CommonSpace columnist and Common Weal head of policy Ben Wray explores what it means to be free and how it can be achieved
“Freedom is so much the essence of man that even its opponents implement it while combating its reality; they want to appropriate for themselves as a most precious ornament what they have rejected as an ornament of human nature.
“No man combats freedom; at most he combats the freedom of others. Hence every kind of freedom has always existed, only at one time as a special privilege, at another as a universal right.”
– Karl Marx
HANNAH ARENDT once argued that freedom is “the raison d’être of politics”. Few concepts are so politically loaded and so fought over between left and right as freedom. And why wouldn’t it be – who doesn’t want to be free?
In recent times, freedom as a political weapon tends to be dominated by the right, which depicts itself as the defender of individual liberty and choice against an overbearing state trying to control their lives.
Whereas under feudalism a king and queen would derive their special privilege from their bloodline, in capitalism control over property and capital secures most if not all of earth’s freedoms.
The hypocrisy of this is obvious. To give just one example: it’s not the left which is constantly trying to tell women what they can and can’t do with their bodies. But facts are not what’s most important in political discourse. The fact of the matter is the right is telling a story about freedom that appears to be convincing more people than the left.
This is something we need to urgently change. Marx can help us with this. Depicted by liberals and conservatives alike as a totalitarian thinker interested only in subordinating individuals to the state, when one actually reads Marx it is pretty quickly evident that this is bunkum.
Marx writes constantly about what it truly means to be free, the difference with Marx to liberal notions of freedom is that he destroys the fantasy that freedom is possible for everyone within an economic system based on property-based class division and the exploitation of labour by capital.
I can already hear the sound of eyes rolling. Economics again. Boring. What about culture? Looking at culture separately from economics has been the dominant discourse in the US for many, many years. They call it the culture war, and it is increasingly dominant in British and European politics too, as Americanisation becomes hegemonic.
The culture war, free of economics, is good for people who believe in freedom “as a special privilege”, rather than “a universal right”. Why? Because special privileges in the capitalist epoch are most acutely derived from economic power.
For most of us, while ostensibly we are “free” in the sense that we are legally entitled to work or not work, to apply for a job and leave a job, to essentially spend our days as we wish, in practice this freedom is severely restricted by our lack of economic power.
Whereas under feudalism a king and queen would derive their special privilege from their bloodline, in capitalism control over property and capital secures most if not all of earth’s freedoms.
The global billionaire class, of which 233 new members have just been added in 2017, live a bit like Marx imagined everyone would in a communist society: with copious staff employed they can work little, go where they want, when they want, and the cost of doing all earthly pleasures is so tiny compared to their total wealth as to be no object whatsoever.
For most of us, while ostensibly we are “free” in the sense that we are legally entitled to work or not work, to apply for a job and leave a job, to essentially spend our days as we wish, in practice this freedom is severely restricted by our lack of economic power. This radically limits our choices.
I would like to eat at my favourite restaurant morning, noon and night for the next week, but if I did I’d have nothing for rent, nothing for electricity bills, nothing for transport costs, nothing for food for the rest of the month. These are restrictions on my freedom Paris Hilton does not have.
Under capitalism, the freedom of the billionaire class is reliant on the un-freedom of the rest of us: without the wealth produced through our labour, the billionaire class would not have its yachts, planes and so forth to scour the world living as they wish.
Under capitalism, the freedom of the billionaire class is reliant on the un-freedom of the rest of us.
If all the workers employed by Amazon billionaire owner Jeff Bezos stopped tomorrow, the special privilege freedom he derives from their work would turn to rubble.
The US conservative movement is relentless in the defence of its “freedoms”; to property, to guns, to (hate) speech. What they are less interested in is the ability of all of society to access those freedoms. You can’t own property if you don’t have any money. You can’t shoot your guns if you work all hours of the day. No one can hear you speak your mind if you have no means by which to seriously communicate your message to large numbers of people.
The Milo Yiannopoulos-isation of politics means that millions of young people across America, liberal and conservative, take their half hour break from an 11-hour shift in Walmart on a wage that isn’t enough to pay for their rent with a boss that treats them like dirt to shout at others in the same position as them on social media about everything other than the reality of work under hyper-exploitative American capitalism.
Yiannopoulos, to the extent that he has any sort of consistent belief system, is a believer in freedom as a special privilege. He wants freedom of speech, but is disinterested in the power relations which allow people like him a voice and deny it to others.
It’s why he can call himself a supporter of freedom and a supporter of the settler-colonial state of Israel, systematically denying the most basic freedoms of Palestinians like the right to move freely within their own country, the right to access their own water supply, and so on.
If all the workers employed by Amazon billionaire owner Jeff Bezos stopped tomorrow, the special privilege freedom he derives from their work would turn to rubble.
I’m not the sort of socialist who thinks the only thing worth talking about is strikes and trade unions. Culture and identity is massively important to who we are. But unless that is connected to the economic reality of our lives, we are getting a skewed, ill-informed view of our culture and our identity, one that is never going to lead to any true emancipation and freedom.
What does freedom “as a universal right” look like? Marx described this well more than a century ago, it’s not that complicated: “Only in community [has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible.
In the previous substitutes for the community, in the state, etc. personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed within the relationships of the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class.”
Freedom for all accepts that as individuals we rely on social relations between people for civilisation, and therefore our freedom is necessarily contingent on those around us. It therefore follows that an economy that socially distributes wealth for the needs of all (rather than hoards it privately) provides the basis for freedom as a universal right.
Imagine the possibilities that could be opened up for all of our cultural creativity if capitalism’s endless pursuit of profit accumulation and growth for its own sake was replaced by an economy organised specifically and deliberately to provide the economic requirements we all need to flourish.
I’m not the sort of socialist who thinks the only thing worth talking about is strikes and trade unions. Culture and identity is massively important to who we are.
Let me give just one example: work-life balance. I co-authored a Common Weal report a few years ago which proposed a shorter working week so people could have more free time for life. In it we found that if all the current hours worked in Scotland were distributed evenly, including to those currently unemployed and those in part-time work who want full-time work, everyone in Scotland who wanted it could be employed on a 30-hour week.
Socially organising the hours we work can make us all freer – freedom as a universal right. Pursuing economic and social universal rights in this way, as Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias has argued, would be a democratic revolution: “The right to vote is important but not sufficient. For democracy to exist, it is necessary for the many to hold power and for the few to lose their privileges.
“Once privileges are democratised, they turn into rights that are the very basis of freedom. For this reason, whoever attacks civil rights and social rights attacks democracy.”
I want an independent Scotland to pioneer a new idea of freedom – one based on its now much professed tradition of universalism in public service delivery: freedom as a universal right, not a special privilege of the rich and famous; freedom of the community – knowing that if our freedom is based on the oppression and exploitation of others then it’s a classist, racist, sexist freedom and a lie to tout it as achievable for all.
Four policies that could start creating freedom as a universal right would be a shorter working week (universal free time), a basic income (universal security of finance), a job guarantee scheme (universal right to work) and affordable housing for all through a social housing programme and a living rent (universal right to a home).
Picture courtesy of Leonidas Tsementzis
Check out what people are saying about how important CommonSpace is. Pledge your support today.
