The Sane Society

Instead Fromm analyses current society, circa 1950's, on the basis of human nature which arises from the human condition, his whole existence. Fromm finds that man has, over the centuries, removed himself from nature (the metaphor of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden) which formed for him the womb and the spiritual connection needed by him. Instead man developed his own world which was formed through the creation of villages and towns and agriculture and some independence from nature as the provider and sustainer. The eventual extreme aspects of this alienation are found in both communism and capitalism as seen today where the individual no longer feels a relatedness to others in the society, an alienation which itself can lead to insanity. The fact that people are capital and not "people" anymore and that their work becomes capital as well which can be interchanged with other forms of capital which have no human base produces ill health and a mentally ill society. This also applies to communism except with the addition of enforced governmental structures. Fromm notes how sanity can only be achieved through changes in all aspects of the human condition at once rather than piecemeal attempts. That is his economical, political, spiritual and social needs must be satisfied at the same time. He contrasts earlier centuries to the modern one and how a capitalistic view imposes uniformity even under the illusion of individuality.

From attempts some way out of this crisis through what he calls "communitarian socialism" which applies directly and concretely to an individual's present circumstances. Fromm is widely read and never forgets to note the important authors who led the way before him. Similarly he is knowledgable in surveys and studies over the years concerning attempts at an improvement of the human condition applied in industry by others. It is the satisfaction of human needs in the present circumstances which lie on the road to a better society not who controls the means of production.

Unfortunately after a detailed and brilliant analysis of society Fromm does not spend anywhere near the same amount of time in the resolution of its problems. In the second last chapter, about 70 pages of a total of 360, he attempts it. One feels that he never quite finished this chapter and that he had much more to say, or rather there was much he mentioned briefly but did not analyse deeply enough. He did not discuss the problems which could arise in these solutions as they are implemented. This is disappointing.

Nonetheless, simply for a deep and insightful analysis of society and human nature Fromm cannot be faulted. The book is a must read for these reasons alone. It is unfortunate his ideas were never put into practice. Society continues in its march towards insanity as the capitalist ideal is approached and people are more and more dehumanised. No wonder such massive problems exist.


illuminating and insightful   April 18, 2000
George Shaw
12 out of 15 found this review helpful

Erich Frommfs gThe Sane Societyh is one the most illuminating and insightful books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. In gThe Sane Societyh Fromm questions the sanity of a society which covets property over humanity and adheres to idolatrous theologies of submission and domination rather than self-actualization. Fromm provides readers with a scathing indictment of modern capitalism which, Fromm states, is the main source of the isolation and alienation prevalent in todayfs society. Fromm advocates communitarian socialism, which, he explains, expounds the humanitarian ideals and spiritual self-actualization needed to cure society of its religious and capitalistic ills.


Is our society (= we as individuals) sane? The answer of the book is "no"   February 18, 2009
Vladimir Antimonov (Moscow, Russian Federation)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

The kernel of Dr. Fromm's analysis and the starting point for his further discussions is the definition of "human nature" - from the psychological standpoint. For him the human's psyche is not a computer (to use contemporary metaphor) on which society can install any programs of behavior it requires. If the social programs - norms of conduct and value judgments, i.e. what is good and bad, what one shall strive for etc. - do not match the natural, evolutionary pre-defined needs of the human being, psychological defects and neurosis shall occur. The mentally healthy, i.e. sane person is thus the one who does not have defects and does not experience neurosis, who lives in a society that through economic, political and social channels promotes and furthers his harmony with requirements of his, human nature.

For many of us it may be very surprising and even suspicious that somebody can question the sanity of western society and thus sanity of the majority of its individual members. How, after all, can people who have achieved such dramatic heights in the scientific thought, who have so rapidly progressed in mutual creation of such elaborated technologies, and who then make them work with an even-increasing efficiency, be not sane?

The answer lies in the definition and the meaning of "sanity". For Fromm the term "in-sane" does not equal "idiot". An in-sane person is not necessarily the one who has abnormally low IQ (intelligence level), but the one who is not truly aware of himself and of his nature, whose reason (i.e. the ability to "grasp the world by thought", to penetrate beneath the surface of things and ideas as opposed to mere ability to manipulate given objects and facts) ceased to develop properly or deteriorated; an in-sane person fails to see the difference between the means for his life - money and material possessions as most straightforward examples - and the aims of life. The one who lives for something that he consciously or unconsciously puts higher than him - be it material things or other persons whom he worships.

