R. A.:
Liberty is both the reason and the result of liberty, both the aspiration and the foundation of
liberty. Only those who are free can desire freedom; only those who are free can be free,
live free, and stay free. Freedom is the essential and fitting result of freedom.
M. P.:
How can a thing be the result of itself?
R. A.:
Human freedom is an anthropological given, an existential certainty. Because we are free
we will struggle to be free; and this struggle to be free has the end result that we are made
free. Human freedom is essential; it is the foundation of civil liberties. We are morally free,
and so we can govern ourselves, and so we desire and demand self-government. Self-
government is the end result of what we always and already are -- self-governing beings.
We are self-determined beings, and so we struggle for self-determination, and the end
result of that struggle is self-determination. The result is in the source. Freedom of thought
is always there, even when freedom of thought is prohibited. Freedom of conscience is
already in us, even before freedom of conscience was finally admissible and achieved.
There is an ancient legal maxim: A piratis aut latronibus capti liberi permanent. (Persons
taken by robbers remain free.) In seems contradictory, but even a kidnap victim remains
free. Even a person taken into slavery remains free. To be human is to be free.
M. P.:
If I'm understanding you correctly then you are making a simple mistake. The capacity to
develope a free market is an instance and occasion of freedom. The free market itself is
the result of that.
R. A.:
There is human freedom expressed in free-market activities. But, then, there is human
freedom evident in even the most enslaving of conditions. It is the nature of human freedom
that it erupts even in circumstances and contexts of unfreedom. However, in free-market
capitalism, human beings are transformed into a marketable commodity -- which is to say,
their labor has become a commodity to be purchased and exploited. There is freedom in
this; but there is more to freedom than this, there is more freedom than this kind of
arrangement can realize. Those who believe in free-market capitalism assume that human
beings are as free as they can be when they are forced to sell their labor for a wage. The
capitalist mode of production is an artificial construct, and the ideological capitalist
believes capitalism is a natural or divine design. If you believe that a capitalist political-
economy is natural or eternal, then it is to be expected that you will believe the freedom
capitalism confers is the most natural freedom possible, or the most freedom practicable
and conceivable. Take away the notion that capitalism is eternal, divine and natural, and you
are open to new and other possibilities, you are receptive to a freedom which is other than
capitalist. This creates a more expansive perspective, and a more responsive attitude. You
see the suffering of so many people as abatable.
Whatever is a specimen of freedom, whatever is liberty's precedent, is both necessary for
liberty and the presumption of liberty. Whatever is a necessary result of liberty is also what
we can suppose to be liberating.
M. P.:
Not true. Many of the neccesary results of liberty can result in less liberty.
R. A.:
The struggle for freedom does have disappointing reversals, even some of the most
villainous and criminal regressions. But, we will not stop the struggle for freedom, because
we are free, and because we must be free. We hope, even when all seems lost. As a
democratic and libertarian socialist, I still have hope, even after the happy fall of putative
communism.
Whatever is free can be predicated and postulated to be liberating.
M. P.:
But can it be so predicated and postulated correctly?
R. A.:
Whatever is free can be so predicated, so postulated correctly. But, we can make mistakes
When we predicate freedom, or we can wrongly accept as optimal freedom what is really
minimal freedom. I believe there is a natural context in which freedom can be optimally
expressed. I believe that we can create and constitute such a framework. I believe that this
framework was initially established in ancient Athens, with its democratic and anarchist
self-government, with its municipal and communal structure. I believe that the modern
nation-state must be demolished by peaceful measures and by popular movements. I
believe education for freedom is necessary. We must learn to believe in ourselves, in each
other, before we can dare to undertake such a venture in the direction of an anarchist
republic, a democratic commonwealth, with municipal autonomy, and without a centralized
federal state.
Liberty is itself liberating. Liberation is the beginning and the consequence of liberty.
Liberty precedes liberty, and follows liberty. It is free people who will fight for freedom.
One individual's freedom is no different from another individual's freedom. It is because we
are free that we desire freedom, that we demand more freedom.
M. P.:
Not true, if I were a slave I would still desire freedom, probably more than I do now.
R. A.:
If you are a slave, you desire freedom because you are already free, and you want to be
what you are.
Human freedom is the existential prelude to political and economic freedom. It is because
we are all equally free as human beings that we all desire equal freedom as social beings.
We are all equally free, just as we are all equally human. I am as human as any other
person, even when I must endure an inhuman world. I am as free as any other person, even
when I must endure slavery.
We all need freedom to produce and provide for ourselves, because we all need material
goods in order to live free. When we can freely labor to produce what we need, and when
we can freely and fully enjoy what we produce by our labor, that is when our ontological
freedom will be better perceived, better observed, and better recognized. The class of
producers are just as free as the class of proprietors. The class of proprietors live off the
value created by the labor of those who daily produce value. The class of producers are
regularly dispossessed of the value-overflow which is systematically appropriated by the
class of proprietors. Both producers and proprietors are free as humans, and both are
slaves of capital.
