Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society Offers Guidance
by John Stanton
“His value as a person lies in his salability, not in his
human qualities of love, reason, or in his artistic capacities. Happiness becomes
identical with consumption of newer and better commodities,the drinking in of
music, screen plays, fun, sex, liquor and cigarettes. Not having a sense of
self except the one which conformity with the majority can give, he is
insecure, anxious, depending on approval. He is alienated from himself,
worships the product of his own hands, the leaders of his own making, as if
they were above him, rather than made by him. He is in a sense back where he
was before the great human evolution began in the second Millennium BC. He is incapable of love and
to use his reason, to makedecisions, in fact incapable to appreciate life and
thus ready and even willing to destroy everything. The world is again
fragmented, has lost its unity; he is again worshiping diversified things, with
the only exception that now they are man-made, rather than part of nature.”
“The facts, however, are that the modern, alienated individual
has opinions and prejudices but no convictions,has likes and dislikes, but no
will. His opinions and prejudices,likes and dislikes, are manipulated in the
same way as his tastes, by powerful propaganda machines—which might not
beeffective were he not already conditioned to such influences byadvertising
and by his whole alienated way of life.The average voter is poorly informed
too. While he reads hisnewspaper regularly, the whole world is so alienated
from himthat nothing makes real sense or carries real meaning. He readsof
billions of dollars being spent, of millions of people beingkilled; figures, abstractions,
which are in no way interpreted in aconcrete, meaningful picture of the world.
The science fiction hereads is little different from the science news.
Everything isunreal, unlimited, impersonal. Facts are so many lists of
memoryitems, like puzzles in a game, not elements on which his life andthat of
his children depends.we come across aperson who acts and feels like an
automaton; who never experiences anything which is really his; who experiences
himselfentirely as the person he thinks he is supposed to be; whose artificial
smile has replaced genuine laughter; whose meaning-less chatter has replaced
communicative speech; whose dulleddespair has taken the place of genuine pain.”
“Suppose that in our Western culture movies, radios,
television,sports events and newspapers ceased to function for only four weeks.
With these main avenues of escape closed, what would be the consequence for
people thrown back upon ownresources? I have no doubt that even in this short
time thousandsof nervous breakdowns would occur, and many more thousandsof
people would be thrown into a state of acute anxiety, notdifferent from the
picture which is diagnosed clinically asneurosis.” Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, 1955
++++
The derisive children’s sandbox terms used by media pundits, Democratic and Republican stooges and the One Percent to describe Senator Bernie
Sanders of Vermont, a millionaire himself, would be comedic if it were not so
sad. The words used to denigrate Sanders would be instantly recognized by Fromm
since they were used in 1955 in the same fashion during the first Cold War.
Sanders, a self proclaimed Democratic Socialist, is, in fact, not the demon that nuts like
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews claim him to be. According to the publication The Hill, Matthews compared Sander’s to the Nazis. That’s
interesting because, according to The Hill, “Sanders is Jewish and most of his
family members were killed in the Holocaust.”
Antisemitism anyone?
What is a Democratic Socialist?
Fromm describes a Democratic Socialist as one who believes this:
“ We cannot afford to lose any of the fundamental achievements
of modern democracy--either the fundamental one of representative government,
that is, government elected by the people and responsible to the people, or any
of the rights which the Bill of Rights guarantees to every citizen. Nor can we
compromise the newer democratic principle that no one shall be allowed to
starve, that society is responsible for all its members, that no one shall be
frightened into submission and lose his human pride through fear of
unemployment and starvation.
These basic achievements must not only be preserved; they must
be fortified and expanded.In spite of the fact that this measure of democracy
has been realized--though far from completely--it is not enough. Progress for
democracy lies in enhancing the actual freedom, initiative, and spontaneity of
the individual, not only in certain private and spiritual matters, but above
all in the activity fundamental to every man's existence, his work.What are the
general conditions for that? The irrational and plan-less character of society
must be replaced by a planned economy that represents the planned and concerted
effort of society as such. Society must master the social problem as rationally
as it has mastered nature. One condition for this is the elimination of the
secret rule of those who, though few in number, wield great economic power
without any responsibility to those whose fate depends on their decisions. “
We may call this new order by the name of democratic socialism
but the name does not matter; all that matters is that we establish a rational
economic system serving the purposes of the people.”
