The Pragmatic Value of Liberty

...The number of Americans, or of citizens of other democratic lands, who have lived in totalitarian countries is comparatively very small...

...Totalitarianism, either In its communist or in its nsscmt feres, is a much mere serious challenge to liberal dimirrsry thaw the oW-faohhmod type of despots* asesmreay...

...That is a far more complicated and uncertain question...

...I can still remember vividly, over a span of a decade, the tears of the mother ef tana children who had died of hunger and whom »« lamented, in simple peasant fashion, because they wer» "so learned...

...One uses the tera "accidental ally" deliberately...

...Many other experiences in the Soviet Union pointed in the same direction...

...There was not a village, among a score that w* visited, which did not report a death rate of at less* ten per cent...

...As I moved among the scenes of this immense slaughter, which, as I am convinced by comparing the mortality proportion with the population of the affected area, took the lives of some four million human beings, I put a question to myself: Could such s monstrous atrocity have occurred in any country where newspapers could have published pictures and accounts of the dying villages, where the Government would hsve to face the test of a free election, where s campaign for relief could have ben energetically organized...

...One may slso note, as characteristic of the totalitarian society, a tendency toward isolation from foreign political and intellectual influences, a trend toward autarchy in economic life, an attitude of nervous suspicion toward foreign Visitors who may bring with them, quite unconsciously, the contamination of "dangerous thoughts...

...the individual has no security sgsinst the arbitrary violence of the state...

...But democracy was far less secure after the end of this titanic conflict than it was in the generation of comparative peace and progress that ended sbruptly and tragically in August, 1V14...

...We have experienced one of the cyclical reactions of governmental thought and theory...

...There were parliaments from China to Peru, although the reality of popular control over government policies varied widely from country to country, depending on such factors a* literacy and experience in self-government...

...There had been no war, no disruption of communication facilities...

...All these dictators argued that so-called bourgeois democracy was unreal, that a press controlled by the government is the freest in the world, becsuse it serves the entire nation, not the special interests of small groups...

...The unforeseen and uninvited victors of the last war were a little-known Russisn revolutionary named Lenin, an Italian with the reputation of a radical Socialist named Mussolini, and a completely unknown corporal in the vast German army named Adolf Hitler, » • • lllERE is every indication that the United Nations are strong enough to win this war, just as the Allied powers possessed a sufficient preponderance of strength over Germany and its allies to win the last one...

...There is no evident* that Stalin would have ever entered the war on the side of the democracies if Hitler had left him ssy alternative...

...So, before we discuss the question of whether liberty , possesses a pragmatic value, there must be some sgree-ment as to what liberty is...

...I know that my own choice for democracy, whatever its faults and shortcomings, snd against totalitarianism, whatever material achievements might be claimed for it, was made finally »nd irrevocably during some mild autumn days in the Ukraine and the North Caucasus in 1933...

...And in that answer, I believe, is the overwhelming condemnation of totalitarianism...

...Much of the held of the totalitarian state on the minds of its subjects depends on the maintenance of false or greatly exaggerated ideas about the achievements of the existing raglnse and the supposed decadence, weakness and social injustice of non-totalitarian societies, which are stigmatised aa "democratic'' or "capitalist" Two causes have obviously contributed to the growth of totalitarian systems...

...The Bolshevik, National Socialist and Fascist revolutions have limited, instead of expanding the freedom of the individual...

...On the eve of the first World Wsr there was no large country that did not pay at least lip service to the idea of representative government...

...many countries were on the point of granting the ballot to women...

...Soviet trade-unions are still run on totalitarian principles...

...And even if the faults and weaknesses of democracies were ten times greater than they actually are, free countries would still enjoy a comfortable margin of advantage, as regards justice, humanity and material well-being, compared with totalitarian regimes...

...they had gone to school, while she had remained illiterate...

...Paraphrasing Quezon, I would say, on the basis of personal experience, that I would vastly prefer a democracy run lUce hell (not that I believe a democracy must • be or should be run in this fashion) to the most effcient, streamlined totalitarian state, where the spirit of liberty is dead...

...In the second place, white war may be an effective means of disposing of a single ruler, of stopping the aggressive designs of one or mora powers, it is much leas sure as a weapon against the spread of an ideology...

...Experience, I think, is more impressive than eny amount of theoretical argument, in arriving s't a decision of this kind...

...The Pragmatic Value of Liberty An Essay on the Moral Paradoxes of Today By William Henry Chamberlin ASTRIKING and significant characteristic ef tkia ac;« at wars and violent revolutions ia ran tempt for individual liberty- The three eseet important revolutions that followed the tret World War, the victory of Communism in Russia...

...It was primarily a political weapon with which the.Soviet Government was crushing the passive resistance of the peasants to the introduction of collective fanning and to certain methods of grain collection and agricultural organization which the Government itself repudiated later as "bureaucratic distortions...

...1 can still remember the argument between the mother who said it would be better not to bear children if they were doomd to die and a boy who reasoned: "No, if there are no people, who will tilt the land...

...and we cannot say a word of articulate protest against them...

...But will the peace be won for the idea of liberty...

...Their heads are responsible to the ruling psrty, not to the workingdass membership...

...It is an understandable policy of totalitarian regimes to isolate their subjects, by every means in their power, from contact with democratic countries and ideas...

...The tatter eras rented ia condition* wMeh hove seaosd or at* ceasing to exist In every '*ig* and important country, in the ignorance and illiteracy, with the II—nsjml political passivity of The totalitarian state, on the othei hand, fits in with Some Americans osubUeo* feet ohet the mattery victory of the United Nations will dispose of MM issue ef totalitarianism...

...We Russian radical and liberal intellectuals were always quick to protest against cruelty and injustice, in our own country or abroad...

...Ia the fist place, one of the strongest of the totalitarian states, the Soviet Union, will, ia all probability, emerge as one of the victors in the present confjet, as the strongest mad power in Europe and in Asia...

...Obvious prerequisites of liberty in the political field are freedom of speech and press and assembly and political association and voting...

...During the nineteenth century, liberalism, gradually broadening into democracy, won a series of important victories...

...Few individuals are in a position to make their decision in this great debate between liberty and totalitarianism, the greatest of the twentieth century, intelligently because few are equally acquainted with the two systems...

...National Socialism in Germany, and Fascism in Italy, repudiated, in practice, if not always in theory, all the essential principles of nineteenth century liberalism and swept away all the safeguards that had been gradually erected to pretest the individual against the arbitrary violence of the state...

...The doctrine of the divine right of kings, of the necessity and even desirability of absolute concentration of power in the hands ef the sovereign, prevailed over much of the greater pert of the European continent until the French Revolution...

...Is intellectual freedom merely she luxury of an intellectual minority...

...The words "fascist" snd "communist" are sometimes employed loosely and unjustly a* terms of ubuse, not of argument...

...He remarked that he felt like a hypocrite when he signed Communist?sponsored protests against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti...

...President Quezon of- the Philippine Commonwealth once declared that he would rather see the Philippines -run like hell by Filipinos than run like heaven by Americans...

...One is impressed by the similarity of argument in many passages of the writings of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini...

...And idem formed on the basis of books, lectures snd radio discussions may often reflect wishful thinking or prejudice, rsther thsn the sctual situation...

...But when one examines the realities of Soviet political practice ft ia clear that political and personal liberty is non-existent, as must be the case under any totalitarian regime There can be no freedom of election where there is only one legal political party and where there is no room for even a single newspaper or mags-sine that would express a dissenting viewpoint The very unanimity of the voting in Soviet parliamentary sessions is the best proof of its easentisl irrelevance When people are allowed freedom to express divergent views there arc always differences...

...In one of the worst of these villsges, Cherksss, near Belaya Tserkov, the secretory of the local Soviet reported over six hundred deaths in * population of about 2,000...

...One of the peculiarities of our age is that words like liberty and democracy are often invoked by regimes which represent a complete negation of what would seem to be the plain snd obvious meaning of these terms...

...But there are so very many Sacco-Vanzetti cases in the Soviet Union...

...There has • been no system since the beginning of recorded history so perfect that all its decisions would voluntarily elicit unsnimoa* approval...

...Stalin quite seriously described the Soviet Constitution as the most democratic in the world...

