Introduction
1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the
life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling,
have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical
suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will
worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human being to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world,
it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering
even in “advanced” countries.
2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level
of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at
the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the
social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or
modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.
3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous
the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.
4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it
may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do
outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for
a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not
governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.
5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrialtechnological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we
regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have
received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed
environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of
wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.
The Psychology of Modern Leftism
1
This text was sent in June, 1995, to The New York Times and The Washington Post by the person who calls himself "FC,"
identified by the FBI as the Unabomber, whom authorities have implicated in three murders and 16 bombings. The author
threatened to send a bomb to an unspecified destination "with intent to kill " unless one of the newspapers published this
manuscript. The Attorney General and the Director of the FBI recommended publication. This article was published in The
Washington Post, September 19, 1995.
This text was copied from ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/users/misc/unabomber and edited to correct misspellings and
make minor corrections.
Page 2
6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the
craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of
the problems of modern society in general.
7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could have been practically identified with socialism.
Today the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this
article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal
rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to
get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related
types. Thus, what we mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology. (Also,
see paragraphs 227-230.)
8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than we would wish, but there doesn’t seem to be any
remedy for this. All we are trying to do here is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psychological tendencies that
we believe are the main driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist
psychology. Also, our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of the extent to which
our discussion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization.”
Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain
segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.
Feelings of Inferiority
10. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits;
low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self-hatred, etc. We argue that modern
leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the
direction of modern leftism.
11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies)
we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists,
whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to
designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “Negro,” “oriental,” “handicapped” or
“chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick”
were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy,” “dude” or “fellow.” The negative connotations have been attached to these
terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its
replacement by “animal companion.” Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive
peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the word “primitive” by “nonliterate.” They
may seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to ours. (We do not mean to
imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the hyper sensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)
12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian
immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any
“oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university
professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males