The dream of enlightenment
Fredosor.com
The dream of enlightenment became visible for all during the 18th century, with the French philosophers Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau being leading figures. Out of this period the notion of human rights entered the main stage of politics, culminating in the key words of Freedom and Equality of the US Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution, and the French declaration of human rights – and ultimately the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 (about two hundred years later).
Freedom - blowing out the constraints of life
Freedom is the absence of constraints of any kind. In communities where human beings live together, absolute individual freedom cannot exist. The larger the community, the more limitations in their personal freedom each individual has to accept - if the community is to function. Rules of conduct of different kinds (legal, social, cultural), and economic limitations make up the framework within which social life takes place.
The possibility for an individual to break legal rules depends on the community’s capacity to respond with convincing sanctions. It may be easy to break social or cultural rules, but the sanctions will come in the form of social exclusion from the groups that hold these rules most dear. Whether you consider that to be a problem or not, depends on your attachment to these groups. In communities with strong social or cultural cohesion, the prospect of social exclusion has a much stronger preventive effect than sanctions applied to breaches of legal rules.
When legal rules become unduly constraining, their social acceptance diminish – with the subsequent effect that people will circumvent them with impunity (with the tacit acceptance of the community). Attempts by leaders to impose sanctions that are not accepted by the community at large, will in the long run undermine the authority of the leaders.
Many leaders act as if the rules of society do not apply to them. They seem to consider that they are above that, as if they were in some way Olympian gods. The power elite of many countries navigate in this mental state, at the detriment of the population and at the detriment of their own dignity. They give themselves freedoms which they know would be harmful for the people in the community at large to have. Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative has certainly not crossed their minds.
The tension between an individual’s desire for freedom and the same individual’s desire for orderly conduct by the other persons within a community is an everlasting tension which will swing as a pendulum in response to relevant events in the community.
There is a major difference between freedom as a right and freedom as a possibility.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 establishes freedom as a human right. Amnesty International shows us in numerous ways how this right is violated on a daily basis around the world. This right is like all other rights. It has no value unless those who have power do not protect it against all types of assaults that are made against it.
The notion of freedom as a possibility is seen in connection with all those limitations we meet in daily life, and which restrict our freedom of action and speech in so many ways. As already mentioned, economic and legal limitations are the most obvious – whereas social and cultural limitations are more indirect in nature.
The idea of free competition in a market economy is an interesting example of the intricacies of the notion of freedom. The good functioning of a free market requires many laws and rules. It also requires enforcement agencies, firstly to protect consumers against abusive market behavior on the part of producers (like monopolistic cartel formations or marketing of toxic products), secondly to protect workers against exploitation in the labor market (like illegal immigrants accepting to work under slave conditions for fear of being sent back to their country of origin), thirdly to protect investors against misleading information on the part of companies seeking capital (stock market regulations), or – fourthly - to protect firms from unfair market practices on the part of competing firms (like use of inside information to obtain contracts in bidding processes). Thus, ensuring free competition requires many measures on the part of government agencies, measures which intuitively run counter to freedom seen from the point of view of an anarchist.
Another interesting example of the complexities of the notion of freedom, is seen in the case of psychological barriers experienced by one individual which from the point of view of another person would not seem to exist. A paralyzing fear of speaking to an audience could for one person represent an absolute barrier, whereas this would not be a problem at all for another person. Thus, freedom of speech gives power to those who speak well and have few inhibitions about expressing themselves in private or in public.
Freedom being the absence of constraints, constraints are found in countless kinds ranging from the obvious physical constraints represented by a wall, laws like those we meet in the traffic every day, social rules like those you meet within different social classes, cultural rules like those you would meet in a bridge club, to the completely intangible barriers (self-made or inherited) existing in the mind of any given individual. What freedom is, who possesses it, and what different types of freedom lead to when other types of freedom are limited, are interesting subjects in this context.
Equality - Human dignity; now - or later?
As in the case of freedom, the notion of equality can also be seen from two fundamentally different angles: equality as a right and equality as a possibility.
