| A lot of communists posit that capitalism (and perhaps in some cases statism) cause and/or arise from something kind of resembling a mental illness. Marx's "Alienation" and especially Delueze's "Desire" have this flavor. I think this is one reason why there's a whole brand of communism that's closely tied to Freudian/Lacanian style psychology. That psychological aspect usually plays some role in transitionary theories for certain brands of communism, especially anti-statist brands. Although nailing down exactly what role it's supposed to play is usually pretty difficult, it's fair to say that the answer to your question would -- for a lot of anarcho-communists -- boil down to something related to these psychological theories. This post may sound uncharitable to those communists. And I don't agree with their theories. But I also think that their work contributes something very important to discussion of fringe political theory: Flipping a psychological switch in the minds of the masses is an absolute pre-requisite for most anarchist theories. IMO that includes anarcho-capitalism. The communists at least recognized this way earlier than everyone else and are very careful about identifying psychological theories that match well with their sociological theories. We can argue whether psychological switch-flipping is a realistic expectation -- I'd argue not. But any time I read political theory, I try to identify where the author invokes a form of switch-flipping. 99% of the time the author just makes overly charitable assumptions about human psychology -- that's usually the case in mainstream politics. Communists sometimes have some Freudian psycho-analytical flavored theory. Anarcho-communists like Molyneux prefer weird pseudo-logical reasoning about moral axioms. Implicit assumptions of switch-flipping show up in mainstream politics as well (IMO "drain the swamp" and "black lives matter" both make implicit assumptions about switch-flipping that under-estimate the stubbornness and importance of human psychology...) |
I would also note that sometimes, people operating off a 'psychologist' basis like you've identified, misunderstand the critiques of others as being also 'psychologist'. For example, the Hayekian critique of central economic planning is often characterized as a psychological argument that "people are naturally selfish and greedy". Thus, if you can get them to stop being so selfish, the objection is overcome. However, what the critique is actually about is inherent limits to knowledge and information, which would apply regardless of psychology.