Research On Fromm’s Interpretation Of Historical Materialism

Erich Fromm was an important theorist of the Frankfurt School and the founder of "Neo-Freudianism".The interpretation of Marx’s materialist view of history is an important part of his thought.Fromm’s interpretation of the materialist view of history is both a product of the times and influenced by the ideas of predecessors.Its theoretical sources include Marx’s theory of alienation and Freud’s psychodynamics.Fromm believes that human creative potential promotes the progress of productive forces and the transformation of production relations,and is the fundamental driving force of social development.Fromm developed the theory of the "social character" to explain the dialectical relationship between the economic base and the superstructure.He believes that the social character shaped by the economic base is the mediator between the economic base and the superstructure.The economic base determines the social character,and the social character has relative independence and has a certain counter-effect on the economic base;Social character chooses the superstructure,and the superstructure,in turn,has a certain shaping effect on the social character.Fromm also proposed the theory of the "social unconscious" to explain the dialectical relationship between social existence and social consciousness.He pointed out that the social unconscious is the mediator between the mutual movement and transformation of social existence and social consciousness.Social existence determines the social unconscious,which in turn rises to social consciousness and eventually interacts with social existence.In addition,Fromm also proposed the principles and ways of constructing a "sound society" on the basis of a critique of capitalist society.Fromm believed that the most basic characteristic of a sound society is the development of human creative potential.To build such a society,it is necessary to carry out comprehensive changes in the political,economic,cultural and moral spheres at the same time.Fromm’s interpretation of the materialist view of history criticizes the distortion of the materialist view of history,deepens and expands the basic principles of the materialist view of history to a certain extent,explores the construction of a sound society,and provides a new angle for criticizing capitalism.Its ideas help us to understand more deeply the connotation of Marx’s materialist view of history and have certain theoretical value.But at the same time,Fromm’s interpretation of the materialist view of history has a strong humanistic color,exaggerates the social role of psychological factors,unilaterally denies violent revolution,and lacks practical feasibility in the construction of a sound society,with obvious theoretical limitations.In short,we need to make a historical dialectical analysis of the materialist view of history interpreted by Fromm in the context of its time.