Friedrich von Wieser, Machtpsychologie (1923)

Friedrich von Wieser’s German-language Machtpsychologie (1923) explains social power through the interaction of individual wills. Moving from a critique of crowd psychology and supra-individual abstractions to the relations between leaders and followers, it examines power’s capacity for collective achievement and destruction. Its central problem is how individuals create social forces that subsequently constrain them.

Wieser credits modern crowd psychology with directing attention toward observable processes, but questions its concentration on revolutionary crowds and unstable collectivities. Its important discovery concerns the transformation of conduct through participation:

Das Neue an ihr ist die Erkenntnis, daß das „Individuum in der Masse“ sich ganz anders gibt, als das „Individuum für sich“, so daß sich ohne weiteres verstehen läßt, wenn im Massenleben Wirkungen hervorkommen, die sich im individuellen Leben nicht ereignen.

English translation: What is new in it is the recognition that the "individual in the mass" conducts himself quite differently from the "individual by himself," so that it can readily be understood if effects emerge in mass life which do not occur in individual life.

This contrast does not establish an autonomous collective soul. Nor is the isolated individual an adequate starting point: private conduct already depends on imitation, reciprocal expectations, and inherited achievements. Crowd psychology must therefore extend to enduring institutions and ordinary social life.

Economic value theory supplies a methodological analogy:

Die neuere Theorie hat aber klar gemacht, daß es einen objektiven Wert nicht gebe und nicht geben könne und daß der von den Gütern ausgesagte Wert immer der Ausdruck eines persönlichen Werterlebnisses sei.

English translation: The more recent theory, however, has made clear that an objective value does not and cannot exist, and that the value predicated of goods is always the expression of a personal experience of value.

A common market price does not imply identical personal valuations: the same monetary amount entails different sacrifices and opportunities for different people. Similarly, the apparent independence of capital, law, weapons, or religion should not obscure their operation through human capacities and convictions. Wieser preserves the reality of social constraint while rejecting its explanation through a separately existing “objective spirit.” Individuals experience the combined pressure of others while helping to sustain it.

His constructive psychology distinguishes forms of participation in power. At its most elementary, power appears as imposed suffering:

In roher Zeit erlebt die große Masse das Dasein der Macht nur leidend, ohnmächtig erduldet sie den Druck der Macht.

English translation: In a crude age the great mass experiences the existence of power only passively; powerless, it endures the pressure of power.

The disciplined soldier illustrates a more complex progression. Fear and contagious excitement can induce obedience, but durable cooperation requires mutual expectations, recognition of common purposes, honor, pride, and duty. Power becomes inwardly binding through participation. Collective life can cultivate purposeful will rather than merely diminish intelligence or release instinct. Yet this achievement entails a sacrifice of independent volition: coordination strengthens participants while deepening their dependence.

This mechanism extends beyond armies and public institutions:

Wie alles gesellschaftliche Leben steht auch das private unter dem Gesetze der Führung und im Banne der gesellschaftlichen Mächte, zu denen sich die Erfolge verdichten, die unter dem Vorangehen der Führer und der Nachfolge der Masse errungen werden.

English translation: Like all social life, private life too stands under the law of leadership and under the spell of the social powers into which condense the successes that are won through the leaders going before and the mass following after.

Ordinary economic actors remain guided by custom and example despite their formal freedom. Entrepreneurs exercise greater initiative, but depend on organized labor and historical conditions. Their contributions to public welfare can coexist with domination and indifference to suffering. Wieser accordingly treats the coercive capacities of large enterprises as grounds for stronger public supervision.

Against accounts emphasizing crowd volatility, he stresses the conservatism produced by reciprocal dependence. Even revolutionary groups impose obligations rather than simply liberating private impulses. Collective credulity is selective: groups accept claims supporting their purposes and resist unwelcome evidence. Solidarity can sustain exceptional effort but also prolong disastrous commitments.

Leadership intensifies this ambiguity. Exceptional spiritual leaders can awaken neglected moral capacities; ordinary leaders often exaggerate prevailing ambitions. Specialized competence may confuse success in a means, such as military victory, with society’s ultimate welfare. Napoleon and the Jacobins exemplify how organized energies become instruments of exhaustion and destruction. Power’s drive to preserve and enlarge itself does not guarantee social self-preservation.

Wieser concludes with the problem of moral reconstruction after war and upheaval. Recovery requires new leadership, ideas, and constituencies, including unobtrusive influences working through individual consciences. Cultural history should investigate these powers alongside rulers and battles. Collective achievement and catastrophe thus arise from the same process: coordinated wills create strength that participants may no longer be able to direct toward their common welfare.