Though the ancient world understood that work was a curse, modern industrial society spreads its gospel. The working class, Lafargue hopelessly hoped… - Russell Jacoby

“When material needs are largely satisfied,” writes Carl Rogers, “as they tend to be for many people in this affluent society, individuals are turning to the psychological world, groping for a greater degree of authenticity and fulfillment.” The clear distinction between material and psychic needs is already the mystification; it capitulates to the ideology of the affluent society which affirms the material structure is sound, conceding only that some psychic and spiritual values might be lacking. Exactly this distinction sets up “authenticity” and “fulfillment” as so many more commodities for the shopper. Rather it is the fissure itself which is the source of the ills—between work and “free” time, material structure and psychological “world,” producers and consumers.

[Freud’s] concepts are radical in their pursuit of society where it allegedly does not exist: in the privacy of the individual. Freud undid the primal bourgeois distinction between private and public, the individual and society. … Freud exposed the lie that subject was inviolate; he showed that at every point is was violated.

The disdain for culture expressed by Johst and Fanon is not identical, however. Both despise the deceit of culture, but for opposite reasons. For Johst, culture is in itself a fraud, the cheap talk of weaklings; for Fanon, culture deceives by reneging on its promises. Johst and the Nazis hated culture itself; Fanon hated its hypocrisy, a very different notion.