Arien Mack, Editor
Traces the influence of Marxism in contemporary American political science with special emphasis on its rejection in the 1970s, recommending the transcendence of ideologies and replacing nineteenth-century Marxism with Humanist Economy as something far more sensitive to the human complexities of the twentieth century.
Any attempt to comprehend the different views of man developed by Marxism and psychoanalysis must begin with the questions: Which Marxism and which psychoanalysis? Or, better, whose? The problem is not merely the one—significant enough—of reducing an immense topic to manageable size. At a deeper level it reflects the truth that Marxism and psychoanalysis are in fact trends; put another way, intellectual booty that has been fought over, dispersed, buried, and transmuted by the very historical interests Marx and Freud subjected to critique.
For decades now, the Western industrial societies that developed on the basis of capitalist private ownership of the means of production have been undergoing a process of transformation marked by repeated crisis. There is agreement among scholars about the fact that important transformations are taking place and that the process is critical at least in part, but not about its causes, its nature, and its possible tendencies.
Karl Marx's political theory had its roots in the ideas and institutions of antiquity, particularly in the classical political freedom of the Greeks, calling for an elimination of self-interest in his theory of alienation and a reawakening of social freedom (1800s).
The Gemeinwirtschaft school of thought emphasizes the duty of government regulation of private business so that it will serve rather than violate the common good by maintaining economic freedom within economic order, and balancing public against private interest, 1970s.
The article identifies certain inherent flaws in the functionalist approach to sociology and anthropology and develops a theoretical scheme of structuration to replace it (1970s).
In the last few years the number of books and articles on the history of psychology has steadily increased. Among other topics, the influence of European (German, British, French) psychology on psychology in the United States has been well documented, although more in terms of historical facts, many biographies, than as a history of ideas (theories). Less clear is the impact of American on European psychology, as much as it has been celebrated and deplored in the past few years. The following article is devoted to the one special aspect of the so-called American influence on psychology from and in Germany: the modification of ideas in migration. It is not meant to answer but to ask the question of cross-national diffusion distinctly enough for the historian to answer.