THE 20TH CENTURY CHALLENGE TO FREEDOM

...Indeed, in a planned economy, the only group that will have to sacrifice freedom will be the business enterprisers, and the chief freedom they will be required to surrender is their freedom to waste and exploit...

...Moreover, they were motivated primarily by middle-class economic interests and allied considerations...

...Our ancient liberties, which are also our present liberties, have been applied to protect freedom of business enterprise and private property, and to exploit and depress the masses...

...Radicals, such as our Communist brethren, have wished liberty for their propaganda but have been notoriously lacking in fervor for liberty for others...

...It would give the people a stake in peace and place a strong obstacle in the path of war-monger-ing political opportunists...

...It will not, however, stand up under ^analysis...

...Some preliminary observations were offered in an earlier article...

...The most notable fact about this is the gulf between the propaganda war and the actual war, to which we called attention in the first article...

...If life is to be made worthwhile, it must provide material abundance and economic security for every worthy citizen...

...One of our greatest fears is the fear of war...

...This new "Bill of Rights," conceived in terms of 20th Century civilization, is the following: "1...

...These ideals of liberty revolved mainly about economic considerations and were designe'd almost entirely to promote and buttress the free enterprise of the rising commercial and business classes...

...It is an amazing fact that the civil liberties of 1944, so far as they exist, have made little or no advance over those set forth in the English Bill of Rights of 1688, and these were but the culmination and summation of political struggles over preceding centuries...

...The propaganda war constantly stresses the assertion that this war is being fought to preserve and extend liberty...

...The right to come and go, to speak or be silent, free from the spyings of secret political police...

...The right to adequate food, clothing, shelter and medical care...

...The responsibilities and problems of our complex economy are not compatible with the same degree or type of freedom and independence that might flourish in a much simpler form of society...

...If freedom from want can be achieved only through r.n extension of public control over economic life, it will prove, equally true that such things as freedom of expression and belief and freedom from fear will be increased just in proportion to our achievement of freedom from worry and uncertainty with respect to subsistence...

...Russia And Liberty We shall not consider the problem of the current World War and liberty in any detail...

...If this, in turn, requires a greater degree of social planning and economic regimentation, we must prepare ourselves to submit to it, but we should be ever on the alert to see that no greater degree of government control is exerted than is essential to provide a decent standard of living for all...

...The Russian bourgeoisie were weaker in 1905 than the English middle class was in 1688...

...This is not to imply that our liberties would not be a good thing for the Russians, but, if so, they do not realize this fact...

...We will come to understand that economic liberty is far less important than freedom in the intellectual and cultural realms...

...It is inevitable that this 17th Century conception and pattern of liberty must prove inadequate in a more mature economy, where we must consider the welfare not only of the business groups but also of the farming and working classes...

...In a complicated industrial era, we still limp along on the charter of liberties evolved in a post-feudal agrarian era...

...It was an agrarian and quasi-feudal country down to 1917...

...Modern Bill Of Rights' The pioneer farmer was formerly a bulwark of liberty in the United States...

...A planned economy, which will insure abundance and personal security at home, will promote freedom from both fear and war...

...The right to live in a system of free enterprise, free from compulsory labor, irresponsible private power, arbitrary public authority, and unregulated monopolies ; "6...

...In the past, only the middle class has ever had any overwhelming regard for liberty or been willing to battle consistently for it, and the middle class is now losing its dominant position in society...

...Through the operation of what the psychologists call the mechanism of identification, they identify themselves with their employers and their interests, and warmly support the latter in their exploitive practices...

...Such a modern and streamlined conception of liberty, which might well make an attractive appeal to a wider public than "Economic Royalists," was formulated by the National Resources Planning Board in November, 1942...

...The laboring classes have had relatively little interest in liberty, except in so far as it has meant freedom to organize labor unions and carry on collective bargaining...

...A leading cause of war is the feeling of futility, desperation, and resentment on the part of the exploited masses, who live constantly in misery and insecurity...

...We often wonder how the Russian people can endure the absence of our traditional liberties...

...Russia has never gone through any bourgeois era...

...We must show the Russians that Western liberties mean something more than the freedom and ability of the few to exploit the many...

...But, considering the relatively few opportunities for action, the number of sedition and other ideological prosecutions has certainly been proportionately as high in this war as in 1917-1919...

...Freedoms Bolster Each Other There is no reason whatever why economic planning and productive efficiency need prove incompatible with a far greater degree of liberty than we have ever known thus far in intellectual and cultural fields...

...Groups of men living in misery are all too willing to gamble on the possibility that war may better their lot, at least for the time being...

