Reclaiming the Sane Society IMAGINATION AND PRAXIS: CRITICALITY AND CREATIVITY IN EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

VOLUME 2

SERIES EDITORS Tricia M. Kress Robert L. Lake The University of Massachusetts Boston Georgia Southern University 100 Morrissey Blvd, W-1-77D College of Education, Box 8144 Boston, MA 02125, USA Statesboro, GA 30460, USA

SCOPE Current educational reform rhetoric around the globe repeatedly invokes the language of 21st century learning and innovative thinking while contrarily re-enforcing, through government policy, high stakes testing and international competition, standardization of education that is exceedingly reminiscent of 19th century Taylorism and scientific management. Yet, as the steam engines of educational “progress” continue down an increasingly narrow, linear, and unified track, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the students in our classrooms are inheriting real world problems of economic instability, ecological damage, social inequality, and human suffering. If young people are to address these social problems, they will need to activate complex, interconnected, empathetic and multiple ways of thinking about the ways in which peoples of the world are interconnected as a global community in the living ecosystem of the world. Seeing the world as simultaneously local, global, political, economic, ecological, cultural and interconnected is far removed from the Enlightenment’s objectivist and mechanistic legacy that presently saturates the status quo of contemporary schooling. If we are to derail this positivist educational train and teach our students to see and be in the world differently, the educational community needs a serious dose of imagination. The goal of this book series is to assist students, practitioners, leaders, and researchers in looking beyond what they take for granted, questioning the normal, and amplifying our multiplicities of knowing, seeing, being and feeling to, ultimately, envision and create possibilities for positive social and educational change. The books featured in this series will explore ways of seeing, knowing, being, and learning that are frequently excluded in this global climate of standardized practices in the field of education. In particular, they will illuminate the ways in which imagination permeates every aspect of life and helps develop personal and political awareness. Featured works will be written in forms that range from academic to artistic, including original research in traditional scholarly format that addresses unconventional topics (e.g., play, gaming, ecopedagogy, aesthetics), as well as works that approach traditional and unconventional topics in unconventional formats (e.g., graphic novels, fiction, narrative forms, and multi-genre texts). Inspired by the work of Maxine Greene, this series will showcase works that “break through the limits of the conventional” and provoke readers to continue arousing themselves and their students to “begin again” (Greene, Releasing the Imagination, 1995, p. 109).

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Peter Appelbaum, Arcadia University, Philadelphia, PA, USA Roslyn Arnold, University of Sydney, AU, Australia Patty Bode, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA Cathrene Connery, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, USA Clyde Coreil, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ, USA Michelle Fine, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA Sandy Grande, Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA Awad Ibrihim, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada Wendy Kohli, Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT, USA Carl Leggo, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada Pepi Leistyna, University of Massachusetts Boston, MA, USA Donaldo Macedo, University of Massachusetts Boston, MA, USA Martha McKenna, Lesley University, Boston, MA, USA Ernest Morrell, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA Pauline Sameshima, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, ON, Canada Vera John-Steiner, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA Reclaiming the Sane Society Essays on Erich Fromm’s Thought

Edited by

Seyed Javad Miri Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran

Robert Lake Georgia Southern University, USA and

Tricia M. Kress The University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM / BOSTON / TAIPEI A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-94-6209-605-9 (paperback) ISBN 978-94-6209-606-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-94-6209-607-3 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com/

Printed on acid-free paper

All rights reserved © 2014 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface vii Robert Lake and Tricia M. Kress

Foreword: Fromm’s Social Psychological Approach and Its Relevance for Today ix Rainer Funk

PART I: THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ERICH FROMM

1. On the Psychology and Libertarian Socialism of Erich Fromm: Towards an Empirically Based Psychological Retrofit 3 Rodolfo Leyva

2. Fromm’s Dialectic of Freedom and the Praxis of Being 17 Vicki Dagostino and Robert Lake

3. Humanism and Sociological Imagination in a Frommesque Style 31 Seyed Javad Miri

4. Normative Humanism as Redemptive Critique: Knowledge and Judgment in Fromm’s Social Theory 37 Michael J. Thompson

5. Erich Fromm’s Socialist Program and Prophetic Messianism, In Two Parts 59 Nick Braune and Joan Braune

PART II: FROMM AND RELIGION

6. On Marx and Religion 95 Erich Fromm

7. What is Spirituality?: Insights from Religious Studies and Humanistic Psychology 101 Richard Curtis

8. Erich Fromm’s Social Psychological Theory of Religion: Toward the X-experience and the City of Being 117 Rudolf Siebert

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

9. Erich Fromm and Thomas Merton: Biophilia, Necrophilia, and Messianism 137 Joan Braune

10. Fromm’s Notion of the Prophet and the Priest: Ancient Antagonisms, Modern Manifestations 147 Dustin J. Byrd

PART III: APPLYING AND EXTENDING FROMM’S THEORY

11. The Relevance of Fromm’s Concept of the Distorted Personality 163 Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker

12. Neoliberalism as Social Necrophilia: Erich Fromm and the Politics of Hopelessness in Greece 187 Panayota Gounari

13. Hope—Faith—FortitudeÆ Praxis: Retheorizing U.S. Schooling with Erich Fromm 203 Tricia M. Kress and Patricia M. Patrissy

14. Revisiting Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud: Reflections on Fromm’s Theory and Practice within the Psychotherapeutic Encounter 215 Irene Rosenberg Javors

Notes on Contributors 221

vi ROBERT LAKE & TRICIA M. KRESS

PREFACE

Erich Fromm (1900-1980) was born in Frankfurt Germany and in his formative years, studied traditional Jewish ethics and the newly formed disciplines of sociology and psychoanalysis. After completing his Ph.D. in sociology in 1922 he studied further to become a psychoanalyst. In 1930 he was invited to become a faculty member at the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, also known as The Frankfurt School for Social Research, and the institution that is now widely held as the birthplace of critical theory. With the rise of Hitler, Fromm was forced to immigrate to America in 1934. The institute itself sought refuge in New York and was housed at Columbia University in 1935. By 1937, Fromm’s humanistic readings of Marx and his rejection of Freud’s biologically deterministic drive theories alienated him from the core of scholars at the institute. More specifically, Fromm emphasized the role of social processes in personality formation and eschewed a hardline, depersonalized view of class struggle that cut across prevailing Marxist dogma. These views would eventually result in public disenfranchisement and denunciation from former colleagues such as Theodore Adorno and Herbert Marcuse who went on to become immensely popular with the New Left in Western thought. Yet Fromm’s books went on to sell by the millions. One book alone, The Art of Loving (1956), has sold over 25,000,000 copies. Because he wrote about human relationships in a popular style that was more accessible to a wide range of readers, his work has been mistakenly stereotyped as “self-help” or “pop-psychology,” but as the essays in this book attest, this is simply not the case. In fact, Fromm’s work is particularly relevant in light of present, increasingly complex and often insane prevailing global conditions caused by greed, religious and political dogma, dehumanization and standardization. In many ways Fromm’s work is at least fifty years ahead of his time and brings to mind a metaphor that comes from the largest and oldest trees on the planet, the sequoia. These trees produce seeds in a cone that do not proliferate at the moment of maturity but are retained until the most advantageous environment for germination arises. This occurs after a fire when all the competing growth on the forest floor has been consumed in the heat. At that moment, the heat opens and releases the seeds of the sequoia. Present global geo-political conditions are indeed “heating up” considerably, but this heat can also create the environment for the dissemination of Fromm’s work. For example if you read Fromm’s (1968) work the Revolution of Hope, he clearly warned us of the peril of the misuse of technology when he wrote that if it “is permitted to follow its own logic, it will become a cancer-like growth, eventually threatening the structured system of individual and social life” (p. 15). Fromm offered the first expanded definition of

vii PREFACE biophilia (beyond a medical glossary) in his (1964) work, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil, which included a passionate desire to preserve and nurture all living things. His use of the word has been appropriated by leading voices in ecology such as E.O. Wilson and David Orr. Conversely his use of necrophilia to describe man’s perverse desire to possess and destroy is an apt description of the many-headed monster of neo-liberalism, nihilism, extreme fundamentalist beliefs and increasing standardization. Issues such these are now written about continually by the leading scholars of critical theory and public intellectuals such as Henry Giroux, Naomi Klein and bell hooks just to name a few. Though several Frankfurt School theorists’ works appear to influence critical conversations about education, references to the works of Fromm are conspicuously absent, despite the fact that his work strongly influenced Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the volume which few would argue is foundational to what has come to be known as “critical pedagogy.” Like Freire, Fromm saw love, hope and respect for life as fundamental to the growth of a healthy society and healthy individuals. The relevance of Fromm’s work to education can be understood through the key concepts his thought expresses in the contemporary moment. The terms mentioned above along with his crucial distinction of “having” and “being” (Fromm, 1976) are vitally important when applied to education. Indeed, it is hard to separate his notion of the vast difference between consuming and possessing information, “having,” and personal experience with the text, “being,” from Freire’s concept of the banking model of education. These two men spent time together on several occasions, and like all healthy dialogical relationships, it is clear that they both influenced each other on education and in their focus on an actively engaged praxis of hope. Additionally, Fromm’s (1960) vision of learner centered, curiosity borne, inwardly free, democratic education is a concise yet potent description of the kind of schools we could only hope for in the current nightmare of painting by numbers curriculum. While Fromm’s work makes a relatively small appearance in the education literature, his ideas were nonetheless influential and offer an additional lens through which to reimagine education as critical praxis that is hopeful and actively engaged toward recreating education and humanity to be more humane.

REFERENCES

Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. New York, NY: Harper. Fromm, E. (1960). Foreword. In A. S. Niell, Summerhill: A radical approach to child rearing. New York, NY: Hart Publishing. Fromm, E. (1964). The heart of man: Its genius for good and evil. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Fromm, E. (1968). The revolution of hope: Toward a humanized technology. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Fromm, E. (1976). To have or to be? New York: Harper & Row. Funk, R. (2014). Life of Erich Fromm: Important dates. Retrieved from: http://www.erich-fromm- online.de/index.php/en/life-of-erich-fromm/important-dates

viii PREFACE

McLaughlin, N. (1998). How to become a forgotten intellectual: Intellectual movements and the rise and fall of Erich Fromm. Sociological Forum, 13(2), 215-246. Orr, D. (1994). Earth in mind: On education, environment, and the human prospect: Washington, DC: Island Press.

Robert Lake and Tricia M. Kress Series Editors

ix

RAINER FUNK

FOREWORD

Erich Fromm’s social psychological approach and its relevance for today

Erich Fromm’s relevance for today means above all to refer to him as a social scientist who developed his own social psychoanalytic approach to man and society. But there is another important aspect of Fromm’s relevance for today. It often was neglected or interpreted as “another voice” in Fromm—a “spiritual voice” that has to be strictly separated from his “scientific voice.” According to Fromm’s concept of a “science of man” this aspect has not at all to be separated; rather, it refers to the subjective preconditions of any scientific work in the field of social sciences: For Fromm it is a decisive question, whether a scientist is able to practice personally reason and love—that is to say whether he or she personally is practicing the social psychological insights into what is conducive to a person’s ability to be related to oneself and to others. Both of Fromm’s contributions—his social psychoanalytic theory and how he as a scientist practiced reason and love— will be discussed.

FROMM’S THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Like Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm was driven by the question of what drives the person internally. Only with this answer could a satisfactory answer be found as to why people think, feel and act irrationally, why they control their cognitive and affective strengths insufficiently, even counterproductively, and why they show dysfunctional behavior or become psychically ill. Unlike Freud, who as a physician treated the individual patient and drew on natural scientific patterns to explain psychic phenomena, Fromm the sociologist pursued psychic phenomena with primarily social psychological interest: he wanted to find out why many people behave irrationally in similar ways. This modified central interest entailed that Fromm also had to find an answer to the question of what the inner drives of the subjects had to do with their collective way of life, that is, with their economic relationships and societal demands. With this, the question took hold from the very beginning of what role the requirements for social success play in the development of internal drives. With just a few lines it shall be indicated how Fromm answered this question in the 1930s and how he thus came to a distinct psychoanalytic approach, with which he already developed a great deal conceptually that was interpreted 50 years later in relational and intersubjective psychoanalysis as a great paradigm shift.

xi FOREWORD

The New View on Man and Society That Fromm could come to a new theory that combines the question of sociology and psychology into a social psychological theory and method has doubtless to do with the fact that from 1935 on, Fromm was in an intense exchange with Harry Stack Sullivan, who put the question of the adaptation of man to the environment at the core of his interpersonal psychoanalysis. The psychiatrist Sullivan saw the person’s main problem not in drives, but in his or her relatedness to reality. This different view about what drives a person internally, that is, the need for relatedness, fell on fertile ground with Fromm. For Fromm, socialized as an orthodox Jew, the question of relatedness was a deeply existential one. Fromm grew up in a religious tradition that defined its identity from its demarcation from liberal Christianity as well as from a Judaism that was willing to assimilate to bourgeois society. To be a Jew meant for Fromm that as a child and teenager he had to cut himself off and be isolated. In his 1922 dissertation, he examined three groupings within diaspora Judaism and pursued the question of what enabled these diaspora Jews to survive without adapting their behavior to the society in which they lived. That the question of social relatedness became a question of his own survival became clear no later than when Hitler seized power. Unlike a large part of his extended family, Fromm escaped extermination at the hands of the National Socialists by emigrating in 1934. Sullivan’s focus in psychoanalysis on the question of interpersonal relatedness encouraged Fromm to understand a person’s need for relatedness as the core psychological problem and to revise Freud’s psychoanalytic theory accordingly. For Fromm, abandoning Freudian libido theory was unavoidable in this. This departure was already alluded to at the end of 1936 in a letter to Karl August Wittfogel, a colleague at the Institute for Social Research, to which Fromm belonged at the time: I worked over my fundamental reexamination of Freud. The core of the argument is when I try to demonstrate that those urges which motivate social activities are not, as Freud supposes, sublimations of sexual instincts, rather products of social processes or, to be more precise, reactions to certain circumstances in which human beings need to satisfy their instincts. These urges…differ in principle from the natural factors, namely the drives to satisfy hunger, thirst and sexual desire. While all human beings and animals have these in common, the others are specifically human productions. (Letter to Wittfogel, dated Dec. 18, 1936 – Erich Fromm Archive) Fromm elaborated these thoughts in an essay completed in the Summer of 1937, which was received unfavorably by his colleagues at the Institute for Social Research and therefore remained unpublished. (I found this essay, thought lost, in 1990 in the part of Fromm’s estate deposited at the New York Public Library. It is now accessible in English with the title “Man’s impulse structure and its relation to culture.” Cf. Fromm, 1992a.) By means of this essay, it is possible to see point for point which insights brought Fromm to a reformulation of psychoanalytic theory. xii FOREWORD

For most psychologically relevant phenomena, being driven by the need for relatedness is more plausible than being driven by instinctual needs, which a person shares with animals. In Fromm’s eyes, Freudian drive theory took too little regard of a person’s specific situation. According to Fromm “the psychic structure of man is regarded as the product of his activity and his manner of life and not as the reflex thrown up by his physical organization” (p. 71). Being driven by a need for relatedness (cf. Fromm, 1955, pp. 30-36) resulted from the circumstance that the person lacked the instinctual ability to adapt to his environment to a large extent, so that he perceived this relatedness as a psychic necessity, which he would have to satisfy all his life with his human potential and because of social requirements. What drives the person, especially internally, are conscious and unconscious psychic impulses, with which the person satisfies his or her need to be related to reality, to other people and to him or herself, in which the implementation of these impulses are largely the result of his or her adapting to the demands of societal cohabitation. The physiological drives” such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire, do not have a particular significance for the formation of the psychic structure for Fromm. “The most important elements of the psychic structure are,” as he formulates in his 1937 essay, “the ‘attitude’ of the individual to others or to himself, or, as we should like to say, the basic human relation, and the fears and impulses which, in part directly, in part indirectly, arise out of this behavior” (p. 44). Fromm calls relatedness here “basic human relation,” to express that the person does not exist other than as a relational being, where the concrete manner of his relatedness and his impulses rise from a social process. Later, he speaks of character orientations rather than basic human relations and thereby distinguishes between those that develop because of social adaptation and those that are based on individual life circumstances and relational experiences. He already calls the character orientation resulting from social relatedness the “socially typical character” (p. 58) in the 1937 essay, and distinguishes it from individual character formations.

The Relevance for Social Sciences This distinction between individual and social character also results for Fromm from another understanding of the relationship between individual and society. Just as the Freudian individual is always faced by a society that must be accepted by the individual for better or for worse for the sake of social cohabitation, and which demands of him to abandon his impulses, so Fromm’s relational theoretical approach sees society always at work in the individual, and the individual exists only as a socialized being. “Society and the individual,” says Fromm in his 1937 paper, “are not ‘opposite’ to each other. Society is nothing but living, concrete individuals, and the individual can live only as a social human being” (p. 58). With this, Fromm really introduced a new and different understanding of individual and society to psychology as well to sociology. What is special in Fromm’s psychoanalytic approach is that he understands the person as having always been

xiii FOREWORD related to others, and that he understands this primary sociality not only in the sense of interactive sociality, as antecedent relatedness to other individuals, but as a social relatedness that precedes all concrete perceptions of relatedness, which has its psychic representation in the social character. Actually, this point is most relevant for today in social science. Fromm always tries to see the person, even in his intersubjectivity and relatedness, as a social being. He thus overcomes a social amnesia of which social scientists in particular accuse psychoanalytic theory and practice, and which is not really transcended by relational psychoanalysis or the intersubjective paradigm. From the Frommian perspective, the intersubjective approach is still far too limited to do justice to the social imprint of the person. Sociability of the person is defined in the intersubjective paradigm only from the interactive social, not from that, which the person has to develop in terms of irrational pathogenic drives to do justice to the demands of a certain society. The intersubjective paradigm lacks the potential for social critique that capacitated Freud to recognize the meaning of repressed sexual urges in the development of psychic illnesses and brought Fromm to unmask authoritarianism as pathogenic, given both its inherent quest for power and subordination. At issue is a social-psychological approach with which it is recognizable that that which society needs to function is manifested in the person as a powerful striving, but by all means can also make him or her sick. Fromm’s social psychoanalytic approach is able to do exactly this. It can let us recognize, for example, that the socially required and promoted striving for security, predictability, and quantifiability stifles a person’s ability to trust and to love. It especially allows for a critical distance from the consumerism omnipresent today, in which what goes into a person and what he can acquire and become is the only thing that counts, not what he can bring out of himself from his own abilities. Such consumerism occurs today especially with respect to the experience of feelings and passions. The production and offer of events, emotions, affects and passions are in full force and bring the individual to relinquish his innermost perception of feelings and affective powers in order to experience the proffered emotions. The pathogenic effects of this are readable in insurance companies’ statistics of depression and “burn outs” and also in the inner emptiness and lifelessness that overcome people more and more if they do not let themselves be animated, entertained, stimulated, enlivened or get inspired. Fromm has a clear idea of what is conducive for a “sane” society and which ways of being related have productive effects on mental health, on human growth and on the successful outcome of human beings: by actively being related to reality, to others and to oneself with reason and love.

“DIRECT MEETING”: FROMM’S WAY TO BE A SOCIAL SCIENTIST A Personal Report As I rang the bell at the entrance to the apartment building “Casa La Monda” in Muralto near Locarno, Switzerland on September 1, 1972 and took the tiny xiv FOREWORD elevator to the fifth floor, I had no idea that this first personal encounter with Erich Fromm would be the beginning of a unique relationship for me. Everything that I had been taught up to that point and everything that I had learned, tried out, and experienced myself in the previous twenty-nine years had been centered on education and thought. I was absolutely convinced that this was the way to supremely master life, even my personal, social, moral and religious life. To comprehend and to intellectually safeguard the human was my educational goal. I was equally certain that, after an experience like Auschwitz, we could only place our hopes in humanity if it were protected against failure by something which ensured and transcended man. Fromm’s humanistic justification of ethics was dubious—too trusting and naive. In my initial letter to him, of August 1, 1972, I had already intimated that his humanism would clearly be “the starting point for a constructive debate.” The elevator finally arrived on the fifth floor. When the doors opened I looked straight at Erich Fromm. He was standing in the doorway to his apartment, and looked at me in a friendly and expectant way. I took two steps toward him and stiffly greeted the seventy-two-year-old with the formal address “Professor.” He shook hands with me and facing me, replied: “Guten Tag, Herr Funk.” Fromm invited me to join him in his study. My first impression was the breathtaking view of Lake Maggiore from the window. Fromm had positioned his desk—strewn with books and manuscripts—in front of the picture window extending across the room so that his gaze always fell on the water and its dramatic interplay with light. On the opposite shore the peak of Mt. Gambarogno was visible in the sunny haze of the late summer afternoon. Not until later did I become aware to what a degree a person’s relationship to nature instinctively creates a sense of trust in me. Here I had apparently encountered another human being who shared my affinity. Fromm offered me a chair next to this desk, facing the room. The bookshelves were overflowing, and manuscripts and handwritten drafts and notes were piled on every conceivable surface. This rather chaotic environment became obscured, however, as he seated himself and focused on me with an expression in his eyes that is difficult to describe.

Face-to-Face Encounter Fromm looked at me in such a straightforward way that my attempts at polite conversation abruptly ceased and any role-specific behavior became unnecessary. Although we had only met face-to-face a few minutes before, a dimension for the relationship had already emerged, allowing closeness and trust, but no longer allowing the evasion of a question or topic that had been broached with clever remarks. Somehow Fromm’s eyes, encircled by wrinkles, and scrutinizing me intently, managed to initiate a conversation that appeased my anxieties and made it possible for me to concentrate intently. The initial focus of our meeting was by no means my questions about his works and thoughts. Fromm inquired about my professional situation and why I was

xv FOREWORD interested in his body of thought, particularly his ethics. Above all, he asked which aspects of psychoanalysis, religion and theology interested me. He even wanted to know my stance on Germany’s Ostpolitik, my opinion of the Bavarian-born politician Franz Josef Strauß, and my assessment of Konrad Lorenz’s theory of aggression. However, it wasn’t his intention to discern my political or ideological orientation as quickly as possible. The questions—as it became clear to me through our conversations over the following eight years—were intended to reveal my deepest concerns and preoccupations. Fromm wanted to understand my innermost being: if and what I loved and hated, valued and sought, critically assessed and rejected, what appealed to me, encouraged, stimulated and angered me, delighted or thrilled me, what made me feel anxious or guilty or what frightened me. He was curious about my feelings, my needs, my interests and passions. This was something entirely new to me. It was not my “head,” my thoughts or my intellectual and argumentative abilities, that interested him, but—to continue on the same metaphorical level—my “heart.” What motivated me, fascinated me, passionately moved me, what was behind my values and compelled me—this is what he wanted to learn. Thinking, the art of argumentation, brainwork, knowledge—all of these were at most means for arriving at what really drove people. Fromm’s undivided interest was directed toward coming into contact with inner strivings and feelings and understanding them not as obstacles but as bearers of energy. Even if the emotional powers were less than flattering and prevented thought and action in line with reality, it was crucial to make contact with them and meet them with understanding. Only in this way could the hidden meaning of intense feelings of jealousy or a paralyzing sense of inferiority, for example, be recognized, and the energy bound there be released for a rational or loving approach. The result was a school of thought, in which ‘head’ and ‘heart’ were linked and which strove for cognitive insights carried by feelings. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that particular emphasis was placed on the fundamental role of feelings. Through his interest and questions Fromm wanted to get in touch with my inner world, my rational and irrational, overt and covert strivings. To do so, he utilized eye contact. Since infancy we have all learned to express our inner state—our affects, feelings, wishes, needs as well as our inner reactions—through eye contact. Naturally, at the time, I was incapable of comprehending this fully. What I did sense, however, was that he had a special way of approaching me: it had a great deal to do with his gaze, which one could hardly evade. The pupils of his blue, myopic eyes behind the rimless eyeglasses appeared to be diminished in size, causing his look to seem almost penetrating. His gaze corresponded to his way of being interested in my inner life, my soul. But there was something else about the way Fromm looked at me, spoke to me and focused the conversation. Despite the directness and bluntness with which he approached uncovering my soul, I did not at all feel interrogated, cornered, judged, unmasked or exposed. I quickly sensed that he was dealing with me in a pleasant way, with understanding and warm- heartedness, and that I had no inclination to justify or to conceal myself. He xvi FOREWORD reached out to me and, through his sincere interest in what concerned me, let me sense that there was no reason to fear oneself or one’s inner world. Every look and every word conveyed a sense of solidarity and kindness. This type of human encounter was an entirely new experience for me: this way of conversing, of being with the other, of venturing into that world of feelings and passions which is at work behind our thinking, together with the assurance of a well-meaning glance from the other person, making small talk or pretences at concealment superfluous. Initiated by Fromm, it signaled the beginning of a new intellectual approach for me.

Letting Someone Sense: “This Is You” The Frommian philosophy has its roots in experiences which Fromm himself had in therapeutic relationships. Approximately twenty years later, as his literary executor, I was preparing a number of Fromm’s unpublished manuscripts for publication, when I came across the transcript of a lecture he had held at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City in 1959. There precisely this experience of solidarity was described: The feeling of human solidarity is one of the most important therapeutic experiences which we can give to the patient, because at that moment the patient does not feel isolated any more. In all his neuroses or whatever his troubles are, the feeling of isolation, whether he is aware of it or not, is the very crux of his suffering. There are many other cruxes, but this is the main one. At the moment when he senses that I share this with him, so that I can say, ‘This is you,’ and I can say it not kindly and not unkindly, this is a tremendous relief from isolation. Another person who says, ‘This is you,’ and stays with me, and shares this with me. I have had the experience increasingly through the years that once you speak from your own experience and in this kind of relatedness to the patient, you can say anything and the patient will not feel hurt. On the contrary, he will feel greatly relieved that there is one man who sees him, because he knows the story all the time. We are often so naive, to think the patient must not know this, and the patient must not know that, because he would be so shocked. The fact is the patient knows it all the time, except he does not permit himself to have this knowledge consciously. When we say it, he is relieved because he can say: ‘For heaven’s sake, I knew this always.’ (1992b [1959], pp. 178-179) What Fromm says here about the therapeutic relationship also held true for him in general. In every type of relationship there should be a “direct” meeting with the other person, a face-to-face encounter; the face reveals the inner world of the other. A face-to-face encounter goes beneath the surface, making a “central relatedness” possible:

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I can explain the other person as another Ego, as another thing, and then look at him as I look at my car, my house, my neurosis, whatever it may be. Or I can relate to this other person in the sense of being him, in the sense of experiencing, feeling this other person. Then I do not think about myself, then my Ego does not stand in my way. But something entirely different happens. There is what I call a central relatedness between me and him. He is not a thing over there which I look at, but he confronts me fully and I confront him fully, and there in fact is no way of escape. (p. 174) Such a direct encounter means to be interested: We are interested in another person, we listen attentively, we listen with interest, we think about the person, and yet the other person remains outside…We should try to be aware of the difference between lack of interest, interest and what I call the direct meeting with the other person, not only with regard to our patients, but with regard to everybody. (p. 178) What distinguishes this “direct” meeting with another person from interest in another person? The “direct” meeting facilitates coming into contact with the feelings and passions of the other in order to be able to experience him or her as a whole person. For Fromm, there was one definitive characteristic of this kind of direct encounter with the other: “If you really see a person…you will stop judging provided you see that person fully.” (p. 178 No matter how often we are forced to pass judgment on what we want and what we resist in the course of living and in safeguarding our existence, in a “direct” meeting, in a direct encounter with the other, we must refrain from judgment, if we truly want to see him or her. “If you see yourself, whatever you are, you will stop feeling guilty, because you feel: ‘This is me’” (p. 178). Significant in the “direct” meeting is the direct encounter: At the moment when you see yourself or another person fully, you do not judge because you are overwhelmed with the feeling, with the experience: ‘So this is you,’ and also with the experience: ‘And who am I to judge’? In fact, you do not even ask that question. Because in experiencing him, you experience yourself. You say: ‘So that is you’ and you feel in some way very plainly: ‘And that is me too’… If I see the other person—what happens is not only that I stop judging but also that I have a sense of union, of sharing, of oneness, which is something much stronger than being kind or being nice. There is a feeling of human solidarity when two people—or even one person—can say to the other: ‘So that is you, and I share this with you.’ This is a tremendously important experience. I would say, short of complete love, it is the most gratifying, the most wonderful, the most exhilarating experience, which occurs between two people. (p. 178)

An Exhilarating Experience I vaguely perceived Fromm’s capability for the face-to-face encounter when I met him personally for the first time on this first of September in Locarno. Exactly xviii FOREWORD thirty-three years earlier the Second World War had begun with the invasion of Poland. Fromm, a Jew by birth, was able to avoid persecution and genocide by emigrating to the U.S.A. in 1934. Sadly, although he had done everything in his power from New York City to try to arrange for the emigration of relatives, whom he cared for deeply, he was only able to save a few from deportation to concentration camps and subsequent murder there. Evidently, Auschwitz did not, however, deter Fromm from seeking the face-to- face encounter with the other. Nor did he need transcendental authorization or a justification beyond man in order to have “the most exhilarating experience” “which occurs between two people” (p. 178). The practice or utilization of the capacity for the direct encounter necessitates neither a rational proof nor a special justification. In the course of its realization it proves itself to be morally right and good. The only question is what prevents one from actually doing this—the capability to encounter oneself and others directly can be limited, neutralized or even thwarted by fears, prejudices, biases, illusions, inhibitions, irrational bonds, etc. For Fromm, to put it concisely, it wasn’t the head that made decisions but the heart, through emotional and psychic drives. These drives determine to a great degree whether our thinking is rational and reality-oriented and whether our feeling is loving and solidaristic—or not. This is why Fromm generally spoke of the capacity for reason and love instead of that for the “direct” meeting. The practice of reason and love is what ultimately makes “exhilarating” experiences possible. During our first personal encounter I merely had the impression that the arguments with which I had intended to dispute Fromm’s humanism had become obtuse and unessential. The way he approached me was totally “disarming.” With my intellectual “weapons,” that is logical, argumentative thought, I wanted to challenge, not concede something. I wanted to be right, not rational. I was seeking a confrontation, and Fromm was offering me a face-to-face-encounter. I accepted his offer and noticed how both encounters during my initial visit invigorated me. I left Locarno highly motivated and energized. The following weeks, I formulated the sections on Fromm’s social psychology and his theory of character orientation for my dissertation, and visited him in Locarno again in the summer of 1973. The following summer Fromm—who had only spent the summer months in Switzerland until then and otherwise lived in Cuernavaca, Mexico— decided not to return to Mexico, but to reside in Locarno year-round. This is how he came to ask me to be his research assistant, while he was writing the book To Have or to Be? (1976). I lived in Locarno for some time; later I worked for him while based in Tübingen, visiting him regularly in Locarno as well as in Hinterzarten and Baden-Baden, two spas in the Black Forest, where he and Annis spent the hot summer days together. Above all, the almost daily contact with Fromm in 1974 and 1975 gave me the opportunity to develop a comprehension of his philosophy by observing and reflecting on its effects, although we rarely discussed this specifically. Our conversations revolved in part around topics which I had researched for the book To Have or to Be?, for example, the conception of “activity” in Aristotle, or oral traditional studies on the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament, or the

xix FOREWORD concept of the Godhead in Meister Eckhart. The other part of the conversations— usually continuing for three or four hours—focused on specific passages and chapters of the book in progress, To Have or to Be? (1976a), which Fromm had given me to read as soon as Joan Hughes, his British secretary, had typed the handwritten version from the yellow legal pads. What distinctly characterized these conversations were Fromm’s elucidations from his vast reservoir of historical and political events as well as his personal experiences and encounters with important figures in politics, society and psychoanalysis. Equally unforgettable: his boundless trove of jokes from the Jewish and psychoanalytic scene. It was extraordinarily difficult for Fromm to refrain from telling a joke that suddenly came to his mind. But it wasn’t actually the topics under discussion which caused me to notice the effects of his philosophy, as interesting and entertaining as these were. It was the face-to-face encounter which—regardless of the subject matter—he made possible with clearly perceptible effects on me. Particularly conspicuous were my heightened attentiveness and ability to concentrate; our interpersonal communication did not consume strength but released energy instead. During our countless discussions, I never experienced a feeling of exhaustion nor a decline in attentiveness. I was wide-awake and on some evenings worked on my dissertation far into the night after our meeting, the time spent together with Fromm having been energizing and stimulating. Equally striking was that I often lost all sense of time. Frequently it seemed as if I had arrived half an hour earlier, although three or four hours had actually elapsed. Only in retrospect did the impact of the encounter with Fromm become clear to me; his contact with my emotional realm and my driving forces apparently had initiated a process of personal growth, although in all those years I never experienced Fromm in a therapeutic setting. (Since according to Fromm, the most significant therapeutic factor is the capacity of the therapist for a direct meeting—a face-to-face encounter with the patient—and not a setting defined as ‘therapy,’ it is not surprising that I observed typical therapeutic effects outside the therapeutic setting.) Nor did we ever discuss the following observations. As a result of my contact with Fromm, I began to sense and seek a relationship to nature again. During childhood I had always known whether the moon was full, or waxing or waning, or new at a particular moment. Now I had rediscovered the lunar phases and was captivated when the full moon was reflected in the lake and illuminating the snow-covered peaks. On January 4, 1975, the first red bud of the camellia in front of my window in the Via Mondacce burst into bloom, and before long there was no mountain peak on the horizon that I hadn’t scaled. My decision to stop smoking in the spring of 1975 made life exceedingly difficult for me. Over an extended period of time, cigarettes had supported and stabilized something within me. I was oriented on “having” the cigarettes and on the nicotine-related effects of smoking. But who was I without the cigarettes? As a nonsmoker? The intense daily work on the manuscripts for To Have or to Be? was not without consequences. Freeing myself from this “having” mode of existence became a moment of truth: whether I chose only to intelligently discuss the xx FOREWORD alternative “having” vs. “being” or whether I dared to put the theory to practice, i.e. dared to try to be without a crutch of having. The withdrawal symptoms were intense, and it took me several months to consciously and fully realize that the alternative to the “having” mode of existence is not the “not-having” mode of existence but the “being” mode of existence. The “being” mode of existence, as I learned, had much to do with becoming aware of other things in oneself and in one’s social context as well as with allowing and pursuing new interests. This was terra incognita for me, which I trod on with a wish for professional reorientation. I wanted to discover—in a more exacting and professional way— what really motivates and drives me and others; I wanted to familiarize myself with approaches to the human unconscious, both my own and that of others. At the same time I became aware that what interested me and what sparked my interest in scholarly work was changing considerably. To determine the morally right, the morally demanded and the morally favorable, that is, the morally good, and its justifications is undeniably an important and challenging question. However, it became increasingly clear to me that another question preoccupied me much more, namely, why people who recognize something as being morally right and good do not act in accordance with these insights in their concrete actions and decision- making. What hinders their utilization of the faculty of reason? Which irrational forces lead to their failure to act rationally?—I wanted to undergo training in psychoanalysis and leave the fields of theology and ethics, which I consequently did in 1977, after completing a doctoral dissertation on Fromm’s ethics (see R. Funk, 1982) and having been accepted in a psychoanalytic training program in Stuttgart.

Encountering the Foreign How crucial the direct encounter with the self is and what consequences it can have were phenomena which I also observed with Fromm himself. Hardly a day went by when he did not actively seek this direct encounter with himself. Fromm usually allotted an hour in the late morning for “his exercises.” What he meant were physical and contemplative exercises which he had described in The Art of Being (1989 [1974-75]) as exercises promoting attentiveness and self-perception, sensory awareness exercises, Tai Chi as well as self-analysis. He concentrated on his body movements, on his breathing, attempted to become totally empty and to meditate. He also tried to become aware of what resounded in him emotionally or preoccupied him mentally: for example, a feeling of uneasiness that persisted after an interview, or the impulse to write a letter to the editor for The New York Times. Whenever he could remember a dream from the night before, he tried to decipher its message, in order to be able to confront his own unconscious strivings, fantasies, emotional powers, and conflicts. The effects of these exercises seeking the direct encounter with the self were clearly apparent, not only to Fromm himself but to those around him as well. The most impressive example for me was the opening address Fromm gave at a symposium in Locarno-Muralto in May 1975. Together with the Gottlieb

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Duttweiler Institute in Switzerland, I had organized this symposium in honor of his seventy-fifth birthday. During the preceding weeks Fromm had been considerably incapacitated by a broken arm, and for a long time it had been uncertain whether he would be able to hold the opening address. He ultimately spoke extemporaneously for two hours on “The Meaning of Psychoanalysis for the Future” (1992c [1975]). Afterward I asked him where he had found the concentration and energy for the lecture, and he replied, without any pretentiousness whatsoever: “Well, this morning I spent twice as long doing my exercises.” Someone who practices the direct encounter with himself or herself can draw on powers also serving the direct encounter with other people, facilitating his or her total absorption in a topic and in the other person. The opposite is also true: Someone who practices the direct encounter with others draws on experiences facilitating the encounter with the foreign and the other within himself or herself. That Fromm was versed in both and consequently able to be with himself and with the other could readily be seen in his facial expression. After his death, I found a series of photographs of Fromm, taken with the assistance of a photographic innovation (a battery-powered rewinding mechanism) allowing an entire series of photographs to be shot within a few seconds. On the strip of developed negatives there was one photograph that showed Fromm with his eyes shut next to another photograph in which he was looking directly at the photographer. In the course of these sequential images Fromm must have closed his eyes for a split second and been photographed in the process. On closer scrutiny this photograph depicts a face concentrated on the inner self, a face totally immersed in itself. The adjacent photograph of Fromm with his eyes wide open gives the impression that his eyes are totally focused on the observer. In the first, he is totally with himself, in the second, he is totally with the other. These portraits reveal how intensely Fromm must have practiced the direct encounter to learn to be with himself and with the other. At the same time, they also illustrate the significance of the practice of the direct encounter for the successful realization of humanity and of social existence. Regardless of the type of relationship in which the direct or face-to-face encounter is carried out, in the relationship to others, in scholarly or scientific work, in artistic or therapeutic endeavors, in dealing with nature or in dealing with one’s own inner powers, the direct encounter always releases energy for direct encounters in other areas of life. The experience drawn from the practice of the face-to-face encounter inspired Fromm’s development of the concepts of the “productive character orientation,” “biophilia,” and the “being mode of existence.” “The person who fully lives life is attracted by the process of life and growth in all spheres,” writes Fromm in The Heart of Man (1964, p. 47). In To Have Or to Be? (1976a, p. 103) he summarizes the exponential effect of the direct encounter as follows: “Genuine love increases the capacity to love and to give to others. The true lover loves the whole world, in his or her love for a specific person.” While for the “having” mode of existence it holds that every instance of sharing and every use of what is had leads to its consumption and its consequent loss, sharing and using—by a person in the xxii FOREWORD

“being” mode of existence—lead to the experience of an abundance in sharing and to the growth of the individual’s own powers in using them. Whenever I wanted to more fully comprehend what Fromm actually meant by “productivity,” “reason and love as [one’s] own powers,” “biophilia,” or the “being mode of existence,” I found it helpful to recall the effects of the face-to-face encounters with him. Fromm’s capacity for the face-to-face encounter finally explains why his writings have a special appeal for many people, particularly those who have difficulties reading and comprehending highly conceptual, abstract theories. In an interview conducted by Hans Jürgen Schultz (1974, p. 105), Fromm confessed: “I have no gift for abstract thought. I can think only those thoughts that relate to something I can concretely experience.” This is why Fromm also sought a direct encounter with the issue or problem under consideration in his written work. Before beginning to write, however, he had to find a mental but not totally unemotional approach to what others had written on the same question. When reading a primary text it was vital that he could directly relate to what he was reading. With certain authors this was regularly the case—above all Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, Baruch Spinoza and Meister Eckhart. With a number of other authors this was rarely the case—for example, Georg Wilhelm Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Theodor W. Adorno and most of the sociologists. Fromm spent much more time reading than writing (perhaps twenty or thirty times as much). When he finally did start to write, he generally put his ideas on that specific topic on paper in one sitting—by hand, preferably with a fountain pen or ball point pen. The following day he read what he had written the day before and sometimes started over from the beginning, if he had been unable to express what concerned and interested him and what he wanted to say. He then made another attempt until he felt that he had become one with the topic. While writing, Fromm also sought the direct encounter, namely, with a topic, with concepts, arguments and ideas; not until this encounter in his opinion had been correctly conveyed in the written text did he give the handwritten text to his secretary, so that she could prepare a typewritten manuscript, which he could then give others to read. Because Erich Fromm’s writings arose out of a direct and inwardly perceived encounter with the works of other writers and with a topic, and were not the outgrowth of abstract thought and conceptual-logical thought processes, many readers feel addressed by them and are able to enter into an inner dialogue with what they read. Fromm lived and felt what he said and wrote. Teachings and life were closely interconnected in Fromm’s person and works because both involved the practice of direct encounters.

REFERENCES

Fromm, E. (1955). The sane society (pp. 30-36). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Fromm, E. (1964). The heart of man. Its genius for good and evil (Religious Perspectives, 12, planned and edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen). New York, NY: Harper and Row. Fromm, E. (1974). In the name of life. A portrait through dialogue. In E. Fromm, For the love of life, Hans Jürgen Schultz (Ed.) (pp. 88-116). New York, NY: The Free Press, 1986.

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Fromm, E. (1976). To have or to be? (World Perspectives 50, planned and edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen). New York, NY: Harper and Row. Fromm, E. (1989 [1974-75]). The art of being. New York, NY: Continuum, 1993. Fromm, E. (1992a [1937]). Man’s impulse structure and its relation to culture. In E. Fromm, Beyond Freud: From individual to social psychology, ed. and with a foreword by Rainer Funk. New York, NY: American Mental Health Foundation, 2010. Fromm, E. (1992b [1959]). Dealing with the unconscious in psychotherapeutic practice (3 Lectures 1959). International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 9(3-4), October 2000, 167-186. Fromm, E. (1992c [1975]). The relevance of psychoanalysis for the future. In E. Fromm. Beyond Freud: From individual to social psychoanalysis (pp. 123-147). New York, NY: American Mental Health Foundation, 2010.

Rainer Funk International Erich Fromm Society

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PART I: THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF ERICH FROMM

RODOLFO LEYVA

1. ON THE PSYCHOLOGY AND LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM OF ERICH FROMM

Towards an Empirically Based Psychological Retrofit

The basic entity of the social process is the individual, his desires and fears, his passions and reason, his propensities for good and for evil. To understand the dynamics of the social process we must understand the dynamics of the psychological processes operating within the individual, just as to understand the individual we must see him in the context of the culture which moulds him. (Fromm, 2001, p. ix)

INTRODUCTION Disheartened by the rise of fascism in Western Europe and mass consumerism in the US, the 1930s group of exiled German intellectuals collectively known as the Frankfurt School, sought to investigate why significant numbers of individuals from advanced industrial societies seemed to so willingly succumb to hierarchical political-economic structures that breed rampant inequality and social alienation. Drawing primarily on Marx’s historical materialism and Freudian psychology, they developed critical theory, which describes the hegemony of these structures as the result of interrelated and mutually reinforcing psychosexual, institutional, and ideological discursive factors. While generally in agreement with the principal tenets of critical theory, key member Erich Fromm laid out a more humanist conception of the human psyche that diverged from that of his other notable colleagues; Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, who mostly kept with Freud’s libidinal and instinct-driven formulation. This fundamental disagreement over the interpretation and accuracy of Freudian theory largely contributed to Fromm’s less than amicable divorce from the Frankfurt School. However, it also led him to develop a unique version of critical theory that arguably surpasses the inherent pessimism and hopelessness of its predecessor by offering a convincing framework of the possibilities for genuine human freedom, mental wellbeing, and egalitarian societal organization. This critical theory 2.0 if you will, reflects Fromm’s polymath abilities, and incorporates, amongst others, comprehensive theories on religion, matriarchal relations, and the psychology of fascism and the authoritarian personality (Brennen, 1997). Obviously covering all of these individual elements is beyond the scope of one paper. Therefore, in this piece, I will review some of the major

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 3–15. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. RODOLFO LEVYA elements of Fromm’s work that specifically pertain to his appraisals and criticisms of Freudian theory, humanist ontology, and libertarian-socialism. I then, and in keeping with Fromm’s commitment to empiricism and transdisciplinarity, review some of the recent relevant findings from the neuroscience, organizational, and political schools of psychology, and make the case that they compliment and can be synthesized with Fromm’s mostly theoretical account of human nature, psychology, and normative political-economic organization, i.e., they can offer a contemporary and empirical basis for them. I end this piece by drawing out some of the implications that this theoretical synthesis poses for neoliberal ontology and political economy.

BEYOND HOME-ECONOMICUS AND HOME-SEXUALIS Central to Fromm’s thought was a critical evaluation of the assumptions, premises, and methods of Freud’s psychoanalysis. In the first instance, Fromm was largely indebted to Freudian theory and drew on several of its major insights. Amongst others, these included the observation that childhood is a crucial time for psychological development; the experiences from which can have life-long consequences on adult cognition and behavior. The existential premises that the psyche holds intrinsic drives and needs that unconsciously propel human motivation and behavior, and that the disjunction between these and the expectations and constraints of culture can lead to individual neurosis and pathological behaviors. And, last but not least, he also borrowed from Freud what can be considered a critical realist approach and commitment to the scientific method and its application to the exploration of universal social and psychological characteristics (Fromm, 1980/2013). To be certain, Fromm held a deep and lasting respect for Freud, and considered him to be a great and historically important intellect on par with Hegel, Marx, and Newton. Nonetheless, Fromm departed from Freud in many areas, and perhaps most significantly, he disagreed with him on constitution of the underlying drives of the unconscious. For Freud, these primarily consisted of repressed sexual urges and desires and instinctual destructive and self-destructive tendencies. Fromm however, believed that other drives and innate pre-dispositional needs played a more powerful role in unconsciously influencing human motivation and behavior. Namely, these entail the need to be productive, to reason, to be self-directed, and to be social, or what humanist psychologists today broadly refer to as the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. While Fromm acknowledged the existence and importance of libidinal and physiological needs, he viewed them as pre-social evolutionary inheritances that could be tempered if not overcome via our higher order pro-social needs and motivations. Therefore the ongoing struggle to satisfy these pro-social needs in the face of political-economic and socio-cultural constraints was, according to Fromm, what more accurately constitutes the human condition.

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There lies also the key to humanistic psychoanalysis. Freud, searching for the basic force which motivates human passions and desires believed he had found it in the libido. But powerful as the sexual drive and all its derivations are, they are by no means the most powerful forces within man and their frustration is not the cause of mental disturbance. The most powerful forces motivating man’s behavior stem from the condition of his existence, the “human situation.” […] The necessity to unite with other living beings, to be related to them, is an imperative need on the fulfillment of which man’s sanity depends. (Fromm, 1991, pp. 27-29) Correspondingly, Freud’s homo-sexualis view of human nature was, according to Fromm (1970), the psychological derivative of the homo-economicus ontology touted by neoclassical economists, as in both conceptions the individual is an “isolated, self-sufficient man who has to enter into relations with others in order that they may mutually fulfill their needs” (p. 43). In holding to this narrow ontology of human nature, Freud took capitalism for granted and saw the role of psychoanalysis as helping the mentally ill or psychologically distressed to adjust to the demands of bourgeoisie culture. Fromm’s humanist ontology, however, led him to conclude that capitalism was itself the root of many of the major mental illnesses rampant throughout the developed world, given the meaningless and alienating work, overly competitive social relations, and vapid consumption that liberal-capitalist modes foster and depend on. In other words, in viewing humans as essentially self-interested sexually charged walking calculators, Freud committed a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy whereby he failed to see how dominant social and psychological characteristics that individuals commonly express in any given society are not universal or intrinsic, but are rather specific products and functions that follow from specific political-economic systems. Thus, Fromm argued that rather than marking a fixed or inevitable stage of societal development, liberal-capitalism and the exchange relations, consumer norms and values, and psychopathologies that it generates, is one of many possible societal manifestations. Hence, for example, the selling of human beings under systems of chattel slavery or the selling of human kidneys via ebay under our current neoliberal system, are not inevitable and universal human quirks. They are specific behaviors that are generated and enabled by their respective and overarching political-economic systems. While these practices are underpinned by individual agency, volition, and natural faculties, they are nonetheless second order manifestations that more likely reflect a perverse permutation of our core properties, but which cannot be said to be intrinsic given the vast differences in social norms and values and political-economic systems that can be observed in different societies and historical eras. As Fromm (2001) argued: Why do certain definite changes of man’s character take place from one historical epoch to another? Why is the spirit of the Renaissance different from that of the Middle Ages? Why is the character structure of man in monopolistic capitalism different from that in the nineteenth century? Social

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psychology has to explain why new abilities and new passions, bad or good, come into existence. (p. 9) However, it must be noted that this claim that the human character changes from one system to the next does not mark a relativist or post-structuralist streak in Fromm’s thinking. Rather, he argued that despite their variety, different political- economic systems and their corresponding superstructures take root at different historical intervals specifically because they address some universal aspect of human nature. For example, at least in their initial formation, feudalist societies arguably addressed the human need for security, while liberal-capitalist societies address, however partially, the human need for freedom (Fromm, 2001). The widespread psychological neurosis and distress that follows each of these systems, however, likely stems from their failure to address the totality of human nature by emphasizing some aspects of it while hindering others. For example, liberal- capitalist modes tend to emphasize anti-social qualities like self-interestedness and competition over pro-social qualities like altruism and cooperation). Thus Fromm proposed that another key task for psychologists and sociologists is to attempt to find the types of socio-organizational settings that can best meet and create a balance between all of our various core needs. Such settings should, in theory, lead to more sustained human happiness and social harmony. As social-psychologists Ryan and Deci’s (2000) note: Research on the conditions that foster versus undermine positive human potentials has both theoretical import and practical significance because it can contribute not only to formal knowledge of the causes of human behavior but also to the design of social environments that optimize people’s development, performance, and well-being. (p. 68)

THE SANE SOCIETY But as critical as he was of capitalism, Fromm was equally critical of Soviet-style authoritarian socialism. Drawing on the theories of Max Weber, Fromm saw the inherent dangers of the unchecked institutionalization of scientific rationalism and the consequent bureaucratization of society championed by both orthodox socialists and capitalists alike (e.g., Vladimir Lenin and Henry Ford both admired and implemented Taylorism a.k.a. the scientific management of labor). Bureaucracies, argued Weber (1922), whether serving public or private interests, are characterized by hierarchical command and control structures, compartmentalized labor specialization, role and task specification, and uniform rules and procedures. Moreover, not only are they the most efficient and rational model for structuring and coordinating collective human action, but bureaucracies are also the inevitable result of societal development and industrialization (Weber, 1922). Being well aware of the dismal conditions of both American and Soviet workers who day in and day out worked under such bureaucratic structures, Fromm also significantly departed from Marx, and agreed with Weber that no matter how efficient bureaucratic organization may be, it has an inherently

6 ON PSYCHOLOGY AND LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM dehumanizing effect on workers. Therefore, its prescriptive transposition across all social institutions, even socialist ones, will lead to a lifeless and disenchanting world. The bureaucratic reformer, by laying all the stress upon the purely material side of life, has come to believe in a society made up of well-fed, well- housed, well-clothed machines, working for a greater machine, the state; the individualist has offered to men the alternative of starvation and slavery under the guise of liberty of action. (Fromm, 1991, p. 277) Still, Fromm insisted that liberated from its authoritarian political and bureaucratic correlate, socialism could lead to the types of societal organization more fruitful to individual and societal well-being. Fromm (1991) referred to this more ideal version of socialism as ‘communitarian socialism.’ While sharing many affinities with the orthodox Marxist schools, this version of socialism takes the more anarcho-syndicalist or libertarian socialist inflection of figures like Robert Owen and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who posited to the well-being of the individual worker and democratic organization as the primary political objectives for social transformation. This is in direct opposition to the orthodox Marxist branches of socialism. These are generally premised on the takeover of the political-economic base by an elite revolutionary vanguard who in due time will theoretically relinquish power and usher in a democratic and free communist society. Fromm’s libertarian inspired socialism on the other hand, is premised on Kantian deontological ethics and direct democratic organization in both the workplace and the state whereby individual liberty and collective needs can both be satisfied via the implementation of democratic mechanisms that ensure that everyone has a direct say in the decision-making process. That is, the means have to reflect and not merely justify the ends. More specifically, Fromm (1991) argued that the road to communitarian socialism should first include the implementation of what economist Michael Albert (2000) would refer to as ‘balanced job complex schemes.’ These entail individual workers being trained in, and allowed to perform, all the facets of work related to their workplace; including both mundane and highly technical work. The balance of monotonous and more cognitively challenging work may ensure that at least most workers feel engaged in their work, while also ensuring that dirty and drudge tasks are also completed. Incidentally, as Graeber (2004) argues, having all workers embark in the monotonous work of their workplace may lead to more novel and creative solutions that can decrease the time and effort needed to accomplish it. For example, highly skilled scientists and engineers would also be required to clean up their own labs and bathrooms, and thus one can only imagine how long it would take them to engineer something that can more efficiently deal with these types of unpleasant tasks. Secondly, this road also involves giving workers knowledge of the economic and social consequences of their industry on their local and global communities. This would give workers a more conscious awareness as to what their actions are doing, and will in theory, allow them to correct for any negative externalities that they may be responsible for. Thirdly, and

7 RODOLFO LEVYA perhaps most importantly, this road involves the enactment of systems of direct management whereby the conducting of the particular tasks of any given workplace are directly organized and managed by all of the workers that work in it. Direct management would entail a balance of power between management and the rank and file, as well as significant input from those consumers who are most served by them. As workers develop the sense of empowerment and autonomy that these systems engender, they will, in theory, be more inclined and prepared to transpose and maintain these direct democratic mechanisms at the state level. For Fromm, the self-governing of the workplace was a necessary precondition for political decentralization and individual liberty, and for the development of corresponding cultural norms and values needed to nurture and sustain them.

EMPIRICAL VINDICATION Thus far I have discussed the following themes in Fromm’s work. 1) The ontological position that human nature and psychology is composed of several innate motivational drives and needs, which in addition to biological ones, also incorporates higher order needs that can be parsimoniously classified as competence, autonomy, and relatedness. 2) Bureaucratic structures of whatever political or economic orientation generate dehumanizing work, powerlessness, and consequent mental distress. 3) Libertarian/democratic socialist organization consisting of direct management and meaningful work can potentially generate the socio-environmental settings needed to cultivate mentally and socially healthier human beings. However, despite his insistence on empirical scrutiny, Fromm relied mostly on rhetoric, analytical induction, and folk psychology to support these positions. For example, in his magnum opus The Sane Society (1991), Fromm relegates his empirical foundation for his claim that advanced capitalist societies generate high rates of alienation, suicides, and addictions to sparse statistics, footnotes, and what can almost be classified as anecdotal evidence. Now this may be unfair to Fromm who lived in a time without the Internet, and most importantly, without ‘Google Scholar.’ Thus he could not access the seemingly infinite number of systematic case studies, which would have significantly strengthened his above listed positions. And more limiting than that, he was in fact dead before most of the literature that now lends empirical support for them was published. Indeed, had Fromm been around to asses the recent developments of cognitive and organizational psychology and social neuroscience, he may well have come to realize that his more holistic conception of human nature, which included what he thought of as the inherently ‘non-biological’ traits of imagination, reason, creativity, empathy, and cooperation, are in fact properties that are firmly rooted in biologically endowed neural physiology. To be certain, Fromm was a voracious reader who kept up and drew on latest social and psychological theories of his day, including the cognitive developmental theories of Jean Piaget (Fromm, 1970). Therefore, barring a few semantic revisions, and in keeping with Fromm’s commitment to transdisciplinarity and empirical evidence, I will briefly review the

8 ON PSYCHOLOGY AND LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM findings from a set of studies and meta-analyses from the sub-fields of neuroscience, social psychology, and political psychology that are respectively and specifically concerned with neuroanatomy and social behavior, socio- environmental organization and intrinsic needs and motivations, and workplace democratic practices. I will try to make the case that when looked at in tandem, these literatures give preliminary empirical support for the crux of Fromm’s above listed (and mostly theoretical) positions.

SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE, CREATIVITY, AND DEMOCRACY In recent years the field of social neuroscience has shed some new light on the dynamics between the brain, mind, and culture. Bringing together the expertise of cognitive psychologists and traditional neuroscientists this field is concerned with the exploration of the computational properties of the human mind, their foundation in neurophysiologic structures, and how both of these are in turn influenced, affected, and triggered by stimuli from the social world. Amongst other key findings from this field, preliminary research suggests that human beings are hard wired for creativity, morality, and empathy. In other words, human beings have built in cognitive mechanisms that allow them to manifest these capacities with relative ease across a broad range of socio-cultural contexts (Dietrich, 2004; Jackson et al., 2006; Moll & de Olivera-Souza 2007). These capacities are hypothesized to be the products of evolutionary derived complex neural networks located along the prefrontal cortex and limbic system. Short of relatively rare pathological cases, they are believed to be universal, highly interrelated, and strongly subject to co-activation. For example, in a study by Moll et al., (2007), researchers loaded healthy Brazilian participants onto an MRI machine and gave them a series of event scripts designed to elicit emotional and emotionally-neutral responses. Once inside the scanner, participants had six seconds to read scripts like the following: “Your mom called you and said she didn’t feel well. You ignored her, and the next day she died,” and, “There was an empty shelf in a furniture store. The next day, it was full of new items which were put on display.” The results showed that when presented with scripts designed to elicit pro-social emotions (e.g., embarrassment, compassion, guilt), the pre-frontal cortex and limbic system regions of the participants’ brains consistently lit up. The researchers note that in line with other similar studies, their results suggest that our brains endow most of us with an intuitive sense of fairness, concern for others, and moral agency (ibid). Nevertheless, simply because we have the innate capacities to feel the suffering of others or make moral judgments does not mean that we have a corresponding set of primary motivational dispositions that unconsciously propel us to want to use these capacities as Fromm (1991) argued. While the above studies point to motivational mechanisms that facilitate the manifestation of these capacities in everyday social interaction, these mechanisms refer to products of socialization that are activated during relevant socio-cultural contexts. That is, for example, even though the faculty for empathy may be innate, people learn when to act empathetically, and will be motivated to do so according to appropriate socio-

9 RODOLFO LEVYA cultural contexts that call for it. Therefore these studies do not address whether or not we have an innate need to utilize these capacities, or whether we simply utilize these innate capacities to meet the needs of our respective societies. However, there is a parallel and extensive body of research that draws on the premises of ‘self-determination theory,’ which suggests that competence, autonomy, and relatedness are innate and universal psychological needs with corresponding motivational drives. When cultivated and satisfied under appropriate socio-environmental settings, these intrinsic needs and drives can lead to positive social development, personal job satisfaction, and psychological well-being (Gagne & Deci, 2005; Ryan & Deci, 2000). For example, in a cross-national study by Deci et al. (2001) that explored the degree to which American and Bulgarian workers satisfied their needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness in their workplace, the researchers found that in both nations there was a direct positive correlation between the extent of the satisfaction of these needs and feelings of personal job contentment and work engagement. Moreover, other studies have shown that in order to foster optimal work engagement and performance, work environments have to address all three of these intrinsic needs, which Ryan and Denci (2000) argue is necessary since, for instance, a feeling of competence without the autonomy to more freely express it may forestall or hinder an individual’s intrinsic motivation for creative work. In fact, in order to promote creativity and innovation in the workplace, extensive meta-analyses by Hammond et al. (2011) and Bass et al. (2008) respectively note that, while several factors are important, organizational settings that promote positive work climates, autonomy, mutual trust and respect between managers and subordinates, and enjoyable, interesting, and cognitively challenging tasks are the ones most likely to be filled with creative, engaged, and self-motivated workers. Conversely, workplace settings that are most conducive to the generating of alienated and unmotivated workers, are typically characterized by rigid bureaucratic organization. Given their hierarchical structures and standardized and rigid work routines, bureaucracies to varying extents stifle individual autonomy and creativity since most of the workers in these settings have to perform strict and regimented tasks. Additionally, they often have little or no freedom to decide on the pace of their work, the types of work, or in many cases even the types of clothes that they are allowed to wear to work (to say nothing of the lack of Constitutional rights that most workers are faced with in most workplaces). Moreover, the punitive and/or monetary incentive schemes used to motivate workers that bureaucracies generally employ, likely serves to foster suspicion and distrust between employees. As Pink (2010) argues, several studies have even shown that they actually lead to worse performance on work that requires higher level cognition (Pink, 2010). All of these factors, incidentally, likely explain why bureaucratic workplaces are often plagued with low employee morale and high employee turnover. Thus in contrast to mainstream economics theories, and when combined with the findings from the social neuroscience studies described above, the empirical literature on self-determination theory consistently demonstrates that humans far from being solely utility-maximizers, and are actually hardwired and

10 ON PSYCHOLOGY AND LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM naturally self-motivated to, among other things, care for others, be productive, and master complicated skills and knowledge irrespective of self-regarding incentives. Nonetheless, the extent to which the positive qualities of human nature manifest is largely determined by social institutional organization. For example, bosses and managers all over the world are tweaking their organizational structures in ways that give their workers more autonomy, work enjoyment, and decision-making power. While these tweaks vary in context and are certainly never referred to as forms of ‘communitarian socialism,’ they are characterized by more horizontal organization and democratic practices. These include allowing employees to, for instance, vote for their CEO or managers, determine their own work-projects and schedules, switch leadership roles and job tasks on a frequent basis, and view the company’s financial health via policies of open book accounting. Workplace democratic businesses as they are referred, do not necessarily implement all of these and other democratic practices at once, and there is no study that has explored which practices or sets of practices may be the most effective. What is clear, however, is that workplace democratic practices can lead to the development of healthy, loyal, and conscientious employees and peaceful communities (see Spreitzer, 2007). Incidentally, they can also translate into to healthy and sustainable profit margins through lower employee turnover costs, better customer service, and overall better employee efficiency and productivity (Doellgast, 2012). As Fenton (2011) argues: Sound far-fetched? Well it’s not. These innovative examples of organizational democracy are being practiced in companies all over the world of every size-from small to Fortune 500. It’s a growing trend that reflects an inescapable fact: organizations that embrace a democratic style are building healthier workplaces and cultures and better bottom lines. In the process they are also becoming a force for social change in the world, proving that how a company operates is just as important as what it does. (p. 175) Overall, when looked at together, all of these studies suggest that Fromm is three for three in his above listed positions. Still, a few odd co-opts here and there and some hippy CEOs who are having some success with democratic organization does not prove Fromm right, nor does it prove that workplace democracy can be effectively applied across a now global and irreversibly intertwined political- economy with over 7 billion people and growing. Moreover, both the psychological and democratic workplace studies briefly discussed above are not without criticisms and major limitations. For instance, the former largely consist of small sample sizes of mostly university students in mostly laboratory settings. While the latter are far too few in examples to make any claims that democratic organization will work in other socio-cultural and political-economic contexts, and more importantly, the workplaces highlighted in them are still capitalist not socialist. This means that they are subject to the capricious demands of market forces that at any given moment can undermine democratic organization if it gets in the way of profits.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR CONTEMPORARY NEOLIBERAL MODES Furthermore, it may even be the case that our current global neoliberal political- economic system is the system that, as neoliberals argue, can best optimize human happiness and individual freedom (Braedley & Luxton, 2010; Harvey, 2005). Of course in order to agree with this position one has to ignore the brazen fact that neoliberal market principles and prescriptions led to, or at the very least largely contributed to the 2008 global financial crisis, which is itself only the latest of a series of similar crises that have followed the last thirty years of the neoliberalization of the global economy, and which have at different intervals impacted most of the developed and developing world (Ellwood, 2010; Harvey, 2005; Mason, 2010). One has to also ignore the fact that while many multi-national corporations, institutional investors (e.g., hedge funds, insurance companies, and investment advisors), and elites have throughout the neoliberal era profited from the various windfalls, the vast majority of people have suffered and continue to suffer the consequences of a global economic system that is now, in effect, a global speculative casino (Baker, 2009; Chomsky, 1999), one which is significantly contributing to the proliferation, at a seemingly exponential rate, of massive inequalities and the growth of slums and shantytowns in metropolises all over the world (Davis, 2006; Patel, 2010). As Harvey (2005) argues: For those left or cast outside the market system a vast reservoir of apparently disposable people bereft of social protections and supportive social structures there is little to be expected from neoliberalization except poverty, hunger, disease, and despair. Their only hope is somehow to scramble aboard the market system either as petty commodity producers, as informal vendors (of things or labour power), as petty predators to beg, steal, or violently secure some crumbs from the rich man’s table, or as participants in the vast illegal trade or trafficking in drugs, guns, women, or anything else illegal for which there is a demand. (p. 185) Furthermore, one has to also ignore a growing body of evidence that suggests that as Fromm (1991) argued, the dominant socio-cultural values of market societies are strongly correlated with widespread psychological pathologies (e.g., Black, 2007; Hamilton & Dennis, 2005; James, 2007, 2008). For example, in a cross- cultural analysis of the values and goals of neoliberal societies, Kasser et al. (2007) argue that in promoting questionable assumptions about the primacy of self- interest and the relationship between wealth and happiness, these societies and the consumer and materialistic cultures that they promote undermine empathy, healthy relationships, and feelings of autonomy and relatedness, which psychologists have long thought to be crucial for individual and collective well-being. Indeed, it would appear that one has to ignore reality in order to come to the highly unlikely conclusion that neoliberalism is the political-economic system that most reflects or approximates our human nature and that neoliberal policies will at some point usher in a global consumerist utopia.

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To be certain, the hegemony of neoliberalism continues to reign supreme and will likely continue to do so well into the foreseeable future. However, the homo- economicus ontology that it reflects is a highly questionable depiction of human nature that only really exists in game theory mathematical formulations, corporate boardrooms, and extremely rare pathological cases. It is a narrow and sordid conception that is not borne out by the overwhelming amount of sociological and psychological evidence as Fromm intuitionally and correctly argued. Nonetheless, just because neoliberal modes are arguably antithetical to core human properties does not mean that they will be replaced by more appropriate political-economic systems. Although, understanding the fact that we are more reflective of a humanist ontology, at the very least, affords us the somewhat cruel realization that for all our foibles and limitations, we are capable of creating something better even if we have yet to do so. As Fromm (1991) argued: The problem in the twentieth century is to discuss ways and means to implement political democracy and to transform it into a truly human society. The objections which are made are largely based on pessimism and on a profound lack of faith. It is claimed that the advance of managerial society and the implied manipulation of man cannot be checked unless we regress to the spinning wheel, because modern industry needs managers and automatons. […] Yet it is quite beyond doubt that the problems of social transformation are not as difficult to solve—theoretically and practically—as the technical problems our chemists and physicists have solved. And it can also not be doubted that we are more in need of a human renaissance than we are in need of airplanes and television. (pp. 27-29) Of course there is no telling whether a communitarian-socialist society along the lines envisioned by Fromm will be any better at generating and maintaining genuine human freedom, mental well-being, and socioeconomic equality than current and past political-economic systems. The point, however, is that our evolutionary descent has endowed us with a number of unique cognitive faculties. How we choose to transpose these to the enactment of socio-organizational forms is a volitional choice enabled but not determined by any one of these faculties.

