[Marxism] Theory of Violence

[Greg McDonald]

Owen Davies argues that politics leads to violence. Obviously,  
therefore,  less politics means "less, possibly no violence".

  I was offering Fromm as a useful source to support part of your  
argument, and to make it more nuanced.  Fromm argued against the  
Freudian view of a universal aggressive tendency as part of human  
psychology. He examined the ethnographic record to support his  
argument.  I like Fromm's book because it takes the anthropological  
record seriously. He draws from Quincy Wright's 1,600 page analysis  
of warfare among our forebears, which examined 653 different  
cultures. Fromm then used Wright's conclusions as a benchmark in his  
reading of other ethnographies which he consulted. He found  
commonality on the following conclusion: "The collectors, lower  
hunters and lower agriculturalists are the least warlike. The higher  
hunters and higher agriculturalists are more warlike, while the  
highest agriculturalists and the pastoral cultures are the most  
warlike of all" (Wright, Q. 1965. " A Study of War").

Fromm  comments on Wright's data:  "the more division of labor there  
is in a society, the more warlike it is, and that societies with  
class systems are the most warlike of all peoples. Eventually his  
data show that the greater the equilibrium among groups and between  
the group and its physical environment, the less warlikeness one  
finds, while frequent disturbances in the equilibrium result in an  
increase in warlikeness. Wright distinguishes among four kinds of  
war--defensive, social, economic, and political." According to Fromm,  
Wright's research "confirms the thesis that the most primitive are  
the least warlike and that warlikeness grows in proportion to  
civilization".

The Political is just one cause among many for warfare in primitive  
cultures. That was my point. But the overall analysis supports your  
argument.

And yes, Fromm was associated with the Frankfurt School.

Greg