On having and being: The humanism of Erich Fromm

Introduction Erich From was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1900 into an orthodox Jewish family. He practised the faith of his parents until he was 26. Fromm studied the old testament closely as a young man and studied the Talud with rabbis in Frankfurt and Heidelberg prior to and during his university years. As a university student he studied jurisprudence, philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and sociology, completing his doctoral study on the sociopsychological structure of three Jewish Diaspora communities in 1922 (Funk 2000). His reading of Marx resonated with his strong interest in the radical humanism he found in the messianic vision of the Old Testament prophets Amos, Isaiah and Hosea (ibid). After completing his doctorate he further studied psychiatry and psychology in Munich and during 1928-30 was trained in psychoanalysis in Munich and Berlin. Shortly after co founding the South German Institute for Psychoanalysis in Frankfurt in 1930, Fromm joined the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt University, from which the Frankfurt School of critical theory emerged. Recognizing Fromms expertise in psychoanalysis, Max Horkheimer invited Fromm to membership of the Institutes four-member core group and to become a life associate. Fromm accepted and worked with the School in its German, Swiss, and US incarnations until 1939, when he partedfollowing attacks by Horkheimer and Marcuse on Fromms particular appropriation of Freud in developing his own sociopsychological method. Throughout his life Fromm drew on his three main intellectual influencesFreud, Marx, and religious-theological currents (principally Judaic, Christian and Buddhist)to develop a socialist humanist ideal based on a dynamic analysis of the economic, political, and psychological forces that form the basis of society (Fromm 1970: 21). His humanism was based on the idea that the human unconscious represents the entire person and all of humanity (Funk 1997: 10). In any culture humans have all manner of potentialities for what they may become. What they do become, however, depends largely on which possibilities are cultivated and which are hindered and repressed (ibid). This in turn depends greatly on the kind of society an individual lives in, since all humans can only exist as social beings. Hence, they must be socialized to want to do and be what they must do and be for the society to function. Hence, according to Fromm, social necessities become transformed into personal needs, into the social character (Fromm 1964a: 76). Consequently, our conscious mind represents mainly our own society and culture, while our unconscious represents the universal [human being] in each of us (Fromm 1964b: 93; Funk 1997: 10). Among Fromms many publications, his best known include Escape from Freedom (1941), Man for Himself (1947), The Sane Society (1955), The Art of Loving (1956), Marxs Concept of Man (1961), The Heart of Man (1964), The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), and To Have or to Be? (1976). Fromm died in 1980. Overview In this chapter I want to focus on the distinction Fromm developed in his final major published work between having and being, as two fundamental human orientations toward the self and the

world. I will try to show why Fromm believed that the having mode, which prevails under (post) industrial-capitalism, is destructive, debilitating, and dangerous for the prospects of human fulfillment and mutual wellbeing. On the basis of this account of some of Fromms main ideas, I will then try to show by means of a specific case how the having mode gets into even the most ordinary aspects of everyday lives. This case involves participation in the eBay.com (would be) community. It provides a microcosm of what can happen when human relatedness comes under the logic of the having mode of experience and existence. Human propensities: the human condition, human nature and the social structure To Have or to Be? proved to be Fromms final major work in his long-term study of selfishness and altruism as basic human character orientations. He believed that pursuing a viable future for people and their world depended on reversing the powerful socially encouraged tendency toward selfishness evident throughout the advanced (post)industrial capitalist world. This, he argued, called for renouncing ways of life lived under the having mode of existence and moving progressively toward ways of life lived under the being mode of existence. Such renouncement would require changes at both the individual and societal levels. Fromm presents two opposing accounts of human nature and the human condition. These provide a useful entry point to his ideas about having and being. Fromm believes the first account provides key ideological underpinnings for industrial capitalism and, in our own time, informational or knowledge capitalism. It follows from this view that having is the natural and inevitable human orientation toward self and world. The second account is the view Fromm accepts. It maintains that being (and altruism) is an entirely open option for humans and, moreover, that it is the only option that enables self-actualization, fulfillment, and abiding peace. According to the first account, the aim of human life is happiness, which consists in pleasure defined as satisfaction of the wants and needs we feel. From this perspective, egotism and selfinterest are seen as leading naturally to harmony. Each person pursuing their own interests within recognized legitimate limits in a market of satisficers (goods and services) that is kept as unregulated as possible is, allegedly, the best guarantee of conditions under which humans can realize their life aims. Fromm notes that a particular view of human nature accompanies this conception of the human condition. It asserts that humans are basically lazy [and] passive by nature and that they do not want to work unless driven by the incentive of material gain or else coerced by hunger or fear of punishment (Fromm 1978: 103). Against this view, which he claims dominates popular consciousness in contemporary modern western societies, Fromm presents a second account of the human condition and human nature. According to this view, the human condition and human nature are characterised by two crucial features. One is the biological urge for survival. This tends to predispose human beings toward the having mode. The other feature is the species character unique to human beings, which combines minimal instinctive determination with maximal development of the capacity for reason (ibid: 107). As a result of this unique species structure, humans have lost [their] original oneness with nature. Other animals remain submerged or immersed in nature. But having consciousnessincluding consciousness that they are alone, or individuatedhumans have the capacity to experience existential aloneness (see also Fromm 1941). As a result, says Fromm, in