CONCLUSION Whether or not most of us have an innate need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness, and how strongly these influence our everyday behavior is still highly debatable, but this is missing the forests for the trees. Even if these more pro-social needs and corresponding capacities for empathy, creativity, and moral agency are not underpinned by innate motivational drives, the overwhelming amount of empirical psychological studies concerned with exploring this area, and as briefly discussed in this paper, at the very least, make it clear that most people have the innate capacities to enact pro-social behaviors. Furthermore, when they do so under social organizational settings that more aptly facilitate autonomy, creativity, and relatedness, the preponderance of empirical studies thus far suggest that these

13 RODOLFO LEVYA types of settings, which are to some significant extent democratic in orientation, can lead to the cultivation of workers that are happier, more creative, civically responsible, and feel more empowered and psychologically adjusted. In other words, Fromm was right, and if in the final analysis his theories seem overly utopian and romantic, so be it. After all, when complemented with the major findings of the empirical schools of psychology, they offer an empirically grounded conception of human nature that allows for the possibility of alternative and more humane and democratic forms of political-economic organization. Additionally, they offer a powerful counter-argument to those self-styled pragmatists whose endorsement and promulgation of existing neoliberal modes serves only to justify and perpetuate the mass cruelties that they engender.

REFERENCES

Albert, M. (2000). Moving forward: Program for a participatory economy. Oakland, CA: AK Press. Baker, D. (2009). Financial transactions tax: The perfect gift for Wall Street. The Guardian Unlimited. April 27. Retrieved from: http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/ financial-transactions-tax-the-perfect-gift-for-wall-street/ Bass, M., De Drew, C. K. W., & Nijstad, B. A. (2008). A meta-analysis of 25 years of mood-creativity research: Hedonic tone, activation, or regulatory focus? Psychological Bulletin, 134, 779-806. Black, W. D. (2007). A review of compulsive buying disorder. World Psychiatry, 6(1), 14-18. Braedley, S., & Luxton, M. (2010). Neoliberalism and everyday life. Montreal, Canada: McGill- Queen’s University Press. Brennen, B. (1997). From social unconscious to class consciousness. The Public, 4, 5-18. Chomsky, N. (1999). Profit over people, neo-liberalism and global order. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of slums. New York, NY: Verso. Deci, E. L., Ryan, R. M., Gagne M., Leone, D. R., Usunov, J., & Kornazheva, B. P. (2001). Need satisfaction, motivation, and well-being in the work organizations of a former Eastern Bloc country. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 930-942. Dietrich, A. (2004). The cognitive neuroscience of creativity. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11(6), 1011-1026. Doellgast, V. (2012). Disintegrating democracy at work: Labor unions and the future of good jobs in the service economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ellwood, W. (2010). No-nonsense guide to globalization. New York, NY: New Internationalist/Verso. Felsen, G., & Reiner, B. P. (2011). How the neuroscience of decision making informs our concept of autonomy. Neuroscience, 2(3), 3-14. Fenton, L. T. (2011). Organizational democracy as a force for social change. in R. Biswas-Diener (Ed.), Positive psychology as social change. Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Springer. Fromm, E. (1970). The crisis of psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Fromm, E. (1980/2013). Greatness and limitations of Freud’s thought. New York, NY: Open Road Integrated Media. Fromm, E. (1991). The sane society. London: Routledge. Fromm, E. (2001). The fear of freedom. London: Routledge. Gagne, M., & Deci, L. E. (2005). Self-determination and work motivation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24(4), 331-362. Graeber, D. (2004). Fragments of an anarchist anthropology. Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press. Hammond, M. M., Farr, L. J., Zhao, X., Neff, L. N., & Schwall, R. A. (2011). Predictors of individual- level innovation at work: A meta-analysis. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5(1), 90-105.

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Harvey, D. (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Jackson, L. P., Brunet, E,. Meltzoff, N. A., & Docety, J. (2006). Empathy examined through the neural mechanisms involved in imagining how I feel versus how you feel pain. Neuropsychologia, 44, 752- 761. Kasser, T., Cohn, S., Kanner, A. D., & Ryan, R. M. (2007). Some costs of American corporate capitalism: A psychological exploration of value and goals conflicts. Psychological Inquiry, 18(1), 1-22. Mason, P. (2010). Meltdown: The end of the age of greed. London, UK: Verso. Moll, J., & de Oliveira-Souza, R. (2007). Moral Judgments, emotions, and the utilitarian brain. Cognitive Sciences, 11(8), 319-321. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Garrido, G., Bramati, E. I., Caparelli-Daquer, E., Paiva, L., Zahn, R., & Grafman, J. (2007). The self as a moral agent: Linking the neural bases of social agency and moral sensitivity. Social Neuroscience, 2(3-4), 336-352. Oliver, J. (2007). Affluenza: How to be successful and stay sane. New York, NY: Vermilion. Oliver, J. (2008). The selfish capitalist. New York, NY: Vermilion. Patel, R. (2009). The value of nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy. London, UK: Portobello Books. Pink, D.(2010). Drive: the surprising truth about what motivate us. Edinburgh: Canongate. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well- being. American Psychologist, 55, 68-78.

Rodolfo Levya King’s College London

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VICKI DAGOSTINO & ROBERT LAKE

2. FROMM’S DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM AND THE PRAXIS OF BEING

Positive freedom, according to Fromm’s definition, is the capacity for “spontaneous relationship to man and nature, a relationship that connects the individual with the world without eliminating his individuality” (1941, p. 29). Negative freedom according to Fromm exists in dialectical relationship to this as “freedom from” (1941, p. 34) external restraints that limit the exercise of free will. To illustrate the nature of this dialectic, Fromm uses the example of freedom of speech as an example of negative freedom as the “growth of freedom outside ourselves” (p. 105) without external restraints of authoritarian force. The other dimension to this dialectic is positive freedom, viewed here by Fromm as the ability to “think originally (p. 105) and creatively express newly formed ideas. Fromm’s description of negative and positive freedom together as one holistic entity, is positively Hegelian, in that it negates Cartesian dualist separations of mind and body, objective and subjective forms of reality. Like the act of riding a bicycle, the way to maintain balance is to sustain forward motion through pedaling, steering, leaning and counter leaning. Similarly, Fromm’s use of Hegel’s notion of dialectical thought is best understood in the motion of practice. It is not a ‘method’ or a set of principles” (Spencer & Krauze, 1999, p.78) but as in the bike analogy, there are specific acts of “being” that make use of and keep balanced both aspects of freedom. In this chapter, we view the dialectic of freedom in the unity of negative freedom as “freedom from” outward, individual, limitations of unjust, inhumane and destructive conditions and positive freedom, which is the ability to create, to imagine and “be” free within yourself as well as with others and nature in ways that transcend alienation.

FROMM ON CAPITALISM AND ALIENATION Freedom has a twofold meaning for modern man: that he has been freed from traditional authorities and has become an ‘individual,’ but that at the same time he has become isolated, powerless and an instrument of purposes outside of himself, alienated from himself and others; furthermore, that this state undermines his self, weakens and frightens him, and makes him ready for submission to new kinds of bondage. Positive freedom on the other hand is identical with the full realization of the individual’s potentialities, together with his ability to live actively and spontaneously. (Fromm, 1941/1994, p. 268)

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 17–30. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. VICKI DAGOSTINO & ROBERT LAKE

According to Fromm, our goal as humans is to be free and to live authentically. Historically, becoming free has meant being left alone to choose for ourselves; to have the right to think and act according to our own desires. Yet, what has happened is that even as modern man has achieved this negative freedom (freedom “from”) he has failed to become fully free. This is because he has failed to appropriate both positive and negative freedom because, psychologically, he fears freedom. This fear of freedom leads him to attempt to escape from freedom by responding in one of three ways: a) by looking for security outside of himself again, in terms of looking for an authoritative person, belief system, or other external power source, to relieve them of the responsibility of being free (masochism), or (b) seeking to become the authority over others so that they do not feel so alone (sadism), or (c) falling into mindless (automoton) conformity. Fromm states, “In our effort to escape from aloneness and powerlessness, we are ready to get rid of our individual self either by submission to new forms of authority or by a compulsive conforming to accepted patterns” (1941, p. 134). The crucial need in Fromm’s day as well as today is to move towards a productive orientation towards life that will fulfill the feelings of aloneness, isolation, alienation, and separation. This requires providing a positive solution for the psychic need for relatedness. This human need must be addressed in order for people to fully appropriate positive freedom in loving relationships and productive work. To be truly free we must be both sociologically free from external oppression and psychologically free from the fear of freedom that leads us back into oppressive relationships. Given that we have achieved to a large degree the former, we must begin to acknowledge and fully claim the latter. If we want to reclaim a sane society, we must not only create the external conditions for sanity, but we must help develop the internal conditions which will reinforce the sane society. Fromm goes into great detail in the beginning chapters of Escape from Freedom (1941) to demonstrate that “The breakdown of the medieval system of feudal society had one main significance for all classes of society: the individual was left alone and isolated” (p. 99). Yes, he was free, in the sense of being free from traditional bonds, however, this freedom had a twofold result. Man was deprived of the security he had enjoyed, of the unquestionable feeling of belonging, and he was torn loose from the world which had satisfied his quest for security both economically and spiritually. He felt alone and anxious. But he was also free to act and to think independently, to become his own master and do with his life as he could—not as he was told to do. (p. 99) Hence, the new religious doctrines of Luther and Calvin gave expression to the feelings of isolation which resulted from the loss of the sense of belonging and security which had been in place in feudal times. “Protestantism was the answer to the human needs of the frightened, uprooted, and isolated individual who had to orient and relate himself to a new world” (p. 99).

18 DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM AND PRAXIS OF BEING

Fromm explains that humans feel lonely and isolated because of their separation from nature and from other human beings. He contends that as humans have gained more and more freedom from traditional bonds, they have become more and more isolated, scared, and alone (because they have become isolated from nature and other human beings). This fear of isolation, in turn, has led them to attempt to escape from the freedom they have gained. The acceptance of the doctrines of Protestantism demonstrates how this process has worked concretely in history. It demonstrates that freedom from the traditional bonds of medieval society, though giving the individual a new feeling of independence, at the same time made him feel alone and isolated, filled him with doubt and anxiety, and drove him to find an escape from freedom (1941, p. 103). In a modern sense, capitalism must be understood as a social system that affects the personality too. According to Fromm, development of capitalistic societies has affected the person “in the same direction it had started to take in the period of the Reformation” (1941, p. 103). Capitalism as a system, “its practices, and the spirit out of which it grew, reached every aspect of life, molded the whole personality of man and accentuated the contradictions” (p. 104) between freedom and desire for an escape from freedom. “It developed the individual—and made him more helpless; it increased freedom—and created dependencies of a new kind” (1941, p. 104). Accordingly, it accentuated the “dialectic character of the process of growing freedom” (ibid.), that as modern man became more independent, self-reliant, and critical he also became more isolated, alone, and afraid. Again, it is clear that the freedom that man wanted so badly was slipping further and further out of reach because of the economic system of capitalism and its inherently negative characteristics of competition, individualism, materialism, consumption, etc. As the old enemies of freedom were eliminated, new enemies of a different nature had arisen; “enemies which are not essentially external restraints, but internal factors blocking the full realization of the freedom of personality” (1941, p. 165). According to Fromm, because we have been fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside of ourselves we have been blinded to the fact that there are inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which undermine the victories freedom has won against traditional enemies (1941, p. 105). Fromm further reasons that we are: prone to think that the problem of freedom is exclusively that of gaining still more freedom of the kind we have gained in the course of modern history, and to believe that the defense of freedom against such powers that deny such freedom is all that is necessary. We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigor, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self, to have faith in this self and in life. (1941, pp. 105-106) The effect of the industrial system on this kind of inner freedom, Fromm suggests, has affected the development of the entire human personality. Fromm contends

19 VICKI DAGOSTINO & ROBERT LAKE that capitalism has outwardly freed man spiritually, mentally, socially, politically, and economically. For instance, under the feudal system the limits of one’s life were determined even before he was born; whereas under the capitalist system, “the individual, particularly the member of the middle class, had a chance – in spite of many limitations – to succeed on the basis of his own merits and actions” (1941, p. 107). Man, under the capitalist system learned to “rely on himself, to make responsible decisions, to give up both soothing and terrifying superstitions … [he] became free from mystifying elements; [he] began to see himself objectively and with fewer and fewer illusions” (i.e., to become critically conscious), and hence he became increasingly free from traditional bonds, he became free to become more. As this freedom “from” grew, positive freedom (the growth of an active, critical, responsible self) also advanced. However, capitalism also had other effects on the process of growing freedom as well. “It made the individual more alone and isolated and imbued him with a feeling of insignificance and powerlessness” (1941, p. 108). It also increased doubt and skepticism, and all of these factors made man more anxious about freedom. The principle of individualist activity characteristic of a capitalistic economy put the individual on his own feet. Whereas under the feudal system of the Middle Ages, everyone had a fixed place in an ordered and transparent social system, under capitalism, if one was unable to stand on his own two feet, he failed, and it was entirely his own affair. That this principle furthered the process of individualization is obvious and is always mentioned as an important item on the credit side of modern culture. But in furthering ‘freedom from,’ this principle helped to sever all ties between one individual and the other and thereby isolated and separated the individual from his fellow men. (1941, p. 93) The results of capitalism (the increasing freedom “from” and the strength of the individual character which it built) has led people to assume that modern man is “the center and purpose of all activity, that what he does he does for himself, that the principle of self-interest and egotism are the all-powerful motivations of human activity” (Fromm, 1941, p. 109) He goes onto sat that “much of what seemed to him to be his purpose was not his” (p. 109). Rather, the capital that he earned and created no longer served him—he served it. “Man became a cog in the vast economic machine … to serve a purpose outside of himself” (p. 110). Man became a servant to the very machines he built, which gave him a feeling of personal insignificance and powerlessness. Those who did not have capital (like the middle class) and had to sell their labor to earn a living suffered similar psychological effects, according to Fromm, because they too, were merely cogs in the great economic machine, and hence instruments of “suprapersonal economic factors.” Modern man believed that he was freeing himself, but was really submitting to aims which were not his own. As such, he became untrue to himself. He did not work for himself, his happiness, or his freedom, rather, his work was done either to serve more powerful others or to acquire capital. This further isolated and alienated him from himself and his fellow man. As modern man became more conscious of

20 DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM AND PRAXIS OF BEING and worked towards freedom from oppressive bonds, he also became more alienated and isolated, and he began to feel insignificant. Fromm attributes this to the fact that negative freedom (freedom from oppressive forces) never fully developed into positive freedom. While it did create positive freedom in some ways, i.e., by providing humans “with economic and political freedom, the opportunity for individual initiative, and growing rational enlightenment” (1941. p. 121), it did not provide people with a means to realize positive freedom. Let us return to the quote we gave at the beginning of this chapter. Positive freedom, according to Fromm’s definition, is the capacity for “spontaneous relationship to man and nature, a relationship that connects the individual with the world without eliminating his individuality” (p. 29). The foremost expression of which, according to Fromm, is “love and productive work because they are rooted in the integration and strength of the total personality” (p. 29). So positive freedom equals wholeness of the personality, which is integration. Moreover Fromm asserts that the need for a sense of identity “is so vital and imperative that man could not remain sane if he did not find some way of satisfying it” (1955, p. 61), and “The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence, and it is the source of the most intense strivings” (p. 63). It is humans’ need for identity and belonging that underlies their intense passion for status and conformity. These needs, according to Fromm, can be even stronger than the need for physical survival. Fromm asks: What could be more obvious than the fact that people are willing to risk their lives, to give up their love, to surrender their freedom, to sacrifice their own thoughts, for the sake of being one of the herd, of conforming, and thus of acquiring a sense of identity, even though it is an illusory one? (p. 63) A capitalistic economic system has caused man to be estranged from the products that he makes with his own hands. “He is not really the master any more of the world he has built; on the contrary, this man-made world has become his master, before whom he bows down (Fromm, 1941, p. 117). Productive work does not have this character. Similarly, relations between people have also become alienating in the modern capitalistic world. As Fromm states, human relationships assume the character of relations between things rather than between beings (1941, p. 119). Fromm writes: But perhaps the most important and the most devastating instance of this spirit of instrumentality and alienation is the individual’s relationship to his own self. Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity [and] if there is no use for the qualities a person offers, he has none; just as an unsalable commodity is valueless though it might have its use value. Thus the self-confidence, the “feeling of self,” is merely an indication of what others think of the person … If he is sought after, he is somebody; if he is not popular, he is simply nobody. (p. 119) This is devastating, because what people dread most is isolation; we cannot live without some sort of co-operation with others. In fact, Fromm believes that “the

21 VICKI DAGOSTINO & ROBERT LAKE need to be related to the world outside oneself, the need to avoid aloneness” is as imperative to man as is the physiologically conditioned needs (like hunger, the need for sleep, etc.). Fromm wrote that “to feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death” (1941, p. 17). The mode of capitalistic production, because it has made man an instrument for suprapersonal economic purposes and increased his sense of individual insignificance, has also increased his feeling of isolation and powerlessness. Likewise, human relationships have suffered because they have assumed a spirit of manipulation and instrumentality and have lost their sense of connectedness and relatedness. There is no sense of solidarity in modern society. Human relationships under capitalism have ceased to be relationships between people who have an interest in one another as fellow human beings, and have become relationships based on mutual usefulness. The instrumentality of relationships is clearly seen in relationships at all levels, from employer/ employee, to business person/customer, to one’s relationship with one’s own self. As such humans have become “bewildered and insecure” (p. 120) rather than strong and secure beings who are capable of loving and liberating both themselves and others. Productive and authentic love does not have this character.

PRODUCTIVE LOVE In discussing how to move into positive freedom, Fromm (1947) talks about the importance of love and productiveness. He suggests that genuine love is rooted in productiveness and he refers to this as productive love. Productive love includes care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. He states: To love a person productively implies care and to feel responsible for his life, not only for his physical existence but for the growth and development of all his human powers. To love productively is incompatible with being passive, with being an onlooker at the loved person’s life; it implies labor and care and the responsibility for his growth. (pp. 106-107) Moreover, he contends that love for oneself is inseparably connected to love of any other self, and that to love or work productively, one must be able to be quiet and alone with oneself. He says that “if an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he cannot love at all (1947, p. 135). Later in The Art of Loving (1956), Fromm further confirms that love for self and others are not mutually exclusive concepts. If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue— and not a vice—to love myself, since I am a human being too. There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included. A doctrine which proclaims such exclusion proves itself to be intrinsically contradictory.” Furthermore, “respect of one’s own integrity and uniqueness, love and understanding of oneself, cannot be separated from respect, love, and understanding for another individual. (p. 53)

22 DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM AND PRAXIS OF BEING

In a powerful book called Education and The Significance of Life (1953), Jiddu Krishnamurti beautifully sums up Fromm’s point about the relationship between love of oneself, love of others, and freedom. He states, “Self-knowledge is the beginning of freedom, and it is only when we know ourselves that we can bring about order and peace” (p. 52). He further adds that “if we want to change existing conditions, we must first transform ourselves, which means that we must become aware of our own actions, thoughts and feelings in everyday life” (p. 68). Hence, Krishnamurti concludes: If we are to bring about a true revolution in human relationship, which is the basis of all society, there must be a fundamental change in our own values and outlook; but we avoid the necessary and fundamental transformation of ourselves, and try to bring about political revolutions in the world, which always leads to bloodshed and disaster. (pp. 53-54) Like Fromm, Krishnamurti (1953) stresses inner transformation as one important part of the man’s relationship with others because “It is the inward strife which, projected outwardly [which] becomes the world conflict” (p. 77). He, like Fromm, fears that “most of us are afraid to tear down the present society and build a completely new structure, for this would require a radical transformation of ourselves” (p. 80). He states: If we are to change radically our present human relationship, which has brought untold misery to the world, our only and immediate task is to transform ourselves through self-knowledge. So we come back to the central point, which is oneself; but we dodge that point and shift the responsibility onto government, religions, and ideologies. The government is what we are, religions and ideologies are but a projection of ourselves; and until we change fundamentally there can be neither right education nor a peaceful world. (p. 80-81) Love of self and of others is vital for the flourishing of a productive life of true positive freedom. While it is important to develop critical consciousness in the Freirean sense (a consciousness of oppression and its causes), these notions are not sufficient to create a truly liberated person. Political revolution on the sociological side alone will not cure the ills of society without an internal awareness that merges self-love and love for others in a productive way. In The Sane Society (1955) Fromm integrates the psychological and the sociological dimensions of these conditions. According to Fromm, Americans have lost sight of intrinsic values as a consequence of the Capitalist mode of production and a focus on individual freedom. He says that a “ healthy society furthers man’s capacity to love his fellow men, to work creatively, to develop his reason and objectivity, to have a sense of self which is based on the experience of his own productive powers” (p. 72). However, the capitalistic principle that each individual seeks his own profit and thus contributes to the happiness of all, (which became the guiding principle of human behavior in the 19th century, and which became corrupted further into individual competitiveness over the course of the 20th

23 VICKI DAGOSTINO & ROBERT LAKE century onto the present time), has decreased the role of human solidarity through the inordinate obsession of having. Thus the quest for positive freedom that is spontaneously created through loving relatedness to self and others is destroyed by a focus on possessing and acquisition as a means to overcome alienation, when in actuality it leads to more alienation from self and others.

BEING AND POSITIVE FREEDOM The having mode is the source of the lust for power and leads to isolation and fear and that the being mode is the source of productive love and activity and leads to solidarity and joy. In the being mode of existence, one responds spontaneously and productively and has the courage to take risks in order to give birth to new ideas. Our real goal, Fromm (1976) believes that the distinction between having and being “represents the most crucial problem of existence” today (p. 4). These two “fundamental modes of existence” are two different kinds of character structure the respective predominance of which determines the totality of a person’s thinking, feeling, and acting” (p. 12). Fromm further explains that in the having mode of existence our “ relationship to the world is one of possessing and owning, one in which I want to make everybody and everything, including myself, my property” (p. 12). The self is defined by what one has. The being mode of existence, on the other hand, refers to the mode of existence in which “one neither has anything nor craves to have something, but is joyous, employs one’s faculties productively, and is oned to the world” (p. 6). Like a fish in the water, being “oned” to the world (yes he transforms a noun into a verb) is the environment in which positive freedom spontaneously thrives in creative presence. In Fromm’s writing, he consistently refers to Meister Eckhart, whom he calls “one of the great masters of living” (1976, p. 74). Fromm describes Eckhart’s explanation for the relation between possession and freedom. Eckhart wrote that “freedom is restricted to the extent to which we are bound to possession, works, and lastly, to our own egos … By being bound to our egos, we stand in our own way and are blocked from bearing fruit, from realizing ourselves fully” (Eckhart cited in Fromm, 1976, pp. 51-52). Eckhart’s concept of not having is that “we should be free from our own things and our own actions. This does not mean that we should neither possess anything nor do anything; it means that we should not be bound, tied, chained to what we own and what we have, not even God” (as cited in Fromm, 1976, p. 51). “Being to Eckhart, means to be active in the classic sense of the productive expression of one’s human powers, not in the modern sense of being busy” (1976, p. 53). Fromm believes that “Breaking through the mode of having is the condition for all genuine activity” (1976, p. 54). Consequently, we crave to fill the emptiness of not loving the self by domination or submission to others, and by seeking to possess things which we believe will make us more valuable as persons. A being based orientation then is based in love of self/others, productive creativity which is in essence the very nature of positive freedom. But can one learn to “to be?” Are there choices that we can make and actions to be taken that like the bicycle analogy might create and

24 DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM AND PRAXIS OF BEING sustain the momentum of the dialectic of freedom through being? After briefly exploring Fromm’s praxis of being, we will conclude by returning to this question.

STEPS TOWARD BEING In The Art of Being (1992) Fromm offers “steps towards being” which are intended to be “a guide to productive self-awareness” (p. vii) rather than a prescriptive method that can be nailed down and possessed. It is more apt to liken the following actions as taking steps in a flowing river which possesses you rather than the other way around. While Fromm recognizes that the orientation towards having is rooted in the “structural realities of today’s industrial culture,” he contends that the way to overcome these realities is through “rediscovering man’s own psychic, intellectual, and physical powers and in his possibilities of self-determination” (Funk, 1992, p. vii); hence, his focus is on productive self-awareness. Included in an orientation towards being is the ability to reason and to love, which as we have seen thus far, are in short supply in modern American culture. The narcissism and ego- centeredness of modern man, which are the result of orienting one’s life towards having, need to be overcome in order for reason and love to become manifest. The individual with a having orientation has lost the power of her psychic forces, i.e., the power of her own capacity for love, reason, and productive activity and therefore these capacities must be established (or re-established), strengthened, and honed if one is to become more fully human. Moreover, for Fromm (1992), “the full humanization of man requires the breakthrough from the possession-centered to the activity-centered orientation, from selfishness and egotism to solidarity and altruism” (p. 1). Fromm states that in order to move towards such a productive, being orientation, it is first vital to know what the norms are that are conducive to man’s optimal growth and functioning. He contends that overcoming greed, illusions, and hate, and attaining love and compassion, are the conditions for attaining optimal being (1992). Consequently the art of living and the art of being, come from the ability to grow optimally, according to the conditions of human nature. Fromm outlines several “steps towards being” which he believes will lead towards the type of liberation he is espousing. We provide a brief overview here. For a fuller elaboration of each step refer to the entire book, The Art of Being (1992). He begins with the concept of singular focus, the “first condition for more than mediocre achievement in any field, including that of the art of living, is ‘to will one thing’” (p. 31). By this Fromm means that one must make a decision, and commit oneself to the particular goal one is striving for. This suggests that one is “geared and devoted to the one thing he has decided on, [and] that all his energy flows in the direction of this chosen goal” (p. 31); otherwise, the will of the person to accomplish the goal is compromised. It is to aim for the desired goal wholeheartedly. The second step towards being for Fromm (1992) is to be fully awake. In a state of total awakeness “one is not only aware of that which one needs to be aware of in order to survive or to satisfy passionate goals, one is aware of oneself and of the

25 VICKI DAGOSTINO & ROBERT LAKE world (people and nature) around one. One sees, not opaquely but clearly, the surface together with its roots” (p. 36). To be awake means to see with “an extraordinary clarity, distinctness, reality” (p. 37). It is to see ourselves and others in our “suchness,” meaning seeing people with a “direct, unimpeded awareness” (p. 37) i.e., in a state of alertness and consciousness of the being. Such a state of awareness precludes thinking, passing judgment or placing value on the person; it is a state which transcends thinking (this is a skill which requires much devoted practice and skill). The third step towards being according to Fromm (1992) is to be aware, i.e., attentive and mindful. It signifies more than simple consciousness or knowledge; “… it has the meaning of discovering something that was not quite obvious, or was even not expected. In other words, awareness is knowing or consciousness in a state of close attention” (p. 37). Again, the process of becoming aware transcends thought. Awareness is not only becoming aware of what is not hidden, it is also becoming aware of what is hidden, or becoming conscious of what is not conscious, or making conscious what is repressed. It is a process of revealing or uncovering awareness. For people attempting to achieve a state of being, or liberation, there must be awareness or an uncovering in both inner conflicts and conflicts in social life. Becoming aware has a liberating effect; it allows one to have a clearer more precise understanding of “truth” and “reality” which in turn makes one more independent and more centered in one’s self. Awareness frees us from dependencies on irrational passions, desires, and authority. Often just recognizing a problem and its significance can be freeing, and if one becomes intensely focused on that problem he or she will seek a resolution to it from his or her center. Another dynamic action in the cultivation of being-based positive freedom is the capacity to concentrate, which is “a rarity in the life of cybernetic man” (Fromm, 1992, p. 44). To concentrate requires “inner activity, not busy-ness, and this activity is rare today when busy-ness is the key to success” (p. 45) which is measured in having more and more things. In order to learn to concentrate, one must first practice how to be still. It may surprise many to discover how active, how creative and spontaneous and free your thoughts can become when we cease from striving and being overly concerned about things, opinions, fears, doubts and attitudes that cut us off from connectedness to ourselves and others, which is the very essence of positive freedom. “Concretely speaking, this means to sit still for, say, ten minutes, to do nothing, and as far as possible to think of nothing, but to be aware of what is going on in oneself” (p. 46). This practice is to begin slowly and deliberately by beginning to just sit, and then by stretching that sitting time from 10 to 15 or 20 minutes or so. This can be done regularly, every day, morning and night. After learning to be still one must practice the art of concentration. One can choose to concentrate on an object, or on her or his breathing, for example. This practice should be followed by the practice of concentration on thoughts and on feelings and on concentration on others. One must not focus on the superficial, such as the clothes the other is wearing, or what her position in society is, or how he behaves, i.e., on the persona of the other person, but rather, “one must penetrate

26 DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM AND PRAXIS OF BEING through this surface to lift the mask and see who the person is behind it.” This we can only know if we concentrate on him. Other helpful forms of concentration include concentrating on a particular sport, a chess game, painting or sculpting, anything which requires that we give our full attention to what we are doing. Practicing concentration in these ways helps us to achieve a mindful way of being in which we are fully concentrated on everything we are doing at any given moment, whether it is reading, sewing, cleaning, or eating. This allows us to live in the moment rather than to be fretting over the past or the future. Such deliberate thoughtful, mindfulness is a particularly vital component of a life lived with a being orientation. Finally, the last component of Fromm’s steps towards being is to meditate, which is a direct outgrowth of concentration, awareness, and alertness. While there are various forms of meditation (Fromm 1992) the main goal is maximum awareness or mindfulness of reality, especially, however, of body and mind. Such mindfulness should “be applied to every moment of daily living. It means not to do anything in a distracted manner, but in full concentration of what is at hand … so that living becomes fully transparent by full awakeness” (Fromm, 1992, p. 51). If every experience is done with mindfulness, it is “clear, distinct, real, and hence not automatic, mechanical, diffuse” (p. 51). This allows for “optimal awareness of the processes inside and outside oneself” (p. 53). In the Buddhist tradition of meditation, it is believed that greed, hate, and resultant suffering can be overcome because there is a clarity and intensity of consciousness which presents a picture of actuality that is increasingly purged of any falsifications Through meditation and mindfulness, “the subconsciousness will become more ‘articulate’ and more amenable to control, i.e., capable of being co-ordinated with, and helpful to, the governing tendencies of the conscious mind” (Fromm, 1992, p. 53) which allows for more independence and freedom. The psychoanalytic method can also be used as a tool to help individuals come to a greater awareness of the unconscious aspects of the mind. While most people think of psychoanalysis in a limited way, as a cure for neurosis, the truth is that “the essence of psychoanalysis [once freed from the shackles of Freud’s libido theory] can be defined as the discovery of the significance of conflicting tendencies in man, of the power of the ‘resistance’ to fight against the awareness of these conflicts, of the rationalizations that make it appear that there is no conflict, and of the liberating effect of becoming aware of the conflict, and of the pathogenic role of unsolved conflict” (Fromm, 1992, p. 56). The significance of recognizing internal conflict is that rationalizations for behavior are questioned and challenged. For example, if a newly un-oppressed person engages in oppressive ways, she or he can come to 1) an awareness of the bad behavior, and 2) an understanding of the unconscious thought processes that might be leading to her oppressive behavior. So, the function of psychoanalysis and meditation (and also the nine other “steps towards being” which Fromm presents) can be used for achieving inner liberation by awareness of repressed conflict, but also of achieving love, respect, responsibility, and compassion— which create solidarity—for others, which in turn leads to non-oppressive

27 VICKI DAGOSTINO & ROBERT LAKE liberation of self and others. In other words, these steps towards being help create the conditions necessary for love of oneself and one’s neighbor. They create the conditions out of which productivity can emerge allowing humanity to reach its highest potential. Along with the development of the aforementioned steps towards being, Fromm recognized that analyzing the unconscious aspects of the society was integral to a critical understanding of and transformation of both that particular society and the individual members of it. He declared: “Unless I am able to analyze the unconscious aspects of the society in which I live, I cannot know who I am, because I don’t know which part of me is not me” (Fromm, 1992, p. 78). Thus it is clear that a critical understanding of society is crucial to the overcoming of oppression and to a positive form of being or becoming, but it is also clear that the inner, and often unconscious, conflicts of the individual must be equally understood and dealt with.

THE PRAXIS OF BEING AND POSITIVE FREEDOM Love, reason, and productive activity are one’s own psychic forces that arise and grow only to the extent that they are practiced; They cannot be consumed, bought or possessed like the objects of having, but can only be practiced, ventured upon, performed. (Funk cited in Fromm, 1992, pp. 8-9) We began this chapter with Fromm’s definition of positive freedom and an example of the dialectic of ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom unto’ applied to freedom of speech. In paraphrase, one can be free of unjust laws that prohibit freedom of speech but still have nothing worth saying (negative freedom). Yet the social political conditions derived from this freedom create external conditions to further inward freedom. Hopefully both aspects will result in the spontaneous formation of new thoughts, words and actions that can create inward freedom and connectedness to others (positive freedom). The summary of actions in the above section, singularity of focus, awakeness, awareness and the practice of inward quietness that leads to a lifestyle of mediation are all aspects of the kind transformative praxis that can provide the environment for the growth of positive freedom. When all these “steps” are considered as one holistic practice, it helps us envision how we might apply them to Fromm’s example of negative/positive freedom of speech. First of all the ability to focus on one thing, is not so much a matter of mind over matter exertion. It is a matter of yielding to curiosity, or ideas that grow on the more you give yourself to them. This leads to singularity of intent and a quest to discover more. In the process, awakeness, awareness, rejection of the given will hopefully lead to the quietness of incubation. Remember, it is a matter of yielding, of bringing to birth. It is in the inner quiet of incubation that connections between past experience and new created thoughts are formed. In order for these networks to be established, time for reflection is essential and can occur in many forms. Sometimes incubation occurs in a half dream state of

28 DIALECTIC OF FREEDOM AND PRAXIS OF BEING sleep or while driving, walking or gardening. The mathematicians Changeux and Connes (1995) give an excellent summary of the incubation process that is worth noting here. The process begins with focused conscious intention followed by a period of setting this direct concentration aside. There must be a time allowance for germination or incubation. Often an unexpected solution will make itself known. This is followed up with a time of critical assessment (pp. 75-79). The process they describe parallels well with Fromm’s praxis of being. It is worth returning at this point to the emphasis in Fromm’s definition of positive freedom as the ability to spontaneously connect to others. Steps toward being have a relational/horizontal dimension as well as an individual/vertical dimension. One example of how both aspects might be experienced out of the above mentioned steps might be discovered through an enhanced ability to ask questions of others in ways that draw out personal narratives, that break through presumptions and prejudices that result in forming new bonds and relationships. Yes there are actions that can be taken in “being” which can lead to a lifestyle of singularly focused awakened, awareness, where inner clamor gives way to new thoughts and original ideas, practical ways to be productive, to relate to others in the quality of love of self and others that Fromm sees as essential to positive freedom. As in the bike riding analogy, the dialectic of freedom in motion uses and overcomes the gravity of alienation and maintains the outward/inward balance of both aspects of freedom through productive love of self and others in the praxis of being. Erich Fromm maintains that the achievement of the ideals of knowledge, brotherly love, reduction of suffering, independence, and responsibility, constitute the most fundamental conditions for happiness and freedom. Indeed, as Fromm (1950) contends, these are essentially the fundamental ideals which comprise the ethical core of all great philosophies on which Eastern and Western culture are based (1950). Because these norms are considered so fundamental to human development, they should increasingly become the focus of our shared culture in ways that inspire each of us in our journey toward the unfolding of our full potential as individuals in a positively free democracy.

REFERENCES

Changeux, J., & Connes, A. (1995). Conversations on mind, matter, and math. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Freire, P. (1974). Education for critical consciousness. New York, NY: Seabury Press. Fromm, E. (1941/1994). Escape from freedom. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Fromm, E. (1947). Man for himself. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications. Inc. Fromm, E. (1955). The Sane Society. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co. Fromm, E. (1956). The Art of Loving. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Fromm, E. (1976). To have or to be? New York, NY: Bantam. Fromm, E. (1992). The art of being. New York, NY: Continuum. Hegel, G. W. F. (1840/1991). The philosophy of history (J. Sibree, Trans.). New York, NY: Prometheus Books. Krishnamurti, J. (1953). Education & the significance of life. San Francisco, CA: Harper.

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Snauwaert, D. (2001). Rediscovering the lost dimension of education:7 Toward a pedagogy of being. Paper presented at the IX International Conference on Holistic Education. Guadalajara, Mexico, November 16, 2001. Spencer, L., & Krauze, A. (1999). Introducing Hegel. Cambridge Icon Books.

Vicki Dagostino University of Toledo

Robert Lake Georgia Southern University

30

SEYED JAVAD MIRI

3. HUMANISM AND SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION IN A FROMMESQUE PERSPECTIVE

INTRODUCTION The question of humanism and its relation to sociological imagination is as old as the discipline of sociology. However, the history of this relation seems to go back to Polish philosopher-turned-sociologist, Florian Znaniecki. It is a methodology which treats its objects of study and its students that are human, as composites of values and systems of values. In certain contexts, the term is related to other sociological domains such as anti-positivism. Humanistic sociology seeks to throw light on questions such as, “What is the relationship between a man of principle and a man of opportunism?” It can be seen that any answer to such a question must draw on experience and facts from many disciplines. In the word of Tom Arcaro (1995), humanistic sociology is anger at unreason. It is a belief in human dignity and worth. It is a personal yet rigorously professional effort to push the “is” just a little closer to the “ought.” To bridge between the realm of Is-ness and Ought-ness is what Fromm tried to accomplish. In the following, we shall look at his normative humanism which, in the words of Albert Einstein, considered the goal of science to be the realization of a world where people are more embarrassed by shoddy ideas and values than by homes or clothing.

NORMATIVE HUMANISM AND THE QUESTION OF WELL-BEING Since time immemorial philosophers and theologians have been thinking about the possibility of a Good Society and Well-Being as well as Welfare of human individuals and Fromm is one of the most diligent contemporary social thinkers who has attempted to tackle these issues in a systematic fashion within the parameters of normative humanism under the rubric of mental health in the humanistic sense, as in his view these issues are deeply interrelated with the question of life’s meaning. In Fromm’s (1955) perspective, we must arrive at a different concept of mental health; the very person who is considered healthy in the categories of an alienated world, from the humanistic standpoint appears as the sickest one. (pp. 203-204) Mental health, in the humanistic sense, is characterized by the ability to love and to create, by the emergence from the incestuous ties to family and nature, by a sense

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 31–35. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. SEYED JAVAD MIRI of identity based on one’s experience of self as the subject and agent of one’s powers, by the grasp of reality inside and outside of ourselves, that is, by the development of objectivity and reason. The aim of life is to live it intensely, to be fully born, to be fully awake. To emerge from the ideas of infantile grandiosity into the conviction of one’s real though limited strength; to be able to accept the paradox that every one of us is the most important thing there is in the universe- and at the same time not more important than a fly or a blade of grass. To be able to love life, and yet to accept death without terror; to tolerate uncertainty about the most important questions with which life confront us- and yet to have faith in our thought and feeling, inasmuch as they are truly ours. Fromm (1955) explains that: In other words, the well-being of a human person is possible to appreciate by reference to love, reason and faith [as the healthy person is the one who respects life, his own and that of his fellow man. (pp. 203-204)

HUMANISM The word has been defined differently by various thinkers within a mixture of distinct intellectual paradigms and also shunned by many religious thinkers in Iran and elsewhere, such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2001) and Syed Naghib al-Attas (1978, 1995). These latter groups have shunned the position of humanism due to a particular definition which seems to suggest a humano-centered world rather than theo-centered world that is purported to be the true message of revelations. However, Fromm seems to present a more nuanced version of humanism which does not exclude religious concerns while wholeheartedly include Sartre’s vision of humanism. He believes that man is indeed forced to choose between a renewal of humanism- of taking seriously the spiritual foundations of our … culture, which is a foundation of humanism or- having no future at all. (Fromm, 1994, p. 78).In other words, humanism is of pivotal significance in the thought of Fromm and it plays a very important role in the constitution of his theories on self and society. Thus, we need to understand what he means by humanism if we are interested in unearthing the underlying elements of self and society and also the dialectics which exist between them and formulated in his vision of reality. His vision of humanism is understandable if we take into consideration the opposite of humanism, which in the Frommesque perspective is termed as “modern paganism,” i.e. the absence of supreme concern. In other words: (I)n … these days most people who try to avoid the answer [to the question of how to achieve unity and overcome separateness] and who fill the time with all the many things that we call entertainment or diversion or leisure time or … (Fromm, 1994, p. 76) Fromm seems to suggest that New Paganism, which has led to an unbearable sense of alienation in the contemporary fabric of industrial society, is due to the “absence of supreme concern” in the constitution of self and society. However, the question is what are the elementary components of this supreme concern which in the

32 HUMANISM AND SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

Frommesque perspective is considered to be the underlying principle of humanism? In Fromm’s (1994) view, humanism means “the supreme concern for the unfolding of those qualities by virtue of which man is man” (p. 97). These qualities by virtue of which an individual is able to progress to the heights of humanity are the essences of sacred traditions across the globe. In addition, Fromm believes that modern paganism has targeted these human qualities by virtue of which man could traverse the thorny path of self-realization or humanization of self and society. Fromm (1994) makes a comparison between the sociological concept of alienation and the theological concept of idolatry and in the ecumenical spirit suggests that [today] we witness the rise of a new form of anti-humanism, [namely that] of (frequently highly abstract and/or rational) idolatry. This new idolatry does not present itself any longer in the guise of old pagan religions, but as a new paganism that hides quite frequently under the cover of the great Churches and builds what is the essence of anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Moslem, and anti-Buddhist religiosity. (p. 97) In other words, the humanism Fromm is endorsing is apparently similar to anthropologies which are embedded in the fabric of traditional religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism which take as their supreme concern the unfolding of divine qualities by virtue of which the human self is born as Vicegerent, Godhead, Bodhisattva or so on and so forth. However, we need to revisit the concept of Idolatry in the Frommian frame of reference and compare it with Alienation as understood by Fromm, as this would enable us to reconstruct the latent possibilities of a Frommesque social theory of religion or Frommian sociology of religion.

HUMANISTIC RELIGION VERSUS AUTHORITARIAN RELIGION As Sadr (2005) eloquently argues in his memorable work Religions at the Service of Humanity, we tend to believe that various religious traditions are distinguishable by reference to their respective founding fathers and this ingrained conviction is demonstrable in most historiographies of religious studies where religions are categorized as Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism and Buddhism and so on and so forth. However, Fromm tends to argue differently on the nature of religions based on the modalities rather than formalities such as founding fathers or theological canonicities. In a little volume entitled Psychoanalysis and Religion, Fromm (1978) spells out the differences between authoritarian and humanistic religion in the following fashion. [the] essential element in authoritarian religion and in the authoritarian religious experience is the surrender to a power transcending man. The main virtue of this type of religion is obedience; its cardinal sin is disobedience. Just as the deity is conceived as omnipotent or omniscient, man is conceived

33 SEYED JAVAD MIRI

as being powerless and insignificant. Only as he can gain grace or help from the deity can he feel strength. Submission to a powerful authority is one of the avenues by which man escapes from his feeling of aloneness and limitation. In the act of surrender he loses his independence and integrity as an individual but he gains the feeling of being protected by an awe-inspiring power of which, as it were, he becomes a part. (p. 35) Humanistic religion, on the other hand, is centered around man and his strength. Man must develop his power of reason in order to understand himself, his relationship to his fellow men and his position in the universe. He must recognize the truth, both with regard to his limitations and potentialities. He must develop his powers of love for others as well as for himself and experience the solidarity of all living beings. Man’s aim in humanistic religion is to achieve the greatest strength, not the greatest powerlessness; virtue is self-realization, not obedience. Faith is certainty of conviction based on one’s own experience of thought and feeling, not assent to propositions on credit of the proposer. The prevailing mood is that of joy, while the prevailing mood in authoritarian is that of sorrow and guilt (Fromm, 1978, p. 37). In other words, the different modalities are demonstrable within the same religious traditions and we should not mechanistically demarcate between religions based on assumed identities which could be products of historical complexities or inessential intricacies. This approach seems to be very close to what Rumi argues on the question of cordial convergence over against lingual resemblance as there could be commensurability between a Hindu and a Turk, despite the lingual divergence while there could be incommensurability between two Turks, in spite of their similar lingual backgrounds (Ashraf, 2012). To put it otherwise, the differences between religions should not be treated exoterically and formally (i.e. based on the forms of different religions) but esoterically and existentially (i.e. based on personal experiences of life). The Frommesque perspective on religion, histories of religions and religious experience could surely galvanize the dormant discourses of sociology of religions which are dominant in academia today. Of course, this is an issue which sociologists of religions should take into consideration if they are interested in staying relevant as relevancy is one of the most important dimensions of academic discourses in a postmodern global context of post-capitalism. In other words, the Frommesque legacy is what social theory of after-tomorrow may realize in the course of the 21st century.

REFERENCES

Al-Attas, S. M. N. (1978). Islam and secularism. Kuala Lumpur: Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia. Al-Attas, S. M. N. (1995). Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An exposition of the fundamental elements of the worldview of Islam. Kuala Lumpur: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC).

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Arcaro, T. (1995). What is humanistic sociology, anyway? Paper presented at the Presidential Plenary Session of the annual meeting of the Association for Humanistic Sociology held in Columbus, Ohio, October 25-29, 1995. Ashraf, M. I. (2012). Rumi’s holistic humanism: The timeless appeal of the great mystic poet. Albany, NY: SUNY Press Fromm, E. (1955). The sane society. New York, NY: Rinehart and Winston. Fromm, E. (1978). Psychoanalysis and religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fromm, E. (1994). On being human (Foreword by Rainer Funk). New York, NY: Continuum. Sadr, S. M. (2005). Religions at the service of humanity: Probing into issues of religion and contemporary global issues. Tehran, Iran: Cultural and Research Institute.

Seyed Javad Miri Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies Tehran, Iran

35

MICHAEL J. THOMPSON

4. NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE

Knowledge and Judgment in Erich Fromm’s Social Theory

INTRODUCTION It is unfortunate that Erich Fromm’s work has been marginalized in contemporary social and political theory, not to mention the empirical studies of social and political psychology. His various studies into the social-psychological character of modern individuals as well as his explorations into the dynamics of the personality system under the conditions of modern capitalist society remains an accomplishment of insight second to none. But the intellectual fashions and fads that make up our current self-understanding should be seen as the negation of Fromm’s ideas and critical approach more generally. A reconstruction of Fromm’s social theory should lead us to refocus the energies of critical theory as a discipline, to rethink the current trends that have come to dominate not only critical theory, but the non-critical social sciences as well. Even further, the dynamics of Fromm’s social theory allows for a more robust understanding of what it means to articulate an emancipatory interest within the context of the empirical social sciences. He elaborates a form of thinking that establishes a crucial dialectical connection between the descriptive, factual statements of modern subjectivity and culture on the one hand with the evaluative, ethical judgment of those forms of life. It is this, I will seek to show, that remains Fromm’s most enduring, most salient contribution to critical social theory. Critical theory had always contested the view, promulgated by the empirical, analytic, and positivistic trends in the social sciences, that a purity of knowledge was possible only under the conditions of the separation of facts from values, a problem that plagues all of modern ethics and social sciences.1 Grounded in the Kantian distinction between theories of knowledge on the one hand and ideas about values and norms on the other, the idea that normative judgments must be separated from empirical facts has become the cornerstone of mainstream contemporary social science. The idea that there is a form of knowledge that is able –––––––––––––– 1 Albrecht Wellmer correctly notes the difficulty of this problem when he says that “any attempt to restore the validity of an idea of practical reason in the empirical social sciences in an epoch that has been rendered scientistic, must appear prima facie as a sacrilege to the criterion of the rationality of a science which has laboriously enough emancipated itself from the normative modes of thought of social philosophy and the philosophy of history” (Wellmer, 1990, p. 295 and passim).

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 37–58. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. MICHAEL J. THOMPSON to move beyond this dichotomy was a crucial theme of the methodological writings of Adorno and Horkheimer, and a theme that I propose can lead us to a radical form of ethical reasoning. The reason for this is clear: there can be no critical social science that does not possess, in some sense, a normative foundation, a foundation in the questions of practical philosophy. But practical philosophy as an autonomous enterprise was seen as a defunct enterprise since Hegel’s critique of Kantian morality and, even further, Marx’s analysis of the dynamics of social development and subject formation. The central aim of this kind of critical social science is therefore not only to make knowledge claims, but knowledge claims that are grounded in normative understandings of social life––in short, to provide an antidote to the strong pull of reification. To this end, I will seek to defend the thesis that Erich Fromm’s concept of critical theory, as evinced in his various studies of the pathologies of capitalist society, is underwritten by a methodological perspective counter to the trends in mainstream social science. Even more, I want to suggest that this methodological perspective relates directly to a conception of critical thought that goes beyond method and into the sphere of a normative philosophical anthropology, one that is in direct contrast to current trends in critical theory. Fromm’s basic, underlying methodological and epistemological insight is that facts and values cannot be separated but have to be sublated into a more comprehensive, more holistic understanding of the nature of human beings and their sociality than non-critical theories of society allow. From this, it follows that knowledge and judgment are dialectically related in such a way that any critical social science cannot ignore its import. For Fromm, knowledge and judgment serve as the means to know what is properly human and what is pathological; it serves as a method that can delineate not only a judgment of value, but also an empirical hypothesis about descriptive and causal claims. I will focus on Fromm’s idea of “normative humanism” which I believe serves as a model and exemplar of the kind of dialectical thinking that has been lost in contemporary critical theory and to which critical thought must return if it will be able to remain a means of making critical value judgments in the face of the pathological effects of modern capitalism on human individuality and freedom.

A CRISIS OF CRITIQUE AND JUDGMENT Judgment is the crucial activity by which we are able to make claims about the normative rightness or wrongness of things. It pertains to the moral, evaluative questions and concerns that individuals have about the nature of their personal and social worlds. Critique is the ability to articulate reasons behind things and about things, to explain and to understand. It is the activity of underwriting our world- views with reasons, with explaining the world around us rationally, and with seeking explanations about the causes and rational structure of phenomena, natural, social, or otherwise. It is my contention that traditional critical theorists, working within the structure of thought initiated by Hegel and continued by Marx, saw these two functions as dialectically related, that the very idea of “critical theory”

38 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE meant, and still must mean, that the rational, “critical” explanation of the social world contained within itself the normative guidelines for its own evaluation. In this sense, there are no a priori categories we can use to explain the world nor are there are any a priori values claims that can be used to orient judgment or evaluative thought. Rather, the very criterion for understanding the empirical nature of the social world can only be conceived through its effects on human beings and their developmental capacities.2 Judgment asks: how do we know what is right and wrong? What is healthy and what is pathological? What is desirable as opposed to what should be opposed? On the other hand, critique asks: what causes this phenomenon? What mechanisms are responsible for generating this event? How is a particular state related to and determined by another cause or force? Critical judgment can therefore be seen as those kinds of judgment that take into account the causal structures of things rather than the non-foundationalist view of pluralist, intersubjective consensus as the basis for judging. The basic idea that undergirds modern social scientific thinking and epistemology is that these two categories of question are to be seen as fundamentally separate. Not only was it necessary to keep them apart for the sake of a kind of purity of knowledge––i.e., to prevent the values of the researcher from biasing rational inquiry––but also, and to a certain extent more importantly, to prevent specific political values from gaining hegemony within the academic and political establishment. Historically, this was directed against Marxism and “scientific socialism.” By setting a domain of value- neutral inquiry, it became easier to delegitimize these intellectual forces as “biased” and “non-neutral,” and hence as an invalid form of science (cf. Proctor, 1991, p. 99ff). It was Max Weber who most clearly outlined and forcefully imprinted this separation of fact and value on modern social science and theory highlighting its importance for grounding a modern social scientific method. For Weber, the fusing of values and facts was problematic because he wanted to protect the sphere of values from the hard facts of social reality as well as the “purity” of science from the biasing influence of the world-views of the researcher. At the backbone of neo- Kantian philosophy was the project of keeping the two spheres at bay in order to preserve an element of human reflection and judgment away from the influences of facts. The protection of the value-field from the realm of empirical reality was therefore not meant to instill a sterility to social scientific enterprise, but, rather, to protect ethical postulates from being limited by factual considerations. As Weber notes, “it can never be the task of an empirical science to provide binding norms and ideals from which directives for immediate practical activity can be derived” (Weber, 1963, p. 358). Even more, Weber’s argument holds that values are something that are not objectively valid in the sense that facts can be. Rather, the key feature of normative values is that they are non-objective, relative, held by individuals subjectively. Pre- modern cultures and religion (what Weber termed “positive religions” or –––––––––––––– 2 Amartya Sen (2009) has recently tried to make an argument along similar lines for a theory of justice that keeps to these lines.

39 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON

“dogmatically bound sects”) have been able to articulate values systems that are objectively valid for the members of those societies in which such religions operate. But for all others, “cultural ideals which the individual wishes to realize and ethical obligations which he should fulfill do not, in principle, share the same status” (Weber, 1963, p. 363). This means that values become unhinged from anything positive, anything that can be seen in objective terms. This is because values are seen to be anchored in the subjective orientations of individuals and their relations to the world; they cannot, therefore, obtain any degree of objectivity since they are constantly being revised and changed. There is an inherent incommensurability to all forms of value-ideas and normative standards which render them unable to be comprehensively binding on others. 3 Values, norms, cultural ideals (or Wertideen for Weber) all constitute a field where individuals are able to create their own values, their own normative principles, and, hence, their own authentic sense of guiding their own lives. “The fate of an epoch which has eaten of the tree of knowledge,” writes Weber, “is that it must know that we cannot learn the meaning of the world from the results of its analysis, be it ever so perfect; it must rather be in a position to create this meaning itself” (Weber, 1963, p. 363). Such a paradigm shift in social-scientific epistemology meant that the spheres of critique and judgment were to be seen as estranged from one another, something which has persistently evoked reaction from critical theorists.4 The split between a critical scientific investigation into the forces of capitalist societies on the one hand and the moral judgment of the institutions and systems that comprise them have grown ever farther apart to the extent that it is seen as illegitimate to make judgment claims in social scientific analysis. But at the same time, the sphere of judgment has been cleaved from the empirical facts and functional forces that continue to shape modern subjectivity and culture. For this reason, more contemporary thinkers have sought to ground a concept of judgment not in any kind of objective, generally valid set of values, but have instead sought to pursue Weber’s basic thesis that values must be worked out through dispute, through argument, outside of the realm of social facts. Hannah Arendt’s social philosophy is an example of this tendency, something that has taken a strong hold on contemporary political theory and which has had a decisive influence on the direction of critical theory. Arendt suggests that the concept of “action” be –––––––––––––– 3 “Normative standards of value can and must be the objects of dispute in a discussion of a problem of social policy because the problem lies in the domain of general cultural values” (Weber, 1963, p. 362). 4 The alternative critique of Weber’s views and modern social scientific rationality came from conservatives. Leo Strauss’ argument against this trend is convincing: “One evades serious discussion of serious issues by the simple device of passing them off as value problems. One even creates the impression that all important human conflicts are value conflicts, whereas, to say the least, many of these conflicts arise out of men’s very agreement regarding values” (Strauss, 1959, p. 23). Strauss also holds Weber to account more strongly on this point: “The prohibition against value judgments in social science would lead to the consequence that we are permitted to give a strictly factual description of the overt acts that can be observed in concentration camps and perhaps an equally factual analysis of the motivation of the actors concerned: we would not be permitted to speak of cruelty” (Strauss, 1953, p. 57).

40 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE construed as an inherently political activity in which different individuals come to debate, share opinions, and seek to persuade one another of their positions. Since politics needs to be conceived as an “essential and nonreducible plurality and variability of opinions” (Bernstein, 1983, p. 215), judgment comes to be detached entirely from the context of social structures and forces. Rather, judgment comes to mean the ways in which we shape and form opinions through deliberative action: “I form an opinion by considering a given issue from different viewpoints, by making present to my mind the standpoints of those who are absent. … The more people’s standpoints I have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and the better I can imagine how they would feel and think if I were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinion” (Arendt, 1954, p. 237). Arendt then goes on to define judgment as the mental activity that occurs when individuals are engaged in this kind of action, of politics itself in her terms: “the capacity to judge is a specifically political ability in exactly the sense denoted by Kant, namely, the ability to see things not only from one’s own point of view but in the perspective of all those who happen to be present” (Arendt, 1954, p. 218). Judgment is not about “facts,” nor is it about truth, which she sees as essentially “coercive.” 5 Rather, judgment is a kind of intersubjective-phenomenological process, a “sharing-the-world-with-others” that enables us to orient ourselves in the world and to live together. Politics ceases to be a question of domination and of the problems of obtaining freedom and instead becomes embedded in culture, in that realm which is (somehow) devoid of coercion and of domination: “Culture and politics, then, belong together because it is not knowledge or truth which is at stake, but rather judgment and decision, the judicious exchange of opinion about the sphere of public life and the common world, and the decision what manner of action is to be taken in it” (Arendt, 1954, p. 219). Here we see the move toward a new paradigm of political judgment: one conceived as external to the structural relations of social power that give society its very substance, that indeed gives politics its very meaning. It is giving primacy to politics over society. Arendt’s redefinition of judgment therefore moves us further away from the quest for some kind of objectively valid values that can ground the capacity for judgment in the sense that we do not consider the ways in which the opinions of individuals have –––––––––––––– 5 This arises from Arendt’s move toward Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft as a means to establish an epistemic ground for political judgment. Kant’s purpose in the early sections of that work is to establish the foundations for “taste,” for aesthetic judgment which Kant sees as the only means to reconcile subject and object. Arendt’s move toward the aesthetic of Kant can be seen as a crucial move toward establishing a theory of political judgment that is more devoid of questions of social fact than even Weber would have conceived. Arendt notes that Kant’s purpose was not to justify private tastes, but rather to make judgments that can appeal to common sense, to the world itself, “an objective datum, something common to all its inhabitants” (Arendt, 1954: 219). This should not lead us to believe, however, that she means that values can become objectively valid or true, but rather that they must appeal to the ways that others see and conceive of the world. This forces us out of a private, subjective abstraction from social processes and into an intersubjective abstraction where we rely on the phenomenological relatedness with others rather than on the specific social mechanisms that define, distort, and constrain our individual and cultural development.

41 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON been irrationally formed by forms of social power. For her, the concern of judgment is ungrounded, it becomes dependent upon the intersubjective exchange of reasons, feelings, intuitions, or whatever else that a plurality of individuals come to embrace. Habermas would come to make this turn in critical theory, arguing that there is a “cognitive content” to a morality that can be established through discursive forms of interaction.6 Since normative claims are articulated through language, Habermas maintains that the discursive procedures that individuals use to justify their claims with others can serve as the foundation and the criterion for justified norms. Judgment, morality in general, therefore comes to possess a cognitive content since individuals are forced to justify their normative claims to others. Ultimately, only those norms are valid which (i) meet with the acceptance of all concerned within the discourse, and (ii) when the consequences of that norm are “jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion” (Habermas, 1998, p. 42). The idea that judgment is an activity of rational discourse about the moral norms holds with Weber’s thesis that values are a matter of dispute, that they have no objective validity. Even though Habermas claims that the cognitive content of morality makes it plain that there is a certain objectivity of values, only when others come to see them as valid as well, there is no ontological grounding for validity claims outside of the structure of language. Judgment, in this sense, is more epistemically demanding than on Arendt’s account, but there is still a separation between the values and social facts; moral and political judgment is still seen as separate from any objective features of human life and social processes.7 For classical critical theory, by contrast, there could be no separation between critique and judgment. Both needed to be seen as dialectically related and sublated. There can be no separation of “facts” from “values”; and there can be no kind of praxis that is not tied to, embedded within an inquiry into the objective, social- structural conditions that shape subjectivity and our cognitive and evaluative capacities. Max Horkheimer, in his seminal essay on the method and purpose of “critical theory,” argues this explicitly: The scholarly specialist “as” scientist regards social reality and its products as extrinsic to him, and “as” citizen exercises his interest in them through political articles, membership in political parties or social service organizations, and participation in elections. But he does not unify these two activities, and his other activities as well, except, at best, by psychological interpretation. Critical thinking, on the contrary, is motivated today by the effort really to transcend the tension and to abolish the opposition between the individual’s purposefulness, spontaneity, and rationality, and those work- process relationships on which society is built. (Horkheimer, 1972, p. 210)

–––––––––––––– 6 For his indebtedness to Arendt, see Habermas (1985). 7 Also see Ferrara (2008) and Azmanova (2012) for more recent, but basically derivative, approaches to the question of judgment.

42 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE

For Horkheimer, the foundation of critical theory is the move toward understanding critique not as a separate faculty of knowledge but rather as a deeper, thicker type of thought which seeks to render some idea of the capacities of human beings with the irrationality of the social systems in which they are ensconced: “Critical thought has a concept of man as in conflict with himself until this opposition is removed. If activity governed by reason is proper to man, then existent social practice, which forms the individual’s life down to its least details, is inhuman, and this inhumanity affects everything that goes on in the society” (Horkheimer, 1971, p. 210). Horkheimer’s basic contention is that any theory of society that does not consider and account for the social conditions that shape human life is insufficient. The idea that the social facts that we consider are to be looked upon with an evaluative consideration goes against the very logic of the modern social sciences and its insistence on the separation between “facts” and “values.” The basic problem that frames this discussion is the question of the possibility of values, then can be described as “objectively valid” as well as causal knowledge of social phenomena and social facts that have the same status of objective validity. In this sense, the primary problem is how to articulate knowledge claims that in some sense escape the problem of relativism or in some other sense, the Critical theorists railed against this tendency, seeing it as a path to abstraction, taking us away from the critical opposition to the social mechanisms and structures that shape individuality and the context of cultural life. As I have been arguing, contemporary social theory and the social sciences more broadly tend to see these two activities or practices as separate, leaving questions of judgment outside of questions of explanation. But at an even more serious level, the general texture of late capitalist societies can be described as having repressed the faculty of judgment almost entirely, leaving questions of explanation and fact to experts on the one hand and a bankrupt capacity for rational reflection for mass society on the other. This problem is no less a concern in the area of contemporary critical theory where we are asked to replace the critical inquiry into the structure of the social order and its pathological effects on subject-formation and instead adopt the view that discursive or recognitive relations can serve an emancipatory interest in contemporary societies. I see these three trends––that of mainstream social science, the contours of everyday life and culture, and the communicative turn in contemporary critical theory––as evincing a crisis of the faculties of both critique and judgment in the sense that the dialectical relation between them has been driven asunder. What is powerful in Fromm’s analysis of modern, capitalist society is his ability to continue the critique of capitalism as a social order that is capable of distorting, mutilating, shaping man in defective ways. This brings attention back to the problem of distinguishing between a materialist understanding of human subjects as shaped by the socio-economic structures of any given historical formation; and second, that of the charge of a priori values as opposed to the social facts that constitute human forms of freedom and action. In this sense, the judgment paradigm pushed by contemporary theorists is unable to ground claims in anything

43 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON objectively valid outside of the intersubjective context of discourse. In contrast to this conception of judgment, I want to juxtapose Fromm’s theoretical insights to chart a path toward a more radical, more morally compelling conception of radical ethics: an objective ethics that is grounded in the rational, ontological, and material realities and dynamics of individual and social life. This is achieved, I will argue, by overcoming dialectically the split between facts and values and the abstract character of individual or intersubjective life-worlds separated from the socio- relational contexts that shape them instead moving toward an understanding of ethical postulates that can be considered valid only when they appeal to the structures of socialization and socio-relational contexts that constitute a genuinely free individuality. I submit that it is only through this path of analysis that we can arrive at a truly emancipatory ethics that can inform a rational radical politics.

FROMM’S NORMATIVE HUMANISM AND CRITICAL THEORY Fromm’s entire concept of critical theory, of ethics, and of social and cultural critique is premised on the thesis that there exist, in some sense, normative statements about the nature of human beings that are objectively valid and which must serve as an anchor to any theory of society if it is to be understood as critical in any sense. Given the discussion above, this will be a heavy burden to justify. The allure of deliberative and communicative approaches to political theory and political praxis seem to have eclipsed this older paradigm of critique and judgment. But my central contention here is that this is a mistake, that the collapse of social critique, the continued atrophy of moral revulsion and the paucity of social action against the contemporary social order is due to the collapse of the very paradigm that Fromm’s social theory epitomizes. For Fromm, there exist universal criteria from which we can make judgments, construct critique, establish a ground from which to grasp the pathological, destructive features of the modern social order. And this is itself related to a specific conception of the needs of human beings, of relatedness and of creativity, and of specific forms of relatedness and creativity. Fromm orients his social theory against what he sees as “sociological relativism” which postulates that “each society is normal inasmuch as it functions, and that pathology can be defined only in terms of the individual’s lack of adjustment to the ways of life in his society” (Fromm, 1955, p. 12). At the heart of Fromm’s approach, by contrast, is an emphasis on what he sees to be specific laws of development that human being all share, laws that are to be understood in psychic no less than in social terms: The species “man,” can be defined not only in anatomical and physiological terms; its members share basic psychic qualities, the laws which govern their mental and emotional functioning, and the aims for a satisfactory solution of the problem of human existence … The real problem is to infer the core common to the whole human race from the innumerable manifestations of human nature, the normal as well as the pathological ones, as we can observe them in different individuals and cultures. The task is furthermore to

44 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE

recognize the laws inherent in human nature and the inherent goals for its development and unfolding. (Fromm, 1955, pp. 12-13) The dichotomy between what is “social” and what is “biological” is the chief error that mitigates against the fuller, more comprehensive and critical account of modern human pathologies: “the main passions and drives in man result from the total existence of man, that they are definite and ascertainable, some of them conducive to health and happiness, other to sickness and unhappiness. Any given social order does not create these fundamental strivings but it determines which of the limited number of potential passions are to become manifest or dominant” (Fromm, 1955, p. 14). Human subjectivity is not, in direct contrast to the postmodern social-constructivist view, created by individuals but is the result of the processual nature of the social order. There is no ready-made and fixed essence to man, but there is a universal set of fundamental capacities and drives that come into contact with the various relational matrices of any given social order. It is the dialectic of these two spheres that generates or produces the content of individual life. The emphasis on “normative humanism” therefore comes more sharply into focus once we grasp that there exists a specific set of characteristics that can qualify as healthy or unhealthy, that can be seen, in some objective sense, to be correct and right. The distortion of human subjectivity by the social forces of capitalism is, for Fromm, only glimpsed from the standpoint of an objective set of social-psychological processes that allow for the capacities that lie inherent in human beings to be made manifest, to become realized in any real sense. Fromm’s view is partly grounded in the view shared by Aristotle, Hegel, and Marx (cf. Thompson, 2011) that human development grounded in the social conditions that form human beings, largely through the nature of social relations. But it is also an attack on any kind of speculative understanding of human beings, based in the social scientific analysis of the traits and characteristics of man: “If we want to know what it means to be human, we must be prepared to find answers not in terms of different human possibilities, but in terms of the very conditions of human existence from which all these possibilities spring as possible alternatives. These conditions can be recognized as a result not of metaphysical speculation but of the examination of the data of anthropology, history, child psychology, individual and social psychology” (Fromm, 1968, pp. 59-60). 8 As Fromm sees it, this basic starting points shows that there is a particular social-psychological way of understanding the health of the individual. “There are many ways in which man can find a solution to the task of staying alive and of remaining sane. Some are better than others and some are worse. By ‘better’ is meant a way conducive to greater strength, clarity, joy, independence; and by ‘worse’ the very opposite” (Fromm, 1968, p. 61).

