FASCISM AND BOHEMIA
179
stateless society-all these are admitted to have been idle and
fairly vulgar illusions. For they depend on the belief that man
is inherently capable of leaving behind murder and slavery.
A:
But Fromm in
Escape From Freedom
places the blame for the
fascist drives on modem social institutions. Once these are cor–
rected the drives will disappear.
C: It's true that to Fromm Modem Man is twisted by the pressures
of modem social relations and that he will rise into a higher
life once a truly creative democratic society is achieved. Yet even
Fromm seems to me
to
go too far in linking fascism with the
contemporary soul. For it has not been demonstrated that the
fascist State was created by Man's desires, however neurotic. On
the contrary, everything points to the fact that it was the result
of a conspiracy and that the so-called mass-following of the
Nazis did not represent the common man in Germany. The out–
standing moral fact in the history of fascism is that Hitler, despite
unemployment, despite the paralysis of all political opposition,
despite the Storm Troopers and the connivance of Reichswehr
officials, despite the big money, was unable to win a majority or
enough dynamic support to capture the State by force as genuine
revolutions do. That Hitler could take power only through a
coalition arranged behind the scenes qy the ruling groups of
Germany proves that it was "society" that corrupted the people,
not the people who ran amuck against social values.
A:
You must admit, though, that Fromm contributes a great deal
towards our understanding of why some people joined the Nazis
and the others lacked the strength and the will to resist fascism
more effectively.
C: Even
if
Fromm does throw light on what made fascism able to
win converts and seize the State, his theory does not explain
what caused fascism. A concrete political movement does not
arise from the general moral condition of Man at any given
moment-democracy, for instance, did not come into being
because man suddenly became good or eager for freedom. The
positive causes of fascism are to be discovered by analyzing
objective political, economic and social relations, as well as our
cultural past-rather than by defining an image of some type of
individual through psychological or metaphysical speculation.
Class Sociology or Bohemian Monster
Heiden borrows from Marx one'-half an idea--or rather, the
shadow of an idea. The idea is Marx's conception of the economic
