Marxism as a foundation for critical social psychology

Michael Arfken

pp. 37-58

in: Brendan Gough (ed), The Palgrave handbook of critical social psychology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

While recent crises have given social psychologists a chance to reflect on the values embedded within the very structure of their discipline, few have sought to interrogate in any systematic fashion the basic assumptions that guide social psychological research and practice. It is here that Marxism is in a unique position to illuminate the complex relationship between the discipline of social psychology and the economic structure of modern society. Drawing on Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism, it becomes possible to view social psychology not as a research programme for disclosing universal features of social reality but rather as a manifestation of a historically specific organization of the social relations of production.

Cited authors

Marx Karl