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Charles Thorpe’s >Necroculture< attempts to demonstrate that the variegated experiences of alienation under the technocratic culture of neoliberal capital are experiences tantamount to a culture of death. Thorpe suggests that the root of the necrophilia that denes contemporary capitalist culture is in the valuing of non-living objects over living human beings. In the alienation and replacement of imperfect human labor with automated dead labor and in a highly atomized consumer culture where social participation is mediated by commodity fetishism, the non-living are given priority over the living.
Although the once wildly popular writings of Erich Fromm have fallen into desuetude in the 21st century, Fromm remains a relevant figure for anyone interested in the interpenetrating fields of psychoanalysis, cultural criticism, personal spiritual development and civic engagement in domestic and international affairs. For that reason, his thought is eminently worthy of being revisited. At least that is the claim of Lawrence J. Friedman in his new biography, >The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet<.
Dr. E. Fromm, in a recent report to the Journal of the American Home Economics Association, discussed the two kinds of hatred which he claims exist. One is what he calls the >counterpoint of life<. It is rational hatred, aroused by an attack on life, freedom, country, some person or institution we love. Such hatred is necessary for winning a war against aggression. >People must love what they are defending, in order to hate their attackers effectively.< The other kind of hatred, which he calls >character-conditioned<, was made use of by the Nazis in recruiting their party. The bulk of their recruits came from the lower middle class, who had led a starved and frustrated life socially and economically, particularly since 1918, in Germany. This led to tremendous irrational hatred and destructiveness which could only be expressed in small doses before the Nazi party offered an outlet.