...Does democracy lead only to the growth of a plutocracy and discrimination against the poor...

...ThE spread of totalitarian ideas and systems poses very sharply the question whether there is a pragmatic case for liberty...

...Is the common man better off when there is a central authority with tremendous overriding power...

...Unfortunately, there can be no such reasonable assurance...

...As soon as this type of organisation goes into effect a safeguard against exploitation by the employer, whether it be a private capitalist employer or, as in the Soviet Union, a state-capitalist employer, disappears...

...TliE first World War, with its unparalleled destruction of life and property, interrupted an era of progress, marked by a steady growth of democracy and of individual liberty, two trends which had been generally considered inseparable...

...Mooes* eedevrr, rather than kabrmt corpus, is still the rule in Soviet jurisprudent...

...Hitler and Mussolini more than one* claimed (the merit of "true freedom'' and "true democracy" for their systems...

...With the extension of the franchise went an extension of social services and protective lahor legislation...

...It includes sentimental conservatives who exalt the pre-industrial age, Communists, Fascists, and what might be called "totalitarian liberals," individuals and groups that are prepared to use dictatorial or semi-dictatorial methods and to short rirruit constitutional procedure in the supposed interest of social reform...

...But the world trend toward democracy and popular government was unmistakable...

...Not that I do not sympathize with Sacco and Vonietti," he said...

...I recall a conversation with one of the finest men I have ever known, a Russian author whose name I will not mention, because he is still aliv* in Russia...

...The war ended in a complete military victory over the Central Powers...

...The limited suffrage and the weighting of the voting scales in favor of the propertied classes which had been general in the early stages of constitutional government were giving away more and more to the principle of universal manhood suffrage...

...The trade-union becomes simply snother sgency of state control and regimentstion, ss is reflected in the following description of some of the more important functions of Soviet trade-unions at a meeting of the Soviet Trstle-union Council in 1939: To help the workers improve their technical skill, to encourage Socialist competition, to see that the workers do not get more sickness and disability benefits than they are entitled to...

...when my wife and I went from village to village, compiling the ghaatly chronicle of the man-made famine of the preceding winter and spring...

...These include the monopolisation of political power by a single party, headed by a supposedly infallible leader, the concentration of economic as well as political power in the hands of the state, the complete suppression of civil and personal liberties, the intensive indoctrination of the people, especially of the younger generation, with the ideas of the ruling group...

...The very theory of liberty has been challenged in our time, net by the pretensions of crowns and churches, as in the period before and immediately after the French Revolution, but by a new philosophy of government and social order which may be defined as totalitarianism...

...Almost inseparably connected with these political freedoms are the established legsl safeguards for the individual, against arbitrary arrest and detention, against execution, imprisonment or banishment except after a fair and public trial...

...Becsuse communist propaganda has hose subtler and mere astute than fascist, aad because the Soviet Union la aa autmmtal ally of the democracies ia the present war, there mM boon mere eonfaslon about the stats ef affairs In Russia, more disposition to take the Soviet regime on fait* as a democracy...

...It nsuld be superfluous, under present circumstances, to prove that three rights and liberties sre completely nullified la the Fssc.st or National Socialist state...

...A curious united front against liberal democracy has grown up...

...Equally important, in the economic field, is freedom of trade-union organisation and action, the right of workers and employees to bargain collectively through unions which are kept under rank-and-file control, in which the officials are subject la re elect ion by free and secret ballot of the membership at reasonably frequent Intervals...

...The answer Is obviously No...

...The aftermath of this war, as of the previous war, will almost certainly produce its full quota of surprises...

...But the totalitarian state can be clearly defined try certain distinctive features...

...Now thia famine was not only one of the greatest, it was one of the least excusable of human tragedies...

...The first World War was widely and sincerely hailed as a crusade to "make the world safe for democracy...

...The first is the tremendous •uffei ing and dislocation of the first World War which piodiapossd the masses, especially in the countries which iSjsTsaed meet severely, to seek violent shortcuts so insprsvimsnC The second is the failure of any »y»»e*n in assy seunlry an yet to solve satisfactorily the economic and social problems posed by the tech-nsissjmnl ov pa anion of the modern industrial system...