To Have or to Be?

Chapter-by-chapter summary

The book has an introduction and three parts. The labels below describe each stretch of the argument.

Introduction: The Great Promise and its failure

Fromm opens with what he calls the Great Promise of Unlimited Production, Absolute Freedom and Unlimited Happiness: the belief that ever more production would bring ever more freedom and joy. He says the promise has failed. Wealthier societies still produce anxious, lonely people, and endless growth now threatens the natural environment and invites nuclear disaster. His answer is to look beneath economics and politics at how people actually live. This matters because it sets up the central question, and it turns a gloomy diagnosis into something each reader can test on themselves: is my life organised around having or around being?

Part 1: Understanding the difference between having and being

Fromm explains the two modes through small examples. In everyday speech we say “I have a problem” where “I am troubled” is closer to the truth. He contrasts Tennyson, who plucks a flower to examine it, with Bashō, who simply looks at the plant by the hedge. He then applies the test to learning, remembering, conversing, reading and loving: a student who copies lecture notes versus one who listens and answers back, or a debate played to win versus a conversation held to learn. Chapter 3 finds the same split in the Hebrew Bible, the Gospels and Meister Eckhart. This matters because it presents the split as an old human question, not a modern complaint.

Part 2: What the having mode is

Fromm describes an acquisitive society in which the wish to own shapes how people see themselves. In the having mode, “I am what I have”: my identity rests on property, status, knowledge and even relationships, which I treat as things to keep. That makes life anxious, because anything owned can be lost or taken. He separates existential having, the ordinary need for food, clothes and a home, from the character trait of clinging. This matters because it shows the problem is not property itself but making property the centre of who you are.

Part 2: What the being mode is

The being mode centres on using your own powers. Fromm uses “activity” in an older sense: not busyness, but thinking, loving, creating and paying attention. A person who is frantically busy can still be inwardly passive if outside pressure drives every move. In the being mode, identity does not depend on what you own, so there is less to defend, and giving and sharing come more easily. Fromm admits that being cannot be defined as neatly as possession; it shows in how a person lives. This matters because it gives the reader a positive picture, not only a critique.

Part 2: Security, solidarity and joy (Chapter 6)

Chapter 6 pairs the two modes across several feelings. On security, having promises safety by holding on but cannot escape the fear of loss, while being accepts uncertainty and finds confidence in one’s own powers. On solidarity, having turns people into rivals, while being allows shared enjoyment. On joy and pleasure, Fromm treats pleasure as the satisfaction of a wish to consume and joy as something that grows out of activity. On death, the person who is what they own sees it as total loss. This matters because it shows how the choice changes everyday emotions.

Part 3: Religion, character and society (Chapter 7)

Fromm widens the view from the person to society. He argues that every society shapes a typical social character, so that people want to do what its economy needs. An industrial society needs consumers and efficient workers, so it produces people who find security in owning, buying and achieving. He adds that people need a frame of orientation and something to devote themselves to, and that in the modern West an unspoken devotion to technology and progress fills that role. This matters because it shows greed is not only a personal failing but something social arrangements encourage.

Part 3: Conditions for change and the new society (Chapters 8 and 9)

Chapter 8 names the conditions for change: people must feel their own suffering, see that another way exists, and decide to act. Fromm sketches a “new man” who needs no possessions to feel secure, enjoys sharing and has dropped inflated self-importance. Chapter 9 offers features of a new society, such as workplaces where people take part in decisions, small discussion groups and a guaranteed minimum income. Fromm does not promise success. He ends with hope understood as readiness to act, not as waiting. This matters because it links large social proposals with small personal choices.

Key people and terms

• The having mode: a way of living in which identity comes from owning things, status, knowledge and even people. It brings constant worry about loss and tends to turn others into rivals.
• The being mode: a way of living in which identity comes from using your own powers and sharing in the present moment. It needs less defending, so giving feels natural.
• Existential having: the ordinary need to own what survival requires, such as food, clothing and shelter. Fromm does not criticise it and separates it from clinging to possessions as a personality trait.
• Activity: in Fromm’s older sense, the inner use of one’s powers through thinking, loving, creating and attention. It is not the same as being busy.
• Social character: the shared personality traits a society develops so that its members willingly do what the economy requires. Industrial societies, he says, favour consuming and acquiring.
• Meister Eckhart: the medieval Christian mystic whom Fromm uses as a guide to being. Eckhart taught that spiritual freedom means letting go of possessions and fixed ideas.
• Karl Marx: the nineteenth-century thinker whose early writings Fromm reads as a humanist critique of a life centred on owning, not as a defence of state control.
• Erich Fromm: the author, a psychoanalyst and social psychologist who joins personal character and social structure in a single argument.

Writing about this book

If you are writing an essay or preparing a discussion, start from questions rather than verdicts. Fromm’s own examples work well as tests. Pick one activity from your week, such as studying, chatting with a friend or shopping, and ask whether you were treating it as something to hold or as something to take part in. Then ask what the book would say about it, and where you disagree.

Good angles include the following. Is Fromm fair to modern society, and which of his examples still ring true? Can a person live in the being mode while still needing to earn money and own things? Does his split between two modes help you understand your own habits, or is real life more mixed? How realistic are the changes he proposes for work and income?

Whatever you choose, tie each claim to a specific scene or argument from the book, name the part it comes from, and add an example from your own life or from the news. A clear personal example makes a stronger essay than a general statement about “modern materialism”.