Book Reviews
overthrow capitalism. This is, I suspect,
what makes Gramscian discourse so
popular amongst so wide an array of
different and contending intellectual and
political outlooks, from vaguely social-
democratic to populist, to the extent that
it ends up sharing ground with crypto-
fascist ruminations. No doubt, some will
find profoundly distasteful the sugges-
tion that the FPÖ of G. Haider is ‘enga-
ged in a class struggle against further
capitalist exploitation of the social and
natural sphere of reproduction’ (p.,
emphasis added). The only rationale for
this comment appears to be that the FPÖ
is nationalist and, as such, opposed to
neo-liberal globalisation.
Of course, Bieler’s study is more
sophisticated and nuanced than these
comments might suggest. Its empirical
richness and theoretically informed
sensitivity to historical detail make it a
model for research in its field. And
though it is intended for a specialist
readership, it is fully readable for a lay
audience with a minimum amount of
background knowledge. An exploration
of the ways in which the corporatist
structures of Austria and Sweden were
K Anderson and R Quinney
Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the
punitive society.
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000, pp. 176
ISBN 0-252-02514-8 $34.95 hardback
ISBN 0-252-06380-0 $15.95 paperback
Reviewed by Steve Hall
If the genuine socialist alternative
remains in the depths of unfashionability
for too long, we might just have to get
accustomed to the sight of criminology’s
181
crucial in accommodating the social
pressures stemming from class
divisions, aiding capital in developing
Fordist arrangements and further in
dismantling them when no longer viable,
would have been rewarding. But,
overall, this is an important book and I
can’t help recommending it.
References
Eatwell, R. () ‘The Nature of the Right
2: the Right as Variety of Styles of
Thought’, in R. Eatwell and N. O’Sullivan
(eds) The Nature of the Right, Pinter,
London.
Griffin, R. (ed) () Fascism, Oxford
University Press, Oxford.
Hall, S. Interviewed by R. Bromley, in Munns
and Rajan ().
Jameson, F. () ‘On “cultural studies’’’, in
Munns and Rajan ().
Johnson, R. () ‘What is cultural studies
anyway?’, in Munns and Rajan ().
Munns, J., and G. Rajan (eds) () A
Cultural Studies Reader. Longman,
London.
radical liberal wing rummaging through
its old drawers in search of some life-
sustaining inspiration that might help to
hold postmodern pessimism at bay. It
182
might be with such a purpose in mind
that Richard Quinney and Kevin
Anderson have selected a group of
North American criminologists to dig
out and dust down the bewilderingly
eclectic ideas of the late Erich Fromm,
and published the results recently in an
edited collection.
In a very clear and concise intro-
ductory chapter, written by his final
psychoanalytical assistant and current
literary executor Rainer Funk, we are
guided through Fromm’s formative
influences, such as radical Jewish and
primitive Christian theology, revised
Freudianism, diluted humanist-Marxism,
existentialism and proto-feminism, to
which he remained faithful whilst making
his intellectual contributions to central
themes that still persist in today’s radical
left-liberal culture. These intellectual
contributions provide the inspiration
and conceptual underpinnings for the
authors in this collection, who apply
them to core debates in criminology’s
analysis of crime and criminal justice,
especially those concerning freedom,
author ity, social power and the
relationship between the State and the
individual.
We learn from Funk that in 
Fromm, at the tender age of , was
appointed as the Frankfurt School’s
resident ‘expert’ in psychological and
social-psychological affairs, and in the
same year he became a practising
psychoanalyst. Although the publishing
career that developed from these two
bases was long and quite prolific, he
wrote only three articles on crime and
criminal justice in the early stages, which
have been reprinted in this collection.
The first was a relatively short article on
a specific murder case (‘Oedipus in
Innsbruck’, ), followed rapidly by
two more general essays on crime and
Capital & Class 76
criminal justice (‘The State as Educator:
On the psychology of criminal justice’,
, and ‘On the Psychology of the
Criminal and Punitive Society’, ).
After this initial flurry, he went extremely
quiet on all things criminological.
The first article was about the role of
the Oedipal process in the generation of
guilt and the repressive denial of the
memory of murder. Shortly after,
Sigmund Freud published an article on
the same murder case, which, without
referring to Fromm, warned of the
dangers of the inappropriate application
of the universal Oedipal condition in the
explanation of singular cases, which of
course described Fromm’s approach
with rather discouraging accuracy.
Unkind cynics might suspect that the
possibility of rebuff by the ‘master’
himself, and the subsequent failure of
his other two articles to make much
impact, might have been influential in
taking some of the wind out of the young
Fromm’s sails and nudging him in other
directions. Indeed, a cursory glance at
the titles of his subsequent work, listed
conveniently at the beginning of
Quinney and Anderson’s well organised
bibliography, could suggest that Fromm
—sensing the possibility of singed
fingers—rapidly abandoned the
intellectual perils of the earthy empirical
and analytical world to climb to the safer
and more profitable ground of the
universal, abstract and spiritual, rather
than grappling with political economy,
practical politics and the everyday
experiences of the working class under
market-capitalism.
