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Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves. All activities are subordinated to economic goals, means have become ends; man is an automaton - well fed, well clad, but without any ultimate concern for that which is his peculiarly human quality and function. If man is to be able to love, he must be put in his supreme place. The economic machine must serve him, rather than he serve it. He must be enabled to share experience, to share work, rather than, at best, share in profits. Society must be organized in such a way that man's social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.

Erich Fromm#50

LoveSocietyHuman natureAlienationConsumerismEconomics

About this quote

What does it mean?
Society prioritizes economic growth over human needs, reducing people to consumptive automatons. True humanity requires placing human connection and love above economic machinery.
In plain terms
We value money and things more than people, but we should care for people more than profits.
What can you take from it?
Organize society to serve human needs, not economic goals.

Where it applies

  • critiquing modern capitalism
  • discussing work-life balance
  • analyzing social goals

Putting it to work

  • prioritize human welfare in policy
  • foster community connection
  • critique consumer culture

Questions to consider

  • How does your daily routine serve your humanity or just consumption?
  • What would a society organized around love look like?

Another view

It overlooks the complexity of balancing economic stability with humanistic goals.

More from Erich Fromm

  1. The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are se…

    Permalink to quote #49
  2. To speak of love is not 'preaching,' for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need of every human being. That this need has been o…

    Permalink to quote #51
  3. Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.

    Permalink to quote #48

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