FREEDOM AND FREEDOMS

...Engels has given us one of the many examples of the confusion that arises when one treats ideas bearing on the general welfare in isolation from individual welfare...

...Therefore, labor laws accord with the general sense of justice not because they represent the realization of freedom but because they place a limitation on freedom in the name of justice, i.e., they defend the rights of the weak against the strong...

...However, no liberal philosophy comprised such an "atomistic" model of society, nor did it require one...

...Socialists, and not only those of Marxist persuasion, rightly branded this view as the ideology of an unrestricted right to exploitation, and they sought to expose the sophistry of a "free contract" between an owner of the means of production and a wage earner...

...And, second, by branding'` negative" freedom as "formal," these critics imply that they are the champions of another, "genuine" freedom, of which we know little more than that it disposes of "formal" freedom—which means that it is despotism...

...Because of the magical force of the word, freedom can be attacked only in the name of a "greater" freedom...

...Marx recognized that the freedom of the worker was not a fiction when he said that capital needed workers who were free in a dual sense: free from the means of production (they had nothing to sell but their labor power) and free from the restrictions that feudal law had imposed on the system of wage labor (they were granted the right to sell their labor in the marketplace...

...For it would be easy to conclude from it that once class antagonisms (in the specific Marxian sense, i.e., the conflicts arising, from the private ownership of the means of production) were eliminated, the social structure would cease to generate conflicts of interest and that all conflicts appearing "on the surface" of the society were nothing but the residue of capitalist conditions of ownership...

...As to the trivial one: it is pointless to derive a definition of "freedom" from historical instances of its usage, for we know in advance that this usage encompasses everything that has ever been held desirable or worthwhile or deserving of support...

...The sophistries which intend to rob the term of its accepted meaning involuntarily pay homage to the idea of freedom...

...Editor's note: It must be remembered that "liberalism" in Europe refers to Adam Smithian free enterprise and laissez-faire—not, as in America, to social liberalism...

...All these rights take on different meanings depending upon whether they are realized under conditions of freedom or despotism...

...376 LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI As this extremely simple example demonstrates, the traditional "negative" idea of freedom does not assume that freedom and justice necessarily reinforce each other nor that freedom contains the answer to all social ills...

...The word "freedom" enjoys such widespread applicability because throughout history it has hardly ever been opposed under that name...

...We can imagine a society in which the value of freedom is not recognized at all...

...The concept of freedom, therefore, is devoid of any meaning with respect to the imaginary "state of nature" that has preoccupied the philosophers of the con/rat social...

...And, in fact, classical mid-19th-century schools of liberalism maintained that all protective labor laws, all legal restrictions imposed by the state on the system of wage labor, violated the principle of a "free contract" between employer and worker...

...Inherent in the idea of freedom is the existence of something that is the opposite of freedom—the restrictions that are an inevitable part of all forms of social life...

...The degree of freedom would stand in direct relationship to the degree of technological development...

...In this way a parody of Marxism helped to sanctify -a parody of socialism, in which traditional freedoms are abrogated in the name of a "higher" freedom...

...Why this haziness...

...The technological problems of our world would seem to indicate that important decisions will be made more and more by centralized power structures and experts, and that the individual is destined to become increasingly helpless 378 LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI vis-a-vis the social organism as a whole...

...From its inception, this concept of freedom, precisely because of the warning against trespassing on the rights of others, showed a tacit awareness that individual freedom could come into conflict with other values such as security, justice, the right of the weak against the strong...

...Hardly any political movement, ideology, or doctrine can do without the word "freedom" in its verbal arsenal...

...This idea permits some peculiar conclusions...

...But it would be wrong to conclude that therefore "formal" freedom is worthless...

...their lives are independent of social conditions...

...First, they seek to prove that this type of freedom can exist alongside exploitation and injustice...

...But let us examine the assumptions of this critique...

...To assert that under the system of wage labor personal freedom is nothing but a fiction violates both common sense and the Marxian philosophy of history: if it were so, there would be no difference between the social conditions of the workers and the slaves of antiquity, and this is patently absurd...

