On March 18, 1980, Erich Fromm died - a psychologist, sociologist, philosopher, anti-fascist, who devoted his life to studying the main problems of modern society: consumption, a tendency to destruction, apathy and flight from freedom
Ask any modern person to list the main challenges of the era - and you will get a similar, sore list. Islamism, the war in Ukraine, the global economic collapse, the destruction of the social sphere (education, medicine, pension security) … Maybe some more “ecology” or “minority rights” will be added here, but they will not surprise anyone anymore. These topics are incessantly discussed by the media, politicians are competing regarding them, they regularly become the subject of conversation in kitchens and canteens.
Surprisingly, a whole class of problems that have a much greater impact on our daily life is almost never raised to the rank of “global”. Moreover - on some reflection, it turns out to be the basis for all these world troubles. In general, they can be called "psychological" problems.
It cannot even be said that people are not busy solving them. In recent years, a whole industry of all these "psycho-trainers", "psychologists", sects and charlatans has emerged, promising to solve all our internal problems, make us freer and more successful, and help us achieve success in life. In an indecently large number of profiles on social networks, the column “interests” is “psychology”, and the goal of life is “self-improvement”.
We can somehow still imagine what needs to be done with world terrorism, civil war or a corrupt official. We are not embarrassed by the need to perform a series of actions, press several buttons and pull the lever. But the problems of psychology require something more than these very external actions. To solve them, you need to change internally, broaden your outlook on things, change your position, show determination and willpower, find some meaning in your life and your own actions … And all this is already shrouded in mystery for us.
Fromm, who did not accept Stalin, nevertheless spoke out against Nikita Khrushchev, accusing him of "goulash communism" - the transformation of the USSR into a society of porteings
Let's say that we want to find our “soul mate”. What is the best pick-up method for us? You need to put on a few "clothes", after which - to reproduce a given sequence of actions in front of all the girls you meet, until something "clicks" in the head of the next female representative, and she does not "sink" into your panache. Then she needs to be dragged into bed and … Throw it away, jumping to the next "victim". What else, in fact, would you order to do with it?
This is cooler than the "glass of water" theory that the Bolsheviks fought against. Then it was argued that sex drive is a "trifling" matter, like hunger or thirst. And it must be satisfied with the same ease, so that it does not interfere with life. For all the far-reaching immorality of this approach, life here at least is not reduced to this very satisfaction of "basic" needs. “Pick-up” is much worse: all interaction with a person there consists in the exchange of “prepared actions. With standard manipulations, we bring a certain physical object (woman) to the state we need, launch the necessary sequence of actions (from her side).
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In a sense, the whole process doesn't need a human person at all. This is a dry interaction of two automatic machines, two machines. Nobody needs your notorious "rich inner world" here. True, here, after obtaining the desired result, it becomes unclear what to do next with this "automatic" girl. In principle, relations develop due to the knowledge of these very "inner worlds" in each other - but here the choice is not based on the criterion of a person's depth, his interests, and so on.
All this is nothing more than an application to a specific side of life (creating a family) of a certain general scheme. The same is true for any other sphere: friendship, work, rest … The main thing is that with exactly the same result: boredom, exhaustion, collapse.
Fromm became one of the main ideologues of the fight against consumer society
And then - you have to ask yourself a simple question. What is the use of improving technologies and machines, if the person using them: a) cannot achieve happiness with their help; b) uses his "humanity" less and less. And then: if technologies reach such a level that everyone can build a nuclear reactor in their kitchens or breed a new bacterium, why won't this become a reason to destroy humanity? If they still do not bring much joy, but criminals, crazy and simply bored egoists will be able to use them as they please?
Does this formulation of the question seem to be too realistic? Sure. Because, first of all, this is a question for the elites, for those in power. If they have a means in their hands (and at first they will have it), which they can somehow subjugate the rest of humanity, or even simply destroy the "extra" part of it - why shouldn't they use it?
Of course, many people - and even entire branches of philosophy and science - have devoted themselves to formulating and solving such problems. They have every right to be surprised that these topics have not become as discussed as the danger of some Islamism: the descriptions of modern society, given by professional psychologists, are sometimes more terrible than the threats of the caliphate. Despite the fact that "Hitlers come and go", but psychological problems remain.
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm was one of the most influential psychologists sounding the alarm on the above issue. His books are perhaps the most popular with people interested in psychology (just like Sigmund Freud is popular among people who have not read anything). Let's try to convey the scale of those threats to humanity, which are described by Fromm.
