Synopsis
A humanist-socialist critique arguing modern capitalist society is itself pathological, alienating people from one another and from meaningful, productive life.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workA whole society can be sick, and ours breeds alienation by reducing people to consumers and cogs, starving the human needs for relatedness and creative work.
It shifts the diagnosis of mental distress from the individual to the social order, judging society by whether it meets human needs.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom.
Reading note
Read Fromm as a moral psychologist; his alternative of communitarian socialism is sketched more as an ideal than a program.
Best paired with
Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom