“Work-democracy adds a decisive piece of knowledge to the scope of ideas related to freedom.”

Section 1 : Give Responsibility to Vitally Necessary Work!
Variant translation: Work democracy introduces into liberal thinking a decisive new insight: the working masses who carry the burden of social existence are not conscious of their social responsibility. Nor are they — as the result of thousands of years of suppression of rational thinking, of the natural love function and of the scientific comprehension of living functioning — capable of the responsibility for their own freedom. Another insight contributed by work democracy is the finding that politics is in itself and of necessity unscientific: it is an expression of human helplessness, impoverishment and suppression.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
Context: Work-democracy adds a decisive piece of knowledge to the scope of ideas related to freedom. The masses of people who work and bear the burden of social existence on their shoulders neither are conscious of their social responsibility nor are they capable of assuming the responsibility for their own freedom. This is the result of the century-long suppression of rational thinking, the natural functions of love, and scientific comprehension of the living. Everything related to the emotional plague in social life can be traced back to this incapacity and lack of consciousness. It is work-democracy's contention that, by its very nature, politics is and has to be unscientific, i. e., that it is an expression of human helplessness, poverty, and suppression.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Work-democracy adds a decisive piece of knowledge to the scope of ideas related to freedom." by Wilhelm Reich?
Wilhelm Reich photo
Wilhelm Reich 89
Austrian-American psychoanalyst 1897–1957

Related quotes

Tim Berners-Lee photo

“I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

Weaving the Web (1999)
Context: In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.

“Closely related to the erroneous idea that science is a body of knowledge is the equally erroneous idea that scientific theories are true.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 40

Anton Webern photo

“Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother.”

Anton Webern (1883–1945) Austrian composer and conductor

Letter to Alban Berg. Hayes, Malcolm. 1995. Anton von Webern, p. 71

Wilhelm Reich photo

“Only a work democracy can create the foundation of genuine freedom.”

Section 2 : The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
Context: Only a work democracy can create the foundation of genuine freedom. Long experience in sociological disputes leads me to expect that a great many people will take offense at the disclosure of this miscalculation. It makes the highest demands on people's will to veracity; it puts a heavy burden on everyday living; it places all social responsibility on those who work, be it in the factory, in the office, on the farm, in the laboratory, or wherever.

Thomas Mann photo

“It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory.”

Speech, "The War and the Future" (1940); published in Order of the Day (1942)
Context: It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.

“There are no countries that have diplomatic relations with other countries simply because of democracy and freedom. They are all focused on national interests.”

Chen Chien-jen (2017) cited in " Ex-foreign minister warns of 'domino effect' after Panama defection http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201706130009.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 13 June 2017

Hans-Hermann Hoppe photo

“Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

"Reflections on State and War" (2 December 2006) http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe17.html

Ai Weiwei photo
Wilhelm Reich photo

“Work democracy does not wish to prevent or prohibit anything. Its only intention is the fulfilment of the biological life functions, of love, work and knowledge.”

Section 3 : Work Democracy versus Politics. The Natural Social Forces for the Mastery of the Emotional Plague.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy

Related topics