Tarde g opinion and crowd. Gabrielle de tarde public blackout and the crowd
Gustave Le Bon. Crowd psychology ("era of crowds")
By the word "crowd" Le Bon means "in the ordinary sense, an assembly of individuals, whatever their nationality, profession or gender, and whatever the chances that caused this meeting." The conscious personality disappears, and, moreover, the feelings and ideas of all the individual units that form the whole, called the crowd, take the same direction. A collective soul is formed, which, of course, has a temporary character, but also very specific features. The crowd is almost the complete opposite of personality.
Crowd traits
1) the disappearance of a conscious personality
2) orienting feelings and thoughts in one direction
3) the unconscious, instinct plays an important role
4) in the crowd, the individual acquires the consciousness of an irresistible force
5) in a crowd, the individual is not inclined to curb his instincts
6) the crowd is anonymous and not responsible
7) infectiousness of feelings and actions
8) susceptibility to suggestion
9) becoming a member of the crowd, a person descends the ladder of civilization a few steps below (the crowd in an intellectual respect always stands below an isolated individual)
10) from the point of view of feelings and actions, the crowd, depending on the circumstances, may be better or worse than an individual
11) impulsivity, irritability, volatility, intolerance are characteristic
12) one transformation of individuals into a crowd is enough for them to feel, think and act in a completely different way than they would think, each of them would act separately
Gabriel Tarde ("era of the publics")
Enough high level development reached the means of communication. Journalism, radio, and telegraph appeared. In connection with the development of communications, the nature of crowds is changing. Thus, along with the crowds gathered in the same enclosed space at the same time, from now on we are dealing with scattered crowds, i.e. with the audience. Tarde gives the following definition of this concept: "the public ... is nothing but a scattered crowd, in which the influence of minds on each other has become an action at a distance, at distances that are increasing."
Thus, Le Bon clarified the psychology of the crowd, while Tarde deals with the psychology of the public, taken in this special sense of the word, i.e. as a purely spiritual totality, as a group of individuals physically separated and connected by a purely mental link.
Differences between the crowd and the public
1) you can belong to several public groups at the same time, but you can only belong to one crowd at a time
2) much greater crowd intolerance
3) the crowd, as a more natural group, is more subject to the forces of nature (it depends on rain or good weather, heat or cold; it forms more often in summer than in winter)
4) the public, as a group of the highest level, is not subject to these changes and the whims of the physical environment, the season or even the climate
5) the imprint of race is much less reflected in the public than in the crowd
6) the influence exerted by the publicist on his public, in terms of its duration it is stronger than the short-term and transient impetus given to the crowd by its leader
7) the influence that members of the same public have on each other is much less strong and always contributes to the publicist
Tarde agrees a lot with Le Bon, giving the crowd a number of characteristics.
1) monstrous intolerance
2) pride
3) painful susceptibility
4) a sense of impunity, born of the illusion of their omnipotence
5) loss of sense of proportion
6) emotional instability
7) collective hysteria
But Tarde noted that crowds are spontaneous and transient associations that cannot remain in a state of excitement indefinitely. They are destined to either disintegrate, disappear as quickly as they appeared, leaving no traces, or evolve to turn into disciplined and stable crowds. The difference between the two is the existence of the organization.
The spontaneous, anonymous, amorphous masses reduce the mental faculties of people to the lowest level. Conversely, the masses, in which a certain discipline reigns, oblige the lower to imitate the higher. Thus, these abilities rise to a certain level, which may be higher than the average level of individual individuals.
The laws of spreading ideas in the act of communication
1) repeatability
Ideas spread exponentially, each new truth attached to a common aggregate of truths, knowledge or propositions is not just addition, but rather multiplication.
2) opposites
There is a tendency for ideas to spread from one individual to others, as a result of their imposition on existing ones.
3) fixtures
Using the emerging invention, imitating it
(131-154) SOUL OF THE CROWD. GENERAL CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CROWD. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL LAW OF ITS SPIRITUAL UNITY
What makes up the crowd from a psychological point of view?- A large gathering of individuals is not enough to form a crowd.-The special character of the soulful crowd.- The fixation of ideas and feelings of the individuals who make up such a crowd, and the disappearance of their own personality.- The unconscious always predominates in the crowd.- Cessation of the activity of the cerebral hemispheres and the predominance of the spinal cord.- Decreased intelligence and complete change in feelings.- The altered feelings can be better or worse than those inherent in the individual individuals who make up the crowd together.- The crowd becomes heroic as easily as it is criminal.
