Review: Kieran Durkin and Joan Braune (eds.), ‘Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory’
Review of Kieran Durkin and Joan Braune’s (eds.) Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory: Hope, Humanism, and the Future (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 248 pages.
Abstract
The current ‘renaissance’ of the work of, the humanist social psychologist, and psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm (1900-1980), has re-opened a ‘psychological basis’ of investigation, by which we may re-analyse the contemporary individual, social, and environmental crises of our time. Kieran Durkin’s and Joan Braune’s, Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory: Hope, Humanism and the Future, presents both the scholar and the activist with an in-depth background and an up-to-date means of applying Fromm’s theories to contemporary social reality.
Reviewed by Daniel F. Davis
The current ‘renaissance’ of the work of the humanist social psychologist and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900-1980) has re-opened a ‘psychological basis’ of investigation, by which we may re-analyse the contemporary individual, social, and environmental crises of our time. It is therefore timely that Kieran Durkin, the author of The Radical Humanism of Erich Fromm and Joan Braune, the author of Erich Fromm’s Revolutionary Hope: Prophetic Messianism as a Critical Theory of the Future, have co-edited an excellent interdisciplinary book that brings together the scholarly views of some of the most esteemed Frommian academics of today.
The book is split into three parts, ‘Radical and Prophetic Humanism’, ‘Social and Psychological Aspects’ and ‘Authoritarianism, Fascism, and the Contested Future’. In addition Durkin provides an insightful introduction to Fromm’s work, and Braune’s conclusion presents a highly relevant account of Fromm’s work in relation to the rise of contemporary fascism.
Durkin’s introduction, ‘Mapping Fromm’s Critical Theory,’ first of all draws on some of Fromm’s early work as a Critical Theorist in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. At that point, Fromm started to build on his social ‘revision’ of Freud, and commenced his empirical research of what can now be considered a highly influential study of the authoritarian social character of the working class in Weimar Germany. Durkin goes on to explain the importance and synthesis of Freud and Marx, which Fromm formulated into his ‘distinct form of Critical Theory’ (4). The introduction offers those without prior knowledge of Fromm a fruitful platform on which to delve into the main texts. It also provides the more experienced Fromm scholar with details of how his work evolved in his early essays.
Part one, Radical and Prophetic Humanism, begins with Michael J. Thompson’s chapter ‘Erich Fromm and the Ontology of Social Relations’. This chapter focuses on the paradigmatic shift in Critical Theory, where today, in contrast to the ‘first generation’ of critical theorists, ‘third generation’ critical theorists, such as Rainer Forst and Axel Honneth, give primacy to the ‘intersubjectivist-pragmatist approach’ (24), which focuses on ‘cognitive structures of consciousness’ (23). Thompson details that in contrast to this, ‘Fromm’s Marxism’ considers that social relations are formed within a ‘totality’ of ‘social power’, ‘norms’, and the enaction of these ‘practices’ (25). As the chapter progresses, Thompson applies Rousseau’s theory of the ‘general will’ (29), and Fromm’s use of ‘positive freedom’ and ‘mature love’ (28), to explain the interconnected ‘relatedness’ that is essential to human flourishing, and to our own sense of individuality (29). Thompson uses the term ‘expanded autonomy’ (31) as a positive means of evincing our symbiotic root to ‘normative humanism’. Ultimately, the chapter explains how ‘social ontology of our relational sociality’ (24) can restrict human relatedness, and hence can enact the ‘crippled ego’s’ search for ‘primary bonds’ (39). The current growth of ‘group narcissism’ (39), authoritarian populism and right-wing anti-establishment sentiment can therefore be understood as a failure of the ontological foundations of neoliberalism.
Chapter two, Michal Löwy’s ‘Jewish Messianism and Revolutionary Utopias in Central Europe: Erich Fromm’s Early Writings’ (1922-1930), starts with an exploration of Fromm’s 1922 doctoral thesis, The Jewish Law: Contribution to the Sociology of Diaspora Judaism, where Löwy comments that Fromm’s work was already both ‘anti-capitalist, and anti-bourgeois’ (46). The chapter continues to enlighten the reader on Fromm’s growing interest in Marx in the 1920s (48), his application of Weber’s protestant ethic (48) and the culmination of this early work that eventually led to Fromm’s publication of The Dogma of Christ in 1963. This chapter will be of great interest to those who wish to formulate an understanding of Fromm’s social theory in relation to his Judaic roots.
