Final Solutions: Human Nature, Capitalism and Genocide

by Sabby Sagall

Final Solutions offers a ground-breaking and genuinely unique analysis of modern genocide. Sabby Sagall draws on the insights of the Frankfurt school and Wilhelm Reich to create an innovative combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis. He argues that genocide is a product of an ‘irrational’ destructiveness by social classes or communities that have suffered major historical defeats or similar forms of extreme stress.Sagall shows how the denial of human needs and the ensuing feelings of isolation and powerlessness propel groups to project their impotent rage, hatred and destructiveness engendered by these defeats on to the 'outsider' and the 'other'.The book applies this theoretical framework to four modern genocides – that of the Native Americans, the Armenians, the Jews and the Rwandan Tutsis. This is a truly pioneering contribution which adds to our understanding of some of the darkest hours of humanity – and how we can stop them from happening again.

322 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 9, 2013

Reviews

[Pinko Palest · Rating 1 out of 5]

a great topic for a book, but most of it is about mechanical explanations. It seems that most trotskyites have taken on the talent that Tankies used to have in the old days, of simplifying the most complex and interesting subjects