Underthe word "crowd" in the ordinary sense means a gathering of individuals, whatever their nationality, profession or gender, and whatever the chances that caused this gathering. But, from a psychological point of view, this word takes on a completely different meaning. With known
conditions - and, moreover, only under these conditions - the assembly has completely new features that differ from those that characterize the individual individuals who make up this assembly. The conscious personality disappears, and the feelings and ideas of all the individual units that form the whole, called the crowd, take the same direction. A collective soul is formed, which, of course, has a temporary character, but also very specific features. The gathering in such cases becomes what I would call, for lack of a better expression, an organized crowd or a spiritualized crowd that constitutes a single being and obeys the law of the spiritual unity of the crowd.
There is no doubt that the mere fact that many individuals are randomly found together is not enough for them to acquire the character of an organized crowd; this requires the influence of some pathogens, the nature of which we will try to determine.
The disappearance of a conscious personality and the orientation of feelings and thoughts in a certain direction - the main features that characterize a crowd that has embarked on the path of organization - do not require the indispensable and simultaneous presence of several individuals in the same place. Thousands of individuals, separated from each other, may at certain moments simultaneously fall under the influence of some strong emotion or some great national event, and thus acquire all the features of a spiritualized crowd. It is worth some chance to bring these individuals together so that all their actions and deeds immediately take on the character of the actions and actions of the crowd. At certain moments even six people are enough to form a spiritualized crowd, while at other times a hundred people who have accidentally gathered together, in the absence of the necessary conditions, do not form such a crowd. On the other hand, a whole people, under the influence of certain influences, sometimes becomes a crowd, without presenting the assembly in the proper sense of the word. The spiritualized crowd after its formation acquires general features - temporary, BUT quite definite. These general features are joined by particular ones, which change according to the elements that form the crowd and can, in turn, change its spiritual composition. The spiritualized crowd can be subjected to a certain classification. We will see further that a crowd of different sizes, that is, one that consists of dissimilar elements, has many features in common with a homogeneous crowd, that is, one that consists of more or less related elements (sects, castes and classes). Alongside these common features, however, the features that make it possible to distinguish between the two kinds of crowds stand out sharply.
Before talking about the various categories of the crowd, we must study its general features and will act like a naturalist, starting with a description of the general characteristics that exist in all individuals of the same family, and then moving on to particulars. allowing to distinguish between species and genera of this family.
It is not easy to depict with precision the soul of the crowd, since its organization changes not only according to the race and composition of the assemblies, and, accordingly, the nature and strength of the pathogens to which these assemblies are subject. However, we run into the same difficulties when we embark on the psychological study of the individual. Only in novels does the character of individuals change throughout their lives; in reality, the monotony of the environment creates only an apparent monotony of characters. Elsewhere I have already indicated that in every spiritual organization there are such inclinations of character which immediately declare their existence, as soon as in environment there will be a sudden change. So, for example, among the most severe members of the Convention one could find completely harmless bourgeois, who under ordinary conditions, of course, would be ordinary civilians, occupying the posts of notaries or judges. When the storm had passed, they returned to their normal state of peaceful bourgeois, and it was among them that Napoleon found himself the most obedient servants.
Not being able to study here all the degrees of the organization of the crowd, we will confine ourselves primarily to the crowd, already perfectly organized. Thus, our exposition will only see what a crowd can be, but not what it always is. Only in this later phase of the organization of the crowd, among the unchanging and prevailing basic features of the race, new special features stand out and the feelings and thoughts of the assembly are oriented in the same direction, and only then does the above-mentioned the psychological law of the spiritual unity of the crowd.
Certain psychological traits of the crowd are in common with isolated individuals; others, on the contrary, are inherent only in her alone and are found only in meetings. We will first of all consider these special features in order to better understand their importance.