In its most extreme interpretation, equality as a right would mean equality in all material living conditions. This is a vision that is hard to envisage, given the enormous differences that already exist in geographic terms, both climatically and biologically. You don’t need the same kind of housing and clothing in all parts of the world, to take a simple example. Another important factor is that most public policy measures aimed at creating equality will be met by countervailing measures on the part of the population, thus making it difficult to attain strict equality. Inheritance of different kinds also tends to maintain differences.
That does not mean that it is meaningless to try to achieve greater equality. It only means that certain methods don’t work. Communism has been attempted, and this system did not manage to handle all the information necessary to make it work. The planning tools were not sufficiently advanced to handle the mass of necessary information, incentives and decision-making involved in matching the needs of individuals with the production capacity of the goods and services producers. Furthermore, the practice of communism has shown us that people’s commitment to self-interest is stronger than their commitment to the general interest. Corruption on a massive scale developed in all those countries where this system was set in place. Only a small minority of people will act for the general interest at the expense of their self-interest. So the system, being incompatible with human nature, collapsed.
The market system is capable of handling all the information needed to make the system work, but it does not achieve equality in any way. The United States has for a number of years developed its market system in a direction which favors the rich and powerful in the markets, on the reasoning that they are the engines of the market economy. They have also weakened the rights of employees, on the grounds that such rights are an impediment to job creation. This evolution has produced an increasingly polarized economy, where the rich have accumulated enormous fortunes, while the incomes of ordinary employees have stagnated for a long time. The US economy is now showing signs of stagnation due to this polarization, because the purchasing power of the great mass of the people is eroding rapidly. The fortunes amassed by the rich people are not plowed back into the consumer markets; they are thereby to some extent withdrawn from the goods markets and placed in financial and real estate markets. This produces a negative spiral where all sorts of financial agents try to siphon off as much profits as they can from these enormous funds that are placed for dividends.
The most successful system so far, is a system based on the market mechanism but with a constant attention directed at correcting the deficiencies of the market system. This system will never be able to achieve full equality in material living conditions, however. The incentives that govern this system imply that there will be clear limitations regarding how far one can get in achieving equality. The best one can hope for in such a system, is to reduce social polarization, enlarge the middle class and lift the material conditions of the most destitute in such a way that they will have the possibility to live in a decent way.
Any workable system, whatever it is called, will need to develop incentives towards equality in such a way that the self-interest and the general interest work in the same direction.
Equality as a possibility is an entirely different starting point. It is easier to conceive in a theoretical way, and will in formal terms be achieved in a democratic state where human rights are solidly entrenched and developed into fundamental areas as education, health and equal rights. Even with such a starting point, it is difficult to envisage equal possibilities in practice. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has shown us the limitations of this starting point. His analyses of the notions of social and cultural capital show that equality as a possibility may be just as utopian as equality as a right.
Criteria for access to different social and cultural arenas, and systems of remuneration follow patterns that discriminate between people with different cultural and social capital. This is in spite of equality of rights according to a set of “objective” criteria. Children with parents that have higher education will be favored in their school work by the parents’ motivation and capacity to give practical help. Children with rich parents will have better access to expensive schools and universities.
Equality is a moving target which requires constant attention and adaptation of adequate policies. The operational definitions of equality will need to be brought out in each case of attempt at policy making. In the absence of proper operational definitions, a quest for equality along one dimension may lead to absurd results when considered in the context of other dimensions.
Brotherhood - solidarity of fraternities and sororities?
Even after the 19th century, when the term brotherhood (or fraternity) was introduced in the political language, brotherhood has been understood more as something representing closed circles and communities where members cultivated internal solidarity and bestowing of favors, than of fraternity in the broader societal context preached by political movements of that century. Some (very few) countries have managed to develop societies where collective solidarity exists in a more fundamental sense. These are still fragile political constructions, but their basic ideas have strong following by the population at large in those countries. Most countries have weak collective systems and rely mostly on the family as a social security network, supplemented by scattered public measures of varying importance from country to country. An obstacle of major importance to the achievement of brotherhood in the broad social sense, is the increasing tendency for media to be owned and managed by people who do not wish to develop society in such a direction.
