On the closing question. Fromm agrees with Tocqueville's diagnosis and goes further. Tocqueville thought people conform because nobody has time to check everything for themselves. Fromm said many people conform because freedom itself is hard to live with. Being responsible for your own judgment, alone, is a weight, and plenty of people will hand it to anyone who offers to carry it. If he is right, then Tocqueville's remedies assume the very thing in question. Juries and town meetings only restrain a majority if the people in them want to stay free. If they want relief instead, those same institutions turn into the mob.
Schumpeter explains why this gets worse over time. Capitalism succeeds, and its success wears away the old loyalties that held society together, while producing an educated class with no property and a career interest in tearing things down.
I accept both diagnoses and neither remedy. Fromm blamed the market for the isolation, but people were fleeing freedom long before there were markets. Schumpeter said the outcome was inevitable. The real question comes before any institution. What produces people who can bear being free.
On the closing question. Fromm agrees with Tocqueville's diagnosis and goes further. Tocqueville thought people conform because nobody has time to check everything for themselves. Fromm said many people conform because freedom itself is hard to live with. Being responsible for your own judgment, alone, is a weight, and plenty of people will hand it to anyone who offers to carry it. If he is right, then Tocqueville's remedies assume the very thing in question. Juries and town meetings only restrain a majority if the people in them want to stay free. If they want relief instead, those same institutions turn into the mob.
Schumpeter explains why this gets worse over time. Capitalism succeeds, and its success wears away the old loyalties that held society together, while producing an educated class with no property and a career interest in tearing things down.
I accept both diagnoses and neither remedy. Fromm blamed the market for the isolation, but people were fleeing freedom long before there were markets. Schumpeter said the outcome was inevitable. The real question comes before any institution. What produces people who can bear being free.
Great question