–––––––––––––– 8 Fromm also notes that “analytical social psychology seeks to understand the instinctual apparatus of a group, its libidinous and largely unconscious behavior, in terms of its socio-economic structure” (Fromm, 1970, p. 144).

45 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON

Returning the concept and approach of “normative humanism,” Fromm notes: If a person fails to attain freedom, spontaneity, a genuine expression of self, he may be considered to have a severe defect, provided we assume that freedom and spontaneity are the objective goals to be attained by every human being. If such a goal is not attained by the majority of members of any given society, we deal with the phenomenon of socially patterned defect. (Fromm, 1955, p. 15) The problematic issue of “fact” and “values” can now be seen to be overcome in a particular argument rooted not in the empirical features of human life, but rather in the dialectical nature of human conditions of life. For Fromm, this is achieved by conceptualizing the essence of human life as socio-relational as well as developmental and processual. In this sense, Fromm reworks Marx’s philosophical anthropology to expand its field of reference beyond labor as the nucleus of human action, absorbing this into other types of action. Central is the understanding of how these different relations contribute to the overall process of ego-formation within the individual. For Fromm, the central question of critical theory must be to determine the mechanisms that prevent the critical attitude from arising within members of mass society. The phenomenon to be explained is why resistance to capitalist forms of life have not increased with their increased penetration into everyday life, but instead give way to the acceptance of domination and authority. For Fromm, the explanation lies in the ways that economic forces are able to rearrange social relations––starting with the family (or primary relations) and moving upward to other forms of socialization, such as school, work, and so on (the secondary bonds or relations). The distortion of family relations––primarily the weakening of the father figure in the nuclear family––constitutes the weakening of the ego in the child leading to a lapse of critical consciousness and a tendency toward the herd mentality, to conformity, and to timidity to and acceptance of authority. In effect, the instrumentalized and authority-based forms of economic life of advanced capitalist society come to shape the very kinds of egos necessary for their own sustenance and reproduction. This would seem to smack of a kind of functionalist form of reasoning, but I am not sure that should be seen as problematic, especially for advocates of critical social theory (cf. Thompson, 2012). The attack on functionalist forms of reasoning in the social sciences was motivated, within the confines of critical theory at least, by a desire to revive the agency of individuals within an instrumentalized and seemingly technologically determined understanding of modernity. Habermas and others sought to reinvigorate the Kantian paradigm of rational agency and democratic forms of activity through intersubjective and participatory forms of rational solidarity and consensus. But this came at the price of viewing the pathological effects of capitalist social relations and their ability to warp the rational and epistemic capacities of subjects socialized under such relations. As Fromm was able to point to again and again, however, it is precisely these kinds of pathological social relations that must be rooted out and transformed prior to communicative forms of relations to be of any political use. Fromm does not work

46 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE within what thinkers such as Habermas (1976) and Honneth (1995) refer to as an exhausted paradigm of monological reason nor to a productionist paradigm where an individual is merely constituted by his labor on things.9 Rather, for Fromm, man’s “nature,” if we can call it such, is essentially relational in nature: his health is dependent on social relations, on the nature of those relations, and cannot be hinged upon communicative or recognitive relations alone.10 Indeed, communication and recognition are important features of social relations, but for Fromm, these are insufficient on their own to characterize the ways that social relations can shape and form subjectivity. What concerns Fromm the most is the ways that the universal and “fundamental” drives of the human being become filtered and directed by social relations. “The active and passive adaptation of the biological apparatus, the instincts, to social reality is the key conception of psychoanalysis, and every exploration into personal psychology proceeds from this conception” (Fromm, 1970, p. 141). To know what it means to be human means to know that his essence is relational and that this relational essence of human beings is something that has a dynamic effect on the formation of the character of any given person by structuring and shaping the directionality of the instinctual drives of the subject in specific ways. Of course, these relations are not under the control or direction of any one person, they are shaped and structured by the social and economic forces that come to predominate any given society.11 –––––––––––––– 9 Honneth, for example, argues that “[t]oday, social theory based on Marx can regain its critical potential only if the functionalist prioritizing of the economic sphere is dropped and the weight of the other domains of action is brought to bear” (Honneth, 1995: 5). Both of these views signify a decisive shift away from the ways that economic life condition and shape subjective action and cognition, a basic premise that Fromm has at the basis of his social theory. 10 For adherents of discourse ethics, this may seem problematic, since social relations, on their view, are essentially communicative. But Fromm suggests that the core problem is that such rational forms of communicative action and discourse are not possible within the force field of capitalist economic life. In this sense, the discursive theoretical position is simply abstract: it tells us nothing about how to correct or include reactionary forms of thought, or power relations grounded in property, or the strong forms of socialization crystallized in hierarchical, legal-rational institutions. A more difficult problem arises, however, when we consider the relation between Fromm’s emphasis on human relations and their essential nature for human freedom, development and health, and Honneth’s thesis of the “ethics of recognition.” For one thing, both seem to be saying that it is only through humane forms of social relationships that human can develop in a more robust way. But Fromm’s thesis is quite distinct in the sense that healthy, recognitive, creative forms of social relations require the removal of specific social and material conditions before that can be realized and even useful. Fromm’s roots in Marx means that his social theory is directed at the material forms of life that structure social relations and that these structures are tied historically to the structural-functional logics of capitalist economic life and institutions. Honneth’s rejection of Marxism therefore places his social theory in a problematic position because of his rejection of Marx’s understanding of the material dimensions of social relations. There can be recognition in any ethical sense within the sphere of capitalist social relations. For Fromm, on the other hand, Marx plays a more important, nay, a central role in this sense because it is the pathological social relations which will disable the capacity to perform either proper communicative or recognitive acts because these pathologies are rooted in “the whole social organization of man which directs his consciousness in certain directions and blocks him from being aware of certain facts and experiences” (Fromm, 1961, p. 21). 11 For an important discussion of the ontology of social relations and their impact on subject development, see Gould (1978).

47 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON

Fromm’s theory of social and psychological pathologies is therefore rooted in a methodological viewpoint that synthesizes and grounds knowledge claims and evaluative claims in a broader critical theory of society. Put another way, there is no way empirically to be able to know the fact of a social or personal pathology without understanding that such a pathology is the very inverse of the healthy social or personal characteristic. Just as a physician would know how damaged or sick, say, a human liver might be in a given patient only by knowing what a healthy, fully functional liver’s characteristics and functionings actually are, so with human beings and with society: the need for critical theory is the need for the correction of those pathological tendencies that exist within individuals and within our culture more broadly that are rooted in the irrational nature of our social order and its various socio-relational structures.12 Fromm sees this as Marx’s contribution to a particular form of consciousness, to a particular way of gaining knowledge about the world that is unalienated. For Marx, just as for Fromm, critical knowledge about the world can only be really formed once we have a concept of human essence: “Only on the basis of a specific concept of man’s nature can Marx make the difference between true and false needs of man. Purely subjectively, the false needs are experienced as being as urgent and real as the true needs, and from a purely subjective viewpoint, there could not be a criterion for the distinction” (Fromm, 1961, p. 62). This passage is significant because it shows the connection between delineating the ontological conception of human beings (i.e., the concept of man’s essence rather than his mere empirical existence) on the one hand and the ability to make judgments about the social world on the other. These two kinds of claims or kinds of knowledge cannot be neatly divided between “is” and “ought,” since each requires the other to be made properly, in Marx’s sense. When I come to conceive of human beings as social, as the essence of his being as social, then we see that the determining character of human consciousness, conscience, as well as cognitive powers, are the product of socialization. As Marx says in the Theses on Feuerbach, “the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of social relations” (Marx, 1959, p. 244). Even further, Fromm takes the Marxian hypothesis of the relation between “base and superstructure” as fundamental to his approach to critical theory. Whereas Marx argued that the human consciousness was determined by its social conditions, Fromm elaborates this model of explanation by incorporating Freud’s theory of the character structure of individuals. But character is not, Fromm tells us, the property of an individual alone since it is functionally dependent upon its interactions with others, on social relations: “character can be defined as the

–––––––––––––– 12 For an important, and alternative, analytic view on deriving normative statements from factual statements, see Searle (1964). Searle claims that a simple statement such as “I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars” can logically be seen to contain a factual claim form which a normative claim can be derived. Fromm’s view, by contrast, or the view that I think we can deduce from his writings, seems to me to be that statements about the nature of human life must contain a normative dimension within them if they are to communicate any kind of valid knowledge about the social world.

48 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE

(relatively permanent) form in which human energy is canalized in the process of assimilation and socialization” (Fromm, 1947, p. 67). Now, this idea of “canalization” is central since it refers to the ways in which the impulses, forms of cognition, the epistemic capacities of the individual, as well as the affective and cathectic dimensions of the personality are formed. The canalization is functionally dependent upon forms of “assimilation and socialization,” which means that the logic of our institutions – from informal ones such as the family a to more formal ones like school and work – have a powerful force in the formation of our character and upon our capacities to think and judge as well. Here Fromm is able to link the Marxian thesis of social relations as the essence of man with the dynamics of the personality as outlined by Freud. If we begin from the premise, as Fromm does and as I think we should as well, that the way to have critical knowledge of when there exists a pathological character is to know what a developed, healthy character is like, then we can ask what properties a healthy character should possess. Fromm’s answer to this is drawn first off of Freud and then from Marx. “The healthy person, for Freud, is the one who has reached the genital level (as opposed to the oral or anal levels of development) and who has become his own master, independent of father and mother, relying on his own reason and on his own strength” (Fromm, 1962, p. 69). From Marx’s German Ideology, we see a different dimension of human freedom, one that Fromm will incorporate into his theory of the free, healthy subject: “As long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him” (Marx, 1991, p. 220). Social relations can mutilate the individual, prevent his capacities and functionings from being realized: “If the circumstances in which the individual lives allow him only the one-sided development of a single quality at the expense of all the rest … then this individual achieves only a one-sided, crippled development.” (Marx, 1991, p. 87).13 Fromm sees Marx’s thesis as transcending Freud because at its core is the notion that “independence and freedom are rooted in the act of self-creation” (Fromm, 1962, p. 69). Unlike Freud, who saw the fate of man as tied to the repressive force of society, of “civilization,” Fromm’s social psychology places emphasis on processes of socialization that mutilate the implicit capacities and functions that human beings possess, albeit in nuce. 14 It is not only an independence from the commands of others and the dependence on their commands that makes the individual alienated and unfree, but also that freedom contains the power of creation, of being part of a social order that has human ends –––––––––––––– 13 Fromm argues that in these argument by Marx, we see a distinctively Marxian theory of human and social pathologies (Fromm, 1970, pp. 62-75). 14 Also influenced by Fromm on this point, see Horney (1945, 1950). More specifically, Horney, like Fromm, sees that “neuroses are brought about by cultural factors – which more specifically meant that neuroses are generated by disturbances in human relationships” (Horney, 1945, p. 12). Horney dwells on this latter theme, but ignores the relationship between these “disturbances” and the structural- functional imperatives of the social order of capitalism, something Fromm places at the center of his social theory.

49 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON as its ends, the common goal of the development of human powers as their particular, individual goals as well. A defective society, however, will reproduce pathological personalities, rendering this kind of freedom and personal health impossible. This leads us to one of the central concerns of Fromm’s social theory: that of domination and authority. It is important to note that Fromm’s emphasis on this theme was central because of its importance for understanding the political shift away from democratic forms of resistance and dissent and more contemporary forms of conformity and attitudinal adjustment to authority-relations. This is what Fromm calls the “authoritarian conscience” which he defines as “the voice of an internalized external authority” (Fromm, 1962, p. 148). Starting from the basic Kantian distinction between autonomy and heteronomy, we can see that this violates the more basic understanding in moral philosophy of what it means to be free: you are not the author of your own acts. But at a deeper level, it employs Max Weber’s thesis about the nature of modern, or “rational domination.” According to Weber, rational domination or authority is one where agent A is able to issue a command to agent B and agent B accepts that command as legitimate and as if it were emanating from his own conscience. The submission to authority therefore requires that the character of individuals are formed in such a way so that they will accept certain commands and not question them, but see them as valid on their face. Fromm’s thesis is that the defective forms of socialization come to infect the character by implanting, so to speak, the external authority into the subject: “In the formation of conscience, however, such authorities as the parents, the church, the state, public opinion are either consciously or unconsciously accepted as ethical and moral legislators whose laws and sanctions one adopts, thus internalizing them” (Fromm, 1962, p. 148). The internalization is not simply the result of routinization however. Rather, Fromm argues that it becomes embedded in the personality because of the alienated form of cultural life that individuals come to be exposed to. It is precisely the pathological forms of culture that motivate the individual to formulate a “pseudo-self”; a kind of escape from the instrumentalized, de-humanized world we come to inhabit: This particular mechanism is the solution that the majority of normal individuals find in modern society. To put it briefly, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patterns; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be. (Fromm, 1941, pp. 185-186) Fromm’s thesis about the nature of domination and its origins in defective forms of socialization means that we must seek to locate the kinds of social relations and logics that constitute defective socialization processes leading to subjects that are ripe for domination, who become submissive to it. But when we ask ourselves about the kinds of institutions, the kinds of practices, the kinds of relations that foster this “submissive mind,” I think it is important to look at the connection between the socialization processes of education and work as examples of the

50 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE defective forms of socialization that foster this kind of character in modern societies. First, it is the context of a capitalist economic system that shapes the defective socialization forms––defective because they fail to realize the potential powers and capacities of individuals. Fromm makes the distinction between two forms of personal power: between “domination” and “potency.” The latter being that form of power where the individual is able to realize his capacities as an individual; to achieve power over himself, to become authentically self- determined. This thesis––adopted from a synthesis of Aristotle and Marx––is at the heart of what Fromm terms a “normative humanism” or the metric by which we can understand and judge the social pathologies within society. When individuals en masse fail to attain freedom, self-determination, genuine personal development then we can speak of a “socially patterned defect.” In the end, a “normative humanism” comes to mean that normative and empirical forms of knowledge come to be dialectically related such that statements that confine themselves to either one or the other fail to grasp the total reality of the human condition. Recall the Hegelian thesis, first elaborated in the Phenomenology, that “absolute knowledge” was that form of knowledge that was able to penetrate beneath the sensory and empirical phases of knowledge, but also, and more importantly, to encompass the whole of the object being comprehended. Rather than isolating itself to mere moments or aspects of any object of inquiry, “speculative (begreifende) knowledge” was able to grasp conceptually the totality of any thing, all of its relations, elements, causal factors, etc. The epistemological strategy at the heart of Fromm’s social theory therefore sees that the genuine concept of human being must be seen as the dialectic between its relational dimension and its dimension of instinctual drives. There is no way to isolate any element of human action or existence and privilege that is a defining aspect of the whole; here again, remembering Hegel, we fall into abstraction by losing connection with the whole reality of human life. So with the relationship between critique and of judgment, of knowledge and of evaluation: these are moments in a more substantive, more robust form of social theory that enables us to reveal the mechanisms responsible for human pathologies and, consequently, the very understanding of why such a state is intrinsically wrong and in need of correction. Without this, critical theory would simply degenerate into another empirical social science, unable to guide through reason and through truth claims about the social world a more emancipatory interest.

CAN THERE BE OBJECTIVE VALUES? From this we can begin to see that Fromm’s account of human pathologies are rooted in the socio-relational contexts that come to shape and develop human subjectivity. Society precedes subjectivity, but the human being exists materially, as a biological entity. The central concern of normative humanism is to be able to make critical judgments about the ways in which specific forms of social life, structures of relations, and so on are able to shape the drives, consciousness, and emotional complex of the individual. The only way to be able to identify a

51 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON pathology or defect is to be able to know the essence, or nature of human life. “[W]e are not referring to an abstraction arrived at by the way of metaphysical speculations,” writes Fromm on this point, “like those of Heidegger and Sartre. We refer to the real conditions of existence common to man qua man, so that the essence of each individual is identical with the existence of the species” (Fromm, 1973, p. 27). The problem with capitalism as a social system lies in the various ways that it shapes those relational contexts that come to mutilate the basic drives of the individual, to direct one’s energies to ends that are not, in some sense, serving the total needs that humans possess. The imperatives of society become the cauldron of subject-formation, of identity, of character, and subsequent pathologies of the personality. Indeed, the dialectic of subject and object, the very pulse of critical theory, is here placed within a form of knowledge that synthesizes critique and judgment: it is only by understanding those kinds of relations, practices, norms, and so on that can promote healthy subject-formation that we can have a capacity for critical judgment. The idea of an objective ethics is therefore central to Fromm’s critical project and this makes sense since his social theory is predicated on the thesis that human beings require specific kinds of relations and forms of life in order to flourish.15 Hence, forms of judgment need to be linked to the critical understanding of the ways in which social conditions distort the processual realization of a free, healthy human subject. What is “objective” here is the fact that these human needs are themselves not subjectively defined, but common to the species of humans as a whole. I cannot simply define ethics or value concepts arbitrarily according to what I think society should look like or what I might want for my own personal welfare, or as the result of conversationally working it out among others through discursive inquiry. Moral concepts, values in general must be “objective” in the sense that they express needs that are common, universal, generalizable to others.16 Ethical statements or postulates must therefore be seen in relation to the objective interests that the needs of human beings make necessary. But this also means that ethical postulates can obtain an objective validity in the sense that we can point to specific and identifiable forms of social structures and relations that can be harmful to the development of human personalities.17

–––––––––––––– 15 It should be noted that in seeking to distill a theory of objective ethics from Fromm’s work, I distance myself from his more abstract and naïve ideas about social transformation, which I see as mistaken. Particularly, Fromm’s ideas about a return to Buddhist values, to a National Council on Conscience, and the like. However, although I agree with Jacoby (1975) on this broad point, I see it as mistaken to critique the attempt at constructing an ethics which can serve radical purposes in place of emphasizing instead the sexual character of psychoanalysis. 16 Fromm notes that “[s]uch value judgments, however, are not mere statements of the likes and dislikes of individuals, for man’s properties are intrinsic to the species and thus common to all men” (Fromm, 1947, p. 36). 17 Contrast this approach that I am developing here with those that express an “ethical naturalism” which is when “an ethical code emerges within the familiar universe where persons struggle in a material and social context. It functions to expedite the winning of that struggle. Its validity is then to be judged in terms of whether it furthers or impedes the realization of the possibilities opened up by the nature the person has in that context” (Fisk, 1980, p. 23). But this seems problematic, especially when we consider that part of the burden of a radical ethics is not only to be able to chart paths for dissent and (continued)

52 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE

This means I cannot come to know or determine such interests through the exchange of reasons, as the pragmatist would argue, nor through the simplification of human interests to the dichotomy of “pleasure” versus “pain” as the utilitarian would argue.18 In contrast, Fromm sees that our values must conform to what we know about the nature of man’s essence, as a member of the species, of what it means to be human. He relates this kind of ethical reasoning first to Spinoza and then to Marx. From the former we see that “[t]he objective character of Spinoza’s ethics is founded on the objective character of the model of human nature which, though allowing for many individual variations, is in its core the same for all men. Spinoza is radically opposed to authoritarian ethics. To him man is an end-in- himself and not a means for an authority transcending him. Value can be determined only in relation to his real interests, which are freedom and the productive use of his powers” (Fromm, 1947, p. 36). Fromm is attracted to the fact that Spinoza’s ethics are grounded in a rational conception of the nature of man. Indeed, although he sees Marx developing this rational concept of man’s nature in a more satisfying way, the basic proposition for an objective ethics remains the same: to see valid ethical postulates as those which harmonize with the needs of the human species. We cannot, therefore, apply utilitarian or deontological forms of ethical reasoning since these concepts would fail to be grounded in the objective characteristics and needs of human beings. Marx, in a footnote from the first volume of Capital makes this argument as well: “To know what is good for a dog, one must investigate the nature of dogs. This nature itself is not itself deducible from the principle of utility. Applying this to Man, he that would criticize all human acts, movements, relations, etc. according to the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature as modified in each historical epoch” (Marx, 1977, pp. 758-759). Now, this brings me back to the discussion elaborated above concerning the merging of critical knowledge and normative judgment. What Marx and Fromm are saying––and which is deeply indebted to Hegel’s philosophical logic–– is that to know any thing, means to know it within the functional context of a system of causes and relations. I cannot isolate any object––a particle of dust, a fork, a neurotic tendency––without understanding the way it fits into a particular

–––––––––––––– struggle, but, more importantly, to be able to endow individuals with a set of postulates or a framework for thinking through the veil of ideology and reified consciousness. Hence, Fromm’s view seems to me to lead us toward an objective ethics where we can refer back to the essence of socialized human individuality and its various features in order to determine valid ethical principles and postulates. 18 Fromm’s critique of Dewey is relevant here: “Like Spinoza, he postulates that objectively valid value propositions can be arrived at by the power of human reason; for him, too, the aim of human life is the growth and development of man in terms of his nature and constitution. But his opposition to any fixed ends leads him to relinquish the important position reached by Spinoza: that of a ‘model of human nature’ as a scientific concept” (Fromm, 1947, pp. 37-38). The pragmatist, as a consequence, may have allegiance to rational forms of reflection, but by dismissing any kind of foundations for ethical postulates, these claims remain abstract and, in the end, unable to secure the validity of objective ethical claims.

53 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON systemic context of causes and relations.19 And this systemic context cannot be whatever I like it to be, but must be the actual character of that system. The nature, and hence proper concept, of any thing is dependent on other concepts: forks on table settings, eating particular foods, and so on. There are right and wrong answers to what makes water boil just as to what a fork actually is in an ontological, as opposed to a crudely material or physical sense. Hence, what things are in any ontological sense cannot be prior to the role they play in a system. Now, the crucial move comes when we consider the extent to which the ontology of any thing is attributed to it by us or is an account of the thing itself. The critical view of Hegel contra Kant was that this was precisely the case. In Hegel’s view, the correct concepts about the world are those that are the very properties of those things. Logical categories are not subjectively deployed onto reality to constitute knowledge, but are the very categories of things themselves.20 This takes us straight to the nerve center of critical social theory and its problem with the division between “facts” and “values.” The neo-Kantian structure of non-critical theory is such that it will continue to see that the world is somehow constructed by its members; that there what is normative is not in any way connected to what things actually are in any real sense. Normative concepts are therefore independent of reality, of the facts of the world. But the argument I have been developing here, and which I believe Fromm is advocating as well, maintains that there is an objective, observer-independent ontology proper to human nature, one that is a function of the system of relations that shapes and determines other aspects of human character and thought. We can call these strong social facts. This is not the same as weak social facts such as the nature of a fork which is, and indeed must be, observer-dependent. Indeed, a fork is what it is only within a context of other things (of the nature of table manners and their development and so on) but the forkness of the fork is not intrinsic to the material object itself since it requires us to attribute meaning to it, to make it what it is. But the question of normative values that have political consequence comes into play when we consider these strong social facts, i.e., those that pertain to the processual development of human beings and their capacities. In this sense, I differ with John Searle’s account of social reality and its nature. For Searle, there are “brute facts” of nature that are intrinsic to objects, such as the statement “that is a stone,” and those that are “observer relative” in the sense that they would not exist without people attributing meaning to them, as in the statement about a stone “this

–––––––––––––– 19 T. H. Green puts this nicely when he says “[a]bstract the many relations from one thing, and there is nothing. They, being many, determine or constitute its definite unity. It is not the case that it first exists in its unity, and then is brought into various relations. Without the relations it would not exist at all. In like manner the one relation is a unity of the many things. They, in their manifold being, make the one relation” (Green, 1969: section 28). 20 Stephen Houlgate makes a similar point when he states that “the words ‘concept,’ ‘judgment,’ and ‘syllogism’ name structures in nature, and so in being itself, not just forms of human understanding and reason. They are, therefore, ontological as well as logical structures – structures of being, as well as categories of thought” (Houlgate, 2006, p. 116). Also see the excellent discussion by Doz (1987, p. 22ff) for a similar view.

54 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE object is a paperweight.” Only in the latter category, according to Searle, can we assign “a vocabulary of success and failure” to objective things. “Thus we can speak of ‘malfunction,’ ‘heart disease,’ and better and worse hearts” (Searle, 1995, p. 15). But this does not seem to me to be the case. A heart’s proper and correct function is not something attributed to it by me or anyone else, it is something intrinsic to hearts. This is not the case with a stone being used as a paperweight, to be sure (an example of a weak social fact) but it is the case for those objects and functions that are human and constitute human personality and character. As Searle correctly notes, however, “[w]henever the function of X is to Y, then X is supposed to cause or otherwise result in Y” (Searle, 1995, p. 19). There is, on this account, a normative feature to any functional system: hearts can be bad hearts if they do not do what are supposed to do, i.e., pump blood to the body to oxygenate its tissues; an engine is a bad engine if it is not able to move the car of which it is a part; and a society can be a bad or sick society to the extent that it does not aid in the cultivation of the capacities and functions of its members. These are not attributable norms, or observer-dependent norms, they are intrinsic to those things, i.e., without the normative telos to define them, they would not manifest their correct functions. Similarly, the systemic context within which these objects find themselves must also be so defined: a heart that pumps properly, but is connected to the rest of the body with defective arteries and capillaries will not be able to perform its proper telos. Just as importantly, it simply does not matter whether a person knows that their heart is part of a functional system, or what its role in the body is; what matters is that hearts do what they are required to do to be properly working or to be evaluated as “good” hearts. Strong social facts have this property: that their normative component is intrinsic to their very existence, they are ontologically prior to the ways we might conceive or judge them. As Hegel’s argument suggests, it is not simply our concepts that constitute the reality of strong social facts: those facts have a conceptual structure that is inherent within them, a conceptual structure we can penetrate and know through the activity of critique. Weak social facts, however, do not, and they are basically constituted by a collective activity of attribution by members of a given community. The nature of human beings is an example of a strong social fact. To be human is to be a social creature. Without it, we would lack language, organized thought, access to emotional care, and so on. Human beings have a nature that is intrinsic to them. A biological entity that is homo sapiens cannot realize the implicit capacities and functions he possesses without specific kinds of social relations. Lacking this, the degree of this person’s “humanity” would be put into question. Hence, when we speak of what it means to construct a critical theory of society, we are working with the need to understand the ways in which an objective ethics can arise to dispel the ideological and irrational ways in which people legitimate their world. Since critical theory is concerned with the ways that the individual is shaped by the totality of social relations, of how subjectivity, consciousness, the personality of individuals, are all interspersed with the objective traits of the social order of which it is a part, it becomes necessary to be able to secure a normative critique of

55 MICHAEL J. THOMPSON society, one that is in some way grounded in the life processes of individuals rather than the anti-foundationalist, “plurality,” or pragmatic conceptions of ethics that have become ascendant in current theory. An objective ethics is therefore concerned with the ways in which society can be evaluated in terms of the relative health or unhealth of its members. When we make ethical judgments that are valid in an objective sense, we are not only evaluating what is wrong or pathological in our institutions and culture, but simultaneously suggesting the very starting points for transformation and change toward something correct, more healthy, and so on. Fromm comes back to this form of reasoning again and again and it seems that he does so to distinguish a way of conceiving the nature of social life which allows for the capacity for individuals to come to explode the defective forms of consciousness and reasoning that prevents them from attaining critical knowledge of their social world. Critical theory, if it is to achieve its basic purpose, is to be able to formulate forms of knowledge that unmask the mechanisms of power and, more importantly, the means by which compliance to the commands of elites and forms of potent dissent weakened among members of capitalist society. The power of an ethics with objective validity lies in its ability to shatter reification, to base praxis on ethical grounds that are not constantly shifting and held subject to the manipulation of the errors of public deliberation and discourse. In this sense, a radical form of ethical and political judgment emerges, one that can help in the reconstruction of the enterprise of critical theory.

THE FUTURE OF CRITICAL THEORY Fromm knew that the collapse of socialist movements and the decline of the labor movements – once the nucleus of Marxian ideas about social transformation – meant a reevaluation of the structure and purpose of Marxist philosophy. But even more, he held fast to Marx’s critique of Aristotle and his conception of man as a “political animal” (zoon politikon) instead emphasizing man as a social animal, one who is dependent on the wide field of social relationships and their primacy in constituting human agency and subjectivity. The great problem of modern capitalist society, as Marx correctly saw, remains its ability to penetrate every sphere of social life, to be able to dominate and shape every realm of human interaction and, therefore, of each human individual. Fromm’s discussion of the family as well as of secondary social ties and their power in affecting the individual’s sanity, health, his very capacity for freedom––all are rooted in this Marxian premise. Fromm’s critical theory is penetrated by ethical postulates grounded in the nature of human individuality and sociality because it is from that source that we are able to generate a critique of the present social order and to begin to articulate new patterns of social life, work, leisure, institutions, and so on, that can help to promote and to secure human freedom and flourishing. But in addition to this, as I have been arguing throughout, I also think that Fromm’s social theory is permeated by a unique form of reasoning that has been purged from the tradition of critical theory. Indeed, Fromm was not alone in his

56 NORMATIVE HUMANISM AS REDEMPTIVE CRITIQUE application of a kind of theorizing that sublated the bourgeois distinction between facts and values. More important is the way in which critical theory itself came to abandon the foundations that made it a vehicle for oppositional thinking. The turn toward pragmatic, inter-subjectivist, and communicative forms of social theory have eroded the Marxian groundwork as well as its Hegelian foundations. Fromm’s utopian moments do not seem to me to be his most important nor salient contributions to critical theory. Rather, it is in the foundations of his unique look at Marx and Freud as well as the ways this can lead to an anti-reificatory form of normative consciousness that is of central import. And I also believe that this is a line of reasoning that can give new energy to critical theory, a discipline now so academic, so isolated from the problems of the real world, that it has become precisely that which it once so vehemently opposed.

REFERENCES

Arendt, H. (1954). Between past and future. New York, NY: Penguin. Azmanova, A. (2012). The scandal of reason: A critical theory of political judgment. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Bernstein, R. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism: science, hermeneutics, and praxis. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Doz, A. (1987). La logique de Hegel et les problèmes traditionnels de l’ontologie. Paris: JR Vrin. Ferrara, A. (2008). The force of the example: Explorations in the paradigm of judgment. New York: Columbia University Press. Fisk, M. (1980). Ethics and society: A Marxist interpretation of value. New York, NY: NYU Press. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Fromm, E. (1947). Man for himself: an inquiry into the psychology of ethics. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Fromm, E.( 1955). The sane society. New York, NY: Rinehart and Co. Fromm, E. (1961). Marx’s concept of man. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar. Fromm, E. (1962). Beyond the chains of illusion. New York: Pocket Books. Fromm, E. (1968). The revolution of hope: toward a humanized technology. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Fromm, E. (1970). The crisis of psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Gould, C. (1978). Marx’s social ontology: individuality and community in marx’s theory of social reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Green, T. H. (1969). Prolegomena to ethics. New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell. Jacoby, R. (1975). Social amnesia: a critique of contemporary psychology from Adler to Laing. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Habermas, J. (1976). Zur rekonstruktion des historischen materialismus. Frankfurt, Germany: Suhrkamp. Habermas, J. (1985). Philosophical-political profiles. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, J. (1998). The inclusion of the other: Studies in political theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Honneth, A. (1995). The fragmented world of the social. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Horkheimer, M. (1971). Critical theory. New York, NY: Continuum Press. Horney, K. (1945). Our inner conflicts: a constructive theory of neurosis. New York, NY: Norton. Horney, K. (1950). Neurosis and human growth: the struggle toward self-realization. New York, NY: Norton. Houlgate, S. (2006). The opening of Hegel’s logic. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.

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Marx, K. (1959). Marx and Engels: Basic writings on politics and philosophy. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Marx, K. (1977). Capital, vol. 1. New York, NY: Vintage. Marx, K. (1991). The German ideology. New York, NY: Prometheus Books. Proctor, M. (1991). Value-free science? Purity and power in modern knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Searle, J. (1964). How to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is.’ The Philosophical Review, 73(1), 43-58. Searle, J. (1995). The construction of social reality. New York, NY: The Free Press. Sen, A. (2009). The idea of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Strauss, L. (1953). Natural right and history. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Strauss, L. (1959. What is political philosophy? and other studies. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Thompson, M. (2011). Marxism, ethics, and the task of critical theory. In M. Thompson (Ed.), Rational radicalism and political theory (pp. 161-188). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Thompson, M. (2012). Talcott Parsons and the logic of critical theory.Situations, 4(2), 141-168. Weber, M. (1963). Objectivity’ in social science and social policy. In M. Natanson (Ed.), Philosophy of the social sciences. New York, NY: Random House. Wellmer, A. (1990). Practical philosophy and the theory of society: On the problem of the normative foundations of a critical social science. In S. Benhabib & F. Dallmayr (Eds.), The communicative ethics controversy (pp. 293-329). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Michael J. Thompson William Paterson University

58

NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE

5. ERICH FROMM’S SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM, IN TWO PARTS1

INTRODUCTION The paper has two parts, the first by Nick Braune and the second by Joan Braune. The first part explores Erich Fromm’s pamphlet, Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program, written for the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation (SP-SDF) in 1960. Nick Braune refutes claims that Fromm was a light- weight “popularizer,” instead presenting Fromm as a science-minded, clear-headed socialist humanist, organizer, and philosopher. He contextualizes Fromm’s pamphlet in the period of 1959 and 1960, a period of recovery for socialists and other radicals nationally after a disorienting decade. Braune then defends Fromm’s concept of “prophetic messianism” from charges that it is a mere literary flourish or an eclectic eccentricity. Fromm uses the term prophetic messianism not just to reach out to certain audiences but also to capture what he considers to be the core of Marx’s humanism. The second half of the paper, by Joan Braune, explores the idea of prophetic messianism in greater detail, beginning with an explication of Fromm’s three-part negative definition of hope and following with a defense of Fromm’s distinction between two kinds of messianism, prophetic and catastrophic. Fromm’s messianism has been almost wholly misunderstood, since scholars of the Frankfurt School and Western Marxism have tended to define messianism in only apocalyptic and catastrophic terms, ignoring the earlier, Enlightenment-influenced tradition to which Fromm belonged. Although new, apocalyptic forms of messianism emerged in Weimar Germany, Fromm remained faithful to an earlier form of messianism, as found for instance in the ethical socialist messianism of Hermann Cohen. Unlike catastrophic messianism, prophetic messianism is not obscurantist, embraces reason and the revolt of the masses, and rejects determinism.

–––––––––––––– 1 This article first ran in Radical Philosophy Review: Nick Braune and Joan Braune, “Erich Fromm’s Socialist Program and Prophetic Messianism, in Two Parts,” Radical Philosophy Review, Vol. 12.1-2 (2009), pp. 355-389.

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 59–91. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE

PART I: FROMM’S PROGRAM AND MESSIANISM, IN THE CONTEXT OF HIS ORGANIZING BY NICK BRAUNE The first half of this chapter was occasioned by its author discovering, and then excitedly reading, a used-bookstore copy of Erich Fromm’s original pamphlet: Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program (hereafter, Manifesto/Program), written for the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation (SP-SDF) in 1960.2 Some of the points in this paper may come as a surprise to those who have fallen for a caricature of Fromm: Wasn’t he once a science-minded leader of the Frankfurt School but later a disconnected “flake” praising Buddha, Jesus, Marx and Socrates in the same breath, all as exemplars of some “art of loving”? But such a caricature is a slander. In actuality Fromm was always a science-minded, clear- headed socialist humanist, and, in the late 1950s and in the 1960s, he began thinking more as an organizer—only through this perspective can we do justice to the wide work of this radical social psychologist and philosopher. This half of the paper (by Nick Braune) will focus primarily on the period when the Manifesto/Program was formulated, 1959 and 1960, a period of recovery for socialists and other radicals nationally after a disorienting decade; then, the paper will develop Fromm’s “prophetic messianism,” an odd concept to appear in a socialist program at the time, but an understandable concept if one thinks of Fromm as an organizer. The second half of the paper (by Joan Braune) will expand the idea of prophetic messianism and locate it within critical theory more generally. The Manifesto/Program was not adopted by the SP-SDF, although the party ran at least three printings of it in the 1960s. It was written roughly during the time Fromm was closely studying Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts and was preparing Marx’s Concept of Man. With SANE (National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy) recently founded, partially named after Fromm’s book The Sane Society, there began an intense burst of public resistance to the 1950s “dog days,” those days when many progressives hid from McCarthyism and felt guilty about it. This resistance/peace movement arose in combination with the emerging civil rights movement: Coretta Scott King, for example, was also a founder of SANE. SANE began openly opposing the bomb shelter scam, a mass delusion that after nuclear explosions some of us could survive underground and emerge later to start the world over. (This author’s father, incidentally, was arrested in 1961 for protesting bomb shelters, making the front page of the Olympia, Washington newspaper.) It was an emotionally important period, specifically 1959 or 1960, when Fromm wrote his Manifesto/Program. –––––––––––––– 2 Erich Fromm, Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program (Socialist Party, New York, 1967). Fromm wrote a new forward for this third edition. In 1981, a year after his death, the program was reprinted again without the new forward and without the introduction by Darlington Hoopes, National Chairperson of the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation. Because it is far easier for researchers to find the latest version, this paper will cite the pages from the new book, Erich Fromm, On Disobedience, and Other Essays (Seabury Press, New York, 1981).

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The peace movement aspect of Fromm’s work must be held in mind to understand the importance of his writings. In the 1950s, America was hardly a freely thinking society. There was Joseph McCarthy in Washington, and every state legislature had a little McCarthy to match him. There were witch-hunts in universities, and as we all know, Hollywood had a red scare where many progressive artists, like Charlie Chaplin, left the country or quit the industry. There was an arms race, brinkmanship, and glorification of big bombers and big bombs. There was “ethnic cleansing” against Mexican-Americans in 1954 (another Eisenhower administration blotch, “Operation Wetback”), and southern states ferociously defended Jim Crow segregation. Because this was such a chilling time, it should not be underestimated how important a new, open peace movement was in the late 1950s. (This was culturally a long time before the widely accepted 1965-73 peace movement.) By 1960, SANE was holding numerous rallies, with various celebrities coming out of assorted stages of political seclusion: Harry Belafonte, Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, Ossie Davis, A. Phillip Randolph, Walter Reuther, Pablo Casals, Bertrand Russell, Albert Schweitzer, and Norman Thomas were among prominent figures who would link up openly with SANE to contest the arms race. Of course, the late 1950s was also still a dangerous time, with the FBI way off the handle, with Bobby Kennedy’s witch-hunts against unions, with state-level investigating committees ranting against subversives, and with the John Birch Society and other rightist and racist groups skulking. So the public rallying by SANE was important psychologically, exposing the bizarre fascination with fleeing into the ground as another form of insanity. Because the Communist Party was a shell of its previous self and was trying to recover from its own semi-underground status during the McCarthy period, and because it was trying to digest the shocking “revelations” about Stalin in the 1956 Soviet Congress and the rebellions in the East Bloc, it was reduced to hoping desperately (and fruitlessly, for the most part) to be accepted by the Democratic Party. The Trotskyists had done poorly in the 1950s too—the term “dog days” comes from James Cannon, who used it to refer to a difficult period in the 1920s— and there were deep splits in Trotskyist ranks. During this time, the Socialist Party also was in flux and was starting to regain its footing. Fromm was on the national committee of the merged SP-SDF and spoke for the party, not just for SANE, at many events, including a 1,200-person rally at Yale and a 2,000-person event at the University of Chicago.3 And he had

–––––––––––––– 3 Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas (The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., New York, 2000), p. 145. Funk says that Fromm “fought passionately” for détente and disarmament, and he was in great demand as a speaker, in 1960 receiving at least thirty invitations a month (p. 144). For a glimpse of the passion of SANE during that period, a good starting source is by an historian of the American peace movement: Milton S. Katz, Ban the Bomb: A History of SANE (Praeger, New York, 1987). I am particularly interested in the early period, 1957 to 1962, interested in the public rallying aspect of the organization, which I think was psychologically important for America and which intersects Fromm’s Manifesto/Program. In 1962, the organization announced its intention to endorse candidates, which may have changed it a bit, and in 1963 it merged with the more sedate United World Federalists, a merger which Fromm opposed (p. 89). Although Funk does not elaborate on this issue in (continued)

61 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE already been in correspondence (at least fifty letters) with Raya Dunayevskaya, whose work produced socialist groupings still active today. I contend that what Fromm was trying to do with his new Manifesto/Program, which he hoped would be discussed in unions and left groups, was to provide a rallying cry to all leftists to come out of the 1950s hole and to try something different than repeating the ineffectual “party-building” (“recruitment”) and sectarian proclivities of the left’s recent past. He was hoping to involve the masses in wide-ranging socialist planning, with discussions on educational reform, critiques of bureaucracy, etc.4 Marx’s Concept of Man in 1961 is really the proper companion piece to the Manifesto/Program and is one of Fromm’s greatest achievements, spreading the word about the “early Marx” and locating Marx in a humanist philosophical tradition. The “early” Marx, with his talk about “alienation” and our separation from our “species-being,” was not accepted well by the old left. The Communist Party was going through one of its intense anti-intellectual phases, burrowing into trade union practice and focusing on telling the workers how money was being taken right out of their mouths and hands by the capitalists every day. You don’t need to know some humanist tradition of thought to get the workers angry about that, they figured. But still Fromm had immense influence, among second-level academic and church layers and the peace movement. Fromm had an impact internationally too—notice that he is one of the few people quoted in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed—and was the organizer of the momentous volume, Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium, which included important East Bloc intellectuals in 1965. He wrote a striking piece for it, as did Dunayevskaya.5 Fromm, from his 1960 Manifesto/Program to the 1965 Socialist Humanism symposium, provided a powerful critique of Western “democracy” removed from its humanist “spiritual” roots from the Renaissance to America’s Abolitionists. “Democracy” had been reduced to stale and oppressive rituals of rigged slates. And the Manifesto/Program provided an implied critique of East Bloc “socialism,” leftist bureaucratic cant about party loyalty, and a certain left sentimental attachment to simple trade union solidarity: I’ll scratch your back if you remember to scratch mine and “buy American.” And the Manifesto/Program offered an implied criticism of the idea that intellectuals provide a “service” to the cause, matching worker production.

–––––––––––––– his biography, Fromm quotes a letter to Polish socialist Adam Schaff in May of 1962: “I have been a socialist since my student days forty years ago, but I have never been active politically until the last five years, when I have been very active in trying to form an American peace movement, on the left wing of which I find myself.” (Funk, Erich Fromm, p. 148). 4 Fromm, ever an organizer, expanded this basic programmatic proposal later, in 1968, as The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology, including a little clip-out page in the back of the paperback to mail back to him, if workers or others would be willing to work with him to form a new network of “clubs.” 5 Raya Dunayevskaya, “Marx’s Humanism Today,” in Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium, Erich Fromm (Ed.) (Anchor Books, New York, 1966), pp. 68-83. Dunayevskaya also translated two essays by East Bloc Marxist humanists for the Symposium.

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“PROPHETIC MESSIANISM” —A LITERARY FLOURISH OR A CENTRAL CONCERN? With that social context developed, this paper can now shift to an important concern about the Manifesto/Program: Why would Fromm speak of something so apparently arcane as “prophetic messianism,” in his socialist program? And when he insists that we have forgotten that democracy and socialism were rooted in a “spiritual tradition” which came to us from humanism, the Enlightenment philosophers, the Gospels, and prophetic messianism, is not this simply a verbal flourish, fluff, a concession to liberalism, superficiality, and religious sentimentality? Among a number of writers currently revisiting Fromm is Kevin Anderson, a sociologist and philosopher, winner of the International Erich Fromm prize for a book he co-edited in 2000, Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology: Beyond the Punitive Society. Anderson takes note of the term “prophetic messianism” in a gem of a short essay in Logos, “Thinking about Fromm and Marxism.” I will trace Anderson’s short essay, which is helpful in showing Fromm in the context of other intellectuals at the time, in order to introduce this messianism issue. Anderson’s opening sentence is insightful: “Erich Fromm’s work is unfortunately neglected in academia today, in no small part because his expansive humanism is out of joint with many forms of radical thought popular in those quarters.” 6 Although Anderson does not elaborate why he thinks Fromm’s expansive humanism has disturbed some radicals in academia, I suggest that one reason many in radical circles may be dismayed with Fromm is that he clearly, repeatedly includes the Enlightenment current in the humanist tradition he defends. Anderson also criticizes the frequent attempts by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, and many of their followers, to portray Fromm as somehow more conservative, as well as hopelessly superficial; and Anderson notes importantly that this has distorted the history of the left. (Anderson may find it ironic that Adorno and Horkheimer are popularly considered to be to the left of Fromm.) Interestingly, in the late 1970s, Marcuse himself said “without reservation” that disagreements with Fromm over his revision of Freud led to an underestimation of Fromm’s contribution to Critical Theory’s early period.7 Anderson criticizes a second misconception about Fromm, that his “early writings” are “more steeped in Marxism than his postwar ones.” 8 Although Anderson is aware that Fromm was a Marxist in the 1920s, and although he champions Fromm’s 1941 Escape from Freedom, he disagrees with those who think that Fromm somehow backed off from Marxism in his later years. The portrait of the later Fromm as less Marxist than in his earlier days is another –––––––––––––– 6 Kevin B. Anderson, “Thinking about Fromm and Marxism,” Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, Vol. 6.3 (Summer, 2007), p. 1. (Anderson’s article is available from Logos online: http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_6.3/anderson.htm.) 7 Lawrence Wilde, Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2004), p. 10. 8 Anderson, “Thinking about Fromm and Marxism,” p. 3.

63 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE indication of the extent to which the pro-Adorno interpretation has become dominant on the left.9 That Fromm is thought to be less Marxist in his later years is also another indication of how much resentment there was in the mainstream left in the 1950s and 1960s to Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts, which Fromm was defending as importantly Marxist. In regard to the line that Fromm was more Marxist in his early years, Anderson’s point is that the very opposite is true. Fromm’s most important contributions to Marxism came after World War II, when he championed a specifically Marxist humanist standpoint in the public sphere. Just so that no reader errs in the opposite direction and finds Fromm before World War II to have been non-Marxist, let me quote Anderson’s tribute to Escape from Freedom: I have used Escape from Freedom (1941) for years as a main text in an introduction to sociology course. Students, whose response has been very favorable, encounter therein a clear and engaging introduction to social theory (Marx, Weber, Freud), to the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe, the anatomy of fascism and authoritarianism, and to a critique of atomization of modern capitalist civilization and its culture industry.10 Although Anderson, in Erich Fromm and Critical Criminology, helped introduce the public to two of Fromm’s very early Marxist sociological writings, he still rightly insists that Fromm’s most significant work in Marxism, contrary to the Adorno/Horkheimer circle, was post-World War II. Anderson praises Fromm for doing more than anyone else in spreading the word about Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts to the reading public. Fromm did so much to show Marx as fully concerned about alienation and “spiritual impoverishment,” although much of the left (I contend) was only concerned with Marx’s writing on point-of- production exploitation, a narrow vision that reflected their narrow social practice. Fromm was attacked, Anderson reminds us, by academics as well; for instance, the young Richard Bernstein talks about Fromm’s “human self-realization” (“in terms prefiguring later-Habermas and post-structuralist critiques”) as creating a “dangerous form of absolute humanism.” 11 The famous left academic, Sidney Hook, likewise attacked Fromm. By stressing the early, Hegel-influenced writings, Fromm was violating “every accepted and tested canon of historical scholarship,” said Hook.12 (Anderson points out that Hook’s acclaimed From Marx to Hegel in 1936 ignored Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts.) Despite his praise of Fromm, Kevin Anderson, in his short but helpful essay, still wonders about the term “prophetic messianism,” finding it reflects a “more eclectic form of humanism” than necessary, opening Fromm and Marxism to unnecessary criticism.13 Because Anderson is this paper’s internalized audience,

–––––––––––––– 9 Ibid., p. 3. 10 Ibid., p. 1. 11 Ibid., p. 6. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

64 SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM the following section of the paper will suggest to him that Fromm used the term “prophetic messianism” for two reasons: (1) A simple heuristic reason, a “literary reference” that has value in opening up certain readers, getting the readers “into a position” to see some important things better, and (2) an historical, factual reason: Fromm thinks prophetic messianism is, in fact, an integral part of the powerful humanist tradition that Marx expresses.14 First, the simple heuristic reason: Fromm, as an organizer, was targeting populations with religious backgrounds: Fromm may have been trying to awaken some layers of the Jewish population who had previously drawn back to their homes and personal lives for safety during the “dog days” of the 1950s. Fromm was trying to make sure those people did not have to choose between political life and reflective religious life. By using terminology like “prophetic messianism,” he identified himself to the community as a fellow Jew, although he always made it clear that he himself was not a “believer,” and he was urging them to come forward with their reflective personal lives to a socialist alternative. It is worth further research on this matter to remember that the SP-SDF was trying to go through its own “regroupment” process in the late 1950s. Max Shachtman’s participation, for all its weaknesses, brought very interesting new layers and discussions to the SP, and the middle 1950s had also seen the attempt to recruit the Jewish Labor Bund to the SP. Those must have been very interesting discussions, because the JLB was non-Zionist, internationalist, socialist, not very religious in usual ways, and bitter toward Stalin. He may have been targeting some Jews who were struggling with the increasingly publicized national interests of established Israel. Fromm believed that one of the characteristics of prophetic, revolutionary, messianism is that it is not nationalistic. Even the Biblical escape from Egypt was “primarily not a national but a social revolution; the Hebrews are not freed because their life as a national minority is intolerable but because they are enslaved by their Egyptian masters.”15 Fromm also developed a history of Judaism which presumes that the Jewish attachment to the land of Israel was a historically conditioned (in fact, feudal) addition to Judaism.16 He also, however, may have been discussing messianism as a way of targeting Christians. The Old Testament sways Christians too, of course. Christianity was in pretty bad shape in the 1950s, with most churches responding to the climate of McCarthyism by becoming more and more anticommunist. Take notice of “liberal” Reinhold Niebuhr, who made the cover of Time magazine, and his “liberal” Christian Century in that period. (Because religion became a litmus test for patriotism, of course, “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance in the early 1950s to taunt those “godless Communists.”) And yet there was a hope,

–––––––––––––– 14 In the second half of this chapter, Joan Braune will show how Fromm nuances his “prophetic” messianism concept, making sure he is not returning to some “enchanted garden” or “apocalyptic” concept of history, which perhaps Anderson thinks accompanies the idea of messianism. 15 Erich Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods (Ballantine Books, New York, 1966), p. 72. 16 Ibid., p. 9.

65 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE under the surface, for what would become Vatican II liberalism in the Catholic Church. In the late-1950s and the 1960s, Fromm was exchanging letters with Catholic reformer Thomas Merton, had contact with Ivan Illich, and was living, on and off, in the culturally Catholic country of Mexico. He reached out as well to those being influenced by Paul Tillich and consistently praised Protestant and Catholic liberatory movements when he saw them emerging in the 1960s. (Marxist-Christian dialogue was in the air, particularly spurred by Vatican II.17 One theme in the dialogue might well be labeled “compassionate solidarity,” a call for empathy with, communion with, and living with the poor and the working class, the sort of solidarity found in Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker houses or in the ascetic social practice of Simone Weil, whose Gravity and Grace Fromm had read. But Fromm may well be trying to impart some emotional awareness of a “prophetic solidarity” (my term), an affirmed unity in hope, found in Fromm’s writing, that a reign of peace and time of plenty, fulfillment, and freedom is actually possible within history—this empowering, unifying, anticipation could fulfill “compassionate solidarity.”)18 Secondly, an historical, factual reason Fromm speaks of prophetic messianism: Although Fromm is surely speaking of prophetic messianism for simple heuristic reasons, to catch the attention of certain groups, I think he also believes the concept is essential to Marxism and for the success of the humanist socialism he envisions. And leaving the concept out will deform the movement. He is intervening psychologically in the socialist movement so it can grow, calling it back to its actual (expansive) humanist roots; Fromm is ever the organizer.

–––––––––––––– 17 Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas, p. 148. On this same page, Funk shows how serious Fromm was about Marxist-Christian dialogue: “In 1963 he developed plans for a magazine to be called Humanist Studies, in which he wanted to bring humanists of different colors together, but it never came to fruition. According to the letter of the 18th of September, 1963, the publishers were to be the Catholics Karl Rahner and Jean Danielou and the Protestants Albert Schweitzer and Paul Tillich. Philosophy and science were to be represented by Bertrand Russell and Robert Oppenheimer, the Marxist side by Adam Schaff and Fromm. Buddhism was to be represented by Daisetz T. Suzuki and another Buddhist who was still to be named.” And in 1966 he tried to persuade Pope Paul VI to call an international conference; however, the effort failed. 18 This distinction between the two types of Christian solidarity, compassionate and prophetic, should not imply that the two exclude each other. (Dorothy Day, for instance, embodied both.) Fromm’s Marxism was in dialogue with some particularly Catholic tendencies; he was interested, for instance, in Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton and Simone Weil. In the case of Simone Weil, Fromm quotes her briefly in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Fawcett World Library, 1973) and in The Art of Loving (New York, Harper and Row, 1956) almost two decades earlier, and he includes a short selection from her Notebooks in a philosophy “reader” he co-edited with the Mexican philosopher Ramon Xirau in 1968, placing Weil’s selection right after Jean Paul Sartre’s and right before Edith Stein’s. (Erich Fromm and Ramon Xirau, The Nature of Man (New York, Macmillan Company, 1968). Linking Weil to Tolstoy and Christian monks—Fromm exchanged many letters with Thomas Merton—Fromm speaks (and not disparagingly) of those who are “giving up all one’s secular concerns and sharing the life of the poorest” (Fromm, The Art of Loving, p. 110). Weil’s deeply motivated choice to live the life of the French factory worker is certainly a kind of solidarity, and the term “compassionate solidarity” seems appropriate; however, those interested in Marxist-Christian dialogue at the time might have recognized how prophetic solidarity possibly would transform compassionate solidarity and be more beneficial psychologically for the workers.

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I personally knew people on the edges of the socialist movement in the 1960s who were unable to fully join it for its workerism and anti-intellectualism. And Fromm may be thinking that some (many) in the socialist movement who rejected religion were doing so out of anti-intellectualism. A “bread and butter” socialist might ask, “Why bother with intellectual traditions? We know—the workers know —the answers already. If we start getting involved in talk about ‘hope’ with Fromm and Ernst Bloch, and ‘the meaning of life’ and worries about ‘spiritual impoverishment,’ we could get trapped, wandering backward into periods of time (feudalism) when religion dominated. We could get caught up in a lot of literary works not written by workers and socialists, not practical for us now, and fall into those endless philosophical debates that are paralyzing academia.” Thus might have spoken some bread and butter socialists attached in sentiment to trade union practice, and Fromm was countering them. Related to this concern about anti-intellectualism, it may also be that Fromm, the social psychologist, believed that the socialist movement (not just the Soviet Union) was infected with emotional stagnation rooted in bureaucracy, holding onto given organizational status and given relationships with outsiders, and was rooted in nationalism far more than it was willing to admit. (Heartily aware since his teen years that the socialist movement is capable of having Sunday speeches in favor of internationalism and still being deeply corrupted by nationalism, Fromm was always concerned about organizational allegiance and nationalism.) The socialist movement was rarely critical of the union bureaucracy—note, however, that Rosa Luxemburg was critical of simple trade union “solidarity” itself—and the socialists were usually uncritical of the unions’ nationalism: UAW’s International (sic) House comes to mind, ceaselessly pounding workers to buy American cars. Older readers may remember that when the left newspapers, although usually propitiating the union bureaucracy, would become critical of union “bosses” and rhapsodize about the “rank and file,” it was often done with the least critical, least searching, “bad apples versus good apples” rhetoric, failing to grapple with the unions as social phenomena which channel social practice certain ways. In some manner, Fromm’s whole intellectual life revolved around 1914 and the moral collapse of the German Social Democracy; despite its proclamations and manifest banners honoring Marx and Engels, the great party betrayed Marxist internationalism.19 And in the 1930s, Fromm’s work was focused on his daring empirical study of the German workers, who overwhelmingly reported left-wing views, recited the left-wing “line,” but would not be able to act against fascism because of a “social character” disorder, a form of authoritarianism mixed with fear.20 Because Fromm saw the left as narrowly “materialistic” in organizing practice, perhaps he raised the issue of prophetic messianism to address this problem. –––––––––––––– 19 Erich Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (Pocket Books, Inc., New York, 1962), pp. 5-13. 20 Erich Fromm, “The Revolutionary Character,” in The Dogma of Christ and other essays on religion, psychology and culture (Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, 1973), pp. 137-154.

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Fromm repeatedly said that it is a slander that socialism sees human motivation as basically monetary and acquisitive, and it is actually the capitalists who think that way. And yet Fromm knew that the socialist nations and the socialist movement had utterly bought into homo consumens21 in their programs and practice. Fromm’s Manifesto/Program explicitly stresses prophetic messianism as an emotional and intellectual corrective to present day democracy and to socialism. He believed that we have to save historic democracy, the dream of the post-feudal world, and save socialism, the dream of the 19th Century; both were effectively killed in 1914, he believed. Our modern democracy is a profound historic achievement, although today it has lost its roots. Because it has been reduced to a “purely political” concept and because it has lost its roots in the hearts and longings of man, it has become an empty shell. (If I may build on Fromm’s insight here: Think of the famous humanist writers who extol democracy, people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and John Dewey. Were they praising “democracy” as a simple political process carried out annually on election days? No, they were caught by the messianic spirit democracy can contain.) Democracy has become an empty ritual, with plebiscites where one can choose one of two managed slates, and where fundamental issues of foreign policy—should we have atomic brinkmanship imperiling mankind?—are left out of the individual’s range of choices. And socialism, like democracy, is also a great historical achievement, although it too has lost the prophetic messianic sense, as is most clearly seen in the misinterpretation of socialism as a purely economic movement. 22 Here is an important passage on messianism from the Manifesto/Program, dealing with democracy and setting up his discussion of socialism: The political ideas of democracy, as the founding fathers of the United States conceived them, were not purely political ideas. They were rooted in the spiritual tradition which came to us from prophetic Messianism, the gospels, humanism, and from the enlightenment philosophers of the 18th Century. All these ideas were centered on one hope: that man, in the course of his history, can liberate himself from poverty, ignorance, and injustice, and that he can build a society of harmony, peace, of union between man and man, and between man and nature. The idea that history has a goal, and the faith in man’s perfectibility within the historical process, has been the most specific element of Occidental thought. It is the soil in which the American tradition is rooted, and from which it draws its strength and vitality. What has happened to the ideas of the perfectibility of man and society? They have deteriorated into a flat concept of “progress,” into a vision of the production of more and better, rather than standing for the birth of the fully alive and –––––––––––––– 21 Fromm, Socialist Humanism, p. 236. 22 I suggest again that the pre-1914 Social Democratic Party, which seems to have impressed almost everyone but Rosa Luxemburg, was ever on Fromm’s mind when he looked at unions and the Soviet bloc. Although thoroughly Marxist, he also had Weber’s fascination with cage-like bureaucracy, reflecting his sociological training under Max Weber’s brother, Alfred.

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productive man. Our political concepts have today lost their spiritual roots. They have become matters of expediency, judged by the criterion of whether they help us to a higher standard of living or to a more effective form of political administration. Having lost their roots in the hearts and longings of man, they have become empty shells, to be thrown away if expediency might warrant it.23 Note that Fromm’s concept of messianism is not strangely recondite: He sees evidence of it in the rising capitalist era’s Enlightenment-shaped conception of democracy—democracy understood not as simply a voting procedure or a license to desire more “things,” but as a gateway to more fully alive and productive humans. And prophetic messianism does not come about through wishes or prayers but historically, where man can liberate himself from various sorts of impoverishment and can unite with man and nature more humanly. Several pages later, Fromm recaps his theme, this time shifting his attention to socialism: “Just as the ideals of democracy lost their spiritual roots, the idea of socialism lost its deepest root—the prophetic-messianic faith in peace, justice and the brotherhood of man.”24 Although socialism in the 19th Century was “the most significant humanistic and spiritual movement in Europe and America,” it succumbed to the capitalism it was trying to replace. “The failure of the socialist movement became complete when in 1914 its leaders renounced international solidarity and chose the economic and military interests of their respective countries as against the ideas of internationalism and peace which had been their program.”25 Although I was initially taken aback by the idea that the failure of the socialist movement was “complete” in 1914, I do see wisdom in it. And Fromm surely knew that it would really rile Leninists and those SP-SDF members reading his proposed program when he said that socialism’s failure as a humanistic and spiritual movement was “complete” in 1914. But Fromm was implying that the socialist humanism movement was re-founding socialism: hence his use of the word “Manifesto.” But I suspect that Raya Dunayevskaya, for one, was not too disturbed by Fromm’s sharp comments, having herself broken successively with the Communist Party, Trotskyism and Shachtmanism, and having herself spent two decades trying to figure out Lenin’s response to the SPD collapse in 1914. Trotskyists particularly, whom Fromm would criticize although defending Trotsky himself from defamation by pro-capitalist detractors,26 would be distressed by the comment about 1914. They see Social Democracy as dead in 1914, for sure, but not the tradition of Lenin through Cannon, which they affirm as the living, uncut organizational/programmatic continuum of Marx’s and Engels’ movement. 27 –––––––––––––– 23 Erich Fromm, On Disobedience, and Other Essays (Seabury Press, New York, 1981), pp. 63-64. 24 Ibid., p. 71. 25 Ibid., pp. 71-72. 26 Anderson, “Thinking about Fromm and Marxism,” p. 4. 27 In a wonderfully entertaining work, Sigmund Freud’s Mission, Fromm criticizes Freud for forming a psychological “International,” which some of his followers will preserve as an unbroken and unsullied (continued)

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Fromm continues in the Manifesto/Program to show how socialism has lost its spirit: The misinterpretation of socialism as a purely economic movement, and of nationalization of the means of production as its principal aim, occurred both in the right wing and the left wing of the socialist movement. The reformist [right] leaders of the socialist movement in Europe [SPD—no doubt] considered it as their primary aim to elevate the economic status of the worker within the capitalist system, and they considered as their most radical measures the nationalization of certain big industries. Only recently [Fromm was in touch with Raya Dunayevskaya at this time] have many realized that the nationalization of an enterprise is in itself not the realization of socialism, that being managed by a publicly appointed bureaucracy is not basically different for the worker than being managed by a privately appointed bureaucracy.28 The left wing, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as opposed to the Second International, had the same problems in terms of their aims, Fromm explains. Arising in an area without solid democratic traditions, however, the problems became far worse than anyone expected. Their state capitalism became “economically successful eventually but humanly destructive,” and more rigid than their capitalist competition. Rigidly bureaucratic, using nationalism to drive the workers—Fromm is ever-nervous about nationalism—the Communist Party defined socialism in terms of nationalization, centralization, and the satisfaction of economic needs. “In order to win the support of the masses who had to make unendurable sacrifices for the sake of the fast accumulation of capital, they used socialistic, combined with nationalistic, ideologies and this gained them the grudging cooperation of the governed.” This program negated what socialism stands for: “the affirmation of individuality and the full development of man.”29

PROPHETIC MESSIANISM: ITS REVOLUTIONARY (HUMANIST) JEWISH ROOTS Fromm’s concept of prophetic messianism, mentioned in the Manifesto/Program, obviously has religious roots, but he uses the term carefully. Fromm’s prophetic messianism is of course a concept drawn from, but not limited to, Judaism, and Judaism to Fromm is an evolving revolutionary aspiration. Fromm reminds us that Judaism is shaped historically. It differs in ancient Palestine, in Babylonia, in Spain, in Christian medieval Europe, in Czarist Russia, and in the current regionally powerful military state of Israel. But still there are two discernable trends of the messianism of the Jewish tradition, one of which is revolutionary. The following chart is drawn mainly from comments made in the Program/Manifesto –––––––––––––– tradition back to its founding, while veering further from their own earlier humanist intentions. I think the book is also a dig at the socialists. 28 Erich Fromm, On Disobedience, p. 72. 29 Ibid., p. 72.

70 SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM and You Shall Be as Gods. Fromm is attempting to separate out the revolutionary core of messianism, perhaps the way Feuerbach separates “love” from its reflected corruption, fixed “faith,” in The Essence of Christianity.

Two Kinds of Messianism: Revolutionary versus Non-revolutionary30

Universalism, radicalism, tolerance versus Nationalism, conservatism, fanaticism Horizontal concerns (this world) Vertical concerns (other world) Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, Hosea Later prophets: Daniel and others up to 200 AD “The days to come” “The end of days,” the world to come This world—historical world Other world—trans-historical world The messiah comes at point of Messiah comes at point of mankind’s mankind’s progress toward self greatest corruption realization Savior comes somehow from within us Savior is an external agent coming in Self-emancipation Mysterious deliverance Attitude of doing Attitude of waiting

Both of the above tendencies can coexist and do, and both tendencies presume a change in mankind and not simply a change in the fate of one individual, but still there is a decided difference between them. Recently, in an exciting student philosophy club discussion about this chart at South Texas College, the students spontaneously started talking about the period right after 9/11. As Fromm’s schema above would suggest, some Americans became very nationalistic (intensely anti-cosmopolitan, wanting even to change the name of “French fries”) and fanatical (intolerant, as in the treatment of the Dixie Chicks) and seemed to be waiting (inactively) for the government to deliver them from terror (self- emancipation being ruled out, while our constructive role became simply to “go shopping,” under the advice of the nation’s president.) A concluding reflection: Messianism (as a rational component of humanism, for Fromm) should not stand embarrassed by its Jewish religious roots. Fromm’s Judaism, influenced by Hermann Cohen, the neo-Kantian Jewish scholar, is revolutionary, rational and profoundly instructive. Fromm demonstrates its radicalism by tracing three stages of religious development in Judaism, stages through which in some sense all persons must pass to reach full rationality and human potential. In the first, earliest, stage, God is viewed as our maker in the sense that the potter is the maker of the pot.31 God makes the pot, can paint it or not paint it, and God can break the pot. A dazzling creator whom we cannot understand, God is the inscrutable, powerful maker, according to this early view. (Of course, –––––––––––––– 30 This chart is drawn, passim, from Erich Fromm, You Shall Be As Gods (Ballantine Books, New York, 1966), pp. 96-118. Also helpful is Lawrence Wilde, Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2004), pp. 48-49. 31 Erich Fromm, You Shall Be As Gods (Ballantine Books, New York, 1966), pp. 21-22.

