To Have or to Be?

Erich Fromm, a psychoanalyst and social psychologist, argues that modern industrial civilization faces a profound crisis rooted in two opposing orientations toward life: the "having" mode, centered on possession, consumption, and control, and the "being" mode, centered on aliveness, productive activity, love, and sharing. He contends that unless humanity shifts from the dominance of having to the cultivation of being, both psychological and economic catastrophe are inevitable.

Fromm begins by describing what he calls "the Great Promise" (1) of the industrial age: unlimited progress, domination of nature, material abundance, and unimpeded personal freedom. This promise, he argues, has failed. Unrestricted satisfaction of desires has not produced well-being; people have become cogs in a bureaucratic machine; economic progress has remained confined to wealthy nations; and technical advancement has created ecological dangers and the threat of nuclear war. He traces these failures to two premises embedded in the industrial system: radical hedonism, the belief that maximum pleasure is life's aim, and the assumption that selfishness and greed lead to harmony. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, economic behavior became separated from ethics, and the question "What is good for Man?" was replaced by "What is good for the growth of the system?" Fromm cites reports by the Club of Rome, a global think tank, and the economist E. F. Schumacher to argue that only drastic changes in both economics and human values can avert global catastrophe, yet he observes that widespread passivity persists, driven by leaders' pretense of action and the belief that no alternatives exist.

In Part One, Fromm introduces the distinction between having and being through contrasting poems. The English poet Alfred Tennyson plucks a flower "root and all" to possess and understand it, exemplifying the having mode. The Japanese haiku poet Matsuo Basho simply observes a flower blooming by a hedge, exemplifying the being mode. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe offers a middle position, transplanting a flower rather than killing it. Fromm defines the being mode as one in which a person "neither has anything nor craves to have something, but is joyous, employs one's faculties productively, is oned to the world" (16).

He traces a linguistic shift in Western languages: the growing use of nouns in place of verbs (saying "I have a problem" instead of "I am troubled"), which he interprets as evidence of increasing alienation. Many languages lack a word for "to have," using indirect constructions instead, suggesting the concept develops alongside private property.

Fromm examines how the two modes manifest in daily life. In learning, having-mode students transcribe lectures into notes to memorize, while being-mode students engage actively and are changed by the encounter. In conversation, the having mode means clinging to opinions as possessions; the being mode produces spontaneous dialogue. He distinguishes having authority, based on social status, from being an authority, grounded in competence. He contrasts having knowledge with knowing, an active process of penetrating illusions. Drawing on the Buddha, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus, the medieval German mystic Master Eckhart, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx, Fromm argues that knowing begins with shattering illusions. In love, the having mode means confining and controlling the loved object, while the being mode means caring, knowing, and bringing to life.

Fromm identifies a central biblical theme: the command to leave what one has and be. He traces this through Abraham's departure from his homeland, Moses leading the Hebrews into the desert, and the Exodus narrative, interpreting the desert as a symbol of liberation from possessions. He devotes extended analysis to the Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath), describing it not merely as rest from work but as the re-establishment of complete harmony between human beings and nature. The New Testament, he argues, radicalizes this protest: early Christians denounced wealth and power, and Jesus' temptation by Satan represents a confrontation between material consumption and being. Eckhart taught that the truly poor person "wants nothing, knows nothing and has nothing" (50), meaning freedom from craving, from treating knowledge as a possession, and from all attachment.

In Part Two, Fromm analyzes the having mode systematically. Industrial society molds its members to desire acquisition and increase of property. He examines ownership of people in patriarchal society, the automobile as a symbol of consumer buying, and the inherent instability of identity based on possession, since both possessor and possessed are impermanent. The having mode necessarily produces the desire for power, maintained through indoctrination beginning in childhood. Fromm introduces "existential having," the rational need for basic necessities, distinguishing it from characterological having, a socially conditioned drive to accumulate.

The being mode's fundamental characteristic is inner activity: the productive use of human powers, including growing, loving, and transcending the prison of one's isolated ego. Fromm traces the concept of activity through Aristotle, for whom contemplation was the highest form of praxis, and Baruch Spinoza, whose Ethics treated irrational passions such as greed as forms of mental illness. Marx argued that capitalism paralyzes human self-activity by allowing capital to dominate labor. Fromm presents evidence for an inherent human desire to give and share, citing animal experiments, infant studies, workplace research, and social phenomena such as Winston Churchill's wartime appeal for sacrifice. He concludes that both having and being are human potentialities, with social structure determining which predominates.

Fromm contrasts security in the two modes: those oriented toward having are necessarily insecure because possessions can always be lost, while those centered in being cannot be deprived of their identity. He distinguishes joy, the sustained accompaniment of productive activity, from pleasure, the satisfaction of desires requiring no inner effort, and traces the centrality of joy in Buddhism, the Old Testament, the Hasidic movement, Eckhart, and Spinoza. He reinterprets sin in the being framework as unresolved estrangement rather than disobedience, and argues that fear of dying is fundamentally fear of losing what one has.

In Part Three, Fromm introduces "social character," the process by which society molds its members so they wish to do what they must do. He argues that European history has been dominated not by Christian ideals but by the pagan model of conquest and exploitation. He describes the emergence of "industrial religion" and the twentieth-century "marketing character," in which people experience themselves as commodities on a personality market, lacking stable egos or deep emotional life. He cites a study by Michael Maccoby of 250 corporate executives that found none exhibited deep loving capacity.

Fromm traces a humanist protest against industrial dehumanization, arguing that Marx's socialism was the secular expression of prophetic Messianism. He presents Marx's concept of having and being from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, in which private property has reduced all human senses to the sense of having: "The less you are and the less you express your life, the more you have and the greater is your alienated life" (128). He explains how Marx's vision was distorted by both Soviet communism and Western social democracy into a materialism aimed at maximum consumption. He surveys other radical humanists, including Albert Schweitzer, Schumacher, and Paul and Anne Ehrlich, identifying shared principles: production must serve real human needs, exploitation of nature must yield to cooperation, and individuals must actively participate in social life.

Fromm proposes conditions for large-scale character change modeled on the Buddha's Four Noble Truths: awareness of suffering, recognition of its origins, recognition that it can be overcome, and acceptance that overcoming it requires changing one's practice of life. He lists the qualities of a "New Man," including security based on faith in what one is, joy from giving and sharing, and freedom understood as the possibility to be oneself. He calls for a "Humanistic Science of Man," participatory democracy in industry and politics, maximum decentralization, a guaranteed yearly income, liberation of women from patriarchal domination, and nuclear disarmament. Additional reforms include prohibiting brainwashing in advertising, closing the gap between rich and poor nations, establishing a Supreme Cultural Council, and separating scientific research from military application. Though acknowledging slim chances for such transformation, Fromm identifies grounds for hope in growing dissatisfaction with consumer life and the recognition that greed draws much of its strength from social pressure rather than inherent human nature. He envisions a synthesis of the spiritual heritage of the medieval world with post-Renaissance rational thought, which he calls "The City of Being" (164).