The name of this book really drew me in, and I stuck with it because of my interest in learning about the rise of authoritarianism in the early twentieth century. Authors like Fromm, Arendt, and Hoffer are so engaging because their perspectives on the Second World War and authoritarianism are not only well-written, but highly relevant to democratic decline today. Fromm is especially concerned with the problem that is caused by “freedom from” without “freedom to.” Specifically, capitalism and liberalism freed individuals from feudal roles without tying them to anything positive or giving people a way to achieve self-actualization. As a result, individuals found themselves lost and unmoored in the world, and sought out authoritarian movements to anchor them to something. Fromm writes that “modern man, freed from the bonds of pre-individualistic society, which simultaneously gave him security and limited him, has not gained freedom in the positive sense of the realization of his individual self; that is, the expression of his intellectual, emotional, and sensuous potentialities. Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless.” Fromm is important because while he acknowledges that psychology cannot alone explain the flight to Fascism, he explains in detail the psychology behind why individuals subjugate themselves to a fascist state.
I think Fromm’s description and analysis of modern society are accurate and remain highly applicable today, but I am still skeptical of his historical analysis of the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation. I think the book suffers from a perspective that begins with the end of the Middle Ages. The book sort of acts like history only exists in Europe, and like history began with the closing of the commons. So much of what Fromm writes is describing why -Europeans- succumbed to authoritarianism, but doesn’t explain much about different groups of people all over the world who have done the same. His conclusions are universal- “We also recognize that the crisis of democracy is not a particularly Italian or German problem, but one confronting every modern state.” But he doesn’t really talk about historical examples or peoples outside Europe. Maybe it would have helped him to write the book fifty years later, seeing authoritarian movements take hold in Asia and Latin America.
For Fromm, human beings are unique among animals in that humans require a far greater degree of learning than instinct. We have few instincts and are essentially helpless and doomed if left alone in the wilderness as children. We are -free- from instincts and have the free will to decide what to do from birth. In that sense, Fromm writes of “freedom from” that “human existence and freedom are from the beginning inseparable.” “Freedom from” is the lack of external restraints, while “freedom to” is the positive ability to self actualize, by not being impoverished or socially repressed. Fromm argues that since the Renaissance, the West has made massive advancements in “freedom from” while “freedom to” has lagged behind. I wonder what he would say about non-Westerners dealing with the same issue today. But that gap between “freedom from” and “freedom to” is what “has led, in Europe, to a panicky flight from freedom into new ties or at least into complete indifference.”
With the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, and the fall of feudalism, religiosity, and the old order, “the individual was left alone; everything depended on his own effort, not on the security of his traditional status.” Today, we often think of this change as purely good, and it was almost definitely a net good. But for many, that loss of traditional status was a bigger loss than their material gains, and for some, social mobility meant mobility downwards, not upwards. Social castes are irrational and wrong, but there are many who benefit from a caste system that leaves them higher in the social hierarchy than they would be otherwise. So like white supremacists today who would rather be poor and benefit from racism, antisemites in Germany would do the same.
Fromm starts to lose me when he gets deep into Calvin and Luther. He asserts that Calvin’s idea of predestination emerges again in Naziism through the basic idea of inequality of men. But I was unconvinced since lots of people have thought men are unequal, and nothing about Calvinism or Lutheranism could explain why Italy was the first country to adopt Fascism. Fromm is extremely hostile to both Calvin and Luther, writing that they “belonged to the ranks of the greatest haters among the leading figures of history.” But even if you accept that Calvin and Luther were the worst guys ever, it is hard to imagine that they somehow uniquely prepared Germans to become servants to the Fuhrer.
Critical to Fromm’s analysis is that the same cause, the advent of the modern world, can have two effects. One is to make men more independent, self-reliant, and critical, and the other is to make men more isolated, alone, and afraid. Capitalism severs the individual from the world, allowing him to choose to use his freedom to relate with it spontaneously (which I did not understand), or to give up his freedom to eliminate the gap between the individual and the world.
Ultimately is it “the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual” that creates the most fertile ground for Fascism. Further aggravating is the fact that facts have lost their power and salience in the modern world since we are bombarded, already by the 1940s, with radio, film, and newspapers that desensitize us to the events of the world. Left with this mass of information that is beyond any person’s comprehension, people become ready to accept any leader who can promise excitement or meaning. The remedy, as I understand it to be, is basically in creating a welfare state, according to Fromm. By meeting the basic needs of the individual and educating him, he is empowered to do that “spontaneous” interaction with the world that helps him achieve the life satisfaction to avoid being seduced by authoritarianism.
Miscellaneous:
- Great passage: “But Hobbes’s picture became outmoded. The more the middle class succeeded in breaking down the power of the former political or religious rulers, the more men succeeded in mastering nature, and the more millions of individuals became economically independent, the more did one come to believe in a rational world and in man as an essentially rational being. The dark and diabolical forces of man’s nature were relegated to the Middle Ages and to still earlier periods of history, and they were explained by lack of knowledge or by the cunning schemes of deceitful kings and priests. One looked back upon these periods as one might at a volcano which for a long time has ceased to be a menace. One felt secure and confident that the achievements of modern democracy had wiped out all sinister forces; the world looked bright and safe like the well-lit streets of a modern city. Wars were supposed to be the last relics of older times and one needed just one more war to end war; economic crises were supposed to be accidents, even though these accidents continued to happen with a certain regularity. When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak. Nietzsche had disturbed the complacent optimism of the nineteenth century; so had Marx in a different way. Another warning had come somewhat later from Freud. To be sure, he and most of his disciples had only a very naive notion of what goes on in society, and most of his applications of psychology to social problems were misleading constructions; yet, by devoting his interest to the phenomena of individual emotional and mental disturbances, he led us to the top of the volcano and made us look into the boiling crater.
- Fromm identifies the Renaissance as a movement by a small group of wealthy elites, while the Reformation was a movement of the urban middle class. So when the Reformation occurred among people who didn’t have the wealth or power that Renaissance patrons and lords had, they were overwhelmed with a sense of individual nothingness and helplessness. They stood alone facing the world, feeling “insecurity, powerlessness, doubt, aloneness, and anxiety.”
- What are the significant psychological atmosphere changes going on today? How are they the same or different from those that occurred with the development of capitalism? Is it about a pervasive visibility? Seeing and being seen? We didn’t know what privacy was until we lost it.
- Interesting idea about how death is a bigger idea in more individualistic societies since the death of an individual is just part of the life of the whole in collectivist societies.