The third chapter in the section is George Lundskow’s ‘The Necessity of Prophetic Humanism in Progressive Change’. This chapter commences with a description of the social pathologies of modern US culture, while adding a religious tone of enquiry. It is clear that Fromm’s early writings were influenced by his experiences in relation to his family’s Judaism, and his later work focused on the influence of the ‘protestant ethic’, but it is also clear that Fromm shared Marx’s atheism. Lundskow’s focus on Fromm’s ‘spirituality’ sometimes overflows into a religiosity that could mistakenly be understood as Fromm’s perspective. For instance, unlike Fromm, Lundskow claims that ‘for socialism to succeed, it must overcome its attempts to be the first society ever to exclude religion’ (57). Further in the chapter Lundskow’s explanation of Huey Newton and the Black Panthers is very interesting, though, I feel that it somewhat distracts the chapter’s focus away from Fromm.
Part two, Social and Psychological Aspects, begins with chapter four, Roger Foster’s ‘Erich Fromm and the Prospects for Renewing Critical Theory in the Neoliberal Era’. Foster begins by evaluating how critical theory needs to return to what Fromm describes as an ‘understanding of the individual as a “socialized person”’ (78). He continues to succinctly explain Fromm’s ‘principle of universalism’, the ‘unity of the human race beyond divisions of tribe and nation’ (80). He then explores what Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel claim to be ‘new emancipatory themes’ that have emerged in contemporary post-industrial societies (84), and counters this by asking why ‘antidemocratic sentiments, and variants of authoritarian populism are on the rise in a society that is increasingly approximating a humanistic culture devoted to self-expression values?’ (85). This leads Foster to answer this by examining the contemporary form of capitalism, the ideological dominance of neoliberalism (86). He describes how neoliberalism has caused mass inequality and the marketisation of even ‘oneself’ (87). I believe that this chapter is essential reading for anyone wishing to investigate the twenty first century form of Fromm’s ‘anonymous authority’, and the routes that are required to reveal and alter its dominance and pathological outcomes.
Chapter five, Lynn S. Chancer’s ‘Feminism, Humanism and Erich Fromm’, explores how Fromm’s gendered terminology may be misleading for some contemporary scholars, but appropriately urges a focus on the positive relevance of Fromm’s work to contemporary feminism. The chapter proceeds to explore Fromm’s theories on socially constructed forms of submissive masochism and domineering sadism, which harness unequal power structures (99), and she expertly details how feminism and humanism share ‘the kind of multidimensional thinking-and-feeling about commonalities-and-differences […] that life demands’ (97).
The last chapter in part two is Michael Maccoby’s and Neil McLaughlin’s ‘Sociopsychoanalysis and Radical Humanism: A Fromm-Bourdieu Synthesis’. This interesting chapter explores the similarities between Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ and Fromm’s theory of ‘social character’. They make a detailed examination of the empirical research of Bourdieu, and Fromm, which is of some note, considering that Maccoby co-authored with Fromm the publication Social Character in a Mexican Village (1970). The crux of a habitus-social character synthesis is considered in how social character fills the gap in Bourdieu’s lack of ‘emotional and irrational aspects’ (124), and how social character can be ‘sharpened’ by Bourdieu’s focus on ‘the circulation of capital’, and a ‘more nuanced attention to social class’ (124). It is claimed that this synthesis could aid scholars in their understanding of contemporary ‘Trumpism’ (125).
Part three, Authoritarianism, Fascism and the Contested Future, starts with David Smith’s chapter ‘Anti-Authoritarian Marxism: Erich Fromm, Hilde Weiss, and the Politics of Radical Humanism’. This is an in-depth study that begins with Smith’s description of Fromm’s often characterised ‘desexualised psychoanalysis’ revision of Freud, which could rather be explained as an ‘anti-authoritarian Marxism’ (131). The chapter provides a historical account of what led to Fromm’s ‘unorthodox’ approach to both Marxism and Freudianism, where Smith notes that Fromm’s early work ‘sought a ‘rapprochement between psychoanalysis and Marxian materialism’ (133), and how he later ‘distanced himself’ from the “bourgeois materialism” that he found problematic’ in ‘these orthodoxies’ (132). Smith goes on to reveal some of Fromm’s mixed engagements with contemporary intellectuals, such as György Lukács, Nikolai Bukharin, and Karl Wittfogel, where his desire for ‘radical humanism’ was evident in his solidarity with ‘revolutionary Marxism’ and his rejection of social democratic ‘revisionism’ (134). The chapter proceeds to give a detailed account of the underappreciated involvement of the Frankfurt School sociologist Hilda Weiss, in Fromm’s Weimar study. The chapter expertly describes how Fromm’s radical humanist, psychological approach to authoritarianism differed from his contemporaries.
