There is a fairly respectable school of thought, which maintains that there is no such thing as capitalism, or socialism for that matter, in the modern world. It would be even more respectable, if it adds the word ‘pure’ into the formula, for, it is a well-established triviality that just as pure chemical elements cannot be found in nature, so cannot pure capitalism or pure socialism be found in the real world, no matter how hard and how long we keep looking for them. We do of course have some ideas of what these two ought to be (the former being free market with zero government regulation, while the latter can perhaps be found in Charles Fourier, but hardly anywhere else), but we know well that having an idea of something is not a sufficient condition for that something to necessarily exist in reality.
By the same token, there is no such thing as “absolute freedom” anywhere in the world, and the only thing that we can do here is determine, or rather define, the parameters of practical freedoms, and track the instances of their incidence in this or that society to the best of our discernment and comprehension.
Hobbes delightfully defines freedom as “the absence of external impediments.” From this definition, as well as from his description of the Commonwealth, it is already clear that organized society has as its rationale a sincere desire, on the part of the covenanters, to create exactly such an external impediment, in the person of the sovereign, on the individual freedoms of the citizens, in case the latter go awry, or rather, pursue the urges of their dismal natural state, which invites nothing but a war of all against all. Thus, it goes without saying that absolute freedom as such doesn’t exist under normal social conditions. In the past, whenever the king or any other type of absolute sovereign would try to exercise his ‘absolute freedom,’ he would quickly end up without a head, or something even more ghastly.
And yet, everybody (hopefully) understands that when today we distinguish between the so-called free and unfree societies, we have something else in mind, rather than the crudity of absolute freedom. Commonsense basics are telling us that the difference between those two does exist, and in fact amounts to something both tangible and definable. The challenge, as I said before, is to define the parameters of the practical freedoms that we are talking about, and only then, having parsed them into small individual concrete parts, to examine how they are applicable to the above-posited free and unfree societies, to see whether they are meaningfully describing our pre-established dichotomy.
Having determined that the difference between freedom and unfreedom is not in the presence or absence of an absolute, but in the specific levels of freedom and unfreedom in each society, it is probably unproductive for one society to accuse another society of being “unfree,” when the other can quickly point its finger back to some specific instance of unfreedom in the accuser, and thus, fallaciously, deduce that, once unfreedom exists everywhere, to a certain degree, the overall differences in the levels of freedom in ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ societies are not that significant, unless unfreedom in the most repressive societies reaches an exceptional level, after which only a violent revolution can serve as a solution to the inevitable crisis.
Ironically, it was not the high level of repression in Nazi Germany that brought down the regime, but it was the debacle of World War II, caused by the militaristic adventurism of the leaders of the Third Reich. Thus, even the definitions of freedom and unfreedom are always conditional, depending on the success or failure of the government that practices them.
Now, although it can be said with a fairly good conscience that American society is a free society, whereas, say, Soviet society of yore was an unfree society, once we get to the specifics of each case, the situation gets somewhat more complicated.
I remember how during the cold war the “freedom to travel” was considered one of such definitive criteria, and how many Russians used to privately grumble that whereas the people in the West (those lucky devils!) could travel freely wherever they wished to go (Rio de Janeiro! Paris! Rome!…), the Russians had been precluded from traveling abroad, except under special arrangements made for them by the Soviet Government.
This Russian “unfreedom” to travel was seen as a definitive distinguishing feature separating them from the free world. Yet, in their dreamy misery, those Russians did not realize that this Western “freedom to travel” was always contingent upon having enough money to exercise this freedom, and that, in fact, not too many Americans or even Europeans were rich enough to afford foreign travel. As a matter of fact, any Russian of small means had a much better chance to go abroad than his counterpart in the free world, because when he or she would be going abroad, that trip was either free, or heavily subsidized by the Soviet State. (Unless it was a professional trip, foreign travel was usually a reward given by the State for good service.)
The much celebrated freedom of speech was indeed a key factor in distinguishing free and unfree society. It is utterly deplorable that speech was restricted and controlled by the State. The Russians were certainly well enough educated to want to exercise free speech intelligently and purposefully, and sorely offended by their inability to do so under the constraints of the Soviet system. I am personally appalled by the stupidity of the Soviet system of my own time (I can understand the severe constraints of the wartime era, and of the years from 1926 (sic!!!) to 1941, when the nation was actively preparing herself for the imminent devastating war with Germany, but not since the time the USSR had established itself as a nuclear superpower!) when most of the restrictions on free speech were totally unjustified and counterproductive. However, there was an upside to this kind of unfreedom. The Russians were well educated, courtesy of free education from kindergarten through college and beyond, which free Americans didn’t have and still do not have, at least to that extent. (They also enjoyed free healthcare, a luxury which free Americans didn’t have and still do not have.) Their education helped them keep an open mind on most things, making any attempt to brainwash them futile and amply compensating them for the constraints on free speech by an unbounded freedom of thought, which they could exercise to the fullest extent of their mind’s capacity.
Alas, in free societies, particularly in America, there often exists a certain complacency of the mind, aggravated by a lack of rigorous (non-multiple choice!) education, which tends to take it for granted that as long as the declarative freedoms are theirs, there is no longer a need to pursue them, concentrating instead on the pursuit of philistine happiness, or, frankly, on plain economic survival. The very low numbers of election voters indicate either a disinterest in the political process or a disgusted disappointment in it, which actually amounts to the same thing. (Had it been otherwise, the choice of major candidates in presidential elections in the more recent cycles, effectively since 1996, would have been more responsible and more representative of the actual alternatives facing American society.) As a substitute for political action, it is disappointing to observe this indisputably great nation sinking into a swamp of that typical capitalistic morale which used to be ridiculed so gleefully and venomously by Marx, and so mournfully by Einstein after him.
The real parameters of freedom have been lost in modern American psyche, substituted by a certain confusion between a sincere urge for intellectual independence and an actual dependence on not very trustworthy sources of information and a political complacency that today characterizes the average Joe. Even political activism follows pre-scripted lines and results in very predictable and rather meaningless collective action. Independently thinking Americans (and these still do exist in ample numbers!), have almost entirely been pushed out of the political arena by agenda-seeking ideologues, for whom words, like public interest, dignity, and honor mean nothing more than a simpleton’s mush. (And don’t we know that the word “simpleton,” being totally incompatible with the “business virtues” of capitalism, has become the most hopeless of all cardinal sins and debilitating disabilities!)
…Freedom and unfreedom in the real world. Once again, I am fully aware of the legitimacy of distinguishing between free and unfree societies, but even recognizing it as an established fact, we ought to keep this issue in proper perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment