Rating: 
Summary: Fromm's masterly analysis of freedom and conformity
Review: This is probably THE Fromm opus, a productive blend of Hasidism, Marxism, existentialism, Freud, and a host of other thinkers all amalgamated into Fromm's discussion of the problem of freedom in the West.
Rating:
Summary: Lessons in what NOT to be, not a rage.
Review: Well, take it from someone who has a degree in Philosophy from Harvard, I have to disagree with a large number of reviews. Strangely enough they often start by saying they went to some big shot college which therefore I gather is supposed to make their review more insightful, though this in itself is a basic philosophical fallacy (that of appeal to authority).You needn't agree with Fromm's conclusions to find this an utterly worthwhile read. In fact, puncturing holes in the arguments of political philosophers is an interesting hobby in itself, and Fromm presents some tempting targets for Randian libertarians. As a junior in college, I took a course in political philosophy at the University of Michigan, which boasts a hypothetical pre-civilization 'state of nature' (as have several other imporant philosophers over the centuries). This provide a foundation from which to argue that you must read this book. You will either find ideas that you can use to define your own world-view or you will find the weapons that others will use against your own position. Some language may offend parents, but overall, a must read for those interested in a playful and fun approach to some kind of system that will somehow control human greed and selfishness as soon as possible.
Rating: 
Summary: Escape into Speculation
Review: While the book has insights into history and psychology, it is problematic in several respects. Fromm is concerned with explaining why people seek to escape from the responsibility and anxiety that personal freedom brings to them. The immediate background for this project is Hitler's Germany and WW II. Fromm was a socialist who fled from the regime, and was, for the rest of his life, under the heavy influence of that catastrophe. Based on this experience, he tends to overgeneralize about the world and makes inferences supported by nothing more than a leap of imagination. As is the case with many works of political theory, the author of this book frequently confounds intellectual history with real history,i.e., actual historical events. He tends to equate human behavior and public policy with nothing more than abstract, esoteric ideas put forth by theologians and philosophers. For him all knowledge about the past--events, actions, policies, and thoughts--is encapsulated in abstract philosophizings of a dozen or so humanistic (no rigorous scientific training) intellectuals. Fromm also tends to psychologize too much, a mark of Nietzschean and Freudian influence. He attributes various feelings and moods to individuals based on little more than conjecture and even proposes unequivocal explanations for these emotions. His thought is full of excessive abstractions of the German intellectual tradition. For example, he introduces such ghosts as "character structure" of man. He also makes vague, mind-numbing statements that could come only from that tradition: "Modern selfishness is the greed that is rooted in the frustration of the real self and whose object is the social self. While modern man seems to be characterized by utmost assertion of the self, actually his self has been weakened and reduced to a segment of the total self--intellect and willpower--to the exclusion of all other parts of the total personality" (page 117). Makes you dizzy, doesn't it? I nearly lost myself in this exploration about the self between the points of the social and individual self. This book has a few insights borrowed from Nietzsche and Freud and applied to the Nazi Germany. This is an old, worn out hat by now. And the price of reading it, is that you have to put up with Fromm's attitude that ideas are facts and philosophizing is science.
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