Alienation as a Central Concept in Marxist and Frommian Humanism Enzo Lio Presentation at a German-Italian Seminar about Die Marx-Rezeption Erich Fromms, February 17-19, 1989, Bologna. Copyright 1989 and 2011 by Dr. Enzo Lio, Vicolo Quantinolo 5, I-40121 Bologna, Italy, E-Mail: enzo.lio[at-symbol]tele2.it. Fromm quoted Terence s statement that Nihil humani a me alienum puto. And if this summarizes and focuses on the essence of humanism, then the following estatement by Goethe, that Man carries within himself not only his own individuality, but the individuality of the whole of mankind with all its potentiality, even though he himself can only realise a small part of this potentiality because of the external limits of his individual existence, is full of philosophical and psychological implications. There are several corollaries to both these statements; all men of whatever race share the same nature and basic psycho-physical characteristics irrespective of cultural conditioning. This implies the need for greater human dignity and liberty which is possible in that man can be perfected and is thus gifted with a capacity for self-development, if correctly guided. This vision of man is by no means new and can be found in the history of culture, religion, and philosophy in various parts of the world: in Buddhism and the Hebrew-Christian tradition, in the classical philosophies of Greece and Rome, in the Renaissance, in the Enlightenment and in positivism. A complete list of those thinkers who share this vision would be far too long here, but some of the most important are: Buddha, Spinoza, Locke, Hegel, Marx, Freud and Fromm himself. Fromm was driven by a humanitarian spirit and gifted with a clear and penetrating mind and he dedicated his whole life to the study of the reasons guiding human behaviour. As he himself says in a famous book published in 1962, Beyond the Chains of Illusion. My Encounter with Marx and Freud (1962a, p. 9f.), his methodological approach can be summarized as a combination of empirical observation and rational speculation: I have always tried to let my thinking be guided by the observation of facts and have striven to revise my theories when the observation seemed to warrant it. As far as my psychological theories are concerned, I have had an excellent observation point. Since 1927 I have been a practicing psychoanalyst. I have examined minutely the behavior, the free associations, and the dreams of the people whom I have psychoanalyzed. There is not a single theoretical conclusion about man s psyche, either in this or in my other writings, which is not based on a critical observation of human behavior carried out in the course of this psychoanalytic work. Psychoanalysis started with Freud in the context of positivism. It applies the idea of the universality of mankind insofar as it studies the unconscious mind with the assumption that this is possible because the unconscious mind is the same in all human beings. Fromm makes this very clear in his article A Global Philosophy of Man (1966i) when he states: Unless we all were a little crazy, a little evil, and a little good, unless we all carried in ourselvers all possibilities, good and bad, which exist in man, how could page 1 of 6
anyone understand the unconscious, the nonconventional nonofficial content of another person s mind? Thus the subject of psychoanalytical inquiry is man in his totality, with his varied and real needs, as biological and cultural evolution has made him. But studying human beings is not easy; the reasons for their actions are often the result of complex processes which hide the real causes, their intellectual and emotional development is the product of an ongoing interactive process between the individual and society, between individual needs and sociohistorical reality. Psychoanalysis must thus take all of these things into account to fully understand the human condition. Fromm was well aware of this and right from the beginning he realised that it had to become the domain of Freudian psychoanalysis too. Freudian psychoanalysis was partially satisfactory, but theoretically incomplete and in need of modification, explanation and, obviously, elaboration. Fromm levelled many criticisms at Freud but they can be summarised in just two main points: 1) Freud s acceptance of German bourgeois materialism with all its theoretical implications, for example the fact that Freud could not conceive of any form of mental activity which could not be traced to its correlative organic substratum; 2) Freud s bourgeois, patriarchal mentality and his inability to rise above the values of his class, which had a notable influence on his thinking and on his theory. In particular Fromm challenged the idea that the purpose of therapy is to reinforce the ego and super-ego in order to control impulses better. In Greatness and Limitations of Freud s Psychoanalysis (1979a, p. 7) Fromm notes: The psychological concept corresponds to the social reality. Just as socially the majority is controlled by a ruling minority, the psyche is supposed to be controlled by the authority of the ego and superego. The danger of the breakthrough of the unconscious carries with it the danger of a social revolution. Repression is a repressive authoritarian of protecting the inner and outer status quo. It is by no means the only way to cope with problems of social change. But the threat of force in keeping down what is dangerous is only necessary in an authoritarian system where the preservation of the status quo is the supreme goal. Other models of individual and social structures can be experimented with. In the last analysis the question is how much renunciation of happiness does the ruling minority