A Reply to Erich Fromm

...I say explicitly in my article (p...

...The principal point here is not ownership of the means of production, but participation in management and decision making" (The Sane Society, p. 323, Fromm's italics) . He thinks that the principle of co-management means a "serious restriction" of property rights...

...On the first page of my article, I stressed the degree to which psychoanalysis "was still committed to the society whose secrets it revealed...

...In trying to refute the argument of my article "The Social Implications of Freudian 'Revisionism'" (DISSENT, Summer 1955), Erich Fromm has constructed a thesis which I did not state.* Although his misinterpretation may be to a great extent due to the fact that my book, Eros and Civilization, to which the article specifically referred, had not yet been published, I feel that a few corrections are in order...

...Fromm maintains that his concept of "productive love" rejects adjustment to an "alienated society...

...Practically every page of every book he wrote since Escape From Freedom is evidence...

...Fromm, who accuses Freud of not criticizing capitalism, writes: The worker's alienation from his work "can be overcome only if he is notemployed by capital, if he is not the object of command, but if he becomesa responsible subject who employs: capital...

...Fromm emphasizes that Freud did not offer a critique of the "socio-economic structure" of contemporary society...

...233) that not these values are spurious "but the context is in which they are defined and proclaimed...

...1. Fromm attributes to Freud, or to my restatement of Freudian theory, the following notions: a) that happiness is satisfaction of the sexual instinct, "specifically of the wish for free access to all available females...

...2. Freud did recognize, however, that even the highest values of civilization, in so far as they contain inhibited and aim-diverted sexuality, inevitably pre-suppose and perpetuate un-freedom and suppression...

...Consequently, Freud could not have had the "idea" (and I did not) that "the emancipation of man lies in the complete and unrestricted satisfaction of his sexual desire" (although I do not agree with Fromm that this idea is part of the "cement which binds men together in the present phase of capitalism...

...He states as my "thesis" that "anybody who studies the conditions for happiness and love is betraying radical thought...

...He considered the "strange possibility" that "something in the nature of the sexual instinct is unfavorable to the achievement of absolute satisfaction" (Collected Papers, Vol...

...The owner or owners are entitled to a reasonable rate of interest on their capital investment, but not to the "unrestricted command over men whom this capital can hire" (ibid., p. 324...

...This is precisely what I question...

...But child development belongs to the domain of every consciousness psychology, of every human relations expert, and Sullivan's treatment of it is, in my view, not essentially different from its most ancient presentations at the surface level of "inter-personal relations...

...Fromm's own analysis of the early stages of character development has been increasingly purged of the explosive instinctual forces linked to the "archaic heritage" of man and to the deadly struggle against suppression...

...The practical suggestions for the "road to sanity" which he makes in his new book (one of them was quoted above) are, in my view, a perfect example of how proposals for a smoother functioning of the established society can be confused with the notions that transcend this society...

...Fromm protests and asks for evidence...

...Moreover, * "The Human Implications of Instinctivistic 'Radicalism'" by Erich Fromm, DISSENT, Fall 1955, pp...

...4. Fromm accuses me of neglect of the "human factor" and of "callousness towards moral qualities...

...italics added...

...My thesis is, on the contrary, that Fromm (and the other revisionists) do 'not really study the conditions for "happiness and love...

...Has the entrepreneur, who employs free wage labor, ever had such "unrestricted command...

...Fromm sees in "workers' participation" a means for "humanizing" work, for establishing a "meaningful" relation between the worker and his labor and his fellowmen, and he quotes the case of "one of the seven largest watch factories" in France, where a sort of work community has been realized...

...Fromm reminds me that "the alienated society develops in itself the elements which contradict it...

...Fromm concludes that Freud leaves no hope for "any fundamental improvement of society" and that Freud's theory is not a "radical criticism of alienated society" because it regards "alienation" as necessary prerequisite of all civilization...

...It does, but I disagree with Fromm on where and what these elements are: much of what he calls alienation is to me the force which overcomes alienation, and what he calls the positive is to me still the negative...

...I think that his concepts partake of alienation...

...On this point, I agree, and I have not said it did...

...In this sense, I accept Fromm's designation of my position as "human nihilism...

...To reveal the implications of this struggle (and thereby the real conditions for the "emancipation of man") was the great concern of Freud's depth psychology...

...What have Eros (for which Freud refers—and not incidentally—to Plato) and the Death Instinct, what have the Nirvana Principle and the "common conservative nature of the instincts" to do with nineteenth-century bourgeois materialism...

...Again Fromm protests and points to the fact that Sullivan's work is almost entirely concerned with the "development of childhood," and that in his own psychol ogy "the character of a person is mainly determined by his childhood situation...

...When I talked of the radical critical implications of Freudian theory, I referred to those of its aspects which elucidate the depth of the repressive controls over the "nature" of man—controls which contemporary society shares with the preceding historical forms of repressive civilization...

...The revisionist reduction also necessitates the shift in emphasis from the pre-individual psyche to the "mature personality...

...It is this ultimate depth dimension of Freudian theory on which my main argument was based, and it is this depth dimension which Fromm (with Homey and Sullivan) discards...

...Far from identifying happiness with the "unrestricted satisfaction" of the sexual instinct, Freud held that "unrestricted sexual liberty from the beginning" results in lack of full satisfaction, and that the "value" of erotic needs "instantly sinks as satisfaction becomes readily obtainable...

...and c) that man has an "inherent wish for unlimited sexual satisfaction," and that the "emancipation of man lies in the complete and unre stricted satisfaction of his sexual desire...

...If such are the elements that "contradict" alienation, then my argument against Fromm indeed collapses at a decisive point...

...342-349...

...They are defined by Fromm in terms of positive thinking which leaves the negative where it is—predominant over the human existence...

...Nihilism," as the indictment of inhuman conditions, may be a truly humanist attitude— part of the Great Refusal to play the game, to compromise with the bad "positive...

...This mutilation, together with the reduction of the libido theory, necessitated the regression of revisionist psychoanalysis toward pre-Freudian consciousness psychology...

...The workers themselves elaborated a "decalogue," which, in addition to some of the Ten Commandments, includes "thou shalt earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow...

...It is not preserved by paying attention to the "conflict between unconscious and conscious strivings" —it depends on the content and dynamic of the unconscious...

...Freud did not define the "essence" of love as sexual desire, but as the inhibition and sublimation of sexual desire by tenderness and affection, and he saw in this "fusion" one of the greatest achievements of civilization...

...There is nothing wrong with more and better industrial psychology and scientific management, but there is a great deal wrong with presenting them as non-conformist humanism...

...3. Fromm expresses "amazement" that I should commit the error of calling a theory (Freud's theory of instincts) radical which is "entirely of the same spirit as that of nineteenth-century bourgeois materialism...

...b) that love is in its "essence" or is "identical with" sexual desire...

...IV, p. 213f...

...If I should mention specific issues: take his re-interpretation of the Oedipus complex, or his analysis of neuroses in terms of a "moral problem...

...This might not be sufficient, but it seems to me far more critical than indicting some secondary features and "excesses" of "alienation" while preserving and even strengthening its roots...