Escape From Freedom

“Man is not only made by history—history is made by man.” 

A key assumption in Fromm’s argument is that individuals and society are in a dynamic, reciprocal relationship with each other. Fromm believes that human nature and personality is largely created by social forces. However, he refuses to say that individuals are totally produced by society, and instead focuses on how society and individuals each shape each other in turns. 

“There is another [need] just as compelling, one which is not rooted in bodily processes but in the very essence of the human mode and practice of life: the need to be related to the world outside oneself, the need to avoid aloneness.” 

In addition to bodily needs such as eating and sleeping, Fromm posits that human beings are driven by a need to feel socially connected with other individuals in a community. Escape from Freedom focuses on how this desire to have a sense of belonging with others leads individuals in modern society to relinquish their freedoms and embrace authoritarianism. 

“To the degree to which the individual, figuratively speaking, has not yet completely severed the umbilical cord which hfastens him to the outside world, he lacks freedom; but these ties give him security and a feeling of belonging and of being rooted somewhere. I wish to call these ties that exist before the process of individuation has resulted in the complete emergence of an individual ‘primary ties.’”

When growing up, children initially have no sense of difference between themselves and other beings, such as their mothers. They form “primary ties” to their parents that provide them with a sense of security at the same time that they limit their freedom. As children grow into adults, they relinquish these primary ties as they gain more freedoms. 

“The process of individuation is one of growing strength and integration of its individual personality, but it is at the same time a process in which the original identity with others is lost and in which the child becomes more separate from them.” 

Through observing how a child develops into an adult individual, Fromm argues that freedom has an inherently dialectic quality, meaning that it is defined by two contradictory aspects. Freedom has a positive aspect in that it allows individuals to develop their personality. However, freedom also means relinquishing one’s bonds with outside individuals, often leading to a sense of isolation. 

“Human existence begins when the lack of fixation of action by instincts exceeds a certain point; when the adaptation to nature loses its coercive character; when the way to act is no longer fixed by hereditarily given mechanisms. In other words, human existence and freedom are from the beginning inseparable.” 

Fromm describes the history of human beings as being one of increasing individualism and freedom, beginning with the emergence of early man. While most animals are governed by natural instincts since birth, human beings are defined by their lack instinctive behavior. Instead, they must continually adapt themselves to their natural surroundings and autonomously determine their behavior.

“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.” 

Medieval society was governed by feudalism, in which a feudal lord governed over all individuals who lived on the lord’s land. Individuals in such a society were born into a certain social caste and had little ability to change their position in society or their occupation. While such a society limited an individual’s freedom, Fromm notes that individuals in the medieval era felt a deep sense of security and purpose that compensated for the lack of freedom. 

“By losing his fixed place in a closed world man loses the answer to the meaning of his life; the result is that doubt has befallen him concerning himself and the aim of life.” 

As the growth of capitalism began to break-down feudal society, individuals gained greater freedoms to determine how they wanted to live their lives. However, such freedom left individuals in a sense of isolation and fear, as they lost their sense of a guiding purpose.

“[Lutheranism’s] conviction of man’s rottenness and powerlessness to do anything good on his own merits is one essential condition of God’s grace. Only if man humiliates himself and demolishes his individual will and pride will God’s grace descend upon him.” 

The Christian sect of Lutheranism preached that human beings must abase themselves to God and completely align themselves with God’s will in order to achieve salvation. Fromm argues that such a religious doctrine arose in response to the spread of capitalism in Europe during the Middle Ages. By teaching that individuals’ should relinquish their individual wills, Lutheranism provided followers with a sense of solace and security for their growing doubts. 

“There is no other period in history in which free men have given their energy so completely for the one purpose work. The drive for relentless work was one of the fundamental productive forces, no less important for the development of our industrial system than steam and electricity.” 

In the Protestant doctrine of Calvinism, the activity of constantly working became a moral virtue, as it was believed to prove that God had selected an individual for salvation. Such an emphasis on working for its own sake became a major force driving the growth of industrial capitalism. 

“We are fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside of ourselves and are blinded to the fact of inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which tend to undermine the meaning of the victories freedom has won against its traditional enemies.” 

While many believe that human beings are fully free in modern society, Fromm argues that this is true if one only considers freedom from external forms of power. Fromm believes that there are less visible shackles that exist within our minds that prevent us from authentically following realizing our true personalities. 

“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. Man became a cog in the vast economic machine—an important one if he had much capital, an insignificant one if he had none—but always a cog to serve a purpose outside of himself.” 

Within a capitalist society, individuals become obsessed with working so as to accumulate more money, rather than working to provide for himself or find happiness. Fromm believes that such a capitalist system reduces individuals to parts of a massive machine. 

“Not only the economic, but also the personal relations between men have this character of alienation; instead of relations between human beings, they assume the character of relations between things.” 

