“Occasionally the meaning of life is, or seems to be, visioned in moments of ecstatic tension“
by Federico Soldani – 23rd May 2024
Harold Loeb, visions at will, and the meaning of life
As previously written in PsyPolitics in a 14-article long review of the 1933 utopia ‘Life in a Technocracy’ – see ‘Life in a Technocracy’, 1933: a soviet of technicians… in America? (2021) – the author Harold Loeb wrote (bold added for emphasis in all of the quotes):
“Occasionally the meaning of life is, or seems to be, visioned in moments of ecstatic tension. Civilized man prefers to pursue this vision by the practice or contemplation of what is known as art.
Other routes are also used, Voodooism and magic, for example, though, because of their frequent abuse, these routes are in disrepute. […]
Despite the vagueness of the whole subject, because the intellect is stultified before it, there is no a priori reason why a sustained, even intelligent, study of the phenomena which induce these visions cannot eventually permit us to attain them at will.
And when a being is in possession of them, he knows or thinks he knows the meaning of life and thus, as a secondary benefit, reduces, by the aid of memory, to their proper unimportance, the sorrow, the tragedy, even the ostensible evil which is woven of necessity into the texture of our temporal days.“
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Harold Loeb, political revolutions, and political psychiatry
These comments about “visions”, obtaining them “at will” and, knowing – or, crucially, thinking to know – the meaning of life, appear particularly relevant nowadays.
This is because of today’s very strong propaganda from main Anglo-American institutions about “hallucinogens” or, as the current new hype prefers to call these substances, “psychedelics”.
See about this Hallucinogens: antidepressants hype, cubed (2023) – PsyPolitics.
But also given the increased relevance of digital devices and infrastructure as well as related V.R. or Virtual Reality, called in many ways now including “metaverse” indicating the need to go beyond (meta) reality as perceived by the five senses.
See Origins of the cyber-psychedelic subculture (2021) – PsyPolitics and Trump, mass hallucinogens, and the cyber-psychedelic transformation of capitalism (2020) – PsyPolitics.
Harold Loeb in his 1933 utopia ‘Life in a Technocracy’ – an essay about a literal, not just metaphorical, revolutionary passage from capitalism to technocracy describing in detail the steps necessary for such (anti)political revolution – was explicit about the political use of psychiatry.
Loeb’s comments about a revolution ought to be taken seriously also because his family company was Kuhn Loeb & Co., a significant financial backer of Russian and Bolshevik revolutionary leaders and of Leon Trotsky in particular.
Trotsky – to mention one more significant point of contact between political revolutionary leaders and the psy disciplines – was an intimate friend of the socialist Alfred Adler, the psychoanalyst of the “will to power,” a pioneer in bringing psychological concepts outside the clinic emphasizing the role of the wider society in individual psychology, seen nowadays as a forerunner of community psychiatry.
The VII and last chapter is entitled “The Advent of Technocracy”, Harold Loeb’s post-capitalist and technocratic utopia ends with a chapter including some of the practical steps to take in order for a revolution to happen in capitalist America along the same lines of the Russian and then Bolshevik revolutions.
A transformation described as an “advent” in quasi messianic terms but also in political and practical revolutionary terms:
“Since revolution should neither be desired nor expected now, and since the transformation from capitalism to technocracy is so drastic that certain of its stages will certainly be considered to be of a revolutionary nature, it may be asked what preliminary steps should be taken in order to prepare for the crucial moments.”
Loeb wrote: “America is not ready for a revolution. If the advent of technocracy depended on the sudden forceful overturn of American institutions, the citizens of the United States would have to get used to hunger and cold even while foodstuffs were rotting on the sidings and fuel was clogging the railways.
Revolution, as Trotsky puts it, can only occur when the class in power has outlived its usefulness and thereby become rotten.”