order not to feel utterly isolated humans need to establish a new unity: with our fellow beings and with nature (Fromm 1978: 107). Humans can effect this unity or relatedness in very different ways, however. For example, we can seek unity in relations with others of domination or submission (authoritarian forms) or by relating equally with them (dialogical or loving forms). We can seek unity through acts of sadism toward others, at one extreme, and by acts of utter solidarity at the other (ibid). In short, we can pursue unity in so many ways through having other people or nature, or through being with them. On the basis of this account Fromm concludes that both the having and the being modes are potentialities of human nature. Our biological urge for survival tends to further the having mode, but selfishness and laziness are not the only propensities inherent in human beings. [In addition] human beings have an inherent and deeply rooted desire to be: to express our faculties, to be active, to be related to others, to escape the prison cell of selfishness (ibid: 103). In other words, both tendenciesto have, expressed in possessive individualism and to be expressed in sharing, giving, and even sacrificingare present in human beings. These opposed and opposing tendencies owe their strength to different aspects of human nature and the human condition. That is, so far as human constitution is concerned, we are set up with the potential to orient ourselves to self and world in either the having or the being mode. Given this, Fromm concludes that whichever orientation prevails within a society will be shaped by the social structure, its values and norms. Cultures that foster the greed for possession, and this the having mode of existence, are rooted in one human potential; cultures that foster being and sharing are rooted in the other potential (108). Fromm claims that a crucial consideration for every society has to do with what kind of quality of relatedness between persons and between persons and nature/the world it fosters, and the kind is can foster under the specific given circumstances of its socioeconomic structures (ibid). To have or to be?: human orientations toward self and world Having laid out some key elements of Fromms argument for the view that having and being are potential orientations for human beings toward self and world, but that in modern (post)industrial societies the having mode predominates, it is time now to spell out just what these two modes are. What is the option framed by the question To have or to be? Fromm claims that having and being comprise two fundamental (underpinning) modes of experience and existence. They are two different kinds of orientation toward the self and the world. We can think of them as two different kinds of character structure within which people do and be in specific ways at the myriad points in their lives. People whose character is structured around having do things and be things (albeit differently to a greater or lesser extent from one another at the level of detail) in different kinds of ways from people whose character structure is one of being. People manifesting these different character structures think, feel and act in different ways (33).

