Abstract
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a Marxist psychoanalyst, philosopher, and socialist humanist. This article asks: How can Fromm’s critical theory of communication be used and updated to provide a critical perspective in the age of digital and communicative capitalism? In order to provide an answer, this article discusses elements from Fromm’s work that allow us to better understand the human communication process. The focus is on communication (the second section), ideology (the third section), and technology (the fourth section). Fromm’s approach can inform a critical theory of communication in multiple respects: His notion of the social character allows to underpin such a theory with foundations from critical psychology. Fromm’s distinction between the authoritarian and the humanistic character can be used for discerning among authoritarian and humanistic communication. Fromm’s work can also inform ideology critique: the ideology of having shapes life, thought, language, and social action in capitalism. In capitalism, technology (including computing) is fetishized and the logic of quantification shapes social relations. Fromm’s quest for humanist technology and participatory computing can inform contemporary debates about digital capitalism and its alternatives.
Highlights
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) was a Marxist psychoanalyst, philosopher, and socialist humanist.1 In the years from 1930 until 1939, he worked for the Institute for Social Research
The social character and social structures mediated through communication in the social relations that humans enter condition, that is, enable and constrain individual thought and action
Like Lukacs, Fromm shows that ideology is a communication process that aims at creating false consciousness
Summary
In the early 1990s, I was pupil living in Austria, where the far-right was relatively success in elections by steering resentments against migrant workers. In 1991, the leader of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO ) Jorg Haider claimed, “In the Third Reich they made proper employment policies, which your government in Vienna doesn’t bring about”. We see a rise of authoritarian capitalism and new forms of nationalism. New demagogues use social media and the Internet for communicating authoritarianism. One of my interests is to recover, revisit, and further develop critical, Marxist–humanist approaches in order to shed light on how authoritarian communication and authoritarian society operate today and how socialist humanist alternatives can look like today.
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