All are equally free! The class of producers are free to be exploited as producers, and to
have the value they create expropriated by the class of employers. The class of proprietors
are free to exploit the producers, and to take the value created by the labor of their wage-
employees.
All are equally free! Every master is just as free as every slave, and vice versa, every slave
is just as free as every master.
M. P.:
I have no idea whether you are serious.
R. A.:
I am very serious. I am telling it like I see it. I am sincere about what I write. I am not joking.
The freedom of every human being is precisely why every person ought to fully enjoy and
richly exercise the freedom we all possess equally, even when so many, even though too
many possess more freedom than they can exert and exhibit. The difference between
moral-law and fiat-law is that obedience to moral-law is freedom, while obedience to fiat-
law is slavery. As long as we have political statism and economic capitalism there will be
laws, and more laws, because of the division of classes, and because of a discord of
interests, which a competitive and cutthroat régime must enforce and always imposes on
all of us.
What comes first? Liberty, or liberation?
M. P.:
Liberation is the process of gaining liberty therefore it comes first.
R. A.:
Do we gain what we already and always possess? Liberation is free people gaining equal
respect as equal persons, gaining equal recognition of the freedom they all have, and have
always had.
M. P.:
No. Liberation is gaining freedom.
R. A.:
Every human being is free, always free, before and after gaining freedom. We cannot gain
what we have already. Freedom can no more be gained than freedom can be given. When
we respect the equal freedom of each person, of all people, then we will have gained
whatever freedom we may say is gained. We talk this way, but such talk is murky. We all
too often use words wrongly. I know what you mean when you talk about gaining freedom.
But, I also believe such talk is an ambiguous use of words.
M. P.:
Not neccesarily equal recognition of said freedom and not gaining what they already had.
If they already had freedom then liberation would be impossible. It would be like sinking
the Swiss Navy.
R. A.:
As I view liberation, this is when people have come to recognize the other, every other, as a
person, as an equal, as a sovereign self, as an independent individual. Liberation is more
recognition than acquisition. Liberation is not taking possession of freedom; it is knowing
freedom.
Every person is free. Even when I do not practice the freedom I possess, I am still free.
M. P.:
Excuse me but what exactly do you mean by free in this context? You seem to be saying
that even in a prison with you testicles attached to electrodes you are still free. This is not
what anyone else calls freedom.
R. A.:
Being in prison is not freedom. But, while in a prison, I am free, just as much as I am human.
Being tortured is not an expression of my freedom. But, even when I am tortured, I am free,
just as I am still a person. If I am tortured, and I do not talk, then I expressed my freedom in
my very refusal to confess some secret, or to betray some friend.
I am morally free even if I do not practice ethical conduct. I am existentially free, even
though I fear my freedom, and try to escape such freedom in habits and in formulas, in
orthodox conventions and in conservative customs. I am economically free, even while I am
driven by my situation and forced by my circumstances to petition an employer for a wage-
job, and to take whatever exploitative wage is offered.
M. P.:
So freedom is slavery to you. I suspected as much.
R. A.:
Freedom is not slavery, but slavery does not erase the slave's essential freedom, just as
slavery cannot erase the slave's humanity. Is the slave less human? Is the slave less free?
What some will call gaining liberty is what I call effectuating liberty, grasping the liberty we
already have, gathering the liberty we always have. We do not come to possess freedom;
we come to practice freedom. Liberation is practicing what we have always possessed.
M. P.:
You like to lie a lot. If you can't do what you want because someone will hit you then you
aren't free.
R. A.:
I am always free. If someone wishes to stop me from doing what I will, by threatening to hit
me if I do what I will, then I am free to adjust and adapt my will to the existing situation
which the threat puts me in. If it is rational to obey the will of the other, to will what the other
wills, then my surrender to another's will is a rational and volitional action. Freedom is the
ability to act in a rational way. Obeying another's will is very rational, if such obedience
saves me from pain, or from death.
M. P.:
If the situtation changes you gain liberty. You don't effectuate it, you don't gather the liberty we always had. You gather the liberty you didn't have, that's the point.
R. A.:
Your point is well stated. If I do not agree with you, it is not because I do not understand.
We imagine more freedom because we have more freedom than we realize, we possess
more freedom than we actualize. In the progress of freedom, we are working out the
practical performance of freedom we have always owned, we are making good the
freedom we have already owned, even when silenced and suppressed. The propertyless
wage-worker is always free to say NO! to capitalism, and to the capitalist class. Wage-
workers are free to say NO!, even though they all too often say YES!, even though wage-
work is opposed to their reasonable self-interest as the class of value-producers.
M. P.:
How do you know? What is a self-interest as the class of value-producers? If it is a self
interest it is not a class interest is it? A self is not a class.