Great hopes and great disappointments
Like the entire Western intelligentsia, Erich Fromm begins with a statement of the total collapse of hopes that overtook humanity at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. According to him, capitalist society was initially driven by a fanatical belief in the infinity of progress. People thought that their dominance over nature would grow every year, their personal freedoms, material abundance would become available to more and more people. Technology made them omnipotent, science made them omniscient, production successes promised an unprecedented level of consumption.
However, the years passed, and more and more people began to understand that capitalist society did not follow the path that the overwhelming majority of the population wanted. Man freed himself from the oppression of feudalism when his whole life was set from birth. He entered the "free" market, he could do what he wanted, improve his living standard through his own efforts and enterprise … However, it soon turned out that a severe stratification was taking place in society: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. And the "middle class" (which liberals still consider the guarantee of state stability) is rapidly torn between these two poles. Moreover, most of it falls into the trap of poverty. For people who find themselves at the “bottom of life”, the road “up” is closed. A worker who works in a factory for 16 hours, from an early age,not able (physically) to get an education and immersed in loans that he cannot pay off is not the same as the son of a successful capitalist, who from the very beginning has access to all the benefits of civilization.
Child workers at a manufactory in the USA. 19th century
Capitalism easily freed itself from all the ethical requirements, morality and ethics that bound it. If Western society began with Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments or Max Weber's Protestant Ethics, now it has become an instrument of a huge economic system that considers man not as an end, but as a means for its own expansion. The capitalist is chasing profit, not the happiness of the people. And he will not stop at any abominations in order to get more money: lies, debauchery, murder, enslavement, warmongering. Alexander Blok wrote about this:
Messina's ruthless end
(The elemental forces cannot be overcome)
And the relentless roar of the car
Forging doom day and night
Consciousness of a terrible deception
All the old small thoughts and beliefs, And the first takeoff of an airplane
To the desert of unknown spheres …
And disgust for life
And mad love for her, And passion and hatred for the motherland …
And black, earthly blood
Promises us, inflating veins, All destroying the boundaries
Unheard of change
Unprecedented riots …
What is the man? - Behind the roar of steel, On fire, in gunpowder smoke, What fiery gave
Have you opened your eyes?
What is the constant grinding of machines?
Why - propeller, howling, cuts
Is the fog cold - and empty?
Fromm became one of the ideologues of denazification. The phenomenon of fascism is described by him in the book "Escape from Freedom"
This - primary - despair alone gave rise to Nazism (it is known to have found a wide response among the burghers - these very German "middle classes"). There was a "flight from freedom": people preferred a dictatorship, which gives their life some kind of stability, to the constant threat of "slipping" to the social lower classes under capitalism. Nazism also played into the hands of the elite: it erected insurmountable barriers between different strata of the population and thus returned feudalism - with its hereditary masters and slaves. In this system, "subhumans", "untermenshes" received the lost "stability", and superhumans - strengthened their dominance. Fromm says that capitalism gave people "freedom from" - the destruction of the shackles of feudalism. But he did not give them "freedom for" - the opportunity to achieve high, creative goals.
It took a colossal effort by socialists and communists to - first - force the capitalists to abandon the unlimited exploitation of workers, and then - to defeat the black fascist plague. Capitalism began to acquire a "human face", ordinary people began to be given access to some benefits, but …
It turned out that the satisfaction of "material" desires does not bring people happiness or even maximum pleasure (!). People were saved from the open dictatorship of fascism, but they never got real freedom: they became "cogs of the bureaucratic machine." Their feelings, thoughts and tastes began to be manipulated by the masters of the media - government and industry. Technological progress began to play against them: it created the danger of a nuclear war, invented new methods of manipulating public consciousness. And the gap between rich and poor has continued to grow. Add to this the growing individualism and isolation of man from man.
Photo from Life magazine during the Great Depression in the United States. "Highest living standards"
Fleeing from disappointment, the Western man sees before him two ways: to drown the mental pain in constant consumption and become a conformist, to erase his personality and succumb to the "herd instinct."
The civilization of things
However, it is wrong to understand consumption as a simple pursuit of pleasures that distract attention from pressing problems - that is, something like drugs or alcohol, only more acceptable to society. Behind it is a whole view of the world, an attitude towards life that extends to areas that lie very far beyond "shopping" or gastronomy.
