Authoritarian society both creates and satisfies the sado-masochistic needs of its members.

Evidence

Authoritarian forms of society, so termed by Fromm with reference to the widespread discussion which had been going on since the late 1920s about an authoritarian, total state, were characterized by the way in which every member of society was incorporated into a system of dependency relations with those above and below. For Fromm, this represented a precondition for the existence of functional interplay between the sado-masochistic character and the authoritarian form of society. We have attempted to show', he stated in conclusion, that the authoritarian structure of society both creates and satisfies needs which develop on the basis of sado-masochism.’ The expressions sadomasochistic' and authoritarian’ thus became synonymous for him. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 173

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A self-reproducing mechanism: society manufactures the character type that then demands its own subordination, a genuinely load-bearing causal claim about domination.
• XREF: connects to: Fromm held that authoritarian societies both create and satisfy sadomasochistic needs — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 616

Broader Connections

• Fromm held that authoritarian societies both create and satisfy sadomasochistic needs #corroborates (1.00) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 616