The most striking fact observed in a spiritualized crowd is the following: whatever the individuals that make it up, whatever their lifestyle, occupation, their character or mind, one and their transformation into a crowd is enough for them to form a kind a collective soul that makes them feel, think and act in a completely different way than they would think, act and feel each of them individually. There are ideas and feelings that arise and turn into actions only in the individuals who make up the crowd. A spiritualized crowd is a temporary organism formed from dissimilar elements that for one instant joined together, just as cells that enter into a living body unite and form, through this connection, a new creature that has properties that differ from those that each cell possesses in separately.
Contrary to the opinion that is encountered, to our surprise of such an astute philosopher like Herbert Spencer, in the aggregate that forms the crowd, there is neither the sum nor the average that make up its elements, but there is a combination of these elements and the formation of new properties, just as it happens in chemistry, with a combination of certain elements, bases and acids, for example, forming a new body with completely different properties than those possessed by the elements that served for its formation.
It is easy to see how an isolated individual differs from an individual in a crowd, but it is much more difficult to determine the reasons for this difference. In order to at least somewhat explain these reasons to ourselves, we must recall one of the provisions of modern psychology, namely, that the phenomena of the unconscious play an outstanding role not only in organic life, but also in the functions of the mind. The conscious life of the mind is only a very small part in comparison with its unconscious life. The most subtle analyst, the most discerning observer, is able to detect only a very small number of unconscious drives to which he obeys. Our conscious actions flow from the substrate of the unconscious, created, in particular, by the influences of heredity. In this substrate are innumerable hereditary remnants that make up the very soul of the race. In addition to the reasons that we openly admit that govern our actions, there are also secret reasons in which we do not admit, but behind these secret reasons there are even more secret ones, because they are unknown to us. Most of our daily activities are driven by hidden drives that elude our observation.
The elements of the unconscious, which form the soul of the race, names, are the reason for the similarity of individuals of this race, differing from each other mainly in the elements of the conscious - that is the fruit of upbringing or the result of exclusive heredity. People who are most dissimilar in their minds may have the same passions, instincts and feelings; and in everything that concerns feelings, religion, politics, morality, attachments and antipathies, etc., famous people only very rarely rise above the level of the most ordinary individuals. There may be a whole chasm between a great mathematician and his shoemaker in terms of intellectual life, but in terms of character, there is often little or no difference.
These general qualities of character, controlled by the unconscious and existing in almost the same degree in most normal individuals of the race, they join together in the crowd. In the collective soul intellectual abilities individuals and, therefore, their individuality disappear; the heterogeneous drowns in the homogeneous, and unconscious qualities take over.
It is this combination of ordinary qualities in the crowd that explains to us why the crowd can never perform actions that require a sublime mind. Decisions concerning common interests taken by the meeting even famous people in the field of different specialties, they differ little from the decisions made by a meeting of fools, since in either case, not some outstanding qualities are combined, but only ordinary ones, found in everyone. In a crowd, only stupidity can accumulate, not mind. “The whole world”, as it is often said, cannot be smarter than Voltaire, but on the contrary, Voltaire is smarter than “the whole world”, if by this word we mean a crowd.
If the individuals in the crowd were limited only to the combination of ordinary qualities that each of them possesses in isolation, then we would have an average value, and not the formation of new features. How do these new traits arise? It is this question that we will deal with now. The emergence of these new special features characteristic of the crowd and, moreover, not found in individual individuals that make up it, is due to various reasons. The first of them is that an individual in a crowd acquires, thanks only to numbers, a consciousness of an irresistible force, and
this consciousness allows him to succumb to such instincts, which he never gives free will when he is alone. In a crowd, he tends to curb these instincts, because the crowd is anonymous and not responsible. The sense of responsibility, which always restrains individual individuals, completely disappears in the crowd.
The second reason - contagion or contagion - also contributes to the formation of special properties in the crowd and determines their direction. Contagion is a phenomenon that is easy to point out but not to explain; it must be ranked among the category of hypnotic phenomena, to which we will now pass to the crowd every feeling, every action is contagious, and, moreover, to such a degree that the individual very easily sacrifices a pack of personal interests to the collective interest. Such behavior, however, is contrary to human nature, and therefore a person is capable of it only when he is part of the crowd.
