> WALLACE: What do you mean by "the marketing orientation," Dr. Fromm?
> FROMM: I mean by that, that our main way of relating ourselves to others is like things relate themselves to things on the market. We want to exchange our own personality - or as one says sometimes, our "personality package" - for something. Now, this is not so true for the manual worker. The manual worker does not have to sell his personality. He doesn't have to sell his smile. But, what you might call the "symbol pushers" - that is to say, all of the people who deal with figures, with paper, with men, who manipulate - to use a better or nicer word - manipulate men and signs and words. All those today have not only to sell their service, but in the bargain, they have to sell their personality, more or less. There are exceptions.
> FROMM: I mean by that, that our main way of relating ourselves to others is like things relate themselves to things on the market. We want to exchange our own personality - or as one says sometimes, our "personality package" - for something. Now, this is not so true for the manual worker. The manual worker does not have to sell his personality. He doesn't have to sell his smile. But, what you might call the "symbol pushers" - that is to say, all of the people who deal with figures, with paper, with men, who manipulate - to use a better or nicer word - manipulate men and signs and words. All those today have not only to sell their service, but in the bargain, they have to sell their personality, more or less. There are exceptions.
-- Erich Fromm, http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/from...