Henry de Man - The Psychology of Marxian Socialism

Social Science Classics Series

Vilhelm Aubert, The Hidden Society

Samuel Bernstein, French Political and Intellectual History

Herbert Blumer, Critiques of Research in the Social Sciences

G.D.H. Cole, Guild Socialism Restated

Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order

Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization

Benedetto Croce, Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx

Henry de Man, The Psychology of Marxian Socialism

Albert Venn Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century

Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society

Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism

G.S. Ghurye, The Scheduled Tribes of India

Ludwig Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology

Everett C. Hughes, The Sociological Eye

Helen MacGill Hughes, News and the Human Interest Story

Kurt Koffka, Growth of the Mind

Walter Laqueur, Young Germany

Harold J. Laski, The American Presidency

Gustave LeBon, The French Revolution and the Psychology of Revolution

Gustave LeBon, The Psychology of Socialism

Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Morals

Helen Merrel Lynd, England in the Eighteen- Eighties

Harriet Martineau, Society in America

Vilfredo Pareto, The Transformation of Democracy

Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development

George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

Werner Sombart, The fews and Modern Capitalism

Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics

Anselm Strauss et al., Psychiatric Ideologies

William Graham Sumner, Earth-Hunger and Other Essays

Thorstein Veblen, The Engineers and the Price System

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise

Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics

Max Weber, General Economic History

Florian Znaniecki, Cultural Sciences

Then too, there are the singular and disturbing facts of de Man's biography. Indeed, his life may be thought of as a reflection of the most important currents of European culture and politics in the first half of this century. An active and committed Marxist in his early years, he eventually became a major figure among Europe's democratic or parliamentary socialists. He fought in World War I and was decorated with the Belgian Croix de Guerre. He had an academic career and taught at the University of Frankfurt, where his colleagues included Karl Mannheim and Max Horkheimer. A prolific writer, he authored the influential Plan du Travail for the recovery of the Belgian economy. In the 1930s he became leader of the Parti Ouvrier Beige (POB) and briefly served in the government as a minister. As World War II approached, this major socialist figure and one-time Marxist became friend and confidant to Belgium's King Leopold III.

The astonishing culmination of de Man's life was the publication of his "Manifesto to the Members of the POB" in 1940, in which he urged a policy of appeasement and amity toward the Nazi invaders. The "Manifesto" celebrated the collapse of bourgeois liberalism under Hitler's armies, praised the Nazi regime as one which "has lessened class differences much more efficaciously than the self-styled democrats," and looked hopefully toward a future of community and prosperity guided by an authoritarian kind of socialism. It would be absurd to call de Man a Nazi, but it would be equally wrong to dismiss this episode as something merely accidental and inessential. The denouement of de Man's life involved his conviction in absentia of treason against the Belgian state. He spent his last years in bitter exile in Switzerland.

We may well be tempted to view The Psychology of Marxian Socialism in the light of these facts. It would be particularly interesting to read this book as a precursor of the 1940 "Manifesto," and to find in it the seeds of a fascist temperament. Indeed, there are materials here for just such a study. But to pursue this tack would be to ignore what is truly of interest and importance in this book, namely, de Man's particular account of socialism and of the role of social theory.