Man is not only a member of society. Man is a member of the human race. Man has necessities of his own which exist quite independently from any other society. It is true that man has to live in such a way that he will fill the demands of society, but it is also true that society has to be constructed and structuralized in such a way that it will fill the needs of man. (…)
You might define a good society as a society which approaches most meeting the needs of humanity, the needs of man, and a bad society as society in which the gap between human needs and social needs is great. I think there is a point in which man either becomes pathological and breaks down, and so society breaks down, or in such a society he tries to change the society in such a way as to make it more human.
The conflict however always exists: that between the historical need of any given society to make man function and the human needs based in the essence of human existence to make man function. ― (1992f [1956]: Psychic Needs and Society, in: E. Fromm, Beyond Freud: From Individual to Social Psychoanalysis, New York (American Mental Health Foundation) 2010, p. 81.)