We find Fromm describing a picture of where Western society has come from, since
the first Industrial Revolution, and where we are at (in the second Industrial
Revolution). The first Industrial Revolution, Fromm describes as a transfer of
energy sources from organic, animal and man energy sources, to mechanical,
steam electric, oil, and atomic, energy.
“We are not on the way to free enterprise, but are moving rapidly away from it. We
are not on the way to greater individualism, but are becoming an increasingly manipulated mass civilization. We are not on the way to the places toward which our ideological maps tell us we are moving. We are marching in an entirely different direction. Some see the direction quite clearly; among them are those
who favor it and those who fear it. But most of us look at maps that are as
different from reality as was the map of the world in the year 500 B.C.E. It is
not enough to know that our maps are false, It is important to have correct
maps if we are to be able to go in the direction we want to go. The most
important feature of the new map is the indication that we have passed the
stages of the first Industrial Revolution and have begun the period of the
second Industrial Revolution.”[2] Fromm points out that the majority of those in the
industrialized society are not in the position they think they are in. Fromm
describes this as a group of people who are relying on a map that they trust is
true, but is actually false. The mass of industrialized workers and consumers
think they know where they are, in relation to others in society, but in fact,
are trusting in a map that is a false ideology. Worse yet, this map serves to
support other groups within the society.
“The first Industrial Revolution was characterized by the fact that man had learned
to replace live energy (that of animals and men) by mechanical energy (that of
steam, oil, electricity, and the atom). These new sources of energy were the
basis for a fundamental change in industrial production. Related to this new
industrial potential was a certain type of industrial organization[MG1] ,
that of a great number of what we would call today small- or medium-sized
industrial enterprises, which were managed by their owners, which competed with
each other, and which exploited their workers and fought with them about the
share of the profits. The member of the middle and upper class was the master
of his enterprise, as he was the master of his home, and he considered himself
to be the master of his destiny. Ruthless exploitation of nonwhite populations
went together with domestic reform, increasingly benevolent attitudes toward
the poor, and eventually, in the first half of this century, the rise of the
working class from abysmal poverty to a relatively comfortable life.”[3]
Fromm describes a second Industrial Revolution, one that he
saw commencing at the time he wrote The Revolution of Hope, at the dawn of the
Nixon presidency in the US.
“The first Industrial Revolution is being followed by the second Industrial
Revolution,
the beginning of which we witness at the present time. It is characterized by the fact not only that living energy has been replaced by mechanical
energy but that human thought is being replaced by the thinking of machines.Cybernetics and automation (“cybernation”) make it possible to build machines
that function much more precisely and much more quickly than the human brain
for the purpose of answering important technical and organizational questions.
Cybernation is creating the possibility of a new kind of economic and social
organization. A relatively small number of mammoth enterprises has become the
center of the economic machine and will rule it completely in
the not-too-distant future. The enterprise, although legally the property of
hundreds of thousands of stockholders, is managed (and for all practical
purposes managed independently of the legal owners) by a self-perpetuating
bureaucracy. The alliance between private business and government is becoming
so close that the two components of this alliance become ever less
distinguishable. The majority of the population in America is well fed, well
housed, and well amused, and the sector of “underdeveloped” Americans who still
live under substandard conditions will probably join the majority in the
foreseeable future. We continue to profess individualism, freedom, and faith in
God, but our professions are wearing thin when compared with the reality of the
organization man’s conformity guided by the principle of hedonistic
materialism.”
2 The Vision of the Dehumanized Society of 2000
“What
is the kind of society and the kind of man we might find in the year 2000?,”
asks Fromm. “Most people still
think in the concepts of the society of the first Industrial Revolution. They
see that we have more and better machines than man had fifty years ago and mark
this down as progress. They believe that lack of direct[4] political
oppression is a manifestation of the achievement of personal freedom. Their
vision of the year 2000 is that it will be the full realization of the
aspirations of man since the end of the Middle Ages, and they do not see that
the year 2000 may not be the fulfillment and happy culmination of a period in
which man struggled for freedom and happiness, but the beginning of a period in
which man ceases to be human and becomes transformed into an unthinking an d
unfeeling machine.”
