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Erich Fromm is a worm-famous philosopher. This Is ...’ oxcmt from his essay Alienation under capitalism.

lienation as we find it in modern society

is almost total; it pervades- the relationship

of man to his work, to the things he con-

, sumes, to the state, to hisfellow man and

to: himself. Man has created a world of man-made

things as it never existed before. He has construct-

ed a complicated social machine to administer the machine he-built.

'Yet this whole creation of his stands over and above him. He does not feel himself as a creator and center, ~but‘as the servant of a Golem, which his hands have built. The more powerful and gig- antic the forces are which he unleashes, the more pchrless he feels himself as a human being. He confronts himself with his own forces embodied in things he has created, alienated from him-self. He is by his own creation, and has lost owner- ship of himself. He has built a golden calf, and says, .“these are your gods who have brought you to Egypt.” ‘

What happens to the worker? To put it in the words of a thoughtful and thorough observer of the industrial scene; In industry the person becomes an economic atom that dances to the tune of atomistic management. Your place is just here, you will sit in this fashion, your arms will move x inches in a course of y radius and the time of movement will be 000 minutes.

“Work is becoming more repetitive and thought- less as the planners, the micromotionists, and the scientific managers further strip the work of his right to hink and move freely. Life is being denied; need to control, creativeness, curiosity, and inde- pendent thought are being baulked, and the result, the inevitable result, is flight or fight on the part of the worker, apathy or destructiveness, psychic regression” (J. J. Gillespie.)

The role of the manager is also one of aliena- tion. It is true, he manages the whole and not a part, but he too is alienated from his product as something concrete anduseful. His aim is to em- ploy profitably the capital invested by others, al- though in comparison with the older type of owner- manager, modern management is much less inter- ested in the amount of profit to be paid out as divi- dend to the stockholder than it is in the efficient operation and expansion of the enterprise. Charac- teristically, within management those in charges of labor relations and of sales—that is, of human and manipulation—gain, relatively speaking, an increase ing importance in comparison with that in charge of the technical aspect of production.

The process of consumption is as alienated as the process of production. In the first place, we acquire things with money; we are accustomed to this and take it for granted. But actually, this is a most peculiar way of acquiring things. Money represents labor and effort in an abstract form; not necessarily my labor and my effort, Since I can have acquired it by inheritance, by fraud, by luck, or any number of ways. But even if I have acqu1red it by my effort might not have brought me the money were it not for the fact that I employed men), I have acquired it in a specific way, by a spec1f1c_kind of effort, corresponding to my skills and capacItles, while, in spending, the money is transformed into an abstract form of labor and can be exchanged

against anything else.

Provided I am in the possession of money, no effort or interest of mine is necessary to acquire something. If I have the money, I can acquire an exquisite painting, even though I may not have any appreciation for art; I can buy the best phonograph,

even though I have no musical taste; I can buy a ’

library, although I use is only for the purpose of ostentation. I can buy an education, even though I have no use for it except as an additional social asset. I can even destroy the painting or the books I bought, aside from a a loss of money, I suffer no damage. More possession of money gives me the right to acquire and to do with my acquisition what- ever I like. The human way of acquiring would be to

' make an effort qualitatively commensurate with

what I acquire. The acquisition of bread and cloth- ing would depend on no other premise than that of being alive; the acquisition of books and paintings, on my effort to understand them and my ability to use them. How this principle could be applied prac-

, tically is not the point to be discussed here. What

matters is that the way we acquire things is sep arated from the way in which we use them.

’Our way of consumption necessarily results in the fact that we are never satisfied, since it is not our real concrete person which consumes a real and concrete thing. We thus develop an ever-increasing need for more things, for more consumption. It is true that as long as the living standard of the pop- ulation is below a dignified- level of subsistence, there is a natural need for more consumption. It is also true that there is a legitimate need for more consumption as man develops culturally and has more refined needs for better food, obj ects of artis- tic pleasure, books, v

But our craving for consumption has lost all connection with the real needs of man.

Originally, the idea of consuming more and better things was meant to give a man a happier, more satisfied life. Consumption was a means to an end, that of happiness. It now has become an aim in itself. ’

The censtant increase of needs forces us to an ever-increasing effort, it makes us dependent on these needs and on the people and institutions by whose help we attain them. ‘Each person speculates to create a new need in the other person, in order to force him into a new dependency, to a new form of pleasure, hence to his economic ruin. . .With a multitude of commodities grows the realm of’alien things which enslave man.” (Marx.)

Money transforms imaginary powers into real powers; loyalty into Vice, vice into Virtue, the slave into the

master.

Man today is fascinated by the possibility of buying more, better, and especially, new things. He is consumption-hungry. ;

Man is not only alienated from the work he does, and the things and pleasures he consumes, but also from the social forces which determine our so- ciety and the life of everybody living in it.

What is modern man’s relationship to his fel-‘ low man? It is one between two abstractions, two living machines, who use each other. The employ- er uses the ones Whom he employs, the salesman uses his customers.

Everybody is to everybody else a commodity, always to be treated with certain friendliness, be— cause even if he is not of use now, he may be later. There is not much love or hate to be found in hum- an relations of our day. There is, rather, a super- ficial friendliness, and a more than superficial fair- ness, but that surface is distance and indif- ference. There is also a good deal of subtle distrust.

Alienation uncler

capitalism

V APRIL 6, 1970

l l When one man says to another, “You speak to John Smith; he is all right,” it is an expression of- reas- surance against a general distrust.

What is the relationship of man toward him- self? I describe this relationship as “marketing orientation” x r In this orientation, man experiences himself as a thing to be employed successfully on the market. He does not experience himself as an active agent, as the bearer of human powers. He is alienated

from these powers. His aim is to sell himself suc- '

cessfully on the market. His sense of self does not stem from his activity as a loving and thinking in dividual, but from his socioeconomic role. If things could speak, a typewriter would answer the question “Who are you ?” by saying “I am a typewriter,” and an automobile, by saying “I am an automobile,” or more specifically by saying, “I am a Ford,” or “a Buick,” or “a Cadillac.” If you ask a man “Who are you ?”, he answers “I am a manufacturer,” “I am a clerk,” “I am a doctor”~or “I am a married man,” “I am the father of two kids,” and his answer has pretty much the same meaning as that of the speak- ing thing would have.

That is the way he experiences himself, not as a man, with love, fear, convictions, doubts, but as that abstraction, alienated from his real nature, which fulfills a certain function in the social system.

His sense of value depends on his success: on whether he can sell himself favorably, whether he can make more of himself than he started out with, whether he is a success. '

His body, his mind and his soul are his capital, and his task in life is to invest it favorably, to make

a profit of himself. Human qualities like friendli- ‘

ness, courtesy, kindness, are transformed into com- modities, into assets of the “personality package,” conducive to a higher price on. the personality mar- ket. ' - ..

If the individual fails in a profitable investment of himself, he feels that he is a failure; if he suc-

ceeds, he is a success. Clearly, his sense of his own,

value always depends on factors extraneous to him- self, on the fickle judgment of the market, which decides about his value as it decides about the value of commodities.

He, like all commodities that cannot be sold profitably on the market, is worthless as far as his exchange value is concerned, even though his, use value may be considerable.

The alienated personality who is for sale must lose a good deal of the sense of dignity which is so characteristic of man even in most primitive cul— tures. He must lose almost all sense of self, of him- self as a unique and induplicable entity. The sense of self stems from the experience of myself as the subject of my'experience, my thought, my feeling, my decision, my judgment, my action. It presup- poses that my experience is my own, and not an alienated one. _

Things have no self and men who have become things can have no self, either.

by Erich Fromm I