...That is to say: man is free to the extent to which he is capable of dominating nature with the help of science and its technical application, and also to the extent to which he is able to control social processes which, given the proper know-how, presumably can be predicted and regulated like natural processes...

...Yet this awareness is of little comfort in the absence of agreement on what constitutes restrictions on freedom and what, safeguards...

...The critics of "formal" freedom generally resort to a dual mystification...

...As every student of history knows, throughout the ages men have called freedom whatever they held in high esteem or thought worth striving after...

...The linking of the two ideas called for another assumption, according to which freedom is a value that must be defended whenever it conflicts with other values...

...This definition is to be understood not in terms of stoic philosophy—freedom as a purely intellectual confirmation of everything that is thought to be inevitable—but in terms of technology...

...To begin with, it might be concluded that in order to measure the degree of freeFREEDOM AND FREEDOMS 377 dom in a society we do not have to know anything at all about the rights granted its members but only about the level of its technology...

...The freedom of the worker within the wage-labor system is not a fiction...

...Marx believed that the classical formulas of the Great Revolution, which defined freedom as the right to act free from all restraints within the limits of not doing harm to other people, presupposed a society in which individuals saw themselves as free-floating atoms pursuing selfish goals, as members of an abstract, "alienated" community, in the form of the state and of laws, one which would perforce limit or minimize the conflict of opposing interests...

...On the other hand, the assertion that, historically speaking, the idea of personal freedom developed and became entrenched under the aegis of the bourgeoisie is true but completely irrelevant as far as the question of its value is concerned...

...Marx, however, specifically opposed this assumption as an ideological mystification serving the perpetuation of capitalistic exploitation...

...For that reason the claim to unconditional freedom, fatefully turning into its opposite, is identical with supporting the rights of the stronger...

...That is true and self-evident, for freedom by itself does not automatically bring about the solution of all social problems...

...CLAMORING FOR A FREEDOM THAT IS petty-bourgeois, narrow, limited, merely phenomenal, rootless, superficial, irrelevant, abstract, only formal, based on a subject-object divergence, purely empirical— INSTEAD OF A FREEDOM THAT IS true, genuinely humane, essential, nonalienated, nonobjectified, concrete, socially rooted, profound, higher, true to its basic idea, based on a subjectobject unity...

...Such freedom, as it were, perpetuates the antagonistic nature of human interests by hypostatizing it as a natural condition and certainly does not assure positive freedom— i.e., a condition offering the individual the social base that permits him to develop his potential in harmony with (instead of against) the general welfare...

...Since time immemorial Christianity has defined obedience to the Divine Will as "freedom from sin," and skepticism, at least since the 17th century, has been acclaimed as "freedom from superstition...

...However, I fail to see how it can be avoided...

...And, second, this definition leads to the assertion that the degree of freedom of a society is directly related to the extent of regulatory control, i.e., that a society is the freer the more despotic its rule...

...Or, to put it differently: the concept assumes meaning only when it is contrasted to law, i.e., as limited freedom...

...that would be true especially where the freedom of the stronger is asserted in relation to the weaker...

...It would serve little purpose to list further examples or cite additional sources to show how widely we use the term "freedom" or "unfreedom" to express a positive or negative judgment, to indicate something desirable...

...Too often such deceptive labels serve to rob the term of its root meaning and its value...

...I certainly do not wish to say that this definition is in keeping with Engels':s intention...

...The assertion that, because it originated in bourgeois ideologies and in connection with the interests of the bourgeoisie, it is therefore a sham and deserves to be destroyed is as absurd as the assertion that Euclidean geometry is false because it developed in a slave society and that "in the final analysis" its invention was dictated by the needs of the privileged classes of that society...

...As we know, this view of freedom was attacked by various socialist ideologies, particularly by Marxian social philosophy...

...Hardly any good that, besides its actual name, was not also called a freedom...

