Escape from Freedom

by Erich Fromm

The picture of the Middle Ages15 has been distorted in two ways. Modern rationalism has looked upon the Middle Ages as an essentially dark period. It has pointed to the general lack of personal freedom, to the exploitation of the mass of the population by a small minority, to its narrowness which makes the peasant of the surrounding country a dangerous and suspected stranger to the city dweller—not to speak of a person of another country—and to its superstitiousness and ignorance. On the other hand, the Middle Ages have been idealized, for the most part by reactionary philosophers but sometimes by progressive critics of modern capitalism. They have pointed to the sense of solidarity, the subordination of economic to human needs, the directness and concreteness of human relations, the supranational principle of the Catholic Church, the sense of security which was characteristic of man in the Middle Ages. Both pictures are right; what makes them both wrong is to draw one of them and shut one’s eyes to the other. What characterizes medieval in contrast to modern society is its lack of individual freedom. Everybody in the earlier period was chained to his role in the social order. A man had little chance to move socially from one class to another, he was hardly able to move even geographically from one town or from one country to another. With few exceptions he had to stay where he was born. He was often not even free to dress as he pleased or to eat what he liked. The artisan...