71 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE unconsciously dominant in this powerful image of God is the idea that God does not countenance rivalry well.) How can man relate to this all-powerful being? Only one way, by submission. But, breaking through that original submission, a second (higher) stage of development32 is also evident and beautifully portrayed in Judaism, particularly in the story we have been given of Abraham, although it is a stage that no doubt matures hundreds of years after the historical Abraham. Abraham is said to have been commanded by God to go and convert Sodom and Gomorrah from their wickedness. (Fromm cites rabbis who interpret the “sinfulness” there as selfishness not homosexuality.) If they do not convert, God says, they are to be destroyed. Fromm describes how Abraham “drew near” to God and asked if the good were to be slain with the unrighteous, which obviously did not seem fair to Abraham. So he asked if God could make a concession. Even if Abraham could not get them all to convert, maybe God could concede to spare the cities if Abraham could convert fifty of them. Abraham lectures God: Far be it from me to kill the righteous with the wicked and far be it for you, God, to do it. Coming into agreement with Abraham, God agrees not to destroy the people if there are fifty righteous ones. Abraham has struck a deal. Maybe God is not so inscrutable. Although Abraham is thankful and humble, he presses on in the bargaining, trying to get the number down to forty-five; it seems wrong and petty to destroy the city because we are five people short of fifty! God agrees with Abraham again: God will save the city if there are forty-five righteous. Abraham gets the number down to forty, down to twenty, and then all the way to ten by whittling away in a negotiating process. God had originally wanted Abraham to convert them all or they all would be destroyed, and now Abraham only has to convert ten to save the cities. This amazing story is no longer portraying an inscrutable God to whom we submit, suggests Fromm. Abraham develops confidence that God reasons as humans do and is not an arbitrary ruler but a being with whom humans can argue. This is the stage of the Jewish covenant. Mankind can challenge God in the name of common principles and shared rationality. Mutual promises can be made. (I once heard a rabbi say that it is acceptable to praise God and it is acceptable to scold God, but it is not acceptable to ignore God.) This leads Fromm to the third stage, which is beyond the contractual level and the level of power. In the third stage of Judaism’s religious development, 33 we see a second negativity—we do not see God as a master nor as an entity to be contracted with, in fact, not as an “object” at all. When God refused to name himself to Moses and gave the non-name—I do not have a name; I just am—God is no longer a something or other to contract with, but God just is. As opposed to a subject/object relationship, the suitable relationship, according to Fromm, becomes a commitment to inter-subjectivity: No longer I-It but rather I-Thou, in Feuerbach’s and Buber’s terminology. (Buber and Fromm were both in the mystical, story- telling tradition of the Hassidics and both were influenced by Feuerbach’s I-Thou –––––––––––––– 32 Ibid., pp. 23-25. 33 Ibid., pp. 25-29.

72 SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM and his Love vs. Faith dialectic.) God, in the third stage of encounter, should never be responded to as an idol, a name-able object outside me, but humans too should never be objectified—and the humans are really Fromm’s concern here—because they share God’s nature.34 Surely modern socialists should not be embarrassed by the Jewish roots of Fromm’s prophetic messianism, as if religion were inherently pre-radical by nature. Fromm’s Judaism is liberatory, humanist and simply part of Marxism. Because Judaism emerged through those three stages of religious development, dealing with issues of submission and authority and arriving at an affirmation of intersubjectivity, it brings with it a sensitivity needed in the left. The year after writing the Manifesto/Program, Fromm wrote a beautiful, terse, essay: “The Revolutionary Character.” (According to his essay, a “revolutionary” is properly biophilic and hopeful, but a “rebel” is not.) A revolutionary is not certified objectively, by participating in a revolution or quoting a program. Rather, a revolutionary is understood as someone committed to changing society radically but who does not draw strength (like a rebel) from a symbiotic relationship to authorities and subordinates. Because too often our “revolutionaries” are simply internalizing external authority, tailoring themselves to fit that authority, their commitment can become ferocity, a kind of “burning ice,” feeling strong and burning with “life” only when acting coldly.35 (The author of this paper knew a leftist who was overjoyed at making the coldest organizational decisions.) And because of unresolved relationships with authority, opportunistic acceptance of “help” from the powers outside has always plagued the left: “Twentieth century political life is a cemetery containing the moral graves of people who started out as alleged revolutionaries and who turned out to be nothing but opportunistic rebels.”36 The prophetic messianic root of humanism, with its confidence to act on the possibility of peace and tolerance and brotherhood, with its openness to inter- subjectivity, and its continual awareness of the perfectibility of man through human history, is a challenge to socialism and its proclaimed revolutionaries. Everyone on the left should at least reread Fromm’s Manifesto/Program, Marx’s Concept of Man, and “The Revolutionary Character”—they have not lost their sting in these fifty years—and we should attempt to read Fromm as a philosopher/organizer, working on several levels, not as a simplistic popularizer.

–––––––––––––– 34 Fromm, perhaps like Hegel, often plays with Meister Eckhart’s negative terminology: if we do not seek God as an object we will find God, and we humans can hence learn to avoid treating others as things, not submitting, not dominating and not simply contracting as opposing interests. 35 Fromm, “The Revolutionary Character,” p. 141. 36 Ibid., p. 140.

73 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE

II. PROPHETIC MESSIANISM: AN EXCURSUS AND FURTHER DEFENSE BY JOAN BRAUNE As Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx and some of Jürgen Habermas’ recent work have brought to wider attention, Marxism and the Frankfurt School owed much to “messianism,” a partially secularized version of the traditional Jewish hope and enthusiasm for the coming of the messianic age. This half of the paper explores Erich Fromm’s interconnected concepts of “hope” and “messianism.” According to Fromm, hope—the motivating force of true messianism—leads one to become actively involved in building a better society, neither idly waiting for a better age to come, nor attempting to “force” the messianic age to come before its proper time. Fromm distinguishes two conceptual approaches to this messianic age, two kinds of messianism— “prophetic” messianism and “catastrophic” messianism— which can be seen as two opposing perspectives on the nature of revolutionary change. While Fromm was raised an Orthodox Jew, was educated by Talmudic scholars, and engaged in dialogue with various religious thinkers throughout his career, he broke away from Jewish religious practice as a young man and thereafter always asserted that he was “not a [religious] believer.” Although Fromm often appropriates terms (like “messianism”) from theological discourse, his use of these terms can generally be understood as political and not theological. (However, for reasons that cannot be addressed here, I reject strict dichotomies between the sacred and the secular. It might not be possible to neatly cleave the political from the theological sense of these terms.) Fromm’s messianism is primarily not a religious hope, but a political hope for a better future beyond capitalism, a future “messianic age” or utopia.37 (The concepts of messianism and utopia may not be entirely synonymous for Fromm—the messianic age connotes another time, utopia another place—but he seems to see them as closely connected.) Prophetic messianism, which Fromm supports, views the messianic event as the outcome of historical progress and united human effort. He traces its origins to the Old Testament prophets’ denunciations of injustice and sees it manifesting itself in certain marginal movements in the Middle Ages, in Renaissance humanism, in the Enlightenment, in utopian socialism, and in Marxism. By contrast, catastrophic messianism, which he opposes, is motivated by a kind of despair that masquerades as hope, and it is reactionary in its political consequences (though not necessarily in its conscious motivations, since many leftists are catastrophic messianists). Catastrophic messianism awaits a messianic event that will follow from a catastrophic situation, into which some force or individual from outside of history will intervene, to save a corrupted humanity from itself. In defending prophetic messianism and criticizing catastrophic messianism, Fromm was challenging certain predominant perspectives on the left and perhaps critiquing the work of a number of Frankfurt School thinkers as well. Although the –––––––––––––– 37 The concepts of messianism and utopia may not be entirely synonymous for Fromm—the messianic age connotes another time, utopia another place—but he seems to see them as closely connected.

74 SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM focus of this paper is on Fromm’s conceptions of hope and messianism and not on the Frankfurt School at large, it will become clear at several points that there are significant differences between Fromm’s conception of messianism and that of some other prominent members of the Frankfurt School. The paper concludes that Fromm’s prophetic messianism is more useful to political praxis than catastrophic messianism.

ERICH FROMM’S CONCEPT OF HOPE Fromm’s discussion of hope rests mainly on a dialectical account of “what hope is not,” a question he states is easier to address than the more difficult question of “what hope is,” a question he suggests can be more adequately answered through the medium of the arts than through a philosophical treatise.38 Fromm describes three things that are not hope but that often masquerade as hope. (The third of these negations will contribute the most to clarifying Fromm’s distinction between the two kinds of messianism.) Hope is not (1) mere desiring or wishing, (2) the passive, inactive expectation of a better future, or (3) “forcing of what cannot be forced” (i.e., “forcing the Messiah”). Firstly, Fromm states that hope is not mere desiring or wishing, but rather is a kind of “certainty.”39 One can wish for something without believing that one will ever attain it. True hope, by contrast, is grounded in a humanistic faith, a “paradoxical certainty” that human beings will bring about a better future.40 This certainty is paradoxical because it nevertheless rejects determinism. People cannot (and should not) be forced to choose a better future when faced with crucial alternatives: to choose, e.g., socialism over barbarism, or nuclear disarmament over nuclear annihilation. But the person of humanistic faith nevertheless feels a kind of certainty—an inward conviction—that humanity will make the right choice, when confronted with such crucial alternatives. Another reason that hope is not mere desiring or wishing is that, while hope involves a certain kind of activity aimed at bringing about the goals for which it strives, this activity does not look like the frantic attempt to meet desire after

–––––––––––––– 38Erich Fromm, The Revolution of Hope: Towards a Humanized Technology (Harper & Row, New York, 1968), pp. 6, 11. 39 Ibid., p. 6. 40 Erich Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York, 1966), p. 157. A very clear expression of this paradoxical certainty in a Marxist context can be found in Georg Lukács’ essay, “The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg,” in History and Class Consciousness. Responding to those who sneer that Marxism is “religious faith,” Lukács does not reply—as one might expect—by insisting that Marxism is not a faith but a science. Instead, he responds by criticizing science, rejecting determinism, and stating that there is “no ‘material’ guarantee” of the proletariat’s success. He then professes his “certitude that regardless of all temporary defeats and setbacks, the historical process will come to fruition in our deeds and through our deeds.” Here Lukács expresses a kind of faith in the coming of socialism, not a scientific conclusion that the coming of socialism is “determined” (Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, trans. Rodney Livingstone (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 43).

75 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE desire, through the consumption of consumer goods.41 While people in our society are often “busy,” they do not possess the “activeness” that Fromm seeks. He writes, Our whole culture is geared to activity—activity in the sense of being busy, and being busy in the sense of busyness (the busyness necessary for business). In fact, most people are so “active” that they cannot stand doing nothing; they even transform their leisure time into another form of activity.42 But while hope may not be frantically busy, like the harried shopper, it cannot be passive and inactive either. Secondly, hope is not passive, inactive waiting, even if coupled with the confident expectation that some lofty object of desire (“fuller life,” “liberation,” “salvation,” “revolution”) will arrive in the future.43 True hope actively seeks to bring its goals into reality, while passive waiting can be a “cover for resignation,” “mere ideology,” or even an idolatry of history or progress, in which history and progress become gods to whom humans submit, rather than realities that they actively shape.44 (Here Fromm references Marx’s adage, “History is nothing and does nothing. It is man who is and does.”45) Passive “hope” is dangerous, because even when the hoped-for event presents itself as a very real possibility—for example, when the revolution is imminent—the person who has inculcated a false, passive form of hope may be unable to seize the opportunity and take action.46 Thirdly and finally—and this will require some rather lengthy explication— hope is not manifested by “forcing of what cannot be forced,” i.e. “forcing the Messiah.”47 The Jewish Talmudic tradition, in which Fromm was trained before studying psychoanalysis and joining the Frankfurt School, warns against “forcing the Messiah” by becoming “carried away by one’s hopes and wishes” and attempting to calculate the date of the Messiah’s arrival or announcing that the Messiah has come.48 Fromm observed an attempt to force the Messiah in fascism’s deification of leaders, yet he also thought that the left was not itself immune to the kind of false hope that attempts to force the Messiah.49 Some clarification of Fromm’s puzzling condemnation of “forcing the Messiah” can perhaps be obtained through an examination of his “radical interpretation of the Old Testament,” You Shall Be as Gods. There he offers a brief history of the various false Messiahs who arose throughout Jewish history. Among these was Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676), who in 1648 declared himself the Messiah and announced the impending apocalypse. This being a time of rampant persecution –––––––––––––– 41 Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, p. 6. 42 Ibid., p. 12. 43 Ibid., p. 6. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., p. 8. 46 Ibid., pp. 6-7. 47 Ibid., p. 8. 48 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, p. 153. 49 Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, p. 8.

76 SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM and consequent eschatological hope, many European Jews accepted his message and sold their homes, preparing to move to Jerusalem.50 This new “Sabbatean” movement would likely have ended after Zevi, under threat of martyrdom, converted to Islam, had it not been for the movement’s development of a strange doctrine of “redemption through sin.” Although Fromm does not address the doctrine of “redemption through sin” directly in his book, he would surely have known that the doctrine was loosely motivated by the Lurianic Kabbalah’s teaching that God’s creation of the world involved God withdrawing himself from creation, the argument being that if God had not been somehow absent from creation, he would have created a double of himself, a logical impossibility given the infinite nature attributed to God.51 In line with this doctrine of God’s withdrawal from nature, according to which God’s absence caused the entry of evil into creation, the Sabbateans argued that Zevi had had to sink into the depths of sin, through infidelity to his faith, in order to re- create and redeem the world. 52 The Sabbateans honored their doctrine of “re- demption through sin” through various ritualistic violations of religious and social mores, “which were supposed to make manifest the power of negation in the execution of actions which were at the same time destructive and liberating.”53 It is sufficiently perplexing that Fromm would write a book on interpretations of the Old Testament in the middle of the tumultuous 1960s (as Nick Braune addresses in detail above). But it is perhaps even more baffling that Fromm would discuss in that same book the story of Sabbatai Zevi, whose story was likely an embarrassment to most Jews (the book’s main audience). There are a number of possible reasons for Fromm’s inclusion of Zevi in the book. For one, Fromm probably knew, although he does not say so in You Shall Be as Gods, that Gershom Scholem—long-time collaborator of Walter Benjamin and leading scholar of Jewish mysticism, with whom Fromm had been in contact in his younger years— had done considerable research on Sabbateanism. Fromm would later criticize Scholem for holding a catastrophic form of messianism.54 Further evidence that Fromm may have introduced Zevi to make a point about the dangers of catastrophic messianism, can be found in a passage following shortly after Fromm’s discussion of Zevi, in which he writes of the disillusionment that so many felt about the Soviet Union, after Marx, Engels, and Lenin had had such high hopes that the “Kingdom of Heaven” was near. 55 In the face of this disillusionment, the left needed to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of despairing withdrawal from politics, on the one hand, and, on the other, the assertion that the

–––––––––––––– 50 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, p. 146. 51 Rudolf Siebert, The Critical Theory of Religion: The Frankfurt School (The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD, 2001), pp. 306-307. 52 Ibid., p. 311. 53 Ibid. 54 Erich Fromm, On Being Human (Continuum, New York, 1994), pp. 141-142. 55 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, p. 156.

77 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE messianic age had already come (“forcing the Messiah”) in the form of the Soviet Union.56 Elsewhere, Fromm suggests that in the context of politics the hopelessness that leads to false Messiahs (“forcing the Messiah”) is characterized by “phrase making and adventurism,” “nihilism,” and “disregard for reality,”57 and he worried that such hopelessness was rapidly becoming characteristic of some of the young activists of his time.58 (It was only a few years after Fromm’s worry to this effect that there was a resurgence of groups on the left, such as the Weather Underground and the Baader-Meinhof, which tried to “force” the revolution without building a mass movement.) He saw Herbert Marcuse’s philosophy as a further expression of the rise of nihilistic attempts to force the messiah. (The Revolution of Hope was largely a response to Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man, although Fromm directly addresses Marcuse’s thought only briefly.) According to Fromm, because Marcuse seemed to suggest (in One-Dimensional Man) that all the concepts and structures present within capitalist society were useless in the struggle against capitalism, Marcuse was forced to adopt an approach to revolution (his “Great Refusal”) that advocated a dramatic and total break with present conditions, leading to a future that is not imaginable or conceivable from the standpoint of the present; this approach seemed to Fromm to make any realistic revolutionary strategizing—any theorizing about the “steps between the present and the future”—impossible.59 (I discuss Fromm’s critique of Marcuse’s Great Refusal in my forthcoming book and will return to this critique briefly below.) As has been shown, Fromm’s negative definition of hope was a warning about the dangers of reducing hope to mere desiring or wishing, inactive waiting, or “forcing the Messiah.” Although Fromm warns that it is difficult to give a positive account of hope, he does offer some brief positive remarks as well. It has already been noted that Fromm conceived of hope as a “paradoxical certainty.” He also described hope as a “state of being,” an “inner readiness,” “activeness,” and “to … be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not to become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.” 60 He adds that hope has an unconscious component, found in all “life and growth,” even the growth of plants.61 “When hope has gone life has ended, actually or potentially,” he writes, and although he does not say so explicitly, he seems to be making a rather Aristotelian point, that all living things have a telos for which they are striving, and that to stop striving for this telos is both to die and to abandon hope. 62 This parallels Fromm’s ongoing defense of his “socialist humanism,” according to which the human essence is a potential yet to be actualized. According to Fromm, “the socialist movement was radical and humanistic—radical in the … sense of –––––––––––––– 56 Ibid., pp. 156-157. 57 Fromm, The Revolution of Hope, p. 8. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid., pp. 8-9. 60 Ibid., pp. 11-12, 9. 61 Ibid., p. 13. 62 Ibid.

78 SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM going to the roots, and the roots being man; humanistic in the sense that it is man who is the measure of all things, and his full unfolding must be the criterion of all social efforts.”63

FROMM’S CONCEPT OF PROPHETIC MESSIANISM “Messianism” is a recurring theme in Fromm’s work and is addressed in many of his books and articles, from the time of The Sane Society (1955) to To Have or To Be? (1976). As noted previously, Fromm distinguishes two kinds of messianism, prophetic and catastrophic. 64 Prophetic messianism, which Fromm supports, conceives of the messianic event as occurring within history and time, and not as rupture with history and time.65 By contrast, catastrophic messianism, which Fromm opposes, conceives of the messianic event as entering history from outside, not as an outcome of human activity. While prophetic messianism is a “horizontal” longing, a longing for human-made change, catastrophic messianism is a “vertical” longing, a longing for some external savior (perhaps a human leader, a party, a nation, or some deterministic law governing history) which is conceived as transcendent, and which is expected to enter history from a realm outside of human affairs. 66 Since prophetic messianism views the messianic event as the outcome of human progress, it encourages productive and revolutionary action, but since catastrophic messianism views the messianic event as the outcome of catastrophe, with the “Messiah” entering history to rescue a helpless and lost humanity, it encourages passive waiting or even destructive activity aimed at speeding the coming of the apocalypse. Fromm’s prophetic messianism stands in sharp contrast with other conceptions of messianism prevalent in the Frankfurt School, most notably in Walter Benjamin and also perhaps in Herbert Marcuse, both of whom seem to be closer to catastrophic messianism. 67 Probably due to a dearth of Fromm scholarship (a dearth that is only lately beginning to be remedied), characterizations of the Frankfurt School’s messianism are likely to exclude Fromm’s conception of prophetic messianism and to present the Frankfurt School as wholly motivated by a kind of catastrophic messianism. In a recent essay, a revised version of an essay –––––––––––––– 63 Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: The Courage to Be Human, trans. Michael Shaw (Continuum, New York, 1982), p. 206. 64 Fromm uses a number of terms to differentiate between these two kinds of messianism, but in a later work (unpublished during his lifetime), he offers the particularly useful terms of “catastrophic or apocalyptic messianism” (hereafter, “catastrophic messianism”) and “prophetic messianism,” and I will employ these terms here. (Lawrence Wilde, Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2004), p. 49.) 65 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, p. 88. 66 Ibid., p. 133. 67 It is quite possible that no messianic thinker’s theory perfectly fits all aspects of Fromm’s description of prophetic messianism or of catastrophic messianism. One may perhaps conceive these two kinds of messianism as Weberian ideal types. The various messanisms of Fromm’s time (H. Cohen’s, H. Marcuse’s, etc.) could be charted upon a spectrum, from the most “prophetic” on one end to the most “catastrophic” on the other.

79 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE originally published as an introduction to Jürgen Habermas’ Religion and Rationality, Eduardo Mendieta addresses Habermas’ attempt to grapple with the tradition of “Jewish messianism” and its reverberations in “Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse—and to extend legitimately Gershom Scholem’s list, Erich Fromm and Leo Löwenthal.” 68 Although Mendieta makes a point of including Fromm in his list of important “Jewish messianic” members of the Frankfurt School (“legitimately … Erich Fromm …”), Mendieta then lists what he considers to be four key aspects of the Jewish messianism motivating the Frankfurt School, the first three of which seem to contradict Fromm’s prophetic messianism and are much closer to the catastrophic messianism he opposed. Mendieta draws this list mainly from Anson Rabinbach, whom he cites. 69 Rabinbach was describing a new version of messianism that arose in Germany in the early 1900s, from around 1915-1925. This new messianism was characterized by opposition to the Enlightenment and neo-Kantianism. Fromm, however, seems to have stood in a different camp on this issue, remaining (critically) loyal to neo-Kantianism and the heritage of the Enlightenment. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Jewish thinkers in the Enlightenment tradition, like Hermann Cohen and Leo Baeck, had theorized Judaism in Kantian terms as the “religion of reason.” Before becoming a psychoanalyst and subsequently joining the Frankfurt School, Fromm was a founding member of the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus (Free Jewish Study-House) in Frankfurt. The Lehrhaus was a hub of leftwing Jewish intellectual life in 1920s Germany, whose many famous participants included Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Franz Rosenzweig, Leo Löwenthal, Ernst Simon, Leo Baeck, and Abraham Heschel. During this time, like many others in the Lehrhaus, Fromm was influenced by the thought of Hermann Cohen, whom he later called “the last great Jewish philosopher” and praised for grasping the connection between “messianism and socialism.” 70 Universalist (non-Zionist and anti-nationalist), humanist, socialist, and rationalist, Cohen’s messianism influenced a generation of German- Jewish intellectuals. According to Cohen, central to Judaism was the belief in a coming Messiah, which would be neither an individual nor a select nation of people, but humanity as a whole, who would make world history together, a view of history that he held

–––––––––––––– 68 Eduardo Mendieta, Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 2007), pp. 142-143. 69 Rabinbach’s first three points are roughly the same as Mendieta’s, although Rabinbach’s fourth point seems different from Mendieta’s. Rabinbach’s fourth point is that there is an “ethical ambivalence” in messianism, an ambivalence which stems from the fact that human action aiming at bringing about the messianic age is superfluous for this conception of messianism, since the messianic age is not the outcome of human action (cf. Anson Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals Between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1997), pp. 31- 34, and Mendieta, Global Fragments, p. 143). 70 Fromm, On Being Human, p. 143.

80 SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM was first advanced by the Hebrew prophets.71 The arrival of the messianic age depended upon humanity becoming the subject/object of universal knowledge72 and love.73 Humanity’s love would be manifested through suffering, freely chosen out of compassion and out of fidelity to ethical principles.74 The oppressed would thus become their own Messiah, 75 their spirit being one of “opposition to the acceptance of superficial human reality as displayed in power, in splendor, in success, in dominion, in autocracy, in imperialism; as an opposition to all these signs of human arrogance.”76 Both Fromm and Cohen (and, one could argue, Marx) held that until the messianic age (or full communism) arrives, humanity does not yet fully exist.77 In working for the messianic age, one was also working for the fulfillment of human nature. Also, Fromm’s and Cohen’s messianism was radically forward-looking,78 while still holding that the future is linked to the present and can be understood or imagined to some extent from the standpoint of the present. The messianic event was not to be an unpredictable, non-conceivable, dramatic rupture from the present but was to be built and planned for in the present.79 Through their attainment of self-knowledge and love, humans could catch a glimpse of the future messianic age through their own action in the present. But Cohen’s messianism—and to some extent Fromm’s—stands in sharp contrast to the later, cataclysmic, semi-Romantic messianism that arose among some German Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals at the beginning of World War I. Cohen soon represented a mainstay of Enlightenment optimism and Kantian rationalism that many of the young radicals repudiated as outmoded. Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and many others in the Lehrhaus circle who were initially attracted to Cohen’s ideas eventually broke away from his thought. 80 (While Cohen’s capitulation to German nationalism and endorsement of the war surely played a role in his loss of popularity on the left, other factors, including his vocal opposition to Zionism, played a role as well.) The new messianism—romantic, nihilistic, anarchic, and catastrophic—envisioned a messianic future that would arrive not as a product of human progress or planning but suddenly, in a time of disorder and despair, through a dramatic “rupture” with the present and with all prior history. Fromm stands, sometimes isolated, as a prominent Marxist theorist

–––––––––––––– 71 Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, trans. John Denton (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY, 1997), p. 236. 72 Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (Scholars Press, Atlanta, GA1995), p. 249. 73 Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, pp. 236-237. 74 Ibid., p. 242. 75 Ibid., pp. 242, 245. 76 Ibid., p. 244. 77 Ibid., p. 237. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Michael Löwy, Redemption and Utopia: Jewish Libertarian Thought in Central Europe: A Study in Elective Affinity, trans. Hope Heaney (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 1992), p. 59.

81 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE who continued to defend the pre-war universalistic messianism and who saw it as true to Marx’s vision. Anson Rabinbach argued that the new messianism—shared by Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin, on the left, and Carl Schmitt, on the right, among others—was characterized by four “dimensions.”81 The first three of these are summarized and slightly modified by Mendieta, as follows. (1) “Restoration” through anamnesis and through breaking with the past, as opposed to restoration of some past, historical “Golden Age” (2) “Utopianism” that contradicts “Enlightenment utopianism” and views progress as “catastrophe,” and (3) An apocalyptic rupture with the past and present, leading to a future that is not even “imaginable” from the standpoint of the present.82 Contra Mendieta, Fromm’s prophetic messianism has little in common with these points, while (2) and (3) actually sound like aspects of the catastrophic messianism Fromm so vehemently opposed. Addressing each of these points with regard to Fromm will elucidate his prophetic messianism and show how it differs from the messianism adopted by some other members of the Frankfurt School. In what follows, I will discuss the first three points in the order they are presented by Mendieta.

– (1) Restoration through anamnesis: the role of memory and the past in messianism. Karl Kraus’ statement “Origin is the Goal”83 became a popular slogan of the new messianism described by Rabinbach and was adopted by Walter Benjamin,84 among others; Herbert Marcuse does Kraus homage85 and alludes to the principle, though perhaps he never quotes the slogan. For Benjamin, history was a long chain of catastrophes, and historical memory served to spark messianic hopes for redemption while simultaneously convincing people that this redemption cannot come by means of mere human effort in history. For Marcuse, memory seems to serve a more subversive role, in that it is the memory of past utopian dreams as well as of humanity’s original polymorphous perversity, that fuel revolutionary sentiment. In dealing with memory and the past, Fromm takes a different approach from that of Benjamin and Marcuse, seeing memory as having progressive as well as reactionary potential. Although Fromm differs profoundly from Mendieta’s points (2) and (3) (see below), Fromm does share some commonalities with this trend (1) in the new –––––––––––––– 81 Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe, pp. 3, 31-4. 82 Mendieta, Global Fragments, p. 144. 83 Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe, p. 31. 84 Ibid. 85 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Beacon Press, Boston, 1991), p. 196, and Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (BostonBeacon Press, Boston,1966), p. 145.

82 SOCIALIST PROGRAM AND PROPHETIC MESSIANISM messianism. For example, memory seems to play a potentially messianic role in his book The Forgotten Language: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Dreams, Fairy Tales, and Myths, which argues that humanity has forgotten—and needs to remember—how to interpret the potentially subversive “language” of “dreams and myths.” Furthermore, Fromm suggests in You Shall Be as Gods that prophetic messianism seeks a restoration of the state of Paradise, i.e. a restoration of a time when society was lacking in the alienation and fragmentation that are so prevalent in late capitalism. Messianism seeks to rectify “the fall,” which for Fromm was an allegorical way of speaking about an “historical” (as opposed to metaphysical) event, the point in time at which humanity lost its original sense of oneness with nature and its fellow humans.86 Fromm writes, “The messianic time is the time when man will have been fully born. When man was expelled from Paradise he lost his home; in the messianic time he will be at home again—in the world.”87 Although Fromm does seem to say that the messianic age restores the state of Paradise that exists prior to the fall, it is also important to note that Fromm saw the fall as a needed step in human development. The fall was not a loss of humanity’s dignity, nor was it a sin, but rather it was an important step in human development, a part of humanity’s process of “growing up,” of learning not to blindly obey the orders of authority figures (orders such as “don’t eat from that tree”), and breaking its infantile bonds to blood and soil.88 But, expelled from its original oneness with nature and with its fellow humans, humanity now feels helpless and unprotected, and longs for the former safety of “Paradise.” In Escape from Freedom, Fromm warned of the dangers of yielding uncritically to this longing, since it was this very feeling of helplessness that led humanity to seek relief in authoritarianism, including fascism. Hence, there is a need to rediscover the importance of disobedience. Humanity has so far been unable to recognize the promise of the serpent in Genesis—”You shall be as gods”—as a blessing and not a curse. Since Fromm was wary of the danger of the masses feeling overwhelmed by helplessness and seeking to escape the burden of their freedom through blind obedience to irrational authorities, he probably viewed the new messianism’s emphasis on memory with a degree of suspicion. Following Hermann Cohen, who argued that what was unique about Jewish messianism was its future-oriented-ness, Fromm’s messianism was highly future-oriented, and he adamantly rejected any romantic or nationalistic attempts to turn back the clock to some earlier stage of human history. It is probably because of this concern of his part that one finds far less discussion of memory in Fromm than one does in Benjamin, Marcuse, or Adorno. The messianic future envisioned by Fromm is a dialectical synthesis of, on the one hand, the primal oneness with nature and one’s fellow humans that humanity experienced at its earliest stages of historical development—variously characterized by Fromm as primitive communism, as matriarchy (following –––––––––––––– 86 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, p. 122. 87 Ibid., p. 123. 88 Ibid., pp. 122-123.

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Bachofen), or (allegorically) as Paradise/Eden—and, on the other hand, the individuality and autonomy of persons that was celebrated by much of the tradition of humanist thought and especially by the Enlightenment. He writes, “There is a dialectic relationship between Paradise and the messianic time. Paradise is the golden age of the past, as many legends in other cultures see it. The messianic time is the golden age of the future.”89 Consequently, anamnesis of humanity’s early unity and non-alienation can be progressive, for Fromm, and need not result in a reactionary attempt to flee from the pressures of the present. But although Fromm holds that “paradise is the golden age of the past” and “the messianic time is the golden age of the future,” it should be noted these two states are quite different.90 Fromm’s notion of history is not cyclical, the future is not simply a return to the past, and the origin is only half of the goal. The pre-historic golden age is defined by “man’s not yet having been born” and the messianic golden age by “man’s having been fully born.” 91 The coming messianic time is a stage in human development that has never before been achieved, marking progress beyond both past and present, but it is a stage in which prior history will be sublated and brought to fulfillment.

– (2) Messianism’s response to the Enlightenment: or, progress vs. catastrophe. Fromm saw the Enlightenment as one of the historical manifestations of prophetic messianism, and he rejected the view that a catastrophe must precede the messianic event. These two positions (2a and 2b, below) are linked by Fromm’s openness to the Enlightenment ideal of historical progress. – 2a. Fromm and the Enlightenment. Fromm saw the Enlightenment as radical in its humanism, its devotion to freedom, its commitment to moving history forward, and its rejection of authoritarianism (“authoritarian idolatry”). 92 Fromm would likely agree with Jürgen Habermas’ characterization of the Enlightenment as an “unfinished project” that needs to be continued in certain respects. Like Ernst Bloch,93 Fromm held that the Enlightenment retained an unconscious affinity with radical undercurrents latent in religious eschatology prior to the Enlightenment. Despite the Enlightenment’s attempt to jettison religious concepts, it was “only a new form of thought expressing the old religious enthusiasm, especially as far as the meaning and purpose of history was concerned. In the name of reason and happiness, of human dignity and freedom, the Messianic idea found a new expression.”94

–––––––––––––– 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 Ibid., pp. 123-124. 92 Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (Rinehart and Company, New York, 1955), p. 235. 93 Those interested in Bloch’s interpretation of the Enlightenment should also check out his essay in Fromm’s anthology, where he argues that Marx continued the tradition of the Enlightenment: Ernst Bloch, “Man and Citizen According to Marx” in Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium, ed. Erich Fromm (Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1965). 94 Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 235.

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According to Fromm, Marxism stands within the same prophetic-messianic tradition as the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment’s messianism helped give rise to Marxism. Condorcet’s radical messianism, Fromm claims, influenced Proudhon and the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon and Comte, and in turn Marx; similarly, Marx was influenced by Lessing, Fichte, and Hegel, all whom Fromm also sees as inspired by the Enlightenment’s messianism.95 Marx’s own thought was “Messianic-religious, in secular language.”96 This messianic spirit suffered various setbacks throughout history, with one of the most significant in recent Western history being German Social Democracy’s capitulation to nationalism, which marked a loss of the “messianic pathos, its appeal to the deepest longings and needs of man.”97 Fromm wrote that the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and of (Jewish theologian and anarchist revolutionary) Gustav Landauer were meant to snuff out the messianic project,98 while fascism and Stalinism dealt further near-deadly blows to messianism.99 A revival of prophetic messianism would be largely dependent, for Fromm, upon a rediscovery of Marx’s prophetic messianism, and Fromm held that such a rediscovery was occurring in his time, through the work of Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, and Paul Tillich, among others.100 Although Fromm defended the Enlightenment as a radical and unfinished project, contributing to the birth of Marxism, it should not be inferred that Fromm was an uncritical defender of the Enlightenment. He leveled a number of insightful criticisms against the Enlightenment, criticizing the Enlightenment’s determinism101 and pointing out that the Enlightenment’s humanism bordered on a fetishistic idolatry of humans, resulting in despise of nature.102 In Escape from Freedom, he also addressed the psychological consequences of the Enlightenment, which, while liberating in important respects, included feelings of loneliness and disenchantment among Europeans. Nor did Fromm’s defense of the Enlightenment lead him to an ardent or dogmatic rejection of religious ideas (as his engagement with concepts like messianism attests), of the medieval world, or of Christianity, though such repudiation is sometimes considered a characteristic of defenders of the Enlightenment. That Fromm’s work was influenced by various religious thinkers (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist) is evident. Fromm also evolved towards a greater openness toward Christian thought, and Catholicism specifically, over the course of his career, without this leading him to a blanket rejection of the Enlightenment. Especially later in his career, he drew from various radical Catholic thinkers: Thomas Merton, Karl Rahner, Latin American theologians, French –––––––––––––– 95 Ibid., p. 236. 96 Ibid. 97 Wilde, Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity, p. 122. 98 Fromm, The Sane Society, p. 239. 99 Ibid., pp. 237-239. 100 Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (London: Continuum, 1994), pp. 6, 57. 101 Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (Harper & Row, New York, 1964), p. 21. 102 Lawrence Wilde, Erich Fromm and the Quest for Solidarity, p. 49.

85 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE worker priests, Eastern Europeans involved in Marxist-Christian dialogue, and others. In a 1954 letter to Thomas Merton,103 Fromm wrote of overcoming the narrow negative attitude toward the Middle Ages that he had as a youth, a product of having been raised in a predominantly Protestant country. He was also increasingly attracted to Renaissance humanism,104 and his attempt to meld the contributions of Enlightenment thought with those of Christian humanism eventually culminated in his proposal for a “City of Being,” providing “a synthesis between the spiritual core of the Late Medieval world and the development of rational thought and science since the Renaissance,” melding the Medieval vision of the “City of God” with the Enlightenment’s ideal of the “Earthly City of Progress.”105 Although Fromm’s support for the Enlightenment was cautious and not uncritical, he nevertheless seems to differ from the approach of most of the other Frankfurt School thinkers (prior to Habermas) to the Enlightenment. Unlike Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, he saw the Enlightenment as an essentially radical and progressive period of human history, leading to the development of Marxism. Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s The Dialectic of Enlightenment (which was initially intended to be co-authored by Horkheimer and Marcuse), took a considerably more negative approach to the Enlightenment than Fromm did. Benjamin, as will be noted briefly in the following discussion of catastrophe (2b), was also intensely critical of the Enlightenment.

– 2b Progress and catastrophe. Fromm lived in an era which, perhaps much like our own, was aware of the threat of catastrophe but seemed unwilling to take action to avert the catastrophe. He was especially disturbed by discussions of bomb shelters and by the widely held view in the U.S. that families could hide below ground in the event of a nuclear catastrophe, fight off the invading hordes attempting to steal their goods, and then reemerge to entirely rebuild civilization. That so many people were willing to accept such a possible outcome to human history, Fromm saw as profoundly pathological. Fromm’s involvement with SANE aimed at awakening the world to the need to prevent nuclear catastrophe in an insane time of nuclear “deterrence.” In a 1961 letter to Thomas Merton, Fromm offered a disturbing depiction of what American life would be like in the wake of a nuclear war. Those who survived in fall-out shelters would presumably use stockpiles of guns to defend their shelters from others searching for food or assistance, big cities would cease to exist, and a life –––––––––––––– 103 Erich Fromm, Letter to Thomas Merton (University of Kentucky Special Collections Library), December 8, 1954. (Fromm exchanged roughly thirty letters with Thomas Merton, over the course of fourteen years. Fromm’s part of the exchange is housed mainly at the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University and the Special Collections Library at University of Kentucky, both of which archives kindly allowed me access. Some of Merton’s letters to Fromm are published in The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns (Ed. William H. Shannon).) 104 Fromm, The Heart of Man, p. 81. 105 Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? (Continuum, New York, 2000), p. 202.

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of widespread starvation, pitiless violence, and finally “complete barbarism,” would follow the catastrophe.106 Passages like this one indicate that Fromm seemed to think that people were aware of the potential for catastrophe, and yet the impending catastrophe did not motivate them to revolt, and if the catastrophe were actually to occur, would be more likely to lead to barbarism than to socialism.

A quite different approach to the question of catastrophe can be found in the work of Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and Gershom Scholem. In Benjamin’s case, although there are certainly links between his messianism and Marxism,107 his conception of messianic time as a rupture from history—a “Messianic cessation of happening”—is oddly un-dialectical for a Marxist.108 Fromm’s conception of the messianic event as an outgrowth of history, not a break from it, differs dramatically from Walter Benjamin’s assertion that, “Messianism demands a complete repudiation of the world as it is, placing its hope in a future whose realization can only be brought about by the destruction of the old order.”109 Gershom Scholem, Benjamin’s longtime collaborator and correspondent, likewise emphasized the catastrophic nature of messianism. Perhaps more than any other Jewish messianic thinker of his time, Scholem stressed that the messianic event would result from an apocalyptic rupture, a result of “transcendence breaking in on history, an intrusion in which history itself perishes, transformed in its ruin because it is struck by a beam of light shining into it from an outside source.”110 It is telling of Fromm and Scholem’s deeply entrenched intellectual differences, that while Fromm and Scholem were participating in the Frankfurt Lehrhaus, Fromm led a study group on the Biblical book of Exodus (in which the Jewish people made history through their confrontation with the Pharaoh) and Scholem led a group on the book of Daniel (which Fromm considered to be an example of catastrophic messianism). 111 Decades later, Fromm noted that Scholem’s view was “that the concept of the messianic age was to be virtually a catastrophic one.”112 It is also telling that, according to Habermas, Scholem viewed Marx and Freud (Fromm’s two intellectual heroes), as heretics influenced by the same dangerous spirit as the false Messiahs and the Enlightenment.113 Marcuse, for his part, often makes references to “catastrophe” and quotes some messianic remarks of Walter Benjamin’s very approvingly, in both Eros and –––––––––––––– 106 Erich Fromm, Letter to Thomas Merton (Thomas Merton Center), October 9, 1961. 107 Benjamin Lane, Reading Walter Benjamin: Writing Through the Catastrophe (Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK, 2005), p. 9. 108 Ibid., p. 143. 109 Ibid., p. 15. 110 Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (Schocken Books, New York, 1971), p. 10. 111 Rainer Funk, Erich Fromm: His Life and Ideas: An Illustrated Biography, trans. Ian Portman and Manuela Kunkel (Continuum, New York, 2000), p. 42, and Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, pp. 133-134. 112 Fromm, On Being Human, pp. 141-142. 113 Jürgen Habermas, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, Religion, and Modernity (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002), p. 145.

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Civilization114 and One-Dimensional Man.115 Marcuse held that the distortion of language by capitalism meant that the revolutionary potential of terms like “hope” and “love” had been severely inhibited. Consequently, revolutionary activity must not—contra Fromm—attempt to build upon concepts already present under capitalism (“love,” “hope,” “progress,” etc.) but rather attempt to create an opening or rupture into which something entirely new could enter. In a significant passage, Marcuse suggests sabotaging the mainstream media, the “mere absence” of which, he suggests, would “plunge the individual into a traumatic void,” from which he or she would obtain a profoundly new understanding of self and from the rubble of which, society would be reconstructed for the better. 116 Such proposals were deeply worrying to Fromm, who held that successful revolutions are motivated by a radical kind of productivity (in the sense of Marx’s conception “species-being,” or human nature as fundamentally productive). For Marcuse, the revolution was sparked not through building up dual power or through party-building, but rather by a mere absence of what has become commonplace and by an ensuing crisis. While Fromm attempts to build upon the present, Marcuse’s approach seems to depend more on dismantling and then reconstructing social structures.

– (3) Imagining the Future Finally, Mendieta’s third point remains to be addressed: whether the messianic future is “imaginable.” In contradistinction to a number of other thinkers in the Frankfurt School, Fromm held that the messianic future is imaginable from the standpoint of the present. He saw potential in a kind of “utopian” thought, as he argued in his “Forward” to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and “Afterword” to George Orwell’s 1984. Although there are certainly limits to one’s ability to describe the socialist future while living under the conditions of capitalism—no doubt Fromm would think it impossible to so completely understand the present and predict the future as to decide, as Fourier had attempted, how garbage-collection would work under socialism—Fromm nevertheless saw some potential in the utopian imagination. Furthermore, his openness to the Enlightenment and his rejection of the view that the messianic event would have to result from an ahistorical rupture, allowed him to use certain concepts present under capitalism to describe the socialist future. For example, we can legitimately say that the socialist future would be one of “love,” and it is not the case that we cannot know anything about love under capitalism. Fromm writes (largely in response to Marcuse), [Some] share the opinion of the basic incompatibility between love and normal secular life within our society. They arrive at the result that to speak of love today means only to participate in the general fraud; they claim that only a martyr or a mad person can love in the world of today, hence that all

–––––––––––––– 114 Marcuse, Eros and Civilization, p. 233. 115 Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, p. 257. 116 Ibid., pp. 245-246.

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discussion of love is nothing but preaching. [Author’s note: Marcuse had accused Fromm of “sermonizing” in their famous debate in Dissent magazine.] This very respectable viewpoint lends itself readily to a rationalization of cynicism … This “radicalism” results in moral nihilism.117 Fromm continues, defending his view that love is not inconceivable or impossible under capitalism: I am of the conviction that the answer to the absolute incompatibility of love and “normal” life is correct only in an abstract sense. The principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love are incompatible. But modern society seen concretely is a complex phenomenon…”Capitalism” is in itself a complex and constantly changing structure which still permits of a good deal of non-conformity and of personal latitude.118 It seems that Fromm is pointing out that the seeds of any new society are present in the preceding one; while catastrophic messianism suggests the need for a radical rupture from current society, Fromm preferred to nurture the seeds of the next society that are already present within the current one. Although a helpful rubric for elucidating Fromm’s messianism, it has been seen that the aspects of messianism described by Eduardo Mendieta do not adequately explain Fromm’s prophetic messianism, but rather in large part describe a catastrophic messianism that may be found in the work of other members of the Frankfurt School, such as Walter Benjamin and Herbert Marcuse, while Fromm differs in conceiving of the messianic age as a product of a this-worldly, historical, human effort. In rejecting the view that the messianic age must arise from catastrophe or a rupture from history, and in critiquing false conceptions of hope, Fromm presents a vision for revolutionary action. An attempt to recover this alternative version of messianism should lead critical theorists to a thoughtful reengagement with Fromm, a reengagement that is currently under way but still quite fledgling. In the process, unique trends in messianism can be differentiated, and the left may be able to better articulate what it is that we mean when we express our hope or faith in the coming of a future that fulfills our utopian longings. Although Fromm knew that messianism had suffered severe setbacks in the twentieth century (the Second International’s capitulation to German nationalism, fascism, the devolution of the Soviet experiment into bureaucratic “state capitalism,” and the rise of the nuclear arms race)—he was not naïve about how arduous a struggle it would be to recover the prophetic-messianic spirit—he remained committed to a socialist humanism which saw the masses as capable of envisioning and creating a future that could better meet their needs. Today, in a time of heightened threat of catastrophe, both economic and ecological, it seems to this writer more imperative than ever that we adopt neither a passive, “waiting” –––––––––––––– 117 Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (Harper & Row, New Yor, 1956), p. 131. 118 Ibid., pp. 131-132.

89 NICK BRAUNE & JOAN BRAUNE stance—we remember how some relied upon Obama—nor a strategy of blanket destruction, attempting to “force the Messiah” without building a mass movement, in the hopes that crises will spur revolt. Rather, the socialist movement has much to learn from Fromm’s “expansive humanism,” as we continue to further the prophetic-messianic vision.

REFERENCES

Anderson, K. B. (2007). Thinking about Fromm and Marxism. Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture, 6(3). Retrieved from http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_6.3/anderson.htm Cohen, H. (1995). Religion of reason out of the sources of Judaism (S. Kaplan, Trans.). Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Fromm, E. (1955). The sane society. New York, NY: Rinehart and Company. Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Fromm, E. (1962). Beyond the chains of illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud. New York, NY: Pocket Books, Inc. Fromm, E. (1963). Sigmund Freud’s mission: An analysis of his personality and influence. New York, NY: Grove Press. Fromm, E. (1964). The heart of man: Its genius for good and evil. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Fromm, E. (Ed.). (1966). Socialist humanism: An international symposium. New York, NY: Doubleday & Company. Fromm, E. (1966). You shall be as gods. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. Fromm, E. (1966). You shall be as gods: A radical interpretation of the Old Testament and its tradition. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Fromm, E. (1967). Let man prevail: A socialist manifesto and program. New York, NY: Socialist Party, U.S.A. Fromm, E. (1968). The revolution of hope: Towards a humanized technology. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Fromm, E. (1973a). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York, NY: Fawcett World Library. Fromm, E. (1973b). The revolutionary character. The dogma of Christ and other essays on religion, psychology and culture (pp. 137-154). Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc. Fromm, E. (1981). On disobedience, and other essays. New York, NY: Seabury Press. Fromm, E. (1994a). Marx’s concept of man. London, UK: Continuum. Fromm, E. (1994b). On being human. New York, NY: Continuum. Fromm, E. (2000). To have or to be? New York, NY: Continuum. Fromm, E., & Merton, T. Letters. University of Kentucky Special Collections Library. Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Fromm, E., & Xirau, R. (Eds.). (1968). The nature of man. New York, NY: Macmillan Company. Funk, R. (1982). Erich Fromm: The courage to be human (M. Shaw, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. Funk, R. (2000). Erich Fromm: His life and ideas. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc. Habermas, J. (2002). Religion and rationality: Essays on reason, religion, and modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Katz, M. S. (1987). Ban the bomb: A history of SANE. New York, NY: Praeger. Lane, B. (2005). Reading Walter Benjamin: Writing through the catastrophe. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Löwy, M. (1992). Redemption and utopia: Jewish libertarian thought in Central Europe: A study in elective affinity (H. Heaney, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lukács, G. (1972). History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics (R. Livingstone, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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Marcuse, H. (1966). Eros and civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Marcuse, H. (1991). One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Mendieta, E. (2007). Global fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and critical theory. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Poma, A. (1997). The critical philosophy of Hermann Cohen (J. Denton, Trans.). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Rabinbach, A. (1997). In the shadow of catastrophe: German intellectuals between apocalypse and enlightenment. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Scholem, G. (1971). The Messianic idea in Judaism and other essays on Jewish spirituality. New York, NY: Schocken Books. Siebert, R. (2001). The critical theory of religion: The Frankfurt School. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press. Wilde, L. (2004). Erich Fromm and the quest for solidarity. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Nick Braune South Texas College

Joan Braune Mount Mary University

91

PART II: FROMM AND RELIGION

ERICH FROMM

6. MARX AND RELIGION1

In order to understand the sentence “Religion is the opium of the people” we have to read it in its whole context: The religious misery is at once the expression of the real misery and the protest against the real misery. Religion is a sigh of the distressed creature, the soul of a heartless world as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The negation (Aufhebung) of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is a demand for its real happiness; the demand to keep the illusion about his condition is the demand to give up a condition which requires illusions. The critique of religion is essentially the critique of the vale of misery whose halo religion is. The critique has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain, not in order for man to wear the fantasy-less, comfortless chain, but in order that he throw away the chain and pluck the living flower. The critique of religion undeceives2 man in order that he thinks, acts and forms his reality like an un- deceived man who has come to his senses in order to move around himself and hence around his real sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which moves around man as long as he does not move around himself.3 It becomes clear that Marx does not condemn religion as such but because it gives people illusory instead of real happiness. Putting it this way however, the statement seems to imply that Marx was really in favor of religion which he obviously was not. How can we resolve this problem? The first question is: What is meant by religion? Religion is a system of ideas, norms and rituals which satisfy the need deeply rooted in human existence, for a system of orientation and devotion. This

–––––––––––––– 1 “Marx and Religion” originated in 1978/79 in a German and an English version. The German version was published under the title “Konsumreligion” in Neues Forum, Wien, No. 301/302 (1979), pp. 12-13, while the English typescript so far wasn’t published. Copyright © 1979 by Erich Fromm; Copyright © 2013 by The Literary Estate of Erich Fromm, c/o Dr. Rainer Funk, Ursrainer Ring 24, D-72076 Tuebingen, Germany; e-Mail: fromm-estate @fromm-online.com. 2 In German, “enttäuscht” means today a sad experience of unfulfilled expectations, while its literary meaning is something very positive, namely not to be deceived, i.e. to be rid of one’s illusions. To the degree to which people live by illusions, the negative aspect of disillusions must prevail. 3 K. Marx, Einleitung in die Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (my translation, E.F.).

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 95–99. © The Estate of Erich Fromm. Used with the permission of the Estate of Erich Fromm. ERICH FROMM definition is valid for all religions, regardless of whether they worship idols or an invisible god or as in Buddhism, have no concept of God at all. The kind of ideas and images that a society has of a “holy” being depends on its social structure and cultural tradition. The Hebrews in Egypt made him a king; the poor in Palestine a suffering man; the Buddhists a teacher who has taught man to arrive at the blessed life (nirvana) by following the noble eight-fold path of conduct. Before commenting on Marx’s text a classification of terminology seems to be useful. The terms “religion” and “religious” are used here in a special way. By “religion” I refer to an Institution with authorities, dogmas and a certain amount of authoritarianism. By “religious” I mean an attitude that considers the full development of man to be the supreme goal of human ethics, an attitude which is primarily not expressed in a set of beliefs but in the daily practice of life; it may be defined as a character trait. It is unfortunate that in our language we have no other word for this trait but the word “religious,” which is misleading by its connection with religion. There are religious atheists and non-religious believers. Only their deeds and their character-structure tell to which category a person belongs. What they themselves think about their being “religious” matters least. Religion in a general sense can be defined as the ultimate motivation of man. It should be clear that by ultimate motivation is meant not what he thinks motivates him but what can be shown empirically as motivating him. What then is “ultimate motivation?” First, “ultimate motivation” is not a philosophical or theological but a strictly psychological category. It is discovered by the most detailed analysis of the character structure. One discovers through this analysis that behind the apparent multitude of desires, each individual is motivated by one goal, to which all desires are subordinated; love, hate, power, possession, insight, humility can be the ultimate motivation and the ultimate goal. Psychologically speaking then, a person whose ultimate goal is power, is “religious” in the broad meaning of the word. His religion is the worship of power and he is attracted by power, whenever he finds it, and repelled by those who have no power. In this sense then there are no unreligious persons; they would die from sheer boredom. But the religious impulse may be very weak—and is in fact weak with the majority which is mainly occupied with making a living and killing, in various ways, the time which they have left over. The situation in modern society is more complicated because we have two species of religion, similar to the Teutonic tribes who at the time of their conversion accepted Christ and yet kept their old pagan idols. Today there are religions to which the majority of the western world still, with greater or lesser intensity are committed . But we have a second “religion” which is not called religion and yet has all the qualities of one: a religion of production and consumption, of human enslavement to things, whose norms are maximal production, unbridled egotism, and exploitation. The salvation of man in this religion consists in maximum material success, his sacred duty is essentially that of “functioning.”

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Why should this secular system be called religion when it seems to be so contrary to a religion? The reason is simple. It shares with religion the principle that a man devotes his whole life to these goals; he feels guilty if he fails to do so, and damned if he remains without success of some kind. But the secular religions of capitalism and Soviet “socialism” do not fulfill the task of satisfying profound and ineradicable human needs. Man cannot help dreaming. He is longing for a world of love, freedom, justice, and as long as this world does not exist in reality, he constructs it in a system which exists apart from social reality. If we mean by ‘religious’ an attitude whose ideals are essentially those of love, brotherliness and human dignity, religion is a necessity in a society which negates and denies precisely those values. As a consequence man splits the world outside, and himself inside, into two contradictory parts. He is the ruthless egotist, only out for himself and more power (or for submission if there is no chance of any power) and he deals with his strivings for love and justice in the alienated form of building a religion apart from secular society. From all this follows a simple conclusion: the more “religious,” that is to say practicing freedom and brotherhood a society is, the less it needs religion. The more unreligious it is, the more it needs religion. It may very well be said that Marx’s fight against religion was the fight for a religious society, provided we understand religious in the above mentioned sense. Religion removes itself as a separate institution to the degree to which its principles are realized in social life, and the concept of God removes itself to the degree that a society is not awed by powerful authorities. To sum up: Religion in its positive aspects was a necessary and important institution representing the interests of man against powerful institutions (even though the church very often did not fulfill this function). In a truly socialist society based on brotherliness, human solidarity and love, there is no need for religion because the society as such has become “religious.” These considerations lead to the conclusion that there is no conflict between religion and socialism or Marxism properly understood. In the socialist society, as we said, religion as a particular institution is unnecessary because its principles are realized in social life. This kind of non-religion may also be called “atheism,” a view in which there is no concept of God. However, it is important to distinguish between what might be called bourgeois atheism and Marxist atheism. A great number of those who call themselves atheists (not only in the bourgeoisie but also in the working class) retain a bourgeois concept, which was part of the bourgeois materialism represented by such men as Jakob Molleschott and Ludwig Büchner. One fought God because one believed that the only reality was that of capital and commodities. Bourgeois religion and bourgeois atheism both defend the status quo with the bourgeoisie as the leading class. Revolutionary atheism is of an entirely different kind. It sees history as a process in which man strives for the realization of himself, driven and encouraged by the class struggles which form the essence of all previous history. Socialist and religious tradition meet in one concept, that of the Messianic Time, which is

97 ERICH FROMM essentially the same as Marx’s concept of the socialist society. In order to stress this similarity, I quote a passage from Maimonides’ characterization of the Messianic Time and from Marx’s description of the socialist society. Maimonides writes: The Sages and Prophets did not long for the days of the Messiah that Israel might exercise dominion over the world, or rule over the heathens, or be exalted by the nations, or that it might eat and drink and rejoice. Their aspiration was that Israel be free to devote itself to the Law and its wisdom, with no one to oppress or disturb it, and thus be worthy of life in the world to come. In that era there will be neither famine nor war, neither jealousy nor strife. Earthly goods4 will be abundant, comforts within the reach of all. The one preoccupation of the whole world will be to know the Lord. Hence Israelites will be very wise, they will know the things that are now concealed and will attain an understanding of their creator to the utmost capacity of the human mind, as it is written: For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9)5 In this description the goal of history is to enable human beings to devote themselves entirely to the study of Wisdom and the knowledge of God; not power or luxury. The Messianic Time is one of universal peace, absence of envy, and material abundance. This picture is very close to the concept of the goal of life as Marx expressed it toward the end of the third volume of his Capital: The realm of freedom does not commence until the point is passed where labor under the compulsion of necessity and of external utility is required. In the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of material production in the strict meaning of the term. Just as the savage must wrestle with nature, in order to satisfy his wants, in order to maintain his life and reproduce it, so civilized man has to do it, and he must do it in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. With his development the realm of natural necessity expands, because his wants increase; but at the same time the forces of production increase, by which these wants are satisfied. The freedom in this field cannot consist of anything else but of the fact that socialized man, the associated producers, regulate their interchange with nature rationally, bring it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power; that they accomplish their task with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most adequate to their human nature and most worthy of it. But it always remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human power which is its own end, the true realm of freedom, –––––––––––––– 4 My translation from the Hebrew text, instead of the incorrect “blessings” in the Hershman translation, published by Yale University Press. 5 Maimonides, Moses (1963), The Code of Maimonides. Translated by A.M. Hershman. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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which, however, can flourish only upon that realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its fundamental premise.6 Marx, like Maimonides—and in contrast to Christian and to other Jewish teachings of salvation—does not postulate a final eschatological solution; the discrepancy between Man and nature remains, but the realm of necessity is brought under human control as much as possible: “But it always remains a realm of necessity.” The goal is “that development of human power which is its own end, the true realm of freedom” (emphasis added). Maimonides’ view that “the preoccupation of the whole world will be to know the Lord” is in Marx’s language the “development of human power … (as) its own end.”

Erich Fromm (1900-1980)

–––––––––––––– 6 Marx K. 1909. Capital. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. (Emphasis added.)

99

RICHARD CURTIS

7. WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?

Insights from Religious Studies and Humanistic Psychology

INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS The fundamental difference between the two primary words comes to light in the spiritual history of primitive man. Already in the original relational event he [the individual] speaks the primary word I-Thou in a natural way that precedes what may be termed visualization of forms—that is, before he has recognized himself as I. The primary word I-It, on the other hand, is made possible at all only by means of this recognition—by means, that is, of the separation of the I. (Buber, 1958, p. 24) When I am with bonobos I feel like I have something that I shared with them long ago but forgot. As we have clothed ourselves and separated ourselves we have gained a wonderful society but we have lost the sort of soul to soul connection that they maintain. And it sometimes seems to me that we are both a kind of disadvantaged species. … I feel like if I could maintain my abilities and have theirs I would be whole. (Sue Savage-Rumbaugh1)

THE DEFINTION Spirituality is the practice of or the experience of reconnecting with something outside of and larger than the self; something that is social, natural and/ or supernatural. This is the basic understanding of spirituality I have come to as a scholar who has studied religion and its formal constructions (theology) for the last quarter century. I offer this definition here as a generic, intended to reflect the functional meaning of the word as used in the early 21st Century across the globe. That may sound like a grand claim but is intended more modestly and scholarly. This word is used in highly structured religious contexts and completely unstructured contexts; by the most devout believers and by people who claim no specific religious or metaphysical beliefs.2 We use this word in all these different contexts and that raises the question of meaning.

–––––––––––––– 1 Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a senior primatologist, on the show Radio Lab. 2 The usage is so broad that, for example, the library research tool ProQuest finds six (6) different scholarly journals that start with the letter A with the word “spirituality” in the title (January 2013). That is just the letter A!

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 101–115. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. RICHARD CURTIS

One might ask here if anyone has already defined “spirituality,” after all the comparative study of religion is over a century old now. Surely this word has a scholarly definition already! Well, no. Interestingly, neither of the major reference texts in Religious Studies defines “spirituality.” The Encyclopaedia of Religion (edited by Mircea Eliade, the Father of the Study of the History of Religion) and The Dictionary of Religion (edited by Jonathon Z. Smith, the leading religion scholar in the world today) do not have entries for “spirituality.” This is because it is not a term religion scholars generally use outside of specific contexts. It was in the Christian context that the term arose, so the technical treatments often assume Christian Spirituality, and both have entries for that. That usage comes from the Catholic Church and refers to a person’s (often a saint’s) “religious sensibilities” (Smith, 1995, p. 1023). The Oxford English Dictionary defines “spiritual” as: “of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.”3 The terms, “religious sensibilities” or “related to spirit” capture much of what ordinary people seem to mean when they use the word “spirituality.” But that is not the only usage common in the world today. In the west one often hears talk about “spirituality” outside of a religion, some even say they are “spiritual but not religious.” Existential theorist Emmy van Deurzen (2002) wrote, “… the spiritual world refers to a person’s connection to the abstract and metaphysical aspects of living” (p. 86). It is all of these usages that a definition must include, and so that is the goal here. In as much as human beings tend to think of ourselves as beings that have a body and a mind (some include soul or spirit) then the dictionary definition really is useful because it refers to some whole sense of what is human.4 Spirituality is not just about our physical being (that is medicine) and it is not just our mind or brain (that is psychology) but a wellness of the totality (a notion common to things like yoga or Tai Chi, which are often described as spiritual, as well as some psychology, in particular Erich Fromm and Abraham Maslow for my purposes). A more fruitful approach might be to see what spirituality is not, to set it against a good contrasting term.

LOVE In the relevant Philosophical and Psychological literature there is a related concept that provides that vital contrast. That concept is “love.” I will have more to say about this but would like to suggest first that: Love is interpersonal; Spirituality is transpersonal. I hold that we need both to have full lives. Abraham Maslow (1968) commented decades ago: “We need something ‘bigger than we are’ to be awed by and to commit ourselves to in a new, naturalistic, empirical, non-churchly sense, perhaps as Thoreau and Whitman, William James and John Dewey did” (p. iv). He –––––––––––––– 3 http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1293221#m_en_us1293221.009 4 I, personally, hold that we not only do not have a soul, we do not even have a self. Self is an experience not a thing. I would agree with the notion that mind is a significant organizing concept but would deny that it is ontologically distinct from brain. More below.

102 WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? was clearly advocating a non-theistic position, where I am defining spirituality in a way that fits that view and more traditional theistic or metaphysical (in the colloquial sense) views. Let us note, though, that what he said is that human beings need spirituality, as it is here defined (I think that is fair to say). It is also important to note here that both love and spirituality have to do with feelings of connection, either to another or to something beyond the individual. Even when people turn inward (as in some mystical experience) they still refer to something external (something beyond the individual) that is being connected with via this inward turn. By “transpersonal” I have in mind something like what Abraham Maslow seems to have had in mind with the term: states of consciousness beyond the self.5 By “love” I have in mind what the Greeks called agape (as opposed to philos or eros; intellectual or erotic love respectively). Love applies to someone who can love you back. Many mystics talk of love when they speak of the divine, and this usage applies here because that belief holds that the divine does love them back. This shows that individuals may not discriminate in their usage between these terms but I would suggest this difference is a useful way to understand these terms and their relationship. This usage also fits with talk of “god loving humanity” as humans can love their god back. Eric Fromm (1956) said, “Love is possible only if two persons communicate with each other from the center of their existence ….” (p. 86). What I want to insist is most useful to notice about all this is that the word “love” is used to indicate the reciprocal nature of the feeling of connection, where “spiritual” is used to indicate a non-reciprocal feeling of connection, or reconnection. Again from Fromm, “The religious form of love, that which is called the love of God, is, psychologically speaking, no different” (p. 53). I am separating these things for analytic purposes but in experience they may not be separable. For example, nature cannot “love” us back, but we can have “spiritual” experiences in nature. Further this feeling, to be called spiritual, includes a component of awe, as Maslow suggested. This is something Rudolf Otto (1958; a pivotal figure in the history of the study of comparative religion, and one of Eliade’s teachers) also held was vital to all religious experience. Here I am suggesting that spirituality is the experiential level at which Otto’s talk of the numinous or the holy should be understood. One might next ask about the relationship between “Spirituality” and “Religion.” Spirituality is context specific and relates to ultimate meaning, so is important to religion. In that sense the two are intimately connected since religion provides definitions of ultimate reality. Spirituality is an experience word (it is about feelings) used to discuss ultimate reality and connections to it or some vital part of it. I hold that both religion and spirituality are universal (as scholarly understood in both cases). We find what the social sciences call religion throughout human history and across all human cultures. Keep in mind here that the social sciences do not mean “belief in things that can’t be proven” as the

–––––––––––––– 5 Maslow used the term in his 1969 article, “Theory Z.” It can be found in Motivation and Personality (see p. 28 for definition). He also founded the Association for Transpersonal Psychology in 1969.

103 RICHARD CURTIS definition of religion. The most famous definition of religion in the social sciences is from an Anthropologist named Clifford Geertz: a religion is: a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in [people] by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. (1973, p. 90) Note that Geertz uses the phrase “conceptions of a general order of existence.” I have shown in an earlier work that this conception––this worldview––is three fold: emotional, existential and social.6 We all need this sort of basic understanding of the world to function,7 and it is a curious lesson from history that we need not believe only things that are true. Humans have believed all sorts of things that we later discover are not true, and often they got along fine. The trick is for the beliefs to be functional in context, and that leaves a lot of room for variation. Put more specifically, Ira Zepp (who was an important teacher in the field and former student of Eliade) described the scholarly view this way: This [analysis] of religion transcends the normal understanding. I am concerned with the religious person—homo religiosus—the tendency of human beings to re-link, re-bind, re-connect, and re-concile themselves with each other and nature. This is precisely what the Latin “re-ligare” (from which the English word “religion” is derived) means. Whenever people are in the process of restoring life to wholeness, integration and unity, they are engaging in religious activity. (1997, p. 14) While not disputing Zepp’s usage it does seem that many people have come to see this reconnection as an aspect of spirituality (I am claiming spirituality is an aspect of religion, in the generic, but can be understood on its own terms as I am doing here). In Zepp’s understanding this is the core activity of all religion. I am here suggesting that the word “spirituality” be used to refer to the emotional sphere of religion, to this “reconnecting” and “restoring” rather than religion itself (given the confusion with religion colloquially thought of as “believing things one can’t prove”). This does not mean I am trying to say that religion and spirituality are not connected, only that differentiating the terms is analytically useful. Spirituality is a core interest of the religions around the world (now that the word has wide usage). In psychology the view is: When people recover their inner connectedness to something greater than themselves, to some ideal which will lift them beyond their everyday struggles, a new motivation flows inside of them, which can carry them through difficulties with unerring purposefulness. (Van Deurzen, 2002, p. 87)

–––––––––––––– 6 I first argued a version of this point in Curtis (1998). 7 Van Deurzen wrote: “Every person has an implicit worldview” (p. 87).

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I also don’t mean to claim here that “reconnecting with something larger” is the core activity of every religion, or should be seen as definitive. Rather I mean to say it is something modern people would seem to agree is useful and something we have come to see as part of the activity of various religions around us as they act in the world. Of course some people are very critical of what organized religion does, and with good reason. I mean to point to positive aspects and potentials. This reconnecting is something that religion facilitates ideally, and something many people have come to see as vital regardless of religion. I think it is vital for all people just as I think all people have key aspects of religion in common with religious people––we all need a reasonably coherent worldview to get by. In some sense the formal job description of the clergy is to facilitate reconnections. Theology provides content for an understanding of self, world and society, but the clergy actualize those ideas in the lives of people. In the modern world we also have the development of chaplains as reconnection specialists, and most interestingly the formalization of this as a professional quasi-freelance role (freelance in that for a Hospital Chaplain patients come and go where a congregation stays). Chaplains are like social workers for spirituality.

RECONNECTING There is, I think, a sense of self that we experience and seek to nurture and protect. I don’t believe it is a thing, but rather it is an experience of consciousness encountering the world (see Dennett, 1991). It would seem that higher orders of intelligence and consciousness required mediating structures and so evolution had to develop those for intelligence to proceed. The result is that we each have a sense of self. Again, this sense is not of a thing but it is organized to seem like a thing. “I am a self!” No, actually “I” am an experience a particular embodied brain is having. Producing this experience is a core activity of that brain. Consciousness actually is the monitoring and reporting of brain activity not the mediation or control of brain activity.8 It is vital to how we live, as human beings. We protect it. We nurture it, when we can, but usually not enough. This nurturing is what I mean by an experience of reconnecting to something larger. It needs to be done personally and socially, since we are social creatures of a particularly complex sort.9 Reconnection is accomplished through experiences of felt intimacy between the self and other, a something other that is worthy––vital as judged by the individual or the tradition. I have this sense of myself and you have it of yourself, and how we have it is culturally as well as genetically conditioned. We are genes interacting with a culture, organized to have a sense of individuality in community (some cultures emphasize one more than the other but both are vital). –––––––––––––– 8 I would like to thank William Harms, PhD (a brilliant contemporary philosopher of science) for that terminology. 9 See Siegel (2010). His work focuses on the neurobiology of relationships, how our brains naturally are wired to be in community.

