The next discussion involving Marx is in the section The Historic Role Sociometry on page 8. The section opens:
During the first quarter of the twentieth century there were several main directions of thought in development, each apparently unrelated and uncoordinated to the other.
These are the five Moreno refers to:
Bergson. His “Creative Evolution .” did not involve experimentation but led Moreno to do so and identify spontaneity.
Freud. Who engaged with the “subject” (The patient or client or as I might learn to call it … tangata). But Freud released only memory. “Instead of free association we sought the full release of the subject, his mental and mimic expression.”
Freud like Nietzsche, “did not know what to do with the moment.” (Moreno 1978:9)
Nancy school, especially Bernheim
It was an advance as it put emphasis upon the group rather than upon the single individual . Russian investigators began to perceive the group as a reality superior to the individual, as a collective, and to study the form collectives might assume under different conditions. But the larger the groups became the more were the individuals reduced to symbols and their interactions to nebulous processes. As the investigators could not travel except on the surface of these collectives, they could not study more than structures as they appeared on the surface. We met this difficulty with a method which considered the individual in the collective, we entered into the group to call all the subject-centers within the group to aid. And as we studied the development of the collective from within the collective we became able to estimate its inner organization.
I’m quoting and commenting more fully about the Nancy School, because it addresses concepts central to this monograph, the ideas here foreshadow what is to come when Marx is covered as one of the antecedents to sociometry .
Moreno recognizes the tension between the individual and the collective in group work, warning that as groups scale up, individuals risk being reduced to symbols. This may not be inevitable. The challenge lies in finding ways to engage large groups—like the working class—as dynamic collectives capable of transformation as a “class for itself”.
On another level, the question becomes how small groups can meaningfully amplify the collective’s struggles and potential. Moreno’s insight that the protagonist works for the group, not just in it, provides a model: small entities can surface and address the themes of the larger whole without reducing individuals to isolated actors or mere statistics. The individual is a microcosm of the group they are involved and engaged with.
Comte
.”..his Positive Philosophy was brought to fresh advance by Le Play and his disciples.”
However Moreno is not satisfied for reasons that will become ever more clear.
“The economic side is only one phase of this structure, covering up the psychological structure of society which is beneath the surface and most difficult to ascertain.”
This will also relate to his thinking about Marx.
Apart from Moreno’s frustrating reductionism of Marx to the “economic”, there is a truth that the macro and the micro have different attributes and behave in distinct ways. Moreno’s criticism of analysis at the macro level could countered by saying that that psychological is only one phase of this structure. The sociological layer often lies beneath the surface and can be challenging to discern and engage with.
I’m thinking it is not integration or synthesis of Marx and Moreno, the macro and the micro, I am looking for. Rather a better way to do psychodrama, sociodrama and worker organisation.
We might consider how the Nancy School approached this in terms of suggestion and hypnotism. Their methods offer potential for engaging large groups beyond what we might call marketing or propaganda today. There is something unsavory about bourgeois social media, revolutionary alternative could be found. Some sort of intermediary space to use Fanon’s word.
Marx
I will quote the relevant paragraphs….
A fifth line of thought was represented by economic planning based on an analysis of society as an economic-materialistic process (Marx) Economic planning was a real advance. But the tacit basis of this planning was the collective, the collective of symbolic membership. It attempted to function in disregard of the individual as a psychological energy and of society as a growing complex continuously pressed by psychological currents and the networks they form. Or better said, it had so little regard for the psychological factor that it thought to suppress or denaturalize without expecting any particularly harmful consequences. As the planning progressed and began to manage the nature of man and society according to the economic criterion curious disturbances appeared, the cause of which was a puzzle.
The founder of scientific socialism underestimated religious forces for the same reason which made him underestimate socio-psychological forces operating in groups. He failed to integrate them into his theory of social revolution and communistic government. This occurred for the same reason which made him distinguish between the first phase of communistic society and the highest phase of it. It was a theoretic obsession with strategic procedure, splitting a unity into two different issues. The deep analyst of the relation of merchandise to man was a poor psychologist of human interrelations. Marx thought that the economic and the socio-psychological problems of man can not be attacked at one time; that the psychological problem can wait; that, so to speak, two different revolutions were necessary and that the economic-social revolution has to precede what we have called the psychological or creative revolution of human society. He tried to prove that, in the long run at least, all decisive psycho-social changes are produced by economic revolutions; that from the division between capital and labor derived the structure of two different classes, bourgeoisie and proletariat, and with this all major differences among men. The change of economic structure in Russia has not brought about, however, after the revolution of 1917, the expected change in the socio-psychological behavior of the masses. Looking at the Russia of today he might be amazed to find that the socio-cultural changes lag far behind the economic changes. This lag is perhaps easily comprehensible if we apply a frequent Marxistic phrase to Soviet Russia itself: the communistic society is still in its first phase; the chief objectives of scientific socialism have remained unfulfilled, because the State has not yet “withered away.” But it seems as if the communistic society in its highest state of development is becoming a comfortable myth, to be set aside permanently as an Utopian goal, as unattainable, as soon as the economic program of the first phase is achieved.
Economic reductionism
I have addressed this in my comments on the first mention of Marx. However these passages are rife with a new take on it. Moreno is here of the opinion that Marx thought there was an economic and then a psychological revolution.
Marx did have a view of stages of revolution. His theory, shaped by experiences like the Paris Commune and debates with anarchists, relate to the nature of the state. The first stage, socialism, involves the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” i.e. the working class’s organised control of society. This “dictatorship” is about dismantling the existing structures of exploitation and creating new socialist forms.
The second stage—envisions a future where the state becomes unnecessary as class antagonisms dissolve and the new society stabilises. While this is speculative and distant, it is a view far removed from Moreno’s suggestion that Marx thinks the psychological must be postponed. There is one process and consciousness evolves alongside material conditions through revolutionary struggle.
Conflation of Marxism with Soviet Russia.
I commented on this conflation in the see Note on Marxism and Russia in an earlier post.
Reductionism and conflation aside, what remains is sociometry and psychodrama..
Moreno successfully synthesized an approach that works exceptionally well with small groups. Sociometry goes beyond measuring relationships—it is an action method that creates connections, serving as the foundation for group work and psychodrama. Integrated into this is Moreno’s development of the scientific method (1), which links to Marx’s scientific socialism. This integration forms the basis of Moreno’s methods for dynamic group transformation.
At this juncture (Section 5), I want to honor the contribution Moreno has made to working with small groups. Psychodrama and sociometry are revolutionary in the psychological sphere.
I am struck by how these methodologies fail to extend into broader social structures. Even within the psychodrama community, while we excel at running transformative group sessions, we struggle to apply Moranian principles to organizational settings. Our business meetings, AGMs, and decision-making processes use traditional methods like Robert’s Rules and voting systems,
This raises the question: can Moreno’s insights still contribute to a more cohesive and revolutionary approach to social and organizational dynamics?
Moreno concludes the section …
It is through a synthesis of these … lines of development that gradually the preliminary ground was laid for an experiment in the psychosocial planning of society.
Footnote
1. See my paper “Moreno’s Scientific Methodology:
by, of and for the People” (2015) https://aanzpa.org/wp-content/uploads/1512-AANZPA-Journal-Walter.pdf
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This post is part of a series.
See Intro Marx and Moreno Monograph