Fromm
goes on to tell of the astute thinkers of the 18th and 19th century who foresaw
the impending crisis of an ideological dogma for an industrialized society. He
includes in this list Burckhardt, Proudhon, Baudelaire, Thoreau, Marx, John
Stuart Mill, and Tolstoy:
“It
is interesting to note that the dangers of the new dehumanized society were
already clearly recognized by intuitive minds in the 19th century, and it adds
to the impressiveness of their vision that they were people of opposite
political camps.”
Regarding
Marx, who viewed the problem to be one of the goal of industrialization rather
than industrialization itself, Fromm saw a thinker of “ever-increasing
cupidity”.
“It
seems that great minds a hundred years ago saw what would happen today of
tomorrow, while we to whom it is happening blind ourselves in order not to be
disturbed in our daily routine. It seems that liberals and conservatives are
equally blind in this respect. There are only few writers of vision who have
clearly seen the monster to which we are giving birth. It is not Hobbes’ Leviathan,
but a Moloch, the all-destructive idol, to which human life is to be
sacrificed. This Moloch has been described most imaginatively by Orwell and
Aldous Huxley, by a number of science-fiction writers who show more
perspicacity than most professional sociologists and psychologists.”[5]
“The
largely humanist-oriented, occasionally ideologically minded
intellectual-dissenter… is rapidly
being displaced either by experts and specialists… or by the
generalist-integrators, who become in effect house-ideologues for those in
power, providing overall intellectual integration for disparate actions.”[6]
“The ‘megamachine’ is the totally organized and homogenized
social system in which society as such functions like a machine and men like
its parts. This kind of organization by total coordination, by ‘the constant
increase of order, power, predictability and above all control,’ achieved
almost miraculous technical results in early megamachines like the Egyptian and
Mesopotamian societies, and it will find its fullest expression, with the help
of modern technology, in the future of the technological society.”[7]
“The
first time the megamachine was used on a large scale in modern times, was it
seems to me, in the Stalinist system of industrialization, and after that, in
the system used by Chinese Communism. While Lenin and Trotsky still hoped that
the Revolution would eventually lead to the mastery of society by the
individual, as Marx has visualized, Stalin betrayed whatever was left of these
hopes and sealed the betrayal by the physical extinction of all those in whom
the hope might not have completely disappeared. Stalin could build his
megamachine on the nucleus of a well-developed industrial sector, even though
one far below those of countries like England or the United States. The
Communist leaders in China were confronted with a different situation. They had
no industrial nucleus to speak of. Their only capital was the physical energy
and the passions and thoughts of 700 million people. They decided that by means
of the complete coordination of this human material they could create the
equivalent of the original accumulation of capital necessary to achieve a
technical development which in a relatively short time would reach the level of
that of the West. This total
coordination had to be achieved by a mixture of force, personality cult, and
indoctrination., which is in contrast to the freedom and individualism Marx had
foreseen as the essential elements of socialist society. One must forget,
however, that the ideals of the overcoming of private egotism and of maximal consumption
have remained elements in the Chinese system, at least thus far, although
blended with totalitarianism, nationalism, and thought control, thus vitiating
the humanist vision of Marx.”[8]
“…the second Industrial Revolution, in which society itself
becomes a vast machine…”
Comparisons with the machine of ancient Egypt… “First of
all, the labor of the live parts of the Egyptian machine was forced labor. The
naked threat of death or starvation forced the Egyptian worker to carry out his
task. Today, in the 20th century, the worker in the most developed industrial
countries, such as the United States, has a comfortable life—one which would
have seemed like a life of undreamed-of luxury to his ancestors working a
hundred years ago. He has, and in this point lays one of the errors of Marx,
participated in the economic progress of capitalist society, profited from it,
and, indeed, has a great deal more to lose than his chains.”[9]
Uncritical acceptance of science
Media literacy
Corporate capitalism
Suf of true
Emotional/artistic constipation
Intentionality – pursuit of das man over self
Standardization of man
“The
bureaucracy that directs the work is very different from the bureaucratic elite
of the old megamachine. Its life is guided more or less by the same
middle-class virtues that are valid for the worker; although its members are
better paid that the worker, the difference in consumption is one of quantity
rather than quality. Employers and workers smoke the same cigarettes and they
ride in cars that look the same even though the better cars run more smoothly
than the cheaper ones. They watch the same movies and the same television
shows, and their wives use the same refrigerators.”