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We feel most connected (in a way, most in touch with that self) in what Maslow (1968) called “Peak Experiences.” Peak Experiences are those in which time seems to stand still, thus Maslow (1968, p. 26) describes them in terms of “being” rather than our usual mode of “becoming.” We are “in the moment” and that moment is felt timeless. These are moments when we feel connected to a larger reality, or are that reality, or enveloped by the reality (the experience may be framed religiously by believers and called god). Often in these moments the sense of isolated self can drop away and we seem to experience reality more purely––a directly felt connection or participation. Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh (who is a primatologist), quoted at the top, referred to “soul to soul connection” and she is not alone in talking this way. The “I” becomes a “we” and in that experience the self has ceased being the central focus of experience. In love the meaning of the experience is the other; where, in spirituality, the meaning is the felt reconnection––both involve an “I” becoming more aware of a “we” (which can be the “I” being enveloped in a larger totality or the “I” connecting with another “I”). The “we” that often matters to us is not a social “we” but a cosmic one (the “we” is “me” participating in the divine or ultimate reality). In some Eastern thought this description sounds like a discussion of losing the ego. It is a curious irony that by being in touch with that experience of self in relationship to a larger reality, the sense of the self can drop away. I think what is happening is that the lens of self through which we generally experience reality has actually dropped away and we are aware of what seems to be a more pure perception. The problem is a difficulty in communicating the experience. I would suggest this is because what is called “me” is actually an organizing principle that is experienced, as mentioned above. To communicate the experience would require a vocabulary to describe how this experience affects “me” but that “me” has been enveloped in the experience. These moments are therefore difficult to communicate, by their nature. In spiritual experiences we often seek out experiences of losing the self, even though that self is vital to ordinary functioning. All manner of mystics, seekers and chemical experimenters work hard at losing something nature worked out over many eons, and they seem to be doing something good for themselves and for us in doing it (as an example of what is possible, when the motive is spiritual and not selfish, of course). Humans simply value that felt connection or envelopment, especially if it results in a felt disappearance or dissolving of the self (ego) into an experience that people might describe as “pure being” or “god.”

SOME COMPLICATING FACTORS I often comment to my wife about a feeling I have that the universe wants us to be together. Our history is a bit rocky and so that phrase has special meaning and captures a profound feeling that I have about her and the place she occupies in my life. Does the universe want us to be together? No. It doesn’t care – about anything. I feel as if certain things are just true. We all do. That sounds crass and

106 WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? believers will want to interject that their feeling is something more, but I would here refer them to Friedrich Schleiermacher (the Father of Modern Protestant Theology) and his feeling language.10 The believer takes some of those feelings to be more than feelings. I do not. But feelings still matter, if not to the universe then to us. This is the deep emotional life that is referred to in the concept spirituality. It is problematic when we are not careful about what we take to be important to us versus true about the world. This is not a new observation on my part.11 Nor are replies to it.12 The most common reply is an appeal to the importance certain feelings have for us. This is sensible on the face of it, but cannot be taken as license to accept any feeling as true just because it feels important. My colleague Bill Harms shows his students the Heaven’s Gate web site to make this point when he teaches the issue. Heaven’s Gate was a cult the members of which all committed suicide together in the late 1990s. They believed they would not die, but they are dead. The feelings were, in William James’ language, “live, forced and momentous.” And the people having those feelings were wrong to accept them as more than feelings – dead wrong. We must balance the importance of our feelings with a healthy dose of scepticism about the often spurious nature of their obvious interpretation. Do I feel that the universe wants my wife and me together or is that just a verbal expression of a feeling, an emotional experience? Obviously the latter. What is the real feeling, unclouded by language? At times this has been a big debate in the study of mysticism but I think it is obvious from neuroscience that by the time a thought is conscious it has been through memory and language centers and does not exist for us absent language. So what is the feeling really? Hard to say, but I am pretty sure my linguistic framing of it is culturally bound and poetic, not veridical. But it is still very, very important. This is the point. True and important do not go together necessarily. What do I learn from my feelings? How do I interpret them in a productive way? Those questions can be more important than “are they true?” However, the balance is vital. My feelings want to run wild in a world that has real risks, so they cannot just run wild. That said, I don’t have a formula to offer here, just this suggestion to be “epistemologically humble.” This is advice I give my students in all sorts of contexts. We feel certain things are vital but if those things cannot be proven then we must be humble about the power of the feeling. A few years ago there was a film adaptation done of the book, “Into the Wild.” The central character leaves modernity behind to spend a summer alone in the wilds of Alaska. The story ends badly, but at a vital moment in the film this character writes in his journal, “Happiness requires others” (or something to that extent). It is a stirring moment in the film, and a very important insight. Sigmund Freud famously observed that people need love and work to be happy (something to do and people to care for and be cared by). Erich Fromm wrote a great deal

–––––––––––––– 10 Schleiermacher focused on the term “Utter Dependence” in his book The Christian Faith. 11 See W.K. Clifford’s “Ethics of Belief.” 12 See William James’s “Will to Believe.”

107 RICHARD CURTIS about love.13 In modern psychology a new idiom from the neurosciences is in the ascendancy and so the talk shifts. Daniel Siegel (mentioned above) talks about this in neurobiological terms. In his work there is a triad between body, brain and relationships. Freud and Fromm could not have known how deep this need for connection goes, this being formed in relationships is for human beings. We know now that it is vital and “soul to soul connection” or “love” are both good ways of describing it. There is a long standing view – especially in religion – that there is something broken about human beings. In The Symposium, Plato has Aristophanes say: And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love. There was a time, I say, when we were one, but now because of the wickedness of mankind God has dispersed us, as the Arcadians were dispersed into villages by the Lacedaemonians. And if we are not obedient to the gods, there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like the profile figures showing only one half the nose which are sculptured on monuments, and that we shall be like tallies. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety in all things, that we may avoid evil and obtain the good, taking Love for our leader and commander.14 What he was explaining is sexuality but a more general insight seems to resonate across the ages. Christians call this “The Fall,” but there are versions of it in all or almost all religions. This is not a logical necessity for religion so its universality is a curious feature (my guess is that having an intrinsic particular problem to solve makes any specific religion seem relevant and so it is perpetuated). For most, fixing this brokenness is their core activity; and what is left unresolved is whether this feeling of brokenness is itself innate or a curiously common cultural phenomenon – but either way it calls out to be resolved or at least managed. Buddhists want to teach people to give up their attachment to the experienced self. Jews want to make peace between that self and society. Muslims see the solution in devotion, or submission to guidance (literally submission to the will of Allah). Each is, arguably, solving a version of the same problem (see Bellah, 2010). Martin Buber (above) discussed this problem in a way that seemed to have been popular in his time. From his work, and others, we get the sense that this problem is largely to do with the individuation of the human self, presumably as a result of the complexities of consciousness, or culture, or both combined. Fromm (1956, p. 53) claimed that this sense of separation causes anxiety and the felt need to love arises in response. We come from nature and imagine (perhaps correctly) that there was a time when our ancestor creatures felt connected to each other and to their world (social and natural, to the degree they had social worlds). G.W.F. Hegel (1995) makes this problem cosmic in arguing that even God needs a partner to actualize God’s self-consciousness. Judaism talks of YHWH and Shekinah, Islam –––––––––––––– 13 Fromm (1956), Art of Loving, especially. 14 Plato, The Symposium (the quote is the fourth paragraph from the bottom).

108 WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? talks about Allah and Sharia, Trinitarian thought in Christianity has the Trinity and Creation forming the same polar pair (which is where Hegel presumably got the idea). Relationships are vital not just to our being but to our sacred stories as well. My full view would be as follows: In evolutionary terms the emergence of the advanced trait we call self-consciousness is the history of this self becoming aware that it is different from and other than the world and its fellow creatures. At some point we felt connected or at least did not feel unconnected, but with full self- consciousness we feel unconnected. We feel a sense of isolation that spirituality lessens. In Buber’s terms this happens with the development of I-It relations. The “It” here is the other, the external world and people who are not me. When I am aware of that separation, that existential distance, then a need develops from a sense of brokenness or existential isolation. We want to reconnect and so are spiritually inclined. Religions then develop as the specific cultural forms for this inclination to be followed, or a path to repair or lessen the sense of brokenness. Ultimately, spirituality is a compensation for a need that arises out of the development of complex intelligence, out of self-consciousness. Various spiritualities, then, are the various cultural forms a search for a solution to the felt brokenness takes.15 It appears to need a solution or management regardless of whether it is a problem rooted in the evolution or consciousness or the evolution or culture. Our expectations for the future might change but the present issues and struggles remain unchanged regardless. Buber and some psychologists in his time (especially Fromm) also came to see “love” as a vital part of this issue. My suggestion is that we see love and spirituality as intimately connected. As mentioned above, “love” applies to that which can (seem to) care for me in some reciprocal fashion and “spirituality” applies to that which is too abstract to care for me in a reciprocal fashion. Again, some believers might object that love is experienced from the divine, love in the relationship with the divine. I think that language works in context. To the believer, at least certain sorts of believers, the divine is the sort of thing that can care for me in a reciprocal fashion, of some sort. So the believer, especially the mystic, will talk about love of god as the experience. A more abstract form of belief, say deism, would not think of the divine that way. The abstract god of deism does not care reciprocally, but nonetheless is important and for the deist believer that connection is vitally important––a deistic spirituality is still a felt reconnecting to a larger reality. The point here is that this view of spirituality fits all sorts of religious views as well as no religious view.

–––––––––––––– 15 It is not clear if this is a human problem or a culture problem. Would a different and radically healthier culture not have this problem? If so then the problem is actually the one Marx identified as the problem of early accumulation that he saw being finally resolved after a very long history in what he called Communism. I am not sure we can know the answer to this question without trying, without constructing that society to see how different we become.

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GOING FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE In a Postscript Buber wrote: “… if the I-Thou relationship requires a mutual action, which in fact embraces both the I and the Thou, how may the relation to something in nature be understood as such a relationship?” (1958, p. 125). He answers that we have to think of these things separately. I think his approach mirrors the one I am advocating here. I have called this reciprocal. Nature cannot be reciprocal that way, but we still feel powerful connections in and to nature. Nature spirituality is a powerful and useful thing. But it is different from love, is what I want to make clear. We cannot love nature in this literal sense. The Greeks distinguished between eros (erotic love), philia (intellectual love) and agape (true love, real caring for another). Here I have been interested in agape, the love we have for our mates and friends. Eros heightens and strengthens agape amongst romantic partners, but it is not the same as agape. Agape is the deep connection we have with other humans. Spirituality is the deep felt connection with non-humans (god, nature, etc.). I think these might usefully be seen as deeply interconnected concepts. We feel both spirituality and love very deeply. Both are very important to human well being. Both are involved in living well. So in that sense spirituality can encompass love, but love cannot encompass spirituality. Spirituality is the larger category. In 1963 Bishop John A.T. Robinson (then the Anglican Bishop of Woolrich, England) wrote, “Suppose the atheists are right––but that this is no more the end or denial of Christianity than the discrediting of the God ‘up there,’ which must in its time have seemed the contradiction of all that the Bible said?” (p. 16). What Robinson was arguing is that the notion of a God “up there” was discredited by the Copernican Revolution. It just didn’t make any sense after we knew more. Similarly, he concludes, the notion that God is “out there” (the metaphysical response to the end of God “up there”) is equally unsupportable. To him, and indeed to many others, Christianity is more than empty and indefensible metaphysical claims. He goes on, “Have we seriously faced the possibility that to abandon such an idol [God ‘out there’] may in the future be the only way of making Christianity meaningful, except to the few remaining equivalents of flat- earthers ….” (Robinson, 1963, p. 16). His answer is existential and he explicitly embraces the work of Paul Tillich (as well as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Rudolph Bultmann, who we might note was deeply influenced by Martin Heidegger––this was a source of disagreement between these two). Robinson goes so far as to say, “True religion (if that is not a contradiction in terms, as it would be for the Marxists16) consists in harmonizing oneself with the evolutionary process as it develops ever higher forms of self-consciousness” (1963, p. 32). What is true? Or perhaps a better question might be “What is authentic?” And what then is authentic spirituality? Bishop Robinson concluded, “All true awareness of God is an experience at one and the same time of ultimacy and

–––––––––––––– 16 I don’t think he understood Marx’s critique of religion but that is not important here.

110 WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? intimacy, of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.”17 Fromm said the authentic is the natural: “The thesis of this paper is that values are rooted in the very conditions of human existence, hence that our knowledge of the conditions – that is, of the ‘human situation’ – leads us to establish values which have objective validity” (1981, p. 1). For Fromm the starting point is the same observation that has woven its way through this entire discussion. “Man is torn away from the primary union with nature, which characterizes animal existence” (ibid.). In a more practical vein, van Deurzen (inspired by Victor Frankl) wrote, “Rising to the challenge of one’s own ideals can instil a whole new meaning to life and with this sense of purpose comes a vital aliveness and passion which are commonly considered unattainable” (2002, p. 88). Her suggestion is that people benefit from having something that is important to them, important enough they would die for it (ibid., p. 87). She and Irvin Yalom maintain that the goal of therapy is to make these ideals or values explicit as self-knowledge (Yalom, 1980, p. 421; Van Deurzen, 2002, p. 87). But that seems completely relative to the individual and Fromm tells us these ideals are or can be objectively determined, and interestingly Bishop Robinson did too. What does one do with these conflicting points of emphasis? Fromm’s view looks to social theory and suggests engagement with the world; Robinson looks to science and suggests engagement with it. Van Deurzen and Yalom would not disagree with that but seem to disagree with the strength of their claim. From my vantage point, in studying religion a solution emerges. “The thing for which one is wiling to die,” which is needed for healthy functioning, is not and cannot be one thing for all people. Even when Fromm speaks of this as being objective, I think he does not mean to suggest that there is one path for all people (he would suggest there are ethical limits, as the social world demands justice). What he seems to be telling us is that the path chosen, the ideals pursued and defended, need to be values that are conducive of living. We need to walk a path that fits life’s needs, as those strike us in their particularity in our time and place. We also have different interests and talents and these too must change how the path is seen. Freud held that psychosis was, in the final analysis, the confusion of symbol for reality. In theology this is called idolatry. These are the real limits. A healthy and functional spirituality is, therefore, one that is conducive of living in the individual’s time and place, while fitting the individual’s talents and interests. It cannot be idolatrous, and so can be evaluated objectively. Does the representation or symbolic understanding of these ideals fit the individual’s real needs? Are they conducive for living? If so then they are most likely the sort that is needed. The Spiritual Realm is the realm of values, ideals and meaning. These vary by individual and there are many valid constructions, but not all possible constructions are valid (which is to say, functional). If a particular construction is idolatrous or psychotic it won’t work and must be challenged and abandoned. The goal is to get at what really matters to the individual and to help them know this –––––––––––––– 17 Robinson (1963, p. 131). I should mention that the phrase mysterium tremendum et fascinans is Rudolph Otto’s (discussed above).

111 RICHARD CURTIS deeply and live it fully. Here I have tried to focus on the experiential side of all this. These values are not simply deduced from first principles; they are derived from lived experience. If that experience is engaged authentically and the symbolic representation of it can be achieved without appeals to idols, then true self knowledge and vital aliveness can be achieved.

PRODUCTIVE VERSUS UNPRODUCTIVE One reading of the discussion above is: “spirituality is good.” That does not seem to be saying much. Indeed, I have tried to soft-peddle one of the most obvious conclusions. That conclusion is that Fundamentalist forms of religion and therefore spirituality are not authentic and therefore not healthy. The reason this for conclusion is obvious, at least with a little knowledge of what Fundamentalism is; according to Freud’s definition, Fundamentalism is psychotic. Fundamentalism is, theologically, the confusion of symbols of the divine for ultimate reality itself (or the divine itself). The Fundamentalist treats sacred texts as reality and fails to understand that texts are symbols too. The history of Theology is the history of re- evaluating the symbols used to understand ultimate reality and the human relationship with that reality. Fundamentalism is an early 20th Century and originally Christian phenomenon that rejects that history in favour of a psychotic relationship to religious symbols.18 This is true today regardless of what religion is in question. It is the common feature of all forms of Fundamentalism – confusing symbol for reality. More theoretically, the reader may be aware that I have combined two schools of thought in Psychology that do not understand themselves to be in agreement. But that is the details. I think there is significant overlap in the approaches that derive from Fromm’s Analysis and Frankl’s Existentialism. Both are part of what is called Humanistic Psychology (along with the work of Maslow and Rogers). I would suggest that the overlap can usefully be understood via the concept of “Facticity” as discussed by Jean-Paul Sartre. Facticity is that which cannot change. The goal, according to Sartre, is distinguishing between the two (what is a choice and what is real Facticity). When and where I was born is part of my facticity, as is the gender of my birth, my parents, and my ethnic background. The prevailing views of society also have an element of Facticity but are not real Facticity as they can change, albeit with difficulty. Existential therapy emphasizes individual decision making and self-responsibility outside the realm of Facticity, and Analysis emphasizes the patterns and features that went into personality formation, which is –––––––––––––– 18 The guiding texts of Christian Fundamentalism is a collection of work published by a wealthy oilman named Lyman Stewart in the early 20th Century. Lyman is, I think, essentially a fascistic thinker who sought grounding for his particular form of Calvinist social control in a particular and particularly narrow reading of scripture that is essentially a rationalization for Stewart’s wealth. Given that the obvious reading of the Gospels is social justice one who is interested in domination needs a different reading, and benefits from claiming that reading is the only authentic reading possible. His wealth made it possible for him to propagandize the country with these pernicious and idolatrous ideas with astounding success.

112 WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? to say the Facticity of personality formation. The two benefit from a healthy dialogue, I maintain. More practically a model for thinking about all this exists in the work of Søren Kierkegaard, the Dutch founder of what Sartre called “Religious Existentialism.” In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard argued for a faith based approach to religion. This, generally, is seen as a reaction to the hyper-rational approaches of Immanuel Kant earlier, and G.W.F. Hegel more immediately (Hegel was the dominant voice in philosophy when Kierkegaard was alive, and he even studied for a time in Berlin and took at least one class from Hegel). Those systems emphasized reason as the core of religious thought, as the truth of religious thought. Kierkegaard’s model is famously different. He embraces the risk that faith can be wrong, but nonetheless sees faith as vital to human existence. He claimed that “theology is idolatry.” And this language seems to have much in common with my approach here. The fundamental point of both is that reality is larger than our symbols for it, and life requires an act—demands that we do things. Humans, Neil Armstrong famously observed from the moon, just explore, it is what we do. There are other things we to do too and needs which must be met. In this sense a proper spirituality is one that understands the feeling of connection to be deep, but not always rationally explicable. There is no shortage of observations about the nature of love in this regard. Here I am simply extending those observations about the inscrutable character of love and suggesting that the same can be said about spirituality. Humans need these felt connections: why and how they form is effervescent to us. We know they must be functional to be ideal, to maximize their potential. Indeed, for someone like Fromm they must be functional to the point of revolution. Fromm’s view seems to have been that we are an interaction between a fixed nature (facticity) and the effort to transcend that nature by strengthening the social. Lawrence Wilde (2000) put it this way in summarizing Fromm’s view: Only by recognizing that the only meaning to life is that which is given by humans through productive living can the possibility develop of achieving happiness through the full realization of the faculties which are peculiarly human––reason, love and productive work.19 What Wilde concludes is that Fromm’s views on productive work are vital and often underappreciated. Fromm was well known for his socialist views and so what we find then is a sustained defence of the struggle for and the achievement of right relationships to work and nature. For Fromm, and indeed many others, that is the definition of socialism. In the final analysis, Fromm clearly thought that healthy human functioning required a socialist reorganization of society. And many have suggested that truly healthy functioning is not possible in a society organized around exploitation. More recently, it has become common for people to notice that capitalism (with its

–––––––––––––– 19 Wilde was paraphrasing from Fromm’s Man for Himself, page 40.

113 RICHARD CURTIS demand for eternal growth) is logically, not just practically, incompatible with maintaining a functioning ecosystem. What is not entirely clear is the degree to which authenticity can be found in the struggle for that new society itself, or whether it requires that new society. In The Sane Society Fromm is pessimistic. instead of rational and irrational but overt authority we find anonymous authority – the authority of public opinion and the market; instead of the individual conscience, the need to adjust and be approved of; instead of the sense of pride and mastery, an ever-increasing though mainly unconscious sense of powerlessness. (1955, p. 99) Someone like Che Guevara would have argued that the struggle is meaning, and that seems plausible for some, like Che himself, in spite of Fromm’s diagnosis of our condition. It seems unlikely that this is possible for all people. It may be all we have though! A dysfunctional social context (capitalism) cannot be expected to produce healthy human beings. For now we have the struggle, and it gives us meaning by being the most objectively productive work one can do. But of course there is no clear consensus on how to achieve any socialist vision for society. I will end by suggesting that the struggle, at least a minimally informed struggle, goes a long way toward helping the individual confront the banality of human existence in the early 21st Century and thereby find solidarity with others and a deeply felt connection to the social world. Struggles for social justice can be spiritually meaningful, but perhaps not ultimately fulfilling (which requires a radically different social context). We engage the world by changing it. It is not necessary to have The Right Path, but a reasonably informed path, a struggle for justice to engage life to make it meaningful grounded in some concrete analysis of society. The sectarian thinking of the past was unproductive then and less than useless today. And of course, in our time, that struggle has become not just a struggle to organize society in humane and functional ways, but we must also engage in much more vigorous struggles to protect our planet from environmental collapse, as well as to limit suffering as that collapse may be inevitable at this point. Kierkegaard had pointed to a mystical path as the alternative. He sought to disrupt those complex rationalistic constructions and to replace it with experience. Life is to be experienced after all. The mystical path seems unproductive for most 21st Century humans, but what cannot be denied is the element that is felt as choice ––the choice to engage reality, to experience it, or to deny it. We take his leap when we engage the world in a spirit of optimistic patience for the fact that change takes time, and that in the process of living an authentic life in service of social justice one has meaning, one has definition, one has life, real human life.

REFERENCES

Bellah, R. (2010). All religions are cousins. In R. Curtis (Ed.), Reasonable perspectives on religion. New York, NY: Lexington Books. Clifford, W. K. Ethics of belief. Accessed from: http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/ w_k_clifford/ethics_of_belief.html (Feb. 2013) Buber, M. (1958). I and thou (2nd edition). New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

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Curtis, R. (1998). The essence of religion: Homo religiosus in a dialectical material world. Nature, Society, and Thought, 11(3), 311-330. Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness explained. New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Co. Fromm, E. (1955). The sane society. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Fromm, E. (1981). Values, psychology and human existence. In On disobedience. New York, NY: The Seabury Press. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essay. New York, NY: Basic Books. Hegel, G. W. F. (1995). Reason in history. New York, NY: Prentice Hall. James, W. Will to believe. Accessed from: http://falcon.jmu.edu/~omearawm/ph101willtobelieve.html (Feb. 2013) Maslow, A. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd edition). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Maslow, A. (1970). Motivation and Personality. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Otto, R. (1958). The idea of the holy (trans. by John W. Harvey). London, UK: OxfordUniversity Press. Plato. The symposium. Accessed from: http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sym.htm (Feb. 2013). Robinson, J. A. T. (1963). Honest to God. Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press. Savage-Rumbaugh, S. http://www.radiolab.org/2010/feb/19/kanzi/ (accessed Feb. 2013). Schleiermacher, F. (1928). The Christian faith. London, UK: T & T Clark. Siegel, D. (2010). The developing mind (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Smith, J. Z. (Ed.). (1995). Harper-Collins dictionary of religion. New York, NY: Harper One. van Deurzen, E. (2002). Existential counselling and psychotherapy in practice (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Wilde, L. (2000). In search of solidarity: The ethical politics of Erich Fromm. Contemporary Politics, 6(1), 37. Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books. Zepp, I. G. (1997). The new religious image of urban America: The shopping mall as ceremonial center (2nd ed.). Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado.

Richard Curtis Existential Psychoanalytic Institute of Seattle and Seattle Central Community College

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RUDOLF SIEBERT

8. ERICH FROMM’S SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION

Toward the X-Experience and the City of Being

INTRODUCTION1 This essay explores Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion, as X- experience and longing for the City of Being, as being informed by the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Meister Eckhart as well as Georg W.F Hegel, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. Its religious attitude constituted the very dynamic of Fromm’s writings, as well as of those of the other critical theorists of society, e.g. Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Leo Loewenthal, Herbert Marcuse, etc., It united them. It could only be expressed in poetical symbols: the X-experience; or the longing for the imageless, nameless, notionless utterly Other than the horror and terror of nature and history; or the yearning for perfect justice and unconditional love: that the murderer may not triumph over the innocent victim, at least not ultimately. Man begins to become man only with the awakening of this longing for the entirely Other, or the X-experience. This religious attitude aims as idology at the destruction of all idolatry. In the Near East –––––––––––––– 1 Editors’ note-The author’s use of Fromm’s concept of “x-experience” comes from this passage in his work: What we call the religious attitude is an x that is expressible only in poetic and visual symbols. This x experience has been articulated in various concepts which have varied in accordance with the social organization of a particular cultural period. In the Near East, x was expressed in the concept of a supreme tribal chief, or king, and thus „God” became the supreme concept of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which were rooted in the social structures of that area. In India, Buddhism could express x in different forms, so that no concept of God as a supreme ruler was necessary. (Fromm 1966, p. 226) In the last passage To Have and To Be Fromm (1976) concludes by saying that: Later Medieval culture flourished because people followed the vision of the City of God. Modern society flourished because people were energized by the vision of the growth of the Earthly City of Progress. In our century, however, this vision deteriorated to that of the Tower of Babel, which is now beginning to collapse and will ultimately bury everybody in its ruins. If the City of God and the Earthly City were thesis and antithesis, a new synthesis is the only alternative to chaos: the synthesis between the spiritual core of the Late Medieval world and the development of rational thought and science since the Renaissance. This synthesis is The City of Being. (p. 186)

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 117–136. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. RUDOLF SIEBERT the X-experience was articulated in the concept of a supreme tribal chief or king. Thus “God” became the supreme concept of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the Far East, Buddhism expressed the X-experience without the concept of God as a supreme ruler, or slave holder, or feudal lord, or owner of capital. In Modernity and Post-modernity, believers and non-believers can be united by their common experience of the supreme value of X, or total Otherness, and by their attempt to practice it in their lives, and by their consequent fight against idolatry in terms of a post-theistic humanistic socialism, or socialist humanism, which resists even the temptation to make man himself into an idol in any form or shape. Fromm’s religious attitude is ultimately directed toward the Post-Modern City of Being, in which the antithesis and antagonism, between the Medieval vision of the spiritual core of the City of God, on one hand, and the rational thought and science of the Modern, earthly City of Progress, on the other, will be dialectically synthesized in the supreme value of the X experience, and the longing for the totally Other than the finite world of appearances with all its murderous injustices in family, civil society, costitutional state, and most of all in history. i.e.international relations. Precisely this synthesis is the very heart of Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion, or dialectical religiology.

INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT In the perspective of the comparative, dialectical religiology, Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience and longing for the City of Being and the consequent attitude, can not be understood without the institutional context, from which it started in Frankfurt in the late 1920s and 1930s. The mediation of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and of Karl Marx’s historical materialism had a special institutional tradition in Frankfurt, Germany. The old Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute, which was founded in 1929, was from its start very much promoted by the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, the basis of the later Frankfurt School. From 1929 on, the Psychoanalytical Institute had guest status in the Institute for Social Research. Most seminars of the psychoanalysts of the Psychoanalytical Institute took place in the rooms of the Institute for Social Research, newly built on the Campus of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt. Max Horkheimer, who in 1930 became Director of the Institute for Social Research, was since 1927 a patient of the psychoanalyst Karl Landauer, the founder of the Psychoanalytical Institute, because Horkheimer was unable to lecture freely without a script. But the analysis was broken off soon, because according to Landauer, Horkheimer was much too happy a man together with his British, Protestant wife Rose Riekher, whom he called Maidon, and his life long friend Friedrich Pollock. In 1929, Landauer had founded the Psychoanalytical Institute together with Erich Fromm, his wife Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, and Heinrich Meng. At the occasion of the opening of the Psychoanalytical Institute, Fromm gave in February 1929 a lecture entitled “The Application of the Psychoanalysis to Sociology and Religiology.” Here Fromm tried to present a basic as well as far reaching starting point for the integration of Freudian

118 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION psychology and Marxian theory of society: historical materialism. According to Fromm, with the formation of psychoanalysis a scientific instrument had been created, which made possible an embracing knowledge of the psychic apparatus of man. What had now to be explored and researched against the background of the psychoanalytical paradigm, was the question, in which way the psychic apparatus had caused or determined the social development of society: how the authoritarian personality, shaped in the family by an authoritarian father, contributed to the formation of the authoritarian state. Fromm’s formulation was not meant to be abstractly programmatic. That was proven through the study accomplished by him, Landauer, Hilde Weiss, and other psychoanalysts and critical theorists of society, about “German Workers 1929––A Survey, its Methods and Results.” It was a significant empirical research project about the psychic structure and the political potential of German blue and white color workers. Fromm, Landauer, Weiss, etc., started this study only a few months after Fromm’s lecture in the context of the Institute for Social Research. In 1930, Fromm became under the directorship of Horkheimer department chair for social psychology in the Institute for Social Research. In 1932, Fromm published in the first issue of the new Journal for Social Research, edited by Horkheimer, two articles entitled “Method and task of an analytical social psychology” and “The psychoanalytical characterology and its significance for the social psychology.” Fromm contributed the social- psychological part to the first research report of the Institute for Social Research entitled Studies on Authority and Family, on which he worked together with Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, and which appeared already in American exile, into which the Institute was driven by the rise to power of National Socialism in Germany. After Fromm had done research on the “Jewish Law” in 1922 and on the “The Sabbath in 1927, and on the “Connection between Psychoanalysis and Sociology” in 1929, he traced in 1930 on the basis of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Marx and Freud, the evolution of the Dogma of Christ up to the fourth century. Out of these socio-psychological beginnings, Fromm developed in the following seven decades a theory of religion as “X-experience” (Fromm, 1966) or a religiology, which was comparative in terms of a variety of religions, like matriarchal and patriarchal religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc., as well as dialectical in the Hegelian sense of a historical movement, by following the rhythm of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

AUTHORITARIAN AND REVOLUTIONARY PERSONALITIES Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience cannot be understood without the German and European fascist environment, against which it was developed in the first place. Fromm’s study “German workers––1929 A survey, its methods and results,” differentiated between revolutionary personalities. Later on in exile from national-socialist Germany, in liberal Chicago, he placed the democratic personality at one end of the social continuum, and the authoritarian character, on the other. The study found, that about 12% of blue- and white-color workers were authoritarian personalities, and were inclined toward fascism, and

119 RUDOLF SIEBERT about the same percentage of workers were revolutionary characters, and were inclined toward socialism and communism. The study was to allow a possible prediction concerning the rise of National Socialism: if the authoritarian or fascist personality, or the revolutionary, or socialist personality would win the struggle for recognition and power in the Weimar Republic. Four years later, in January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by the Empire President Hindenburg, who as General had together with General Ludendorf won the battle of Tannenberg against the Russians in 1914, and four years later lost the war against the French, British and Americans in the West. Ludendorf had marched with Hitler and others to the Feldhernhalle in Munich, during an attempted fascist putsch against the Bavarian Government. When Hitler gained power in Germany in 1933, the aggressive, authoritarian, fascist personality won the struggle over the revolutionary, socialist personality, the labor movement, for the time being, only to fall 12 years later, in April 1945. Most workers, instead of overthrowing Hitler and the Düsseldorf Herren Club—Krupp, Siemens, and Thyssen, etc.—and the German corporate ruling class, as well as foreign capitalists, e.g. Henry Ford from Michigan,who paid Hitler, so that he would overcome socialism and communism, and quietly tolerated his rise to power and suffered the catastrophe with him, which followed. As I grew up in Frankfurt, in fascist Germany, I experienced continually between 1933 and 1945 a relatively small number of workers, who were fanatic national socialists, and a likewise small number of workers, who were socialists or communists and landed in Dachau, or in other concentration camps. The majority of German blue- and white-color workers were quiet and passive, and simply let Hitler’s fascist counter-revolution proceed, and did not even rise at the end. At least in my personal experience, the result of Fromm’s study was verified. The study constituted the forerunner of a whole series of empirical research projects, in the evolution of which the revolutionary and the authoritarian personality metamorphosed into the being—and having—personalities, of which the former pointed toward wholeness or holiness, and the latter toward insanity. This metamorphosis in Fromm’s social psychology from the paradigm of the revolutionary-authoritarian personality to the model of the being-having character took place as the liberal state, out of which the authoritarian or fascist state had developed in the first place, was able to overcome the fascist state with the help of the only socialist state in existence at the time, Soviet Russia. At the same time it was able to curb the socialist state, and finally to resolve it in the successful neo- liberal counter-revolution of 1989. Thus it was able to accomplish without bloodshed, what the fascist state had failed to do militarily and most violently in Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin, by murdering 27 million Russians and 6 million Jews in the process, because they stood up for the formerly Jewish, Christian, and Islamic principle of equality against the fascist aristocratic principle of nature: the right of the predator over the prey. The paradigm of the having-being character played an important role in the evolution of Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion, aiming at the City of Being.

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LIQUIDATION Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience and longing for the City of Being, can not be understood without his early communication with his colleagues in the Frankfurt and New York Institute for Social Research, and without his connection with its fate. Only 4 years after Landauer had taken over together with Meng the directorship of the Psychoanalytical Institute in Frankfurt, it was liquidated together with the Institute of Social Research, the so called “Caffee Marx,” by the National Socialist Culture Minister in Berlin in 1933, after Hitler had come into power, and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University became fascist over night. Landauer and Horkheimer became connected by a deep friendship. Their correspondence lasted up to 1941. Horkheimer tried several times to motivate Landauer, who had emigrated from fascist Germany to liberal Holland, to come to America, but in vain. After the German occupation of Holland, Landauer was brought into a Fascist concentration camp, where he starved to death. Both Institutes had opposed fascism from the start. Neither of the two Institutes could adapt to National Socialism, nor could they survive through simply hibernating in internal exile. Horkheimer took the Institute for Social Research from Frankfurt to New York in fall 1933. Also Fromm and Horkheimer became connected early on by a deep friendship. Fromm had already earlier immigrated to Chicago. Fromm remained connected with the Institute of Social Research in New York up to 1939, when he left it, because of financial, and philosophical, as well as scientific reasons, especially his rejection of the Freudian drive theory, which emphasized the natural, but neglected socio-historical factors. Fromm spelled out his rejection more specifically in his paper of 1935, entitled “The Social Determination of Psychoanalytic Therapy.” Fromm started to practice psychoanalysis in New York, the capital of liberalism, and tried to transform sick having-personalities into healthy being-characters. No other departure from the Institute of Social Research saddened and hurt Horkheimer so deeply as that of Fromm, with whom he shared not only deep Marxian and Freudian, but also Jewish and Christian religious concerns and interests. Both were friends of the great protestant theologian Paul Tillich, without whom Horkheimer could not have become the director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Already shortly after his exit examination from high school in Frankfurt, Fromm had intensely studied the Jewish Religion of Sublimity, particularly its prophets, in his hometown Frankfurt a.M. He had written his doctoral dissertation in Heidelberg about “The Jewish Law,” as a contribution to Judaism in the diaspora. Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience and search for the City of Being was deeply Jewish from the start. As Fromm concretely superseded Judaism, he did not only negate or criticize it, but also preserved, and elevated, and fufilled it dialectically: determinate negation. After his dissertation, Fromm had continued his psychoanalysis with Landauer in Frankfurt. Horkheimer and Fromm shared the same psychoanalyst.

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RETURN Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of region as X-experience and longing for the City of Being was preserved in Frankfurt after World War II, and the return of the Institute for Social Research into the ruins of Frankfurt, in 1956. Horkheimer, Adorno, and the psychoanalysts Mitscherlich, who wanted to help the Germans to overcome their pathological inability to mourn, organized at the occasion of Sigmund Freud’s 100th birthday a lecture series in the newly erected Institute for Social Research—the old one had been bombed out by the British Air force—and to invite outstanding national and international lecturers. This lecture series was a breakthrough, in which the critical theorists were able to bring back to the post-fascist Germany psychoanalytical thinking in a way effective in the public sphere. Thereby, also the ground was prepared for the foundation of the new Sigmund Freud Institute in 1960 in place of the old Psychoanalytical Institute, in which Fromm and Landauer had worked. Besides the Mitscherlichs, Horkheimer and Adorno were very active in this foundation. In the 1960tieth, there happened in consequence of the Student Movement, inspired by the critical theory of society, many attempts to reconnect again most closely and deeply psychoanalysis and historical-materialist social theory. In 2000, the Institute for Social Research and the Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute celebrated the 100th birthday of Fromm with a common symposium about his social psychology in a series of lectures, which were devoted from different perspectives to the fruitfulness of his attempt to connect psychoanalysis and critical theory of society, particularly also in reference to his social-psychological theory of religion.

IRONY Erich Fromm’s critical theory of religion as X-experience and longing for the City of Being can not be understood adequately without taking into consideration its connection with the changed relationship between Marxism and theology after World War II. It may be called the irony of the spirit of the times, when in the 1970s theologians, most of them students of the existential theologian, Paul Tillich, announced the death of God, while critical philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists, like Fromm, Bloch, Horkheimer, Benjamin, and Adorno, searched for the Infinite, the utterly Other, the X-experience and stated the finitude of man. A gigantic change of fronts took place. Marxists, as e.g. the Czechoslovakian philosopher, Vitezslav Gardavsky, asked: What shall man without God have to offer? Catholic theologians, like Walter Dirks, Eugen Kogon, and Johannes B. Metz, sanctioned the revolutionary abolishment of an unjust antagonistic civil society. The conversion of some Marxists was even more astonishing, than the new praxis of some Christians. But in the perspective of the critical theory of religion, or the comparative, dialectical religiology, this astonishment was valid only as long as Marxists and Christians were lookedupon as mere puppets of a worldview, which had long become independent, institutionalized, reified, and alienated into an authoritarian and dogmatic system. Already in the 1940s, Walter Benjamin,

122 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION informed by Gerhard Scholem, scholar of Jewish mysticism, as well as by Franz von Baader, the Catholic friend of the Lutheran Georg W. F. Hegel, both rooted in the mystical theology of Meister Eckhart, had looked with an abyss-like smile on theology as a small and ugly hunchback, and on historical materialism as a puppet in Turkish attire with a water-pipe in its mouth. At the same time, Benjamin saw, nevertheless, theology and historical materialism cooperating with each other on the chessboard of world history. Theology could legitimate historical materialism metaphysically, and historical materialism could help theology to translate itself into political and historical praxis. Benjamin tried to reconcile Scholem’s mystical theology with Bertholt Brecht’s historical materialism, and found critical resistance on both extremes of the modern continuum between the sacred and the profane. For Hegel, informed by Meister Eckhart, as well as for Jewish and Christian mystics before, and for Karl Marx and the historical materialists, and for the critical theorists later on, particularly Fromm and Horkheimer, religion was part of the history of human reason. According to Fromm, thinkers of the Axial Age from Lao-Tse through Eckhart to Marx agreed on the dialectic of having and being: The way to action is to be. (Lao-Tse, 1988, p. 37) Men should not reflect so much on what they should do, but they should rather consider, what they are. (Meister Eckhart cited in Blakney, 1941) The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the bigger is your alienated life. (Marx, 1964, p. 150) It was certainly an irony of the spirit of the times, that the critical theorist Fromm praised the Catholic reformers, Karl Rahner and Hans Küng, and that Pope Paul VI. quoted Fromm in one of his social encyclicals, and that Benedict XVI cited Fromm’s colleagues, Horkheimer and Adorno, in one of his encyclicals to the amazement of Marxists, Freudians, and theologians.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience and search for the City of Being can not be understood without taking seriously its Marxist roots. Horkheimer, the son of a factory owner and a CEO himself in a factory in Zuffenhausen in Germany in 1915, and thus like all the other critical theorists of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, including Fromm, a member of the German middle bourgeoisie before, during, and still after World War I, turned, nevertheless, to anti-bourgeois Marxism, or historical materialism, after having become familiar before with other great thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, and others. Horkheimer and his colleagues, particularly Fromm, in the Institute for Social Research, who all came from more or less assimilated Jewish families, were motivated to do so, by the will to and longing for perfect justice, which had been brought into world-history by the Hebrew prophets. For Horkheimer and his colleagues, historical materialism was the answer to the domination of the totalitarianism from the Right, fascism and national socialism,

123 RUDOLF SIEBERT rising up after World War I, in which he had served as a soldier in the German army. The same prophetic will to perfect justice motivated Horkheimer and his colleagues, also Fromm, to become critical of Eastern Marxism, when Stalin began to practice the totalitarian rule from the Left—red fascism—long before it fell victim to the neo-liberal counter-revolution of 1989. Horkheimer had thought with the founders of the scientific socialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, that the cultural achievements of the bourgeois epoch of history, i.e.the free unfolding of all productive forces, intellectual productivity, no longer characterized through violence and exploitation, i.e. genuine being in the most emphatic sense, should extend and spread in the world. What the critical theorists experienced during World War I, and in between the Wars, and during the restoration period after World War II in Germany, Europe, and America, did not leave their thinking unaffected. There was the great disappointment, that the working classes in Germany and Europe allowed Hitler and his German National Socialist Party and Movement to come to power in the first place, and that they did not rise against him and the corporate ruling class, which he served, but marched with him—3 million of them—into the Soviet Union, in order to kill atheistic bolshevists. There was also the experience, that the states, which called themselves communistic, and which used the same Marxian categories, (to which the theoretical and practical efforts of the Frankfurters owed so many insights into individual, family, civil society, state, history, and culture), were during the Cold War not closer to alternative Future III—the realm of freedom as creative realization of being, i.e. of all human potentials, and powers—eye, ear, memory, intellect, will, etc. —beyond the realm of natural and economic necessity, and that they were not less prone to move toward alternative Future I––the totally bureaucratized society, which is characterized by reification, and by the attitude of having, and in which, therefore, life is not living, and toward alternative Future II—a militaristic society, which is continually engaged in wars of revenge or thievery of land, cheap labor, and resources, like robber, coffee, or oil, etc., and in which death prevails and dominates, than the liberal countries, in which so far at least the personal autonomy of the individual had not yet been extinguished. When around 1933 the critical theorists had the choice to flee from fascist Germany either to socialist Russia, or to the liberal United States, most of them left for the latter, Fromm before all others.

SPARKS OF THE ETERNAL Erich Fromm’s critical theory of religion as X-experience, and its central attitude and message of being over having, cannot be understood without the young Karl Marx. In 1835 in Trier, Germany, the Jewish baptized Lutheran Marx had written an essay in his Abitur, in the discipline of religion, which sounded as if at the time he had already read not only the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, but also some of the works of Meister Eckhart, Kant and Hegel, who had died in Berlin 4 years earlier, and in which he stated:

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When we consider the history of the individual, or the nature of man, we see admittedly always a spark of the Divinity in his chest, an enthusiasm for the good, a striving for knowledge, a longing for the truth. Alone the sparks of the Eternal are suffocated by the flame of desire, passion, and greed; the enthusiasm for the virtue is stunned, and stilled, anesthetized, and overpowered by the tempting voice of sin. It is mocked and sneered at, as soon as the life has let us feel its whole power. The striving for knowledge is repressed by a low striving for earthly goods. The longing for the truth is extinguished through the sweetly flattering power of the lie. And so man stands there, the only being in nature, which does not fulfill its purpose; the only member in the universe of creation, who is not worthy of the God, who created it. (Marx & Engels, 1975) Early on, the young Marx knew, that to reach being, the full realization of all human potentials, it was necessary to concretely negate the attitude of having, so characteristic for antagonistic civil society. Already the great enlightener Kant believed, following Gaunilon’s fool, to have destroyed the ontological proof for the existence of God, the necessary unity of Being and nothing, Notion and existence, Infinite and finite, through reference to the contingent having or not having 100 thalers. The originally Jewish and Christian dialectic of having and being reaches like a red thread throughout Marx’s life work. Throughout his life, Marx criticized the religious, and particularly Christian discrepancy between theory and praxis in terms of an inverse theology rooted in the tradition of the apophatic via negativa. Already in his essay “The Leading Article of No. 179” of the Kölnische Zeitung, Marx wrote, that if religion became a political quality, an object of politics, there seemed to be hardly any need to mention, that the newspapers not only may, but had to discuss political objects. For Marx, it seemed from the very start of his philosophical and political life, that the wisdom of this world, i.e. philosophy, had more right to bother about the kingdom of this world, about family, society, state, and history, than the wisdom of the other world, i.e. religion and theology. The point here was not, whether the state, including family and society, should be philosophized about, but rather whether it should be philosophized about well or badly, philosophically or unphilosophically, with prejudice or without, with consciousness or without, consistently or inconsistently, in a completely rational or half rational way. According to Marx, if people made religion a theory of right and law, of family, society, state, and history, then they made it itself a kind of philosophy. Marx asked, if it was not Christianity before anything else, that had separated church and state? Marx admonished his Christian readers, to read Saint Augustine’s “De Civitate Dei,” and to study the Greek and Roman Fathers of the Church, and the spirit of Christianity, and then come back and tell people, which was the Christian State: the church or the state! Marx asked his Christian readers, if not every minute of their practical life gave the lie to their theory? Marx’s Christian readers in Germany, England, Europe or America did not consider it wrong, to appeal to the administration of justice in civil society, to the law, to the courts, when they were cheated out of their property. However, Marx reminded his

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Christian readers, that the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, that precisely that was wrong. Marx asked his Christian readers, if they offered their right cheek, when they were struck upon the left, as demanded in the Sermon in the Mount, or did they not rather institute proceedings against assault? Marx reminded his Christian readers, that the Gospel of Matthew forbid precisely that. Did the Christians not claim their reasonable right in this world, particularly their property rights: their rights to having? Did they not grumble at the slightest raising of a duty or taxes by the state? Were they not furious at the slightest infringement on their personal liberty? But, so Marx argued, the Christians had been told by their teacher, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, that the sufferings of this life were not to be compared with the bliss of the future, eternal life, and that suffering in patience and the bliss of hope were cardinal virtues. In the perspective of the comparative, critical religiology, Marx did not attack Saint Paul or the Gospels, or Saint Augustine, but rather the hypocrisy of the Christian bourgeoisie in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, London, or Washington D.C., and Christendom’s horrendous discrepancy between theory and practice, which is unfortunately widely spread among all the world religions. Still during the American Presidential campaign of 2012, which cost over 2 billion dollars, and in which no viable humanist-socialist or communitarian labor party represented the 200 million workers, the debates among so called Christian politicians were much more about having than being. Again and again the bourgeois politicians quoted Saint Paul to the working class: who does not work, should not eat! Marx asked his Christian readers, if not most of their administration of justice and court proceedings, and the majority of their civil laws were concerned with private property, which at the time was together and connected with the so called just wars over 10,000 years old, and in general with having rather than with being?). But the Christians had been told by Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, that their treasure was not of this world. Marx admonished the Christians, that, if they based themselves on giving to Caesar the things, which were Caesar’s, and to God the things, which were God’s, they should not consider the mammon of gold alone, but at least just as much free reason as the Caesar of this world, and the action of free reason was what Marx, following Hegel, called philosophizing. Marx reminded his Christian readers, that when in the Holy Alliance, the predecessor of the League of Nations and of the United Nations, and at first a quasi-religious alliance of states, was to be formed, and religion was to be the state motto of Europe, the Pope showed a profound sense and perfect consistence in refusing to join it, for in his view the universal Christian link between nations was the Church, and not diplomacy, and not a worldly alliance of states. For Marx, the truly religious state was the theocratic state. The prince of such theocratic states must be either the God of religion, e.g. Jahweh, or El Shaddai, or Elohim himself, as in the Jewish state, or Allah, as in the Islamic states, or God’s representative, as the Pope in the Vatican, or the Dalai Lama in Tibet, or finally such theocratic state must as Christian state submit to a Church, which was an infallible Church. For if, so Marx argued, there was—as in Protestantism—no supreme head of the Church, the domination of religion was nothing else but the religion of domination, the cult of the will of the government

126 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION and of the state. In the perspective of the comparative dialectical religiology, at least since Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin, it is clear, that theocracies are no longer possible in Modernity or Post-Modernity: the goal of politics is not the kingdom of God, but rather human happiness. Like two opposite forces in nature, so can, nevertheless, also the longing for the kingdom of God and for human happiness, as opposed to each other as they may be, support each other in the long run. Only a good Christian can be a good atheist, and only a good atheist can be a good Christian, and communism is the presupposition of the kingdom of heaven: the monastic orders have always known about this, and thus had the vow of poverty. Remember the beginning of Christianity was communistic.

HISTORICAL IDEALISM Erich Fromm’s critical theory of religion as X-experience and yearning for the City of Being cannot be understood without its connection to the historical idealism. Modern philosophy, as represented by the 19th century idealist Friedrich W. J. Schelling, and his friend, the philosopher of evolving spirit, Hegel, the greatest of the German idealists, admitted an indebtedness to Meister Eckhart. Eckhart has even been credited with being the father of German historical idealism and historical materialism. Baader,a Catholic student of mysticism, and according to the critical theorist Leo Löwenthal a religious sociologist of sociology, reported, that he was often with Hegel in Berlin. Once Baader read to Hegel a passage from Eckhart. Baader was not aware, that Hegel had become familiar with Eckhart already during his youth, namely during his time in Bern, and that already then he had made excerpts from his work Baader thought, that Eckhart had only been a name for Hegel before he introduced him to him. When Baader read a passage from Eckhart to Hegel, he was so excited by it that the next day, he delivered to him a whole lecture on Eckhart, which ended with: There, indeed, we have what we want! Also Hegel’s archenemy, and the father of modern metaphysical pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer and his famous book “The World as Will and Representation” shows the greatest familiarity with Eckhart’s writings. The same is true of the work of Baruch Spinoza. Max Horkheimer started his philosophical life with reading Schopenhauer, after his friend Pollock had introduced him to the great philosopher, before the start of World War I. Horkheimer was connected with Meister Eckhart first through Schopenhauer, and only much later through Marx and Fromm. Also Sigmund Freud, the teacher of Fromm, and Thomas Mann, the friend of Adorno, became Schopenhaurians, and were thus indirectly connected with Eckhart. Bloch and Fromm invoked Eckhart as a forerunner of the spirit of Marx and Freud. Long before Hegel, Marx, Freud, Bloch, and Fromm, Meister Eckhart, informed by Scripture, knew about the necessity and importance of the class struggle between master and servant, slaveholder and slave, feudal lord and serf, producer and consumer, patrician and plebeian, bourgeois and proletarian or precarian, in society, state, and history, and its possible resolution. Thus, Eckhart

127 RUDOLF SIEBERT stated in his Sermon Twenty-two: Our Divinity and God’s Divinity: To Be God Is to Give Birth: The more the effort, so much the more should be our serious striving for virtue. So unitary should our love be, for love will never be anywhere else than where equality and unity are. Between a master and his servant there is no peace because there is no real equality. Eckhart was fully aware not only of the mystical but also of the political dimension of Judaism and Christianity, and of the connection between them. Fromm was certainly not too far removed from Eckhart, Hegel, and Marx, when he defined his humanistic religiology as X-experience, and Horkheimer and Adorno when they determined theology as the longing for the imageless and nameless totally Other, as the Truth, and as the Negation of all negativity––i. e. abandonment, alienation, and injustice, and all the other perils of human existence; or as yearning for perfect justice and unconditional love; or as hope, that the murderer shall not triumph over the innocent victim, at least not ultimately. For Hegel, if the course of the world would be defeated and overcome, and the virtue, i.e. unitary, equality-creating, reconciling love, would be victorious––that had to be decided out of the very nature of the living weapons, which the fighters in the class struggle used. That was so, because the weapons were nothing else than the very essence of the combatants themselves.

DAOISM, BUDDHISM, HINDUISM, AND SUFISM Erich Fromm’s comparative, critical theory of religion as X-experience and longing for the City of Being cannot be understood without reference to the Asian religions: particularly Buddhism. Asian scholars like D. T. Suzuki, a friend of Fromm, spoke of the closeness of Eckart’s dialectical way of thinking to that of Mahayana Buddhism, especially of Zen Buddhism. S. Ueda from Kyoto said, that Eckhart broke the sound barrier of the normal intellectual world of Christianity, and thereby entered into the world of Zen. The Trappist Thomas Merton agreed, saying that whatever Zen may be, however you define it, it is somehow there in Eckhart. Merton confessed to having been entranced by Eckhart. It can be documented, that Merton’s conversion from being a Romantic, dualistic, Augustinian––minded monk in the 1950s to being a prophetic Christian in the 1960s occurred while he was studying Zen and Eckhart. Hindu scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy compared Eckhart to Vedantist traditions. Certainly Eckhart lifted Christianity above any parochial conception and revealed its inner relation to the great, universal, spiritual movements. Eckhart lived on the same highlands of the spirit,that were disclosed in the Upanishards and Sufi classics. To go where Eckhart went, is to come close to Lao Tse and Buddha, and certainly to Jesus of Nazareth. To be sure, the religions that have grown up around these great thinkers fall with time, each into its own positive parochial form and idiom, and each acquires its own crust, its own shell, which encases one or two germs of the one universal life. But Eckhart stated in Thüringian dialect:

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Wiltu den kernen haben, so muostu die schalen brechen Eckhart was a breaker of shells, not as an iconoclast breaks them, but as life breaks its shells by its own insurgent power. It was from Eckhart, that his great successor, Hegel, learned to break the shell, and to penetrate through the bark of things into their very core—their dialectical notion: the self-particularizing and self-alienating, as well as self-singularizing and self-reconciling Universal.

SPARK OF THE SOUL Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience and longing for the City of Being cannot be understood without considering a long line of modern religiologists of different persuasion. Quaker mystic Rufus Jones acknowledged a debt to Eckhart as well he should, for Quaker founder George Fox was in many ways influenced by Eckhart. Jones’ notion of the spark of the soul seemed to be as little accidental as Fox’s. The Hegelian Josiah Royce and the Neo- Kantian Rudolf Otto also revived Eckhartian studies inside of Christian theological circles. In the 20th century, American letters, the writers Saul Bellow, John Updike, and Annie Dillard, as well as spiritual seekers such as Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Alan Watts, and Intensive Journal guru Ira Progoff have made extensive use of Eckhart. He attracted theologians and Marxists, and even fascist philosophers and psychologists, Zen thinkers and Hindu scholars, Polish poets and American novelists. Eckhart has had a universalist appeal. Eckhart’s dialectical intellectuality and spirituality seems to be uniquely suited for an age of the global village, and of ecumenism of all world religions. Of course, all these debts to Eckhart go back much further than to him himself: to the Greek and Roman classic writers of Antiquity, to the Torah and the New Testament, to Greek and Latin Church Fathers, and to the Scholastics. The number of authorities, which Eckhart quoted and used as springboards for his new dialectical thinking, is amazing and overwhelming. Eckhart’s writings still affect all those people in the 21st century, who are seeking guidance to a non-dualistic, non-ascetic, non-authoritarian, non- dogmatic, non-theistic, and rational, yet religious philosophy of life. In spite of the fact, that Eckhart belonged to a premodern age, in which individual, family, society, state, history and religion, were less differentiated from each other, he can still help religious people from Western as well as Eastern religions, to enter the public sphere, and thus to have a therapeutic effect on members in liberal society by freeing them from the compulsion of having into being. By learning from Eckhart, as well as from Boehme and Hegel, to find the reflection of his trinitarian notion and logic of God in nature as well as in man, family, society, state, history, and religion, religious people can try to overcome dialectically in a new way the still growing, modern, abyss-like dualism between the internal and the external world, between the sacred and the profane, between individual and collective, between theory and praxis. Religious people can still learn from Eckhart, how to deduct from the logic of the Creator God, reflected in his creation, in nature and man, values and norms, by which they can judge, what in what is the case in

129 RUDOLF SIEBERT modern liberal, socialist, or fascist society ought not to be, and thus should be changed through political praxis. Eckhart can help them, to modify at least Post- Modern, alternative Future I—the one-dimensional, totally administered society, and to resist Post-Modern, alternative Future II—the entirely militarized society, and to move toward Post-Modern, alternative Future III—a sane, humanist- socialist world, in which being is more important than having.

GOOD AND BAD RELIGION Erich Fromm’s critical theory of religion as X-experience and search for the City of Being was most deeply opposed to any form of opium religion. The question, who was more competent for Marxism, the young or the old Marx, who called the religion opium of the people, besides the outcry of the oppressed creature, and the heart of a heartless world, may not let come to rest those people, who with anger, or with malicious delight, depending on their political color on the Hegelian Right, or in the Hegelian Center, or in deconstructionism, or in neo-conservatism, would like to discover contradictions in the historical materialism. Before Marx, Hegel had called Hinduism, the Religion of Imagination, alone the opium of the people. Marx generalized the notion and applied it to all religions. Before Marx and Hegel, Kant had called opium a religion, which consoled people and made them feel good in such a way, that it did not sharpen, but rather dulled their conscience in the face of horrible injustices. In the view of the critical theory of religion, today in 2013 America, Christians may face urban slums or over one million casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly collateral damage, with a quiet and undisturbed conscience, by simply saying: Christ is my Savior. For Kant, while bad religion was opium for dulling the conscience, good religion sharpened it. In terms of the critical theory, a good religion may genuinely console as well as sharpen the conscience at the same time. According to Kant, morality lead indispensably and vitally to good religion. Through religion, morality broadened itself to the idea of a powerful moral Lawgiver outside of man. In Kant’s view, in the will of this moral Lawgiver, precisely that what was the ultimate purpose of the creation of the world, could also be at the same time, and ought to be, the ultimate goal of man, Kant insisted and argued, the assumption of the existence of such a moral lawgiver said more than the mere possibility of such an object. But in any case, for Kant not only morality, but also religion was not a matter of pure reason, but rather of practical reason. There was no moral or any other proof for the existence of God, but morality was not possible without at least the postulate of God. as well as of freedom, and immortality. Adorno and Horkheimer, informed by Kant, inverted and translated with Rudolf Otto, Karl Barth, Ernst Bloch, and Erich Fromm this postulate of the existence of God into the longing for the utterly Other than the phenomenal world with all its injustices, or the X-experience. With Gaunilon and his Fool, more than with Anselm of Canterbury and his Proslogium, Monologium, and Cur Deus Homo, and more with Kant and Schopenhauer than with Hegel, the critical theorists of society, stood in the apopathic rather than in the kataphatic

130 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF RELIGION tradition, and walked more the via negativa than the via positiva: toward the radically transcendent Theos agnotos or Deus absconditus. Hegel had, like Eckhart before, dialectically combined the cataphatic and the apophatic tradition and the via positiva and the via negative.

THE MURDER OF CHRIST Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience and longing for the City of Being embraced Marx’s Christology from below: the historical Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. While the younger Marx still stood with the Torah, the New Testament, and Hegel in the cataphatic tradition, the older Marx moved with Kant and Hegel into the apophatic one. But even the older Marx still quoted in The Capital and other writings not only Kant and Hegel, but also the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The older Marx also still took his children to a Catholic church in London, in order to listen to the music. When his children asked Marx, what the music was all about, he answered, that there was once a poor man, and that the rich people murdered him: the carpenter Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ by his friends. The older Marx also still asked indignantly the London bourgeoisie: why do you make a liar out of him—Jesus of Nazareth—with every word you say, and with every deed you do. In the view of the critical theory of religion, the rich have never stopped murdering the poor man ever since: slaveholders, as well as feudal lords, and capitalists. For Horkheimer, informed by the younger and the older Marx, Jesus died for all human beings. He could not avariciously hold himself back for himself. Jesus belonged to all what suffered. According to Horkheimer, the Greek and Roman Church Fathers made out of this self-giving death of Jesus of Nazareth a religion. They made out of his self- sacrificial death a teaching, which was a consolation also still for the evil people without a conscience, or a dull one. In Horkheimer’s view, since then this religion has been so successful in the world, that the thought of Jesus has no longer anything to do with the actions of the people, and certainly not with their immense suffering. In Horkheimer’s view, whoever read the Evangelium and did not see that Jesus died against his present day representatives, could not read at all. This theology was the most furious, fierce, and severe scorn and sheer mockery, which has ever happened to any thought. The early Church accepted finally after many internal struggles soldiers into its community. The Church did not yet bless the murder weapons of two hostile armies: or, so the critical theorist of religion may add––the atomic bombs, to be thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The religion, which appealed to Jesus of Nazareth, redirected the spiritual energies, which had been awakened through his unheard of deed of self-giving, which broke through the icy-coldness of the ancient world, from mimesis to cult, from action to adoration. However, if that had not happened, so Horkheimer had to admit, Jesus would probably have been forgotten, and his followers would have wasted themselves. They would have gone under in darkness. Instead of an economically and politically successful church-organization, which was also not poor in educational results, nothing would have remained. The good and bad deeds and

131 RUDOLF SIEBERT institutions of Christianity would not have been written down in any history book. Jesus would have remained right with what he, according to John, spoke before Pilate, the Roman Governor of Palestine, a notorious mass murderer, shortly before his execution: Mine is not a kingdom of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, my men would have fought to prevent my being surrendered to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of this kind. (St. John, 18:36) Horkheimer did not dare to say, what would have been better: total forgetfulness or ecclesiastical distortion. The critical theory of religion prefers distortion over complete forgetfulness, since the former still allows at least some remembrance of the truth, which according to John Jesus confessed before Pilate, the skeptical Roman judge: Yes, I am a king. I was born for this. I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of the truth listen to my voice. (St. John, 18:37) On November 25, the Christian Church celebrates the Feast of Christ, the King of the Universe. Horkheimer saw, like Fromm, in Jesus of Nazareth an extraordinary and exemplary man of being, rather than of having.

FAITH IDEA Erich Fromm’s critical theory of relIgion as X-experience and urge for the City of Being shared with Horkheimer the faith idea. In 1969, Horkheimer differentiated between the critical theory of society and the Christian faith idea. Horkheimer admitted, that his, Adorno’s, and Fromm’s idea, to express in the face of the positive sciences as well as of the whole historical situation after Auschwitz, the notion of an all-mighty and all -benevolent Being no longer as dogma, but rather as an X-experience, or as longing for the imageless and nameless utterly Other, so that the horrible events, the injustice of the previous world history would not be the ultimate fate of the victims, seemed to come close to the Protestant, more precisely the Calvinistic solution of the theodicy problem through the central role of the faith idea. However, according to Horkheimer, the essential difference between the critical theory of society and the Protestant faith idea consisted in that faith was expected to accept all too many hard to digest representations, as e.g. the idea of the Trinity or Incarnation; and that it was connected with an authoritarian coercion, which could almost no longer be recognized; and that it became in spite of all protest once again a dogma. Horkheimer explained through those aspects of the Protestant faith idea the tendency toward an aggression, which understood itself as being religious. According to Horkheimer, Adorno, and Fromm the key idea of the critical theory of society was a religious and a theological one: the X-experience, and the longing, that the murderer may not triumph over his innocent victim, at least not ultimately. The fundamental idea of the critical theory of society is connected to and rooted not only in Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx,

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Nietzsche, and Freud, but also, and even most of all in the three Abrahamic religions. According to Horkheimer, particularly the Jews felt as the chosen people, because they were obligated as individuals and as a nation to the only God and to the perfect justice Through his will to perfect justice, the Jew was the enemy of everything totalitarian on the Right, or on the Left, and precisely in that lay one of the roots of the global Anti-Semitism in the past, as well as in the present––in 2013. Edmund Arens, Professor at the University of Luzern, Switzerland, and former student not only of Johannes Baptist Metz, but also of Jürgen Habermas, has recognized, that since the 1980s our teaching and research in the comparative, dialectical religiology has been faithful to the critical theory of society of Schopenhauer’s, Adorno’s and Fromm’s, as well as of my own hometown Frankfurt a.M., and that we have developed it creatively further, and that we have passed on its not yet realized inheritance to the younger generations: particularly its religious key idea of the imageless and nameless utterly Other than the horror and terror of nature and history and of the X-experience: the Absolute is the entirely demythologized Other, or X. This critical theory of religion has always been dialectically connected with pedagogical as well as with political praxis of being rather than having in Europe as well as in America. At the same time, Professor Helmut Fritzsche, University of Rostock, Germany, admired our far reaching renewal of the critical theory of society and our contribution to the Christian, inter-religious discourse. He was sure, that it would work as a mile stone for the generations to come. He confirmed, that all what we had been looking forward to concerning the community of fate between the modern civilization and religion for decades, is happening now, and our call for a worldwide revival of religion seemed to him the most important matter in the world of spirit today. Furthermore, Professor Fritzsche wanted to bestow his high respect for our courage to address the concrete political, social, and caring issues of the day in our theoretical, philosophical reflections. According to Professor Fritzsche, in contrast most of the authors today take pains to bypass the real world, and the humans’ real sufferings.

SYNTHESIS Erich Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience and longing for the City of Being is deeply concerned with the question, if a conversion to a humanistic religiosity without dogmas, authorities, institutions and asceticism, as intended in his theory, can come into practical existence in the present transition period from Modernity to Post-Modernity: love instead of asceticism. According to Fromm, such humanistic religiosity has been prepared for centuries through the non-theistic movements from Buddhism to Marxism and Freudianism. In the present world historical transition period, people do not stand before the alternative to become victims of a culture industry and mass culture characterized by sex, car, and career, on one hand, and the acceptance of the Abrahamic notion of God, as it appears in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The new humanistic religiosity may develop in family, society, state, history, and culture, without the need for a

133 RUDOLF SIEBERT separate religious organization. The demand for a new non-theistic, non-dogmatic, non-ascetic, non-institutionalized humanistic religiosity is not directed against believers of the great, traditional world-religions, in so far as they experience authentically the humanistic core of their own faith, and sharpen their conscience. The demand for a new humanistic religiosity is not an attack against the traditional religions. It is, however, an appeal to the Abrahamic religions to return to the spirit of their first paradigms: e.g. to the Roman Catholic Church to convert itself from the Roman bureaucracy to the spirit of the Evangelium, as promised in the Second Vatican Council. The demand for a new humanistic religiosity does not mean, that the former socialist countries in Eastern Europe remain de-socialized and without solidarity after the successful neo-liberal counter-revolution of 1989, but rather that the former bureaucratic socialism, not to speak of red fascism, will be replaced in the future by a genuine humanistic socialism. The goal of the new humanistic, comparative, dialectical religiology, informed by Fromm and the other critical theorists, is Post-Modern alternative Future III—the City of Being. In this City of Being is concretely superseded the Catholic vision of the City of God, which inspired the Medieval culture. In the City of Being is also determinately negated the vision of the earthly City of Progress, which energized the people in Modernity. According to Fromm, since the 20th century, particularly since the end of World War I, this vision of the City of Progress has taken on characteristics of the Tower of Babel, which in the 21st century seems to move from one crisis to the other, and may finally collapse and burry the people under its ruins. When, so Fromm argued in terms of the Hegelian and Marxian dialectical logic, the heavenly City of God and the earthly City of Progress represented thesis and antithesis, then a new synthesis is the only alternative to chaos and barbarism. The new synthesis is The City of Being. It is the synthesis between the internal and the external world; between the sacred and the profane; between the religious core of the Medieval culture, and the development of the modern world with its scientific thinking and its emphasis on the individual, since the Renaissance and the Reformation; between personal autonomy and universal, i.e. anamnestic, present, and proleptic solidarity; between theory and praxis; and most of all between having and being: having concretely superseded in being. Precisely this synthesis, is the very heart of Fromm’s social-psychological theory of religion as X-experience and as longing for the City of Being, which moves through his whole life work, and inspires its fundamental attitude, and holds it together.