The fact that in a capitalist society the laws of the market (that is, the pursuit of money, power, status and some kind of "economic" efficiency), together with the desire to consume and have, make a person consider everything in the world as a thing that can be owned … Fromm writes:
“Modern capitalism needs people who are united in large masses and work harmoniously together; who want to consume more and more; whose tastes are standardized, can be easily guided from the outside and anticipated."
Let's return to the example from the beginning of the article - the attitude towards women. The choice of a love partner becomes something between buying a suit and finding an object for a successful investment. A woman is seen as a kind of luxury item that enhances the social status of a man; it looks for qualities that are recognized by society, it is evaluated from the point of view of its "success" (the criteria of which are also set by the capitalist market). The same is true for the male sex. As a result, the relationship between two people turns into a kind of bargaining, the exchange of "personal packages".
Fromm generally supported the sexual revolution as an uprising against the power dictatorship, but saw its dead end within the framework of capitalism
“In articles about a happy marriage, his ideal is described as the ideal of well-functioning coherence. This description is not too different from the idea of a functioning employee: he must be "reasonably independent", ready to work together, tolerant and at the same time ambitious and aggressive … The whole set of these types of relationships boils down to a well-oiled connection between two people who remain strangers to each other throughout their lives, never reaching a "deep connection", but kind with each other and trying to make each other's life as pleasant as possible."
The same rules apply here as in the labor market. If pornography brings profit, then the artists who paint Raphael's Madonnas are "overboard": they are simply not needed, they will have no money, no fame, no recognition. They become marginalized, and cannot even count on friendship or interest of the opposite sex.
Thus, even a person's self-affirmation in modern society is based mainly on external attributes recognized by the market: a jacket, a watch, a car, an apartment or a whole house. The maximum "personal" that he can count on is "sociability", "aggressiveness" and "tolerance".
As already mentioned, wives and husbands can be included in the category of "property". The same thing happens with young children. It is not surprising that at present the mood of "child-free" - abandonment of children - is growing: they are becoming economically unprofitable, and a woman can no longer engage in self-affirmation through them.
But it also manifests itself, for example, in disputes. Position, opinion - are also perceived as property, constituting your "status". People are not looking for the truth, they are trying to defend their point of view and establish themselves at the expense of the opposite side. To lose the correctness of one's opinion would mean to lose part of one's property.
“Articles about a happy marriage describe its ideal as the ideal of
One of Fromm's landmarks was Meister Eckhart, a medieval German theologian, one of the most influential Christian mystics.
You can even relate to God on the same grounds. A person addresses him only as a magical helper, shifts the solution of problems that arise in life to him. When such a need disappears, he, like a small child, forgets about his father and again takes a great interest in the game. It is not surprising, therefore, that life is clearly separated from any religious values. A person is chasing material goods and success, he needs faith only as a psychological technique that calls for good luck and allows him to better cope with the difficulties of competition.
Similar processes occur with any knowledge, any book: you can even read the entire Russian classics, but if we consider it as an object for possession, as an attribute emphasizing our status, it will not give us anything. We will remain deaf to its ideas and appeals, we will not understand its content. The text will remain in our memory, but not its meaning.
Of course, this cannot but affect directly in political life. In modern democratic elections, we vote not for a program of action and not even for a real person, but for a photogenic appearance, delivered diction and the amount of money invested in the election campaign. Formal status, a place in power begins to mean more to us than real competence, intelligence, and determination.
Naturally, this type of life is very unreliable. It is worth taking away from a person his things, his external attributes, and he will remain naked and naked. His self-esteem is too dependent on market trends. Like King Midas, turning everything around him into soulless things, a person is completely alone. He loses both his personality and the feeling of closeness with the people around him.
Walls between people
Loneliness cannot be underestimated. If a person can still survive the instability of his world, then the absence of love is unbearable for him. History knows many forms of bridging the gap between people, which are still resorted to in one way or another - unfortunately, the forms are not the most effective.
The first is the state of trance, which has been achieved since ancient times with the help of orgies and the use of special "substances". With him, the external world disappears, and with it the feeling of separation from it also leaves. If a group of people enters the trance state at once, then the experience of some kind of merging with the group adds here. In the modern world, this can be seen in companies that are going to "drink beer": alcohol loosens the tongue, weakens barriers between people - and creates a short-term feeling of closeness and frankness. The same was practiced by the hippies, going into a heavier - narcotic - trance.