The third reason, and moreover the most important one, which determines the appearance in individuals in a crowd of such special properties that may not occur in them in an isolated position, is susceptibility to suggestion; the contagion we have just talked about is only a consequence of this susceptibility. To understand this phenomenon, one should recall some of the latest discoveries in physiology. We now know that in various ways it is possible to bring an individual into a state where his conscious personality disappears, and he obeys all the suggestions of the person who made him come into this state, performing actions at his command that are often completely contrary to his personal character and habits. Observations indicate that an individual, having spent some time among the acting crowd, whether under the influence of currents emanating from this crowd or for some other reason, is unknown, soon comes to a state that is very reminiscent of the state of a hypnotized subject. Such a subject, due to the paralysis of his conscious brain life, becomes a slave to the unconscious activity of his spinal cord, which the hypnotist controls at his own will. The conscious personality of the hypnotized person completely disappears, since the will and reason, and all feelings and thoughts are directed by the will of the hypnotist.
This is approximately the position of the individual who makes up a particle of the spiritualized crowd. He is no longer conscious of his actions, and, like a hypnotized person, some of his sensibilities disappear, while others reach an extreme degree of tension. Under the influence of suggestion, such a subject will perform certain actions with irresistible impetuosity, this uncontrollable impetuosity is manifested with even greater force, since the influence of suggestion, which is the same for everyone, increases through reciprocity. People who have individuality to resist the suggestion are too few in number, and therefore unable to fight the current. The most they can do is to distract the crowd with some new suggestion. So, for example, a good word, some image, incidentally, evoked in the imagination of the crowd, sometimes distracted it from the most bloodthirsty actions.
So, the disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the same direction of feelings and ideas, determined by suggestion, and the desire to immediately transform the suggested ideas into actions - these are the main features that characterize the individual in the crowd. He already ceases to be himself and becomes an automaton, for which his will does not exist.
Thus, becoming a part of an organized crowd, a person descends several steps down the ladder of civilization. In an isolated position, he might have been a cultured person; in the crowd, he is a barbarian, that is, an instinctive being. He reveals a tendency to arbitrariness, violence, ferocity, but also to the enthusiasm and heroism inherent in primitive man, the resemblance to which is further enhanced by the fact that a person in a crowd is extremely easily subordinate to words and ideas that would not affect him in an isolated position. no influence, and commits acts that are clearly contrary to both his interests and his habits.
The individual in the crowd is a grain of sand among the mass of other grains of sand, uplifted and carried away by the wind. Due to this very property of the crowd, we sometimes have to observe that the jury pass a sentence, which each of them would never pronounce; we see that parliamentary assemblies agree to such events and laws that would be condemned by each of the members of this assembly individually. The members of the Convention, taken separately, were enlightened bourgeois with peaceful habits. But, joining in the crowd, they already accepted the most ferocious proposals without any hesitation and sent people completely innocent to the guillotine; to top it off, they renounced their immunity against their own interests and punished themselves.
But it is not only by actions that an individual in a crowd differs from himself in an isolated position. Before he loses any independence, a change must take place in his ideas and feelings, and, moreover, so profound that it can turn a miser into a wasteful, a skeptic into a believer, an honest person into a criminal, a coward into a hero.
The renunciation of all its privileges, voted by the aristocracy under the influence of enthusiasm on the famous night of August 4, 1789, would never have been accepted by any of its members individually.
From all of the above, we conclude that the crowd is intellectually always lower than the isolated individual, but from the point of view of the feelings and actions caused by these feelings, it can be better or worse than him, look? according to circumstances. It all depends on what kind of suggestion the crowd obeys. It is this circumstance that was completely overlooked by all writers who studied the crowd only from the point of view of its criminality. The mob is often criminal - it's true, but it is also often heroic. The crowd will die for the triumph of some belief or idea; in the crowd, you can awaken enthusiasm and make it, for the sake of glory and honor, go without bread and weapons, as in the times crusades, to free the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidels, or, as in 1793, to defend the native land. This is heroism, somewhat unconscious, of course, but it is with his help that history is made. If only great deeds, thought out in cold blood, were at the expense of the peoples, then there would be very few of them in the world lists.
