“Fromm’s story shows us that a critique of authoritarian culture — one that identifies the strong tendencies toward passivity and reaction in the general population — can retain its central thrust, while still maintaining some of the optimism of the original Marxian critique of capitalism, and its orientation toward political action here and now. “The Sane Society was also notable for its criticism of aspects of the Marxist project, especially concerning the traditional concept of revolution. Fromm believed that there was a profound psychological error in the famous statement that concludes the Communist Manifesto , suggesting that the workers had ‘nothing to lose but their chains’. As well as their chains, the workers also had something else to lose: all the irrational needs and satisfactions that had originated while they were wearing those chains. “Fromm argued that we need an expanded concept of revolution: in terms of not only external barriers, but of internal, subject...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51