Fromm argues that capitalism’s relentless drive for individuals to make more money fundamentally alters the ways in which individuals relate to each other socially. When individuals feel themselves reduced to machinery, they similarly treat each other as mere objects to be manipulated for earning more money. Under capitalism, Fromm argues that each individual learns to treat others as means to an end. 

“Today the voter is confronted by mammoth parties which are just as distant and as impressive as the mammoth organizations of industry. The issues are complicated and made still more so by all sorts of methods to befog them.”

Modern society is characterized by a variety of massive, faceless institutions which leave individuals with feelings of intense insignificance and powerlessness. In this example, Fromm notes that the modern political system leaves individual citizens feeling hopeless that they might play any direct part in affecting change. 

“From a standpoint of human values, however, a society could be called neurotic in the sense that its members are crippled in the growth of their personality.” 

In this passage, Fromm uses the psychological notion of a “neurotic” individual to analyze the workings on the scale of societies. According to Fromm, all existing forms of modern society—whether democratic or authoritarian—could be said to be neurotic, as they do not offer individuals with the ability to authentically realize their inner selves.   

“The first mechanism of escape from freedom I am going to deal with is the tendency to give up the independence of one’s own individual self and to fuse one’s self with somebody or something outside of oneself in order to acquire the strength which the individual is lacking.” 

In Chapter 5, Fromm describes several psychological escape mechanisms individuals use so as to deal with their feelings of isolation and loneliness. One of the main types is the sado-masochistic person, who seeks to totally devote themselves to a perceived authority so as to “fuse” with that person and gain a sense of bonding. 

“The masochistic person […] is saved from making decisions, saved from the final responsibility for the fate of his self, and thereby saved from the doubt of what decision to make. He is also saved from the doubt of what the meaning of his life is or who ‘he’ is.” 

By completely relinquishing their individual will to an outside authority, people with masochistic tendency give-up the need to think or decide things for themselves. Fromm argues that such an escape mechanism serves as a means of silencing one’s doubts about their individual life purpose or desires, as it allows another being to make those choices for them. 

“This substitution of pseudo acts for original acts of thinking, feeling, and willing, leads eventually to the replacement of the original self by a pseudo self. The original self is the self which is the originator of mental activities. The pseudo self is only an agent who actually represents the role a person is supposed to play but who does so under the name of the self.” 

In the escape mechanism of conformity, individuals substitute their own thoughts and desires for those of an outside authority. However, they frequently mistake these outsides thoughts as being their own. Fromm argues that this eventually leads a person to develop a “pseudo self,” in which one’s personality is entirely based upon societal expectations. 

“Nazism is a psychological problem, but the psychological factors themselves have to be understood as being molded by socio-economic factors; Nazism is an economic and political problem, but the hold it has over a whole people has to be understood on psychological grounds.” 

Most attempts to explain the rise of Nazism in Germany argue either that Nazism develops to fulfill certain economic desires by German industrialists, or that Nazism is the result of a wide-spread psychological craze in German culture. In Escape from Freedom, Fromm argues that one must consider Nazism both from the psychological and economic perspectives so as to properly understand how and why Nazism arose in Germany. 

“What they want is the victory of the stronger and the annihilation or the unconditional surrender of the weaker.” 

This quote comes from Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, and describes Hitler’s beliefs about the desires of the masses. In Chapter 6, Fromm quotes numerous passages from Mein Kampf so as to argue that Hitler’s writings display many key traits of the sado-masochistic personality. In this quote, Hitler evinces a desire to dominate others frequently associated with sadism. 

“But this masochistic longing [found in Germany’s masses] is also to be found in Hitler himself. For him the superior power to which he submits is God, Fate, Necessity, History, Nature.” 

At the same time that Hitler displayed a desire for total world power, Fromm also argues that he had masochistic desires to sacrifice himself to higher authority. Hitler understood his dominating actions as being required of him by higher, metaphysical authorities, such as God and Fate. 

“The right to express our thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own; freedom from external authority is a lasting gain only if the inner psychological conditions are such that we are able to establish our own individuality.” 

Though modern democracies offer individuals the freedom of speech, Fromm argues that such freedom is meaningless. As such a society has yet to offer its members the ability to develop an authentic and original sense of self, such individuals could not be said to truly be free. 

“Yet all this bespeaks a dim realization of the truth—the truth that modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want.”

Under capitalist society, Fromm believes that individuals have no ability to determine their own desires for themselves. Instead, they devote their lives to satiating desires that society tells them to pursue: money, cars, bigger houses, and more. 

“We believe that there is a positive answer, that the process of growing freedom does not constitute a vicious circle, and that man can be free and yet not alone, critical and yet not filled with doubts, independent and yet an integral part of mankind.” 

Though Escape from Freedom focuses on how individuals flee from their growing freedoms by submitting to society, Fromm does not believe authoritarianism is the inevitable human response to freedom. Instead, Fromm argues that through encouraging an individual’s spontaneous thoughts and actions, it is possible to create a society that allows individuals their utmost freedom while also providing them with a sense of community.