LOVE UNDER THE SHADOW OF CAPITALISM
The text “Art of Loving: Capitalism and its Destruction of Love in the Western World” is based on Erich Fromm’s essay “Love and Its Disintegration in Contemporary Western Society” and it explains how capitalism destructs true love. Ph. D Karen Shore, in her article “The Relevance of Erich Fromm to September 11, 2001” tries to show that the lack of love causes sadism and necrophilia. As a combination of these two articles, it can be concluded that there is less love in the world because of capitalism which eradicates selfhood, makes them self-centered and conformist,0 and the lack of love causes today’s most important human problems of the Western World such as terrorism, war, hatred.
Why capitalism causes grim consequences? Erich Fromm explains these effects of capitalism by criticizing it mercilessly as he is right. He states that in the system of capitalism, the companies only aim at making more profit at the expense of workers (117). The capitalist doesn’t care about the condition of the worker while the end condition of the product is very important for them (117). He is liken this situation to that an army commander who only aims at winning the war at the expense of life of soldiers (117). He manifests the ironic status of the labor union by stating that “the individual worker does not have to bargain on the labor market by and for himself; he is united in big labor unions, also led by powerful bureaucracy.”(117) When workers are trying to escape from the cruelty of capitalism with the help of unions, however, they are captured by the system of capitalism inside these unions (117).
When capitalists expend workers at the sake of more earnings, workers lose their individuality and they are forced to be conformist. Erich Fromm says capitalism makes workers an expandable cog in the machine which causes this loss of individuality (Fromm, 117). Any of workers’ excessive individuality is a danger for the system and in this system, in order to survive, they have to conform the rules (118). Capitalism removes workers’ creativity, self-expression and ingenuity which make them different from each other and it leads these workers to be the copy of one another (117-118). For capitalism, none of workers’ features is valuable but their potential labor force. As a consequence, capitalism produces conformity and it eradicates selfhood.
Like Erich Fromm said, you should first love yourself in order to love others. One becomes incapable of love as one is without the self, identity, one’s own nature (Fromm, 118). People, to avoid capitalism harmful effects, they takes love as a shelter but this kind of love, which is a result of capitalism, is an empty love, far from true love (118). Therefore, capitalism takes individuality which is necessary for love and it makes people incapable of love by possessing their individualities.
Capitalism is based on individual self-centered, and this leads to an economy stimulated the interest of people by only profit and greed. Economic growth which established on capitalism creates wealthy capitalists, on the one hand, and poor, poverty-free and oppressed workers, on the other (117). Capitalism, with its emphasis on self-interest and individual freedom, has been crucial to material development. There is no place for love where there are materialist and self-interested people. Capitalism, with its all aspects, is like it exists to remove love from the world.
It is known that sadism and necrophilia cause wars, terrorism and massive destructions which are today’s most tragic problems. However, it is ignored or denied to be known that the reason of sadism and necrophilia is the loss of love (Shore). Since love is the basic need of human existence, when this need is not satisfied, there exist negative character-rooted passions (120). As result of that, some people (sadists) want unlimited power to dominate others and some (necrophiliacs) want it to destroy others. The reason of that there is more terrorism, massive destructions or other evil things in last decades is because there is less love in the world today than before.
It is not hard to see the real consequences of lack of love, in other words the real consequences of capitalism. Karen Shore starts her article with the most efficient terrorism attack of recent years, with September 11. Then she gives exmps…
And she says, if we look at these peoples backgrounds, we can see lack of love in their lives
Reflecting on the information given above, the time of capitalism that we are now in can be expressed as the time of terrorism, wars and massive destructions. In order to prevent this deteriorating state, we first have to admit that the absence of love becomes the source of these human problems and than we have to change the policies of nations according to this truth. Unless the system of capitalism changes, there will be loss of self-hood. As long as individuals loses their self-hood, there will be lack of love in the world and we will experience more and more trouble until we establish true love all around the world.
