We shall be heard

In ‘The Sane Society’ Erich Fromm undertakes a study of the psychopathology of modern life. Fromm correctly takes issue with those analysts who proceed from the premise that capitalism is rational and the task of the individual is to “adjust”, that is, conform to its special requirements. On the contrary, Fromm asserts, the system is inherently irrational, as its effects demonstrate. If men and women are to live productively and at peace with themselves and one another, capitalism has to go. He makes many astute observations on the ways in which capitalism mangles human personalities. When the people get off their knees, the high and mighty rulers no longer loom so large. As the workers regain their self-confidence and feel their collective strength, their former prostration before fabricated idols vanishes. Marx emphasised that mankind cannot behave according to truly human standards until they live under truly human conditions. Only when the material conditions of their existence are radically transformed, when all their time becomes available for freely chosen pursuits, can they throw off the contradictory relations which have tormented humanity.

The socialist argument is once everyone’s primary needs are capable of satisfaction, abundance reigns, and the labour time required to produce the necessities of life is reduced to the minimum, then the stage will be set for the abolition of all forms of alienation and for the rounded development of all persons, not at the expense of one another. The abolition of private property must be followed by the wiping out of national barriers. The resultant increase in the productive capacities of society will prepare the way for the elimination of the traditional antagonisms between physical and intellectual workers, between the inhabitants of the city and the country, between the advanced and the undeveloped nations. Religion is primarily the product of mankind’s lack of control over the forces of nature and society. The power of the gods, indeed, their very existence, was at bottom derived from the powerlessness of the people in the face of society and nature. The socialist movement has as one of its objectives the abolition of the material conditions which permit such degrading fictions to stunt men’s outlooks and cramp their lives. These are the indispensable prerequisites for building a harmonious, integrated, inwardly stable and constantly developing system of social relations. When all compulsory inequalities in social status, in conditions of life and labour, and in access to the means of self-development are done away with, then the manifestations of these material inequalities in the alienation of one section of society from another will wither away. This in turn will foster the conditions for the formation of harmonious individuals no longer at war with each other—or within themselves. Such are the prospects held out by the socialist revolution and its reorganisation of society. The aim of socialism is to introduce the rule of reason into all human activities. For humanity the welfare of their fellows will be the first law of their own existence.

With knowledge and power thus acquired, humanity will become the freely creative species it has the potential of becoming. The universal elevation of living and educational standards will break down the opposition between workers and intellectuals so that all intelligence can be put to work and all work be performed with the utmost intelligence. In this new form of social production labour can become a joyous and significant enterprise instead of an ordeal. Under capitalism the wage worker is treated, not as a fellow human being, but as a mechanism useful for the production of surplus value. He is a prisoner with a lifetime sentence to hard labour. Wage workers who are obliged to create an ever-expanding surplus of value for the masters of capital. Compulsory labour is the mark of slavery and oppression. Free time for all is the characteristic of a truly human existence. Free time enjoyed by all will be the measure of wealth, and the guarantee of equality and harmony. This is the promise of socialism.