The distinction runs deep in ordinary language and, in many cases may seem insignificant until we follow the logic further. In language, for example, we readily say I have a headache. This, says Fromm, transforms an experience [the sensation of feeling sore in the head] into something I possess. The I of experience is replaced by the it of possession (31). The experience of the headache, which is part of the life in process that is me at a given time, is objectified as some separate (or alien) thing that I happen to possess. In the having mode I enter into a property relationship with the headache and relate to it as property (shall I get rid of it and, if so, what do I need as a mediator in order to divest myself of it?). The difference is between a state that I am experiencing something I am actively doing or beingand a thing that I have. According to Fromm, when people are in the having mode their relationship to the world and to themselves is one of possessing and owning, where they want to make everything and everybodyincluding themselvestheir property (33). When they are in the being mode, by contrast, they are alive to the world and authentically related to itdirectly, and as expressions of what they are as human beings, not indirectly or in a mediated way via relationships of property. By considering some other everyday examples we can see more tellingly the extent to which being sore in the head and having a headache underwrite different modes of existence and experience, and what is at stake between these modes. Fromm looks at activities like learning and knowing in the having and being modes respetively. In the case of learning, students in the having mode attend classes, hear what is said (or what they are to read), make notes and convert these into forms that can be used for passing exams or writing assignments. They become owners of collections of statements made by somebody else (37). These are stored, guarded or memorized, in order to be cashed in, exchanged or capitalized upon at appropriate times. In contrast, students who learn in the being mode have previously thought about the issues or problems involved in the course. When they hear or read what teachers and authors are saying they respond in active ways, producing new ideas, questions or perspectives as they listen or read. They produce in the moment. This new production becomes both the moment and the point or purpose of learning. Learning becomes the act of putting ones capacities to work in dialogue with stimuli from the world, then and there, in order to be changed and to be challenged. Learning becomes a process of responding and doing, not accumulating, storing and deferring (37-39). In the case of knowledge, knowing in the having mode is a process of taking and keeping possession of available knowledge (information) (47). Optimizing knowledge involves having more knowledge (48). In the having mode, people acquire (buy, commission, contract, download) knowledge in order to have access to truth or better informationoften to get a competitive edge. They do not need to actively generate this knowledge themselves. It is easier, and often more convenient, to get it in as one might a delivery pizza. Knowledge becomes a commodity which one can own, acquire, guard, and use as one would any other aspect of ones private property. In the being mode, knowledge is what one produces through acts of knowing, understood as using (actualizing) ones reason/critical faculties to try and understand aspects of the world more deeply. The aim of knowing in the being mode is to affirm ones human capacity for critical reasoning, to put to work our native curiosity and intelligence, to experience ourselves relating to or interacting with some aspect of the world. The point is not to try and get something (like certainty) that will make us more secure in our grip on the world, or to give us an edge. Not knowing something is

equally attractive to the knower in the being mode, because it presents a further opportunity. Optimal knowledge becomes a matter of seeking to know more and more deeply, which is always possible in the being modeas opposed to getting some knowledge in as a pristine finished product. For knowledge workers, like researchers, the difference between working under the two modes can be palpable. Under a having regime the knowledge worker is a hired hand whose critical capacities are turned to whatever the knowledge contractor wants knowledge about. Rather than our knowing faculties being exercised for their use valueto affirm our being as humans and to satisfy authentic purposes they we envisagethey are made into a commodity production unit with exchange value. They are made subservient to other peoples demands that may not interest us, and that we may actually find abhorrent. Knowing can become intensely alienating under such conditions. This, of course, applies more largely to alienated work in the having mode. It is important to see clearly what is at stake here. When Fromm talks about the being mode in terms of being alive to the world and authentically related to it, he has in mind processes like knowing in the being mode. Humans are rational creatures, with a reasoning faculty to express and actualize. In processes of affirming this capacity by knowing because we are moved to know something, we authentically express who and what we are as a species. We actualize or realize what in a deep sense we are. This is compatible with all people doing the same thing and with individuals collaborating with one another in expressing what they are. Living as humans becomes the major end in itself, and this option is open to all. In the having mode, by contrast, there is no need at all to affirm our being in the process of acquiring knowledge. Moreover, knowledge readily becomes a resource that we can use to advantage ourselves over others. The point of one person knowing in the having mode may be precisely to prevent others knowing or getting access. Knowing becomes competitive, exclusionary, and divides people into haves and have-nots. Destroying other peoples knowledge or access to it can become (almost) as good as having knowledge oneself. This logic is buttressed by all sorts of mechanisms designed to discourage people from thinking they can know. Only some knowledge is genuine, legitimate, authoritative. This becomes a way of robbing humans of their species capacities, by telling them they do not have them, and forcing them to acquire on a market or to get the necessary training. A parallel example here, which shows how much is at stake in the difference between the modes concerns work. In the being mode, work means applying our physical and mental powers to some aspect of the world in order to do something. All humans have these powers, hence all can work whenever they choose. In working they affirm their species being (as in knowing, which can be seen as a form of work), express themselves, and experience a sense of engagement and realization. In the having mode, work means having a job. If one does not have a job one cannot work. Under market conditions of less than full employment, for one person to have a job necessitates that another does not. When income is tied to having job things can become dangerous. People without jobs believe they cannot work, have no worth, and may become passive and debilitated or frustrated and destructive, and so on. They are robbed of the capacity to do what humans can innately do because they are not permitted to see this as work, and may hence lose the incentive to engage and affirm their work capacities.