REFERENCES

Blakney, R. B. (1941). Meister Eckhart. New York, NY: Harper and Brothers. Fromm, E. (1922). Das jüdische Gesetz. Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des Diasporajudentums. Heidelberg. Fromm, E. (1927). Der Sabbath. Imago. Zeitschrift für Anwendung der Psychoanalyse auf die Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften. XIII.Jg.Wien. Fromm, E. (1929). Psychoanalyse und Soziologie. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalytische Pädagogik. III.Jg. Wien.

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Fromm, E. (1930). Die Entwicklung des Christusdogams. Eine psychoanalytische Studie zur Sozialpsychologischen Funktion der Religion. Imago. Zeitschrift für Anwendung der Psychoanalyse aud die Natur und Geisteswissenschaften. XVI.Jg. Wien. Fromm, E. (1932a). Über Methode und Aufgabe einer analytischen Sozialpsychologie. Zeischrift für Sozialforschung, 1(1/2), 28. Fromm, E. (1932b). Die psychoanalytische Charakterologie und ihre Bedeutung für die Sozialpsychologie. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 1(1/2), 253. Fromm, E. (1935a). Die gesellschaftliche Bedingtheit der psychoanalytischen Therapie. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 4, 365-397. Fromm, E. (1950). Psychoanalysis and religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers. Fromm, E. (1957). Man is not a thing. Saturday Review, March 16. Fromm, E. (1959). Sigmund Freud’s mission. New York, NY: Harper and Brothers Publishers. Fromm, E. (1961a). Afterword. In George Orwell, 1984. New York, NY: The New American Library. Fromm, E. (1961b). Karl Marx by Eleanor Marx-Aveling. In Marx’s concept of man. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. Fromm, E. (1964). The heart of man: Its genius for good and evil. New York, NY: Harper and Row Publishers. Fromm, E. (1966a). Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics. New York, NY: Fawcett World Library. Fromm, E. (1966b). You shall be as gods: A radical interpretation of the Old Testament and its tradition. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Fromm, E. (1967). Marx’s concept of man. New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. Fromm, E. (1968). The revolution of hope: Toward a humanized technology. New York, NY: Harper and Row Publishers. Fromm, E. (1970a). Guest Editorial: Thoughts on bureaucracy. management science, application series. Urban Issues, 16 (12), B699-B705. Fromm, E. (1970b). Some post-Marxian and post-Freudian thoughts on religion and religiousness. In J. B. Metz, New questions of God (pp. 146-156). New York, NY: Herder and Herder. Fromm, E. (1972a). Escape from freedom. New York, NY: The Hearst Corporation. Fromm, E. (1972b). The Erich Fromm theory of aggression. New York Times Magazine, February 27. Fromm, E. (1973.) The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Fromm, E. (1974). Im Namen des Lebens. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Fromm, E. (1975). Interview. In L’Espresso by L. Aleotti, Feb. 16. Fromm, E. (1976). To have or to be? New York, NY: Harper and Row Publishers. Fromm, E. (1980a). Arbeiter und Angestellte am Vorabend des Dritten Reiches. Eine Sozialpsychologische Untersuchung. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt. Fromm, E. (1980b). Greatness and limitation of Freud’s thought. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Fromm, E. (1981). On disobedience and other essays. New York, NY: The Seabury Press. Fromm, E. (1990a). The sane society. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. Fromm, E. (1990b). Beyond the chains of illusion: my encounter with Marx and Freud. New York, NY: Continuum. Fromm, E. (1992a). The dogma of Christ and other essays on religion, psychology, and culture, trans. by James Luther Adams. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Fromm, E. (1992b). Beyond Freud. Riverdale, NY: American Mental Health Foundation Inc.. Fromm, E. (1995). The essential Fromm: Life between having and being. New York, NY: Continuum. Fromm, E. (1997). Love, sexuality and matriarchy: About gender (R. Funk, Ed.). New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation. Fromm, E. (1999). Gibt es eine Ethik ohne Religiosität? Fromm-Forum, 3, 34-36. Fromm, E. (2001). Haben oder sein. München: Deutscher Verlag. Fromm, E. (1966) . Socialist humanism: An international symposium. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company.

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Fromm, E., & Ramon, X .(1979). The nature of man. New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company. Fromm, E., Suzuki, D. T., & De Martino, R. (1960). Zen Buddhism and psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Harper and Row. Lao-tse (1988). Tao Te Ching (Trans. S. Mitchell). New York: Harper & Row. Marx, K. (1964). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. New York, NY: International Publishers. Marx, K. (2002). In Marx on religion (J. Raines, Ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1975). Collected works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Volume 1. Marx: 1835-1843. London, GB: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd.

Rudolf Siebert The Center for Humanistic Future Studies Western Michigan University

136

JOAN BRAUNE

9. ERICH FROMM AND THOMAS MERTON1

Biophilia, Necrophilia, and Messianism

ABSTRACT The paper explores Erich Fromm’s 1963 antiwar pamphlet, War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry into the Roots of Destructiveness, part of a series of pamphlets published by the American Friends Service Committee. In the pamphlet, Fromm contrasted the healthy “biophilic” character orientation, which was open to growth, change, and the future, with the pathological “necrophilic” character orientation, which was characterized by sentimentality, dwelling upon the past, and attempting to render the world static, fixed, predictable, and dead. While the former (the biophilic) was future-oriented, the latter (the necrophilic) attempted to flee the burdens of personal responsibility, freedom, and individuality through regression into the past. To demonstrate the relevance of this distinction, the paper first lays out Fromm’s distinction between two kinds of “messianic” aspiration, one of which Fromm supports and the other of which he opposes. After a look at these two kinds of messianic aspiration, the paper addresses Fromm’s related distinction between the biophilic and necrophilic character orientations in the context of the 1963 pamphlet. The paper then expands upon Fromm’s decade of correspondence and collaboration with Kentucky Trappist monk, spiritual writer, and progressive social critic Thomas Merton and their shared concerns about nuclear weapons and the U.S. political and cultural climate during the Cold War.

TWO TYPES OF MESSIANISM In 1963, Erich Fromm issued an antiwar pamphlet entitled War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry into the Roots of Destructiveness. There Fromm contrasted the healthy “biophilic” character orientation, which was open to growth, change, and the future, with the unhealthy “necrophilic” character, which was characterized

–––––––––––––– 1 A version of this paper was presented at the Italian-English conference “Death and the Love for Life in Psychoanalysis: In Memoriam Romano Biancoli” in 2010 in Ravenna, Italy and was reprinted in the journal of the International Erich Fromm Society, Fromm Forum, Vol. 15 (2011).This paper is part of an ongoing study by the author of the relationship between reification and violence as outlined in the work of Erich Fromm, Thomas Merton, and D.T. Suzuki.

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 137–146. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. JOAN BRAUNE by sentimentality, dwelling upon the past, and an attempt to render the world static, fixed, predictable, and dead. While the former (the biophilic) was future-oriented, the latter (the necrophilic) attempted to flee the burdens of personal responsibility, freedom, and individuality through regression into the past. In order to understand the relevance of this distinction, it is helpful to first understand Fromm’s distinction between two kinds of “messianic” aspiration, one of which Fromm supports and the other of which he opposes. After a look at these two kinds of messianic aspiration, the chapter addresses Fromm’s related distinction between the biophilic and necrophilic character orientations in the context of his 1963 antiwar pamphlet. The final section of the chapter addresses the pamphlet in the context of Fromm’s dialogue with Kentucky Trappist monk, spiritual writer, and progressive social critic Thomas Merton. Erich Fromm’s thought was largely motivated by a partly secularized version of the traditional Jewish hope and enthusiasm for the coming of the messianic age.2 The concept of messianism, though initially developed in the context of theology, proved to be a useful tool for understanding revolutionary change and human hopes for utopia. Messianism was a topic in the air during his youth, when Fromm was a young religious Jew attempting to differentiate his messianic philosophy of history from the various other “messianisms” that were to be found among left- wing Jewish intellectuals of the time, and he returned to the question in the 1950s, grappling with it from the time of his book The Sane Society (1955) to his death in 1980. Fromm distinguishes between two kinds of messianism, “prophetic” messianism (which he defends) and “catastrophic” messianism (which he criticizes). 3 Prophetic messianism works for and hopes for a future “messianic age” or utopia, which will be characterized by justice, fulfillment, peace, and redemption, and it believes that this future will be brought about by human effort in history. Prophetic messianism is characterized by a “horizontal longing”; it looks ahead to the future with hope.4 It sees the future fulfillment of its hopes not as a dramatic “rupture” with history but as a result of historical progress. The messianism that Fromm opposes, catastrophic messianism, holds that the messianic event enters history from outside, a force majeure, not as an outcome of human activity. Catastrophic messianism is consequently a “vertical” longing, often manifested as the longing for intervention by an external, transcendent savior

–––––––––––––– 2 Those of Fromm’s works that directly discuss messianism include, among others, The Sane Society (1955), Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program (1960), Marx’s Concept of Man (1961), May Man Prevail? An Inquiry into the Facts and Fictions of Foreign Policy (1961), Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962), You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament (1966), The Revolution of Hope (1968), To Have or To Be? (1976) and his late, posthumously published manuscript Marx and Meister Eckhart on Having and Being. 3 Fromm gives the two kinds of messianism a variety of names, but in a late manuscript he uses the terms “prophetic messianism” and “catastrophic or apocalyptic messianism” (which I am shortening to “catastrophic messianism”), and I will use these terms here (cf. Fromm, On Being Human). 4 Erich Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York, 1966), p. 133.

138 ERICH FROMM AND THOMAS MERTON

(perhaps a human leader, a natural event, or a deterministic law governing history).5 Because it views the messianic event as the outcome of the transcendent entering history to rescue a fallen humanity in a time of crisis, catastrophic messianism encourages passive waiting or even destructive or unnecessarily violent action aimed at increasing the crisis and thus speeding the intervention by transcendent forces. In other words, catastophic messianism risks becoming quietism on the one hand or actively destructive nihilism on the other. At its most destructive, catastrophic messianism can take on a reactionary yearning to return to an unblemished past through a total destruction of present structures. Erich Fromm’s prophetic messianic hope rests at the core of his philosophical, psychoanalytic, and political program. This messianic hope is highly future- oriented; it looks not backward to some golden age of the past but forward to a “golden age of the future,” in which humanity’s long-held dreams of justice, peace, wisdom, and love, will find fulfillment. According to Fromm, this radical, future- oriented, messianic hope is necessary for the psychological health of the individual and society. This hope is manifested not in passivity or patient waiting, but in action aimed at bringing about a better future for humanity; it is a commitment to continually working for a better world, with realistic understanding of the obstacles facing one’s action, and without cynicism or naïve optimism.

ABOUT THE PAMPHLET, WAR WITHIN MAN Fromm’s 1963 pamphlet War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry into the Roots of Destructiveness was published as part of a series of pamphlets by various authors, entitled “Beyond Deterrence” and sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, the pro-peace activist organization of the U.S. Quakers. The pamphlets opposed the nuclear arms race at a time when the majority in the U.S. were gung-ho nationalistic proponents of the arms race against the Soviet Union. Prior to writing the pamphlet War Within Man, Fromm had already played an important role in spearheading the U.S. movement against nuclear weapons, and the first major anti-nuclear weapons organization in the U.S. at the time, SANE, was named after Fromm’s book The Sane Society. War Within Man consists of an approximately twenty-five page essay by Fromm, exploring possible psychological causes of the peculiar apathy of Americans about the nuclear arms race, followed by brief critical responses from monk Thomas Merton, psychoanalysts Roy Menninger and Jerome Frank, Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, political scientist Hans Morgenthau, and sociologist and anti-Communist Russian émigré Pitirim Sorokin. These responses are followed by a brief reply by Fromm, responding to his critics. With the exception of Merton’s contribution, the critics’ contributions to the pamphlet mainly fail to capture the essence of Fromm’s argument and are diverted by misunderstandings of Fromm’s essay. Some of them misunderstand necrophilia

–––––––––––––– 5 Ibid.

139 JOAN BRAUNE and biophilia to be mere instincts or biological drives, despite the fact that Fromm makes clear in his essay that biophilia and necrophilia are “character orientations” and that he is rejecting Freud’s assertion about the existence of a death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Tillich’s short response is a critique of an earlier title of the pamphlet, dropped by Fromm for the final version. Roy Menninger plainly misunderstands, or perhaps intentionally distorts, Fromm’s argument. Although Fromm states in the essay that he does not believe there are simply two types of people (biophilic and necrophilic), but that most people display a mix of biophilic and necrophilic tendencies, Menninger claims that Fromm believes there are simply “two species” of people.6 Of Fromm’s critics in the pamphlet, only Thomas Merton seems to understand Fromm’s argument and to take it seriously. I will outline Fromm’s assessment of necrophilia in the main part of the pamphlet, and I will return to address Merton’s response in light of Fromm’s long-time dialogue with Merton.

PROGRESS OR RETURN? The struggle to overcome the desire to regress, and to devote oneself to a future- oriented messianism, stands at the center of Fromm’s 1963 pamphlet. An ongoing theme in Fromm’s work is the desire of individuals to “escape from freedom,” i.e., to flee the burdens of individual freedom, responsibility, and loneliness, often through regression to childlike dependence upon leaders, or through politically reactionary efforts to reinstate some lost golden age of ancient history or prehistory. As early as the mid-1930s, Fromm explored this question in an essay on J.J. Bachofen’s theory of matriarchy or “Mother Right.” Socialists like Marx and Engels, but also anti-socialist reactionaries like Ludwig Klages and Alfred Bäumler, had all praised Bachofen’s theory of a pre-historic “matriarchal” world that preceded the rise of contemporary “patriarchal” societies.7 However, Fromm explained, the reactionaries praised Bachofen’s theory because they “looked back to the past as a lost paradise,” while the radicals praised Bachofen’s theory from a very different standpoint, since they “looked forward hopefully to the future.”8 The reactionaries yearned to return to a “lost paradise,” a state of helpless dependence upon a fascist leader, much like the infant’s helpless dependence upon an all- giving, all-nurturing mother. The Nazis’ desire to return to infancy manifested itself in passive submissiveness towards nature—a belief that history is “fated” or cyclic—a strong preference for those with whom one is related by blood, a predilection to honoring the dead through rigid repetition of rituals, and an

–––––––––––––– 6 Roy Menninger, in Erich Fromm, War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry into the Roots of Destructiveness (American Friends Service Committee, 1963), p. 39. 7 Erich Fromm, The Crisis of Psychoanalysis: Essays on Freud, Marx, and Social Psychology (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1970), pp. 84-85. 8 Erich Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1962), pp. 84-85.

140 ERICH FROMM AND THOMAS MERTON attachment to land and “soil” (symbolically associated with motherhood and feminine fertility). After escaping Nazism and accepting exile in the United States, Fromm continued to worry about the political ramifications of desires for psychological regression. His new milieu—the United States in the midst of a paranoid and irrational anti-Communist “red scare,” soon to be in the midst of the cold war arms race—presented new but similar problems to those of his old milieu in Germany. Fromm grew increasingly concerned with Americans’ passivity about the arms race and the threat of nuclear catastrophe. He was especially disturbed by discussions of bomb shelters and by the widely held view in the U.S. that families could hide below ground in the event of a nuclear catastrophe and then simply emerge to rebuild civilization. That so many people were willing to accept such a possible outcome to human history, Fromm saw as profoundly pathological. Fromm’s concerns about nuclear deterrence were highlighted in his letters to Thomas Merton. Fromm questioned the sanity of those who suggested, for example, that in a nuclear catastrophe “only [only!] sixty million Americans [would] die,” and he was acutely aware that, “Almost literally the fate of the human race will be decided within a year.” In a 1961 letter to Merton, he added, I have been thinking a good deal lately about the increasing discussion of what people will do in their fall-out shelters in case of an atomic attack. It seems that most people take it for granted that they would defend their shelters with guns against neighbors who want to intrude … This whole discussion shows what kind of life we would have, even if millions of people could stay alive by protecting themselves from fall-out in shelters. Of course big cities are written off, and those who would survive would be the part of the population in the country, removed from the cities. It would be a life of complete barbarism … Neighbor defending his life against neighbor by force, children starving, life reduced to its most primitive components of survival. Anyone who believes that in this way we can save freedom, I think, is just dishonest or cannot see clearly.9 The irrational passivity of Americans in the face of the possible impending destruction of civilization seemed to Fromm to require a psychological explanation going beyond the effects of anti-Soviet propaganda. American apathy pointed to an unconscious necrophilic wish, a desire to escape life through a return to the comfort of the womb. Individuals felt lured to escape the burden of their freedom and individuality through various mechanisms of psychological regression. As noted above, Fromm’s early reading of socialists’ and reactionaries’ interpretations of Bachofen contributed to his conclusion that a radical, prophetic messianism must not seek to regress to earlier stages of human development but must proceed towards a future that fulfills the hopes of the past and present. The desire to restore a lost paradise is reactionary, while the revolutionary looks

–––––––––––––– 9 Erich Fromm, Letter to Thomas Merton (Thomas Merton Center), October 9, 1961.

141 JOAN BRAUNE forward to a future. In his later work, Fromm expressed this dialectic allegorically, drawing upon the story of Adam and Eve. According to Fromm, history began with an act of disobedience. Adam and Eve’s disobedience of God was, allegorically speaking, the first historical act, through which human beings began to develop freedom and awareness of themselves as separate individuals.10 Disobedience was an important step in human development, a part of humanity’s process of “growing up,” learning not to obey orders blindly (orders such as, “Don’t eat from that tree”), and breaking its infantile bonds to blood and soil. 11 Adam and Eve’s disobedience was “the condition for man’s self-awareness, for his capacity to choose … man’s first step toward freedom.”12 With this act, humanity lost its primal lack of differentiation; that is, it lost its original oneness with nature and with its fellow humans.13 Despite the great advance represented by Adam and Eve’s disobedience—the achievement of self-awareness, freedom, and individuation—something was tragically lost with the expulsion from Eden. Like the infant undergoing the traumatic experience of birth, Adam and Eve were thrown from the comfort of Paradise into a world of loneliness, isolation, and homelessness, and were left yearning for a union that seemed impossible to reclaim. Humanity is now faced with a difficult choice of alternatives: it can either seek to escape the reality of its expulsion from Eden through psychological regression to a womb-like Paradise, or it can squarely face reality and actively move forwards to the future. Among the paths by which humans seek to escape their freedom and attempt ineffectively to regain “Paradise” are three “mechanisms of escape,” which Fromm discusses in his book Escape from Freedom: (1) masochism and/or sadism, characteristic of the “authoritarian personality,” in which the individual merges his or her identity with that of another, through either dominating, or being dominated by, the other, (2) destructiveness, in which the individual seeks oneness through annihilation of what is other,14 and (3) conformity, in which the individual attempts to merge with the world by making him or herself identical with it (adopting the same thoughts, attitudes, behaviors, etc., as others).15 All three options bode ill for an emancipatory politics. There is no simple escape, no mere regression, that can return the individual to Paradise. The coming messianic time is something never before achieved in human history. While the prehistoric state of Paradise was defined by “man’s not yet having been born,” Fromm writes, the future age is defined by “man’s having been fully born.”16 In War Within Man, Fromm argues that the psychological roots of Americans’ passivity to impending destruction could be found in a “necrophilic,” or death- –––––––––––––– 10 Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, p. 167. 11 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, pp. 122-123. 12 Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (Harper & Row, New York, 1964), p. 20. 13 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, p. 122. 14 Fromm, Escape from Freedom, p. 202. 15 Ibid., p. 208. 16 Fromm, You Shall Be as Gods, pp. 123-124.

142 ERICH FROMM AND THOMAS MERTON loving, character orientation. By “necrophilia,” Fromm explains, he does not mean specifically a sexual attraction to corpses. Rather, he is describing a general psychological orientation towards the world that is characterized by an attraction to all that is static, mechanical, dead, predictable, and easy to control. Fromm writes that the necrophiliac is “fascinated by all that is dead,” feels drawn “to corpses, to decay, to feces, to dirt,” and “[loves] to talk about sickness, about burials, about death.”17 He or she is attracted to darkness, night, (womb-like) caves, and hiding places. Fromm’s interpretation of “necrophilia” is straightforwardly political. For example, Fromm writes that the necrophiliac loves “law and order” and bureaucracy.18 The necrophiliac, like the Nazi bureaucrat Eichmann, “transform[s] all life into the administration of things.” 19 The necrophiliac is attracted to nationalism, since he loves what is “home-made” and that to which he is accustomed, while he is afraid of what is new or different. Finally, the necrophiliac, like the Soviet ideologist, misunderstands justice, seeing justice as a merely quantitative matter of equal distribution. Both capitalist and Soviet bureaucracy, along with fascism, seem to Fromm to foster a death-loving, necrophilic character orientation. Like the reactionaries Klages and Bäumler, oddly obsessed with J.J. Bachofen’s descriptions of a prehistoric matriarchy, the necrophiliac seeks to escape the pressures of the present through a return to the dead, fixed, controllable past. Fromm states that necrophilia is closely related both to sadism and the death instinct, although neither concept fully explains necrophilia.20 As noted previously, Fromm saw “sadomasochism” and “destructiveness”21 as mechanisms of escape from freedom. The sadomasochist seeks to subject the other or be subjected by the other, while the merely destructive orientation seeks to annihilate the other. Sadomasochism he linked to the “authoritarian character,” which views the world solely through the lens of power relations. Both the sadomasochist and the destructive personality are dependent; the sadomasochist needs an other to subjugate or to be subjugated by, while the destructive personality needs an other to annihilate. But neither the sadomasochist nor the destructive personality are truly concerned for the other. Each feels personally stunted, and each takes revenge upon another—attempting to render the other a powerless object or non-entity—in order to avoid facing the reality of their own unfulfilled, unlived lives.

MERTON AND FROMM Of the various commentators included in Fromm’s pamphlet, Thomas Merton had an advantage; he had already been in dialogue with Fromm for some time and had

–––––––––––––– 17 Fromm, War Within Man, p. 9. 18 Ibid., p. 11. 19 Ibid., p. 12. 20 Ibid., p. 9. 21 Fromm, Escape from Freedom.

143 JOAN BRAUNE a good grasp of Fromm’s project. The pamphlet was probably largely the fruit of a productive collaboration between Merton and Fromm. In the previous year, Fromm and his research collaborator Michael Maccoby had contributed a co-authored article to an antiwar anthology edited by Merton, Breakthrough to Peace. This was in the midst of a lively correspondence between the Merton and Fromm. The two exchanged roughly thirty letters from 1954 to 1966, offering a lovely example of Marxist-Christian dialogue on a range of philosophical, religious, and political topics. Merton initiated the correspondence in 1954, having already read three of Fromm’s books (Psychoanalysis and Religion, Man for Himself, and Escape from Freedom). In the course of the exchange, the two frequently sent one another books, with Merton reading Fromm’s The Sane Society and Marx’s Concept of Man, and Fromm reading Merton’s The New Man in 1958 and probably reading Disputed Questions in 1960, and some other of Merton’s writings, including probably The Ascent to Truth, No Man is an Island, and Merton’s early biography The Seven Storey Mountain, judging from references to these books in their discussions. The dialogue between Fromm and Merton incorporated extensive discussion of the worrisome passivity of Americans about the nuclear arms race and culminated with a joint effort by Merton and Fromm to get Pope Paul VI to sponsor a conference on peace to be held in Latin America.22 In his response to Fromm’s essay in War Within Man, Merton agrees with Fromm’s assessment of the prevalence and danger of necrophilia, though he questions whether Fromm’s radically future-oriented, biophilic messianic hope can be adequately grounded without a theistic faith in a God who can bring human hopes to fulfillment. In Fromm’s concluding response to his critics, Fromm sings the praises of Merton, praising him for being a “true religious humanist” and for giving a charitable reading of Fromm’s essay (something some of the others, especially Menninger, seem not to have done). According to Fromm, Merton’s charitable reading “transcend[s] the words of the author and [seeks] to understand what he means or even what he might mean if he were fully aware of the consequences of his own ideas.”23 In speaking of Merton’s ability to “transcend words,” Fromm was alluding to something he saw as centrally important: the need to oppose an idolatry of words, that is, to refuse to cling to fixed and dead descriptions and instead to understand reality as continually living and becoming. Fromm grew to believe that dialogue and collaboration between Marxists and people of faith should be based upon a common rejection of “idolatry,” a theme that comes up several times in the correspondence. This theme of idolatry is in the background in War Within Man, where Fromm writes that he feels an affinity with Merton, despite their differing religious conceptualizations, since Fromm holds that religious experience, which transcends language, has primacy over religious

–––––––––––––– 22 Although the papal conference never materialized, the proposal garnered support from numerous public figures. Later, Pope John Paul II praised Fromm’s book To Have or to Be? and invited Fromm to the Vatican (Lawrence J. Friedman, The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet [Columbia University Press, New York, 2013], p. xxiv). 23 Fromm, War Within Man, p. 55.

144 ERICH FROMM AND THOMAS MERTON concepts. This theme can be found throughout his correspondence with Merton. In his first letter to Merton, for example, he stresses his agreement with Merton’s interpretation of religious mysticism, “that the true mysticism does not know God after the manner of an object.”24 (In the background of this discussion is Merton’s and Fromm’s dialogue and collaboration with Zen master and philosopher D.T. Suzuki, for whom an overriding theme was the limitedness of language for capturing reality.) Though “not a believer,” Fromm’s description of his non-belief at times borders on negative theology; his atheism is not so much a rejection of God’s existence as it is a rejection of all positive statements about God. Just as he is wary of positive theology’s potential to become “idolatry,” he rejects capitalism as idolatrous. Both capitalism and reified theology place more value upon the products of human thought and labor than upon human beings themselves. From a Christian standpoint, Merton shares Fromm’s worry about “idolatry.” Responding to Fromm’s worries about conservative religious leaders in the U.S. at the time (Billy Graham, Rev. Peale, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen), Merton states, “I am deeply worried by the falsity, the superficiality and the fundamental irreverence of what is so often hailed nowadays as a ‘return to God.’ People have resurrected a lot of ‘words about’ God,” and Merton follows this statement with a reference to idols, to the “golden calf.” Although Fromm and Merton shared a concern with the exploitation and cheapening of religious discourse, one of Fromm’s most significant influences on Merton was exposing him to the work of French Catholic social theorist and mystic Simone Weil (1909-1943).25 The influence of Weil on both thinkers merits further research. Weil’s analysis of oppression and force, as well as her negative theology, probably appealed to Fromm. In 1955, Fromm recommended that Merton read Simone Weil’s essay, “The Iliad or The Poem of Force.”26 Employing Homer’s epic to describe the nature of “force,” Weil defines force as “that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing.”27 In his books Fromm frequently quotes Weil’s definition of force as the power to transform a human being into a thing or a corpse.28 This is paralleled by Fromm’s statement in War Within Man that sadism seeks to make its victim into a thing, a “living corpse.”29 –––––––––––––– 24 Fromm, Letter to Merton, October 1954. 25 Merton later makes various references to Weil in his books, including several in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, where he expresses his “sympathy for” her and her desire “not to be in the middle of the Catholically approved and well-censored page, but only on the margin … as question marks: questioning not Christ, but Christians” (Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Doubleday, New York, 1966), p. 40). 26Fromm, Letter to Merton, October 1955. 27 Simone Weil, Simone Weil: An Anthology, Ed. and Trans. Sian Miles (Grove Press, New York, 1986), p. 163. 28 Including Fromm’s “Afterword” to George Orwell’s 1984; The Dogma of Christ: And Other Essays on Religion, Psychology, and Culture (Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Connecticut, 1963), p. 188; War Within Man, p. 9. For other references to Simone Weil in Fromm’s writings, cf. The Art of Loving, The Nature of Man, and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. 29 Fromm, War Within Man, p. 10.

145 JOAN BRAUNE

* * * Ultimately, the problem with necrophilia that Fromm identified is that it attempts to render what is living and uncontrollable into something dead and controllable. “Idolatry,” in all its manifestations—whether it is an idolatry of language, of wealth, of the past, of a nation, or even of ideas about God—functions like necrophilia, glorifying what is dead and unchanging over what is living and changing. Throughout his career, Fromm sought to promote a future-oriented hope for the messianic age, in opposition to those who, like the reactionary proponents of Bachofen, sought to regress to some lost paradise, or to dwell sentimentally upon memories of the (dead and completed) past. Fromm would find many allies in his struggle against necrophilia and idolatry, theologians like Merton among them. But, just as Fromm found that his messianic hope for the future was still relevant in the United States in the Cold War as it had been in Germany under the Nazis, we will likely find that in present-day society Fromm’s openness to the future, to change, to hope, and to life, and his opposition to the love of what is fixed, dead, and controllable, are no less relevant today than they were in the 1960s.

REFERENCES

Friedman, L. J. (2013). The lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s prophet. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York, NY: Farrar & Rinehart. Fromm, E. (1962). Beyond the chains of illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Fromm, E. (1963). War within man: A psychological enquiry into the roots of destructiveness. American Friends Service Committee. Fromm, E. (1964). The heart of man: Its genius for good and evil. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Fromm, E. (1966). You shall be as Gods: A radical interpretation of the Old Testament and its tradition. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Fromm, E. (1970). The crisis of psychoanalysis: Essays on Freud, Marx, and social psychology. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. Fromm, E. (1994). On being human. New York, NY: Continuum. Fromm, E., & Merton, T. Letters. University of Kentucky Special Collections Library. Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Merton, T. (1966). Conjectures of a guilty bystander. New York, NY: Doubleday. Weil, S. (1986). Simone Weil: An anthology (S. Miles, Trans., Ed.). New York, NY: Grove Press.

Joan Braune Mount Mary University

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DUSTIN J. BYRD

10. FROMM’S NOTION OF THE PROPHET AND PRIEST

Ancient Antagonisms, Modern Manifestations

Erich Fromm’s life began and ended in an age of perpetual crisis which threatened the very existence of humanity. This crisis was characterised by existential uncertainty, artificially maintained irrational antagonisms, authoritarian political structures—both claiming to be in accordance with human nature—world wars, the cold war, and a consumer society designed for maximum distraction and mental diminishment, predicated on structural and sometimes direct violence (Adorno, 1991, pp. 107-131). As a reader of world history and a critical social psychologist, Fromm deduced that while the particular language of human destructiveness changes over time, the core issues that hinder or block the fulfilment and flourishing of well-being within humanity remain consistent throughout history. No matter the strength of the attempt to overcome and transcend human destructiveness, whether it be through radical theory, revolutionary praxis, socialism, religious utopianism, etc., the core conflicts within the individual and society remain driving forces within civilizations. Nevertheless, Fromm did not abandon his commitment to fulfilling what he saw as not only the promise of the Enlightenment, but also the inculcation of the geist of the Messianic age within modern society – the totally reconciled society based within the realm of freedom beyond the realm of need (Fromm, 1968, pp. 18-20). In essence, Fromm’s psycho- philosophical and sociological work, rooted in Freud and Marx, remained deeply committed to his conception of the “prophetic,” which both religious and secular activism could embrace as their own way-of-being in a society that was sick, irrational, and self-destructive (Fromm, 1990, pp. 12-21). In this essay, I will examine Fromm’s notion of the prophetic vs. the priestly character types that serve as the radical praxis and spiritual nourishment of his entire philosophy. It is through the prism of the prophets, rooted in the Abrahamic bilderverbot (image ban), that Fromm address Adorno’s new “categorical imperative,” i.e. that the world shall never return to such barbarity that Auschwitz could ever occur again (Adorno, 1999, p. 365). In light of this, I will make the case that today, in the early 21st century, with the deep crisis of faith within capitalism, socialism, and humanity itself, as manifested in the economic collapse of 2008, the rise of right- wing political organizations in North America and Europe, and the 2011 massacre of left-wing children on Utøya island, Norway, by the neo-fascist Anders Behring Breivik, that the prophetic voice which Fromm advocated is still an active

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 147–160. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. DUSTIN J. BYRD participant within the movements found in the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and the street protests against the neo-conservative “structural-adjustment” programs in southern European nations, etc. It is my contention that the spirit of the biblical and Qur’anic prophets, as understood by Fromm, animates both secular and religious radical praxis aimed against the structures of cultural necrophilia, political domination, and economic exploitation throughout the world.

THE PROPHET AND THE PROPHETIC We should make it clear that by using the word “prophet” in the modern sense, we don’t mean an individual who was chosen directly by the divine to deliver a message to mankind. This biblical and Qur’anic interpretation of the historical prophet should remain intact and unmolested by philosophical and sociological analysis of the “prophetic.” In respect to the Abrahamic religious traditions, the critical religiologist does not claim that the modern “prophetic” is a historically designated messenger of the divine, although we can assume that the prophetic is in service to that which is often endorsed by the radical utopian nature of the Abrahamic traditions. For Muslims, Prophet Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah of the 7th century Arabia is the last of the historically called upon individuals to serve as a voice of God to humanity. We do not claim that there is another “prophet” post Muhammad, but we do claim that the role of the prophetic individual can be and will be assumed by individuals who act in accordance with the characteristics of the historical prophets. In this sense, the modern “prophet” is “prophetic” because he acts in such a way that his/her actions are perceived to be within the role of the prophet, not because he/she is designed as such by the divine. This is an important distinction to make clear as not to confuse the reader into thinking that Erich Fromm believed new prophets were sent by the divine, which would be a tremendous misreading of his philosophy (Byrd, 2011).

THE MODERN PROPHETIC Fromm asks the question of his readers: “Are the prophets still meaningful for anyone except practicing Christians and Jews? Shouldn’t they be meaningful to everyone today?” (Fromm, 1986, p. 134) To drive his point closer to the core of the modern human condition, he asked further: “Should they become relevant for us again precisely because they are regarded as irrelevant? Because we live in a time that has no prophets but needs them” (Fromm, 1986, p. 134)? Unlike the ancients, whose desperate pleas for divine guidance were answered by the leadership of prophets, Fromm sees modern man trapped in a secular social- psychological predicament without the active aid of the divine. In our secular age, God doesn’t seem interested in an active introduction of himself into human history; not even when the Jews begged for his compassionate and merciful intervention in Auschwitz did the divine make his presence and power known. The silence of the deus obscanditus remained so prevalent as to render all attempts to articulate the horror and terror of gas chambers and crematorium facile and

148 THE PROPHET AND THE PRIEST insulting—The God of the Hebrews no longer answered the prayers of the Jews and no rationalization that attempted to explain God’s silence could render meaning into the meaninglessness of Auschwitz without the re-victimization of the victims. The one time collaborator of Fromm’s, Theodor Adorno, stated in his Negative Dialectics, After Auschwitz, our feelings resist any claim of the positivity of existence as sanctimonious, as wronging the victims; they balk at squeezing any kind of sense, however bleached, out of the victims’ fate. And these feelings do have an objective side after events that make a mockery of the construction of immanence as endowed with a meaning radiated by an affirmatively posited transcendence. (Adorno, 1999, p. 361) No other event made it more clear that the divine would no longer enter into human history than did the systematic mass extermination of the Jews during the final solution, and the suffering and death induced by the totalen krieg of Nazism upon the nations of Europe, which included the killing of 27 million communists. Fromm would always remember the incestuous madness that accompanies nationalism, which prevented him from accepting Zionist claims’ about divine favor on a very earthly state of Israel (Funk, 2000). When in the extermination camps, when the divine was needed the most, when the presence of a divinely appointed prophetic was desired, nothing appeared except fascist cruelty. Absente reo, the Rabbis in Auschwitz convicted the divine of abandoning and or violating the covenant and defaulting on his compassion. For many former believers, the retreat into secularity and the atheism of Nietzsche’s claim that “God is Dead,” was the only logical conclusion (Nietzsche, 2008). Fromm, having experienced the hatred and sadomasochism of German fascism in his hometown of Frankfurt am Main, and seeing the total absence of the divine in the concentration and extermination camps, also retreated deeply into the sadness of atheism. Yet for Fromm, the prophetic core of the biblical tradition could not be abandoned even though the god of theology became an untenable proposition. He became aware that no event other than Auschwitz so radically demonstrates the non-existence of god, but also conversely: that no other event demonstrates the absolute need for prophets. In his atheism, Fromm preserved the possibility of both the existence of the divine, the “totally other,” and the hope for radical prophetic praxis towards the construction of Alternative future No. III, the “totally reconciled society.” Fromm attempted to give the prophets of the sacred scriptures a new translation, one that could impregnate a post-theological meaningless world with prophetic geist directed towards the earthly construction of the messianic promise. Although Fromm could no longer hold onto the traditional theology of Judaism or Christianity, he could not abandon prophetic ethics and morality for bourgeois coldness and capitalist greed. The religion of the prophets had to be determinately negated; the untenable theological legitimation of theory and praxis could no longer serve as it once did as the basis of unconditional meaning and truth, but rather an appeal to human nature and biological well-being and mental health – as Fromm understood it—replaced theology as the legitimation for both life and

149 DUSTIN J. BYRD thought. The modern “prophet” is born out of sadness resulting from the death of god, but within prophetic hope that the messianic age of peaceful cooperation among peoples and nations, as well as the banishment of alienation within the life of the individual, could finally be achieved in such a way that if the messiah were ever to appear, it would be able to set his stamp of approval on the reconciled society that man himself created. Fromm sees the prophetic in the secular age within the dialectical prism of disobedience and obedience (Fromm, 1981). The biblical prophets, announced the idea that man had to find an answer to his existence, and that this answer was the development of his reason, of his love; and they taught that humility and justice were inseparably connected with love and reason. They lived what they preached. They did not seek power, but avoided it. Not even the power of being a prophet. They were not impressed by might, and they spoke the truth even if this led them to imprisonment, ostracism or death. They were not men who set themselves apart and waited to see what would happen. They responded to their fellow man because they felt responsible. What happened to others happened to them. Humanity was not outside, but within them. (Fromm, 1981) In this sense, the biblical and Qur’anic prophets were from their society, living within their society, but not of their society; they stood in complete solidarity with the suffering of the victims, but had the courage to critique that which they loved: their own people. Their main role was not to foretell the future, but as Fromm states, “they are seers but not foreseers.” The prophets were the mirrors of their own society that painfully illuminated the ugliness of the unarticulated and unaddressed injustices of their community (Fromm, 1986, p. 134). The prophets in different periods of history, just as the modern prophetic traditions of today, do not attempt to deodorize the stench of systematic and structural oppression, violence, and hatred, but rather force all to confront the darkside of their society. There is a reason why the biblical and Qur’anic prophets are so often killed—by the power of their convictions, arguments, and wisdom, they hold their society accountable for the terror and suffering that they impose of others and themselves. The prophets speak directly to the conscious of the people, bypassing their hardened public persona (πρόσωπον—mask), thus disturbing the “happy consciousness” that allows the average citizen to remain oblivious to the plight and predicament of those who suffer before their eyes without ever examining the possibility that they may have a duty to uplift their fellow humans, or that their own way-of-being in the world contributes to the destruction and misery of others. Prophets, just like Socrates, destabilize the status quo by articulating the rotten nature of the structure that upholds the powerful at the expense of the powerless. In modern times, this dialectical critique of the prophetic individual poses as a threat to the smooth operation of the markets and authoritarian regimes; men and women of religious conviction, as well as their secular counterparts, both sensitive to the suffering of the finite individual, find themselves drawn to mobilizing their resources towards overturning the injustices of the market society, the shallowness and mind-

150 THE PROPHET AND THE PRIEST numbingness of the consumer society, corrupt political regimes, and the exploitation and expropriation of the life of the working class, the poor, and the marginal (Evans, 1966). As Fromm states, “it is the historical situation which makes prophets, not the wish of some men to be prophets” (Fromm, 1981, p. 43). The political and social pressure of any given moment creates the need for the prophetic voice as it is the only voice that gives recognition to the suffering of those who are ignored in a society that only values the powerful, the beautiful, the strong, and the healthy: the übermensch society, or as Ayn Rand dreamed of it: the Utopia of Greed. Make no mistake, there is no place for that which suffers, that which is ugly, that which is sickly, that which is poor, nor that which speaks in the name of those who suffer, in a society of greed, egoboundedness, and the Aristocratic law of nature. Both the prophet and the victims of society, in Fromm’s understanding, are the enemy of the good of such a society. As such, the prophets stand in opposition to Nietzsche’s transvaluation of all values, as it undermines the already perverted nature of messianic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the perversion that the “last will be first,” “the poor shall inherit the earth,” and the “peacemakers shall be called ‘sons of God.’“ Nietzsche wished to return society back to its Greek pagan values, its idolatry of power, conquest, and destruction, and the prophets and the prophetic today stand against the rebarbarization that the transvaluation stands for. As Fromm understood, the prophetic stance is rooted in a particular form of “relatedness,” an inter-subjectivity that sees the humanity of oneself within the humanity of the other. It is a connection that bans the use of the other as a means to an end, and dwells in a deep sea of altruistic concern for the welfare of society, the individual, and the family. The prophets stand in service, not in authority, to the masses; their ultimate concern is bringing into being the necessary conditions for the flourishing of human eudaimonia, by the elimination of alienation, bringing the realm of human needs under the greatest rational control, and the liberation of the revolutionary humanistic potential of all. In taking such a revolutionary stance towards the status quo, rooted in egoboundedness, greed, and exploitation, the prophets demonstrate themselves to be “martyr material” (Fromm, 1981; Fromm, 2000). As in the Christian and Islamic traditions, the wilful giving of one’s life to another or in the service of humanity is the greatest of all sacrifices—acta sanctorum. For Fromm, the prophetic individuals embody this value more so than any other category of humans (Fromm, 2000). Fromm understood the role of the prophets to be threefold. First, prophets articulate the reality of life and history; they speak the truth about the condition in which they find their society with uncompromising honesty to those who do not wish to hear it and to those who need to be awakened from their self-induced slumber (Fromm, 1981, 1986). Secondly, the prophets articulate the alternatives to what-is-the-case within the status quo, demonstrating that another and better way- of-being is possible if they so chose to bring it into existence through their own labor (Fromm, 1986). For Fromm, this “alternative” is not limited to a religious, ethical, or moral change, but often times is an issue of realpolitik; prophets do not abide by the bourgeois enlightenment’s notion of the separation of church and

151 DUSTIN J. BYRD state, which castrates the liberation and revolutionary potential of religion by enclosing it into the private sphere––thus barring it from affective change in the public sphere––but they radically deploy their moral and ethical vision of the good society, the utopian society, the totally reconciled society, towards and against the already established society and its politics. The alternatives that the prophet pronounces are both moral and political, and cannot be separated. As Fromm believed, it was history that made prophets necessary, the prophet’s role is to make himself unnecessary in the family, civil society, and state, as these three sections of society would not need the prophetic voice if they embodied the prophetic way-of- being. Fromm believes the third function of the prophet is to protest. He says, “not only do they show what the alternatives are, they also actively warn against the choice that would lead to destruction” (Fromm, 1986). Fromm articulates a democratic notion of prophethood; the prophet makes all the alternatives clear to society, including those that he believes would be detrimental to the masses and those that would guide mankind towards greater reconciliation between the religions, races, genders, etc. Yet the sovereignty and dignity of the individual and the nation to determine its own fate is respected by the prophet, as he does not force his audience into a given decision, but allows them to freely chose between the alternatives. Individual subjectivity remains free to decide between the alternative visions for the future; the prophet warns and protests against those alternatives that he sees would “lead to disaster,” but he never is dialectically transformed into the opposite of a democratic-revolutionary, i.e. an authoritarian, who imposes his choice on the people (Fromm, 1986, p. 136). It is the role and function of the prophet to be the advocate for the messianic idea, not to be a dictator than imposes it upon the masses. Although he is fully committed to man’s full development of his “psychic powers, his reason, and his life to their full extent; for him to be free and centered in himself; [and] for him to become everything a human being is capable of becoming,” he nevertheless cannot force mankind to do so (Fromm, 1986, p. 138). Although he hinted at it, Fromm overlooked additional functions that prophets and prophetic individuals play; the fourth function of the prophets of old and the prophetic of today is that they force, by the strength of their conviction and wisdom, the so-called “believers” to confront their empty religious formalism; the prophets demand they choose between their professed faith and that of the idols they worship in their daily lifeworld—what Fromm calls their “secret religion” (Fromm, 2000, p. 136). Fromm states, We claim that we pursue the aims of the Judaeo-Christian tradition: the love of God and of our neighbor. We are even told that we are going through a period of a promising religious renaissance. Nothing could be further from the truth. We use symbols belonging to a genuinely religious tradition and transform them into formulas serving the purpose of alienated man. Religion has become an empty shell; it has been transformed into a self-help device for increasing one’s own powers for success. God becomes a partner in business. (Fromm, 1992, p. 100)

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Similar to the Islamic tradition’s theo-philosophical notion of shirk, or “association of partners to the divine,” Fromm believes that the ultimate concern and ultimate object of devotion in one’s life determines what one’s true religion is; if one is fully absorbed in the pursuit of monetary gain, material goods, fame and fortune, then those values serve the purpose of the object of devotion for that particular individual—they are “god,” or as Fromm would say, an idol. The man of success, who bows down to the dead-things he has acquired, who worships in accordance to the necrophilic culture of material wealth, “worships the works of his own hands, bowing to the new idols, yet swearing by the God who commanded him to destroy all idols” (Fromm, 1992, p. 103). According to Fromm, the pagan gods of the market are the antithesis of the monotheistic God of Abraham, as expressed both the radical anti-idol stance of Abraham and the prophetic-revolutionary social justice of its moral teachings. For Fromm, a so-called Jew, Christian, or Muslim, cannot honestly profess a faith in their divine being while remaining in service to capital, power, greed, or selfishness. Fromm, in believing that it is not possible to live in a state of being while attempting to live the way of having, finds himself in full agreement with Jesus of Nazareth when he says: “No one can serve two masters: either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew, 6:24). The fourth, and often most important role of the prophet, is the prophetic “wake- up” call to those trying to live a Janus existence: both as a devotee of God and mammon. The last function of the prophet is to awaken the automaton from his/her slumber. Fromm concretely demonstrated in his Escape from Freedom the psychological aversion so many individuals have toward true freedom; that humans often would rather dissipate into the herd, das mann, or the anonymous other, which provides them safety, security, an identity, a ready-made set of ideas, and a sense of belonging, rather than cutting the symbolic umbilical cord which ties them to their blood, soil, and ideology, etc., and become fully individualized human beings. He writes, the individual ceases to be himself; he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by cultural patters; and he therefore becomes exactly as all others are and as they expect him to be … The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. The price he pays is high; it is the loss of his self. (Fromm, 1994, p. 184) Furthermore, speaking of the man in the homo consumens and marketing herd, his “value” lies in his salability, not in his human qualities of love and reason nor his artistic capacities. Hence his sense of his own value depends on extraneous factors – his success, on the judgment of others. Hence he is dependent on these others, and his security lies in conformity, in never being more than two feet away from the herd. (Fromm, 1992, p. 97)

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The process of individualization is the task of the ever-maturing human being, one that inherently brings about anxiety, stress, uncertainty, and unpredictability. Nevertheless, without passing through the gauntlet of individualization, the human reverts to a state of perpetual childhood: the eternal suckling babe—always ready to receive from the other all forms of nourishment, both spiritual, physical, mental, and intellectual, from the culture which created him. As Fromm pointed out, the danger in the herd is its inability to resist mass manipulation; its inability to be critical; its inability to accept criticism of the prevailing status quo – as any criticism of the herd is felt by the individual as an attack directly upon them and their identity (Fromm, 1981, 1994). The herd is inherently irrational, underdeveloped, distorted, and immature. As such, it falls prey to whomever promises most effectively to slay the chaos that brings about uncertainty; a charismatic figure––if he is able to penetrate into the existential anxieties of the herd, he can lead the masses to do whatever it is the authority wants them to do. When the prophetic voices stand in opposition to this mass of human obedience, the rational nature of the prophet appears to them to be irrational; the moral appears to be immoral; and justice appears to be tyranny. Nevertheless, it is the role of the prophetic to break into the consciousness of the herd mentality and show it for what it is: collective suicide. Ultimately, the prophetic stance is rooted, as stated before, in disobedience to irrational authority. In Fromm’s thought, irrational authority is authority that lacks legitimation; it stands over the individual via force, not via the willing submission or consent of the individual (Arendt, 1970; Fromm, 2000). What’s more, irrational authority lacks legitimacy precisely because it lacks concern for the best interest of the individual it governs; the individual is but a means to an ends for the authority – the individual is there to serve the authority, not the opposite. By force alone does the authority wield control over the individual. Nevertheless, the individual can deprive that authority of its power when it retracts its consent to be governed or oppressed by the authority itself. The prophetic voice chooses to disobey that which is demanded of it; it refuses to consent to its own destruction, its own annihilation, its own negation. Yet, as Fromm points out, disobedience is dialectical, because every form of rational disobedience is also obedience to another principle, value, concept, or thought. He says, “disobedience, then, in the sense in which we use it here, is an act of the affirmation of reason and will. It is not primarily an attitude direct against something, but for something (Fromm, 1981, p. 48).

POSITIVE RELIGION AND THE PRIEST The critical religiologist distinguishes between religiosity that affirms a world that is structured by oppression, exploitation, suffering, alienation, terror and horror, and another form of religiosity that is a protest against such oppression, exploitation, suffering, terror and horror, and strives towards the totally reconciled, and therefore redeemed, society. The former is described as being a “positive” religiosity, as it affirms that which is the case, i.e. the world in how it exists at the

154 THE PROPHET AND THE PRIEST present moment, and the latter is described as being a “negative” religiosity; it denies the validity of the status quo—it maintains and embodies a critical geist that points to the possibility of another and more reconciled way-of-being in the world. What’s more, negative religiosity gives voice to the innocent victims of history, those raped by the advance of golgatha, and those whose suffering cannot be articulated in meaningful, and therefore positive, language. Its critical standard is that of the messianic and the utopian, i.e. the sum of all “oughts” within human social history. From the last section, it is easily deduced that the prophet is a living example of negative religion. Yet positive religion must have its representative too; for that it has what Fromm identifies as the “priest” (Fromm, 1981, p. 43). Fromm is not the first to construct the sociological character type of a “priest” as an instrument of social regression, individual diminishment, and intellectual degeneration. He follows behind the philosophical warpath of Friedrich Nietzsche and his psycho-philosophical analysis of the role of the priest in society (Nietzsche, 2006). Indeed, Nietzsche exhausted himself in his condemnation of such a figure; he spared no damning insult for the institutional agent of what he termed “slave morality” (Nietzsche, 2006). Although Fromm agrees with Nietzsche’s assessment about the death of god and the problem of unconditional meaning in a godless world, he does not however agree with Nietzsche’s complete abandonment and condemnation of traditional moral values associated with the Abrahamic traditions. Where Nietzsche wishes to once-and-for-all bury Christianity (and therefore Judaism and Islam) in the abyss of human history and return to the heroic greatness of ancient Greece, Fromm chooses to determinately negate Abrahamic religion, thus preserving the liberational and prophetic core ideals that have made prophetic religions forces of progress throughout history. Fromm wishes to remain in solidarity with the victims of history, just as the biblical and Qur’anic prophets did; whereas, Nietzsche’s so-called social Darwinism continues the slaughterbench of history by creating new victims by handing power back to Zarathustra’s übermensch—so they may pillage undisturbed by altruistic slave morality. As for Christian morality in Nietzsche’s mind: Acta est fabula, plaudite! (the play is over, applaud!). In the very place where Nietzsche sees weakness in religion, Fromm sees strength; where Nietzsche sees decadence, Fromm see revolutionary potential. However, on the subject of the priest, both Nietzsche and Fromm converge in ways that are most surprising considering their ultimate evaluation of Christianity. As is commonly known, Nietzsche’s statement about the death of god was not really about god at all, but mankind’s expired ability to believe in a god so conceived by Christianity as omniscient, omnipresent, and compassionate in the face of world history, science, and the consumer society constructed by the market way-of-being. Indeed, it is in the market place, speaking directly to merchants and consumers, that Nietzsche’s madman announces the death of god (Nietzsche, 2008). His indictments are directed squarely at civil society—the battlefield in which the murder of god took place. Yet for Fromm, in the 20th century, the question that plaques mankind is no longer whether or not god is dead, for even if individuals continue to believe in a personal divine being, civil society and the

155 DUSTIN J. BYRD state have been thoroughly secularized, taking god out of the daily equation; the question for modern man is rather is man dead (Fromm, 1992). According to Fromm, after the prophets announce their ideals, which are rooted in human liberation, flourishing, and the negation of alienation, those ideals are accepted by millions and become an integral part of their character structure and daily way-of-being for the committed believers. Yet this is the very reason why these values, ideals, principles, and thoughts become a powerful tool of control and manipulation. “The idea becomes exploitable for others who can make use of the attachment of the people to these ideas, for their own purposes—those of ruling and controlling” (Fromm, 1981, p. 43). In Fromm’s analysis, the agent of control is the priest, for he “administers” the ideas to those who believe in them. The initial idea that appealed to the individual due to its powerful liberational critique of society has lost its vitality. It has become a formula. The priests declare that it is very important how the idea is formulated; naturally the formulation becomes always important after the experience is dead; how else could one control people by controlling their thoughts, unless there is the “correct” formulation? The priests use the idea to organize men, to control them through controlling the proper expression of the idea, and when they have anesthetized man enough, they declare that man is not capable of being awake and of directing his own life, and that they, the priests, act out of duty, or even compassion, when they fulfill the function of directing men who, if left to themselves, are afraid of freedom. Where Nietzsche refuses to distinguish between prophets and priests, essentially declaring all of Abrahamic religion, especially Christianity, as being degenerate, weak, and born out of the ressentiment (resentment) of slaves, Fromm attempts to rescue the prophetic from the priestly, the revolutionary from the counter- revolutionary, the liberational from the oppressive. The prophet lives, embodies, and dies within the ideas he pronounces; the priest functionalizes the thought, biography, and actions of the prophets, dialectically turning them into structures of dogmatic orthodoxy. Every dogma, every structure, and every orthodoxy calls for an enforcer – a priest to maintain obedience to the authority that exists based solely on its claim to be the guardian of the legacy and contemporary voice of the prophet. The priest serves as the Grand Inquisitor over those the prophet attempted to set free, issuing condemnatory sentences in the name of the prophet. Where the call of the prophet once liberated the people, the priest returns them to oppressive obedience. Fromm states, The priests usually confuse the people because they claim that they are the successors of the prophet, and that they live what they preach. Yet, while a child could see that they live precisely the opposite of what they teach, the great mass of the people are brainwashed effectively, and eventually they come to believe that if the priests live in splendor they do so as a sacrifice, because they have to represent the great idea; or if they kill ruthlessly they only do so out of revolutionary faith. (Fromm, 1981, p. 44) There is no difficulty in searching for historical precedents for religiously rooted acts of priestly terror; whether it be in the burning and/or drowning of “heretics”

156 THE PROPHET AND THE PRIEST by the Catholic Inquisition, the murder of innocent women suspected of being “witches” in America, the stoning of unwed pregnant Muslim women in the Middle East and Africa, the discrimination against African Jews in Israel, or the “honor” killings of women in the Arab world, or the legitimation of “preemptive wars” via the invocation of Deus Volt (God wills it), the prophetic voice stood up for the victims while the priest condemned them to gruesome death, all in the name of dogma. In the Christian tradition, the story that demonstrates this prophetic defense for the simple sinner the most is Jesus of Nazareth’s intervention on behalf of Mary Magdalene as she was soon to be stoned to death for sexual misdeeds. We can recall Jesus’ famous statement: “let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Yet, what is most perverse is the fact that the people still believe in the legitimacy of the priest’s actions as they are thought to be justified based on the ideals of the prophets. Even though in this particular case, where Jesus shames his Jewish brethren into forgoing execution, the legitimacy of the law, which is the basis for the execution, is not questioned, for it is still understood to be the codification of prophetic teachings and therefore God’s will. As such, the criminality of priestly power is legitimated by the revolutionary philosophy of the prophets. Jesus of Nazareth understood this phenomenon when he called the scribes and pharisees “whitened sepulchers”––carriers of religious formalism that is devoid of the prophetic spirit (Matthew 23:27). Yet, the distorted nature of the priestly power is rarely understood by the victims of the priests themselves. The Muslim girl submits to her executioner because she believes he represents the will of Allah as expressed by Prophet Muhammad; the “heretic” submits to the will of the executioner because he/she believes there is no salvation “outside of the church.” The victim may protest his/her execution as a mistake, but will not question the fundamental “right” of the priestly institution to exact punishment on the believer due to the perception that the institution is the legitimate heir of the prophet; as the prophet was legitimate, so is the priest that speaks in his name. Yet for Fromm, the “priest” is not only a religious figure; although the archetype of such is rooted in religion, there are secular priests in the modern world that are just as if not more dangerous in their priesthood. If we look into the family, civil society, and the state, Fromm maintains that we can identify many individuals who embody the priestly values of authoritarian power, bourgeois coldness in the face of human neglect, the tunnel vision of instrumental rationality, and the calculated and ruthless pursuit of gain at the expense of human frailty. The authoritarian father produces sadomasochism children within the family, reproducing what Fromm refers to as the “bicyclist character”––the tendency to bow down in admiration to those perceived to be superior in power, status and rank while kicking at those perceived to be inferior (Fromm, 1973; Fromm, 1986). The demand to respect one’s paternal authority, whose love is conditional, while socialized to look down upon those thought to be inferior, produces a society that values strength, power, and force, but also conformity, obedience, and complacency, while it despises weakness, ugliness, and powerlessness. In civil society, we are told not to interfere with the smooth reproduction of capital through

157 DUSTIN J. BYRD our unhappy conscience at the sight of poverty, sickness, despair, and unfair social conditions, but are to remain comfortably anesthetized in the idea that “there will always be the poor,” that “they chose to be miserable,” and that it’s “just business.” The values that were taught by the various faith traditions have to be neutralized and made devoid of social power because they are a hindrance to the smooth functioning of civil society. From the perspective of capitalism, altruistic morality, as expressed by the Torah, the Gospels, and the Qur’an, cannot interfere with secular capitalism, as the two are mutually incompatible at their core values (Fromm, 1986; Rand, 1995). Therefore, the priestly voices of the market remind us that we either have to reject our religious traditions, or simply make them irrelevant by diminishing them to pure speculative theology, or by socially castrating them by secluding them into the private sphere. One cannot ask the prophetic questions about labor rights, surplus value extraction, exploitation of third-world workers, ecological destruction, and political oppression, as the activists do, as these questions only destabilize the markets and therefore jeopardize the very workers who are dependent on the health of civil society for their livelihood. Because the priest will be blamed for the collapse of the structures of dominance, as it is his job to pacify the masses in the interests of the owners, dictators, and masters, he attempts to maintain legitimation for the status quo by invoking the prophet legacy as justifying the structure of domination. As he is the “pusher-man” for opiate religion, he wishes to placate the masses within the “iron cage” of capitalism: give them bread and circus and let them be happy behind their bars.

THE PROPHETIC IN RECENT HISTORY If we turn to recent history, the prophetic protest against the idolatry of the market via the Occupy Wall Street movement, the uncompromising demand for freedom from tyranny and corruption that animates the Arab Spring, and the revolt in Europe against first world “structural adjustment programs,” all are rooted with the revolutionary notion of the prophetic. Indeed, Fromm’s suspicion that the contemporary situation calls for the existence of new prophets has been answered; this answer, however, comes not through the anointment of a new divinely inspired Prophet, ready to deliver the will of God to mankind, but from masses of individuals taking on and fulfilling the prophetic role; i.e. they stand in solidarity with the victims of tyranny, corruption, and economic terrorism, and in the name of those who cannot fight for their own liberation, they fight instead. Fromm’s attempt to bring about a new humanist, biophilic, and just culture within the West, one rooted in the inter-subjective concern for the humanity of the self and others, stands in opposition to the necrophilic (death-friendliness) culture of modern secular capitalism (Evans, 1966). Fromm doesn’t wish to undo democracy, as liberal democracy still respects both individual autonomy and collective solidarity, but rather to direct society towards greater rationality that doesn’t abandon humanity to technological and instrumental reason alone, but preserves the deep ocean of human creativity, emotion, compassion, etc., that alone

158 THE PROPHET AND THE PRIEST can stand as a countervailing force to the market way-of-being (Fromm, 1968). In Fromm’s way of thinking, it is better for the individual who can no longer believe in a religion to retreat into a form of “religious” humanism—a secularized form of prophetic religiosity—in which the semantic and semiotic social ethics of prophetic religion are allowed to migrate from the depth of the mythos into a secular ethos and discourse. This “X-experience,” as Fromm called it, is a path not only to a more humane culture, but also a bridge by which the secular individual can enter into a robust discourse with their religious counterparts (Fromm, 1969, pp. 47-51; Siebert, 1978, p. 116). Furthermore, for Fromm, the religious believer has to return to the normative values of the prophets and separate themselves from the distorted ideologies that they’ve turned their religions into; Moses’ liberational ethic has to once again become constitutional for the Jews; the very earthly Jesus of Nazareth––the unconditionally loving martyr––has to become constitutional for the Christians; and Muhammad’s compassionate sunnah (way-of-being) has to once again guide the Muslim community away from the hardened hearts of contemporary Islamism. Furthermore, the pathological and criminal histories of the various religions must not be forgotten, as the victims of religious tyranny still demand a representative voice within human future discourse, but must be abandoned in praxis. Humanity must engage in a future-oriented remembrance of past suffering as to commit themselves and their religious perspectives towards the total banishment of unnecessary human suffering and direct their energies towards building a society based on providing the necessities for human actualization.

REFERENCES

Adorno, T. (1991). The culture industry. New York, NY: Routledge. Adorno, T. (1999). Negative dialectics. New York, NY: Continuum. Arendt, H. (1970). On violence. New York, NY: Harvest Book. Byrd, D. (2011). Ayatollah Khomeini and the anatomy of the Islamic revolution in Iran: Towards a theory of prophetic charisma. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Evans, R. I. (1966). Dialogue with Erich Fromm. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Fromm, E. (1968). The revolution of hope: Toward a humanized technology. New York, NY: Perennial Library. Fromm, E. (1969). You shall be as Gods: A radical interpretation of the Old Testament and it tradition. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Premier Book. Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Fromm, E. (1981). On disobedience and other essays. New York, NY: Seabury Press. Fromm, E. (1986). For the love of life. New York, NY: The Free Press. Fromm, E. (1990). The sane society. New York, NY: Owl Book. Fromm, E. (1992). The dogma of Christ and other essays on religion, psychology, and culture. New York, NY: Owl Book. Fromm, E. (1994). Escape from freedom. New York, NY: Owl Book. Fromm, E. (2000). To have or to be. New York, NY: Continuum. Holy Bible. (1972). Revised Standard Version (RSV). New York, NY: Thomas Nelson Inc. Nietzsche, F. (1954). The philosophy of Nietzsche. New York, NY: The Modern Library. Nietzsche, F. (2006). On the genealogy of morals. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble. Nietzsche, F. (2008). The gay science. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble.

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Rand, A. (1995). Letters of Ayn Rand (M. S. Berliner, Ed.). New York, NY: Dutton Book. Siebert, R. (1978). Fromm’s theory of religion. Telos, 34, 111-120.

Dustin J. Byrd Olivet College

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PART III: APPLYING AND EXTENDING FROMM’S THEORY

GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER

11. THE RELEVANCE OF FROMM’S CONCEPT OF THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY

INTRODUCTION The general lack of interest in Erich Fromm’s work today, in part, marks the success of his critics during his lifetime.1 Two of his severest and earliest critics, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, were, like Fromm, former members of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. As early as 1936, in a letter to Max Horkheimer regarding an article by Fromm, Adorno accused Fromm of political and theoretical naïveté.2 Years later, Marcuse charged Fromm’s use of Freud with reviving “all the time-honored values of idealistic ethics as if nobody had ever demonstrated their conformist and repressive features” (Marcuse, 1966, p. 258). These two prominent proponents of critical theory bestowed a portrayal of Fromm’s thought as superficially radical and, even worse, as serving to accommodate the subject to the very social reality that the Frankfurt School sought to critique.3 At stake for all three men was whether psychological inquiry furthered the critique of capitalism or effected obeisance to capitalism. Yet, today, Adorno and Marcuse are treated as central to the development of critical theory, while Fromm is, at best, relegated to a secondary position.4 My aim in this essay is to contest this appraisal of Fromm by reconsidering his understanding of the social processes that distort individual personality. In my view, focusing on this aspect of Fromm’s thought serves to reclaim the radicalness of his unique Freudian Marxist social critique as well as endow Fromm’s thought with renewed relevance in light of more recent work in political psychology. The attacks on Fromm by his fellow critical theorists tended to target his humanism. 5 Fromm and his critics shared a commitment to analyzing the degradation of social relations and the domination of individuals under capitalism. But, for his former colleagues, Fromm’s ideal of human liberation through the –––––––––––––– 1 The recent publication of a new biography of Fromm by a long-time admirer, Lawrence J. Friedman, offers some hope that there is some renewed interest in Fromm (see Friedman, 2013). 2 “The article is sentimental and wrong to begin with, being a mixture of social democracy and anarchism, and above all shows a severe lack of the concept of dialectics.” Theodor Adorno quoted in Wiggershaus (1995, p. 266). 3 This assessment of Fromm was in many respects reiterated by Jacoby (1975). 4 For a discussion of how Fromm’s contributions to the development of critical theory have been overshadowed, see McLaughlin (1999). 5 For an interesting historical discussion of debates on Marxist humanism within the Frankfurt School, see Jay (1985).