in a society need to impose on the majority? The answer lies in the development of productive forces in the society, and hence in the degree to which the individual is necessarily frustrated. The whole scheme superego, ego id is a hierarchical structure, which excludes the possibility that the association of free, i.e., nonexploited, human beings can live hamoniously and without the necessity of controlling sinister forces. If taken out of context, the passage quoted above could have been written by a Marxist revolutionary, and in my opinion Fromm was a Marxist in the original sense of the word, perhaps more so than many so-called Marxists. He recognized that Marxism had regressed and he intended to restore it to its original universal, humanistic vocation. He accused Marxists of having degenerated in their ideals and saw the need for the rediscovery of authentic Marxism which had been lost in its transformation into doctrinarism by Stalin who is described in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973a) as a clinical case of non-sexual sadism. Fromm rightly believed that Marxism could greatly enrich psychoanalyitical thinking. As a science which studies man, psychoanalysis cannot ignore the great revolutionary force which was the result of the thinking of a man who, for the first time in history, encouraged philosophers not simply to interpret the world but to commit themselves to changing it. Thus Fromm soon turned his attention to the critical understanding of those theories which had revolutionized thinking in the humanities: in sociology, politics, philosophy. He considered Marx to be the architects of the modern age, together with Freud and Einstein (1962a, p. 11), and one of the great humanists who have contributed to the welfare and development of humanity. Fromm considered Marx s thinking as one of the deepest possible expressions of humanism, one which goes beyond the distortions and adaptations used to rationalize failed attempts at socialism. Consistent with the humanistic concept, Marxism is a phi- page 2 of 6
losophy for human beings insofar as it theorizes the development of their potentiality based on the objective conditions of their existence and not on the ideas that they have of themselves. This means it is based on their psychological, physical and social prerogatives as beings who live in a certain socio-historical and cultural context. Marx must have had this idea of man in mind as early as 1841. At the age of twentythree he argued in his degree thesis Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie that Democritus atomism was limited to a simple description of the movement of atoms without offering any dialectical interpretation. Epicurus, on the other hand, tried to carry this out. Marx was already interpreting the clinamen (the free declination of atoms) in dialectical terms, and noted that although it is to be rejected as a phenomenon, philosophically speaking it is the manifestation of the nature of the liberty of self-consciousness, a fundamental part of the ancient enlightenment of Epicurus. In the following year Marx wrote in the Rheinische Zeitung of 14 July 1842 (MEG I,1,1, p. 242), a newspaper to which he had earlier contributed articles defending press freedom (these had in turn provoked the conservative Kölner Zeitung into calling for censorship), as follows: First the question is posed, Does philosophy have any right to discuss religious matters in newspapers too? The only way to answer this question is to criticize it. Philosophy, and above all German philosophy, has a solitary bent; left to its own devices it will engage in monolithic system-building, it will succumb to passionless introspection; thus right from the very start it is cut off from the raucously ephemeral, quickwitted world of the newspaper where the real source of pleasure is the communication process itself... Only the philosophers do not grow like mushrooms overnight; they are the fruit of their times, of their people... The same spirit builds philosophical systems in philosophers brains as built the railroads with the hands of organized labor. Philosophy does not have a vantage point outside of the world... In essays from that period Marx fiercely defends the interests of the people, especially the destitute, for example he bitterly criticized the injustice of the law which abolished the custom by which the poor collected firewood from private woods (debate on the law against stealing wood) These few examples clearly show Marx s poltical and philosophical orientation. He felt the need to find a solution to the problems of humanity strongly and this became the driving force behind the scientific development of his thinking, which constantly sought to understand the complexities of human reality in order to improve the conditions of its development. The break with Hegel can be seen as a result of this line of thought. In the manuscript of Contribution to the Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right, Marx takes up Feuerbach s criticism of Hegel and argues that Hegelian philosophy, although full of empirical data, tends not to offer any criticism, as if the self were a predicate of thought. Thus it is unacceptable for both theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically speaking it inverts the natural relationship between thought and reality, making reality a product of thought. Practically speaking it supports the idea that what exists is rational reality (all that is real is rational and vice versa) thus supporting conservative ideology. Marx was concerned that Hegelian philosophy could be used to rationalize the human condition through the formulation of ideal categories which would sanction