Finally, for present purposes, we may consider identity from the standpoint of having and being respectively. Fromm discusses identity in the having mode in relation to ego, in the sense of perceiving our ego as something we possess and where this thing is the basis for our sense of identity. According to Fromm, Our ego is the most important object of our property feeling [I]t comprises many things: our body, our name, our social status, our possessions (including our knowledge), the image we have of ourselves and the image we want others to have of us (77). In the having mode we feel our ego as a thing we possess: the ego we have that becomes the basis for the identity we have, or need to get and, having got it, to defend, invest in, build up, shore up, and so on. In this mode the ego is not just something I have, but something I can build and add to by having. Thus I have X (an object, a reputation a CV, a certain status) contains a definition of I. In the statement I have X, says Fromm, the subject is not myself. Rather, it is I am what I have, since my property constitutes myself and my identity (82). Furthermore, because I depends on having it then it has me (83). Subjecthood is destroyed. The having mode makes things of subject and object alike. Take the it away and the I collapses. In the remaining sections of this chapter we will see just what this can mean in concrete instances. In the being mode we are (our identity) what we express and enact in our relationships with others and the world. We do not have an ego and an identity based upon it. Rather, we be moment by moment in the ways we affirm our specifically human structure, which comprises activity, critical thinking [and] faith in life (85). In the being mode individuals are indeed identifiable and identitied. But identity simply is not for them an issue like it is in the having mode, where identity s constructed as a possession we are encouraged to invest in and draw upon. Beings who are continually actively engaged in affirming their capacities have no need to possess and identity, not least because they are not in competition with others for scarce resources (prestige, status, power, possessions) out of which to carve identity or in pursuit of which to draw on identity. They can just get on with living, as do others around them. In this way they are able to cooperate, share, enter egalitarian relationships, help, encourage, and support others because being is not a zero sum game. Fromm argues that the having mode, or the attitude centered on property and profit, necessarily produces the desire indeed the needfor power In the having mode, ones happiness lies inones superiority over others, in ones power, and in the last analysis, in ones capacity to conquer, rob, kill. In the being mode it lies in loving, sharing, giving (86-87). In this context it is important to note that when he talks about having as a mode of existence and experience, Fromm is talking about what he calls characterological having and not what he calls existential having. Humans, as material beings, need to have certain things in an existential sense: like food, shelter and clothing. But this is not the same thing as having to have in the sense of a character structurethe need to live through property relations and acquisition. Rather, what has happened in the developed west is that we have created a world of practices and institutions

