4: The Psychology of Revolutionary Crowds
A revolution is a kind of crowd event, and as such is subject to the same properties as the psychology of any other kind of crowd.
Le Bon suggests that in a multitude, a man becomes a very different being than he is as an isolated individual. The common passions and sentiments of a crowd form a collective mind, and is subject to a peculiar collective logic.
(EN: I balk at the notion of collective mind, which is a mystical construct, but which has also been explained as irrational imitation. That is, while there is no collective mind men in crowds can set aside their own rational faculty and engage in imitative behavior - doing as others do without thinking. The effect is similar but represents the abdication from individual thinking rather than the supposition of a collective consciousness.)
The nature of crowds is to be gullible and dramatic, short-sighted and incapable of exercising reason. Each person is reacting mindlessly to the actions of others, and reality and experience is set aside. In another sense, the men within a crowd become savages - prone to momentary violence and enthusiasm, devoid of morality of long-term planning, and responding to stimuli with the most primitive of emotions: anger and fear.
He pauses to observe that a parliament is a crowd, and in this collective participants pass laws that are so poorly conceived that none of its supporters would have voted for it in an isolated and pensive condition.
Knowledge of the psychology of crowds is necessary to quell an uprising, and in that regard it is clear the governments do not understand crowds - which is where they fail to competently respond to rioting and tend to fall so easily to insurrections - and have generally been more successful in exacerbating hostile demonstrations into riots than in dispersing them.
The Crowd Exists Within a Culture
Any nation or race is a collective of people - a crowd - with certain common characteristics that form a sense of identity. Under normal circumstances, their collective behavior is unremarkable, though there are mechanisms in place to encourage conformity and certain individuals who periodically (or permanently) appoint themselves as directors of culture in seeking to encourage behavior that supports social norms and discourage behavior that deviates from those norms.
Like a crowd, a nation consists of individuals, each of whom has an individual mind and individual customs and habits. The idea of "social norms" is largely a fiction, in that each person has their own idea of what their society values and a differing degree to which he deviates and tolerates the deviation of others from what he perceives those common values to be.
A society may consist of a number of smaller groups, each of whom has its own distinct culture. This can be seen in the distinction of social class, or the ways in which people who live in a city have a culture slightly different than those who live in the surrounding countryside. They are still parts of the same society, but belong to different groups within it.
In times of peace, there is mobility among these groups, such that a person can shift from one group to another in some instances (a country farmer moving into town) but not in others (a peasant will not be accepted among the patricians). In times of revolution, the structures within the group are being redefined, and mobility is perfectly elastic within the group (a peasant can become a patrician) but the group identity will remain - a revolution keeps the identity of a society intact, but changes the role of individuals within that group.
Because a revolution takes place within a culture, it is subject to the social norms of that culture, or at the very least wishes to keep most of the social norms intact, changing a few that are not to their liking. For example, the point of the French Revolution was contained within the society of France - those who supported the revolution did not wish to stop being French, but to redefine their role in French society. Whether it was their personal desire to realign themselves individually (a peasant wanted to become a member of the patrician class) or to realign their entire group (to remain a peasant but increase the esteem of the peasant class).
A culture is less excitable than a crowd, in that its primary purpose is to perpetuate the status quo. Society may act to quell an uprising, but it will never, as a whole, rise up against itself (though it may seek to compete with other societies, such as struggle and warfare between countries). It is particularly in the interests of the classes of individual who are served by present society to maintain it, and their routine task is to convince the classes of individuals whose exploitation is necessary to accept things such as they are.
As to the people, so long as they are docile in accepting their role in society, society will persist. The seeds of revolution are in their discontent with their role - until they are discontented enough to take action, the seeds remain dormant and society continues with business as usual.
But again, even when a faction of society becomes discontented enough to take action, their desire is not to destroy society, but to change it in certain ways - which is to say that they wish to preserve it in most ways and change only a few. This will constrain the behavior of a crowd.
The Role of Leaders in Revolutionary Movements
All varieties of crowds are incapable of undertaking any action as a unit unless they find someone to give them purpose and direction.
Le Bon likens the way that a suggestion spreads through a crowd to the way that an odor diffuses itself through the air - it starts in one place and slowly spreads to fill the room. It is in the same way that a leader within a mob incites others to riot - the idea to attack a target begins with one person, spreads to others, becomes a chant, and eventually infuses the entire crowd with a specific call to take a specific action.
A crowd is prone to suggestion, but not all suggestions. A rational appeal will not spread through a crowd, but a violent impulse will. The move to violence may have some sense of rationality to it, but those members of the crowd who accept the suggestion have not been shown to have deliberated much: if a suggestion is superficially sensible, it will be adopted.
Those within a crowd are not seen to follow individual reason, but imitate the behavior of others unthinkingly. Consider the phenomenon of applause: it may start with a section of the audience who witnessed something that moved them to applaud, and the behavior spreads to the point that every member of the audience is applauding, even those who were not paying attention to what was happening and have no idea why they are applauding - they do so simple because "everyone else" was doing so and they wanted to feel part of the group.
The true leaders of the mob can work in complete secrecy: once the chant has been taken up, the person who started it can walk away and the crowd will continue in the direction in which he has influenced them. The question of "who started the riot?" cannot be answered - and when asked is often answered inaccurately. The person who threw the first stone is seldom the person who started the chant that stones should be thrown.
It is in the same way that the intellectual leaders of rebellions are often well away from the action, and credit is given to those who acted on the thoughts of others. The leader of a rebellion can even be in a different time and place is someone present in the mob merely passes along his ideas.
However, any "ideas" are merely excuses to take action, as a mob is incapable of exercising logic or restraint. There is a desire to destroy something, but a mob is indiscriminate in what it destroys. A riotous mob will attack any government office, regardless of whether it was in any way connected to the alleged reason for its discontent. They very often sack retail shops and other commercial establishments.
In that sense, it is difficult to assert that the "leader" of a mob actually leads the mob. He encourages them in a direction, incites them to action, but is helpless to control their behavior. This is the reason that many who organize peaceful demonstrations are chagrinned to see them degenerate into violent riots. The leaders presumed that they could control the mob they created in a precise way, which is never the case.