule, a kind of tax amnesty, publicized by Goering. When they had to resort to heavier taxation than ever before they camouflaged it most skilfully as charity, voluntary donations, and so forth, and collected large amounts of money by illegal threats, rather than by offi- cial tax legislation.
Here are a few examples of the antitaxation complex:
The high-scoring man, M 105, who is violently anti-Semitic and associated with the "lunatic fringe," says:
"It is the taxpayer's money that has been put into South America; other countries will think we are fools. "
M345, a radar engineer of the Extension Testing Class, who scores middle onE, low on F, but high on PEC, believes:
(What about government control of business? ) "It has gotten to the point where it is requiring too much of the citizens' tax money and time. "
Again, the taxpayer's complex is not limited to high scorers. The low- scoring man, Mzz6, the deviate case of a conformist, conventional conserva- tive definitely opposed to prejudice, strongly identified with his father, accepts his Republican views:
". . . also because businessmen generally don't like the taxes. "
In case of a new economic crisis, where unemployment would necessitate high taxation of people whose incomes have shrunk, this complex would un- doubtedly play an exceptionally dangerous role. The threat is the more seri- ous since, in such a situation, a government which would not impose taxes would fail, while one which would take steps in this direction would invari-
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ably antagonize the very same group from which totalitarian movements most likely draw their support.
4. FOREIGN POLICY AND RUSSIA
Lack of information on the part of our subjects prevails, even more than anywhere else, in the area of foreign politics. There are usually rather vague and misty ideas about international conflicts, interspersed with morsels of information on some individual topics with which the subjects either happen to be familiar or to which they have taken a fancy. The general mood is one of disappointment, anxiety, and vague discontent, as symbolically epitomized by the medium-scoring woman, F340B: "Seems we haven't got any foreign policy. "
This may easily be a mere echo of newspaper statements frequently made at the time of the study by columnists such as Walter Lippman and Dorothy Thompson. Repeating them transforms the feeling of insecurity and dis- orientation of many of our subjects into the semblance of critical superiority. More than in any other political sphere, our subjects live "from hand to mouth" in the area of international affairs.
There is a striking lack of a sense of proportion, of balanced judgment, considering the importance or unimportance of topics of foreign politics.
One illustration, stemming from the "easy going" low scorer M7zz:
(Major problems facing country? ) "Hard question to answer . . . Perhaps the main one is how we're going to fit in with the rest of the world. . . . I'm a little concerned about what we seem to be doing in China. . . . If we are a carrier of the torch of the Four Freedoms, I think we are a little inconsistent in our maneuver- ings in China and Indonesia. "
This statement seems to be a "day residue" of continuous newspaper read- ing rather than the expression of autonomous thinking. Yet it should be noted that it remains within the anti-imperialist frame of reference of the low scorer.
The symbol of political uneasiness is the atom bomb which is dreaded everywhere. The stand taken toward the atom bomb seems to differentiate the high from the low scorers. As is to be expected, also for psychological reasons, the high scorers are all out for secrecy. Here, as elsewhere, "they want to keep what we have. "
M662A, the San Quentin "tough guy," high on all scales:
(Threats to present form of government? ) "Atom bomb. If these other countries get it, they're going to use it on us and we're going to have to look out for Russia. . . . I'm for Russia, but . . . I think sooner or later we're going to go to war with them. "
As to the prospect of a devastating war, this man seems to take a fatalistic view as if it were a natural catastrophe rather than something dependent on
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humans. This is in keeping with our clinical knowledge of the male high scorers' psychological passivity (cf. p. 575).
The low scorers either want to outlaw the atom bomb or to make the secret public:
M627, the alcoholic sex-offender, low onE and PEC but high on F:
(Major problems facing this country? ) "Well, I think this atom bomb. (Solu- tion? ) . . . Well, it ought to be outlawed and money appropriated to see if we can't use that power for good. "
F515, the "genuine liberal" who is to be discussed in detail in Chapter XIX (p. 782), pleads for international atomic control:
"Truman doesn't want ~o give away the secret of the atom bomb-1 think he should. It's already out anyway. "
Although the over-all ideology is fear of war, the high scorer's attitude indicates that, while deeming war inevitable, they have some underlying sympathy for war-making, such as that found in the Los Angeles high-scoring radio writer 5003 characterized as highly neurotic:
As for the world state, he expects anything at the present time. "Why shouldn't we have further wars? W e are animals and have animal instincts and Darwin showed us it is the survival of the fittest. I'd like to believe in the spiritual brotherhood of men, but it's the strong man who wins. "
This kind of phrasing, "why shouldn't we have further wars," is indicative of his agreement with the idea, in spite of his talk of spiritual brotherhood. The use that is often made of the Darwinian slogan of the survival of the fit- test in order to rationalize crude aggressiveness, may be significant of the fascist potential within American "naturalism," although it is supposedly linked to progressive ideals and enlightenment.
5009, a p-year-old teaching principal in a small California town, who scores high on all scales, rationalizes his belief in a forthcoming war dif- ferently:
He expects no warless world and thinks that the next war will be with Russia. "The United States has always ranged itself against dictatorship. "
While he shows the typical high scorers' attitude-psychologically linked to cynicism and contempt for man-of regarding war as unavoidable, he justifies a policy which actually may lead to war with a democratic ideal: the stand to be taken against dictatorships.
A third aspect of subscribing to the war idea comes up in the interview of the aforementioned 5031, a wealthy building contractor. He
feels that perhaps we had better go to war with Russia now and get it over with.
Here the high scorer's typical cynicism, a fusion of contempt for man, exag- gerated down-to-earthness, and underlying destructiveness, is allowed
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uncensored expression. Whereas in the sphere of private morale such psycho- logical urges are held at bay by the acceptance of more or less convention- alized humane standards, they are let loose in the sphere of international politics where there seems to be as little of a collective superego as there is of a truly powerful supranational control agency.
The all-too-ready assumption that war cannot be abolished-which, accord- ing to this man, could be hoped for only if military men ran the UNO-is, fused with the administrative, quasi-technical, idea that one "should get it over with" as soon as possible, that Russia should be taken care of. War and peace become matters of technological expediency. The political conse- quence of this way of thinking is self-explanatory.
As with many other political topics, attitude toward Russia, whether for or against, does not by itself differentiate with any sharpness between high and low scorers. There is, first, a kind of "pseudo-low" attitude toward Russia. It falls in line with the general admiration of power in high scorers and is positive only as far as Russian military successes are concerned. It turns into hostility where Russian strength is presented as potentially dangerous. This happens with the San Quentin inmate M62zA, who scores low onE and F but high on PEC. He expresses his true anti-Russian feelings by means of personalization:
(Major problems facing country today? ) "I think Russia. . . . (Subject fears a war with Russia sooner or later over the atom bomb. ) Russia wants control of territory in China, so do the United States and England. (What do you dislike most about Russia? ) Well, a little bit too aggressive. Of course, they've done some won- derful things. Five year plan, educated themselves. (What good things about Russia? ) Lots of stamina to stand up under hardship. (Objections? ) I met quite a few Russians. Don't like them, because they seem to be overbearing. (How do you mean?
