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For our first ‘Weekly Fromm’ of 2009, I thought it appropriate, in the light of events in Gaza, to post the thoughts of the great man on Zionism from 1959:

It is often said that the Arabs fled, that they left the country voluntarily, and that they therefore bear the responsibility for losing their property and their land. It is true that in history there are some instances — in Rome and in France during the Revolutions when enemies of the state were proscribed and their property confiscated.

In general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the [European] Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic political claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.

No doubt if Fromm were alive today and expressed such opinions he would be denounced as an ’anti-semite’, even though he was Jewish.

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Continuing our series focusing on the work of the great German social philosopher and psychoanalyst Dr Erich Fromm, arguably the most prescient thinker of the 20th century.

Above you can watch the great man talking about the having and being modes, from a 1970s BBC interview with Robert Robinson.

It's extremely interesting, particularly when Dr Fromm turns to knowledge as a form of having- and the type of professor who knows everything but who tells us nothing.

What comes over in this interview and indeed in all his interviews is Fromm’s fundamental modesty.

He says that the points he makes are not new and have been said more powerfully and more beautifully by others.

But personally, I don’t know of a single writer who has made the case for a mode of existence based on being and not having- more powerfully- or more beautifully than Erich Fromm.

Enjoy.

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Introducing a regular new feature on this blog: The Weekly Fromm.

The feature will focus on the work of the great German social philosopher and psychoanalyst Dr Erich Fromm, arguably the most prescient writer of the 20th century.

Fromm has influenced my political thought more than any other writer: if I was allowed just three words of advice for anyone interested in trying to improve the society we live in, I would say 'Read Erich Fromm'. Sadly, it seems all too few people in Britain today do read Erich Fromm, and if we are going to rescue our disintegrating society, that's something that needs to change.

To kick off the series, above is the first part of Fromm's 1958 television interview with Mike Wallace. In it he talks, among other topics, about the marketing orientation.

Modern capitalism Fromm argued, produces a neurotic character type: "the marketing character", who "adapts to the market economy by becoming detached from authentic emotions, truth and conviction".

For the marketing character "everything is transformed into a commodity, not only things, but the person himself, his physical energy, his skills, his knowledge, his opinions, his feelings, even his smiles".

(For a perfect example of a "marketing character", we only need to think of a recent inhabitant of No 10 Downing Street).

The marketing character is deeply insincere, and modern capitalism ensures that we have marketing characters in abundance.

HAT TIP for the You Tube clip- to the Editors at Media Lens.

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