[Historical materialism's] main postulate is that the way in which
man produces determines his practice of life, his way of living, and
this practice of life determines his thinking and the social and
political structure of his society. [...] Marx's idea that man is
formed by his practice of life was not new as such. Montesquieu had
expressed the same idea in terms of "institutions form men"; Robert
Owen expressed it in similar ways. What was new in Marx's system is
that he analyzed in detail what these institutions are, or rather,
that the institutions themselves were to be understood as part of
the whole system of production which characterizes a given society.
[...] Man himself, in each period of history, is formed in terms of
the prevailing practice of life which in turn is determined by his
mode of production. [...] Marx's main criticism of capitalist society
is precisely that this society makes the wish to "have" and to "use"
into the most dominant desire in man; Marx believed that a man who is
dominated by the desire to have and to use is a crippled man. His aim
was a society organized in such a way that not profit and
private property, but the free unfolding of man's human powers are
man's dominant aims. Not the man who has much, but the man
who is much is the fully developed, truly human man.
—Erich Fromm, Beyond the Chains
of Illusion