Fromm sees right to the heart of our contradictory needs for community and for freedom like no other writer before or since. In Fear of Freedom, Fromm warns that the price of community is indeed high, and it is the individual who pays.

In this book Fromm set out to identify 'what man is, how he ought to live, and how the tremendous energies within man can be released and used productively.' It makes for exciting, illuminating, even life-changing reading.

This critique of contemporary capitalism established Fromm as one of the most controversial political thinkers of his generation, and was originally published to wide acclaim and even wider disapproval.