Nevertheless, despite missing a
number of similar opportunities for
critical reflection on Fromm’s ‘spiritual’
approach, all the featured writers have
produced clearly written pieces. Judging
by the crucial criteria of coherence,
Book Reviews
thematic continuity and the absence of
either digression or duplication, this
collection is exemplary in its gathering
and organization of material. In chapter
two, Richard Quinney outlines Fromm’s
enduring core themes: the critique of a
materialist culture that places emphasis
on having rather than being; the
identification of the outsider and the
non-assimilable minority as the true
opposition to the oppressive majority;
the promotion of the messianic message
of universal love and peace from the old
testament; and the existentialist and
proto-feminist critiques that posit
deference to ‘paternal’ authority as an
escape from the burden of making free
but difficult decisions.
The other contributors explore and
apply these themes in the context of
criminological theory. Lynn Chancer
claims that the working-class’ tendency
to defer to the State’s sadistic punish-
ment of lower-class criminals is
influenced by the existence of sado-
masochistic principles and practices as
‘common defence mechanisms’ in
Western cultures. John Wozniak explores
the well-worn theme of alienation as the
reduction of the victim to an object, and
Polly Radosh furnishes us with yet
another authentication of the loving and
nurturing principles of matriarchal
culture as the true opposition to the
repressive violence at the heart of
patriarchy. Kevin Anderson pursues one
of Fromm’s primary themes, perhaps
promoted more famously by Weber,
Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault and
others; the way the State educates not
to enlighten but to legitimise its
authority. Criminal justice is an integral
part of this ideological-discursive
project, bad at reducing crime and
enhancing security but good at legiti-
mising the existing social order.
183
All this makes for an interesting
collection, and its revisitation and clear
delineation of core themes in left-liberal
thought is of some value to the
uninitiated student reader. However,
the telling flaw, one that runs not only
through this collection but also through
most works in the left-liberal oeuvre, is
a reluctance to engage in deep reflexive
critique. Nowhere is it emphasised that
Fromm’s ideas were extremely deriva-
tive and forged at the highest level of
speculative abstraction, rather than in
more concrete, praxical forms that
could help sociologists, criminologists,
politicians and practitioners to adopt
critical practices in the criminal justice
system. Nor is the reader alerted to the
possibility that his more celestial sup-
positions, and the left-liberal postulates
from which they derive, are all highly
questionable. For instance, it was the
spiritualisation of the soul, not the
objectification of the body, that allowed
Fromm’s ‘benign and wise’ Judaeo-
Christian tradition—not only when it
became institutionalised but from the
beginning—to justify the most brutal
physical punishments. Further, the
constant casting of the State as the
irredeemable villain in a simplistic
morality tale does nothing to further the
reputation of criminology as a sober and
sophisticated analyst of contemporary
life. And, quite honestly, the other
applications of Fromm’s ideas further
expose their frailty; is Lynn Chancer,
for instance, quite sure that a sado-
masochistic urge still pervades a Western
Culture that has notably reduced the
barbarity of its punishments since the
th century? Is Kevin Anderson equally
sure that the ideological explanation of
mass imprisonment is so superior to
Rusche and Kirchheimer’s ‘economic
reductionist’ analysis at a time when the
184
nine-fold rise in the North American
prison population coincides not just with
profound changes in the underlying
mode of production and the domination
of the market, but also with a cultural-
ideological climate and institutional
practices that are in many ways more
‘liberal’ and less ‘patriarchal’ than they
were thirty years ago?
All in all, this collection is a useful
introduction to the sources and possible
applications of Fromm’s thought, and it
R English and M Kenny (eds)
Rethinking British Decline
London, Macmillan, 2000, pp. xiv + 315
ISBN 0-333-67965-2 (hbk) £45.00
ISBN 0-333-67966-0 (pbk). £15.99
Reviewed by John Stewart
Britain’s ‘decline’ has been the subject
of endless speculation and debate not
only among contemporary commen-
tators, social scientists, politicians, and
historians, but since around the time
when it allegedly started, the latter part
of the nineteenth century. The late
Victorian and Edwardian elites felt
threatened by economic, military, and
imperial competition from nations such
as the recently united Germany; claims
that social conditions at the ‘heart of
the empire’ were injurious not only to
those unfortunate enough to suffer them
but also to economic and military
performance; and political challenges
from Irish nationalism, suffragism and
labour ism. This led to the well-
documented campaign for ‘national
efficiency’ which sought to halt or even
reverse Britain’s apparently deteriora-
ting position. The social reforms of the
Capital & Class 76
just might uplift the spirits of some
flagging liberal humanists or introduce
a few of the uninitiated to the cause.
However, others, who know a little
more about the relationship between
crime, criminal justice and the globalis-
ing marketplace, might find the
University of Illinois Press blurb-writer’s
claim that it ‘points towards a society
free of crime and violence’ a little less
convincing.
Liberal governments of - can
be seen as a relatively early instance of
‘welfare capitalism’ intended, at least in
part, to stem the tide of decline.
Whatever the success of such cam-
paigns, the consequences of two world
wars, the emergence of the ‘super-
powers’, and the rise of colonial
nationalism seemed to further ensure a
diminished world role.
Such change had domestic
consequences. Since the Second World
War, itself a pivotal event in the nation’s
history, the rhetoric of British ‘great-
ness’, and the need to reassert it, was
especially pronounced during the s
although such political discourse has not
been confined, as has recently once
again become clear, to the political right.
The issue is now given added resonance
by concerns with ‘globalisation’; and,
somewhat by contrast, the partial