ABOUT “BOLSHEVISM AND INDIVIDUALPSYCHOLOGY” BY ALFRED ADLER

Abstract

Immediately after the end of the First World War, A. Adler takes the opportunity to outline his own idea of socialism, which is founded on a peaceful, humanitarian and ethic vision of the emacipation of mankind. Actually he aims to apply the priciples of Individual Psychology to social psychology and political issues. A condemnation of Bolshevism follows: the violents ways of revolutionary policy are considered as a collective expression of will of power and therefore a “tragic mistake”. Adler’s political position is close to those revisionist and reformist tendencies, which were majority, at that time, inside the Second International. The modern reformist socialism, as distinguished from communism, had its own origin largely in the revisionist movement of the late 19th century. Many socialist thinkers began to doubt the indispensability of revolution and to revise other basic principles of Marxism. Led by the German writer Eduard Bernstein, they declared that socialism could best be attained by reformist, parliamentary, evolutionary and educational methods