the status quo and block any possibile change in the history of mankind. He believed that all legal institutions came about as a result of the class struggle. Marxism does not oppose idealism to a historical naturalism but to a materialistic consideration of the historically determined relationships between human beings and between human beings and nature. Marx s great contribution to human thought lies in the fact that he did not see man s existence in abstract terms but rather, he saw how it was conditioned by socio-historical reality and how this leads man to become alienated from himself, from his own nature and real needs. In this way man strays from his natural path which would otherwise lead to the development of his potentiality. This is the aspect of Marxist theory that most interested Fromm as he clearly stated in Beyond the Chains of Illusion. My Encouter with Marx and Freud (1962a, page 3 of 6
p. 26): Marx s protest against a social order in which man is crippled by his subservience to the economy, and his ideal of the full unfolding of the total, unalienated man, is part of the same humanistic tradition. The interest Marx showed in economics ( he claimed to have read everything that had been written on the subject before writing about it himself ) culminated in the drafting of Das Kapital and was aimed at liberating man from material interests. This is also the main concern in Fromm s most important works and in The Sane Society he wrote: Since the modern capitalist employs labor, the social and political form of this exploitation has changed; what has not changed is that the owner of capital uses other men for the purpose of his own profit. The basic concept of use has nothing to do with cruel, or not cruel, ways of human treatment, but with the fundamental fact that one man serves another for purposes which are not his own but those of the employer. The concept of use of man by man has nothing to do even with the question whether one man uses another, or uses himself. The fact remains the same, that a man, a living human being, ceases to be an end in himself, and becomes the means for the economic interests of another man, or him self, or of an impersonal giant, the economic machine. The concept of human alienation is central to the theoretical development of Marx and Fromm. Marx saw alienation as an unawareness of the self, of emotions, of the reality of one s being so that an alienated subject does not see himself as in terms of his own reality but in terms of the things he creates, which objectify his human qualities. Hegal believed that relationships themselves implied alienation, whereas Marx argued that alienation was a certain type of relationship and that it could be eliminated by changing the relationship. According to Marxist theory, therefore, the human condition is historically determined and can in any case be overcome with time. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx criticizes traditional economics for taking as fact that which must be explained. Traditional economics held that the relationship between worker and product could not be modified, thus mystifying the true nature of alienation which is the result of a historically and socially contingent situation of constraint. Marx takes his criticism of Hegel s concept of alienation from Feuerbach, who objected to the fact that Hegel had taken God as the author of history while man was in a state of selfalienation. Feuerbach considered God to be simply an external projection of human qualities, made by man in order to enable him to experience his particular qualities through adoration. Thus Hegel believed that the nature of existential relationships expresses a state of alienation. Marx thought that the nature of relationships cannot be considered a state insofar as it exists not as reality but as possibility. This implies that alienation can both be eliminated and can return. This assertion merely expresses in words the dilemma of the human condition which must find an alternative and act on it if it is to overcome its alienated state. In Beyond the Chains of Illusion. My Encouter with Marx and Freud (1962a, p. 53 and 56f.): Alienation as a sickness of the self can be considered to be the core of the psychopathology of modern man... Precisely because the alienated person has transformed his own functions of feeling and thought to an object outside he is not himself, he has no sense of I, of identity. This lack of sense of identity has many consequences. The most fundamental and general one is that it prevents integration of the total personality... In the widest sense, evenry neurosis can be considered an outcome of alienation; this is so because neurosis is characterized by the fact that one passion (for instance, for money, power, women, etc.) becomes dominant and separated from the total personality, thus becoming the ruler of the person. This passion is his idol to which he submits even though he may rationalize the nature of his idol and give it many different and often well-sounding names. He is ruled by a partial desire, he transfers all he has left to this desire, he is weaker the stronger it becomes. He has become alienated from himself precisely because he has become the slave of a part of himself. The phenomemon of transference is also seen in this light.in fact Fromm maintains that the more alienated the individual, the greater the need to transfer their parent s qualities to the analyst in order to relive the sense of secu- page 4 of 6
