Czarny Pies's Reviews > La Psychologie des Foules

Gustave LeBon's legendary La psychologie des foules is a stunning book. It is well documented that Benito Mussolini greatly admired this work and it has been speculated that Adolf Hilter was also influenced by it. In La psychologie des foules makes a compelling analysis of crowd behaviour that rings true on every page. He tells us what we already know from personal experience or have heard second-hand about crowds. The book is not scientific group psychology as LeBon mistakenly believes it to be. Rather it is brilliant political philosophy similar in length and force to Machiavelli's brilliant analysis of politics in the age of the courtier,The Prince. La psychologie des foules deserves to be on introductory undergraduate courses on political theory because it is so clear and so provocative.
LeBon argues that crowds are highly irrational. Ideas are inculcated in the crowd through affirmation, repitition and contagion. Reason is total ineffective in a crowd. The highly educated are as susceptible as the most uneducated to the psychological dynamics of the crowd. In what LeBon refers to as the "psychological crowd", the individual loses sight of his own self interest and will rush to danger. The leader of the crowd is a charismatic individual profoundly under the spell of the delusion he imparts to his listeners.
LeBon states that crowds are neither good nor bad in themselves. They can commit acts of heroic virtue or barbaric savagery. They key point is that the crowd is powerful. Europe was in a crisis because the philosophy of the enlightenment had profoundly undermined the Christian beliefs that had dominated Europe in the middle ages. The French Revolution inaugurated the era of the crowd in which successive charismatic leaders would incite large populations into destructive revolutionary acts. The key to political success in the twentieth century would be to learn how to control the "psychological crowd." In LeBon's view political leaders would either thrive or perish by the crowd. In his own words: "Les foulds sont comme le sphinx de la fable antique. Il faut savoir resoudre les problèmes que leur psychologienous pose ou se résigner à être dévorés par elles."
Despite the occasional lapses of illogic, racism and misogyny, La psychologie des foules is a brilliant and efficient work that deserves to be read by anyone interested in world history.