Historical Materialism, Cultural Determinism, and The Origin of The Ruling Classes

Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents, likened the varieties of culture to the varieties of neurosis. Roheim,25 in work beginning with The Riddle of the Sphinx in 1934, footnoted Freud's insight by adding that the variations in these institutionalized neuroses that are called “culture” were due to differences in the childhood experiences of the various groups. From the psychoanalytical point of view, the problem in explaining variations from culture to culture, and innovations within an ongoing culture, is to account for differences and/or changes in the childhood situation of newborn members of the society. This is now recognized by most cultural theorists who have been brushed by Freudian psychology. However, such theorists usually suggest that the childhood changes are caused by changes in the objective, external environment (e.g., industrialization, periodic drought) as reflected through or mediated by parental behavior. They subsume the Freudian insight within an environmentalist and/or rationalist frame of reference. This is, for example, essentially the position taken by “neo-Freudian” Erich Fromm13, 14 and by psychoanalyst Abram Kardiner,18 although each is critical of the other.

Contrary to Fromm and Kardiner, who are usually heralded as two of the leading theorists in the application of Freudian psychology to social psychology and anthropology, we do not believe that a Freudian psychology need abandon its method and theory—abdicating to environmental, cultural, or “economic” determinism—when faced with the task of understanding cultural differences and cultural