ABSTRACT
The Communist dictatorships, like the Fascist ones, have another reason for favouring large towns: large towns mean tall blocks of flats; flats need door and lift attendants; attendants can be, and often are, police spies. The need for status and function is one of the most fundamental human requirements. The demand for personal status is something different from simple individual responsibility: it can generally only be achieved by being the member of a social group with its own achievable, evident and self-evident objectives, by being an obvious and necessary contributor to securing the agreed end. The charge-sheet is not yet finished. There is a strong and growing body of opinion which associates much of the incidence of psychosomatic illnesses with the depersonalization of relationships in large industrial organizations, where discipline is not self-imposed but comes from ‘them’, and with the demotion of primary working groups to an insignificant role in the planning of operations.
