The components of the mob theory of Gustave Le Bon (1895), subjected to the most intense criticism from the researchers of the past and the present, are considered In particular, the critical comments on the tactics of the impact on natural education, thesis on "spiritual unity" of the crowd and severe leveling of the individual in it, the psychological mechanisms of formation of the crowd, its basic properties and types are analyzed A number of methodological errors of G. Le Bon, including the decontextualization of the crowd, its artificial exclusion from the general social, political, economic, as well as specific situational context of intergroup interaction; excessive generalization of the concept of the crowd, which extends this name to various social associations, where the "law of spiritual unity" is manifested; uncritical transfer of the characteristics of individual "crowds" of the great French revolution and the Paris commune on the phenomenon of natural groups as a whole; unjustified underestimation of the content of the impact of social manipulators on the crowd; purely mechanistic nature of the crowd formation model, in which individuals play the role of passive subjects, automatically responding to external stimuli Ideological bias of the author and doctrinal character of construction of one of the first theories of crowd which have caused many of the specified methodological violations are stated. The arbitrariness and fuzzy interpretations of some basic concepts are fixed At the same time, the article emphasizes the importance of the theory of G. Le Bon in the further development of scientific ideas about the interactive and irrational aspects of the behavior of natural social associations.