Question 40. “Opinion and the crowd” - analysis of interaction in the work of G. Tarde.Comparing the crowd and the public Tarde says that the public should not stoop to the crowd, that is, Tarde puts the public on a high level, above the crowd. Although he does not deny that the audience can become a crowd, for example, when it is very excited by some incident, then it turns into a fanatical crowd. The crowd, in his opinion, as a more natural group, obeys and depends on the forces of nature, the sun's ray gathers the crowd, and the rain scatters it. The public, as a group of the highest category, is not subject to these changes. The actions of the crowd, according to Tarde, are easier to predict than the actions of the public, due to the fact that the crowd, as a rule, are people united by their national characteristics, who add up and form one whole, while in the public people are individually different . Tarde says that any magazine, publication, newspaper, even an orator has its own audience. Types of public - religious, scientific, secular, economic, aesthetic, constantly inherently international; crowds - religious, scientific, etc. only occasionally are they international in the guise of congresses. Of course, the "audience" and "crowd" are somewhat similar, one might even say that each audience is outlined by the nature of the crowd that it generates.Religious audience outlined by a pilgrimage, socialite i am- balls, festivities, literary - theater audiences, industrial audience - strikes, political - chambers of deputies, revolutionary - riots, etc. But there is no such thing as crowds merge if the public does not exist. Despite all this difference, the crowd and the public are the 2 extreme poles of social evolution (the family and the horde are the 2 starting points of this evolution) they have the following similarities: the connection of the various individuals that make up their composition is not that they harmonize with each other with their characteristics, mutually beneficial qualities, but also that they mutually reflect on each other, as if merging in unison.Tarde classifies the audience and the crowd from very different perspectives. For example, if viewed in relation to gender, then there is a male and female audience as well as a male and female crowd. But the female audience who, for example, reads novels, poems, fashion newspapers, etc., does not at all look like a crowd of the same sex. It is more harmless. For example, if we consider by age, then the crowd of young people, rebellious gatherings of students - are much more important than the youthful audience. Crowds vary in time, season, latitude .… But the most important difference that Tarde makes is that which stems from the very essence of their purpose or their faith. As soon as a sight attracts people's eyes and their minds, as soon as danger or indignation directs their heart to the same desire, they begin to obediently unite, and this first stage of the social aggregate is the crowd. For the crowd, there is no middle ground between disgust and adoration, today they can shout "Long live!", Tomorrow "Death!" etc. Only a word is enough for them to turn adoration into eternal damnation. The audience differs from the crowd in that whatever its origin, the proportion of an ideological and believing public greatly prevails over a passionate and acting public. Moreover, as the action of the public is more reasonable and more meaningful, it may be, and is often more fruitful than the action of the crowd. Tarde divides the crowd into 4 groups: Waiting(there is a very strong collective curiosity in the crowd, these are people waiting for the appearance of a regal cortege, the appearance of a character, it can also be just people sitting in the theater and waiting for the curtain to rise). Attentive(these are the people who crowd around the professor's chair, near the tribune, in front of the stage. Their general attention and inattention is always manifested much stronger and more persistent than the attention and inattention of each individual who is part of this composition, if he were alone). Manifestant (whatever they show - their belief, love or hate - they always show it with their usual exaggeration ). The current(can be divided into 2 crowds: loving and hating). If we talk about the acting public, then it is inspired by love or hate in its action; but unlike the action of the crowd, its action, if inspired by love, often has the form of direct productivity, since more deliberate and calculated. Tarde also writes that there is a so-called criminal public, which differs from the criminal crowd in 4 properties: They cause a less repulsive character. They stem not so much from vindictive as from self-serving goals, they are less cruel, but more insidious. Their pressure is broader and more prolonged, and impunity is even better for them. So, considering the crowdand the publicTarde ends his study of these social groups in this way, and writes that the public is a new group that encompasses more and more areas, and is acquiring an ever greater density, and they replace numerous varieties of human association with incomplete and unchanging divisions with unclear boundaries, mutually penetrating into each other.