R. A.:
Escaping personal poverty by producing is both a self and a class interest -- a self concern
in every social form, a matter of class concern only in a class-divided society. I am
interested in work to the degree that work is the positive means to making a material living.
I share that same interest in having a wage-job with every one who must engage in value-
creating work as a means of livelihood. Although, working in the tertiary sector -- the
services sector -- I'm not all that sure that the value I create by my employment is truly
valuable. Workers in the primary sectors (agriculture and mining), and in the secondary
sectors (manu-facturing, machino-facturing) do actually and factually produce what has
general or generic use-value. I believe there are wage-jobs which produce value limited to
profiting an employer; while other wage-jobs produce not only profits for the employer, but
also produce value for the benefit and utility of the community.
When the exploited agree to be exploited, it is a free action performed within material
pressures and social constraints which sanction and permit the class of producers to do
what is both in and against their interests as a class. It is in their interest to work for a
wage, as the only rational alternative to poverty or crime. It is against their interest to work
for a wage, because the system keeps the producers always dependent on, and always
subservient to the class of proprietors for access to the material means of livelihood.
Productive labor is a natural necessity in every possible, in every conceivable mode of
production. But, wage-labor is an artificial necessity, made compulsory by the capitalist
form of property, which enriches some while impoverishing others. The capitalist form of
property is both a form of investment for some, and of divestment for others. The capital
proprietors appropriate value created by the labors of others. The surplus value created by
the direct producers is expropriated by the class of capital proprietors. This process of
exploitation impoverishes the class of direct producers; and so, the capitalist form of
property enriches the proprietors while impoverishing the producers. It is this form of
property which socialists and communists wish to see abolished. There is a capitalist form
of property, and there is a socialist-communist form of property. Socialists and
communists desire a form of property which combines personal possessions in the means
of existence with collective property in the means of production.
M. P.:
The labourers can always buy their own means of production.
R. A.:
Always?
What you do not seem to understand is that it is very economical, in many cases, to
produce goods more abundantly by labor-saving machino-facture, rather than by labor-
intensive manu-facture. So that, even if workers can afford to invest in the material means
of machine-facture, for example, it is more than likely not a very rational/economic
investment. Collective processes of production are here to stay. Associated machino-
production is based on reason and on economy. And so, rather than every producer
investing in private property in the tools of manufacturing, it is much better that producers
join together and invest in some collective production venture, some combination of
associated manu-facture and machino-facture. The capitalist mode of production was, and
is, a more progressive method and system of production, relative to all the previous
historical modes of production, in that the capitalists conceived and developed the
collective mode of production, gathering workers together first in large centers of manu-
factories, and then in larger concentrations of machino-factories. The collective mode of
capitalist production is progressive, but the capitalist form of property is regressive.
Associated production for private profit is a retrogressive way of organizing and
co-ordinating production. Associated production ought to be associated property, and ought
to be an associated process of production, including associated planning and collective
decision-making. Capitalism involves an absolute division of labor, with the capitalist
master doing only or mostly all the mental labor (all the planning and all the directing), and
the wage-workers doing all the manual labor. Of course, this model has been altered, with
the innovative introduction of a managerial structure which divorces ownership of a firm
from the control of a firm. Management, not shareholders, set the company objectives,
because managers are more interested in sales than in the maximization of profits. But
there is still an absolute division of labor between those who do the intellectual labor and
those who do the physical and material labors. The very word capital speaks of the
principal and dominant beneficiary of the capitalist mode of production. The word capital is
derived from the Latin word for head -- which is, caput. The capitalist -- and management --
does all the intellectual production; and the employees do all the material production. What
the socialist and communist would like is for the direct producers of material value to have
as much to do with the intellectual processes of planning, and with the mental processes of
management and direction, as they have to do with the instrumental and the manual
process of production. Industrial democracy is what socialism and communism desire,
with each and every person combining in their person, and in their labor activities, both the
mental and the manual sides of production. For example, in a worker-managed enterprise,
if there is a formal division of labor between the mental and the manual aspects of
production, this will not be an absolute division, as in capitalism, with the proprietor as the
supreme head (caput), and the producers as the menial hirelings, as the hands subordinate
to the head. The head directs the hands, and not vice versa, in a capitalist mode of
production. In a social democratic mode of production, the head and the hands come
together, with the hands electing the head, with no absolute division of labor separating the
directing head from the directed hands. This industrial and democratic arrangement will, of
course, require a very well-educated population, educated for self-management, educated
for a life of freedom and of responsibility; but, this is not a difficult prospect, and does not
require some very lengthy evolutionary interval. We do not need more evolution of the
human brain; what we need is more education of the human mind, and a more democratic
practice both of production and of politics.
It is rational to agree to work for a wage, if, and only if, the legal and enforced system
extends this choice, and limits this choice, of propertyless producers to agreeing to this or
that wage-contract as the only viable and practical alternative to poverty and crime.
To be continued . . .
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