The young Erich Fromm's contribution to criminology*

Abstract

Erich Fromm's virtually unknown early writings on crime were published in German in psychoanalytic journals in the early 1930s, but have never been translated into English. In three articles published in 1930 and 1931, Fromm considered the criminal justice system as an important legitimating institution within the capitalist social order. His theoretical contribution to criminology is discussed here as a largely unknown but important chapter in the history of criminology, one which can still speak to us today. I also assess his contribution from several vantage points: (1) its relationship to earlier German liberal criminological reformers such as Liszt and Aschaffenburg; (2) its connection to the Frankfurt School's synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis, which underlay their account of the leanings of large sectors of the German population toward authoritarianism; (3) the difference in focus between Fromm's work and that of other psychoanalytic criminologists of the period, such as Alexander and Staub; and (4) comparisons with other leading European radical theorists who subsequently wrote on crime: the Frankfurt School's Rusche and Kirchheimer, the French psycho-analyst Lacan, and the French post-structuralist Foucault. I conclude that Fromm's work contains important insights for contemporary criminology.