rity and protection which has been lost. From what has been said it can be inferred that neither Marx nor Fromm saw alienation as necessarily permanent, but as a continual threat to humanity, and it can also be said that any attempt to eliminate it is compatible with human nature. Both thinkers insist on the primary nature of alienation, it affects the whole of human reality, society, and nowadays the very survival of the species and of the whole planet as well. Man s future lies in possibility and not in necessity and whilst the number of choices is not infinite, the possibility to choose does exist. Both Marx and Fromm saw that history and society could give and take away from human beings the opportunity to evolve because men are gifted with the ability to develop their being. By picking out the proletariat as the pole of the dialectic of the class struggle, Marx did not intend to give a fatalistic interpretation of history, giving the impression that the oppressed classes everywhere would eventually and in any case free themselves of their chains in order to achieve their own and society s emancipation. If Marx s intention is interpreted in this way, as it often has been and still is, it would be impossible to understand even the concepts of class consciousness and class struggle. These concepts show that change can only come about through the search for real tools connected to the goal to be reached and through the effort to act. Fromm means the same thing when he states that man can break the chains of necessity if he is aware of the forces which act without his knowledge and if he makes the great effort to earn his freedom. Marx s solution to the problem of alienation as a consequence of change in the economic structure seems too simplistic, but the necessity mentioned is a result of the contradictory nature of capitalism and of the forces at work in it. Marx saw the advent of socialism as the only solution and its realisation must be a priority if human beings are to overcome the state of alienation to which the relations of production have relegated them. When Marx states in Das Kapital that the mode of production of material life generally dominates the development of social, political an intellectual life, the word dominates does not refer to any direct or inevitable determinism. It is not, as some detractors of Marxism maintain, a question of economic reductionism but it is necessary to go through a series of filters made up of the correlates between individual existence and group relations. This is a mechanism that Marx did not explain but which others, such as Althusser (A.I.S) and Fromm himself, have clearly illustrated: for example, when they speak about the socialization of children, human passions and all the other historical and cultural aspects which go to make up the subject matter of psychoanalytical study and of other related disciplines. Conditioning by the the economic structure can thus be mediated by situations, institutions, and circumstances which imply changes in the direction and extent of the original conditioning. Both Marx and Fromm were concerned about the increasing lack of opportunity for man s emancipation because of the deep-rooted conditioning which is typical of certain social orders and which leads to the risk that mankind will be unable to realize its humanity. Neither thinker believes in the inevitability of events but they do believe in possible alternatives that human beings can exploit if they use their resources correctly. But conditioning is often so strong that speaking of necessity seems unavoidable. However the concept of necessity can be mystifying and Marx was aware of this when he objected to the fact that capitalism believed that its laws were necessary. Those who believe that the Marxist dialectic is one of natural necessity should reflect on this point. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx maintains that man is the vehicle of the dialectic and if man can be perfected then anything which goes beyond the realms of a dialectic of the possible would be a contradiction. In the same way that Marx asserted that the proletariat must first become aware of its interests and then begin the struggle, Fromm believed that alienation could be remedied by the efforts of the individual who must become aware of the forces which paralyse him before he can act. He also believed that it could be remedied by social transformation aimed at eliminating the causes of alienation. Both thinkers believed that the relationship between man and nature and between man and society is real page 5 of 6
and can therefore be corrected in an attempt to cure man and society. Both had a deep faith in human beings and both saw the danger of losing the opportunity for any change in the historical situation with the consequent dehumanisation of the species. Both can be considered the guardians of man s humanity: Marx as the theorist of a philosophy of commitment and Fromm as the advocate of the psychoanalysis of love and of hope. Bibliography E. Fromm (1955a): The Sane Society, New York 1955 E. Fromm (1962a): Beyond the Chains of Illusion. My Encounter with Marx and Freud, New York 1962 E. Fromm (1964a): The Heart of Man. Its Genius for Good and Evil, New York 1964 E. Fromm (Ed.) (1965a): Socialist Humanism. An International Symposium, New York 1965 E. Fromm (1966i): A Global Philosophy of Man, in: The Humanist, Yellow Springs, Ohio 26 (1966), p. 117-122 E. Fromm (1973a): The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, New York 1973 E. Fromm (1979a): Greatness and Limitations of Freud s Psychoanalysis, New York 1979 E. Fromm (1981a): On Disobedience and Other Essays, New York 1981 I. Geymonat: Storia del pensiero filosofico, Milano, A.Garzanti Editore 1970 K. Marx: Oekonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844 K. Marx: Das Kapital K. Marx - F. Engels: Das Kommunistische Manifest page 6 of 6