Abstract
This chapter suggests that, while not easily discerned and indeed denied, Marx did have an implicit notion of “human nature” and elements of an implied social psychology of (thwarted) desire that informed the 1844 manuscripts. Why was alienation onerous? People felt pain! More specifically, the class relationships of market society, based on private property, depended on alienated wage labor to produce surplus value, which, together with the dominant ideologies that sustained capitalism, frustrated the basic fundamental human. One of the fundamental innovations of the Frankfurt School (FS) following this was the incorporation of the newly emerging psychoanalytic depth psychology into a critical, emancipatory social psychology of domination. As this chapter explains, not only were such concerns absolutely central for the early FS, but also their perspectives continue to provide major insights into the contemporary world fraught with the dangers from unprecedented inequality fostering resurgent fascism and nihilistic terror.
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Notes
- 1.
Gramsci critiqued what he called “economism,” which ignored the cultural barriers to political economic transformation, as will be noted, to transform capitalism. One must first confront its hegemony, its ideological control of culture, that acts as barriers that sustained the political economic claims and privileges of its historic bloc—ruling classes.
- 2.
The 1844 manuscripts have not yet been found.
- 3.
Class domination was evident in the early civilizations, with slavery often typical. Patriarchy antedates civilization. The power of religious codes, typically sustaining both class and gender domination, has a long history. What makes modern capitalist domination unique is the basis of its wealth, wage labor and, in turn, alienation. Moreover, its ideologies, from its promises of liberté, fraternité and egalité and the “common sense” of rationality (instrumental reason) to a politics that claims legitimacy on the basis of “the will of people,” cloak its domination, while in general, it is popular culture that provides both escapist diversion and privatized hedonism—indifference to the social—and systematically erodes the capacity for critical thought.
- 4.
Freud (1922) had spelled out how people exchanged obedience to the “idealized” leader for his “love” as well as attachments and bonds to the group that provide people with feelings of power and security that allowed otherwise forbidden impulses to be expressed. But note, Freud, as a conservative, decried the “mob” that threatened “order” and could not envision groups mobilizing for the sake of progressive social change.
- 5.
This is, of course, part of psychoanalytic therapy; the analysis of transference gives the ego awareness and power to change: where id was, ego shall be.
- 6.
Fromm (1961) was indeed influence by Marx’s theory of alienation; his Marx’s Concept of Man remains one of the best commentaries on the 1844 manuscripts. As I earlier suggested, one could see an implicit social psychology in Marx that informed Fromm’s more historically materialist theory of “social character.” One might note that psychoanalytic theory moved away from Freud’s drive theories to what has been called object relations theory, surely a more interpersonal framework.
- 7.
Reich had actually used the term “fear of freedom” in 1933, long before Fromm (1941).
- 8.
But as will be noted below, while we might start with authoritarianism, it must be seen within larger constellations of class, status, identity and group affiliations.
- 9.
For a fuller explication of Marcuse, sexuality and the utopian possibility of an emancipated sexuality coupled with the elimination if not reduction of alienated labor, see Whitebook (1996a, b). We might also note that in his critique of Marcuse and Habermas, as will be noted, when Habermas moved to a communication theory of society, the actor became disembodied, neutered if not castrated, and bereft of motivation, emotions and feelings at both conscious and unconscious levels.
- 10.
I will later show, see p. 454–459, that a great deal of the current academic social psychology of attitudes has rediscovered wheels first evident in the authoritarianism research of the FS.
- 11.
See p. 457–460 below.
- 12.
It should be noted that this fear of being soft unconsciously refers to the notion of masculine toughness and aggressiveness, and that the underlying notions of masculinity that sustain American imperialism could only be maintained by tough, phallic aggressive, American men. As we have seen politically, “soft” potential leaders such as Stevenson, McGovern, Gore or Kerry never had a chance against tough-guy anticommunists. And lest we forget, the only reason a skinny, metrosexual and African-American became president was the total ineptness of the George W. Bush administration, and let us also not forget that the alpha male John McCain ticket still got 47% of the vote.
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Langman, L. (2017). The Social Psychology of Critical Theory. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_20
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