Mike Wallace interviews Erich Fromm in 1958

I know that people were absolutely horrible to large parts of the population based purely on identity in the United States in the 1950s. But can we also acknowledge that discussions like the half-hour interview of Erich Fromm by Mike Wallace actually happened on television?

This is a major socialist philosopher and psychologist talking to a non-adversarial journalist who actually read his book. These days, this kind of interview is relegated to a channel with subscribers in the triple digits and viewers in the triple digits and likes in the single digits.[1]

We have gained much but we have also lost something along the way. It’s not to late to get the good stuff back.

I have included a highlighted transcript of what ended up being most of the video.

The Mike Wallace Interview: Erich Fromm (1958-05-25) by thomastvivlarenDOTse (YouTube)

At 09:00,

“Erich Fromm: We have, in the same way, relegated our own responsibility in what happens to our country to the specialists, who are supposed to take care of it. And the individual citizen does not feel that he can judge and even that he should judge and take any responsibility. I think there are quite a number of recent developments, which show that.

“Mike Wallace: For instance?

“Erich Fromm: For instance, we are confronted with the possibility of a war of such destruction that the whole existence of our nation and of the whole world is at stake. […]People know it, people read it in the newspaper, people read that, at the first attack, 100 million Americans might be killed. And yet, they talk about it as if they were talking about something being wrong with their carburetor of their car, perhaps. Actually, they have paid more attention to the danger of flu epidemics than to the danger of the atomic bomb because…

“Mike Wallace: Don’t you think that’s a little overstatement, Dr Fromm?

“Erich Fromm: Well, I wish it were. Because what I see is, relatively few people who experience, who feel the danger which we are threatened with, and who feel the responsibility of doing something about it.

“Mike Wallace: Well, maybe when you talk about the responsibility of doing something, maybe it simply is this: that we find it very difficult to make ourselves felt in this amorphous society in which we live. Each individual would want to do something but would find it difficult to make himself felt.

“Erich Fromm: Well, I think here you point out really one of the basic defects of our system: that the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act. But it’s also true that, if one has no possibility of acting, one’s thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.”

At 18:00,

“Erich Fromm: I think, if you ask what people really mean by happiness today, it is the experience of unlimited consumption—the kind of thing Mr Huxley has described in the Brave New World. I think if you would ask people what their concept of Heaven is and, if they were honest, they would say it’s a kind of big department store with new things every week and enough money to buy everything new. Happiness today, I think, is for most people the satisfaction of the eternal suckling, to drink in more this, that, and the other.

“Mike Wallace: And what should happiness be?

“Erich Fromm: Happiness should be something which results from the creative, genuine, intense relatedness, awareness—responsiveness to everything in life, to man, to nature. Happiness does not exclude sadness. If a person responds to life, he’s sometimes happy and sometimes sad. What matters is he responds.”

At 21:30,

“Erich Fromm: I understand by socialism, society in which the aim of production is not profit but the use, in which the individual citizen participates responsibly in his work and in the whole social organization and in which he is not a means who is employed by capital.

“Mike Wallace: But he’s going to be employed by the state, is he not, Dr. Fromm? Are you not putting the individual in socialism at the disposal of the state? Doesn’t it devalue the individual?

“Erich Fromm: Well, we must clarify one thing: socialism…if the Russians claim they have socialism, this is just…I would say, a lie. They have no socialism at all. They have what I would call a state capitalism. Their system is the most reactionary, conservative system anywhere in Europe today—or in America, for that matter. And actually, the ownership of industry by the state? That is not socialism actually. If you take a nationalized British industry, it is not different from Ford and General Motors as far the realistic situation of the work in the factory.

“Mike Wallace: Well, then, what is socialism? If that is not socialism, what is?

“Erich Fromm: Well, I would say it is, to be quite specific, I see socialism in the direction of management of an enterprise by all who work in the enterprise. I would consider socialism a mixture of the minimum of centralization necessary for a modern industrial state and a maximum of decentralization. I would have to say this, Mr. Wallace: we are terribly imaginative as far as technique and science is concerned. As far as changes in social arrangements are concerned, we lack utterly in imagination.”

At 24:00,

“Erich Fromm: We talk a great deal about Russia today and I’m afraid that, in 20 years, we and Russia will be more similar than different.

“Mike Wallace: Why?

“Erich Fromm: Because, what is common to both societies is a development into a managed mass society, with big bureaucracies managing people. The Russians do it by force; we do it by persuasion. I appreciate the tremendous difference that we can express ideas without being afraid of being killed or imprisoned, but I think the Russians might do away with the terror in 20 or 30 years when they are richer. And, when they don’t need these repressive methods so much, what we have in common is a mass bureaucracy and a manipulation of everyone to act smoothly but with the illusion that he follows his own decisions and opinions.”

At 25:00,

“Erich Fromm: I would need much more time to explain that socialism—[…] in the humanistic, democratic sense in which Marx meant it—in which I understand it, is exactly the opposite of a managed society, managed by big bureaucracy.”

At 27:30,

“Mike Wallace: Whether or not one agrees with his solution, Dr Eric Fromm points to a pressing problem as he sees it: America tends to worship machines instead of men; we seem to prefer success to sanity. A society that is politically free, says Dr. Fromm, should guard against this kind of spiritual enslavement.”