...The right to work usefully and creatively through the productive years...

...The right to security, with freedom from fear of old age, want, dependency, sickness, unemployment and accident...

...The Fourteenth Amendment to our Federal Constitution provided the most ingenious instrument in all human history for social and economic exploitation in the name of freedom and liberty...

...If we are to provide an adequate and diversified class support for liberty in the future, we must develop new conceptions of liberty and a new schedule of liberties which will appeal to our white-collar proletariat, farmers, and workers, and will make it reasonably certain that they will support the newer ideals and practices of liberty with the same enthusiasm with which the older notions of liberty have been defended by the middleclass capitalists...

...The first World War was fought to make democracy safe, and all but killed democracy...

...What the present war for liberty will do to liberty remains to be seen...

...The white-collar proletariat of office help, clerks, salesmen, and the like, have been notoriously indifferent to their own rights...

...The Most Important Liberty In the long run, we may well work out far more satisfactory conceptions of liberty than were achieved by the middle class in England in the 17th Century...

...Due to the popular impressions about Pearl Harbor, there has been very little open criticism of official ideology about the war and its merits...

...Likewise, warmongering political leaders have long recognized that one of the best methods of perpetuating themselves in power is to foment a war, distract popular attention from the failures, suffering, and discontent at home, and concentrate public interest on plunder and rainbow-chasing in foreign regions—the further from home the better...

...We might conclude this article fruitfully by a discussion of Soviet Russia and liberty, since this subject is both widely discussed and generally misunderstood...

...They benefited chiefly the propertied elements in society...

...How remote we are from realizing any such comprehensive and modern schedule of realistic liberties may be seen from the fact that Congress saw fit to abolish the National Resources Planning Board in the Summer of 1943...

...In the first place, it is easy to understand why the Russians do not have our conventional civil liberties...

...Indeed, it may well turn out that economic planning, to produce efficiency and abundance, is indispensable to the creation of that security and leisure which alone can make essential freedom extensive and worth while...

...Our ancient liberties were, in reality, a highly selfish and limited pattern of freedom...

...For the masses, our liberty has meant, ail too often, freedom to starve and shiver at subsistence wages or less...

...The right to equality before the law with equal access to justice in fact...

...The actual war suppresses liberty and limits its sphere of operation...

...These are a product of bourgeois politics and economics...

...It may be worthwhile again to call our attention to the fact that the cooperative movement offers an opportunity not only to provide an efficient planned economy and to assure abundance and security, but also actually to increase the elements of democracy and freadom in our life...

...Cultural lag is nowhere more impressive than in the field of liberty...

...It will be desirable, further, to explode one common illusion, namely, that we have been remarkably free in this country from any massacre of our civil liberties since Pearl Harbor...

...In the future evolution of liberty, we shall probably have to surrender some of our former economic freedom, and submit to extensive planning and regulation in economic life to secure expert control, resulting in abundance and security...

...Perhaps even more important in the future of liberty will be a fundamental revolution in our whole conception of its nature and social applications...

...This conviction is based on the small numerical list of convictions for sedition and the like...

...Personal security, gained by a planned economy, would not only remove the fear of want but would also do a great deal to eliminate war and the fear thereof...

...The 20th Century Challenge To Freedom By HARRY ELMER BARNES IT IS EXTREMELY likely that the civil liberties which were developed in the middle-class, capitalistic, national state,*chiefly in England between 1600 and 1700, will be subjected to extensive modifications, parallel to those brought about in democratic politics...

...When the Bolsheviks took over in the fall of 1917, they skipped the bourgeois era altogether and set up a proletarian state...

...The right of fair play, adequate to command the necessities and amenities of life in exchange for work, ideas, thrift, and other socially valuable work...

...The right to education for work, for citizenship, and for personal growth and happiness...

...If we wish the Russians to have respect for our liberties and to adopt them, then we must demonstrate them to be worthwhile and beneficial to all of mankind...

...In the realm of economic life, assured security for all will probably turn out to be more than adequate compensation for the loss of some former economic freedom, much of which is incompatible with efficient production in an age of complex and efficient mechanical equipment...

...But the earlier robust individualism of the frontier farmer has evaporated in the face of the growing farm crisis...

...The right to rest, recreation, and adventure, the opportunity to enjoy life and take part in advancing civilization...

...The obvious answer is that they can hardly miss or resent the absence of something they have never known...

...If we are to have a realistic conception of liberty and practical freedom in the future, we must also provide a new type of class support for liberty...

...Russia's main contribution to the picture has been to stress the fact that citizens have duties as well as rights...