The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (Paperback)

And he begins by rejecting, or more accurately speaking: fusing, both the polar extremes. Both the instinctivist view - which says that man is innately violent and seeks out ways to channel his anger - and the behaviourist explanation - which says that it is situations created by the overarching social conditions which give rise to mans anger - are rejected as counterintuitive and unnecessary limited.

The neurology of our minds show that like all other animals we are designed by biology to fight or flee when our vital interests are threatened - and in most cases we flee. This is defensive aggression, which serves a obvious part in our survival. But, not only does imagination and human intelligence make our vital interests more expansive than the mechanistic needs of a rabbit (for example) but we are also the only animal that engages in violence and torture when there is no threat. We are the only species that willingly inflicts pain and suffering intra-specifically (and inter-specifically) when there is no clear incitation to do so. This is what Fromm calls malignant aggression.

The general view presented by Fromm is that malignant aggression is the consequence of existential needs interacting with the modern, industrial age. As human beings, we are apart from nature by virtue of being conscious of it - the non-conscious being has no such problem. We are adrift, severed from the umbilical cord and left alone in this world, being burdened with our own mortality and impending shift into non-existence, we are the only species who require a solution to this peculiar dilemma of being alive. What needs do we have? The need to e-ffect others. The need to feel mentally stimulated. The need to feel unity within and rootedness without - i.e. to belong somewhere and to something, to have a frame of orientation that grounds us and provides us with goals and aims. In our anomic, one-dimensional civilisation the possibilities of these needs finding expression in benign ways have been curtailed - although they certainly have not been eliminated. And, these existential needs, if they cannot be satiated with love, will be so with hate. If we cannot e-ffect others by loving them, then we will have to do so by controlling or destroying them. If we are not mentally stimulated by our wonderful jobs and ever-shrinking mobile phones then we will have to destroy something to rise free from this deadening boredom – to save us from destroying ourselves. Our cybernetic age produces the schizoid man – engaged with his thoughts but distant with his emotions: and any society that puts coins and notes on a pedestal and its people into the gutter, is not only insane, but borders on the necrophillious itself (which means, broadly speaking, love of the non-living). Aggression is the inevitable outcome of a social-system that not only fails to recognise the existential needs of man, but seems actively designed to suppressed their positive manifestation: love, compassion and a role in the world other than that as a cog. Please forgive the crudity of this summary.

Is Fromm saying that gratuitous violence is the rotten fruit of industrialisation? Indeed, to some extent, he is. Drawing evidence from anthropology, neuro-physiology and animal behaviour, he shows how violence above and beyond defensive aggression is a not only unique to our species but unique to our age too. It may seem a tad romantic to talk of a pre-industrial age, where, as a consequence of there being an anarchy rather than a hierarchy, there was no violence or coercion: but the facts (at least those used) support this assertion.

This is a shining example of what the Frankfurt school was about. Here neo-psychoanalysis fuses with understated anarchic politics in an attempt to explain the apparent propensity towards destruction humankind has. Through the goggles of the radical left, a well-argued case that the violence we see in man is brought out by nurture acting on nature, emerges. The jury has not been sent packing though. This in one side of the debate but it is far from being the definitive one: I feel that there is a very wide gulf between what Fromm writes of and what motivated Hitler or Suharto (add choice murderous dictator here) or even what motivates the former wife-beater, to do what they did. An equally strong case could be argued for the opposite conclusion: that we humans are just vile, craven beasts, and genetically predisposed towards aggression – this book does not remove that interpretation, despite trying to. All social systems are built upon a view of human nature: the left say that humans, being compassionate and gregarious, need no government, the right say something approaching the opposite. The political importance (and consequence) of the question “is man born violent or created violent?” cannot be ignored, and respect goes to Fromm for addressing the question in a way that has left the silence of the counter somewhat telling.