“The
managerial elite is also different from those of old in another respect: they
are just as much appendages of the machine as those whom they command. They are
just as alienated, or perhaps more so, as the worker in one of their factories.
They are bored, like everyone else, and use the same antidotes against boredom.
They are not as the elites were of old—a culture creating group. Although they
spend a good deal of their money to further science and art, as a class they
are as much consumers of this “cultural welfare” as its recipients. They are
creative scientists and artists, but it seems that, thus far, the most
beautiful blossom of 20th-century society grows on the tree of science, and not
on the tree of art.”[10]
3. The Present Technological Society
a) Its Principles
“The
technetronic society may be the system of the future, but it is not yet here;
it can develop from what is already here, and it probably will, unless a
sufficient number of people see the danger and redirect our course. In order to
do so, it is necessary to understand in greater detail the operation of the
present technological system and the effect it has on man.”[11]
“The
system is programmed by two principles that direst the efforts and thoughts of
everyone working in it: The first principle is the maxim that something ought
to be done because it is technically possible to do it. If it is possible to
build nuclear weapons, they must be built, even if they might destroy us all.
If it is possible to travel to the moon or to the planets, it must be done,
even if at the expense of many unfulfilled needs here on earth. This principle
means the negation of all values that the humanist tradition has developed.
This tradition said that something should be done because it is needed for man,
for his growth, joy, and reason, because it is beautiful, good, or true. Once
the principle is accepted that something ought to be done because it is
technically possible to do it, all other values are dethroned, and
technological development becomes the foundation of ethics.”[12]
“The
second principle is that of maximal efficiency and output. The requirement of
maximal efficiency leads as a consequence to the requirement of minimal
individuality. The social machine works more efficiently, so it is believed if
individuals are cut down to purely quantifiable units whose personalities can
be expressed on punched cards. These units can be administered more easily by
bureaucratic rules because they do not make trouble or create friction. In
order to reach this result, men must be de-individualized and taught to find
their identity in the corporation rather than in themselves.”[13]
This section deals nicely with the dangers of Industrial
Revolution standardization & the popular corporate obsession with “best
practices”.
“A second line of investigation should be a full
consideration of the fact efficiency is only a known element in already
existing activities. Since we do not know much about the efficiency or
inefficiency of untried approaches, one must be careful in pleading for things
as they are on the grounds of efficiency. Furthermore, one must be very careful
to think through and specify the area and time period being examined. What
might appear efficient by a narrow definition can be highly inefficient if the
time and scope of the discussion are broadened. In economics there is increasing
awareness of what are called neighborhood effects; that is, effects that go
beyond the immediate activity and are often neglected in considering benefits
and costs. One example would be evaluating the efficiency of a particular
industrial project only in terms of the immediate effects on this
enterprise—forgetting, for instance, that waste materials deposited in nearby
streams and the air represent a
costly and seriously inefficiency with regard to the community. We need to
clearly develop standards of efficiency that take account of time and society’s
interest as a whole. Eventually, the human element needs to be taken into
account as a basic factor in the system whose efficiency we try to examine.”[14]
“Dehumanization
in the name of efficiency is an all-too-common occurrence; for example, giant
telephone systems employing Brave New World techniques of recording operators’
contacts with customers and asking customers to evaluate workers’ performance
and attitude, standardizing service, and increasing efficiency. From the narrow
perspective of immediate company purpose, this may yield docile, manageable
workers, and thus enhance company efficiency. In terms of the employees, as
human beings, the effect is to engender feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, and frustration,
which may lead to either indifference or hostility. In broader terms, even
efficiency may not be served, since the company and society at large doubtless
pay a heavy price for these practices.”
“Another
general practice in organizing work is to constantly remove elements of
creativity (involving an element of risk or uncertainty) and group work by
dividing and subdividing tasks to the point where no judgment or interpersonal
contact remains or is required. Workers and technicians are by no means
insensitive to this process. Their frustration is often perceptive and
articulate, and comments such as “We are human” and “the work is not fit for
human beings” are not uncommon. Again, efficiency in a narrow sense can be
demoralizing and costly in individual and social terms.”
