Fromm’s economic determinism collapsed into paradox, preparing his turn to messianic humanism

Evidence

Fromm maintained, with a rigorousness which did not flinch even in the face of glaring paradoxes, that the economy determined humanity’s fate. The quasi-neurotic behaviour of the masses, which is an appropriate response to the damaging and pointless conditions of life they are inevitably faced with, cannot, therefore, be "healed" by "analysis". It will only be "healed" by the alteration and elimination of these conditions of life.' … First, it was shown that the tight functioning of society would not permit any radical change in the conditions of life; then it was said that only a radical change in the conditions of life would be able to change the behaviour of the masses. But even this sort of change in the conditions of life would only lead to the creation of the new ideological superstructure which the economic and social base would require’. With views such as these, it was only a matter of time before someone like Fromm, who was convinced that fulfilment in life was possible for everyone, turned resolutely towards a messianic humanism which offered an ever-present escape from the endless chain of being and consciousness. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 233

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely dense logical demonstration: Fromm’s own determinist premises make social change impossible, which jointly pushes toward a messianic humanist escape from the closed loop of base and superstructure — a locked dialectic the reader will sit with.
• XREF: connects to: Fromm’s rigor reduced the materialist conception of history to absurdity. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 233; Russian messianic thought demanded dissolution of personality into society; Fromm carried secularized Jewish themes into his later work — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 164 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Fromm saw psychoanalysis as filling Marxism’s missing link between ideology and economic base. #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 329
• Fromm carried secularized Jewish themes into his later work #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 164
• Russian messianic thought demanded dissolution of personality into society #corroborates (0.72)
• Foucault’s later work broke from his own earlier discourse-determinism #complicates (0.70) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 697