G. Tarde L'Opinion et la Foule Translation from French under the editorship of PS Kogan Publishing house of the Printing House A. I. Mamontov, M., 1902 Institute of Psychology RAS, Publishing house "KSP +" 1999
One of the most famous works of the French sociologist and criminalist. According to his concept, the creator of public opinion is a certain public with very mobile and unclear boundaries, rooted in especially mass spiritual and psychological processes.
All social processes, according to Tarde, are based on interpersonal interactions, the study of which Tarde considers the main task of the social sciences.
Printed with the text brought to the standards of the modern Russian language
PUBLIC OPINION AND CONVERSATION
CROWDS AND CRIMINAL SECTS
NOTES
FOREWORD
PUBLIC AND CROWD
CONVERSATION
Foreword
Expression collective psychologyor social Psychologyoften give a fantastic meaning, from which it is first of all necessary to get rid of. It is what we imagine collective mind, collective consciousness,as a special we,which seems to exist outside or above individual minds. There is no need for such a point of view, in such a mystical understanding, in order to quite clearly draw the line between ordinary psychology and social psychology, which we would rather call interspiritual. In fact, the first concerns the relationship of the mind to the entire totality of other external objects, the second studies or should study the mutual relations of minds, their influences: one-sided or mutual, - one-sided at first, mutual then. Between the first and the second there is thus the distinction that exists between genus and species. But the species in this case has a character so important and so exceptional that it must be isolated from the genus and interpreted using methods specially peculiar to it.
The individual sketches that the reader will find here are fragments of this vast field of collective psychology. They are connected by a close bond. I had to reprint here, in order to determine its real place, a sketch of crowds,constituting the last part of this book. Indeed, public,which constitutes the special main subject of this study, is nothing more than a scattered crowd, in which the influence of minds on each other has become an action at a distance, at distances, ever increasing. Finally, opinion,the result of all these actions at a distance or in personal contact constitutes for the crowd and the public something like what thought is for the body. And if among these actions, as a result of which an opinion appears, we begin to look for the most general and constant, then we will easily make sure that such is conversation,an elementary, social relation, completely forgotten by sociologists.
A complete history of conversation among all peoples at all times would be an eminently interesting document of social knowledge; and if all the difficulties that this issue presents could be overcome with the help of the collective work of numerous scientists, then there is no doubt that from a comparison of the facts obtained on this issue from the most diverse peoples among themselves, a large stock of common ideas would stand out, which would allow make from comparative talka real science, slightly inferior to comparative religion, comparative art and even comparative industry, in other words, political economy.
But it goes without saying that I could not pretend to sketch out a plan for such a science in several pages. In the absence of information sufficient even for the most sketchy sketch, I could only indicate its future place, and I would be happy if, expressing regret about its absence, I aroused in some young researcher the desire to fill this important gap.
May 1901 G. Tarde
The famous French sociologist Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904), almost simultaneously with Le Bon, also explores the phenomenon of the crowd. He draws attention to the fact that the crowd is attractive in itself, moreover, as he puts it, has a certain charming effect. He distinguishes between such concepts as the crowd and the public and, unlike Le Bon, considers his modern age to be the century of the public. The crowd, in his opinion, as a social group belongs to the past, it is something lower. By the public, he understands a “purely spiritual collective whole”, in which individuals are not gathered, as in a crowd, together, but, being physically separated from each other, are linked together by a spiritual connection, namely a community of beliefs and passions. The audience, according to Tarde, is much wider, more numerous than the crowd. The advent of printing, and especially newspapers, revolutionized the appearance and role of the public. A lot of people began to read the same newspapers, to experience similar feelings while sitting at home. The periodical press deals with the same pressing problems. The emergence of the public presupposes a more significant mental and social development than the education of the crowd.
If the birth of the public is associated with the emergence of printing in the 16th century, then in the 18th century. a "political public" appears and grows, which soon absorbs into itself, "like an overflowing river its tributaries, all kinds of other publics: literary, philosophical and scientific ... And begins to matter only as a result of the life of the crowd." The revolution not only greatly activated the crowd, but also gave rise to an unprecedented abundance of "greedily read newspapers". At that time, the presence of such a public can only be said in relation to Paris, but not the provinces. And only "our century, with its means of improved movement and instant transmission of thought at any distance, was given to give a different kind, or better, every kind of public that boundless expansion that it is capable of, which is its sharp difference from the crowd." The crowd cannot go beyond certain limits, otherwise it no longer represents a single whole and cannot engage in the same activity. And a combination of typography, railways, telegraph and telephone has made the public so numerous that it is not about the era of the crowd, but about the era of the public.
