Book Review: To Have or to Be?

The Frankfurt School has a special place in history. It’s an object of hatred for both ends of the political spectrum. Leftists, especially Marxists, hate them for diluting revolutionary thought and creating a version of the Left that is “compatible” with the capitalist ruling class. Rightists hate them for giving birth to identity politics and political correctness. However, it’s a mistake to think of the Frankfurt School as a single harmonious entity. While it’s true that the school consisted of thinkers on the left side of the spectrum, their thoughts were diverse and not always compatible with each other. Nevertheless, they shared an ethos of human emancipation and mostly had the same view on why it kept failing to happen: “The revolutionary promise of the 19th century has failed and the reason is the culture.” Erich Fromm was one of the youngest members of the Frankfurt School. Fromm, a German Jew, fled the Nazis and settled in the United States in 1934. He was a psychoanalyst, a…