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Science as a Vocation
(1949)
Charismatic Authority
(1962)
The Nature of Bureaucracy
(1962)
Bureaucracy: The New Force
(1966)
The Prophet
(1970)
>The Social Relevance of the Fromm-Marcuse Conflict<: At the heart of this study are the two authors’ divergent approaches to human nature and to the individual/society interface that their different theories were woven from. Both, as it happens, operate with diametrically opposed preconceptions. For Fromm man is a social being; for Marcuse, however, man is non-social by nature – i.e. that man looks on his fellow man agonistically is a fact anchored in his very biology. Fromm, for his part, is aware of the consequences of his underlying menschenbild, and elsewhere he assesses its implications for the theories he tries to develop on its basis. Other differences crop up in the respective conceptions of the relation between >theory and practice<, as well as in the account given of >individual< and >society<. Fromm places at the heart of his concern the concrete individual and the concrete social situation in the here-and-now; while Marcuse is content to deal with an idealistic abstraction of such. Theory is a closed book for the Frankfurt School in the sense that social practice can no longer have any effect on theory – only with the advent of a nonagonistic society would the book be reopened. Here Fromm clearly has the more open conception of the essence of the social scientific task. He sees theory and practice as constantly enriching each other, and so contributing to ever more exact insights into man and his place in the world. The disparate nature of the two approaches is nowhere more fraught with consequences than in the opposing conceptions of therapy and of psychic health. Here we find Adorno and Marcuse adopting an anti-Enlightenment stance: man must achieve an even greater consciousness of his impoverishment. Fromm, on the other hand, is concerned with the optimal unfolding of the manifold possibilities found within each individual – i.e. in concrete individuals living here and now, and not in their abstracted and idealized form. This study praises Fromm for recognizing that the conflict between him and Marcuse was more than just a personal one. Numerous passages are cited where he makes the point that Marcuse has delivered just the ideology sought by a disorientated, spoilt, narcissistic youth to justify its sense of malaise. Fromm, on the other hand, is commended for the way in which he repeatedly highlights the implications and consequences of an untenable menschenbild.
The Bureaucratic Machine
(1993)
What Is Politics?
(1993)
Class, Status, Party
(1993)