Man as a Political Organism
(EN: This book is somewhat controversial - not merely because of its topic, but because of its origin. It is presented as a synthesis of various Soviet documents on the practice of brainwashing, but may in fact be a fabrication to provoke outrage and opposition to the communist party and due to its suspicious origin is considered that it may be a hoax or a work of science fiction. I've read it, and preserved notes, as it seems interesting and plausible, in spite of its dubious validity and origin.)
We speak of man as if he is one thing, but on closer inspection we can observe that he is actually a "colonial aggregation of cells" that are arranged into different organ systems that must work in harmony to maintain his life. If his cells are in conflict with one another - his heart or his kidneys refuse to perform their functions, a man becomes quite seriously ill and incapable of sustaining life.
We see the same phenomenon in ecology: every plant and creature in an environment performs a specific function, and each is necessary to sustaining the ecosystem. IF the bees cease to pollinate the flowers, the plants cannot reproduce fast enough to sustain their numbers, the herbivores starve, and so on. Each individual plant and animal must perform its role to sustain the system.
And in politics, each member of society performs a function for the greater good of all. Should the farmer or the doctor or the weaver fail to perform his function, society is deprived of a necessary product or service.
(EN: There are a few paragraphs of posturing against the capitalist society, portraying it as an ecosystem overrun by parasites and hence unsustainable, but in light of the events of the last half century this seems a bit ridiculous, aside of being oblique to the topic of this book.)
There is an acknowledgement that man has existed as an individual creature without a society for many years. The farmer could produce everything that was needed to sustain his family and had very little need to trade with or interact with others. But the industrial revolution has shown us a better way: through the division and specialization of labor man can be far more productive, but what remains is a problem of coordination. The isolated farmer could see the needs of his family and know where his labor must be applied to satisfy them. The factory worker in a great urban city cannot perceive the needs of his society, and must be directed to work as needed to do his part to support a larger collective.
In this sense, the psychology of man is problematic because he has been programmed for millennia to think as an individual and to see to his individual needs, or at best a small collective of his family, clan, or tribe. His perception is not well suited to large and complex societies, and he must be trained to think and function in a different way. The responsibility of training him falls upon the leader of this new industrial society.
Neither is it acceptable to allow some men to follow their own path while others work together, nor to simply get rid of those who refuse to support the collective. One does not become well by carving out organs that are not performing their proper function, but by rectifying those organs to restore the health of the system. It is for this reason that communism should avoid the path taken by the socialists, which led to civil strife and bloodshed. Instead, the communist must seek to restore health to his system without sacrificing his organs.
In that sense, psychopolitics is to the state like medicine is to the body: it seeks to promote a productive orchestration of all the individual components of a larger system. It does not seek to exterminate the self-centered individual, but to reeducate and condition him to return to a state of harmony with society.
There's a bit of contempt for the more fanciful applications of psychology. Analyzing dreams and fantasies and the mysticism of the subconscious mind seem an idle pursuit for those with pretensions to being intellectuals that will have little benefit to society. There are better uses for science than chasing butterflies.
Then back to politics, the suggestion of communism as a world-wide system and the need to extend the communist "education" to the misguided workers in other countries, whose priorities are out of order and whose loyalties are confused. Such people are not enemies to be hated, but patients to be treated - and psychopolitics is the manner of medicine that they need to heal.