The Crowd & The Psychology of Revolution: Two Classics on Understanding the Mob Mentality and Its Motivations

by Gustave Le Bon

This edition brings to you Le Bon's two most celebrated works, "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" and "The Psychology of Revolution", which made a breakthrough in what is now known as crowd psychology. Le Bon theorised about a new entity, "psychological crowd", which emerges from incorporating the assembled population not only forms a new body but also creates a collective "unconsciousness". As a group of people gather together and coalesces to form a crowd, there is a "magnetic influence given out by the crowd" that transmutes every individual's behaviour until it becomes governed by the "group mind".
Gustave Le Bon was a French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. Ignored or maligned by sections of the French academic and scientific establishment during his life due to his politically conservative and reactionary views, Le Bon was critical of democracy and socialism. Le Bon's works were influential to such disparate figures as Theodore Roosevelt and Benito Mussolini, Sigmund Freud and José Ortega y Gasset, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin.

Genres: Psychology, Politics, Sociology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, History, Society

487 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 18, 2017

About the author

A social psychologist, sociologist, and amateur physicist. He was the author of several works in which he expounded theories of national traits, racial superiority, herd behavior and crowd psychology.
See also Гюстав Ле Бон

Reviews

[Nico Battersby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crowds are bad. Communism is bad. Democracy is bad.
Oh and we're all doomed.

[William Schrecengost · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. An excellent aid to understanding how crowds work. I think the main things are:
- crowds become one body and think as a unification of common ideas and traits of the people within the group
- crowds are inherently stupid. You cannot reason with them
- if you try to lead them, you must use simple direct commands. Fred is a lawyer, lawyers are bad, therefore Fred is bad. There is great danger in leading a crowd as it can quickly turn against you merely by confusing your logic.
- because of the common trait being the primary one of a crowd, a crowd often becomes criminal due to our primitive traits from evolution (for Christians, this would be our sinful nature under Adam).
- public education is very important because it creates the common traits that a crowd will have. Me Bon laments the style of education that merely fills the head with information and that it only prepares the mind to be a bureaucrat or politician and leaves the rest of the populace jaded and angry.

This would be very helpful for our leaders now to read.

[Dimo Delchev]

The book gives ideas why so many people are so dumb even on things that are not supposed to be. It explains very well the difference between an individual and a group of people.

[R]

Brilliant.

[Nelly Fisher · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very excited to read this book because the title promises a thorough investigation into the psychology of a crowd. It’s a topic I am very invested and interested it. Yet, the book delivers nothing on that promise.
Its key points are:
1. Masses are mainly a dumb blob of people willing to do anything when addressed appropriately.
2. Masses are mobilised not by a speech full of truth and facts, but by emotion and emotion alone. Duh.
These points are talked about a lot but le Bon doesn’t go into any psychological or sociological depths worth mentioning. I learnt absolutely nothing new from this book.
I have read a few of the older key philosophical works (Montesquieu, Rousseau, Locke, Adam Smith) and usually I enjoy their universal approach to their topic, mixing philosophy, history, mythology, economics etc. Le Bon does so as well, but it adds no valuable extra information regarding the key topic. To finish it all of, I have never read any historical book with so much racism and sexism (I know, I know, it was the general view of the time, but then at least tell me something new and interesting, old white man).

[?0?0?0 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right?
Right.

[Andrew Child · Rating 1 out of 5]

if i could go back in time i would beat this guy up. literally shut the fuck up

[Tandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully insightful view into the mind of an average citizen willfully giving their freedom to a tyrant. Moreover, this concept is also applicable on every scale of a society. The “crowd” essentially creates a herd mentality where individual thought is lost and shared growth is stifled through the appointment of a “leader”.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in taking an outside view of their inability to think critically within a society easily steered towards providing the wellness of a ruling class. Be it political, religious, or familial, we all fall victim to accepting a status quo guideline without considering the more preferred outcome through promoting and maintaining their individual dignity.

[Julia Jarzębak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Często się wyłączałam.
Odnoszę wrażenie, ze ta książka mogłaby być o połowę krótsza, tak jakby autor ciągle krążył wokół jednych i tych samych wniosków.
Jednak mój odbiór może być spowodowany tym, jak stara jest to praca i część rzeczy, które w jej czasach były niezwykle odkrywcze, są już truizmami. To raczej dobry znak.
3,5/5

[Mohammed Alsharqawy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The style of writing is very old and in somewhere is difficult to understand. The writer glorifies the french revolution and thinks about all other movements or revelations or religions is the worst. Most of the writing is a lack of examples that support his view besides he rarely mentioned the opposite opinions.

[Kezia Singgih · Rating 3 out of 5]

insightful, but i don't completely agree with it at personal level

[Emil Lechev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read.

[Bill Cripps · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit hit and miss, with some interesting ideas on race thrown into the mix. Cherry pick the good bits!

[Marco Matteucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favourite