Rattle those chains!

Western democracies often label themselves as 'free'. But what does it mean to be free? How free are we really? With this post I do not seek to refute the liberties enjoyed by citizens in the West. I simply wish to reflect upon the nature of those liberties; I want to investigate if liberty is synonymous with freedom. In the tradition of some earlier posts I want to promote a view rooted in marxist thought - what follows thus is a marxist conception of freedom.

There are a few difficulties in grasping an abstract philosophical notion like 'freedom'. We need to overcome these before we can judge todays freedom, and point out future directions. The latter should be the ultimate goal of our reflections. Now how to deal with the problems we face? How to know freedom? As always, starting in the field of practice proves to be useful: in the West we are free in a relative fashion, relative to contemporary authoritarian societies and relative to our own past social order. This notion of relative freedom has its (theoretic) opposite in an absolute freedom. I added theoretic between brackets because freedom can never be absolute. Absolute freedom only exists in the realm of fiction, where it is often attributed to divine beings. Mortals however will always be subject to boundaries; as material substance human beings have to abide the rules of physics. Next to the laws of nature, other limitations exist: geographic conditions, material capacities, social structures, etc. Even the expectations themselves can impose boundaries as expectations are formed within a social context - our scope of possibilities can be limited by dominant cultural values.

Mankind is however no passive slave of his conditions; throughout history we gained knowledge over nature and applied tools to overcome our limitations. Agriculture lead to increased carrying capacity of the land, language allowed for better coordination, etc. Sometimes our instruments of liberation imposed new boundaries, as was the case with economic modes of production (feudality, capitalism) or the creation of unity (culture, religion, nationalism). Karl Marx' famous example is the organization of society under the state - a strong mechanism for overcoming our natural condition but a strong boundary on further development as well. In fact, Marx thought it was such a big roadblock that he saw revolutionary overthrow of the state as only possible way forward. A bit radical, but considering the circumstances at his time not a strange conclusion at all.

Our liberal freedom is built upon the unfreedom of others.
Historic ánd continued exploitation make up pour welfare;

Speaking of evolution, we can discern an evolutionary pattern away from the initial 'anarchic' freedom. This natural condition was described by Hobbes as the fight of all against all; Darwin called it the struggle for survival. It is a natural freedom of social boundaries that we luckily left behind us. Ever since civilization came about, history has unfold as a history of emancipation from our boundaries. The modern day western society is quantitatively more free than say China's or Iran's. Qualitatively they are all the same: they are communities build upon tools to lift us out of natural anarchy but impose new limitations. They are filled with tools of oppression (political correctness, gender constructs) and tools of exploitation (a capitalist market economy).

One might argue that western democracies do not pose the same physical obstacles as raised by 'unfree' societies. True, but our liberal freedom - manifested in welfare and security - is based upon the exploitation and unfreedom of others: the bottom billion in the third world, the cheap Chinese workers, etc. Our freedom is stolen freedom and simply shifts the burden. The goal should be to take the next qualitative jump from liberal freedom to actual freedom. We ought to build a fair society in which the explicit goal is true maximum freedom for all, not just limited freedom reserved for some.