Visions of A Sane Society Fromm and Critical Theory for a Free, Democratic, and Sustainable Future

1. Introduction: A Sane Society Now and in the Future, 2. Can We Become Fully Human During and After Late Capitalism?, 3. American Authoritarian Populism, aka American Fascism, 4. Star Trek or the Matrix? Universal Humanism versus Technofascism, 5. The Messianic Moments of Critical Theory and MAGA, 6. Visions of a Sane Society, Epilogue from George Lundskow: A Paradise of Life, Liberty, and Happiness—for Everyone, Epilogue from Lauren Langman: Toward a Healthy Society

Biography

George Lundskow is Professor of Sociology at Grand Valley State University. He is the author of White Supremacy and Anti‑Supremacy Forces in the United States (2024), as well as co‑author with Sarah MacMillen of QAnon and Other Replacement Realities: How Religious Emotion Threatens Free Society but Can Also Contribute to a Progressive Future (2023).

Lauren Langman is Professor of Sociology at Loyola University, Chicago. He has published widely in critical theory and social movements, such as Alienation and the Carnivalization of Society (Routledge, 2012), which he co‑edited with Jerome Braun and volumes on hegemony and Arab Spring/Occupy.

“We seem to be living in an age of regression as well as one of aggression. The dark nemesis of Enlightenment humanism seems to have won the day. But Langman and Lundskow argue passionately for a return to the vital current of freedom, reason and the ethic of the good life in this important new book. Theirs is a commitment to the ideal of the good not as something abstract, but as realized in our social world, an ideal that can help us re‑ground and re‑orient progressive politics as well as critical social science. This is a book that our time desperately needs.”

Michael J. Thompson, Professor of Political Theory, William Paterson University

“Many societal trends today inspire fear of fascism. But this becomes free‑floating unactionable terror without a vision of a sane society to give perspective to a critique of what is actually going on. Lundskow and Langman do a valiant job bringing forward this perspective, starting with demonstrating why it can’t be understood as simply Left or Right in conventional terms. If you think society and government today have gone mad, read this book about sanity.”

Craig Calhoun, University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University and Stanley Kelley Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching of Sociology at Princeton University

“Can it happen here? In their wide‑ranging study, Lundskow and Langman answer that old question about the possibility of a fascist turn in the US soberly, i.e., in the affirmative. At the same time, however, they address a kaleidoscope of counter‑currents, in both theory and in movements for social justice. In so doing, they draw on luminaries of social theory like Marx, Weber, Freud, and above all Fromm, as well as newer thinkers, plus a host of contemporary figures and movements. They ground their study in both economic exploitation and the domineering personality, inspired by Fromm’s great work The Sane Society (1955), published as McCarthyism was just beginning to ebb. This is a timely and necessary book.”

Kevin B. Anderson, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of A Political Sociology of Twenty‑First Century Revolutions (Routledge, 2024)