Yearbook / Jahrbuch (1990-1995)
Schriften der Internationalen Erich-Fromm-Gesellschaft e.V.
Refine
w05/1994m
>On the Present Escalation of Violence: Causes, Connectivities, and Containment Strategies<: The current increase in youthful crimes of violence mainly directed against foreigners is often put down to defective education. This essay will have none of such simplifying explanations, pointing instead to a connection between >direct< (youthful) violence, >structural< violence (in the public sphere and the economy), and >cultural< violence (in the media). As to the psycho-social genesis of youthful crimes of violence, Helmut Johach distinguishes a >classically asocial< socialization type, mainly restricted to the lower class, from a >narcissistic< deviance syndrome that more characterizes the middle class. An alteration in socialization conditions, affecting both types equally, has been brought about by television more and more replacing primary social experiences in the family. The fact that youthful violence by skinheads and other rightist groups is mainly directed against foreigners is seen as being due to a post-reunification >drift to the right< in German public life and society at large – a drift also manifested in e.g. the asylum-seeker debate in the bundestag. Finally, the author locks horns with the thesis that the >anti-authoritarian upbringing< propagated in the aftermath of the 1968 student revolts has led to a >value decay< in today's younger generation. The ideological function of such pronouncements is to attract attention away from the real causes of the crisis, which are in the nature of the capitalist economic system. Helmut Johach concludes that calls for a >strong state< are quite wrongheaded if the aim is to combat rightwing radicalism; what is needed instead is a more energetic commitment to maintaining a democratic and socially concerned framework.
w06/1995c
Zur Frage nach der analytischen Brauchbarkeit des Begriffs >Gesellschafts-Charakter< bei Erich Fromm
(1993)
>The Analytic Usefulness of the >Social Character< Concept in Erich Fromm’s Thought<: It is a weakness of traditional social research that it is able, at best, to supply accurate descriptions of the social status quo, but is quite at a loss to undertake any serious prognostication worth the name. Erich Fromm, with his theoretical analysis of >social character<, has developed an approach which might just allow us to predict social developments in the making. First, the author shows how the theory of an >authoritarian character<, originally propounded by Erich Fromm in his worker and employee investigations at the end of the twenties, was subsequently expanded and refined by him. By the time Fromm had finished, he possessed a highly differentiated theory of social character. For a researcher to critically scrutinize his own hypotheses is a rare enough undertaking. But just that was what Erich Fromm undertook to do after his relocation to Mexico – by conducting, for this express purpose, a comprehensive case study of a Mexican village. There the great estates had been broken up barely 40 years earlier, at the time of the Revolution, and the land redistributed to the peasants. Fromm wanted to know which expressions of social character would turn out to be readily adaptable and which would prove intractable. The questioning modalities developed by Fromm involving use of an interpretive questionnaire, and especially his methods of interpretation in terms of the biophilia/ necrophilia polarity, were painstaking in the extreme. That is why final publication of the protocolled findings took until 1970 to complete, thirteen years after the start of planning. Apart from the high qualitative and qualificational demands made on interviewers and analysts, the greatest difficulty probably lay in the ease with which related categories could be confused. Notwithstanding, the concept of social character proved an uncommonly fruitful theoretical approach for carrying out studies into a group’s mindsets and ethical qualities.
w04/1993e
>The Meaning of Work in a Market Economy<: Work has both an economic and a human value. The latter value is downplayed though in capitalist market economies, since these are based on the expropriation of labor, rather than on the self-fulfillment of the workforce. However, entrepreneurial manipulation of labor as a production factor is today tempered, to an extent at least, by an increased need for social integration within the firm or on the factory floor. From the worker's perspective too, work is not a matter a choice but of hard economic necessity. Most contracted activities performed by workers for remuneration are alienated (on several different levels). The author advances the thesis that proprietors are increasingly discovering an interest in having >self-determined< individuals on their staff. This development is, however, problematic if it means, in concrete terms, that individuals are now expected to internalize formerly external mechanisms of exploitation (a dominance-oriented culture, surveillance, ecological indifference, a technology-heavy approach). Yet this development has another aspect: it could also provide real gains in the struggle for greater onthe- job freedom. Both on the individual and collective level, it could end up giving workers greater room for maneuver.
w04/1993c
>Links between Work, Character, and Education<: The transformational processes presently occurring in the techno-economic bases of industrial life are, inevitably enough, accompanied by changes in social character. Though the significance of work for character formation has declined as other influences have moved to centerstage, >work< still remains an important dimension by which human beings define and anchor themselves in the world. Indeed, this >anchoring through work< allows the characterological status quo in the present to be read off. This essay takes the Frommian concept of social character as its departure point, asking what work experiences lead to what character structures and also what work ethic results from these characterological features. An analysis is given of the social-characterological conditions necessarily imported by workers into their job situations, simply in order to break even in an evolving industrial labor process marked by structural unemployment. More stringent vocational requirements, plus an increased release from the coercion of having to work for one's daily bread, pose a real danger for one's psychic balance and make flexibility an imperative. If the identity crisis brought on by the deprivation of work is to be mastered, new vocational outlets must be developed that are removed from financial remuneration and accountability – as an alternative to work in the traditional sense. At the same time, jobs and wages need to be uncoupled and a society-wide minimum income guaranteed. These transformational processes are giving rise to a >post-industrial character structure< principally characterized, in its productive variants, by flexibility andsocial competence; moreover, its behavior patterns are loosened up by quality-orientated, diversified job (or other vocational) requirements capable of appealing to the whole person.
w03/1992