Escape from Freedom

by Erich Fromm

It is the thesis of this book that modern man, freed from the bonds of pre-individualistic society, which simultaneously gave him security and limited him, has not gained freedom in the positive sense of the realization of his individual self;

Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless.

This isolation is unbearable and the alternatives he is confronted with are either to escape from the burden of his freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full realization of positive freedom w...

Man’s brain lives in the twentieth century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself.

In the long and virtually continuous battle for freedom, however, classes that were fighting against oppression at one stage sided with the enemies of freedom when victory was won and new privileges were to be defended.

The abolition of external domination seemed to be not only a necessary but also a sufficient condition to attain the cherished goal: freedom of the individual.

We have been compelled to recognize that millions in Germany were as eager to surrender their freedom as their fathers were to fight for it;

Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission? If there is not, how can we account for the attraction which submission to a leader has for so many today?

we are dealing here with a political system which, essentially, does not appeal to rational forces of self-interest, but which arouses and mobilizes diabolical forces in man

in the Northern European countries, from the sixteenth century on, man developed an obsessional craving to work which had been lacking in a free man before that period.

When man is born, the stage is set for him. He has to eat and drink, and therefore he has to work;

Thus the mode of life, as it is determined for the individual by the peculiarity of an economic system, becomes the primary factor in determining his whole character structure, because the imperative need for self-preservation forces him to accept the conditions under which he has to live.

Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.

the more he becomes an “individual,” has no choice but to unite himself with the world in the spontaneity of love and productive work or else to seek a kind of security by such ties with the world as destroy his freedom and the integrity of his individual self.9

Only if man humiliates himself and demolishes his individual will and pride will God’s grace descend upon him.

God-ward man has no ‘free will,’ but is a captive, slave, and servant either to the will of God or to the will of Satan.”

irrational doubt can never be cured by rational answers; it can only disappear if the individual becomes an integral part of a meaningful world.

the doubt can only be silenced, driven underground, so to speak, and this can be done by some formula which promises absolute certainty. The compulsive quest for certainty,

rooted in the need to conquer the unbearable doubt.

to find certainty by elimination of the isolated individual self, by becoming an instrument in the hands of an overwhelmingly strong power outside of the individual.

Man is free from all ties binding him to spiritual authorities, but this very freedom leaves him alone and anxious, overwhelms him with a feeling of his own individual insignificance and powerlessness. This free, isolated individual is crushed by the experience of his individual insignificance.

his concept of faith means: if you completely submit, if you accept your individual insignificance, then the all-powerful God may be willing to love you and save you.

If you get rid of your individual self with all its shortcomings and doubts by utmost self-effacement, you free yourself from the feeling of your own nothingness and can participate in God’s glory.

a God who insisted on complete submission of man and annihilation of the individual self as the essential condition to his salvation.

“Even if those in authority are evil or without faith, nevertheless the authority and its power is good and from God…. Therefore, where there is power and where it flourishes, there it is and there it remains because God has ordained it.” (Letter to the Romans 13:1)

“Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him he will strike you, and a whole land with you.”

one could not do anything which would endanger the state of salvation, since one’s salvation did not depend on one’s own actions but was decided upon before one was ever born.

In the further development of Calvinism, the emphasis on a virtuous life and on the significance of an unceasing effort gains in importance, particularly the idea that success in worldly life, as a result of such efforts, is a sign of salvation.

effort and activity is not the result of inner strength and self-confidence; it is a desperate escape from anxiety.

In Calvinism this meaning of effort was part of the religious doctrine. Originally it referred essentially to moral effort, but later on the emphasis was more and more on effort in one’s occupation and on the results of this effort, that is, success or failure in business. Success became the sign of God’s grace; failure, the sign of damnation.

frantic effort was a reassurance against an otherwise unbearable feeling of powerlessness.

we often do not fully realize what it means to conceive of God as being as arbitrary and merciless as Calvin’s God, who destined part of mankind to eternal damnation without any justification or reason except that this act was an expression of God’s power.

Freedom brought isolation and personal insignificance more than strength and confidence.

conventionally we think in non-dialectical terms and are prone to doubt whether two contradictory trends can result simultaneously from one cause.

the modern individual has lost to a great extent the inner capacity to have faith in anything which is not provable by the methods of the natural sciences.

In capitalism economic activity, success, material gains, become ends in themselves. It becomes man’s fate to contribute to the growth of the economic system, to amass capital, not for purposes of his own happiness or salvation, but as an end in itself.

the selfish person is always anxiously concerned with himself, he is never satisfied, is always restless, always driven by the fear of not getting enough,

he produces cars and clothes, he grows grain and fruit. But he has become estranged from the product of his own hands, he is not really the master any more of the world he has built; on the contrary, this man-made world has become his master,

He keeps up the illusion of being the center of the world, and yet he is pervaded by an intense sense of insignificance and powerlessness

The attitude toward work has the quality of instrumentality; in contrast to a medieval artisan the modern manufacturer is not primarily interested in what he produces; he produces essentially in order to make a profit from his capital investment, and what he produces depends essentially on the market

Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity

As with any other commodity it is the market which decides the value of these human qualities,

the “feeling of self,” is merely an indication of what others think of the person.

The boss has become an abstract figure—he never sees him; the “management” is an anonymous power with which he deals indirectly and toward which he as an individual is insignificant.

The insignificance of the individual in our era concerns not only his role as a businessman, employee, or manual laborer, but also his role as a customer.

To have a job—regardless of what kind of a job it is—seems to many all they could want of life and something they should be grateful for.

They cannot go on bearing the burden of “freedom from”; they must try to escape from freedom altogether unless they can progress from negative to positive freedom. The principal social avenues of escape in our time are the submission to a leader, as has happened in Fascist countries,

the striving for submission and domination, or, as we would rather put it, in the masochistic and sadistic strivings

The more aggressive kind of sadistic impulse finds its most frequent rationalization in two forms: “I have been hurt by others and my wish to hurt them is nothing but retaliation,” or, “By striking first I am defending myself or my friends

The sadist needs the person over whom he rules, he needs him very badly, since his own feeling of strength is rooted in the fact that he is the master over someone.