The Psychology of Socialism

The Psychology of Socialism was first published in 1899 in a period of crisis for French democracy. The Third Republic had survived an attempted coup d'tat, only to be confronted with what Georges Sorel and others called the "Bohemian revolution"-the triumph of radical and socialist forces in the Dreyfus Affair. The emotionalism and hysteria of the period convinced Le Bon that most political controversy is based neither on reasoned deliberation nor rational interest, but on a psychology that partakes of hysterical religiosity.