On Disobedience_ Why Freedom Means Saying _No_ to Power - Erich Fromm [18]
Quite in contrast to the frequently uttered cliché that Marx and other socialists taught that the desire for maximal material gain was the most fundamental human drive, these socialists believed that it is the very structure of capitalist society which makes material interest the deepest motive, and that socialism would permit nonmaterial motives to assert themselves and free man from his servitude to material interests. (It is a sad commentary on man’s capacity for inconsistency that people condemn socialism for its alleged “materialism,” and at the same time criticize it with the argument that only the “profit motive” can motivate man to do his best.)
The aim of socialism was individuality, not uniformity; liberation from economic bonds, not making material aims the main concern of life; the experience of full solidarity of all men, not the manipulation and domination of one man by another. The principle of socialism was that each man is an end in himself and must never be the means of another man. Socialists wanted to create a society in which each citizen actively and responsibly participated in all decisions, and in which a citizen could participate because he was a person and not a thing, because he had convictions and not synthetic opinions.
For socialism not only is poverty a vice, but also wealth. Material poverty deprives man of the basis for a humanly rich life. Material wealth, like power, corrupts man. It destroys the sense of proportion and of the limitations which are inherent in human existence; it creates an unrealistic and almost crazy sense of the “uniqueness” of an individual, making him feel that he is not subject to the same basic conditions of existence as his fellow men. Socialism wants material comfort to be used for the true aims of living; it rejects individual wealth as a danger to society as well as to the individual. In fact, its opposition to capitalism is related to this very principle. By its very logic, capitalism aims at an ever-increasing material wealth, while socialism aims at an ever-increasing human productivity, aliveness, and happiness, and at material comfort only to the extent to which it is conducive to its human aims.
Socialism hoped for the eventual abolition of the state so that only things, and not people, would be administered. It aimed at a classless society in which freedom and initiative would be restored to the individual. Socialism, in the nineteenth century and until the beginning of the First World War, was the most significant humanistic and spiritual movement in Europe and America.
What happened to socialism?
It succumbed to the spirit of capitalism which it had wanted to replace. Instead of understanding it as a movement for the liberation of man, many of its adherents and its enemies alike understood it as being exclusively a movement for the economic improvement of the working class. The humanistic aims of socialism were forgotten, or only paid lip service to, while, as in capitalism, all the emphasis was laid on the aims of economic gain. Just as the ideals of democracy lost their spiritual roots, the idea of socialism lost its deepest root—the prophetic-messianic faith in peace, justice, and the brotherhood of man.
Thus socialism became the vehicle for the workers to attain their place within the capitalistic structure rather than transcending it; instead of changing capitalism, socialism was absorbed by its spirit. The failure of the socialist movement became complete when in 1914 its leaders renounced international solidarity and chose the economic and military interests of their respective countries as against the ideas of internationalism and peace which had been their program.
The misinterpretation of socialism as a purely economic movement, and of nationalization of the means of production as its principal aim, occurred both in the right wing and in the left wing of the socialist movement. The reformist leaders of the socialist movement in Europe considered it