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 163–185. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER expression of repressed human capacities was depicted as a means of reconciling the subject to a reified existence in a society permeated by domination. The liberation of subjectivity via the psychoanalytic interview seemed far too reformist a solution to the pervasive social and psychological repression wrought by capitalism.6 To the degree liberation was possible for individuals living in modern capitalist society, Adorno and Marcuse saw it in the rejection of modern society. This led Adorno later in life to reflect on the prospect of liberation through subjective aesthetic experience.7 At the same time, Marcuse embraced the utopian currents of the late 1960s countercultural movements.8 Fromm rejected both these alternatives, but this did not render his humanism a form of political complacency. Far from seeking to reconcile the subject, his humanism articulated an ideal of human existence against which the real could be measured. 9 For this reason, Fromm complemented his humanism with an effort to identify the processes that led to personality distortion and its political implications. Political critique meant recognizing the pathological personalities who supported reactionary and regressive political ideologies and socio-economic structures that forged them. Adorno shared Fromm’s interest in personality and recognized its significance for politics. In 1950, Adorno along with a team of researchers at Berkeley, including Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt Sanford, published The Authoritarian Personality, which has since become a classic in political psychology. A direct response to the rise and defeat of fascism, the study probed the question of what kind of person would be susceptible to the appeal of authoritarian political regimes. Since the work’s publication, a growing number of psychologists have continued to research this problem. The empirical studies of Bob Altemeyer, Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, and John Jost and Mahzarin Banaji have done much to correct methodological problems with the Berkeley study and, as a consequence, provide provocative alternative theories for the development of authoritarian personalities. Nevertheless, The Authoritarian Personality continues to loom large as a founding text of the discipline, primarily because of the empirical nature of the work. It, therefore, makes sense that empirically oriented researchers in political psychology would favor Adorno and his team as their forbearers over the more theoretical Fromm. Yet, the findings of these psychologists are more in line with Fromm’s theoretical explanations than Adorno’s. The problem is that Fromm’s work, along with the critiques of

–––––––––––––– 6 For a discussion of Fromm’s attempts at “practical reforms,” see Jacoby (1975, pp. 13-14). 7 Note, for example, Adorno’s claim that “The liberation of form, which genuinely new art desires, holds enciphered within it above all the liberation of society, for form––the social nexus of everything particular––represents the social relation in the artwork; this is why liberated form is anathema to the status quo.” This quote appears in Adorno (1997: 255). For Adorno’s conception of freedom through subjectivity, note, for example, his claim in Negative Dialectics, “Where the thought transcends the bonds it tied in resistance––there is its freedom. Freedom follows the subject’s urge to express itself” see Adorno (1973, p. 17). 8 For Marcuse’s views on the New Left, see, in particular, chapter three of Marcuse (1969). 9 Although I do not discuss Fromm’s humanism in this essay in detail, I recommend to the reader the discussion in this volume by Michael J. Thompson.

164 RELEVANCE OF THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY positivism and capitalism that informed it, remains largely ignored. In my view, Fromm’s work still has much to contribute to political psychology precisely because it is non-positivistic, historical, and Marxist. The affinities that do exist make it possible to bring Fromm back into dialogue with the field of political psychology. Fromm’s work is not only important for work done in the academy. Fromm was a public intellectual and his many books were written for a general, politically concerned intellectual audience. More recently, a number of popular books have been written that discuss the psychological basis for political preferences. In particular, I have in mind The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt (2012), a psychologist, and The Republican Brain by Chris Mooney (2012) a liberal journalist. Though very different in their aims, both books make strong claims about the neurobiological basis for political orientation. It is important to revive Fromm’s ideas to combat this popular tendency. Such claims amount to a revival of the very naturalism that critical theory sought to expose as theoretically deficient. Hence, revaluating Fromm’s theories of personality distortion serve not only to make Fromm an interlocutor for empirical researchers whose work has been primarily circulating through the academy, but also to pose an alternative to more polemical texts that have gained public attention. By using Fromm’s ideas to evaluate both academic and popular works in political psychology, I hope to reclaim something of the intellectual purpose of Fromm’s enterprise in particular and critical theory more broadly. This purpose was premised on the notion that the critical theorist must be capable of engaging both scholarship and ideas ambient in public consciousness. Max Horkheimer provocatively summed up this intellectual agenda: “Critical theory is neither ‘deeply rooted’ like totalitarian propaganda nor ‘detached’ like the liberalist intelligentsia” (Horkheimer, 1995, pp. 223-224). I begin by reviewing the more orthodox appropriation of Freud to critical theory by Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. Though Adorno’s and Marcuse’s uses of Freud have been extensively interpreted, my purpose is to outline the trend in Freudian critical theory that stood in opposition to Fromm’s and that has become most readily identifiable with critical theory writ large. Given the focus of this paper, I draw attention to how Adorno and Marcuse used Freud to understand the distortion of personality. The following section focuses on Fromm’s theoretical alternative to both Adorno and Marcuse. Here, I argue for the strengths of Fromm’s use of Freud over that of Adorno and Marcuse. In the third section, I turn to the empirical research in contemporary political psychology. By moving away from the methodology of The Authoritarian Personality, I argue that these contemporary political psychologists have developed theories that are amenable to Fromm’s, but that Fromm remains a source of novel insights. The final section moves beyond Fromm’s salience for scholarly research to discuss using Fromm as critic of the aforementioned popular works in political psychology. Here, I tie together my claims about Fromm’s work as an alternative to Adorno and Marcuse within critical theory; Fromm as an interlocutor for empirical political psychologist; and, Fromm as critic of neurobiologically grounded popular political psychology. By weaving these three strands to show Fromm’s usefulness in

165 GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER understanding personality distortion, I argue for the historical and contemporary political relevance of Fromm’s critical theory.

CRITICAL THEORY AND THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY Critical theory’s origins are couched in a particular political dilemma: why do oppressed people accept domination? This was the question that Georg Lukács sought to answer in his seminal 1923 text History and Class Consciousness. Lukács’ explanation of the reification of consciousness under capitalism guided the members of the Frankfurt School in their own efforts to explain the distortion of consciousness. One of the ways the Frankfurt School’s members distinguished their work from Lukács’ was by their early engagement with Freud. Freud’s work offered a new repertory of concepts that the Frankfurt critical theorists drew upon in their particular project of understanding how capitalism fostered acceptance of domination. With the rise of the more immediate threat of fascism, the question of why people embrace authoritarian political programs became of greater urgency to the Frankfurt critical theorists than the question of the acceptance of capitalist exploitation. Nevertheless, whether confronting capitalism or authoritarianism, a concern with psychological explanations for the acceptance or perpetration of domination was central. In this section, I examine how Adorno and Marcuse provide an answer to this question via more orthodox interpretations of Freud than Fromm’s use of Freud, which I discuss in the following section. Key features of all the Frankfurt theorists’ disparate appropriations of Freud can be gleaned from Max Horkheimer’s early essay “Authority and the Family.”10 Horkheimer built off of Freud’s emphasis on the family as the laboratory of socialization. As Freud hypothesized, “it may be possible to discover the beginnings of [the social instinct’s] development in a narrower circle, such as that of the family” (Freud, 1959, p. 5). In appropriating Freud’s insight, Horkheimer tried to understand how the family served to socialize individuals to accept authority. He paid particular attention to the unique status of the father as economic provider and legal head of the modern bourgeois family. Horkheimer concluded, “In consequence of the seeming naturalness of paternal power with its twofold foundation in the father’s economic position and his physical strength with its legal backing, growing up in the restricted family is a first-rate schooling in the authority behavior specific to this society” (Horkheimer, 1995, p. 107). As the primary socializing structure, the family is the locus for explaining subsequent behavior. The authoritarian structure of the family with the father at its head could explain why individuals would submit to authority in other spheres of life. The authority of the father, Horkheimer emphasized, is conditioned upon the economic and legal legitimacy bestowed upon him by bourgeois society: “As long as there is no decisive change in the basic structure of social life and in modern culture which –––––––––––––– 10 This essay originally appeared in a larger study published by the Institute. Marcuse and Fromm wrote the other main theoretical sections. The history of this study is recounted by Wiggershaus (1995, pp. 149-156).

166 RELEVANCE OF THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY rests on that structure, the family will continue to exercise its indispensible function of producing specific, authority-oriented types of character” (Horkheimer, 1995, p. 112). When Adorno mounted his own study of the authoritarian personality in the aftermath of World War II, he, like Horkheimer, emphasized the family dynamic as the birthplace of authoritarianism. Yet, Adorno and his team developed the argument that an individual submissive to authority tended toward conformity in their behavior. They argued that the authoritarian personality was a conformist, or “standardized,” personality: “Here lies the ultimate principle of our whole typology. Its major dichotomy lies in the question of whether a person is standardized himself and thinks in a standardized way, or whether he is truly ‘individualized’ and opposes standardization in the sphere of human experience” (Adorno et al., 1950, p. 749). The team based political preferences on individual pathologies. Conformist individuals were more likely to embrace antidemocratic politics. Individuals were interviewed for the study and the degree of their antidemocratic potential was measured on the Fascism (F) scale. Authoritarian personalities would have high scores on the F scale and were prone to create an authoritarian society. The issues discussed in the interviews were not confined to political views. Like Horkheimer before them, the team delved into the interviewee’s upbringing. The researchers found a correlation between those who scored highly and those who had more restrictive and abusive parents: “Prejudiced subjects tend to report a relatively harsh and more threatening type of home discipline which was experienced as arbitrary by the child” (Adorno et al., 1950: 385). In the researchers’ opinion, there was a lack of individuation from parents among high- scoring subjects. This lack was also applicable to the subject’s sexual interactions and could explain “the relative lack of isolation of the sexual impulses from the rest of the personality, the paucity of affection, and the somewhat exploitive, manipulative approach in the choice of a mate” (Adorno et al., 1950: 404). The researchers, therefore, identified a “close correspondence in the type of approach and outlook a subject is likely to have in a great variety of areas, ranging from the most intimate features of family and sexual adjustment through relationships to other people in general, to religion and to social and political philosophy” (Adorno et al., 1950, p. 971). A lack of individual development in familial, sexual, and interpersonal relationships could explain an individual’s potential for authoritarianism. The individual susceptible to authoritarian politics suffered from a weakly developed ego. In his “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda,” Adorno (1978) drew an analogy between individual to whom fascism appeals and the childhood experience of submitting to parental authority, writing, “It may well be the secret of fascist propaganda that it simply takes men for what they are: the true children of today’s standardized mass culture, largely robbed of autonomy and spontaneity”

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(p. 134). 11 The point was that fascism exploited the experience learned in childhood of submitting to authority. Indeed, as Horkheimer had also asserted, the problem was not the family per se, but the modern historical manifestation of the family embedded in a society that encouraged conformity and reverence for authority. The family acted to transmit the imperatives of modern society. The family shaped authoritarian personalities and the degree of an individual’s authoritarianism could be determined by the severity of their upbringing. Because Freudian theory focused on ego formation as the key to a healthy personality, the conformist effects of an authoritarian upbringing could be understood as leading to a distorted personality, which, in turn, would support extreme right-wing political movements. Though Marcuse participated with Horkheimer in the Institute’s early study on authority and the family, unlike Adorno, his appropriation of Freud in Eros and Civilization was not aimed at identifying susceptibility to authoritarian politics. Still, his study includes a developed notion of personality distortion and draws out its political implications. Relying on Freud’s (2004) Civilization and Its Discontents, the repressive role of society is central to Marcuse’s analysis. In a novel reinterpretation of Freud, Marcuse substituted Freud’s notion of the reality principle for his own performance principle. The performance principle refers to the historical manifestation of the reality principle specific to modern society “in order to emphasize that under its rule society is stratified according to the competitive economic performances of its members” (Marcuse, 1966, p. 44). Under such a society, individual laboring activities are oriented to the reproduction of economic rationalization. By playing their role as part of an economically rational whole, however, “Men do not live their own lives but perform pre- established functions. While they work, they do not fulfill their own needs and faculties but work in alienation” (Marcuse, 1966, p. 45). Thus, like Adorno, Marcuse pointed to the loss of autonomy in modern society. Unlike Adorno and Horkheimer, Marcuse did not attribute the loss of autonomy to an authoritarian family structure. Instead, Marcuse explained the loss of autonomy with reference to Freud’s notion of the pleasure principle. Marcuse’s point was that the performance principle succeeds in alienating individuals through the repression of the pleasure principle. That is, the domination of individuals in the modern labor process succeeds by controlling their primal libidinal urges. The Freudian understanding of the family influenced Marcuse insofar as he took Freud’s explanation of the Oedipal conflict of the son with the father for the love of the mother as one that entails the repression of the son’s primal libidinous desire. Marcuse depicted an antagonism between the reality principle and the pleasure principle, arguing, As the reality principle takes root … the pleasure principle becomes something frightful and terrifying; the impulses for free gratification meet with anxiety, and this anxiety calls for protection against them. The –––––––––––––– 11 My italics.

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individuals have to defend themselves against the specter of their integral liberation from want and pain, against integral gratification. And the latter is represented by the woman who, as mother, has once, for the first and last time, provided such gratification. (1966, p. 67) The repression of the pleasure principle by the reality principle takes its modern form in the performance principle’s domination of human laboring activity. Just as the reality principle represses the liberation of the libido in sexual satisfaction, the performance principle represses libidinously satisfying laboring activity through the rationalization of the labor process. Marcuse, therefore, reinterpreted Freud’s work to argue that modern capitalist society acts to repress biological libidinal drives. It distorts individuals by alienating them from their labor, consequently, repressing their libido. The purpose of reviewing Adorno and Marcuse’s appropriations of Freud is to show that both remained wedded to fundamental elements of Freudian theory. In Adorno’s case, this is evident through his emphasis on the role of the family dynamic in personality formation; an emphasis he shared with Horkheimer. Marcuse, in contrast, focused on a reinterpretation of Freud’s analysis of libido repression. Nevertheless, Marcuse did rely on something of Freud’s discussion of the family dynamic by using Freud’s transhistorical theory of the Oedipal repression of the libido to argue that libidinal urges are repressed by mechanized labor under an economically rationalized society. In this sense, the father’s repression of the son’s desire is mimicked in the modern world as society’s repression of laboring activity. Further, what emerges in both Adorno and Marcuse’s analyses is a servile individual who conforms to the demands of modern society. Adorno described the formation of this individual through the early experience of domination within the family, while Marcuse described it through modern society’s adoption of the metaphorical role of the primal father. Examining the ways Adorno and Marcuse appropriated Freud helps to elucidate their objections to Fromm’s work. Earlier, I noted that both accused Fromm of using psychoanalysis to reconcile the individual to the inherent repressiveness of modern society. The reasoning for this criticism is understandable now that it is clear that both idealized the formation of a non-conformist, spontaneous subject as the antidote to a repressive society. Fromm sought this as well, but he thought this could be achieved through healthy forms of social relatedness.12 For Adorno and Marcuse, socialization meant indoctrination, conformism, and repression. Indeed, they stressed that these are the effects of a particular historical form of society, the modern bourgeois society of which Fromm was no less critical. Yet, Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the repressiveness of modern society left them without any conception of socialization that could be above suspicion. Any form of socialization is socialization for the sake of repression. In the thoroughness of their critique of modern society, Adorno and Marcuse abandoned Marx’s social anthropology. Both saw the transformation of society as necessary, but the –––––––––––––– 12 See the discussion in Fromm (1941, pp. 258-263).

169 GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER transformation of society served as means to the end of developing a free individual. Marx’s understanding of the social basis of human existence fell out of their analyses. In effect, Adorno brought Marxist critique into the service of realizing a Nietzschean conception of aesthetic self-creation, 13 while Marcuse found a Marxist idiom for expressing the ideas he had learned from Martin Heidegger as a young student.14 The language was Marxist, but the goal was a self- creating, spontaneous individual that fit more in line with Nietzsche or Heidegger.

FROMM ON THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY More than the other Frankfurt School theorists who melded Marx and Freud, Fromm took seriously Marx’s understanding of humans as social beings over Freud’s individualistic account of drives.15 As Fromm put it, “I consider Marx, the thinker, as being of much greater depth and scope than Freud” (1962, p. 12). Fromm’s thorough Marxism compelled him to break with Freudian orthodoxy in a way that Adorno and Marcuse never could. He did not think the liberated subjectivity, which Adorno argued was the antidote to conformism and authoritarianism, is possible. There is no primal libidinous personality that needs to be reclaimed in the face of the performance principle as Marcuse suggests. 16 Rather, we must begin with the social embeddedness of humans. From the beginning of Escape from Freedom, Fromm made clear his differences with Freud, writing, “Contrary to Freud’s viewpoint, the analysis offered in this book is based on the assumption that the key problem of psychology is that of the specific kind of relatedness of the individual towards the world and not that of the satisfaction or frustration of this or that instinctual need per se …” (1941, p. 12). The necessity of relatedness to human life, a concept Fromm drew from Marx, is the key claim that distinguishes the Marxian pedigree of Fromm’s psychology (Fromm, 1970, p. 50). As Fromm explained the matter, “It is not as if we had on the one hand an individual equipped by nature with certain drives and on the other, society as something apart from him, either satisfying or frustrating these innate propensities” (1941, p. 12). Although Adorno and Marcuse tried to meld Freud’s work with Marxism, ultimately, they followed Freud, depicting the dialectical relation as one between separate entities: the biological individual and society. They did not

–––––––––––––– 13 Note the largely positive assessment of Nietzsche’s work in Horkheimer and Adorno (2002, p. 93). This is treated briefly in Claussen (2008, p. 129). Also, note the Nietzschean sources for Adorno’s Negative Dialectics discussed in Honneth (1995, p. 130). 14 On the Heideggerian roots of Marcuse’s thought, see Wolin (2001). See also Marcuse, (2005). 15 An important study of this aspect of Marx can be found in Gould (1978). 16 The absence of such a notion informs Paul A. Robinson’s charge that “while Fromm undoubtedly stands to the left of Freud politically, he is a rabid sexual conservative, denying both the importance attributed to sexuality by Freud himself and the value assigned to it by Reich, Roheim, and Marcuse” (see Robinson, 1969, p. 5). At this point, it is difficult to maintain that the denial of Freud’s concept of the libido entails “rabid sexual” conservatism. Still, this quote helps to illustrate why Marcuse was so much more popular among the counter-culture of the 1960s than Fromm.

170 RELEVANCE OF THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY follow the Hegelian-Marxian insight in seeing the dialectic of individual and society as part of the very fabric of personality.17 Personality, Fromm suggested, is the product of an innate aspect, temperament, and a modifiable aspect produced by social experience and environment, which Fromm referred to (borrowing from Wilhelm Reich) as character. 18 A fixed temperament and changeable character, therefore, forge personality: “Temperament refers to the mode of reaction and is constitutional and not changeable; character is essentially formed by a person’s experiences, especially of those in early life, and changeable, to some extent, by insights and new kinds of experience” (Fromm, 1947, p. 52). Fromm did not deny that there were biological needs, “such as hunger, thirst, sex, which are common to man,” but his point was that “those drives which make for the differences in men’s characters, like love and hatred, the lust for power and the yearning for submission, the enjoyment of sensuous pleasure and the fear of it, are all products of the social process” (1941, p. 12). 19 The good and the bad in an individual’s character were both social products. Marx’s thought was central to Fromm’s discussion of the biological and social features of the human life. From Marx’s early writings, Fromm developed a humanist anthropology based on human needs. It is crucial to understand Fromm’s work on personality and his shift away from Freud through his appropriation of Marx. For Fromm, Marx best articulated the distinction between a fully human life grounded in genuine needs and the inhuman life under capitalism that relied on imaginary needs. It was through Marx’s discussion of genuine human needs that, as Fromm acknowledged, a critique of the distorting effects of capitalism on personality structure could be analyzed: “Marx’s concept of truly human needs–– the need of the other, the need to express and to pour one’s faculties into their adequate objects, can be understood fully if one pays attention to Marx’s concepts of synthetic, inhuman, and enslaving needs” (1970, p. 53). Freud and his heirs, Fromm argued, failed to recognize this distinction: “Modern psychology is little concerned with the critical analysis of needs; it accepts the laws of industrial production (maximal production, maximal consumption, and minimal human friction) by assuming that the very fact a person desires something is proof that he has a legitimate need for the desired thing” (1970, p. 53). Taking a critical Marxist approach to the concept of need, which Freud never developed, enabled Fromm to distinguish how basic human needs become distorted under the socio-economic conditions specific to capitalism. Among the basic human needs, Fromm counted “the need to be related to the world outside oneself, the need to avoid aloneness” (1941, p. 19). In Man for

–––––––––––––– 17 Marcuse, in particular, remained committed to Freud’s theory of libidinal drives as a revolutionary concept. He discussed the relation of humans to society as a fundamental conflict between the drives and the conformist tendencies of society. Note Fromm’s criticism of this account in his footnote in Fromm (1970, pp. 44-45). 18 For a discussion of Fromm’s relation to Reich, see Burston (1991, p. 67). 19 My italics.

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Himself, Fromm distinguished between two forms of relatedness: “In the process of living, man relates himself to the world (1) by acquiring and assimilating things, and (2) by relating himself to people (and himself)” (1947, p. 58). Both the process of assimilation (1) and socialization (2) are necessary to human life. Early in life, the “primary ties” satisfy the need for relatedness. Such ties refer to those that the child has early in life: “They are organic in the sense that they are a part of normal human development; they imply a lack of individuality, but they also give security and orientation to the individual” (Fromm, 1941, p. 25). The process of becoming an individual requires the severing of these ties. However, individuation is accompanied by a growing experience of “aloneness” in the world. Though necessary, the manner in which one undergoes individuation and severs the primary ties is crucial to the future development of personality. The need for relatedness has to be satisfied, but under capitalism, as Fromm understood from his reading of Marx’s concept of human needs, this need would be expressed in pathological forms of social relation. In Escape from Freedom, Fromm (1941) described the historical process by which modern society has become more fragmented and socially isolating in order to explain the emergence of authoritarianism.20 This process, in Fromm’s view, culminated in the emergence and development of capitalism. Earlier historical forms of society provided the sense of belonging and security humans require via membership in a close-knit community or through religion. The advent of capitalism marked an ever-accelerating process by which these old forms of social cohesion decayed. The introduction of new forms of social organization at the level of the species based on the division of labor and market relations is experienced at the level of the individual as fragmentation and isolation. The paradox of the modern individual is that freedom from such earlier forms of social organization is linked to a growing experience of isolation: Once the primary bonds which gave security to the individual are severed, once the individual faces the world outside of himself as a completely separate entity, two courses are open to him since he has to overcome the unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness. By one course he can progress to “positive freedom”; he can relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous, and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self. The other course open to him is to fall back, to give up his freedom, and to try to overcome his aloneness by eliminating the gap that has arisen between his individual self and the world. (Fromm, 1941, p. 140)

–––––––––––––– 20 It is interesting at this point to note that in her large history of the study of prejudice, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl discusses Escape from Freedom and Fromm only briefly. Though Fromm seriously engaged the question of the psychological basis for authoritarianism and its link to prejudice, the limited treatment his work receives by Young-Bruehl is another example of how his work has, in effect, been written out of history. See Young-Bruehl (1996).

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Humans must find new ways of satisfying the need for relatedness that they experience in childhood and that earlier modes of social organization were formerly able to provide. We are faced with regressive and progressive solutions to the basic need to satisfy relatedness outside the primary ties (Burston, 1991, p. 71). What leads an individual to select a regressive or progressive answer to their need for relatedness? The loss of primary ties is a traumatic experience. If one is unprepared for the independence that the loss of these ties entails, they cope with this loss by relating to the world in regressive ways. Character reveals the way the individual deals with independence. As Rainer Funk explains, “Character … gives information about the nature of the individual’s relatedness to the world, to others, and to himself, and, in turn, is formed by this relatedness” (1982, p. 27). The primary ties, particularly how they develop within the family, are important in shaping character. 21 But, as Horkheimer had also emphasized, the family is embedded in society. Thus, in keeping with Horkheimer and Adorno, Fromm argued, “the family … may be considered the psychological agent of society” (1941, p. 287). This, however, did not mean that the experience of family life alone forged character in some determinate fashion. Character changes through an ongoing relation to the world and others. And, Fromm emphasized, individuals relate to the world in various ways. “These orientations, by which the individual relates himself the world,” Fromm argued, “constitute the core of his character; character can be defined as the (relatively permanent) form in which human energy is canalized in the process of assimilation and socialization” (1947, p. 59). Fromm never suggested that individual character corresponds on a one to one basis to the kind of orientation an individual has to the world. “The character of any given person is usually a blend of all or some of these orientations,” but, Fromm added, “one … is dominant” (1947, p. 61). Fromm distinguished between productive and nonproductive ways of orienting oneself to the world, which, as ideal types, correspond to healthy and pathological forms of orientation. If the nonproductive orientations are dominant, the personality is distorted. Given my focus in this paper on the distortion of personality, the nonproductive types of orientation are most significant. The nonproductive orientation manifests itself in four types of character. Each, in turn, explains the political tendencies of the individual. The first two, the masochist and the sadist, relate on the basis of a need for symbiosis, the need to unite the self with another self. The masochist copes with their aloneness in the world by relying on the other. They look to an authority as a source of power to which they can be loyal. The sadist, in contrast, seeks relatedness by exerting power over another. Both the masochist and the sadist are drawn to authoritarian politics. The former sees in authoritarianism a means for

–––––––––––––– 21 This point may seem to contradict my claim that Fromm’s work is differentiated from Adorno’s by the latter’s focus on the primacy of the family, especially given that Adorno et al. also acknowledged that their findings about the family’s formative role in the development of character was in keeping with Fromm’s (1950, p. 376). Although Fromm saw the family as important to the formation of character, he always emphasized that his concept of character was dynamic and explicitly reiterates this point to distinguish his work from that of Adorno et al. (1973, p. 80 n5).

173 GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER expressing their need for submissiveness, while the latter finds an opportunity to dominate. For the authoritarian, “the world is composed of people with power and those without it, of superior ones and inferior ones. On the basis of his sado- masochistic strivings, he experiences only domination or submission, but never solidarity” (Fromm, 1941, p. 173). In contrast to symbiosis, Fromm identifies withdrawal from the world as another pathological form of overcoming the experience of aloneness (1947, p. 109). The destructive character seeks to obliterate the world in which they feel isolated: “I can escape the feeling of my own powerlessness in comparison with the world outside myself by destroying it” (Fromm, 1941, p. 179). The violent and warlike tendencies of authoritarian regimes could be attributed to destructiveness. Finally, Fromm paid particular attention to what he called the marketing orientation. This, he suggested, was the dominant nonproductive orientation of modern market society. The marketing orientation refers to the reifying tendencies of market society that lead individuals to regard themselves and others as things: “The market concept of value, the emphasis on exchange value rather than on use value, has led to a similar concept of value with regard to people and particularly to oneself” (Fromm, 1947, p. 68). The marketing orientation in assimilation corresponds to indifference in socialization. I have focused my discussion on Fromm’s explanation of how the distorted personality is the product of pathological relations to the world. In part, this is because Fromm’s conception of healthy forms of relatedness entails a discussion of Fromm’s humanism, which is treated elsewhere in this volume. But it is also because it enables me to bring Fromm into more direct dialogue with his critics, Adorno and Marcuse, on the social psychological malaise of modern life that the Frankfurt School set out to diagnose. For all three, this malaise is rooted in modern capitalist society with its authoritarian and conformist tendencies. Adorno and Marcuse would certainly agree with Fromm’s claim that “Whether or not the individual is healthy, is primarily not an individual matter, but depends on the structure of his society” (1955, p. 72).22 But the strengths of Fromm’s analysis derive from his dynamic conception of character founded on a Marxian understanding of human needs. Fromm’s understanding of character formation not only accommodates a more robust and variegated account of the ways social life shapes character, it does so with reference to the various ways human needs, specifically the need for relatedness, become distorted. Ultimately, for Adorno and Marcuse, the phylogenetic pathology is conformism and ontogenetic pathologies are explained by the degree to which the individual is conformist. My summary of Fromm’s typology of nonproductive characters shows the variety of pathological personalities that can develop based on the distinct ways their need for relatedness to the world is distorted. It bears restating that Fromm did not think that individuals only exhibit one orientation or another: “I want to stress at this point that all orientations are part of the human equipment, and the dominance of any specific –––––––––––––– 22 Although not focused on Fromm, for an historical account of how mental illness was attributed to societal ills, see Staub (2011).

174 RELEVANCE OF THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY orientation depends to large extent on the peculiarity of the culture in which the individual lives” (Fromm, 1947, p. 78). Distinctions between societies and cultures and the uniqueness of the lives individuals lead matter to Fromm. It is precisely because Fromm offers a vocabulary for understanding the complex ways that orientations are mixed within the individual based on their experience that Fromm is so useful for political psychology. Fromm enables us to understand the different types of character that are able to express their orientations through a given political structure. Similarly, we can uncover the ways personalities with different dominant character orientations are able to operate under a social institution like capitalism. None of this means that we need accept Fromm’s categories. Fromm’s work was highly theoretical and empirical research will likely call into question some of his claims about character types. However, the important feature of Fromm’s thought, for my purposes, is his emphasis on relatedness in the shaping of character. This introduces a social understanding of psychology to critical theory that is not present in the psychological works of Adorno or Marcuse. If critical theory is to remain relevant to the discussion of the interrelationship of psychology and politics, it is necessary that we turn to Fromm, not Adorno or Marcuse, as a fount for new insights. Contemporary political psychologists have revealed the weaknesses of Adorno’s approach, while the Freudian conception of the libido upon which Marcuse relied has become an historical anachronism for psychology as a modern discipline.

THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY In contemporary political psychology, Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford’s (2012) The Authoritarian Personality, not Fromm’s work, remains the historical reference point. Fromm’s work receives mention, but it is Adorno’s empirical methodology that psychologists like Bob Altemeyer, Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto, and John Jost and Mahzarin Banaji see themselves as primarily in dialogue with. In this section, I review the work of these psychologists in order to suggest how Fromm can be brought into dialogue with their work. This is primarily because the trend in political psychology is leading to a greater emphasis (particularly by Sidanius and Pratto) on social environment in the shaping of political psychology. Fromm would largely be sympathetic to this tendency and, in many respects, his theoretical claims about relatedness are being substantiated by the empirical findings of these psychologists. At the same time, we must be cautious about overemphasizing the affinities between Fromm and these more recent political psychologists. Their approach remains overwhelmingly that of positivistic social science, while Fromm’s is that of social science grounded in critical theory. Further, Fromm’s critical theory remains steeped in an historical and social critique of capitalism absent from contemporary political psychology. Losing sight of this risks erasing the original distinctiveness of critical theory as a radical alternative to positivism. Of the psychologists seeking to refine Adorno and his team’s methodology while still engaging the question of authoritarianism, Bob Altemeyer’s work stands

175 GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER out. In contrast to the F scale, Altemeyer developed the Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) scale. Moving beyond the immediate political concerns of Adorno and his team about the susceptibility of individuals to fascism, Altemeyer’s RWA scale is concerned with a broader understanding of authoritarian behavior. Dismissing the Berkeley study’s focus on authoritarianism as a product of degrees of conformity versus independence, for Altemeyer, offers an account that stresses greater differentiation among authoritarian types. In place of conformism, Altemeyer uses the term conventionalism to describe “a strong acceptance of and commitment to the traditional social norms in one’s society” (1996, p. 11). Thus, the authoritarian appears as a less passive individual than she had been portrayed in the Berkeley study. Submission to norms is transformed into an act on the part of the individual rather than the product of a lack of individuation. Further, Altemeyer distinguishes between submission to norms and submission to authority figures: “Authoritarians believe, to a considerable extent, that established authorities have an inherent right to decide for themselves what they may do, including breaking the laws they make for the rest of us” (1996, p. 9). This move differentiates between individuals who embrace authoritarianism because they believe it preserves the social order and those who will allow another individual to change that order on their behalf. Lastly, he more thoroughly differentiates aggressive authoritarians from those who submit to authority or convention and notes that aggressive authoritarians “are predisposed to control the behavior of others through punishment” (1996, p. 10). Altemeyer’s account can accommodate a more robust understanding than the Berkeley team of the types of individuals who embrace authoritarianism, ranging from individuals who believe in an established order to those who would act aggressively toward others. In this respect, Altemeyer’s typology bears a resemblance to Fromm’s. Fromm could speak of the differences between the masochist or the automaton’s investment in order and the sadist and destructive personality’s aggressiveness. Thus, like Fromm, Altemeyer provides a more differentiated notion of the types of individuals who support an authoritarian regime and their reasons for support. Further, like Fromm, Altemeyer abandons Freudian theory. He states, The Berkeley model was built around Freudian theory, with its emphasis on early childhood roots of behavior, vast (and largely untestable) unconscious struggles, repressed hatreds, projected hostilities, and so on. The present approach uses none of these. So while it turns out that High RWAs do tend to be anti-Semitic, that does not mean they are prejudiced because they unconsciously hate their fathers. (1996, p. 47) The possible causes of authoritarianism are, therefore, no longer entirely dependent upon what happens within the sphere of the parental relationship and can be explained in terms of any number of events in the subject’s life as in the case of Fromm. The problem with Altemeyer’s refinement of authoritarian psychology is that it abandons any real explanatory framework. His studies rely mainly on the presentation of data and creating typologies. He goes far in identifying different

176 RELEVANCE OF THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY types of authoritarians, but, unlike Fromm, offers little to explain how these personalities are formed. Although Altemeyer suggests that social factors take primacy in explaining the origins of authoritarianism, he remains within a personality-based model that never explains socialization to the extent that Fromm does (1988, pp. 51-99). While Altemeyer’s work has provided an improvement in the methodology and definitions of The Authoritarian Personality and this has led him into terrain similar to Fromm, he still works within the confines of that study. The most significant move, in my view, toward a theory that takes seriously socialization in a manner akin to Fromm comes from Sidanius and Pratto’s group- based model. Sidanius and Pratto drop the notion of authoritarianism from their work. Instead, they use the notion of social dominance. The question for them is not which individuals are prone to authoritarianism, but which social groups dominate others and what are the psychological factors that perpetuate their dominance. Sidanius and Pratto measure the “degree to which individuals desire and support group-based hierarchy and the domination of ‘inferior’ groups by ‘superior’ groups” (1999, p. 48). In contrast to the F scale or RWA scale, they have developed the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) scale. With its emphasis on group membership, Sidanius and Pratto’s work appears to reflect something of Fromm’s discussion of the fact of the individual’s social embeddedness. Sidanius and Pratto begin their methodological reformulation with the observation that “human societies tend to be structured as systems of group-based social hierarchies” (1999, p. 31). They recognize three stratification systems that contribute to the construction and preservation of group-based social hierarchies: 1) an age system in which adults have greater social power than youths; 2) a gender system where males have more social power than females; and, 3) an “arbitrary-set system” where social power is based on “characteristics such as clan, ethnicity, estate, nation, race, caste, social class, religious sect, regional grouping, or any other socially relevant group distinction that the human imagination is capable of constructing” (1999, p. 33). For Sidanius and Pratto, the question is how these group-based social hierarchies are reinforced at the individual level. An individual’s sense of group membership and the place of that group in a social hierarchy determine the degree to which they are oriented toward social dominance. The individual’s self-understanding is linked to their understanding of themselves as a member of a group. There is, therefore, a dialectical relationship between the individual’s sense of belonging to a group and the way the group acts on the individual’s consciousness. This approach seems closest to Fromm’s discussion of how relatedness shapes individual psychology and potentially perpetuates distorted forms of relatedness to others. According to Sidanius and Pratto, it is not the development of personality types that creates individuals capable of dominating others. Rather, it is the existence of a socially constructed system of group-based hierarchies and how individuals are compelled to interact with that system that can explain how the oppression of one group by another occurs. Hence, the key factor that determines the likelihood that an individual will develop a high measure on the SDO scale is the social context in which the individual finds herself. The Freudian emphasis on the individual’s

177 GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER relationship to their parents is dropped because the broader social environment of the individual becomes a significant variable. Further, biological factors are irrelevant to the understanding of an individual’s orientation to social dominance. Politics can never be understood in terms of any kind of determinism, biological or otherwise, because individuals are placed in a wide array of social contexts. It is the way that they interact with their social environment––working within greater or lesser social constraints––and how they negotiate the terms of that environment that explains their ranking on the SDO scale. Finally, any notion of individuals with higher SDOs as passive or pathological is absent from this framework. Individuals are always agents based on their decision to identify with a specific group and their willingness to perpetuate the group’s legitimizing myths. Despite understanding individuals as agents, the degree to which social hierarchies are enhanced or attenuated depends on the matrix of legitimizing myths propounded by the group. Further, because individuals make their decisions within social constraints and within societies where social dominance is more or less operative, their choices cannot be understood with reference to any kind of psychological health or illness. Instead, their political orientations need to be understood in a social context. All this sounds very close to Fromm, but, in their emphasis on groups, Sidanius and Pratto drop any discussion of character. They have a theory of how certain types of group membership cause individual pathologies, which is an advance over Altemeyer’s work, but they lack a theory about individual psychology. Personality, which was so crucial to Fromm’s dynamic theory of character, is abandoned. Group membership is taken as a social fact, not as the product of a human need for relatedness. What, at first, reads like a dialectical theory is, in fact, a theory of how groups act on individuals without taking into account the dialectical interrelationship of the individual and society. Despite his later falling out with Horkheimer, Fromm’s work was very much in line with the methodological imperatives that Max Horkheimer laid out for critical theory: “Critical thinking is the function neither of the isolated individual nor of a sum-total of individuals. Its subject is rather a definite individual in his real relation to other individuals and groups, in his conflict with a particular class, and, finally, in the resultant web of relationships with the social totality and with nature” (Horkheimer, 1995, pp. 210- 211). Fromm could consider both individual personality and social forces through his category of character, which serves to explain how individual experience and society interact to help forge personality. There is a further important difference between Fromm’s work and SDO theory. Fromm was concerned not just with human social embeddedness, but how human social relations are shaped by systems, particularly capitalism. This is why his historical discussion of the emergence of modern capitalist society in Escape from Freedom is so significant to the overall argument of the book. Though close to the concerns of Sidanius and Pratto, John Jost and Mahzarin Banaji try to move beyond Sidanius and Pratto’s group-based theory by developing a theory of how systems justify themselves. Jost and Banaji, like Fromm, take systems seriously and they inquire into how these systems become legitimated at the level of the individual. Jost et al. argue

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that there is a general (but not insurmountable) system justification motive to defend and justify the status quo and to bolster the legitimacy of the existing social order. Such a motive is not unique to members of dominant groups. We … claim that people want to hold favorable attitudes about themselves and about their own groups, but they also want to hold favorable attitudes about social and political systems that affect them. (2004, p. 887) Yet, as in the case of Altemeyer and Sidanius and Pratto, Jost and Banaji take a positivist approach to their inquiry. Their theory, like the others, does not offer an account of the interrelationship of self and society that Fromm achieves by developing the concept of character. The most provocative contemporary theories in political psychology have increasingly drifted from the work done by Adorno and his team and show a marked progression toward taking seriously many of the concerns that Fromm first highlighted. Altemeyer’s typology is very similar to Fromm’s. Like Fromm, Sidanius and Pratto take seriously the role of relatedness to others. Jost and Banaji share Fromm’s insistence on the central role of individual psychology in legitimating social systems. Further, it is not only at the level of theory that Fromm’s ideas appear relevant to contemporary discourse in political psychology. In at least one case, empirical data has substantiated one of Fromm’s theoretical claims, i.e., that the experience of helplessness can draw people to authoritarian politics (Doty et al., 1991). Yet, each of the theories I have discussed differs from Fromm’s in one crucial respect. Each is positivistic. Character, in Fromm’s sense, is not a positivistic category. It is not a descriptive category. It is a dynamic category, explaining both the relation between individual psychologies to society as a whole and containing within it the possibility of transforming society. As a dynamic category, it is also acutely sensitive to the historical shifts in the structure of society and how they reshape the ways individuals relate to one another and their world. None of the political psychologists I have discussed consider the impact of historical changes in social structure on individual or group psychology. The basic psychic need for relatedness, which forms the ground upon which Fromm builds his conception of character, can only manifest outwardly in the fact of observable individual behaviors and attitudes to the positivist, but this says nothing of it as a human value. Importantly, it can say nothing about how this quality relates to an individual’s ethical capacities. As a result, it cannot address how socio-historical structures provide the conditions for the degeneration or flourishing of human ethical capacities. And this was central to Fromm’s purpose. For Fromm, psychological inquiry was deeply entwined with the question of ethics and politics. He was not merely seeking to create a typology aimed at understanding certain kinds of human behavior. His account of pathological character types sought to explain the sources for the devaluation of the self and others as social products with political consequences. Therein lies Fromm’s relevance as an alternative. Positivism can only describe facts about the world. The purpose of critical theory is to integrate those facts into a political critique of society as a totality.

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Ultimately, the concept of society is absent from all of the aforementioned political psychologists. In Fromm’s view, knowing facts about individuals is not an end in itself, but, rather, contributes to our understanding of society as a whole. When we understand society’s historical development, the mechanisms by which it shapes individuals, and how it itself is shaped by systems that perpetuate domination, we can challenge domination and develop alternatives. In particular, for Fromm, such knowledge enables us to confront the forms of domination unique to modern capitalism. If we understand the ways consciousness of human needs is distorted, we can critique the structural socio-economic institutions that foment false consciousness. As Fromm put it, “The destruction of illusions and the analysis of consciousness – that is to say, awareness of the reality of which man is not conscious, are the conditions for social change” (1970, p. 57). The discussion of values is necessary to this enterprise. It is incumbent upon us not merely to observe facts about individual psychology, but to understand these facts as symptomatic of societies that can constrain or cultivate value-laden concepts such as freedom, which nevertheless are practical significance in people’s everyday lives. In the following, final, section, I seek to illustrate why this aspect of Fromm’s thought is so important by way of discussion of a recent trend in more popular works in political psychology.

POPULAR NEUROSCIENCE AND FROMM’S CONTINUED RELEVANCE Biological Freudianism, which Adorno and Marcuse advocated, is now largely a thing of the past. For this reason, I have argued that Adorno and Marcuse’s political psychology is no longer salient. But some psychologists have found a new biological orthodoxy in the form of neuroscience. The psychologists who I discussed in the preceding section are not a part of this trend, but their work is not written for public consumption. Those academic psychologists who have been able to make the transition to public intellectual have largely done so by equating psychology with the study of the human brain. Given the focus of this essay, none is more important than Jonathan Haidt. In his recent popular book, The Righteous Mind, Haidt (2012) develops a neuroscientific explanation for political preferences. The book serves to present in a popular format an argument that Haidt has been developing for some time. Its main purpose is to make a case for the neurobiological basis of morality, which, in turn, Haidt suggests shapes political behavior. Haidt has claimed that humans come biologically equipped with five moralfoundations:care/harm,fairness/cheating,loyalty/betrayal,authority/subversion , and sanctity/degradation (Haidt, 2012). He argues that liberals privilege the concern with care/harm and fairness/cheating over the other three foundations and are, as a consequence, open to change. In an earlier co-authored paper with slightly different categories, Haidt explains that conservatives, in contrast, emphasize the other three: “We refer to these three foundations (Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity) as the binding foundations, because they are (we suggest) the source of the intuitions that make many conservative and religious

180 RELEVANCE OF THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY moralities, with their emphasis on group-binding loyalty, duty, and self-control, so learnable and so compelling to so many people” (Graham et al., 2009, p. 1031). Openness to Experience is based on which moral foundations are more operative in a subject. Liberals, being more open to change, are more open to experience than conservatives. This does not mean either group is morally deficient. It is a matter of emphasis. In Haidt’s view, this creates a necessary balance in politics (2012, p. xiii). Whereas the political psychologists who I discussed in the previous section offer a positivist account of political psychology that leaves out the ethical dimension with which Fromm was so concerned. Haidt takes values seriously for an understanding of political psychology. But, for him, values are the product of brain states. Morality is based in facts about the brain. Such a move implies a deterministic understanding of politics. If Haidt is correct, political theory is an empty enterprise. Haidt’s evolutionary neurobiological argument is symptomatic of the very feature of positivism that critical theory and, earlier, Lukács saw as so politically dangerous. It leads individuals to accept political realities as natural facts. The existence of exploitation and oppression become impossible to confront and correct because they are part of nature. In his effort to offer a naturalistic basis for the democratic cooperation of liberals and conservatives that, he thinks, is necessary to the proper functioning of society, he already assumes that democracy is an a priori value and not historically emergent. More importantly, he ignores the ways that the political worldviews of particular individuals have very real implications for the capacity of others to experience freedom or for the constraints placed on others. Conservative policies, for example, have real effects on the ability of people to work under conditions in which they are not exploited, on the rights of women over their bodies, and on the capacity of homosexual couples to enjoy the same legal status as married heterosexuals. Though I do not think Haidt would want his argument taken in this direction, in effect, it suggests that oppression can have a natural grounding if there happen to be more individuals born who emphasize loyalty, authority, and purity than those concerned with harm and fairness. For Fromm, Haidt’s moral foundations of loyalty, authority, and purity would all constitute qualities of a distorted character structure. For Haidt, an individual who emphasizes one or more of these moral foundations is perfectly healthy because these are natural consequences of neurobiological development. But Fromm did not argue such individuals were pathological because he saw abnormalities in their brains. He argued that they were pathological because such characters were drawn to reactionary politics, which led to the very real oppression, and even destruction, of others. In my view, Fromm’s approach is valuable because it enables us to continue engaging in political psychology as a form of political critique. To many, it may seem as though I am stubbornly grasping to a methodology rendered anachronistic by advances in neuroscience. Indeed, liberal journalist Chris Mooney has used recent research in neuroscience to argue that there is such a thing as a “republican brain” (Mooney, 2012). Conservatives are conservative, according to Mooney, because they are less open

181 GREGORY R. SMULEWICZ-ZUCKER to experience and this is a consequence of their neurobiology. Why not use biology to explain political behavior and critique individuals for their politics nonetheless? It is impossible, at this point, for me to provide a resolution to very old debates over nature versus nurture, facts versus values, and natural science versus social science. What I have attempted to show in this essay is that of all the Frankfurt critical theorists who engaged the issue of political psychology, Fromm’s work remains the most relevant to the kind of work done by many political psychologists today. Further, his approach offers a methodology that might suggest an alternative to the positivism that reigns among the work of these political psychologists. Certainly, this suggestion is not enough to dissuade someone like Haidt from his neurobiological account of political behavior. I can, however, suggest that the kinds of explanations for political behavior that Haidt advances and Mooney embraces, poses a threat to politics as an emancipatory practice by reducing the complexities of politics to naturalistic explanations. The conflation of the social and natural worlds is a dangerous current that the Frankfurt School theorists sought to combat. In it, they saw a kind of political quietism. We are left without a means of contesting the bases for the society we live in. At the very least, we become the masochistic personalities who defer to authority that Fromm described. At worst, we become Fromm’s destructive personality who seeks to destroy the other whose difference we see as irreconcilable. We most definitely cannot, however, become the kinds of reflective beings who Fromm hoped could recognize the socio- political systems that oppress us and work toward correcting socio-economic systems of oppression. Despite their strong differences, Adorno, Marcuse, and Fromm understood human psychology in relation to the historical development of society. They began their inquiries into society aware that modern society is structured by capitalism. This was their methodological starting point and the political psychologists who have succeeded them have abandoned it. Even when it is attentive to social relations, political psychology has become largely ahistorical. As a consequence, it has become less attentive to the impact capitalist society as a unique historical structure of society has on human psychology.23 Marxism provided each of the Frankfurt School’s political psychologists with a conceptual vocabulary for articulating the relationship of capitalist social structure to the psychology of the modern individual. It enabled them to construct a critique of modern politics grounded in the ways capitalism helped mold individuals who would accept the political domination of the powerful or seek power to dominate others. Among these critical theorists, Fromm offered a unique account of how life under capitalism contributes to distorted social relations in which power is predominant. The distortion of personality and, as a consequence, of social relations was a

–––––––––––––– 23 Among the contemporary political psychologists I have discussed, Sidanius and Pratto draw the most from Marxist theory. In particular, they take seriously the notion of “false consciousness.” They, however, redefine the concept to speak about “legitimizing myths” broadly. As a result, they divorce the concept from its former emphasis on the role of capitalism in shaping consciousness. See Sidanius and Pratto (1999, pp. 103-104).

182 RELEVANCE OF THE DISTORTED PERSONALITY political problem for Fromm because it led individuals to relate to their world and each other in terms of power relations. Under such conditions, power ceases to be seen in terms of human powers for such goods as individual or social improvement, but, rather, in terms of who has power over others, whether directly in personal relationships or more indirectly via control of the state or the means of production. The study of power is inherent to the study of politics. Political theory attempts to evaluate power with reference to concepts like justice and equality. These concepts have proven useful in battling injustice and inequality. The battle for democracy, whose victory Haidt prizes so highly, but seems to take for granted, was fought using these concepts. The kinds of states, governments, and individuals who are in power exert an enormous impact on the extent to which democracy is sustained and is expanded. Fromm understood this. He understood that more democratic forms of life were an historical achievement and he knew that such achievements could be undone. At the level of personality, he tried to understand the kinds of individuals who would oppose democracy and those who would allow them to do so. Understanding individual pathologies, in Fromm’s view, contributed to the larger project of combatting the social and ideological tendencies that threatened human freedom. For those who understand the precariousness of democracy as a condition for political freedom or recognize that it still exhibits limitations, Fromm remains an important thinker to engage.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS At the outset of this paper, I noted how rarely Fromm receives serious consideration. I, however, was fortunate to have two teachers, Stanley Aronowitz and Dagmar Herzog, who in separate settings taught Fromm’s work. Though I doubt either would agree with the argument I make, and this essay is hardly a reflection of their views, I am grateful to both for leading me to engage Fromm’s thought. Throughout the process of writing this essay, I benefitted from discussions with Michael J. Thompson who also provided helpful critical comments on the various drafts.

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Claussen, D. (2008). Theodor W. Adorno: One last genius (R. Livingstone, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Doty, R. M., Peterson, B. E., & Winter, D. G. (1991). Threat and authoritarianism in the United States, 1978-1987. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(4), 629-640. Freud, S. (1959). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego (J. Strachey, Trans.). New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. Freud, S., (2004). Civilization and its discontents. (D. Mc Clintlock, Trans.. London, GB: Penguin. Friedman, L. J. (2013). The lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s prophet. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Fromm, E. (1947). Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Fromm, E. (1955). The sane society. New York, NY: Rinehart and Co. Fromm, E. (1962). Beyond the chains of illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud. New York, NY: Pocket Books. Fromm, E. (1970). The crisis of psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Fromm, E. (1972). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Funk, R. (1982). Erich Fromm: The courage to be human (M. Shaw, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. Gould, C. (1978). Marx’s social ontology: Individuality and community in Marx’s theory of social reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029-1046. Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Honneth, A. (1995). Foucault and Adorno: Two forms of the critique of modernity. In C. W. Wright (Ed.), The fragmented world of the social (pp. 121-131). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Horkheimer, M. (1971). Critical theory (M. J. O’Connell, Trans.). New York, NY: Continuum. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments (G. Schmid Noerr, Ed.; E. Jephcott, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jacoby, R. (1975). Social amnesia: A critique of contemporary psychology from Adler to Laing. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Jay, M. (1985). “The Frankfurt school’s critique of Marxist humanism” in Permanent exiles: Essays on the intellectual migration from Germany to America. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25(6), 881-919. Marcuse, H. (1966). Eros and civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Marcuse, H. (1969). An essay on liberation. Boston: Beacon Press. Marcuse, H. (2005). Heideggerian Marxism (R. Wolin & J. Abromeit, Eds.). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. McLaughlin, N. (1999). Origin myths in the social sciences: Fromm, the Frankfurt school, and the emergence of critical theory. Canadian Journal of Sociology , 24(1), 109-139. Mooney, C. (2012). The republican brain: The science of why they deny science and reality. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Robinson, P. A. (1969). The Freudian left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse. New York NY: Harper & Row. Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Staub, M. E. (2011). Madness is civilization: When the diagnosis was social, 1948-1980. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Wiggershaus, R. (1995). The Frankfurt school: Its history, theories, and political significance (M. Roberston, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Wolin, R. (2001). Heidegger’s children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Young-Bruehl, E. (1996). The anatomy of prejudices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gregory R. Smulewizc-Zucker Baruch College, CUNY

185

PANAYOTA GOUNARI

12. NEOLIBERALISM AS SOCIAL NECROPHILIA

Erich Fromm and the Politics of Hopelessness in Greece

I glance through snapshots in the news: grim faces, desperate eyes, angry gaze, frustration, and, most of all, fear. The city of Athens is slowly turning into a cemetery for the living. The transformation of the city, both as a physical and as a symbolic space is shocking to the eye; as a public space and a habitat for its people, it now gets fragmented into deserted stores “for rent,” broken façades and abandonment, apartment windows and balcony doors tightly locked behind iron bars for “extra safety,” carton beds and, along them, homeless people’s possessions: an old dirty blanket, oversized worn out sneakers, plastic flowers, empty water bottles, stale bread. Different parts of the city illustrate palpably a degenerating social fabric, as more Greeks are now joining the ranks of what Zygmunt Bauman (2004, p. 4) has called “human waste”: unemployed, working poor, immigrants, all the outcasts, victims of “economic progress,” preys of rampant neoliberal policies, “casualties,” real victims to what the Greek Prime Minister has recently called a “success story” on the road to privatization and the wholesale of Greece’s national assets and sovereignty. In this paper, I am drawing on Erich Fromm’s work in order to rethink and explain the current economic, political, and humanitarian crisis in Greece and cast some light on the discussion of “what is to be done.” More specifically, I am discussing the ongoing neoliberal experiment in Greece as a case of “social necrophilia” drawing on Fromm’s work on “human destructiveness.” In the context of the European Union, Greek people have been typecast as “disobedient” and in need of discipline. As a result, the freedom to decide on the affairs of their polis has been taken away from them. Fromm’s discussion on obedience is, again, illuminating in understanding what it means to be disobedient in a crisis context. Finally, given the necrophilic nature of imposed neoliberal policies and the hopelessness the latter have generated, I am concluding this chapter with a discussion on hopelessness and hope in order to create a realistic framework for rethinking new orientations. While I acknowledge that what we are witnessing at present is an instance of a major crisis of capitalism, for the purposes of this paper, I will not delve into a detailed economic analysis that is outside the scope of this paper, beyond some necessary introductory remarks that follow.

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 187–201. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. PANAYOTA GOUNARI

THE GREEK CRISIS: NEOLIBERALISM AS A CASE OF “SOCIAL NECROPHILIA” Greece is the most recent and historically unprecedented neoliberal experiment on a global scale. As Stuart Hall (2013) notes, “the fact of global instability and looming crisis has by no means modified the neoliberal offensive. If Chile was the laboratory for the early phases, Greece has become the laboratory for an even more fierce implementation [of neoliberalism]” (p. 12). In the context of the crisis, the gap between rich and poor has widened but more importantly, the crisis served as a platform for further restructuring of state and society along market lines. The survival of capitalism internationally today is directly connected with private and public debts, since the main volume of capital seeks to become loans that are impossible to write off, exactly because they are enormous. This capital is concentrated in banks and other financial institutions, the bankruptcy of which would endanger the basic functioning of the system. Since the largest proportion of international profit comes from interest and profits from credit products, capitalist development is interwoven with an even more radical development of capital markets, credits and money. The current debt crisis is founded on the quest for profitable investment for international loan capital. Capitalism is built on the grounds of surplus value production. Over-accumulation of capital activates the falling rate of average profit percentage, which in turn, generates unused funds that now turn to the credit sector where they have a much larger profit margin. Debt further increased with the governments’ limits in taxing businesses. The main characteristic of the world crisis is the vast abundance of capital lying stagnant in world markets, unable to find a profitable investment. Markets under the auspices of neoliberal governments, such as the current one in Greece, are particularly assiduous in eroding non-market spaces, and privatizing assets as a way to open up new spaces for capital accumulation and market expansion. In this sense, Greece’s remaining non-privatized spaces make up the perfect sites for new business. The privatization program of a neo-colonial type currently under implementation has converted Greece into a marketable commodity for sale: from Public Utilities (water, electricity), to transportation (ports, airports, trains), to public education and research, to national land, coastline and assets, including monuments. Large areas are now sold off to private capital, with no stipulations or restrictions as to their exploitation that could return some revenue or benefit to the Greek people. On the contrary, successful profit-making public companies are priced at the very minimum and sold below their real value to foreign companies. It is commonplace for dominant economies to shift the crisis to weak ones by setting them as warning examples, with lenders pressuring them through usurious terms, and deforming them in the Procrustean bed of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The crisis in Greece, having now mutated into a fiscal crisis, represents in the context of the Eurozone asymmetry, the crystallization of an international crisis with the particular Greek characteristics and problems. What we have in place right now in Greece can be best described as the “downsizing of a country” (Sotiris, 2012) that brings profound changes in its social and economic fabric. Ultimately, the implementation of an extreme neoliberal agenda that

188 NEOLIBERALISM AS SOCIAL NECROPHILIA purports to push the economy to recover and return to growth dynamics through pro-market reforms, will achieve everything else but the goal of resetting the economy: “the massive wave of privatizations that the government is planning will not bring a mass influx of investments, nor will it stop processes of de- industrialization. It will only lead to increased cost, worsening of the quality of services, reduced personnel along with the loss of sovereignty over crucial natural resources. In the end, Greece will emerge as a poorer country, with a diminished productive base, with reduced sovereignty, [and] with a political class accustomed to almost neo-colonial forms of supervision” (Sotiris, 2012). Drawing on Erich Fromm’s work, I want to look at this neoliberal experiment, as implemented in Greece, that breeds destructiveness and death, as a form of “social necrophilia.” By social necrophilia, I mean the blunt organized effort on the part of the domestic political system and foreign neoliberal centers to implement economic policies that result in the physical, material, social and financial destruction of human beings: policies that promote death, whether physical or symbolic. The goal of the ongoing neoliberal offensive is to destroy symbolically and physically the most vulnerable strata of the population, to put the entire society in a moribund state, in order to impose the most unprecedented austerity measures that generate profit for the most privileged classes internationally. Fromm’s work is instrumental here because it provides both a metaphor from the realm of psychiatry, as well as the tools to make the case for a reified market society that is being forced to start loving death: its own. In his seminal work on the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Fromm (1973) defines necrophilia as the “the passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive interest in all that is purely mechanical. It is the passion to tear apart living structures” (p. 369). In the case of the Greek neoliberal experiment, however, beyond destroying for the sake of destruction, there are real economic interests at stake. What we have in place is a society set in what Fromm calls the “having mode of existence,” a default state in contemporary capitalist societies. In the “having mode” there is “no alive relationship between me and what I have. It and I have become things, and I have it because I have the force to make it mine […] The having mode of existence is not established by an alive, productive process between subject and object; it makes things of both object and subject. The relationship is one of deadness, not aliveness” (Fromm, 1976, p. 77-78). Having set relationships in “deadness” and having reified human beings, the capitalist system is promoting a type of “social necrophilia.” It is “a phenomenon deeply rooted in a culture which is increasingly dominated by the bureaucratic organizations of the big corporations, governments, and armies, and by the central role of man-made things, gadgets and machines. This bureaucratic industrialism tends to transform human beings into things. It tends to replace nature by technical devices, the organic by the inorganic” (Fromm 1976, p. 36). Social necrophilia can then be understood as the state of decay, the material and social degeneration of society, and the destruction of social fabric, where illness and death are looming as a result of a dying economy for the poor through specific political choices. Love of death

189 PANAYOTA GOUNARI or the politics of social necrophilia can, therefore, be illustrated in Greece in a) the rise of fascism as a par excellence manifestation of social necrophilia, and b) the shocking increase in illness, suicide, addiction and spread of infectious diseases since the beginning of the crisis.

Fascism In the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973) Fromm makes the case that necrophilia is a product of fascist thought. He discusses Marinetti’s 1909 futuristic manifesto of Italian fascism that vividly expresses love for destruction, infatuation with the machine as a living force, contempt for women; it glorifies war and destruction of culture; it promotes militarism, patriotism, and talks about “the beautiful ideas that kill”: “The love of death in the midst of living is the ultimate perversion” stresses Fromm (1981, p. 37) and points out that true necrophiles salute war and promote it. He gives the example of Spanish Falangists that used to shout “long live death” and the famous 1936 incident at the University of Salamanca with Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno and nationalist general Millán Astray whose favorite motto was “viva la muerte.” In the context of the Greek crisis, a new form of political domination has emerged, a renewed model of fascism, or another example of “proto-fascism.” Fascism as a mass movement that emerges out of a failed democracy and as a social order “resides in the lived relations of a given social order and the ways in which such relations exacerbate the material conditions of inequality, undercut a sense of individual and social agency, hijack democratic values, and promote a deep sense of hopelessness and cynicism” (Giroux, 2008, pp. 21-22). Proto- fascism as a manifestation of necrophilia articulates on different levels in the Greek society. First, the elect Greek government has been systematically violating the Greek Constitution and shaking the foundations of the parliamentary democracy by establishing a side system of legislation. Using massively urgent legislative decrees, the coalition government is bypassing Greek legislation in order to facilitate privatizations and sellouts. In addition there is an institutionalized instability: laws keep changing and many laws are voted in and implemented with retroactive effect. The disappearing public space is a central feature of Greek proto-fascism. For global capital and finance, anything public needs to be gutted. Public space here is understood both materially and symbolically/discursively. It includes places, resources, and services that have historically belonged to the people, as well as the immaterial and symbolic space where alternative voices can emerge, where democracy can be direct, and where debate can blossom. What we have in place right now is not too far from the kind of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt wrote about. According to her, a “totalitarian government does not just curtail liberties or abolish essential freedoms; nor does it … succeed in eradicating the love for freedom from the hearts of men. It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom, which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space” (1973, p. 466). She adds that implicit in the discussion of freedom is the notion of a

190 NEOLIBERALISM AS SOCIAL NECROPHILIA shared space between men and women, a public space that is erased when “men [sic] are pressed against each other” (p. 466). When people are “pressed against each other” they suffocate. However, before the “public” is abolished in favor of the private, it has first to be vilified, downgraded and devalued. A case in point is the ongoing demonization of public functionaries, public education, public health and so forth. Everything “public” is left to decay, by cutting off funding, staff, and support and creating a fertile space for corruption. The concept of the city as a public site is being redefined. Through police force, the Greek government is reclaiming the major squares from the protest movements, while labeling protesters as terrorists or low-life criminals stripping them from any political agenda. Squares around Greece, that in the first years of crisis became new agoras for debate, dialogue, and direct democracy, have been primary targets of control, surveillance and cleaning up. A feature connected to the disappearance of public space and the commodification of society is the criminalization of dissent and protest and the construction of a culture of fear. According to Fromm (1981) “a society based on exploitative control […] tends to weaken the independence, integrity, critical thinking, and productivity of those submitted to it” (p. 332). In a necrophilous state of affairs, the system in charge operates with the conviction that the only way to solve a problem or a conflict is by force and violence, both symbolic and material, usually failing to see other options. This explains the increased violence employed by the state the last five years as manifested in shutting down protests, criminalizing dissent and activism, and torture arrested protesters. Alongside symbolic violence manifested in economic, political, and discursive form, there is an intensified move towards militarization and authoritarianism. Under the auspices of neoliberal ideology that divests the state of any responsibility for social provisions (as evidenced in the degradation of the welfare state, and cutbacks for working people and pensioners), the weakened social and welfare state resorts more and more to material and symbolic violence, including increased militarization, exponential increases in the police forces and the omnipresence of police in public spaces. Through militarization the repressive state apparatus is exhausting its force and unleashing its brutality on youth, women, pensioners, and working people protesting in the streets of Athens and other cities. Again, the tendency is to turn something alive into unalive, to yank the life out of it. Rampant nationalism and the raise of the rhetoric of populism fed by a constructed culture of fear is another characteristic of Greek proto-fascism. In these dark times, we witness more and more incidents of racist violence against immigrants in Athens and in other Greek cities. After the June 2012 elections, the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn secured 18 seats in the Greek Parliament with 6.9%. Since, its swastika-waving members have been engaging in generalized attacks and violence against immigrants and left activists, promoting a discourse of hatred and death. Pseudo-populist discourse is taken to new heights as immigrants are not only blamed for the current economic situation but they are constantly terrorized

191 PANAYOTA GOUNARI with the goal of forcing them to leave the country. In more than one incident, members of the Golden Dawn have been involved in cases where immigrants were brutally beaten and even murdered. Golden Dawn, whose members are nostalgic of Hitler, was also behind the cold-blooded murder of Petros Fyssas, a young leftist anti-fascist activist, and rapper. Finally, there is an interesting “rise of the language of eternal fascism that diminishes people’s capacity to think critically” (Giroux, 2008, pp. 21-22). This is also a typical characteristic of any emerging neoliberal state. Language is used as a vehicle for re-naming the ongoing shift of the State from welfare to fascism (Gounari 2006, 2012). It is not a coincidence that the current austerity measures are promoted under the umbrella of restructuring, reform, improvement, streamlining of the system etc. Part of this language is also the conscious attempt on the part of dominant ideologies to package austerity measures in such way that hides the fact that the real beneficiary is foreign investment capital and banking and financial organizations and not the Greek people. In this context, the living person becomes an appendix to the economic system (the unalive thing). Fromm (1981) notes that in times of crisis we witness the emergence of political priests that can be “politicians, intellectuals, journalists and other public figures who shape public opinion and alter collective consciousness” (p. 17). These political priests use a well-crafted discourse to administer “the idea of freedom to protect the economic interests of their social class. The priests declare that people are not capable of being free and take over ideas and decide how they will be formulated” (p.17).

