Erich Fromm as the ‘Forgotten’ Western Marxist

We contend Fromm sits as an obvious interlocutor for key voices within the Western Marxist tradition today. One reason for this it that his distinctive Freudo-Marxism holds valuable psychological and depth-psychological insights, which have been comparatively absent in much contemporary Western Marxist scholarship. As we discuss below, Fromm’s Freudo-Marxism has been repeatedly turned to in adjacent fields, to provide Marxian-inflected analyses of the rise of contemporary forms of authoritarian populism; a timely and pressing concern for many of today’s leading Western Marxist thinkers. A further reason we would expect to see Fromm brought into conversation with Western Marxism today is that his work offers an assertively humanist Marxism, predicated on a distinctive reading of Marx’s early writings. This offers an obvious site for potentially productive dialogue with anti-humanist Marxist voices, as epitomised by Althusser, whose work is, once again, increasingly discussed. As such, we contend this lack of dialogue between Fromm and Western Marxism is an important and a curious omission worth engaging with in its own right; an omission we seek to correct.