The crowd captures the whole person, it is more emotional than the audience, and therefore more intolerant. The fall of the public to the crowd is very dangerous for society. The leader affects the crowd more emotionally and faster, but the publicist's impact is longer. If the crowd is unchanged in its characteristics, then the audience is amenable to change. The socialist public of the time of Proudhon and late XIX in. has changed quite a bit. The role of publicists is constantly increasing, they create public opinion, not to mention the constantly increasing flow of the press. The crowd is never international, while the modern audience is constantly international. The public, according to Tarde, is less blind and significantly more durable than the crowd.
It is, as it were, the final state, in it religious, political, and national groups merge. The audience, he says, is huge. a scattered crowd with vague and ever-changing contours, suggested from a distance. But at the same time, the audience and the crowd mutually reflect each other, becoming infected with the same thoughts and passions.
Le Bon, speaking of the infectiousness that takes place in the crowd, draws attention to imitativeness. Tarde, when characterizing both the crowd and the public, pays special attention to the moment of imitation. This is generally one of the main ideas of his sociological theories, to which he dedicated separate work - “Laws of imitation”. He perceives society as imitation, and imitation itself acts for him as a kind of somnambulism. All progress, not excluding the progress of equality - he believes - is made by imitation, repetition. And this characteristic comes to light especially clearly when studying the behavior of the crowd, the public.
In his analysis of the public, Tarde emphasizes the role of public opinion, by which he understands not only a set of judgments, but also desires. All this is reproduced in many copies and distributed among many people. It is Tardu who has the primacy in the analysis of public opinion, in the need to take it into account by politicians who must control this opinion. Modern public opinion, he believes, has become omnipotent, including in the struggle against reason. It is guided by suggested ideas, and the larger the public becomes, the stronger the power of public opinion. Periodicals play a huge role in the creation and dissemination of public opinion. As he puts it, one pen is enough to set in motion a million languages. It took 30 speakers to activate 2,000 Athenian citizens, but it takes no more than 10 journalists to shake 40 million French people. Printing unites and animates conversations, making them uniform in space and varied in time. It was the press that made possible suggestion at a distance and gave birth to an audience bound by purely spiritual, psychic bonds. Each reader is convinced that he shares the thoughts and feelings of a huge number of other readers. Tarde believes that it is not the right to vote, but the widespread circulation of the press that mobilizes the public in the name of a particular goal. In difficult social circumstances, the entire nation becomes "a huge array of excited readers, feverishly awaiting messages." Power is dependent on the press, which can make it not only adapt, but also change.
Just as Le Bon gives the classification of the crowd, Tarde gives a certain classification of the public, believing that this can be done according to many criteria, but the most important is the goal that unites the public, its faith. And in this he sees a similarity between the crowd and the public. Both the one and the other are intolerant, biased, demanding that everyone yield to her. Both the crowd and the audience have a herd spirit. Both of them resemble a drunk in their behavior. The crowds are not only gullible, but sometimes insane, intolerant, constantly fluctuating between excitement and extreme oppression, they succumb to collective hallucinations. Criminal mobs are well known. But the same can be said for the public. Sometimes it becomes criminal because of party interests, because of the criminal condescension to its leaders. Isn't the public of voters, he asks, which sent sectarian and fanatical representatives to the House of Representatives, is not responsible for their crimes? But even a passive public, not involved in the elections, is not also an accomplice in what fanatics and sectarians are doing? We are dealing not only with the criminal mob, but also with the criminal public. “Since the public began to emerge, the greatest historical crimes have almost always been committed with the complicity of the criminal public. And if this is still doubtful about St. Bartholomew's Night, then it is quite true in relation to the persecution of Protestants during Louis XIV and so many others. " If there was no encouragement of the public to such crimes, they would not have been committed. And he concludes: behind the criminal mob there is an even more criminal public, and at the head of the public are even more criminal publicists. His publicist acts as a leader. For example, he speaks of Marat as a publicist and predicts that in the future a personification of authority and power may occur, "in comparison with which the most grandiose figures of despots of the past: Caesar, Louis XIV, and Napoleon will fade." The public's actions are not as straightforward as the crowds, but both are too prone to obey the urges of envy and hatred.
