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332 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1941
The mechanism of the new market seemed to resemble the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, which taught that the individual must make every effort to be good, but that even before his birth, it had been decided whether or not he is to be saved.
In having a distinct, unchangeable, and unquestionable place in the social world from the moment of birth, man was rooted...and thus life had a meaning which left no place, and no need, for doubt. A person was identical with his role in society; he was a peasant, an artisan, a knight, and not an individual who happened to have this or that occupation....Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family, or corporaton- only through some general category.There is no way to return to this state of being, nor would Fromm suggest that we should try- he just goes on to point out that freedom is a double-edged sword, and that all the good it has done human beings has been accompanied by unprecedented burdens. In the new Europe that gradually came into being, life was uncertain, and you survived, or didn't, on your own. Soon enough, Fromm writes, there were reactions to this new state of being in the forms of movements led by two of the book's main villains, Luther and Calvin. Fromm isn't too pushy about it, but he frequently invites the reader to draw analogies between processes in society and in the individual psyche; the popularity of Luther and Calvin in Fromm's view are probably analogous to neuroses, their movements mechanisms of escape in which people found catharsis in the supposed virtue of tireless work, or in the conviction that it had all been decided before you were born anyway and it was impossible to know or change your fate, or in giving up your autonomy to an all-powerful God who may just as easily have been a Fuhrer. Just as in a neurotic personality, however, the chosen mechanism of escape, while perhaps temporarily ameliorating pain, has its unforeseen side-effects:
One possible way to escape this unbearable state of uncertainty...is the very trait which became so prominent in Calvinism: the development of a frantic activity and a striving to do something. Activity in this sense assumes a compulsory quality...[this] is not the result of inner strength and self-confidence; it is a desperate escape from anxiety.So it is essentially Fromm's view that a neurosis transformed work from a pragmatic necessity to the essence of human life, and laid fertile ground and psychologically prepared people for modern capitalism; similarly, unquestioning obedience to a deity may prepare people for the same orientation towards other figures of authority.
This whole preaching of self-sacrifice has an obvious purpose: the masses have to resign themselves and submit if the wish for power on the side of the leader and the 'elite' is to be realized. But this masochistic longing is also to be found in Hitler himself. For him the superior power to which he submits is God, Fate, Necessity, History, Nature. Actually all these terms have about the same meaning to him, that of symbols of an overwhelmingly strong power...Nature is the great power we have to submit to [Hitler believes], but living beings are the ones we should dominate.------
That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused...That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer...What is that "something else", then? It appears a few times throughout Fromm's book, each time flitting away like a doorway to Hellenic Greece that opens and closes before you have a chance to walk through it. It might be, for example, for a human being to "...relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities." The steps one should take or actual habits to cultivate in order to live in such a way are not clear to me, and would perhaps require years of intensive psychotherapy with Mr. Fromm, which I would gladly try if he were alive and I could afford it. But applied to the discussion of fascism, I think that what I find most relevant about this view, most pragmatic really, is that it refuses to draw a comforting line between "us" and "them", which is important perhaps not because it is a way of being charitable to people who disagree, but because it reminds us of our own susceptibilities.
Vastness of cities in which the individual is lost, buildings that are as high as mountains, constant acoustic bombardment by the radio, big headlines that change three times a day and leaving one no choice to decide what is important...the beating rhythm of jazz......The part about jazz is perhaps reaching. But this seems like a valid excuse for me to insert a personal anecdote here about how I read most of this book while I was in Tbilisi, staying in a hostel with a strange collection of drifters for $3.50 US per night, as 2017 slowly dwindled. Hostels are not known for being conducive to concentration, so I would bring this book with me when I went for walks around the city; I attempted to read part of it, specifically the chapter on the authoritarian character and mechanisms of escape, in a Dunkin' Donuts on Rustaveli Avenue, the main street in Tbilisi. While it was after December 25th, perhaps the 26th or 27th, I hadn't reckoned with the fact that Christmas in Georgia is January 7th. This was therefore high Christmas season, and high time for Dunkin' Donuts to play Christmas music, quite loudly, in English no less, and so as I tried to read about the authoritarian character and take unmediated masochistic pleasure in the most unpleasant aspects of my personality laid out so clearly on the page, I simultaneously found myself fighting a generalized violent and sadistic impulse that welled up from the very core of my being as a part of my brain helplessly followed along to the music ("jingle bells", a voice on the sound system chimed inanely as I tried to understand Fromm's definition of the masochistic personality, "Batman smells, Robin laid an egg...") which only in retrospect seemed a negligible annoyance yet appropriate and relevant to Fromm's theme- we in the cafe were not to be left alone for a second with our coffee and our own thoughts, not allowed to take a deep breath in a quiet place between the past and the future, anything but that- that burden was lifted from us as a matter of course, without our even having had to ask.
...any attack on Germany as such, any defamatory propaganda concerning 'the Germans', only increases the loyalty of those who are not wholly identified with the Nazi system. This problem, however, cannot be solved basically by skillful propaganda but only by the victory in all countries of one fundamental truth: that ethical principles stand above the existence of the nation and that by adhering to these principles an individual belongs to the community of all those who share, who have shared, and will share this belief.