...The right to education, the right to work, the right to retirement benefits—these certainly must be counted among the rights man may demand of society...

...However, the fact that "freedom" has become synonymous with "worth" leads us to two observations, one trivial and the other more pertinent...

...Like all questions dealing with ends in themselves, i.e., with values pure and simple, this question cannot be solved by scientific methods...

...But the difference between the capitalist and the individual worker is not the difference between a free man and a slave but between a strong and a weak man...

...Nevertheless, we cannot escape such a conclusion if we try to define freedom arbitrarily in a way that leaves no room for individual freedom and lets all our concern be a vague freedom of society as a whole...

...Anything in any way restrictive—in other words, anything that prevents man from becoming an all-powerful, all-knowing god— can also be labeled imprisonment or absence of freedom...

...But for Marx this concept of freedom was the expression of a specific early-bourgeois ideal of free trade and free enterprise...

...in fact, by the end of the 19th century only -a handful of liberal ideologues still held on to it...

...Champions ofthis definition do not as a rule carry the basic assumptions to this conclusion, which in many respects would turn out to be fatal...

...and on the occasions when that was done, the freedom that was being abrogated was declared to be a sham or a fraud, and it was to be superseded—so it was claimed—by a true, genuine, a deeper or higher form of freedom...

...But it does not follow that he should therefore be deprived of the freedom of choice...

...It ought not to be difficult to agree that restrictions on freedom are not quite so dangerous when we call them by their proper name instead of pretending that they are a more perfect form of freedom...

...It is very probable that such conflicts will multiply in democratic societies as well...

...If the term "formal freedom" means the area of decisions left to the individual by the social organization and the law, then it means simply "freedom...

...The only freedom we are familiar with is limited freedom, insofar as it is a characteristic of social life and constitutes itself in the realm of law as a sphere of juridical irrelevance—that is to say, a sphere in which the law claims no jurisdiction...

...In making this point, I do not mean to say that the idea of personal freedom is "true" in the same sense as Euclidean geometry but only that neither social values nor scientific insights should be judged on the basis of their historical origins...

...This very utopia of a conflictless society that makes no allowance for mutual restrictions on individual freedom became the source of a dangerous illusion...

...The right to work exists even in the form of forced labor...

...This very general characterization, which follows the traditional doctrine of 18th-century liberalism, tells us nothing that would enable us to determine under which conditions which sphere of freedom is either possible or desirable...

...Why should it be called "freedom" at all, and why should it be seen as desirable...

...Yet without a doubt freedom appears in this concept as an end in itself, as a value to be defended for its own sake and not only as a vehicle for other values...

...On the contrary, it is testimony to the magical power of the word...

...The worst thing we could do in the face of this situation is to weigh down the idea of "freedom" with ever new and heavier burdens that would ultimately overwhelm the simple meaning of the word and reduce it to insignificance...

...Without violating English usage, I may call someone a "prisoner" of error, a "slave" of passion, "in thrall" of fear, a "captive" of ignorance or sin, of disease, of law or lawlessness...

...In order to substantiate his critique he had to assume that all social conflict was the result of class antagonisms, and that with their elimination the future society would also do away radically with all conflicts of interest...

...Why has the principle of juridical intervention in the relationship of capital and labor found almost universal acceptance in capitalist society, and how does it accord with the accepted sense of justice...

...Deplorable as it may be, thanks to themagical power of the word, anyone claiming to "fight for freedom" is assumed to be "fighting for something"—in other words, it is a meaningless claim...

...A person who has enough to eat is said to be "free from want," and one enjoying security, "free from fear...

...Those who employ the phrase "formal freedom" as a pretext to recommend another better more humane one, instead of the merely "formal" one, are simply, with a verbal sleight-of-hand, using deception to destroy freedom...

...The question of whether freedom is a value is completely divorced from the philosophical debate over freedom of will and determinism...

...Conversely, anything evil, objectionable, or in any way restrictive has been labeled as unfreedom, as capitivity or serfdom...

