I do not like to dwell on theoretical matters as it tends to bore people, but in an effort to accurately analyse reality, it is essential that we understand the fundamentals of political and economic theory. I know it sounds arrogant to say that people in high places, such as at the top of government, do not understand politics and economics, but as I have said before on this blog, such people are well-schooled but are not well educated, and I think that is frequently self-evident. For example, I have been discussing the strenuous relationship between freedom and democracy. The concept of freedom is not unproblematic. The neo-liberal agenda continually stresses that freedom is the ultimate human condition and must be the ultimate goal of both politics and economics. This leads them to emphasise that the continual goal of government policies must be to restore and maintain individual freedom, and in this context it is important to remember that to the neo-liberal this primarily means economic freedom. Here the waters become muddied as, taken literally, individual freedom is a meaningless concept. Individual freedom is indeed a basic human right, but has to be seen, as I stressed in the last post, in the context of the human being as a social animal, in that, one person’s exercise of freedom may require the restriction of another’s, and, in economic terms, one person’s use of scarce resources may mean another person’s lack of resources. That is unavoidable and simply a fact of social life but does emphasise the point that freedom cannot be seen as an absolute. Thus, to discuss the concept of freedom in an abstract, desocialised manner, can be a futile exercise, and becomes completely meaningless in the context of starting from the perspective of viewing the human being as an atomised individual which is itself meaningless.
It is this perspective that motivates the dominant bourgeois perspective of the state being an evil, and make no mistake, this is a class perspective, a negative concept that is hostile to the concept of a social and collective perspective, as exemplified by the philosopher Karl Popper who argued that the state is a necessary evil that must not be allowed to grow greater than is absolutely necessary. What I will argue is that the state is neither good nor evil, but essentially reflects the policies and behaviour of the personnel in charge of it at any given point in history. The state is not a “thing” independent of human activity and behaviour; it is an interdependent set of human institutions, an administrative concept for the regulation and administration of any given political entity. People can be evil and can utilise the agencies of the state for evil purposes, but equally, people can be altruistic and concerned for the welfare of others and can therefore utilise the agencies of the state for good. The state can be large, small, intrusive or liberating; it can be whatever the people directing its activities desire it to be.
The neoliberal persistently refers to what we call negative freedom and is instinctively hostile to positive freedom. Thomas Hobbes argued for the negative form of freedom when he argued that
"Liberty, or freedom, signifies, properly, the absence of opposition; by opposition, I mean external impediments of motion. A freeman is he; that in these things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to do."
That looks very profound and impressive but is actually meaningless. Am I having my freedom impeded if I am physically or legally prevented from murdering or raping if I have a will to do so? The answer from Hobbes must be yes, and therefore such a definition of freedom is profoundly uncivilised and unacceptable. For freedom to be meaningful it must involve real opportunities. Freedom to do what we want to, freedom from constraint, looks good in theory but is meaningless to those who lack the capacity to do what they wish. It is one thing to argue that all doors are open to us, it is quite another to be able to access them. And all doors are not open in a class and race and gender obsessed society like Britain. As I repeatedly argue, Britain is an exclusive society where if, in theory, all doors are open, government policy is increasingly ensuring that it remains a theory. The empirical reality is that more and more people are being excluded and turned away before they even get to the doors. What we have to ensure is that individuals and social groups are empowered before they can even begin to realise their potential and the increasingly private nature of British society is increasingly making that even more remote. Britain has erected a vision of 'freedom' that ensures that the strong remain in the position where they can freely exploit the weak. If that is freedom then I do not understand what that means. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
No comments:
Post a Comment