“If
we are only concerned with input-output figures, a system may give the
impression of efficiency. If we take into account what the given methods do to
the human beings in the system, we may discover that they are bored, anxious,
depressed, tense, etc. The result would be a twofold one: (1) Their imagination
would be hobbled by their psychic pathology, they would be uncreative, their
thinking would be routinized and bureaucratic, and hence they would not come up
with new ideas and solutions that would contribute to a more productive
development of the system; altogether, their energy would be considerably
lowered. (2) They would suffer from many physical ills, which are the result of
stress and tension; this loss in health is also a loss for the system.
Furthermore, if one examines what this tension and anxiety do to them in their
relationship to their wives and children, and in their functioning as
responsible citizens, it may turn out that for the system as a whole the seemingly
efficient method inefficient, not only in human terms but also as measured by
merely economic criteria.”[15]
“The other aspect of the same principle, that of maximum
output, formulated very simply, maintains that the more we produce of whatever
we produce, the better. The success of the economy of the country is measured
by its rise of total production. So is the success of a company. Ford may lose
several hundred million dollars by the failure of a costly new model, like the
Edsel, but this is only a minor mishap as long as the production curve rises.
The growth of the economy is visualized in terms of ever-increasing production,
and there is no vision of a limit yet where production may be stabilized. The
comparison between countries rests upon the same principle. The Soviet Union
hopes to surpass the United States by accomplishing a more rapid rise in
economic growth.”[16]
“Not only industrial production is ruled by the principle of
continuous and limitless acceleration. The educational system has the same criterion:
the more college graduates the better. The same in sports: every new record is
looked upon as progress. Even the attitude toward weather seems to be
determined by the same principle. It is emphasized that this is “the hottest
day in the decade,” or the coldest, as the case may be, and I suppose some
people are comforted for the inconvenience by the proud feeling that they are
witnesses to the record temperature. One could go on endlessly giving examples
of the concept that constant increase of quantity constitutes the goal of our
life; in fact, that is what is meant by ‘progress’.”[17]
“Few people raise the question of quality, or what all this
increase in quantity is good for. This omission is evident in a society that is
not centered around man anymore, in which one aspect, that of quantity has
choked all others. It is easy to see that the predominance of this principle
“the more the better” leads to an imbalance in the whole system. If all efforts
are bent on doing more, the quality of living loses all importance, and
activities that once were means become ends.”[18]
“If the overriding economic principle is that
we produce more and more, the consumer must be prepared to want–that is, to
consume—more and more. Industry does not rely on the consumer’s spontaneous
desires for more and more commodities. By building in obsolescence it often
forces him to buy new things when the old ones could last much longer. By
changes in styling of products, dresses, durable goods, and even food, it
forces him psychologically to buy more than he might need or want. But
industry, in its need for increased production, does not rely on the consumer’s
needs and wants but to a considerable extent on advertising, which is the most
important offensive against the consumer’s right to know what he wants. The
spending of 16.5 billion on direct advertising in 1966 (in newspapers,
magazines, radio, TV) may sound like an irrational and wasteful use of human
talents, of paper and print. But it is not irrational in a system that believes
that increasing production and hence consumption is a vital feature of our
economic system, without which it would collapse. If we add to the cost of
advertising the considerable cost for restyling of durable goods, especially
cars, and of packing, which partly is another form of whetting the consumer’s
appetite, it is clear that industry is willing to pay a high price for the
guarantee of the upward production and sales curve.”[19]
[1] Pg. 36, The
Revolution of Hope
[2] Pg. 36
[3] Pg 36
[4] Italics
added by Giobbi
[5] Pg. 40
[6] Pg 40 from
The Technocratic Society by Brzezinski
[7] Pg 40 Lewis
Mumford The Myth of the Machine
[8] Pg. 41
[9] Pg. 41
[10] Pg. 42
[11] Pg. 43
[12] Pg.43 The
Revolution of Hope
[13] Pg. 43
[14] Pg. 44
[15] Pg. 45
[16] Pg 46 ROH
[17] Pg. 46
[18] Pg. 46
[19] Pg. 47