Tarde believes that it would be a mistake to attribute the progress of humanity to the crowd or the public, since its source is always a strong and independent thought, separated from the crowd, the public. Everything new is generated by thought. The main thing is to preserve the independence of thought, while democracy leads to the leveling of the mind.
If Le Bon spoke about a homogeneous and heterogeneous crowd, then Tarde - about the existence of associations of heterogeneous degrees: the crowd as an embryonic and formless aggregate is its first stage, but there is also a more developed, more durable and much more organized association, which he calls a corporation, for example regiment, workshop, monastery, and ultimately the state, the church. In all of them there is a need for a hierarchical order. He sees parliamentary assemblies as complex, contradictory crowds, but lacking in consensus.
Both the crowd and the corporation have their own leader. Sometimes the crowd does not have a clear leader, but often he is hidden. When it comes to a corporation, the leader is always explicit. “From the moment when some gathering of people begins to feel the same nervous tremor, animate with the same and go to the same goal, it can be argued that already some kind of inspirer or leader, or maybe , a whole group of leaders and inspirers, among whom only one was an active wandering, breathed into this crowd their soul, then suddenly expanded, changed, disfigured to such an extent that the inspirer himself, before all others, comes to amazement and horror ”. In revolutionary times, we deal with complex crowds, when one crowd flows into another, merges with it. And here the leader always appears, and the more friendly, consistent and sensible the crowd acts, the more obvious the role of the leaders. If crowds succumb to any leader, then corporations carefully consider who to make or appoint as leader. If the crowd is mentally and morally below average ability, then the corporation, the spirit of the corporation, says Tarde, may be higher than its constituent elements. Crowds are more likely to do evil than good, while corporations are more likely to be helpful than harmful.
Tarde pays special attention to sects, which, in his opinion, supply leaders to the crowd. They are a wandering crowd for the crowd, although the sects themselves may well do without the crowd. The sect is obsessed with a certain idea, and it picks up followers who are already prepared for this idea. According to Tardu, every idea not only selects people for itself, but directly creates them for itself. All these sects, he believes, arise on false ideas, on vague and dark theories, and are directed to feelings, but not reason. The sect is constantly improving, and this is its particular danger, especially when it comes to criminal sects. Another danger of sects lies in the fact that they recruit for their own purposes people of various social categories. The degree of responsibility of the leaders and sects that generate them, and the masses they lead, are different. For everything destructive that takes place in the revolution, the crowd, at least in part, is responsible. But the revolutions themselves, according to Tarde, were created, conceived by Luther, Rousseau, Voltaire. Everything genius, including crimes, is created by the individual. Leader, political figure, the thinker inspires others with new ideas. He believes that there is nothing mysterious in the collective soul, it is just the soul of the leader. The crowd, the sect, the public always have the main idea that they have inspired, they imitate their inspirers. But the power of feelings, which guides the masses, both in good and in evil, turns out to be its own product. Therefore, it would be wrong to attribute all the actions of the crowd, of the public, only to the leader. When a crowd admires its leader, it admires itself, it assumes a high opinion of itself. But when she, and above all the democratic public, shows distrust of her leader, then the leader himself begins to flirt and obey this kind of public. And this happens despite the fact that the crowds, the public are most often obedient and condescending to their leader.
The works of Le Bon and Tarde were the basis for the study of the phenomenon of the crowd, the masses in all subsequent literature of the XX century. This is especially true of irrationalist philosophy, which is close in its very essence to psychological problems, often intertwined with it. This predetermined the similarity in the approach to understanding the role of the masses by the theorists of “crowd psychology” and a number of representatives of irrationalist philosophy. As we will try to show, many of the ideas of the philosophers of the 20th century, who wrote about the masses, the crowd, are based on the interpretations given by Le Bon and Tarde