The Decaying Body “It’s simple. You get hungry, you get dizzy and you sleep it off” mother of an 11-year old boy who has been suffering hunger pains at school. (NYT, 2013) Necrophilia is further manifested in physical terms in the ways the human body is degenerating, ravaged by illness, malnutrition, drug abuse, HIV, and suicide. People looking for food in the trash. There are homeless people in every corner; a mini slum community in the park across from Evangelismos hospital makes me think of the unusually heavy winter and the Spring that again will refuse to arrive on time this year, as if even the weather is not meant to be an ally for these people. Walking south, towards the center of Athens, thousands of people waiting in line to be served food by soup kitchens that provide over 30,000 free meals a day. Plenty of people queuing up for possibly the only meal of their day. Welcome to the “human waste” line. The Greek governments that assumed the role of the executioners of IMF/EU directives since the beginning of the crisis in 2008 have demonstrated a particularly necrophilous character. Αn increasing number of children have been passing out in schools because of malnutrition; there are embarrassing shortages in public hospitals where often patients have to buy their own gauze and medication from an outside pharmacy while admitted. People without health insurance with severe illnesses do not have access to treatment. Malaria, a disease officially

192 NEOLIBERALISM AS SOCIAL NECROPHILIA eliminated 40 years ago, had also made a comeback in 2012 with cases being noted in eastern Attica and the Peloponnese. Public schools lack books and other materials and in many areas in the north of Greece, children stay at home on very cold days because schools cannot afford to heat the classrooms. Teachers are suffering terrible cuts in their salaries, and universities barely meet their minimum functional needs with cuts in laboratory and support staff that hinder the appropriate working of the departments. There is an increasing number of suicides (marking closely to 40% hike) that rank Greece number one worldwide in suicides the past five years. There are alarming new cases of depression and mental illnesses. A recent study conducted by the University of Ioannina found that one in five people facing financial problems presents psychopathological symptoms. There is also a 200% increase in HIV cases (Guardian, 2013). At the same time, significant funding is cut from psychiatric hospitals, public drug rehabilitation centers and other social and welfare provisions. It is not just the images, the sounds and noises. One can barely breath trying to walk outside on a cold winter like this. A thick cloud of toxic fumes emitted by stoves and fireplaces where Athenians burn everything that can be burnt, from wood, metal, to tires covers the neighborhoods of Attika. Watching the city from atop, it looks drowned in thick fog with lights dying out in the toxic cloud. With a 40% surcharge the government has slapped on heating oil thousands of households remain cold during the winter while people are returning to wood stoves, whose out-of-control use has generated poisonous toxic smog over the city of Athens. Bodily decay goes hand in hand with environmental destruction: Greek soil is ravaged as mineral resources are overexploited in the name of profit. Large forest areas, such as the Skouries forest in Halkidiki, are turning into vast mining sites, where private companies are exploiting the natural wealth of the country, while poisoning the soil, the air and the water. Greece is radically and violently transformed into the land field of “wasted lives” in the giant trashcan of global capitalism. Witnessing as I do this novel form of social necrophilia that eats alive every inch of human life, workspace, and public space, I cringe at the sound of the words “sacrifice,” “rescue” and making Greece, according to the claims of the Greek PM a “success story.” Whose sacrifice and whose rescue? Who succeeds and who loses? Numbers are telling. Unemployment rates are currently climbing to 30%, the same percentage Greece had in 1961. As a point of comparison, unemployment in the United States in 1929 was 25% and in Argentina in 2001 it was 30%. More than 70% of the unemployed have been out of work for more than a year, leaving most to rely on charity after losing monthly benefit payments and health insurance. This percentage does not include young people seeking a job for the first time, employees without insurance, and part-timers. Unemployment is up 41% from last year and, in the ages between 15-24 it has reached 51.1%, doubling in only three years (INE GSEE/ADEDY, 2012). What’s worse, more than half of young people in Greece (one in two) are unemployed––a negative record for a Eurozone country (BBC, 2013). Greece now officially ranks first in youth unemployment in Europe,

193 PANAYOTA GOUNARI taking the reigns from Spain. The ongoing war on the public good has resulted in rampant unemployment, massive layoffs, and often a hostage situation for many employees who have no alternative but to become “flexible labor,” take a major cut in their income, and lose their benefits. The implementation of exhausting, cutthroat neoliberal austerity measures has relegated the economy to continuous stagnation and recession. As of March 2012, recession had reached -7.5% and the Greek economy has been disintegrating along with the social fabric. At the same time, bankruptcies and closing of small and medium-size businesses are in steady increase. The IMF/European Central Bank recipe is generating wealth in the global financial casino, while 31% of Greeks live at risk of poverty, according to Eurostat (2012). These statistics put Greece in seventh place in poverty percentages among the 27 EU countries. More specifically, in Greece 28.7% of children up to 17 years old, 27.7% of population between the ages 27-64, and 26.7% of Greeks over 65 years old live in the poverty threshold. There is an 11.8% increase in child poverty raising the number of poor children to 465,000 in 2011 (Greek National Committee of UNICEF, 2013). The Greek social and welfare state has been collapsing through draconian cuts in wages and pensions, massive layoffs and the violation of vested rights, of labor laws and of collective bargaining rights. All collective bargaining expired on May 14 2013, and it has been be replaced by individual contracts where workers will become hostages of their employers. Base salary went tumbling down to 500 Euros monthly (400 for young people) not to mention a retroactive salary cut of 22% (32% for youth) in February 2012. On March 2013 the government announced additional pension cuts of up to 20%. According to the Labor Institute of the National Confederation of Greek Workers (2012), new measures dictated by the Troika will lead to at least a 35% deterioration of salaried employees’ and pensioners’ lives. As an example, since the beginning of 2011, 113,268 people have disconnected their telephone landlines in order to decrease expenses. With a 19% increase in the cost of electricity, 350,000 people now live without electricity in Athens. Additional taxes on property have ravaged the middle class that is now “paying rent” in their own houses through new taxes and fines imposed. Quality of life is radically deteriorating for Greek people. In listening to all the convoluted and elaborate financial analyses in perfect “economese,” especially those that try to legitimize the violent financial assault on middle and working class households in Greece, I am reminded of the late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s insistence on always keeping in mind the “human consequences,” the “social costs” of economic decisions. Can any policy that translates into lost jobs, homelessness, suffering, sickness, suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence, and child poverty be legitimate? The neoliberal state is inherently anti-social, anti-welfare and hostile to any and all forms of social solidarity (Harvey, 2006, p. 25).

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PEOPLE AS THINGS: OBEDIENCE Flash-back to a long walk wandering in the streets of Athens: Beyond the obvious shrinking of the public space, with the increased presence of armed police in every corner, the city is more quiet, almost solemn in its desperation. Even the passengers’ gait is different, their feet dragging slightly, as if even walking requires an extra effort. Eyes filled with anger, forced scared smiles. Urban spaces are changing under crisis and the human practices in those spaces are being contained, inhibited, and prohibited. Public space does not engulf protest and demonstrations, it is to be kept neat, sterilized and quiet so as not to disrupt the established order. It should come as no surprise that the state repressive mechanisms are now pre-emptively policing any manifestation of public defiance. How does a system “manage” a population that has reached the edge of their humanity? How does “order-building” work to produce “human waste”? How do people become complacent to their own destruction? How is it that after five years of cutthroat austerity measures and a radical decline in the quality of life for the vast majority of people in Greece, dissent and resistance are still contained and controlled? As Bauman (2004) has noted, the production of “human waste” or wasted humans is “an inevitable outcome of ‘order-building’ (each order casts some parts of the extant population as ‘out of place,’ ‘unfit’ or ‘undesirable’) and of economic progress (that cannot proceed without degrading and devaluing the previously effective modes of ‘making a living’ and therefore cannot but deprive their practitioners of their livelihood)” (p. 5). In order to go forward with “order building” free-market ideologues need to create the perfect setting for their ambitions. According to Naomi Klein (2008), apocalyptic landscapes are the only hospitable sites for such ambitions: For 35 years, what has animated Friedman’s counter-revolution is an attraction to a kind of freedom available only in times of cataclysmic change ––when people, with their stubborn habits and insistent demands, are blasted out of the way––moments when democracy seems a practical impossibility. Believers in the shock doctrine are convinced that only a great rupture––a flood, a war, a terrorist attack––can generate the kind of vast, clean canvases they crave. It is in these malleable moments, when we are psychologically unmoored and physically uprooted, that these artists of the real plunge in their hands and begin their work of remaking the world. (p. 25) Given the rapacity and aggression with which neoliberal policies are being implemented, there is in Greece the kind of “psychologically unmoored” and “physically uprooted” population in a very vulnerable position to accept the imposition without a fight. Even though according to Fromm, obedience can be established by sheer force, there are many disadvantages in this method because a) the force configuration might shift in the hands of the many, and b) many kinds of work cannot be done properly if nothing but fear is behind obedience. Hence “the obedience must be rooted in one’s heart and not imposed by fear. Man must want and even need to obey, instead of only fearing to disobey” (p. 10). Both fear and

195 PANAYOTA GOUNARI force have been used in the Greek context to preserve obedience and consent. There is a notion among Greek people that if they obey they will avoid the worst, being unable to see themselves as actually living the worst. Greeks, with few exceptions (anti-fascist movements, anti-capitalist left frontal movements, solidarity groups and so forth) have been complicit in their own dehumanization because obeying makes them feel safe and protected: “my obedience makes me part of the power I worship and hence I feel strong. I can make no error since it decides for me” (Fromm, 1981, p. 8). It is a challenging and complicated task to try to explain Greek people’s lack of organized resistance the last five years given the radical deterioration of their living conditions. There is almost a reconciliation with death looming everywhere, people are slowly getting used to terror. The initial manifestations, gatherings in squares, protests and other acts of disobedience did not acquire a more organized and consistent character, despite the small victories locally and the existence of a movement that struggles on many levels and sites daily. The power elites used the initial shock and paralysis to spread fear. Fear reifies people. They no longer create or decide about the social order they live in, they are instead objects of a pregiven social order. Klein maintains that “the systemic use of shock and fear by the power elites to undermine vulnerable communities is very much evident in post-bailout Greece” (Klein, 2013). As Klein has demonstrated (2008), business interests and power elites exploit shocks in the form of natural disasters, economic problems, or political turmoil, as an opportunity to aggressively restructure vulnerable countries’ economies. She claims that popular resistance and dissent are squashed through symbolic and material fear and violence ranging from “catastrophic” discourses in the media to very real torture and repression. Shock helps the system implement anti-social and harmful policies that citizens would normally object to. Being in a state of shock as a country, says Klein, means losing your narrative, being unable to understand where you are in space and time. The state of shock is easy to exploit because people become vulnerable and confused. They are robbed of their vital tools for understanding themselves and their position in the sociopolitical context. People become unalive things and the market becomes alive. Fromm (1976) is again illuminating here. He stresses that people do not cling to life when it is threatened. For example, people often remain in total inertia in the face of a catastrophe: while in our private life nobody except a mad person would remain passive in view of a threat to our total existence, those who are in charge of public affairs do practically nothing, and those who have entrusted their fate to them let them continue to do nothing. (p. 10) While people become things, things, in turn, become people. While people are slowly losing their humanity with the government abandoning its social and welfare functions, the “markets” are becoming the new referent people should care and worry about, as if it were something alive. Markets while being lifeless things, are acquiring a soul and a character in the neoliberal discourse. One can observe an

196 NEOLIBERALISM AS SOCIAL NECROPHILIA interesting phenomenon in the official government discourse, loyally reproduced by mainstream media: a continuous attempt to ascribe human properties to markets. This is along the lines of administering “things and men as one” (Fromm 1963, p. 22). The “market” as a noun, subject or object, is projected as the overarching authority, above and beyond everybody, the entity that should be kept happy and satisfied. The anthropomorphism of the market is illustrated when “markets” are used in the mainstream media in sentences such as “the markets showed satisfaction today” or “the market is struggling,” and “we need to convince the markets” “we should appease the markets” or “let’s wait and see how the markets respond.” While this entity remains obscure, vague and undefined in the collective mind, the moment things get out of control, there is really no concrete constituency to assume responsibility. The invisible market’s “reactions” give legitimacy to the “human sacrifices,” as all “market feelings” depend on increasing anti-social austerity measures that relegate a large part of Greek productive population in the unemployment trashcan. Beyond all the mythology about self- regulation and naturalness of a highly economic realm, real markets are definitely not people and they are highly political. They are constituted of “systems of rules and regulations made and enforced by both state and non-state agencies, including market actors themselves.” Markets are complex, they are typically linked to wide range of other markets and they are also “‘embedded’ […] in a vast range of other social relations” finally, they are inherently unstable, from the nature of competition itself” (Leys, 2001, p. 3). More importantly, the more human qualities are attributed to the markets, the more real people are robbed off their own human substance. It seems as if the system needs to dehumanize people in order to “humanize” the market and then, possibly re-humanize them in the new market society, as a new kind of people robbed by any sense of agency: The individual becomes a number, transforms himself into a thing. But just because there is no overt authority, because he is not “forced” to obey, the individual is under the illusion that he acts voluntarily that he follows only “rational” authority. Who can disobey the “reasonable”? […] who can disobey when he is not even aware of obeying? (Fromm, 1981, p. 22) Fromm’s discussion on obedience and freedom can further serve as a hermeneutic tool for the current apathy of the majority of Greeks in the face of the destruction of their lives. In 2008 when Greece was forced to resort to the IMF mechanism, it was portrayed as a disobedient country of the European South with unruly and disorganized citizens who constantly broke the law and were in need of discipline. The “discipline” and “civilizing mission” in neo-colonial terms, came from the law-abiding European North (Germany) and was used as a tool for “growth” and alignment with the other orderly European member states. There are however, two issues here: Greek people were not unruly, at least, no more unruly than any other people in Europe. Largely constructed by Greek and European media, fiscal and civil disobedience were used as an excuse for bringing in the IMF as a policing mechanism that would straighten things up and bring order back.

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The kind of obedience required by the “disciplined” European North requires an “authoritarian conscience,” that is, the internalized voice of an authority, the obedience to outside thoughts and power, one that tends to debilitate “humanistic conscience,” that is, our intuitive knowledge to know what’s human and inhuman, the ability to be and to judge oneself, the voice that calls us back to our selves and to our humanity” (Fromm, 1981, p. 7). In other words, it requires of Greek people to submit to their own destruction and sell off their country, to lose the capacity to disobey, so they are not even aware of the fact that they obey. Fromm uses two telling examples, the myths of Adam and Eve on one hand, and Prometheus on the other, who through their disobedience started human history. He claims that humans developed spiritually and intellectually exactly because they were able to say no to the powers that be; therefore, submission to the same powers can only mean spiritual and intellectual death. As a result, says Fromm, (1981) “Human history begun with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience” (p. 1). Here we need to understand that obedience and disobedience are in a dialectical relationship as illustrated, for example, in Antigone’s story: by disobeying the inhuman laws of the State, she obeyed the laws of humanity. Every act of disobedience includes an act of obedience to something else. In a very real sense, this kind of disobedience is connected with a notion of human agency. A person can become free through acts of disobedience by learning to say no to power. But not only is the capacity for disobedience the condition for freedom: freedom is also the condition for disobedience. If I am afraid of freedom, I cannot dare to say “no,” I cannot have the courage to be disobedient. Indeed, freedom and the capacity for disobedience are inseparable; hence any social, political and religious system which proclaims freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot speak the truth. (Fromm, 1981, p. 9) Disobedience should set people free and help them to break out of a preconceived order and heteronomy. From this discussion so far, it becomes clear that disobedience means different things for the dominant system and the power elites, and for the people. In the collective consciousness disobedience sets people free, embodies what it means to be human. In the dominant narrative, it robs people of their humanity and automatizes them. On one hand we have obedience to a person, institution or power (heteronomous obedience) that translates to submission: “it implies the abdication of my autonomy and the acceptance of a foreign will or judgment in place of my own” (Fromm, 1981, p. 5). On the other hand, “obedience to my own reason or conviction (autonomous obedience) is not an act of submission but one of affirmation” (p. 5). In the case of Greece we also have what Fromm calls “irrational authority,” as in the “relationship between the slave and the master. The slave owner wants to exploit the slave as much as possible. The interests of master and slave are antagonistic” (Fromm, 1981, p. 7). Authoritarian political systems continue to

198 NEOLIBERALISM AS SOCIAL NECROPHILIA make obedience the human cornerstone of their existence. What would it mean then for Greeks to disobey to this irrational authority? In order to answer this question we need to revert to Fromm’s discussion on hope.

HOPE AMIDST THE POLITICS OF HOPELESSNESS In the current politics of hopelessness, gloom and doom in Greece, “most people are quite ready to denounce faith in man’s improvement as unrealistic; but they do not recognize that despair is often just as unrealistic” (Fromm, 1973, p. 484). I believe that any work that draws from Erich Fromm’s theory can only have meaning when it includes a discussion on hope in the direction of a socialist humanism. Fromm has provided a theoretical framework for hope, a concept that is inextricably connected to human agency, as the capacity to extricate oneself from what seems the fatal web of circumstances that he has created. It is the position of neither optimists nor pessimists but radicals who have rational faith in man’s capacity to avoid the ultimate catastrophe. This humanist radicalism goes to the roots and thus to the causes; it seeks to liberate man from the chains of illusions. (Fromm, 1973, p. 485) What is important and valuable in Fromm’s theorizing of hope is that it is not a Pollyannaish concept that vaguely describes what it means to think positively. It is an organic construct, grounded on the dialectics between the social and the individual, the material conditions and the social aspirations. In his work, hope is a paradox. It is neither a somnolent reformism nor a form of pseudo-adventurism. It is not a passive hope that submits to prohibitions and just waits to be allowed to a better state. It is not hope for time, neither the worship of the future; it does not ask for a time extension for what’s to happen (this would actually constitute the alienation of hope). Hope does not exist without human intervention, and passive waiting is a form of covered up desperation and incapacity (Fromm, 1973, 1976, 1978). To have hope, claims Fromm, means to cease being an observer. We are part of the situations we observe, we are engaged and our faith is rooted in our relatedness with the situation, “it is a blend of knowledge and participation. Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair” (1973, p. 483). Fromm goes on to make a great distinction between optimists and pessimists that is applicable in the current state of affairs in Greece. The “optimists” on the one hand are the believers in the dogma of continuous progress. They consider the current humanitarian crime as a necessary step towards progress and they identify human achievement with economic achievement, human freedom with freedom from coercion, from the state and the markets’ freedom to regulate as they choose. They do not worry much about the social costs because they “see” a better society emerging from chaos. They are actually unable to see their submission to their own destruction as part of the “success story.” However, there is a paradox here: “how

199 PANAYOTA GOUNARI those technically advanced people can be so savage in exploiting other people at the same time when they can go to the moon?” (Fromm 1973, p. 484) On the other hand, we have the pessimists who deem that the fate of this country and of humanity, in general, is little of their concern. They do not feel despair because it would affect their comfortable lives. They become cynical in order to remain tightly closed in their apathy and inertia. Fromm stresses that “while their pessimism functions largely to protect the pessimists from any inner demand to do something by projecting the idea that nothing can be done, the optimists defend themselves against the same inner demand by persuading themselves that everything is moving in the right direction anyway, so nothing needs to be done (p. 485). Clearly, both positions are inherently problematic because, in essence, they do not move people to subjectivity positions where they might intervene in the current state of affairs. Greeks’ gloomy reality and the ways it has been constructed discursively have prevented them from thinking outside the imposed neoliberal order. The ongoing dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and desperation, as a generalized negative condition has not instilled a desire for new directions, for reorienting ideas, renewing values, ending dehumanization and so forth. In Greek people’s quest to find their lost narrative, to ‘renarrativise’ themselves in a collective way (Klein, 2012) the ability to consciously disobey and to fill the concept of hope with a real, feasible political project are two very important imperatives. To paraphrase Fromm, at this point in Greek history “the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey” may be all that stands between the future for this country and its end (1981). Here disobedience should be distinct from rebelliousness as reaction without a clear political content. The capacity to be disobedient lies in one’s capacity to obey their conscience and the principles they have chosen. While in acute crisis contexts people often develop anger and rage, Arendt (1971) points out that rage is not an automatic reaction to misery and suffering as such. That is, rage does not emerge in all dehumanizing conditions by default. Only where “there is reason to suspect that conditions could be changed and are not does rage arise. Only when our sense of justice is offended do we react with rage” (p. 63). In articulating a political project and a narrative against neoliberal necrophilia there is a need to move beyond the pessimist/optimist dichotomy and put at the center critical and radical thought that, when blended with the most precious quality man is endowed with—the love of life, will bear fruit. Instead of getting confined in reforming or amending the current situation, people need to strive to imagine that which is not, desire it and work hard to make it happen. Disobedience with a clear political content can function at many levels of public life because “is not primarily an attitude directed against something, but for something: for man’s capacity to see, to say what he sees, and to refuse to say what he does not see. To do so he does not need to be aggressive or rebellious; he needs to have his eyes open, to be fully awake, and willing to take the responsibility to open the eyes of those who are in danger of perishing because they are half asleep” (1981, p. 24). It is important for Greek people to not only feel the suffering but also understand it, identify its sources and be able to recognize that there are ways this

200 NEOLIBERALISM AS SOCIAL NECROPHILIA could change if hope acquires meaning, content and actions. Or as Fromm (1973) notes, “to have faith means to dare, to think the unthinkable, yet to act within the limits of the realistically possible; […] This hope is not passive and it is not patient; on the contrary, it is impatient and active, looking for every possibility of action within the realm of real possibilities” (p. 485).

REFERENCES

Alderman, L. (2013, April 17). More children in Greece are going hungry. The New York Times. Arendt, H. (1971). On violence. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace & Company. Arendt, H. (1973). Origins of totalitarianism. New York, NY: Harvest Books. Bauman, Z. (2004). Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Edmonds, L. (2013, April 26). Is Greece in shock? Naomi Klein tells enet how her bestseller The shock doctrine relates to Greece. Eleytherotypia Online. Eurostat (2012, December 3). In 2011, 24% of the population were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Eurostat Newsrelease. Eurozone Unemployment reaches new high (2013, January 8). BBC retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20943292. Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Fromm, E. (1976). To have or to be? New York, NY: Continuum. Fromm, E. (1978). The revolution of hope. Athens, Greece: Boukoumanis. Fromm, E. (2010/1981). On disobedience. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. Gounari, P. (2012). Neoliberalizing higher education in Greece: New laws, old free-market tricks. Power and Education, 4(3), 278-289. Gounari, P. (2006). Contesting the cynicism of neoliberal discourse: Moving towards a language of possibility. Studies in Language and Capitalism, 1, 77-96. Giroux, H. (2008). Against the terror of neoliberalism politics beyond the age of greed. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Greek National Committee of UNICEF. (2003). State of children in Greece 2013. Athens: Greece. Hall, S., Massey, D. & Rustin, M. (2013). After neoliberalism: analyzing the present. In S. Hall, D. Massey, & M. Rustin (Eds.), After neoliberalism? The Kilburn manifesto. London, UK: Soundings. Harvey, D. (2006). Spaces of global capitalism. London, UK: Verso. Henley, J. (2013, May 15). Recessions can hurt but austerity kills. http://www.theguardian.com/ society/2013/may/15/recessions-hurt-but-austerity-kills INE GSEE/ADEDY. (2012). Greek economy and employment: Yearly report 2012. Athens, Greece. Klein, N. (2008). The shock doctrine. New York, NY: Henry Holt. Leys, C. (2001). Market driven politics: neoliberal democracy and the public interest. London: Verso. Sotiris, P. (2012). The downsizing of a country. Retrieved from http://lastingfuture.blogspot.gr/ 2012/09/greece-downsizing-of-country.html.

Panayota Gounari The University of Massachusetts, Boston

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13. HOPE—FAITH—FORTITUDE Æ PRAXIS

Retheorizing U.S. Schooling with Erich Fromm

RECONSIDERING THE PURPOSE OF SCHOOLING IN A DIGITAL, CONSUMERIST SOCIETY As we scan the literature about the history of education in the United States, we can easily see many lengthy debates around the purpose of education stretching back centuries, as far back as Horace Mann’s common school movement in the 1830s and beyond (Kleibard, 1995). Should schools educate for a democratic citizenry (Dewey, 2011)? Should they prepare youth for their place in the workforce? Should education serve the public or private interests of the populace (Labaree, 1997)? Should education facilitate social change in the name of equity and justice (Duncan-Andrade & Morell, 2008)? These are just some of the long- standing questions. Consequently, public schools around the U.S. have seen countless reform efforts of various types, some quite innovative (e.g., during the progressive movement) and others less so (e.g., the “back to basics” movement of the 1980s) (Cremin, 1989). Structurally, what has continued to dominate U.S. schooling as an institution is the “factory model” that was spawned in the mid- 1800s during the Industrial Revolution (Urban & Wagoner, 2009). Schools of this sort mimic the factory assembly line as students shuffle from subject to subject signaled by the ringing of a bell (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Despite the fact that we are no longer in the Industrial Age, and even though contemporary U.S. society is quite unlike the 1800s, public education today bears a striking resemblance to public education of the past (Cole, 2005), albeit, perhaps with different curriculum and newer technologies. As Tyack and Cuban (1999) note, somehow the “grammar of schooling” persists even as times have changed. In the contemporary moment, the schools of yesteryear are not necessarily preparing students for their role in society (Ravitch, 2010). Issues like sustainability and climate change (Martusewicz, Edmundson, & Lupinacci, 2011), international relations (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2004), increasing wealth disparity (Portes, 2005) and the like have lurched to the forefront of conversations around the role of education in the post-industrial Western world. Moreover, with the proliferation of digital technologies and ubiquitous mobile devices, numerous researchers (e.g., Trilling & Fadel, 2009; Berk, 2010; Wan & Gut, 2011) have been calling for changes that “upgrade” schooling in the U.S. to reflect the contemporary digital age as opposed to the industrial society, which birthed the “factory model” of schooling. Citing research about how people learn, Resnick

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 203–214. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. TRICIA M. KRESS & PATRICIA M. PATRISSY

(2002), for example, calls into question the lock-step factory model of schooling in which students are regarded as passive objects, shaped by the schooling machine and turned out as certified “products.” He counters, learning is not a simple matter of information transmission. Teachers cannot simply pour information into the heads of learners; rather, learning is an active process in which people construct new understandings of the world around them through active exploration, experimentation, discussion, and reflection. In short: people don’t get ideas; they make them. (n.p.) Yet, we still have a model of education that supports this outdated logic, particularly as we consider the trends of uber-standardization and high-stakes testing (Gorlewski, Porfilio, & Gorlewski, 2012), both devices that enforce industrial “input-output” logic that researchers like Resnick deem antiqued and ineffective. In this chapter, it is our goal to reconsider the purpose of education in the contemporary moment, in which we are witnessing in the United States a point of contact between the technology of public schooling and an increasingly digitized, consumerist, society. Specifically, we are approaching the present moment as digital and technological, yes, but also a time when we desperately need to reconnect with our humanity as we are faced with increasing challenges that emerge from living in a post-industrial, globalizing world. In this regard, we follow in the footsteps of humanistic education philosophers such as Paulo Freire, Nel Noddings, and Maxine Greene. However, we seek to enrich their ideas specifically in relation to schooling as a technology of society that objectifies young people, stamping them into marketable products that are either deemed suitable for consumption by the capitalist global marketplace or discarded as “industrial waste” into low wage jobs and the penal system. It is our position that the work of Erich Fromm, especially his book The Revolution of Hope (1962), lends insight into the digital age and our role in it as educators. Fromm’s work preceded and in some cases informed the philosophers listed above. In fact, he was influential in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Lake & Dagostino, 2013). Therefore, we find it imperative to consider the ways in which Fromm speaks to the human condition in the digital age, which allows for oppression to continue, consciously and unconsciously, at the hands of the privileged. By engaging Fromm’s humanism, we seek to unravel the ways in which contemporary schooling, as a particular technology born and bred from the Taylorist logic of the Industrial Revolution, feeds into the continuing (and some might argue deepening) alienation of the digital, consumerist society. Fromm’s work also provides us with conceptual tools for reclaiming the humanity in society by reconnecting to the humanity in ourselves. If we infuse this into our understanding of educational praxis we can develop a rich, humanistic consciousness that will provide us a means for changing the current system of education (and thereby society) from within.

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SCHOOLING AS A TECHNOLOGY In very simple terms, technology is machinery or equipment created by man to assist in meeting various needs (Hansen & Froelich, 1994). Often, we think of technology as computers, communication technologies, appliances, vehicles, and mechanical devices, but our world is also filled with technologies that we take for granted, such as pen and paper, chalk and blackboards, desks and chairs—even our language, while not often thought of as such, is in itself a technology. When introduced into a culture, technology is neither inherently good nor bad, and it brings with it both advantages and disadvantages. However, as Postman (1992) points out, “the uses made of any technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself,” and once introduced into a culture, technologies will have a shaping effect, even as cultures shape the adoption and uses of technologies. For instance, if we take into consideration recent digital technologies, particularly web-based technologies, we can immediately begin to see how technology and culture recursively influence one another. One need only think of the impact of social media on everything from politics to fashion to education. Web-based technologies have changed our language and ways of expressing ourselves and our understandings of home/work boundaries and time. Indeed technology, whatever it is, will have an impact in the world once it is introduced. And as Postman (1992) further asserts, “once a technology is admitted, it plays out its hand; that is it does what it is designed to do” (p. 7). If we consider schooling (as opposed to education) as a technology, to understand its uses we need to understand its structure and function but we also need to understand the values it was built to reflect. As Postman (1992) explains, “embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing over another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another” (p. 13). And because the technologies we design emerge from ideologies, which of course reflect particular ways of seeing the world, some people are advantaged by these technologies while others are disadvantaged. To reiterate in the words of Postman (1992), “the benefits and deficits of any new technology are not distributed equally. There are as it were, winners and losers” (p. 9). Therefore, depending upon who is telling the story, schooling has ostensibly served various purposes throughout history. For the purposes of this discussion, there are two common threads that are particularly useful for helping us to understand how we might use Fromm to recast this antiquated technology known as schooling as a mechanism for assimilation/ normalization (i.e., sameness) and social engineering and social efficiency. Certainly, there is not consensus that those listed above are the sole purposes of schooling; a number of authors would argue that schooling in the U.S. also is meant to educate a democratic citizenry (see Labaree, 1997; Portes, 2005; Ravitch, 2010). We do not disagree; however, in countless studies about the “achievement gap” (e.g., Kober, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 2006; Lee, 2002), there is irrefutable evidence that public schooling in the U.S. (historically and presently) is not the same for all students; specifically, students who are ethnic minorities or come from

205 TRICIA M. KRESS & PATRICIA M. PATRISSY lower-income backgrounds have been and continue to be disadvantaged by public schooling in the U.S. (Portes, 2005). Portes (2005) explains, “the failure to educate some cultural groups is an established cultural practice. The system is designed, financed, and organized to tolerate educational practices that leave certain groups or populations of students forever behind” (pp. 5-6). Researchers like Spring (2008) and Duncan-Andrade and Morrell (2008) concur with this “unequal by design” reading of U.S. schooling. This implores us to re-examine schools as technology through a humanist lens because, as Fromm (1968) explains, “the danger is that if technology is permitted to follow its own logic, it will become a cancerlike growth, eventually threatening the structured system of individual and social life” (Fromm, 1968, p. 3). Moreover, given the break-neck speed at which standardization and high stakes testing has run rampant through U.S. education over the past decade, we believe we are at a critical moment where this examination is imperative. Echoing Turkle (2011), we assert, “every technology provides an opportunity to ask, ‘does it serve our human purposes?’” This then leads us to reconsider what those purposes are. While of course there are variations between different schools, and schooling looks different in different locations around the country, broadly speaking, the technology of schooling is underpinned by positivistism, Taylorism1 and social Darwinism (Kincheloe, 2010). In this belief system, the world is finite and measurable. All things can be broken down into their discrete parts in order to understand their universal laws, and life comprises a continual struggle and competition for survival. Within this logic, “there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress” (Postman, 1992, p. 42). In the technology of schooling, this logic is enforced through additional technologies such as: 1) a bureaucratic management framework that can be thought of as a blending of Weber’s theory of the ideal bureaucracy and (social) engineering discourse that emerged in the U.S. during the Industrial Revolution and beyond (Shenhav, 2003), and 2) accounting and measurement techniques like IQ testing in the past and state-wide standardized tests in the present (Kincheloe, Steinberg, & Tippins, 1999; Kincheloe, 2010). This logic (and therefore its embedded values) can be seen quite easily in the design and daily function of schools. For example, students are sorted into age and ability groups.2 Subject areas are divided and –––––––––––––– 1 Developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s within the manufacturing industries, the goal of Taylorism (the first form of scientific management) was to apply principles of engineering to the workplace, specifically labor productivity. Taylor believed that by streamlining the efficiency of the factory workers managers could minimize waste and maximize profits. While Taylorism is no longer seen as the best way to run businesses, it has made an indelible print on industry in the United States. Standardization of best practices, empiricism, efficiency, work ethic and mass production are just some of Tayloristic notions that also shape U.S. schooling. 2 While overt “tracking” is no longer favorable in public discourse about education, there continue to be de facto sorting techniques by way of “magnet schools,” “honors tracks,” and Advanced Placement courses. In addition, many school districts have gifted and talented programs and high schools that require placement exams. These “special” programs serve to track students, often along race and class lines.

206 HOPE—FAITH—FORTITUDEÆPRAXIS taught independently from each other. Each subject is given a specific amount of time allotted in a day (often less than one hour). Students are required to take examinations, independently, to measure how much of the required course content they have retained, and they are then ranked against each other. Despite what contemporary reform rhetoric may say about celebrating diversity, educating the whole child, and promoting 21st century skills in our schools, contemporary education reforms around standardization and testing simply reinforce the industrial logic that has been around for centuries, and in doing so, they reward “sameness” and “efficiency.” In the same turn, dispositions like risk taking, collaboration, divergent thinking, and creativity may in effect be discouraged or even punished when students are penalized on exams for not thinking in a way that tests are designed to measure.

INTRODUCING FROMM’S HUMANISM: TOWARDS BIOPHILIA IN SCHOOLING It is easy to lament the state of the technological society and its institutions, like schools, that seem at times to cause as much harm as they do good. In many respects, what we are seeing today in the hyper-standardization and testing movement appears to demonstrate faith in measurement and numbers, and a lack of faith in people (teachers and students alike). As Postman notes, Tayloristic logic is “the first clear statement of the idea that society is best served when human beings are placed at the disposal of their techniques and technology, that human beings are, in a sense, worth less than their machinery” (Postman, 1992, p. 52). And while the tenor of school reform still champions the input-output industrial logic, it has long been known that this factory model of schooling does not work for all students, perhaps not even most students, although many more “succeed”3 overall than don’t. There is the obvious problem of disadvantaging particular groups of students, but in addition, there is also the question of whether this technology allows for educating all students toward more humanistic ends. For example, authors like Au (2007) note the effects of this reform on “curriculum narrowing” which tends to squeeze “extras” like art, music, and elective subjects out of the school day, especially in schools serving disadvantaged groups of students. In addition, non-tested subjects (like foreign languages and science and social studies in some regions) may take a back seat to subjects like reading and math, which could impact students’ preparedness to be global citizens as well as hinder their understanding of history, geography and the natural world. Finally, the focus on measurable answers and “covering the curriculum” can stymie teachers’ attempts to promote critical thinking and to teach alternative perspectives that do not appear on exams. All of these problems lay the groundwork for perpetuating and

–––––––––––––– 3 “Succeed” is used loosely here to indicate success according to the pre-determined outcome measures of the system itself. It is our position that for many students, and even for those who are “successful,” this type of education falls short because learning is reduced to test scores and testable information and skills.

207 TRICIA M. KRESS & PATRICIA M. PATRISSY exacerbating the very social issues that schooling purports to address (e.g., environmental issues, international relations, and increasing wealth disparity). Fromm’s work is especially useful here because as he explains, “By introducing the human factor into the analysis of the whole system, we are better prepared to understand its dysfunctioning and to define norms which relate the healthy functioning of the social system to the optimal well-being of the people who participate in it” (Fromm, 1968, p. 4). Furthermore, in The Revolution of Hope, Fromm deals with questions of technology and efficiency head-on and in relation to the tendency in the technological, consumerist society to privilege the individual over the collective and having over being. If schooling as a technology mimics these larger systemic social trends, then it assists in reproducing the same “sick” society that Fromm was writing about fifty years ago. Despite the fact that there are pockets of hope in schooling, where students are learning to be productive members of a more humane global society, this cannot be said to be the case overall, and one might wonder if the reproduction of social ills might cancel out the potential good that occurs. Yet, at the same time, Fromm does not disregard modern society and its technologies entirely. Instead, he sees it as our responsibility to interrogate and correct the machinery of society if it is proving to be detrimental to our well being. Fromm explicitly addresses notions of efficiency and progress in industry and production and how these obsessions lead to the prioritizing of non-living social systems and structures at the expense of more biophilic concerns like people’s development into fulfilled, purposeful human beings. Particularly relevant to rethinking the technology of schooling is the tendency to link progress, efficiency and mechanistic activity with intelligence or knowledge, which is reified through national education policies like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top in which the markers of good (or not) schools, bright (or not) students, and effective (or not) teachers are reduced to scores on standardized exams. As Fromm (1968) explains, The tendency to install technical progress as the highest value is linked up not only with our overemphasis on intellect, but, most importantly, with a deep emotional attraction to the mechanical, to all that is not alive, to all that is man-made. The attraction to the non-alive, which is in its more extreme form an attraction to death and decay (necrophilia), leads even in its less drastic form to indifference towards life instead of ‘reverence for life.’ Those who are attracted to the non-alive are people who prefer ‘law and order’ to living structure, bureaucratic to spontaneous methods, gadgets to living beings, repetition to originality, neatness to exuberance, hoarding to spending. They want to control life because they are afraid of its uncontrollable spontaneity. (pp. 42-43) Fromm also notes that efficiency and production imply each other. To maximize production, the process of production must become evermore efficient, leading to newer and better products. This leads to a continuous process of striving for perfection that can never be achieved, consuming more at a faster pace in order to produce more at a faster pace, with the expectation that there will be a continual

208 HOPE—FAITH—FORTITUDEÆPRAXIS refinement of better products that society can consume. The logic is circular, and when applied to schooling, it can have particularly deleterious effects because there is no end goal; the target is always moving as progress demands more and better production. In schooling, we see this play out in the standardization and testing movement. Ostensibly, standardized measures can provide an objective snapshot of students’ mastery of standardized curricular content because all students are subjected to the same curriculum and the same evaluation. Underlying this is a leaning toward social engineering and quality control; as if students were genetically modified plants, made to be precisely the same, they are exposed to the same conditions, and therefore they should experience the same amount of growth as measured by exams. There are numerous problems with this assumption (not the least of which are troubling ideas about control and uniformity), but in the context of this discussion, we will take on one major issue: students are not measured against themselves and their own individual growth over time. Standardized tests are typically normed, which means that students are measured against each other at a particular moment in time in a bell curve. This type of measurement assures that there is always a small group of high achievers on one end, a small group of low achievers on the other end, and most students who are considered “average” in the middle. If the bell curve distorts and there are too many high achievers or low achievers and not enough students in the middle, this does not indicate that the high achieving students have achieved mastery or the failing students did not; it indicates a faulty measurement. If most students were to achieve mastery (or conversely most students failed), then the test must be rewritten so that the proper percent of students will fall into each place of the bell curve. This means that on a normed assessment, there can never be 100% students at mastery; some students must fail and most students must be average. Therefore, what it means to achieve mastery necessarily continues to increase in difficulty or content as students strive toward mastery. In effect, students can learn more at a faster pace and still appear to be “failing” or “average” because they are normed into the bell curve. The underlying values that emerge when this technology is put into practice reflect Taylorist logic as a means of making “progress”; there can never be an end to the goal of production, because it is through this refinement that we will continue to make “better” products, “better” people, and a “better” society. This type of industrial logic harkens back to the likes of Adam Smith and his famous pin factory (Hatch & Cunliffe, 2006). If we consider the work of Fromm in light of standardization and testing in schooling, we can begin to see the problems with applying this industrial logic to human beings. Fromm, however, does not denounce efficiency altogether, but he critiques the meaning of “efficiency” and demands that it be contextualized within the system to which it is being applied. He explains, “efficiency is desirable in any kind of purposeful activity. But it should be examined in terms of the larger systems, of which the system under study is only a part; it should take account of the human factor within the system” (Fromm, 1968, p. 35). When the logic of industrial, consumerist efficiency is overlaid onto schooling, it is easy to forget that unlike Adam Smith’s factory,

209 TRICIA M. KRESS & PATRICIA M. PATRISSY schools are not producing pins, they are producing people. Therefore, what is efficient for creating more pins in a factory may very well be inefficient for developing educated citizens in a school. Fromm explains this phenomenon in detail: If we are concerned with only input-output figures, a system may give the impression of efficiency. If we take into account what the given methods do to the human beings in the system, we may discover that they are bored, anxious, depressed, tense, etc. The result would be a twofold one: (1) Their imagination would be hobbled by their psychic pathology, they would be uncreative, their thinking would be routinized and bureaucratic, and hence they would contribute to a more productive development of the system; altogether their energy would be considerably lower … (2) They would suffer from many physical ills, which are the result of stress and tension; this loss in health is also a loss of the system. Furthermore, if one examines what this tension and anxiety do to them… it may turn out that for the system as a whole the seemingly efficient method is most inefficient, not only in human terms but also as measured by merely economic criteria. (Fromm, 1968, p. 35) The inefficiencies that Fromm notes are the direct consequence of dehumanization, that is, when people are treated as if they are objects that can be manipulated to achieve a particular desired outcome. In the context of students’ experiences in schools that operate under the threat of punitive sanctions for low test scores, learning to learn is a desirable byproduct that may happen but need not, because learning to correctly answer test questions is of utmost importance. The consequences of this for students are numerous: test anxiety, boredom, frustration, anger, and resentment (which may lead to acting out, skipping school, not taking school seriously, and even dropping out). On the teachers’ side, when test scores are taken wholesale as teacher evaluations (which is increasingly the case in a number of states), students’ performance on tests could impact whether or not they remain employed. This can lead to hesitation to try new pedagogies or take risks, strained relations with students, overemphasis on test preparation and even dishonesty in administering exams. Given these negative side effects, by looking at this technology through a humanist lens, standardized testing might actually be quite inefficient for teaching and learning. Much time and energy is lost in struggle because this technology does not leave room to acknowledge that “[m]an not only has a mind and is in need of a frame of orientation which permits him to make some sense of and to structuralize the world around him; he has also a heart and a body which need to be tied emotionally to the world—to man and nature” (Fromm, 1968, p. 65). In the logic of standardized testing, the humanity of the child or teacher in question becomes irrelevant in the quest for efficient means to higher (though elusory if not impossible) test score “progress.” Through the lens of Fromm’s humanism, when the circular logic of efficiency and progress is overlaid onto schooling vis-à-vis standards and high stakes testing we can also see that contemporary schooling functions in such a way as to

210 HOPE—FAITH—FORTITUDEÆPRAXIS maintain (in students and teachers) passivity and a disposition of “having” over “being.” With such continual striving toward impossible goals, teachers and students are compelled to be perpetually busy. For Fromm, however, busyness should not be mistaken for activity. As Fromm (1968) explains, “most people who think they are very active are not aware of the fact that they are intensely passive in spite of their ‘busyness’” (Fromm, 1968, p. 12). Passivity, or inaction, is not simply immobility or stasis; simply doing things doesn’t mean a person is active. Busyness can be understood as a form of passivity because it occupies our minds and our time and perpetuates what is at the expense of what might be otherwise, simply because we do not have time or energy to do otherwise. In Fromm’s (1968) words, “If all efforts are bent on doing more, the quality of living loses all importance, and activities that were once means become ends” (p. 36). As teachers and students strive toward obtaining and delivering more content and acquiring better test taking skills or better aligned teaching activities in order to have higher test scores, being learners and being teachers may be overshadowed by the efficiency-progress, consumerist imperative that is enforced through punitive sanctions. The teaching-learning act can too easily become stale, artificial, superficial, and non-human: “For as long as our planning is oriented toward a never-ending increase in production, our thinking and economic practices are influenced by this goal” (Fromm, 1968, p. 129).

HOPEÆ FAITHÆ FORTITUDEÆ PRAXIS: TOWARD A HUMANISTIC PEDAGOGY Fromm’s work exudes a profound belief in people to change the very systems that keep them in a passive state. The key to change lies in putting responsibility in the hands of teachers and learners by seeing them as whole, living, feeling and thinking beings, not simply automatons. As he explains, change can occur only if the split between emotional experience and thought is replaced by a new unity of heart and mind. This is not done by the method of reading the hundred great books—which is conventional and unimaginative. It can only be accomplished if the teachers themselves cease being bureaucrats hiding their own lack of aliveness behind their role of bureaucratic dispensers of knowledge; if they become—in a word, by Tolstoy—“the co-disciples of their students.” (Fromm, 1968, p. 115) This implies an active state where teacher and learner are no longer reduced to “dispenser” and “receptacle” but become co-learners who are alive and grow together. Therefore the first step in changing the current system of schooling from within involves changing how we relate to our students and the system itself. Fromm offers insight on how to begin to do this through his framework of hope, faith and fortitude. These three concepts, which are interconnected, provide an orientation toward re-humanizing ourselves and the systems in which we live and work, even when times are as bleak as they seem to be now. Fromm (1968) believes that we must first and foremost rekindle hope because it “is a psychic concomitant to life and growth” (p. 12). In this context, hope must be distinguished

211 TRICIA M. KRESS & PATRICIA M. PATRISSY from wishful thinking; it is not a simple wondering of what life might be like if things were different, nor is it fantasizing about impossibility. For Fromm (1968), “Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like the crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment has come” (p. 9). To be hopeful means to be expectant of and ready to seize moments for change on the horizon, even if they are small. Next, faith is a necessary accompaniment to hope: “Faith, like hope, is the vision of the present in a state of pregnancy” (Fromm, 1968, p. 13); in other words, to have faith means to be certain of possibility even in the face of uncertainty. While we cannot predict what the future brings, we know that there will be opportunities for change and that people can exert their energy and imagination to bring change to fruition: “Faith is based on our experience of living, of transforming ourselves. Faith that others can change is the outcome of the experience that I can change.” Hope and faith sustain each other: “Hope is the mood that accompanies faith…Hope can have no base except in faith” (Fromm, 1968, p. 14). Finally, Fromm emphasizes the importance of fortitude—the strength of will to not compromise our vision for the future nor transform our hope and faith “into empty optimism or irrational faith. Fortitude is the capacity to say ‘no’ when the world wants to hear ‘yes’” (Fromm, 1968, p. 15). By embodying these dispositions together, we have already begun to change the status quo because we refuse to accept the world as is, with its necrophilic tendencies towards crushing the human spirit. With a steadfast belief that the world can be otherwise and we are capable of making it so, we can begin examining the technologies that shape our daily practices, in this case the technology of schooling and testing technologies that reinforce mechanistic teaching and learning. Postman (1992) informs us, “New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of our community: the arena in which thoughts develop” (p. 20). Our praxis as educators, if it is to be transformative, must seek out the ways in which these technologies shape what we think about and how we engage with each other, and from there we can begin envisioning alternative possibilities. For example, in a classroom, a standardized test, instead of being a device that forces passivity in teachers and students, might be used instead as an object of examination. Teacher and students could collectively deconstruct the exam, reveal its underlying logic, and then relate this to a critical examination of the content material covered by the exam. An activity such as this could serve multiple purposes; it could: 1) teach students test-taking skills by allowing them to interpret the logic of the test makers and transpose this new understanding to other testing situations; 2) open opportunities to question why close-ended questioning is prioritized over open- ended questions in this medium and how this informs what it means to teach, learn and know; 3) raise conversations about “correctness” and how seeking singular right answers might distort and limit what and how we know about the world. Several researchers and educators (e.g., Ayers, 2008; Butin, 2007; Giroux, 2012) have referred to these times of uber-standardization and testing as “dark times,” and undoubtedly, when mechanistic logic of this sort is allowed to run

212 HOPE—FAITH—FORTITUDEÆPRAXIS rampant as it has for so long, it can seem like “dark times” indeed. We would be foolish to try to make the situation seem easily remedied; these policies are real and entrenched, and they do not seem to be near extinction any time soon. In Fromm’s (1968) words, “Habits and ways of thought do not bend easily, and since many powerful interest groups have a very real stake in maintaining and speeding up the consumption treadmill, the struggle to change the pattern will be hard and long. As has been said many times, the all-important point at this time is that we make a beginning” (p. 132). Despite this, we believe there is possibility for change and that change can happen in small ways by each of us from within the system itself. Our above ideas of how to repurpose a standardized test is just one example of how a technology that man4 has previously served could be used instead in the service of man, but we believe there are as many possibilities for change as there are innovative and creative teachers and students. In the words of Fromm (1968), “Precisely because man has awareness and imagination, and because he has the potential of freedom, he has an inherent tendency not to be as Einstein once put it ‘dice thrown out of the cup’” (p. 68). Thus, it is our responsibility, with hope, faith and fortitude, to reclaim our humanity and encourage the humanity of those with whom we work.

REFERENCES

Au, W. (2007). High stakes testing and curricular control: A qualitative metasynthesis. Educational Researcher, 36(5), 258-267. Ayers, W. (2008). Singing in dark times. The Journal of Educational Controversy, 3(1). Berk, R. A. (2010). How do you leverage the latest technologies, including Web 2.0 tools, in your classroom? International Journal of Technology in Teaching and Learning, 6(1), 1-13. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York, NY: Basic Books. Butin, D. W. (2007). Dark times indeed: NCATE, social justice, and the marginalization of multicultural foundations. The Journal of Educational Controversy, 2(2). Cole, M. (2005). Cross-cultural and historical perspectives on the developmental consequences of education. Human Development, 48: 195-216. Cremin, L. A. (1989). Popular education and its discontents. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers. Dewey, J. (2011). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. LaVergne, TN: Simon & Brown. Duncan-Andrade, J., & Morrell, E. (2008). The art of critical pedagogy: Possibilities for moving from theory to practice in urban schools. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Fromm, E. (1968). The revolution of hope: Toward a humanized technology. New York, NY: Harper & Row. Giroux, H. (2012). The war against teachers as public intellectuals in dark times. Truthout. Retrieved from http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13367-the-corporate-war-against-teachers-as-public- intellectuals-in-dark-times Hansen, R., & Froelich, M. (1994). Defining technology and technological education: A crisis, or cause for celebration? International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 4, 179-207. –––––––––––––– 4 We use the term “man” here rather than a gender inclusive term because in Revolution of Hope, Fromm refers to society as a “system of man.”

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Kincheloe, J. L. (2010). Knowledge and critical pedagogy: An introduction. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Kincheloe, J. L., & Steinberg, S. R. (2004). The miseducation of the West: How schools and the media distort our understanding of the Islamic World. Westport, CT: Praeger. Kincheloe, J. L., Steinberg, S. R., & Tippins, D. J. (1999). The stigma of genius: Einstein, consciousness, and education. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Kleibard, H. (1995). The struggle for the American curriculum: 1893-1958 (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Kober, N. (2001). It takes more than testing: Closing the achievement gap, a report of the Center of Education Policy. Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy. Labaree, D. (1997). How to succeed in school without really learning: The credentials race in American Education. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: Understanding achievement in U.S. schools. Educational Researcher, 35(7), 3-12. Lake, R., & Dagostino, V. (2013). Converging self/other awareness: Erich Fromm and Paulo Freire on transcending the fear of freedom. In R. Lake & T. Kress (Eds.), Paulo Freire’s intellectual roots: Towards historicity in praxis (pp. 101-126 ). New York, NY: Bloomsbury. Lee, J. (2002). Racial and ethnic achievement gap trends: Reversing progress toward equity. Educational Researcher, 31(1), 3-12. Martusewizc, R. A., Edmundson, J., & Lupinacci, J. (2011). Ecojustice education: Toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities. New York, NY: Routledge. Gorlewski, J., Porfilio, B., & Gorlewski, D. Using high-stakes testing for students: Exploiting power with critical pedagogy. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Portes, P. R. (2005). Dismantling educational inequality: A cultural-historical approach to closing the achievement gap. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York, NY: Vintage. Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York, NY: Basic Books. Resnick, M. (2002). Rethinking learning in the digital age. In G. S. Kirkman, P. K. Cornelius, J. D. Sachs, & K. Schwab (Eds.), The global information technology report 2001-2002: Readiness for the networked world (pp. 32-37). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Shenhav, Y. (2003). The historical and epistemological foundations of organization theory: Fusing sociological theory with engineering discourse. In H. Tsoukas & Christian Knudsen (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of organization theory: Meta-theoretical perspectives (pp. 183-209). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Trilling, B., & Fadel, C. (2009). 21st century skills: Learning for life in our times. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Tyack, D. & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Urban, W. J., & Wagoner, J. L. (2009). American education: A history (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Wan, G., & Gut, D. M. (2011). Bringing schools into the 21st century. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

Tricia M. Kress The University of Massachusetts Boston

Patricia M. Patrissy Saint Jean Baptiste High School

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14. REVISITING BEYOND THE CHAINS OF ILLUSION

My Encounter with Marx and Freud: Reflections on Fromm’s Theory and Practice within the Psychotherapeutic Encounter

INTRODUCTION 1970––Student protests against the Vietnam War, marches on Washington, police and National Guardsmen shooting at college kids because they dared to question domestic and foreign policies. At that time, I was a senior in college, torn between wanting to complete my undergraduate studies and the “call” to revolution. I was a history/political science major and taking a course on the Russian revolution. In between demonstrating and participating in sit-ins, I was writing a term paper on Lenin. The focus of the essay entailed a psycho-biographical analysis of his politics. By the end of this project, I came to question how it was possible for Lenin to create a system as oppressive as the one he was committed to overthrowing. I concluded that he knew no other way to be in the world. For all his desire to establish a new and better society, Lenin ended up the leader of a repressive, totalitarian regime. He was unaware of how his socialization within the Czarist system had infiltrated his mind and driven his actions While working on this project, a friend gave me a copy of Erich Fromm’s (1962/2009), Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud. I read this book from cover to cover in one sitting. I realized that many of the issues addressed in the volume reflected my own concerns about the relationship of the individual to society. During this time, I was reading Marx and Freud and attempting to figure out how to integrate their ideas. As a result, I went on to complete a master’s degree in history, political philosophy and finally studied to become a psychotherapist. All along this rather circuitous path, I referred back to Fromm’s ideas about Freud and Marx. I have been in clinical practice as a psychotherapist since the 1980s. My work has been greatly influenced by Fromm’s ideas about how society shapes an individual’s drives and resultant social character. His approach to psychotherapy locates the individual within the larger economic, political, social, and historical context of a society. The focus of this essay is to offer some reflections on the interface of Fromm’s theories and practices on contemporary clinical challenges.

S.J. Miri et al. (eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society, 215–219. © 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. IRENE ROSENBERG JAVORS

INSIDES/OUTSIDES Clients/patients (depends on how they like to refer to themselves) come to therapy because they are suffering. Some claim to know the origin of their pain. Some do not. All seek relief from whatever ‘IT’ is that is making them miserable. The task of the therapist is to help the client sift and sort through the contents of their psyche to find out the source of the misery/conflict and help them to find resolution. Not a simple task. Most individuals come to therapy thinking that they want to stop being miserable but, alas, they discover that they have a great deal of ambivalence about letting go and letting in change. Further complications set in because clients often do not know if the source of their conflicted feelings and thoughts is from within them or outside of them. They are unable to tell the difference. Much time is spent helping a client ‘reality check’––the process wherein the individual attempts to ascertain if what’s going on in their psyche is reflective of what is actually happening in the outer world. The focus is to encourage the client to develop an awareness of their thoughts, feelings and behavior. The goal is to help the individual understand that the way they ‘live in the world’ is the result of their needs and drives in interface with the rules and roles of their society. Fromm posits that each individual has a unique core template that is shaped to conform to the demands of any given culture. Once this process occurs, a person has a difficult time discerning the needs and desires of their authentic self. Often, clients tell me that they do not want to act the way they do but if they did not they would not be able to be successful in their profession. They dislike what they do; yet, they conform in order to do what they must do. Conformity is the price paid for fearing rejection and loneliness. Fromm (2009) has pointed out that both Freud and Marx basically agreed on the idea that we live with, “illusions because illusions make the misery of life more bearable (p.15). They also concurred that that we live in a “false consciousness that, is to say, the distorted picture of reality.” (p. 15) This ‘false consciousness’ lulls us into believing that we are free agents when, in truth, we are ‘slaves to conformity.’ We do not know ourselves.

ALIENATION: THE PSYCHE AS A CULTURAL GARBAGE CAN We live in a world that is obsessed with things- gadgets, cars, computers, widgets and what not. We are constantly consuming and we are told by ‘the powers that be’ that shopping is a sign of good citizenship. We have been taught to see what we own to be an outward sign of who we are and what we are worth. Edward Bernays (1891-1995), nephew of Sigmund Freud and the ‘father’ of the public relations field wrote: [A] thing may not be desired for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see it as a symbol of something else, the desire of which he is ashamed to admit to himself … … he may really want it

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because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of success in business. (1928, n.p.) As a society, we are superb students of Eddie Bernays. Bombarded by advertisements telling us what’s the flavor of the moment, we are constantly working to keep up with ‘what’s in.’ Our celebrity driven culture teaches us who is to be admired and who is deemed a success. Our psyches take these confections in with little or no discriminatory faculty. Individuals come to therapy complaining that they are failures. They are dissatisfied with their life. They compare themselves to celebrities and see themselves as ‘nobodies.’ They are angry, terribly depressed and alienated. Fromm has written, “not only are all forms of depression, dependence, and idol worship (including the ‘fanatic’) direct expressions of, or compensations for alienation; [they are also] the phenomenon of the failure to experience one’s identity” (p. 43). Our culture has, indeed, reached a point of alienation that Fromm astutely describes as on the, “borders on insanity” (p. 45). The psyche has become a ‘cultural garbage can.’ GIGO-garbage in/garbage out is an excellent description of our brainwashed and alienated mindsets. Fromm reminds us that Marx sees the individual as shaped by society while Freud views the individual as molded by his experiences within his family and then by society’s repressive demands. Unfortunately, Freud did not comprehend how the family functions as a socializing agent for the larger culture. As a psychotherapist, my focus is to help the client understand how society through the family of origin teaches the child the rules of the culture. The goal of psychotherapy is not to further adjust the client to the demands of our alienated culture but to help the individual find value and meaning in their life. The challenge involves helping the client become a subject, a person, and not settle for remaining an ‘it.’

SUBJECTS AND SUBJECTIVITIES Zombies and vampires are everywhere in the media and in the cultural imagination. In films and on television, brain dead creatures walk the earth seeking out live humans to cannibalize. Likewise, vampires are on the hunt for our blood. Add to this our obsession with extraterrestrial and flying saucers and the fear of being taken over by aliens. All of these monsters are reflective of our fears about alienation and the predatory nature of our society. Our minds have been deadened and rendered robotic by a vampiric, corporate culture that is sucking the lifeblood out of us. Fromm (2009) has described the sickness of our society in terms of, “the commodity man … knows one way of relating himself to the world outside, by having it and by consuming (using) It” (p. 40). Within the context of the psychotherapeutic encounter, much of the work is devoted to helping the client realize that they are the subject of their life. The goal is to help the client become aware and engage with their subjectivity.

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Conflict results if and when one’s subjectivity does not conform to the roles and rules of our society. We confuse performing productively with living a productive life. Performance, far too often, is about commodifying the self and presenting oneself as a product for consumption in the marketplace of life. Living productively, as Fromm repeatedly suggests, involves approaching life with enthusiasm, vitality and creativity. The alienated individual play-acts life. She is hidden behind a mask of a constructed self. Freedom comes when the authentic self, breaks through what Fromm calls, the chains of illusions. The task of psychotherapy is to help the client confront his defense of alienation and develop a sense of identity (subjectivity) freed from societal illusions and delusions.

TOWARD A DYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY OF ENGAGEMENT Doing psychotherapy involves many skills: empathy, listening acuity, patience, self-awareness, theoretical knowledge and a sense of perspective. Fromm teaches us the importance of contextualizing a client’s psychological challenges within a larger societal and cultural analysis. Drawing upon the young Marx’s Economic/Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), Fromm further elaborates upon the destructive nature of alienation and sees this as the central dilemma of our times. A major task of psychotherapy is assisting the client in learning the skills necessary to help her engage with life. Fromm suggests that such engagement involves a feeling of concern for self, others and the world at large. Robotic conformists do not have such a capacity. The therapeutic context is a place wherein the individual is encouraged to de-frost his heart and experience authentic feelings rather than confected sensations. Fromm asserts, “‘to-be-in’ the world means to be concerned with the life and growth of myself and all other beings” (2009, p. 116). The call for engagement involves not only the client but also the therapist. As therapists, we need to ask ourselves whether or not we are suffering as well from the ‘chains of illusions’? If so, how do they manifest in our work as therapists? In our everyday lives? Therapy, as a discipline and as a culture, needs to be interrogated and asked about its intentions and goals. Are we here to adjust individuals to the demands of a de-personalized society? Or, are we facilitators of consciousness who help clients become aware of themselves within the context of this very ‘sick society’? Increasingly, counseling professionals have become far too involved with the pressures of the bottom line vis-à-vis the protocols of evidence based practice wherein concrete signs of progress and improvement must be demonstrated in order for the client to receive ongoing services (and the therapist payment). On top of this, Big Pharma has managed to convince us that there is a pill for every sad/bad feeling that we don’t want to experience. Managed care would like to cut costs and be rid of talking therapy altogether. Medication gets people ‘well enough’ to go back to work and that’s really all that matters in our profit driven universe.

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Psychotherapy as an agent of social control is a very real danger. Yet, Fromm would argue that the therapeutic encounter offers the individual encouragement for undergoing a radical change of heart and mind and for taking radical action. With increasing awareness, the client comes to realize that she has been living in an illusory world of shallow values. Out of this, ‘acts of disobedience’ might occur, as she refuses to obey and conform to society’s dictates about who she must be and what she must do. At the conclusion of Beyond The Chains of Illusion: My Encounter With Marx and Freud, Fromm states, “I believe that man’s growth is a process of continuous birth, of continuous awakening” (1962/2009, p. 136). The psychotherapeutic experience provides a wonderful setting for this vision. Within this context, an individual has the opportunity to explore the contradictions and paradoxes of living. A place to say ‘yes’ to awareness and ‘no’ to blind obedience. A place wherein we find a way to balance the needs of the psyche and society’s relentless pressure to conform to its dictates. There is a Talmudic tradition that when there are two contradictory interpretations to a reading, a third way is needed in order to reconcile the two. Fromm has offered us that, ‘third way’––the way of humanist, democratic socialism wherein we live as fully awakened individuals no longer enthralled to illusions and false idols.

REFERENCES

Bernays, E. (1928), Propaganda. Reproduced online and retrieved from www.historyasaweapon/ defcon1/bernprop.html. Fromm, E. (1962/2009). Beyond The chains of illusion: My encounter with Marx and Freud. New York, NY: Continuum.

Irene Rosenberg Javors Yeshiva University

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Joan Braune, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Mount Mary University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has published and presented numerous pieces on Erich Fromm and Critical Theorists, and her dissertation on Erich Fromm’s radical and humanistic “prophetic messianism” is currently being prepared for publication as a book through Sense Publishers’ Imagination and Praxis book series.

Nick Braune is Associate Professor of Philosophy at South Texas College, a community college in the economically hard-hit and over-policed U.S.-Mexico Border region. He is a political activist and has written two other articles concerning Fromm’s socialism. They appeared in Fromm Forum (2010, 2011), published by the International Erich Fromm Society.

Dustin J. Byrd specializes in the Critical Theory of Religion/Frankfurt School and Islamic Studies. He did his graduate work in comparative religion at Western Michigan University and PhD work in Continental Philosophy at Michigan State University, where he focused on developing a critical theory of religion as it pertains to Islam and the Islamic world. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Humanities at Olivet College, where he teaches religion, philosophy, and Arabic. He has recently published the book Ayatollah Khomeini and the Anatomy of the Islamic Revolution in Iran: Towards a Theory of Prophetic Charisma with University Press of America.

Richard Curtis received his Ph.D. in Religion from Claremont Graduate University, MA in Religious Studies and BA in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of Colorado. He teaches Philosophy at Seattle Central Community College; is the copy editor for Presencing EPIS; and a contributing editor to Islamic Perspective.

Vicki Dagostino is an Associate Lecturer at The University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. She teaches courses in Educational Sociology and Educational Psychology in the Department of Foundations and Educational Leadership. Vicki is interested in understanding how social and psychological factors interact in transformational practices.

Rainer Funk (1943), psychoanalyst and Erich Fromm’s sole Literary Executor, is living in Tuebingen (Germany). Besides editing Fromm’s writings and organizing the International Erich Fromm Society he is publishing mostly on social psychological topics. In the last years he analyzed a new character orientation that is enthusiastic of constructing reality anew but suffers from an unconscious unbounded self.

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Panayota Gounari is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research focuses on the politics of language in the construction of neoliberal discourses in education and society, as well as on reinventing a theory for critical pedagogy. She is the co-editor of Critical Pedagogy: A Reader (Gutenberg 2010, with George Grollios) and a co-author of The Hegemony of English (Paradigm 2003). She has authored numerous articles and book chapters that have been translated in many languages.

Irene Rosenberg Javors, M.Phil; M.ED. is a licensed mental health counselor She is a Diplomate of the American Psychotherapy Association. She is on the faculty of the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Mental Health Counseling Program, Yeshiva University. She is the author of Culture Notes: Essays on Sane Living (2010), American College of Forensic Examiners Press.

Tricia M. Kress, Ph.D. (CUNY Graduate Center) is an Associate Professor of Leadership in Education and graduate program director of the Leadership in Urban Schools doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research interests include using critical pedagogy and critical research methods with teachers and students to rethink urban learning environments to be generative and liberating. Her recent publications include Critical Praxis Research: Breathing New Life into Research Methods for Teachers (Kress, 2011) and Paulo Freire’s Intellectual Roots: Toward Historicity in Praxis (Lake & Kress, 2013). She is co- editor of the book series Imagination and Praxis with Sense Publishers.

Robert Lake is Associate Professor of Social Foundations at Georgia Southern University where he teaches courses in multicultural education from local and global perspectives. His research is concerned with creativity, critical educational perspectives, and imaginative curriculum. His research on Erich Fromm arose out of his interest in the intellectual genealogy of Paulo Freire. He is the author of Vygotsky on Education (Peter Lang, 2011) and A Curriculum of Imagination in an Era of Standardization: An Imaginative Dialogue with Maxine Greene and Paulo Freire (2013, Information Age). He is co-editor of the book series Imagination and Praxis with Sense Publishers.

Rodolfo Leyva has a PhD in cognitive and political sociology from King’s College London. Drawing on theories from the Frankfurt school and other interdisciplinary systems theories, he is working on synthesizing theories and methods from sociology, political-economy, and the cognitive sciences in order to develop a transdisciplinary framework for the exploration of neoliberal social reproduction.

Seyed Javad Miri, an Irano-Swedish social theorist, was born into a Turkish- Russian family in northwestern Iran in the city of Tabriz and moved to Sweden in his teens. He is currently a visiting professor in human sciences and philosophy at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies in Iran. He is also editor of The

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Islamic Perspective Journal. He got his bachelor and master degrees at Goteborg University in Sweden and then moved in 1998 to England where he got his doctoral degree in collaboration with Gregor McLennan at Bristol University in the department of sociology. There he worked on the question of social theory based on an intercivilizational dialogue by comparing the sacred and secular intellectual traditions in the works of Ali Shariati and Allama Iqbal (from the primordial intellectual tradition) and Giddens and Goffman (from the modernist intellectual tradition). He has been teaching and living since 2004 in China, Russia and currently working in Tehran. He has published 30 books and over 80 articles both in the U.S. and U.K. on various issues related to social theory, philosophy and religion from a transcendental point of departure. He is married and has two sons (Seyed Mohsen Pasha) and (Seyed Morteza Yashar).

Patricia M. Patrissy, M.Ed; M.SILS, is a librarian at Saint Jean Baptiste High School in New York. She has worked with New York City students for the last ten years, as a teacher, mentor and librarian.

Rudolf Siebert was born in Frankfurt a.M., Germany. He has studied history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, social work, and theology at the University of Frankfurt, the University of Mainz, the University of Münster, and the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C.. Since the end of World War II, Siebert developed the critical theory of religion, or dialectical religiology, out of historical idealism, and historical materialism, and the critical theory of society of the Frankfurt School. The author has taught, and lectured, and published widely in Western and Eastern Europe, the United States, Canada and Japan. Since 1965, Siebert has been professor of Religion and Society, and the Director of the Center for Humanistic Future Studies at Western Michigan University. Since 1975 he has been director of the international course on “The Future of Religion” in the IUC, Dubrovnik, Croatia. Since 2000, he has been director of the international course on “Religion in Civil Society” in Jalta, Crimea, Ukraine. His previous major works were: The Critical Theory of Religion: The Frankfurt School (Scarecrow Press, 2001); From Critical Theory of Society to Critical Political Theology: Personal Autonomy and Universal Solidarity (Peter Lang, 1994); Manifesto of the Critical Theory of Society and Religion: The Wholly Other, Liberation, Happiness, and the Rescue of the Hopeless (Brill, 2010) and The World Religions in the Global Public Sphere: Towards Concrete Freedom and Material Democracy (Sanburn Publishers, 2013). See for further information: http://www.rudolfjsiebert.org.

Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker teaches history at Baruch College, CUNY. He is the managing editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture (www.logosjournal.com). His most recent book is Strangers to Nature: Animal Lives and Human Ethics (Lexington Books).

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Michael J. Thompson is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science, William Paterson University. His recent books include The Politics of Inequality (Columbia University Press), Georg Lukacs Reconsidered: Essays on Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics (Continuum), Constructing Marxist Ethics: Critique, Normativity, Praxis (Brill), and the forthcoming The Republican Reinvention of Radicalism (Columbia University Press).

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