Freedom is the absence of constraints of any kind. In communities where human beings live together, absolute individual freedom cannot exist. The larger the community, the more limitations in their personal freedom each individual has to accept - if the community is to function. Rules of conduct of different kinds (legal, social, cultural), and economic limitations make up the framework within which social life takes place.
The possibility for an individual to break legal rules depends on the community’s capacity to respond with convincing sanctions. It may be easy to break social or cultural rules, but the sanctions will come in the form of social exclusion from the groups that hold these rules most dear. Whether you consider that to be a problem or not, depends on your attachment to these groups. In communities with strong social or cultural cohesion, the prospect of social exclusion has a much stronger preventive effect than sanctions applied to breaches of legal rules.
When legal rules become unduly constraining, their social acceptance diminish – with the subsequent effect that people will circumvent them with impunity (with the tacit acceptance of the community). Attempts by leaders to impose sanctions that are not accepted by the community at large, will in the long run undermine the authority of the leaders.
Many leaders act as if the rules of society do not apply to them. They seem to consider that they are above that, as if they were in some way Olympian gods. The power elite of many countries navigate in this mental state, at the detriment of the population and at the detriment of their own dignity. They give themselves freedoms which they know would be harmful for the people in the community at large to have. Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative has certainly not crossed their minds.
The tension between an individual’s desire for freedom and the same individual’s desire for orderly conduct by the other persons within a community is an everlasting tension which will swing as a pendulum in response to relevant events in the community.
There is a major difference between freedom as a right and freedom as a possibility.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 establishes freedom as a human right. Amnesty International shows us in numerous ways how this right is violated on a daily basis around the world. This right is like all other rights. It has no value unless those who have power do not protect it against all types of assaults that are made against it.
The notion of freedom as a possibility is seen in connection with all those limitations we meet in daily life, and which restrict our freedom of action and speech in so many ways. As already mentioned, economic and legal limitations are the most obvious – whereas social and cultural limitations are more indirect in nature.
The idea of free competition in a market economy is an interesting example of the intricacies of the notion of freedom. The good functioning of a free market requires many laws and rules. It also requires enforcement agencies, firstly to protect consumers against abusive market behavior on the part of producers (like monopolistic cartel formations or marketing of toxic products), secondly to protect workers against exploitation in the labor market (like illegal immigrants accepting to work under slave conditions for fear of being sent back to their country of origin), thirdly to protect investors against misleading information on the part of companies seeking capital (stock market regulations), or – fourthly - to protect firms from unfair market practices on the part of competing firms (like use of inside information to obtain contracts in bidding processes). Thus, ensuring free competition requires many measures on the part of government agencies, measures which intuitively run counter to freedom seen from the point of view of an anarchist.
Another interesting example of the complexities of the notion of freedom, is seen in the case of psychological barriers experienced by one individual which from the point of view of another person would not seem to exist. A paralyzing fear of speaking to an audience could for one person represent an absolute barrier, whereas this would not be a problem at all for another person. Thus, freedom of speech gives power to those who speak well and have few inhibitions about expressing themselves in private or in public.
Freedom being the absence of constraints, constraints are found in countless kinds ranging from the obvious physical constraints represented by a wall, laws like those we meet in the traffic every day, social rules like those you meet within different social classes, cultural rules like those you would meet in a bridge club, to the completely intangible barriers (self-made or inherited) existing in the mind of any given individual. What freedom is, who possesses it, and what different types of freedom lead to when other types of freedom are limited, are interesting subjects in this context.
Equality - Human dignity; now - or later?
As in the case of freedom, the notion of equality can also be seen from two fundamentally different angles: equality as a right and equality as a possibility.