whereby existential having in now predicated on characterological having, to the point where it is hard to see the distinction, and hard to contemplate the former without the latter. Yet they are conceptually and ontologically distinct. The relationship between them is contingent. In the developed world, however, we have learned to live the relationship as though it were necessary. Ratings@eBay.com What does all this mean on the ground? How can we put concrete instances to Fromms idea that humans have a propensity for either mode but that social structuresocial patterns of thought feeling and behaving (83)shape the mode we are most likely to take up? To see what this means I want to consider an increasingly common everyday practice within societies with ready access to the Internet. This involves online buying and selling and, in the specific case, the pursuit of personal ratings as buyers and sellers within the eBay.com online trading community (netgrrrl (12) and chicoboy26 (32) 2001). eBay was among the first person-to-person auction venues to go online and is presently the worlds most popular trading community (Friedman 2000; Multex.com 2001). By mid-2001 eBay had twenty-two million registered users buying and selling on average a million items daily from a list of three million in three thousand categoriesand growing. Friedman (2000: 202) identifies eBay as a shaper: an agent shaping up activities within a globalized world of networked coalitions and practices. Friedman sees eBay as a leader in creating a whole new marketplace and instigating an entirely new set of interaction protocols for buyers and sellers on the World Wide Web. At the heart of eBays business process is a simple rating scale and feedback system, through which buyers can rate and respond to the effectiveness of sellers, and vice versa. This has changed relations between buyers on the Internet. It has also, however, elevated to prominence in the identity-shaping behavior of many participants the practice of pursuing a positive ratings profile. eBay uses a three point rating scalepositive, neutral and negativeand stands as a public judgement of the reputation, trustworthiness and reliability of a person. Once an auction transaction has been completed the buyer can leave feedback about the seller and vice versa. Only the buyer and seller are authorized to comment on a particular transaction. Feedback comprises the actual rating (positive, neutral, negative) and a written recommendation. eBay reminds participants that [h]onest feedback shapes the community (eBay 2001c). The higher their positive ratings the more trustworthy and reliable participants are in eBay terms. eBayers are clear about the importance of their ratings. Many go to extraordinary lengths to obtain positive ratings and construct elaborate processes aimed at ensuring as many positive feedback statements and ratings as possible: I have a spreadsheet that i use to keep track of my items, buying and selling and there is a space for me to check off that i have left feedback for a buyer/seller. When the buyer/seller leaves feedback for me in return, i circle the check mark, letting me know the transaction has come full circle. when i sell something, i include a thank you card with the item number listed, the item name listed, my

ebay name and a note stating that i have left positive feedback for them and would appreciate the same in kind and i still have problems getting them to leave me feedback! So every month, i go down the spreadsheet and e-mail those who have failed to leave feedback asking them why they have not done so and if there were problems i was not aware of. this is very time consuming but it has worked on most of the delinquents. it more or less embarrasses them into leaving feedback. (eBay 2001g) From a different standpoint, participants often prefer to be duped by buyers than risk negative feedback. Bea1997 explained: Sometimes I lose money from customers who break an item and ask for money back. I just dont want to risk having my good reputation ruined for a few lousy bucks so I just take the blame and send their money back (e-mail interview 25/09/2000). This tallies with others reported elsewhere. Erick Sherman (2001: 63) recounts: [b]oth buyers and sellers get burned from time to time, but usually not badly. Shamus remembers someone who bought a $25 trading card from him on eBay then returned it, but with a corner newly bent. He said, Thats what you sent me, says Shamus, who didnt argue because the amount was too small and negative feedback would hurt his future sales. Exchanges on the feedback discussion board can get heated, with little evidence of the kind of tolerance expected in a community of the kind eBay aims to foster:
and i agree if you knew the answer why bother asking? i get lots of people asking stupid ? [trans: questions] like what does it measure? when it is already posted on my auctions...i tell them to go back and read the description. i dont find that to be rude (discussion board 2001).

Two people responded as follows:

not rude? must be why you have so many successful transactions.... Why not just answer the question and accept that stupid people make up a big percentage of customers? The guys sarcastic, not rude. Read his very limited, posted feedback for a good laugh.

The references to the first persons successful transactions and very limited posted feedback are snide comments on his beginner status: one positive rating. These kinds of reactions indicate that ratings are read as integral to peoples public reputation and also as an indicator of wisdom and knowledge in matters eBay.

