Re: AUT: Authoritarian Personality research: In defence of the

[Ilan Shalif <gshalif@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi People.
The authoritarian use of the various psychological tests is notorious.
The "psychological" testing is part of the screening of many personal
department of workplaces and manpower placement companies.

The "personality inventories" the CPI with "Authoritarian Personality"
scale - or F scale is one of them.

They are used with partial success to intrude on workers privacy.
And of course the stressing too much of the part of the "Authoritarian
Personality" in the creation of Nazism, as if it is not an essential part
of the capitalist system.

In the capitalist system most people have a significant measure of the
"Authoritarian Personality" which is the policeman in the head of
people and force them to yield to authority. By concentrating
too much on the extreme cases, the users just camouflage the real
facts.

Michael Handelman wrote:

> Has  research (eg Adorno et
> al's work) been co-opted by the ruling class?

It was part of the capitalist system to begin with - no need to
co-opt.

> I've
> seen it be used, by radicals, and those in defence of
> the status quo.

The labeling of the authoritarians of the left as "radicals" is
in the same pro capitalist line.

> I was reading that many of the cold
> war liberals, who developed (a lousy) social
> scientific model in understanding the "Radical Right"
> adopted many of the ideas of the social psychology in
> "Authoritarian Personality":
>
> http://www.publiceye.org/research/concepts/Frameworks-01.htm#P46_5080

Fractions within the capitalist ideology are not libertarian communists though.

> "The first foray into establishing a broad social
> science outline for studying the political right was
> centrist/extremist theory which arrived with the 1955
> publication of a collection of essays titled The New
> American Right edited by Daniel Bell. Eight years
> later The New American Right collection was expanded
> and republished under the title, The Radical Right.
> Contributors to the expanded volume included Bell,
> Alan F. Westin, Richard Hofstadter, Seymour Martin
> Lipset, Earl Raab, Peter Viereck, Herbert H. Hyman,
> Talcott Parsons, David Riesman, and Nathan Glazer. Not
> all of the authors shared all of the analytical views
> outlined in the volume, but since 1955 a number of
> books appeared that either elaborated on or paralleled
> the general themes of centrist/extremist theory first
> sketched in The New American Right.7
>
> Post WWII social science, with the memory of European
> fascist movements fresh in the public mind, had
> already mapped out a framework for studying collective
> behavior that stressed the irrational and destructive
> nature of popular mobilizations. Centrist/extremist
> theory, especially as outlined by Lipset, Raab,
> Viereck, and Bell, merged collective behavior theory
> with emerging theories about social psychology and
> authoritarian personality types. The assumption was
> that socially-constructive "pluralists" who were
> tolerant of different political ideas always
> gravitated toward the center of the political system.
> This is why centrist/extremist theory is sometimes
> called the pluralist school of social science...."

Social sciences more than any other branch of science is
recruited to serve the capitalist system. For sure some of
the findings can be put into good use by us, but no need
to worship them.

There is a big difference between applying some of the findings to
our service and the contributing of voluntary efforts to enlarge
the findings.
Ilan



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