On "Socialism," Christian and Otherwise

I'm working on a paper on sadomasochism and the abuses of power in the Church in light of the sex abuse crisis to be published in England. That has given me an opportunity to go back and re-read Erich Fromm, the 40th anniversary of whose death we are marking this very month in fact.

I drew on Fromm to a limited degree in my Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power. But since publishing that book almost exactly a year ago now, I have read more of Fromm and thought more about the problems of obedience and disobedience in the Church.

One book in particular, a short little book published in 1981 after Fromm's death, is useful not only for these themes but for other reasons. That book is On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying "No" to Power.

I commend it to your attention for all of the above, but also because the last chapter contains some welcome clarifications on what is and is not meant by what Fromm calls "humanistic socialism." The very mention of such phrases and their cognates functions talismanically for too many so-called American Christians, from whom reliably and inexorably one can expect a very great lot of incorrigible stupidity, irrelevant and adolescent deflection, and general fatuousness in discussing these matters.

Fromm cuts through all that nonsense as when he says, e.g.,the aim of socialism "is...the full development of each [as] the condition for the full development of all." Socialism refuses to allow people to be seen or treated as means: "from this it follows that nobody must personally be subject to anyone because he owns capital." Moreover "the supreme principle of socialism is that man takes precedence over things, life over property, and hence work over capital; that power follows creation, and not possession."

Importantly, socialism is against idolatry: "it fights every kind of worship of State, nation, or class."

Perhaps the most important part to stress right now to overcome American fatuities and self-congratulatory nonsense about how "free" this country is and how "socialism" is supposedly the antithesis of such freedom is the following: "Humanistic socialism stands for freedom. It stands for freedom from fear, want, oppression, and violence. But freedom is not only *from* but also freedom *to*; freedom to participate actively and responsibly in all decisions concerning the citizen, freedom to develop the individual's human potential to the fullest possible degree."

There is nothing here in Fromm--nothing--that Catholic Christians, of whom I am one, could disagree with. What this looks like when translated into policy prescriptions remains, of course, to be established. But the unthinking "Christian" opposition to socialism so-called in this country is unsustainable and absurd.