The aim of productive, that is truly human, life for Dr. Fromm is threefold: 1) the realization of man's productive powers, 2) development of his reason, and 3) experience of true love - not only of erotic love, but the true love for ones neighbor that so many religions had manifested. His diagnosis is that our average contemporary fails miserably in all three spheres. Again we may at first rebel at such humiliating statement but only until we go along with the author through all the arguments he successively presents in the book.

For the remote future generations our time may appear to be a very interesting theoretical case. The direct authority that suppressed human beings from time immemorial has been largely gone. No more serf owners, no more cruel industrialists who could exploit workers in the absence of protective legislation. The family authority also diminished and Church as organization as well as an institution does not tower above individual any more. The individual has finally gained (or received) his freedom!... But is he really free? That is a cornerstone question for Fromm's analysis.

The author meticulously studies the peculiar aspects of our modern life, from what the rise of methods of mass production started to require from human beings in the 19th century, to how these requirements had, along with technology, developed in the 20th century. He especially focuses on how requirements of the modern economic machine progressively formed into moral standards for our society and how they forced out the need (and largely the possibility) for direct, overt authority; how these economic requirements now perpetuate and reinforce themselves through political and social institutions in such a way that from the first years of our lives we want to do precisely what the economic machine, and not the human nature, wants us to do: to indulge in obsessive work for most of our life's hours, with only two purposes: 1) to increase the abstract capital, material possessions and to secure the growth of the machine itself, and 2) to be able to spend the results of our work - money - and the small bits of the remaining time on the goods and entertainments produced by this machine.

How could it be so? And is it so? When we look at our lives we may at first fail to find any proof of evidence for it. After all we do what we want to do, we decide what our profession should be, what company we shall work for; nobody tells us what model of the car to buy, or which girl to marry... Nobody forces us to anything! And that is very accurate. Nobody. But it does not mean there is not something that persistently suggests, urges us to do what it wants us to do. The special term was later coined for this something - economists now call it informal "institutions". And the set of institutions currently accepted by most members of society form an overwhelming force called the "public opinion". In contrast to the overt authority, which usually tend to demand very precise things from its subordinates, public opinion leaves us enough room for some unimportant choices, which give us the illusion that the choices are truly ours. In reality though most of our really important choices are pre-determined by the way the mass production machine works and what type of servants it needs for its successful operation. The modern technology needs very intelligent man to operate it. It cannot use brutal force any longer since that would hinder man's intelligence, which it now needs so much. It cannot let most humans to develop their power of reasoning - since they would then rebel against the dictatorship of economic forces. Thus the contemporary economic machine needs man who becomes more and more intelligent ("smart") but never truly develops his reason, who wants to have all the goods this economic machine can produce in order to provide for its continuous growth - and the machine skillfully helps him to want an ever-increasing number of new and different goods and experiences it can produce. It propagates itself and stimulates consumption through techniques of advertisements, propaganda and "success stories". What it does not reveal to us is that most of these stories are successes of the machine, not of human beings in the humanistic sense of achievement.

This book largely repeats what Erich Fromm had already said in his earlier works ("Escape from Freedom" and especially "Man for himself") in the analysis of the human nature, current human situation and problems that occur at their junction. Twenty years after the first publication of "The Sane Society", in his final book "To have or to be?" Dr. Fromm sums up these concepts more succinctly (on some 150 pages), though never loosing important aspects of his previous works. So for anyone who's mostly interested with a psychological and not sociological aspects of this book I would rather recommend to read "To have or to be?" and then "Man for himself".

One aspect of "The Sane Society" that is more elaborated in this book than in his other works is the "Road to Sanity": changes that are necessary in social, political and economic spheres to let the human beings become masters, not slaves, of the technology and capital they created; what changes are required to let each individual realize his creative and loving potential and to stop being converted into programmed robots which follow the dictatorship of the soulless capital, despite having deep inside the ever-present anxiety and neuroses that now so frequently occur.