Chapter eight is Charles Thorpe’s ‘Escape from Reflexivity: Fromm and Giddens on Individualism, Anxiety and Authoritarianism’. Thorpe commences the chapter by drawing on what he sees as the similarity between Fromm and Anthony Giddens’ view of the anxiety inducing contradiction of humanity, a theme that Fromm examined in his book Escape from Freedom, that humans live both ‘within’, and ‘separately from nature’ (166). Thorpe explains how both Fromm and Giddens see this ‘anxiety’ as a ‘psychological source’ of divergency to authoritarian movements (169), and therefore promote a ‘social transformation to a higher form of individuality’ (166). This is defined in Giddens’ ‘reflexivity’ and Fromm’s use of ‘Positive freedom’ (166). But, as Thorpe describes, this is where Giddens’ and Fromm’s work branch in different directions. He describes the limitations of Giddens’ reflexivity, as a ‘politics of lifestyle’ (166), it being about changes that are constrained within extant structure. As opposed to this he clarifies how Fromm aims to remedy this ‘existential anxiety’ by analysing the inherent connection between capitalism’s ‘structural control’ and social pathology. Thorpe goes on to claim that Giddens’ theory of the ‘third-way’, which formed the bedrock of Bill Clinton’s and Tony Blair’s ‘social-ism’, normalises capitalism, and thus dismisses its social construction and fundamental, psychological effects on human nature. Thorpe clearly explains how third-way neoliberalism has failed to create ‘ontological security’ (177), and since the financial crisis, has furthered uncertainty and insecurity. It is therefore worrying, as Thorpe explains, that authoritarian and paternalistic figures, like Donald Trump, are tapping into the existential anxiety of many by creating new ontological security in ‘categories of gender, race and the nation’ (180).
The final chapter of part three is Lauren Langman and George Lundskow’s ‘Social Character, Social Change, and the Social Future’. Langman and Lundskow focus on one of Fromm’s most important concepts, social character. As with the previous chapter, Langman and Lundskow make it clear that ‘mechanisms of escape’ (194) emerge when ‘unpleasant experiences’, like alienation, meaninglessness and impotence become unbearable. Therefore, they see the current ‘having’ social narcissism and insecurity as social character at a point of possible reactive ‘dynamic change (195)’. They cite the productive and anti-authoritarian potentials in a growing social character, and ‘liquid selfhood, ‘among the later Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z’ (202), but they also note the existence of an older social character that is ‘clinging to a social order that is already gone’ (203). The authors are aware that the end to ‘pathological normality, and a ‘sane society’ will require a ‘radical transformation or abolition of capitalism’ (207), and provide a ten-point outline for an alternative (208).
The final contribution to the book is co-editor Joan Braune’s ‘Why anti-Fascism needs Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory’. Braune’s conclusion is an urgent appeal for the application of Fromm’s work in helping us to understand the rise of “global Trumpism” (216). She examines the parallels between the Weimar study of the authoritarian tendencies of 1930s German workers, and the recent “Feldman test”, that concludes that ’19 percent of white US Americans are likely authoritarian’ (217). Braune goes on to detail Fromm’s explanation of the healthy “biophilic’ orientation, which is ‘open to growth, change and the future’ (218), and the unhealthy “necrophilic” orientation, which is linked to contemporary fascism, that renders the world as ‘static, fixed, predictable and dead’ (218). Braune, like the authors of the earlier chapters of the book, urge both the ‘radical hope’ of Erich Fromm, and also cite the democratic means, ‘the common struggle against idolatry’ (224), that are available to people to enact ‘revolutionary change’ (224).
At a time when a multitude of crises face humanity, Fromm’s work is possibly more significant than ever. Durkin and Braune’s Erich Fromm’s Critical Theory: Hope, Humanism and the Future presents both the scholar and the activist with an in-depth background and an up-to-date means of applying Fromm’s theories to contemporary social reality.
Daniel F. Davis is a doctoral candidate at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK. His research focuses on the social psychology of Erich Fromm, Neoliberalism, and Political Economy. He holds a Master’s Degree from Kingston University, London, UK, where he studied under Professor Steven Keen and Dr. Rex A. McKenzie. He has recently been interviewed by the Association of Humanistic Psychology in Britain for an article in their magazine, Self and Society, ‘Fromm in Humanistic Perspective: An interview with Daniel F. Davis’, and has written a chapter in the recent publication Thinking Beyond Neoliberalism: Alternative Societies Transition and Resistance.
Email: daniel.davisecons@gmail.com