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Among many other passages on the explicit political function of psychiatry, in his 1933 utopia Loeb wrote:
“In a technocracy the punishment for habitual dirtiness would be transfer to the cleaning department if the dirtiness was indulged in at the factory, transfer to the department of sewage disposal if the offenses were committed in the residential district. Shirking would be penalized in much the same way, that is to say, by transfer to one of the less agreeable labor tasks. If this task also was shirked, as a last measure the energy certificate [a measure reminiscent of today’s Chinese ‘social credit’, ed.] could be cancelled. This punishment should prove efficacious in most cases.
When an individual proved obstinately recalcitrant for obscure reasons, the psychiatrists would attempt to unravel the trouble.
In no case should real punishment, such as solitary confinement or labor forced by physical threats, be necessary.”
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James Loeb, the largest benefactor of Emil Kraepelin
“My father [Albert], a Wall Street broker, was the second son of Marcus Loeb, brother of Solomon, one of the founders of Kuhn-Loeb and Company and father of James Loeb, sponsor of the Loeb Classical Library”, wrote Harold Loeb in his 1959 memoir ‘The Way It Was’.
Harold Loeb was a second cousin of James Loeb, who was the sponsor of the Loeb Classical Library, originally published by Heinemann in London and currently published by Harvard University Press.
On the website of Harvard University Press, as previously mentioned in PsyPolitics (2021), we read about the founder of the library James Loeb, of note in terms of history of psychiatry and its interrelations with politics, James Loeb, son of the founder of Kuhn Loeb & Co., was the main financer of Emil Kraepelin, considered to this day the father of biological or scientific psychiatry.
According to the website of Harvard University Press “it was during [his] time in Munich that Loeb’s enormous interest in and support of medical and psychiatric institutions became evident. In the early 1900s he stayed for some time with Sigmund Freud in Vienna, who recommended him to Emil Kraepelin in Munich. His association with Kraepelin led to the founding of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie in Munich. This German Research Institute for Psychiatry received the largest combined benefaction from Loeb: one million marks to establish it, further gifts until his death, and one million dollars at his death.”
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Emil Kraepelin as political psychiatrist
As written in one of the very first articles published in PsyPolitics (2020):
“German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin [is] widely considered the most prominent figure in the history of biological psychiatry.
He made the fundamental distinction, considered valid to this day, between “dementia praecox” (more or less what we call schizophrenia) and manic-depressive psychoses. […]
Of note, Kraepelin was also a proponent of the political use of psychiatry, as according to his views socialists and opponents of World War I were judged to be mentally ill.”
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Harold Loeb’s utopia: the source for “capitalist realism” and “acid communism”?
Chapter I of Loeb’s utopia ‘Life in a Technocracy’ concludes with a reflection that echoes the thoughts of contemporary authors, also dealing with themes of politics and psychology, such as Mark Fisher, among the important theorists of so-called ‘acid communism’, or Slavoj Žižek – both quoted on this topic in Bastani’s 2019 book ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ – in particular about so-called “capitalist realism.”
The term was popularized by cultural critic Mark Fisher in his 2009 book “Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?”
Bastani wrote: “Capitalism realism is best summed up with a single sentence: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” and specifies how “this phrase is attributed to both Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, although Jameson himself is unclear as to its original source.”
In closing Chapter I of ‘Life in a Technocracy’ entitled ‘Blind Alley’, Loeb wrote:
“Six thousand years, more or less, have been required to harness the forces of nature. Will another six thousand years be necessary to check the forces which have impelled society to found its faith in greed? For though economic competition, greed operating under a set of rules, has benefited, at least materially, that portion of humanity which has indulged in it; economic competition, the free-for-all, called capitalism, is now breeding a condition which is imperiling the complicated structure and the very civilization of the Western society.
Is the alternative to capitalism so dreadful that it may not even be envisaged?”
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Is Loeb’s ‘Life in a Technocracy’ the original source of, or at least an inspiration for, so-called capitalist realism?
Given Loeb’s comments about “visions” to be studied and attained at will in the context of a literal political “revolution” from capitalism to technocracy, was his 1933 utopia a forerunner of acid communism?
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Last Updated on May 24, 2024 by Federico Soldani