Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 8
The Market Personality Today:
The Further Transformation of Human Beings Into Things
(page 3)
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Human Relationships Become Relations Between Things
In a society where our sense of self is strongly associated with the possession of commodities, relations between humans are transformed into relations between things. Because the acquisition of things dominates human relationships, the latter become dead, not living relationships. In this dynamic in which people “advance” by acquiring things at the expense of others and often through the exploitation of others, people experience excitement and pleasure from things, while their relationships with others are filled with antagonistic anxiety and tension. These feelings express the deadness of stunted relationships — not their growing aliveness. Everything that is alive dies, and everything that is dead comes to life.
This idolizing of things and contempt for the living is, of course, expressed well by the stock market. In many cases, when the rate of unemployment increases (as happened in June 2000), stockbrokers and investors see this as a sign that interest rates will decrease, that is, as a good time to invest because profit in the long run looks good despite the temporary slowdown. The misery of many thus creates more profits and consequently increases the wealth of the rich, allowing them to accumulate more possessions. When the news media report a rise in unemployment, they treat profit as a healthy living body, while they treat the suffering unemployed workers as disposable things. Consider, for example, the following report about the rise of unemployment in June 2000:
"The number of people with jobs fell by nearly 1 million, the largest monthly decline in history. The news triggered a stock buying spree . . . Although a slowdown may sound ominous, investors and financial analysts welcomed the news . . . Although corporate profits may rise more slowly and some workers may lose jobs in the short run, government policymakers believe that this is medicine worth taking so the economy can continue growing at a healthy, less feverish pace over the long run."[2]
Thus, the suffering endured by working people, which may last for many months, or even years, is good for stable profits; the “health” and continuation of huge profits is more important than the misery of millions. This is so because stable profits are the foundation for the extravagant lifestyle of the powerful and rich, who are accustomed to a constant accumulation of possessions. The millions who lose their jobs are just disposable cogs in the machine that keeps the system going. The system is based on the possessive mentality, and the indifference it reflects extends to an indifference toward life in general.
Unfortunately, this indifference to life and to humanity flows inexorably from the economic system, and permeates the psychology of the average person at a deep level. It is too painful to live in such an alienated social reality, and at the same time to remain sensitive, loving, and caring. Most people must suppress their human qualities into the unconscious and replace them with a personality that fetishizes commodities, and values non-living things more than people and nature. However, this process creates constant contradiction and pain. Our humanity never fully dies. It remains an unrecognized force locked deep within us.
The following passage written by Erich Fromm describes, in a simplified version, the fundamental relation of our “ego” to the world of things in alienated bourgeois society:
"In the last analysis, the statement “I [subject] have O [object]” expresses a definition of I through my possession of O. The subject is not myself but I am what I have. My property constitutes myself and my identity. The underlying thought “I am I” is “I am I because I have X” — X equaling all natural objects and persons to whom I relate myself through my power to control them, to make them permanently mine.
"In the having mode, there is no alive relationship between me and what I have. It and I have become things, and I have it, because I have the force to make it mine. But there is also a reverse relationship. It has me, because my sense of identity, i.e. of sanity, rests upon my having it (and as many things as possible). The having mode of existence is not established by an alive productive process between subject and object; it makes things of both object and subject. The relationship is one of deadness, not aliveness."[3]
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[2] The Washington Post, June 3, 2000.
[3] Eric Fromm, To Have or to Be, page 65.