...Quite obviously the individuals who make up bourgeois society are not atoms in the sense that all aspects of...

...To do so would mean that we condone the irresponsible use of the word, that we acquiesce in all the ideological sophistries which can be based on the fact that, twist as we may the word "freedom," italways retains, within its sphere of associations, this central meaning: freedom amounts to the range of decisions that a social organization leaves to the individual...

...Still, this characterization is not completely without merit, since it assumes that unlimited freedom is not possible and that the antagonistic interests requiring regulation by law represent a necessary part of social life...

...After all, no one can deny that protective labor laws effectively limit the freedom of capital insofar as they are incompatible with the unrestricted freedom of contract...

...As to the second observation, the semantic 374 universality of the term should not be an occasion to bemoan human frivolity in the use of language...

...These observations have no bearing on the resolution of any specific social problem, for they offer no clue as to the conditions and the area of social life where, in case of conflict among values, freedom may be sacrificed to other values...

...By their deceptions its enemies concede that freedom is man's most precious possession and therefore cannot be fought under its right name...

...And we can't rule out the possibility that in the future man might be able to exist without a will of his own, as a tool of despots...

...Equality could just as readily be interpreted as "freedom from inequality," and knowledge as "freedom from ignorance...

...Another, and widespread, mystification consists in measuring freedom of choice with the yardstick of power...

...All models -assumed that conflicts of interest constituted an irremovable part FREEDOM AND FREEDOMS 375 of social life and that therefore freedom could be defined only as a principle of individual choice within the limits of the restrictions imposed by law and the social organization...

...By its very nature, the society would have no use for such a freedom...

...However, they should not be labeled "freedom from ignorance" or "freedom from unemployment" or "freedom from hunger," for these rights could just as readily be guaranteed in a fascist state and even in prison...

...In this sense all laws, of course, restrict personal freedom— and it cannot be otherwise...

...The specific cause of this confusion is Engels's definition based in part (but only in part) on Hegel, to the effect that freedom is "insight into necessity...

...The right to publish is meaningless to people who cannot read, but this does not mean that a "deeper" freedom mandates the abolition of the freedom of the press...

...Of course the right to move freely is of little use to someone who lacks the necessary funds to travel, but it does not follow that he can be "liberated" by tying him down (in feudal fashion) to his place of residence...

...But we should not leave it at that...

...Like air, it is a treasure of which we are barely aware as long as we are not deprived of it...

...But this theory does not follow from the classical "negative" concept of freedom...

...Thus the despised "negative" or "formal" freedom ceased to be of value since it served to perpetuate this "residue...

...Upon closer examination, what in fact is so patently wrong with this theory...

...As it happens, the traditional "negative" idea of freedom is not based on unrestricted economic competition and, by extension, on exploitation, even though it is true that the two principles were amalgamated in mid19th-century liberal ideologies...

...Fortunately, past experience does not support such visions of the future...

...there is no other freedom...

...True, free choice of employment is meaningless in a society with mass unemployment, but it does not follow that true freedom consists in attaching man to specific places of employment, i.e., in a return to slavery...

...The right to education can also be granted to persons who are deprived of sources of information and whose knowledge is reduced to blatant indoctrination...

...When this sort of thought operation turns out to be successful, then any social system, however monstrous, can be exalted as the embodiment of the highest freedom...

...consequently, the liberal idea of freedom did not apply to such a society, since freedom "within the limits of not doing harm to other people" necessarily presupposed such conflicts...

...What good is a freedom of an entire body if it is completely "alienated" from the freedom of the individuals making up that body...

...Therefore all of these rights, important though they may be, should not be named "freedoms...

...Obviously the right to individual freedom of choice is doomed if the individual lacks the opportunity to make use of his right...

...what is a fiction is the assumption that the worker as the seller of his labor possesses the same bargaining power as the entrepreneur...

...This, too, is not a conclusion generally arrived at, even though it is an obvious one, since the idea of control over the social conditions implies no determination of its nature, of whether we are dealing with democratic or tyrannical controls...