In its most extreme interpretation, equality as a right would mean equality in all material living conditions. This is a vision that is hard to envisage, given the enormous differences that already exist in geographic terms, both climatically and biologically. You don’t need the same kind of housing and clothing in all parts of the world, to take a simple example. Another important factor is that most public policy measures aimed at creating equality will be met by countervailing measures on the part of the population, thus making it difficult to attain strict equality. Inheritance of different kinds also tends to maintain differences.
That does not mean that it is meaningless to try to achieve greater equality. It only means that certain methods don’t work. Communism has been attempted, and this system did not manage to handle all the information necessary to make it work. The planning tools were not sufficiently advanced to handle the mass of necessary information, incentives and decision-making involved in matching the needs of individuals with the production capacity of the goods and services producers. Furthermore, the practice of communism has shown us that people’s commitment to self-interest is stronger than their commitment to the general interest. Corruption on a massive scale developed in all those countries where this system was set in place. Only a small minority of people will act for the general interest at the expense of their self-interest. So the system, being incompatible with human nature, collapsed.
The market system is capable of handling all the information needed to make the system work, but it does not achieve equality in any way. The United States has for a number of years developed its market system in a direction which favors the rich and powerful in the markets, on the reasoning that they are the engines of the market economy. They have also weakened the rights of employees, on the grounds that such rights are an impediment to job creation. This evolution has produced an increasingly polarized economy, where the rich have accumulated enormous fortunes, while the incomes of ordinary employees have stagnated for a long time. The US economy is now showing signs of stagnation due to this polarization, because the purchasing power of the great mass of the people is eroding rapidly. The fortunes amassed by the rich people are not plowed back into the consumer markets; they are thereby to some extent withdrawn from the goods markets and placed in financial and real estate markets. This produces a negative spiral where all sorts of financial agents try to siphon off as much profits as they can from these enormous funds that are placed for dividends.
The most successful system so far, is a system based on the market mechanism but with a constant attention directed at correcting the deficiencies of the market system. This system will never be able to achieve full equality in material living conditions, however. The incentives that govern this system imply that there will be clear limitations regarding how far one can get in achieving equality. The best one can hope for in such a system, is to reduce social polarization, enlarge the middle class and lift the material conditions of the most destitute in such a way that they will have the possibility to live in a decent way.
Any workable system, whatever it is called, will need to develop incentives towards equality in such a way that the self-interest and the general interest work in the same direction.
Equality as a possibility is an entirely different starting point. It is easier to conceive in a theoretical way, and will in formal terms be achieved in a democratic state where human rights are solidly entrenched and developed into fundamental areas as education, health and equal rights. Even with such a starting point, it is difficult to envisage equal possibilities in practice. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has shown us the limitations of this starting point. His analyses of the notions of social and cultural capital show that equality as a possibility may be just as utopian as equality as a right.
Criteria for access to different social and cultural arenas, and systems of remuneration follow patterns that discriminate between people with different cultural and social capital. This is in spite of equality of rights according to a set of “objective” criteria. Children with parents that have higher education will be favored in their school work by the parents’ motivation and capacity to give practical help. Children with rich parents will have better access to expensive schools and universities.
Equality is a moving target which requires constant attention and adaptation of adequate policies. The operational definitions of equality will need to be brought out in each case of attempt at policy making. In the absence of proper operational definitions, a quest for equality along one dimension may lead to absurd results when considered in the context of other dimensions.
Brotherhood - solidarity of fraternities and sororities?
Even after the 19th century, when the term brotherhood (or fraternity) was introduced in the political language, brotherhood has been understood more as something representing closed circles and communities where members cultivated internal solidarity and bestowing of favors, than of fraternity in the broader societal context preached by political movements of that century. Some (very few) countries have managed to develop societies where collective solidarity exists in a more fundamental sense. These are still fragile political constructions, but their basic ideas have strong following by the population at large in those countries. Most countries have weak collective systems and rely mostly on the family as a social security network, supplemented by scattered public measures of varying importance from country to country. An obstacle of major importance to the achievement of brotherhood in the broad social sense, is the increasing tendency for media to be owned and managed by people who do not wish to develop society in such a direction.