Within this milieu a new lexis is rapidly emerging. It includes items like feedback bombing, feedback extortion and retaliatory negative feedback. In one version of feedback bombing, two or more people gang up on someone, purchase products, then leave negative feedback. Feedback extortion involves demanding some action from a fellow user that he or she is not required to do, at the threat of leaving negative feedback. Retaliatory negative feedback occurs when a negative feedback rating is given to one person in a transaction by the other and the first responds with a negative rating, regardless of the quality of service received. This often goes with feedback hostage taking (e.g., I was really unhappy with this transaction but cant leave feedback until the other party does because I want to leave a negative feedback but am worried that if I leave it first then the person Im dealing with will give me a negative feedback in response!). Having and being had The data presented in the previous section can be read as a sad and sorry but reasonably typical tale of social practices in the having mode. Participants hang so much on possessing positive ratings that they will go to almost any length to get them and to deny them to others. The possibility of spontaneous, decent person to person trading interactions has been undermined by what might initially look like a good idea: public evaluations of peoples interactions. But under the having mode this becomes a pretext for building status, bolstering ego, acquiring elements of identity. Acting well becomes alienated. We end up with the precise opposite of the idea expressed by the 13th century theologian Meister Eckhart, cited approvingly by Fromm. People should not consider so much what they are to do as what they are Thus take care that your emphasis is laid on being good and not on the number or kind of things to be done. Emphasise rather the fundamentals on which your work rests. Our being is the reality, the spirit that moves us, the character that impels our behaviour; in contrast, the deeds of opinions that are separated from our dynamic core have no reality (Fromm 1978: 70). The data reported above betrays a perversion of human possibility. We find precisely those things Fromm associates with the having mode that are inimical to mutual human wellbeing. We find recourse to power and various forms of manipulation (extortion, retaliation, bombing, hostaging, coercion, bribery) in order to try and get/have more positive ratings. We find acts of destruction and animosity directed toward other people (who have unwittingly made themselves vulnerable to these). It is hard to fathom the quiet depth of malice involved in bending the corner of a card and returning it with the charge that the seller (who was acting in good faith) was the perpetrator of a dishonest act. This, however, is not too far removed from all manner of destructive and power tripping practices associated with having. Examples like academic damning colleagues with faint praise, or damning them outright behind privileges of anonymity within reviewing or refereeing situations readily come to mind within an academic context. Readers will be able to produce countless more of their own. From a different angle, we see all too clearly examples of the having mode destroying subjecthood and making things of subject and object alike. The it of ratings has me to the extent of my dependence upon it for ego and identity. It has me so strongly that I will spend hours devising

and trawling spreadsheets in order to more or less embarrass delinquents into providing positive feedback. Much more could be said by way of analysis of the data here, but that would risk taking perversions too seriously. The point, rather, has to do with how easy it is to find concrete instances of the negation of human potential almost anywhere we care to look once we apply the kind of critique Fromm makes possible through his account of having. Equally sobering is the corresponding relative difficulty of finding bona fide examples of being within vast tracts of our lives as institutionally-regulated participants on the (post)industrial capitalist dream. References Fromm, E. (1964a). Humanism and psychoanalysis. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 1, 69-79. Fromm, E. (1964b). The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil. New York: Harper and Row. Fromm, E. (1970). The Crisis of Psychoanalysis. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston. Fromm, E. (1978). To Have or to Be? London: Abacus. Funk, R. (1997). Editors Foreword. In Erich Fromm, On Being Human. New York: Continuum, 912. Funk, R. (2000). Erich Fromms life and work. www.erichfromm.de/english/life/life_bio2.html Downloaded 24/06/2001 netgrrrl (12) and chicoboy26 (32), aka Knobel, M. and Lankshear, C. (2001). What am I bid?: Reading, writing and ratings at eBay.com. In Snyder, I. (ed), Silicon Literacies. London: Routledge-Falmer (in press).