Fromm seeks solution that would help not only the upper and middle classes, but the working class too, every human being. He briefs the reader on the ideas offered by the most and also lesser renowned socialists, quoting them extensively, and suggests that the "Road to sanity" for us should be that what he calls "Democratic Socialism". Unlike many socialists who placed most emphasis in the spheres of political (revolution, the rule of the working class) and economic (nationalization of the means of production and less drastic distribution of income) changes, Fromm explains that unless significant changes also happen in the social sphere (changes in values and increase of faith in abilities and reason of all human beings) any attempts limited to economic and/or political spheres will inevitably fail. He also shows that while economic goal of socialists of the 19th century - to provide better means for living for the working class - has already been accomplished better that many could dream of, the social situation of that class and it's genuine self esteem had not largely changed. The only difference is that brutal oppression of the 19th century was substituted with programming the blue and white collar workers with "the law of the free market" mentality which can be summed up in the following: "If you do not work you will starve, and we offer you choices of work and monetary reward on which you and your family can exist. If you do not like the work we offer for your knowledge and skill level and you do not have enough money and brains to prepare yourself for what you would like to do, or you want to do what we as a society do not value in materialistic sense (teachers, nurses etc) - well that's just too bad for you. But we, the society, have nothing to do with that. This is you who are a failure. Realize it and stick to your destiny and work that you can do. After all somebody have to do the dirty jobs in the factories and on the streets, so why not you?" Although for some this may sound like a normal, fair way of treating individuals, it certainly does not sound so for Dr. Fromm and for many other humanists he quotes.

Erich Fromm was far from being naïve and overoptimistic. He accepts that among current economic, political and social institutions the current way of mass production (around which our whole economy is organized), which requires huge organizations and a great deal of specialization of labor, can be changed least. He offers some very practical (and mostly realistic) political, social and also minor economic changes that should help workers as well as managers to become more reasonable and also become less alienated from their work and their whole life. But after reading his truly brilliant analysis of the human nature and current human situation and the way it developed to what it is, his last, relatively short chapter on the "Roads to Sanity", leaves an impression that he himself was aware that what he proposed was not enough, and what would be enough could not be realistically achieved. Dr. Fromm is an analyst par excellence, but he does not have the vigor and ego of Karl Marx to force his ideas and ideals with the revolutionary strength upon "the ones who must be saved". Thus he does not dwell into many details on how the new, sane society shall function, limiting his suggestions only to indicating "possible ways" and some seemingly discrete changes. And that may be a sign that he himself did not believe that something can be fundamentally changed on the gross level. But even if that is true, even if economic machine and profit obsession cannot be restrained in the foreseeable future, this book is still very important as it can at least help some individuals to unveil their reason and thus to [partially] escape the general madness created by the current capitalistic soulless machine. And the larger the number of such individuals is, the more are the chances that society as a whole will gradually adopt a healthier approach to life.


Excelent book .Pablo Franzani Florida USA   April 7, 2007
P. Franzani
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Excellent book. In a brilliant thesis Mr. Fromm expose the insanity and violence that comes within our Western Society. He writes about the selfish and blind hunger of "developed countries" (on the name of civilized society) killing and destroying millions for their selfish purpose (reminds me of Iraq war).

This book was written about 50 years ago and still up-to date, I just copied this small paragraph that give an idea about the core of Fromm message:" The western world have created a great material wealth more than any other society in the history of the human race. Yet we have managed to kill of millions of our population in an arrangement, which we call war. During these wars, every participant firmly believes that he was fighting in his self-defense, for his honor, or that he was backed up by God. The groups with whom one is at war are, often from one day to the next, looked upon as cruel irrational fiends whom one must defeat to save the world from evil. But a few years after the mutual slaughter is over the enemies of yesterday are our friends, the friend s of yesterday our enemies, and again in full seriousness we begin to paint them with appropriate colors of black and white. "
Fromm message is a one that should be heard by all human beings: love between neighbors , love in societies , countries and nations, is the only solution to the violence and individualism that is destroying western society, I just think about how much violence we have here in the USA, everything is solved with violence, that's the basic relation that is in the core of this society that supposed to be Christian. the book is a must read and I really recommended it to anyone.