How Fromm’s Ideas Resonate Politically as well as Philosophically: The Contemporary Case of Guaranteed Income

ABSTRACT

Erich Fromm is not generally associated with policy positions and politics. Yet, Fromm was an early proponent of guaranteed income as an important practical entitlement necessary if greater human freedoms were to be realized. The article traces the development of the idea of basic (or guaranteed income) in US social movement history going back to the 1960s and including the writings of Erich Fromm on this topic. It argues that the concept of guaranteed income flows easily from, and is consonant with, Fromm’s humanistic philosophy overall. Four reasons are offered, including those that are politically, ethically and pragmatically oriented, as to why providing basic income to all citizens has major advantages over the kind of economic precarity and anxieties that many people currently experience. Lastly, after making a multi-dimensional case for guaranteed income, the article responds to a common objection – namely, if basic income became universally available, people would not wish to work. Quite to the contrary, and as empirical experiments have shown, Fromm’s ideas suggest that guaranteed income would encourage people to work with increased commitment and passion and that more positive than negative consequences would ensue from the concept becoming a widespread and much more generally accepted public policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Guaranteed income
• entitlements
• humanism
• Fromm
• policy
• freedom

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Notes on contributors

Lynn S. Chancer

Lynn S. Chancer, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and Executive Officer of the PhD Program in Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of Sadomasochism in Everyday Life: Dynamics of Power and Powerlessness, High Profile Crimes: When Legal Cases Become Social Causes, and The Unhappy Divorce of Sociology and Psychoanalysis (co-edited with John Andrews), as well as numerous articles on social theory, feminist theory and on Erich Fromm, criminology and feminism.