Opening of the Woodstock rock festival. Fromm did not idealize the rock movement or hippies, but saw in them a rebellion of youth against the meaninglessness of capitalist life.
In ancient times, these states were intensified by direct physical - sexual - contact. On this in our time "love" is built. A young man and a girl get to know each other, maybe - they express to each other some of their experiences, "sleep" together. They feel that the barrier between them is crumbling - and they think it is love. However, the initial sense of newness wears off, and deeper relationships do not take its place. The couple break up and start looking for new contacts, wanting a repeat of this initial feeling of closeness.
But a person does not have to resort to any "special conditions" in order to overcome loneliness. The most popular means of feeling oneness with other people is conformism, “herd feeling”, when a person strives to be like everyone else. He adapts to the group, its habits, customs, practices and beliefs.
In this case, a person usually even has a certain sense of freedom. It seems to him that he follows his own ideas, inclinations, reflections. It's just that every time it turns out that they coincide with the standard for the surrounding society. Moreover, the consent of others even serves as a confirmation of the "correctness", "truth" of his ideas. The sense of individuality is preserved due to minor differences: patterns on the blouse, badges, "creative" signs on the office door …
In ancient times, these states were intensified by direct physical - sexual -
Fromm at work
Conformity is already reaching frightening degrees:
“A person becomes, as they say, 'from nine to five', part of an army of workers or a bureaucratic army of clerks and managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organization of the work, and there is little difference even between those at the top of the ladder and those at the bottom. All of them carry out the tasks prescribed by the organizational structure, at the prescribed speed and in the prescribed manner. Even their senses are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, self-esteem, and the ability to contact others without friction. Entertainment is also set in a similar way, although not so rigidly. Books are chosen by book clubs, films and shows are chosen by the owners of theaters and cinemas, who pay for advertising. Recreation is also unified: on Sunday, a car ride, gathering at the TV, a game of cards, a friendly party."
It also brings to life a special concept of "equality". It is beginning to be understood as "identity" rather than "unity". Personalities and the differences associated with them are destroyed, even gender characteristics begin to be erased. A woman becomes equal because she is no longer different from a man. Thus, all the attraction that arises when different people meet, striving to comprehend these "differences" in each other, is destroyed.
It is all the more "offensive" that conformism does not give complete freedom from the feeling of loneliness. A person has to resort to "auxiliary" means - the most popular of which Fromm calls "sadomasochism". Of course, this means something more fundamental than ropes and whips.
Jacques de L'Ange. Lust. 1650
Masochism is an attempt to avoid isolation and loneliness by making yourself part of another person. He is given leadership, decision-making, risks, protection. At the same time, the strength and confidence of the "master" is exaggerated, elevated to the absolute. Sadism is the other side of "symbiotic unity". Here, a person avoids unity, including another person in himself. He, as it were, absorbs the strength of the one who has given himself into submission.
In both cases, a person is driven by the desire to literally fill the spiritual void. In practice, one and the same individual can easily move from masochism to sadism - the specific form is not so fundamental, it depends entirely on the circumstances.
To have or to be?
What does Fromm offer as an alternative to the current state of affairs? The answer is both banal and difficult: to switch to such a way of life and such a system of assessments, when a person is determined not by what he has, but by his human qualities, skills, abilities. It is necessary to rely not on the growth of the world of things, but on the inner development of a person: his mind, sensitivity, taste, morality.
Fromm, of course, relies on Karl Marx's theory of alienation. The communist philosopher argues that capitalism takes away from man his own humanity. The main thing in it is not even the ability to perceive art, culture and not the depth of the "inner world." And independence (it is also free will) and the ability to create.
An obstacle for this is capitalist society, which subordinates everyone not to the needs of human development, but to the requirements of the economic system. The principle of "man to man is a wolf", which prevents people from joining forces and working for the benefit of each other. The illusion that happiness comes from consumption and possession, rather than the unleashing of creativity and creation for the benefit of society.
Fromm's psychology is largely based on the concept of alienation introduced by Karl Marx
Fromm argues that a person should be active. But not just in the sense of performing some real action - they can be the result of coercion from the economic system or a feeling of loneliness. Being active means following your inclinations, taking responsibility, taking risks, not being afraid to oppose the majority. This means using not external tools, but your own strengths (of course, first of all, creative ones).