With the United States devolving into some sort of weird
corporate fascist state, isn’t it time to get back on track toward evolving
towards a progressive, stable, all-inclusive, well-defended union? America is
going the wrong way. Hell will not be pleasant.
I Like the F-35: I Get High on the Jobs it Creates for
Vermont
Let’s take a
brief look at Sander’s voting
record.
He voted to confirm General David Petraeus, (USA, Ret.) to run
operations in the Middle East area of operations. He voted “yes” on funding
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unemployment benefits extensions for veterans of
those wars, and enhancing the GI Bill’s benefits. He also voted for funding for
a border fence and security along the US-Mexico border. He supports jobs
programs, infrastructure improvements, national health insurance and the repeal of President Donald Trump’s tax cut.
The National Interest reported that Sanders supported the deployment of F-35’s to
Vermont because it’s a great jobs program for the tiny state and its National
Guard Unit was eager to get the aircraft. The publication cited figures that
showed that constructing components for the F-35, (its bomb bays and the
aircraft’s Gatling Gun) in Vermont accounts for 1600 jobs and roughly $222
million in economic activity
While Trump’s fascist and racist tendencies have made mincemeat
out of the traditional, moderate Republican Party into a bunch of Trump
ring-kissers, he has also exposed the centrist and right wing elements of the
Democratic Party for what it is: A quiet partner in Trump’s assault on
immigrants, social programs, and whopping increases in the US defense budget.
Its rightward tilt matches the Republican swing in the same direction. No where
is that more evident in the desiccated, flip-flopping, right wing leaning Joe
Biden (Democrat), put up by Democratic Party leaders as a viable presidential
candidate. Yuck!
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Sanders
disciple, is the long term future of what remains of the Democratic Party; that
is, if she doesn’t start a new, progressive party that breaks with one head of
the two headed monster. Her voting record includes support for not
allowing Russia back into the G7 groups of nations until it gets out of
Ukraine; and, on another piece of legislation,
voted “yes” to stopping Trump from reducing funding for NATO. Her voting
record matches Sanders in many instances.
Cold War 2020: Nukes and Propaganda
The timing of the attacks by the Democratic and Republican party
vanguard coincides neatly with the “new reality” of Great Power Competition with China and
Russia, which the Pentagon and denizens of in the mainstream media—and
Washington, DC’s many Thinks Tanks—are pushing. With the trillion dollars to be
spent on the nuclear Triad modernization, the current deployment of low yield
nuclear weapons on some US Navy submarines—and the open talk of using nuclear weapons, if
only in a simulation, by the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, you’d think the
US is heading back to the Cold War mentality of 1955. Perhaps is time to replay
Stanley Kubrick’s classic movieDr.
Strangelove or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
That means that language has to accompany the shift to fighting
the Stalinist Commies/Socialists in Russia and China. In the coming months and
years, US propagandists will have to created an atmosphere of fear in the
general public not unlike was done for the War on Terror, and Saddam Hussein’s
regime in Iraq in the lead up to both wars waged by the US on that hapless
country.
The terms Left and Democratic Socialist will become equated with
sympathy for China and Russia; support
for repeal of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy; fighting for funding
of food stamp programs and environmental protections; the protection of Social
Security, Medicare/Medicaid; and pushing for healthcare-for-all and employment
insurance.
Those attacks must be pushed back by coalitions like the one
Sanders has worked so hard to build. Ocasio-Cortez, and those like her, will
have to carry the torch once Sanders passes it on to them. The young men and
women of the United States are critical in building a Democratic Socialist
front.
The End?
With all the talk of Artificial Intelligence, robotics and its dangers in war and peace, plus the
ominous consequences of Synthetic Biology gone wrong, it’s worth
closing with a comment by Fromm on the matter. The world is always looking for
modern-day thinkers to divine the
future. But that’s already been done by real intellectuals like Erich Fromm. He
was right on many aspects of Democratic Socialism (though not on a total command
economy) and below is his take on the future of humanity written in 1955. I
fear he may be right.
“In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead;
in the twentieth [and 21st] century the problem is that man is dead. In the
nineteenth century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the twentieth [and 21st] century it means schizoid
self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger
of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel.
But givenman's nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they becomeGolems,
they will destroy their world and themselves becausethey cannot stand any
longer the boredom of a meaningless life.”
John Stanton can be reached at jstantonarchangel@gmail.com
Post a Comment