However, a person truly reveals himself only when he stops taking and begins to give. Again, "giving" does not mean taking away from oneself a part of one's property. Fromm speaks of a "productive attitude." A person transfers to another what is alive in him - his joy, interest, understanding, knowledge, humor. He uses his powers to create, create new things for the benefit of others. Since we are not talking about property, but about internal forces, then from the act of "transfer" they do not decrease, but on the contrary - they increase, strengthen, get stronger. Like muscles in healthy tension.
This is not a deprivation, not an equivalent exchange. It is constant creativity, enriching both the giver and the taker, giving them joy and true happiness. So true love is not wasted, but generates new love in other people.
Love, like a productive life position in general, presupposes caring - that is, interest in the life and development of another person. It requires responsibility both for all neighbors and for oneself - not in the sense of forced obligations, but as a voluntary willingness to make decisions and take risks for a decision made. Caring also presupposes respect: the other person should not develop the way we want, not in accordance with our interests. And in accordance with his unique personality, his desires and decisions.
Henryk Semiradsky. Christ and the sinner. 1873. Fromm found the same humanistic idea in Christianity as in socialism
Of course, all this requires knowledge. To love another person, you need to know him, to reveal his inner world, his inclinations, his experiences. It is important to overcome your own illusions here. It often happens that we want to use a person, change him "for ourselves", for our needs. This is the path to sadism, not to love, and it is a dead end.
It is clear that Fromm's love turns out to be not an emotion, not a sensation, an attitude towards a certain person, but an attitude, orientation of character. Or - “art”, applicable simultaneously to brothers and children, and to a lover, and to God, and to himself. The psychologist even declares that "if a person loves only one person and is indifferent to the rest of his neighbors, his love is not love, but symbiotic dependence or exaggerated egoism."
Faith in man
Drawing pictures of a brighter future, Fromm rests on the main question: who said that a person is good, that he has some kind of desire for creativity, creativity, love. And not a desire to destroy and dominate?
Fromm writes a large study, based on the latest discoveries of science, devoted to the origins of destructiveness in human nature. He comes to the conclusion that, on the one hand, the pleasure of destruction and suppression is absent in animals and even in primitive peoples: they are driven by sheer necessity, the desire to survive. It turns out that even to danger, living beings react with fear and flight rather than aggression. Only with the development of culture and the complication of the psyche does a person gain the "ability" to find satisfaction in destruction and suppression. In other words, Fromm argues that this is not an innate desire, but the effect of a wrong organization of society.
On the other hand, in nature one can find many examples of cooperation, self-sacrifice, sacrificing material interests to the desire for search, for novelty. It will not be superfluous to remember here that Charles Darwin himself came to the conclusion that nature in its development comes not to competition, but to mutual assistance. And those societies in which love and cooperation are more developed - in the end win those where competition and egoism reign.
Fromm relied on the research of Margaret Mead and other anthropologists who studied primitive tribes to prove the lack of innate destructiveness in humans.
However, Fromm agrees that the choice between humanism and living by right of the mighty is a matter of faith. Science cannot indisputably prove that a person is by nature inclined to kindness, and all the evil in him is something superficial, generated by the imperfection of the social structure. Moreover, the world we have is not perfect. The people in it are angry, blind, ready for incredible meanness. And there is every reason to believe that this situation will not change quickly.
Ultimately, one must believe in development, in the ability of each person to become better, in the power of love, kindness and equality. And such faith is not a free thing:
“It takes courage to believe, the ability to take risks, the willingness to accept even anguish and disappointment. Those who value safety and tranquility as the primary conditions of life cannot believe."
Portrait of Erich Fromm
Fromm, of course, recalls that faith in a person (which is also humanism) also has rational grounds:
“We have faith in the capabilities of other people, in our own capabilities and in humanity because and only to the extent that we ourselves have experienced the growth of our own capabilities, the effectiveness of this growth in ourselves, the power of our own power of reason and love. The basis of rational faith is creativity; to live by your faith is to live creatively. It follows that belief in power (in the sense of dominance) and the use of power are the flip side of belief. Belief in the existing force is identical to disbelief in the development of opportunities that have not yet been realized."
The path of loving your neighbor is difficult. He does not tolerate laziness, inaction, sleep, blindness. This path requires everyone to acquire the qualities that he wants to see in others. It requires heroism and self-sacrifice. But, as Fromm says, you shouldn't take it as hard labor. Creativity and love banish mortal boredom from life, overcoming difficulties gives joy, a feeling of unity with neighbors - happiness. After all, he who does not take risks does not drink champagne.
Dmitry Buyanov