When
the
people on the streets in Iran use
the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom,”
the freedom they refer to is
freedom from domination. Iranians
are living under a regime that
limits what they can say, how they
dress, and how they may gather and
organize. Their government is
imprisoning, torturing, and
killing people who are challenging
domination and demanding freedom.
“Woman,
Life,
Freedom” resonates with the slogan
of the French Revolution:
“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”
In that context, “liberty” also
meant freedom from domination:
domination by the church,
domination by the rich, domination
by the monarchy.
And yet
in the present context, the idea of
freedom is often used in ways that are
anything but a call to challenge
domination. In a second sense, freedom
means “I should be able to dominate
others.”
This
mixing of ideas leads to the current
morass where Kyle Rittenhouse’s freedom to
walk into a crowd with a loaded assault
rifle conflicted with his victims’ freedom
to demonstrate peaceably. My freedom from
threats to my health may not be compatible
with your freedom to not get a vaccine.
In
a
Twitter thread in June 2022, Ethan
Grey wrote:
You’ve watched the Republican Party
champion the idea of “freedom” while you
have also watched the same party openly
assault various freedoms, like the freedom
to vote, freedom to choose, freedom to marry
who you want, and so on. If this has been a
source of confusion, then your assessments
of what Republicans mean by “freedom” were
likely too generous. Here’s what they mean:
1. The freedom to tell people what to do. 2.
Freedom from being told what to do. When
Republicans talk about valuing “freedom,”
they’re speaking of it in the sense that
only people like them should ultimately
possess it.
Or,
as
Frank Wilhoit put
it,
“Conservatism consists of exactly
one proposition, to wit: There
must be in-groups whom the law
protects but does not bind,
alongside out-groups whom the law
binds but does not protect.”
And
of
course, white people are the
“in-group” Wilhoit refers to and
they are Grey’s “people like
them.” In his book White
Freedom:
The Racial History of an Idea,
Tyler Stovall does a deep dive
into the ways that freedom in the
U.S. context has always largely
meant freedom for white people to
do what they like to people of
color, especially to Black people.
Stoval argues that historically,
“belief in one’s entitlement to
freedom was a key component of
white supremacy.” He quotes Isaiah
Berlin as reminding us that
“freedom for the wolves has often
meant death to the sheep.”
Freedom
as
white freedom, and an entitlement
to oppress others, goes back to
the early days of capitalism. In Black
Marxism:
The Making of the Black Radical
Tradition,
Cedric Robinson argued that
capitalism has always been racial
capitalism. One of the core ways
those favoring capitalism have
justified the dehumanization,
brutalization, and exploitation of
human beings, was by putting them
outside the circle of those who
deserved freedom.
John
Locke’s
1689 book Two
Treatises of Government is
a
foundational text here. Locke asks
us to imagine a world where we are
all totally independent of one
another and where we make
decisions about what kind of
relationships we would “freely”
agree to. He argues that of course
rational people would choose a
society based on private property
and high levels of production,
because that is just “rational.”
While he
was helping create the founding ideas of
freedom in the West, Locke was also
invested in the slave trade and wrote the
constitution for the Carolinas in the U.S.
which included slavery. For many years
philosophers looking at Locke have wished
away those nasty parts of his biography.
But in fact, they were the whole point.
Locke was crafting a notion of freedom
that would make the domination of others
seem virtuous.
For him,
land in the Americas belonged to white
settlers, because Native people did not
make it productive as God intended. Black
people could be enslaved because, just as
you should not wait for a wild beast like
a lion to attack you when you can know
that it does not follow the light of
reason and so can’t be expected to respect
natural laws, similarly the people of
Africa can be enslaved because they can’t
be expected to act rationally. By
“freedom” he meant the ability of those
“rational” people to do as they pleased.
Locke
starts his analysis by asking readers to
forget about the fabric of social
relationships that we are always enmeshed
in, and he asks them to wish away history.
If I am an autonomous rational individual
who needs nothing from anyone, then the
idea that I can use my stuff as I wish
sort of makes sense. But once we get back
to reality, and realize that we are born
totally dependent on other human beings
for our survival and that our survival
requires cooperation in creating and
fostering the health of the fabric of our
shared reality, then it becomes clear that
the notion of freedom as “no one gets to
tell me what to do” does not help foster a
just society.
This
Lockean idea of freedom was given a boost
by mid-20th century pro-capitalist
thinkers Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich
Hayek, and Milton Friedman. They cemented
for the public the idea that freedom for
markets is somehow equivalent to human
freedom. They argued that the freedom of
those with money to do what they want with
their money was the most important meaning
of freedom.
This
way
of understanding freedom can be
seen in the libertarian rantings
of some of the worst of the
current crop of billionaire robber
barons. When the state of
California required Tesla to
protect its workers from Covid-19
by enacting some basic health
measures, its CEO whined
that the government was being
fascist and imposing on his
freedom.
In
a
2009 article
for the libertarian Cato
Institute, PayPal founder and
funder of Republican supporters of
the Big Lie, Peter Thiel, argued
for an “escape from politics” into
a world where he hopes for a
“single person who builds or
propagates the machinery of
freedom that makes the world safe
for capitalism.” In the same
article, Thiel bemoaned women
having the vote since he argued
that they tend to vote in ways
that restrict the freedom of
people like himself.
Those on
the side of white supremacy and racial
capitalism are continuing to insist on
their right to act without regard for
others and to cast people of color outside
the realm of those deserving freedom,
legal protections, or consideration.
Freedom
meaning “my right to do whatever I want”
gains some of its rhetorical force from
the fact that the same word is also used
to fight against domination. It is noble
to work to end domination. It is whiny and
selfish to want to live in a world where
one doesn’t need to take into account the
needs of others. The astroturf “Tea Party”
movement said that regulations on the kind
of light bulbs that can be sold, in order
to help save our planet from destruction,
were an infringement on freedom. That
absurd claim had cultural resonance
because the word freedom carries a noble
charge and because we have been trained to
not see the fabric of relationships that
connect us.
In
the
middle of the 20th century,
authoritarian socialism provided a
good foil for those wanting to
make capitalism and freedom into
synonyms. Lea Ypi spends the first
part of her beautiful memoir of
life growing up in Albania, Free:
A
Child and a Country at the End
of History,
exploring the lack of freedom that
came from living under an
authoritarian government that
imprisoned people who disagreed
with government decisions, and
that did not allow for freedom of
speech, assembly, or travel.
In the
second half of her memoir she explores
how, after the end of the country’s
dictatorship, Albania ended up under the
authoritarian rule of “market freedom.”
Ypi’s family found itself enslaved and
impoverished by its new master, the free
market, which transformed many Albanians
into economic refugees.
Commenting
on
the hollowness of the West’s claims about
freedom, Ypi writes: “The West had spent
decades criticizing the East for borders,
funding campaigns to demand freedom of
movement, condemning the immorality of
states committed to restricting the right
to exit. Our exiles used to be received as
heroes. Now they were treated like
criminals.” Ypi defends the socialist
ideal that freedom should be grounded in
the possibility of living well, free from
domination. And she offers a searing
critique of the idea that in capitalism
money can cross borders freely, but
billions of people cannot.
In
How
We Win the Civil War,
Steve Phillips argues that the
U.S. is living in a later phase of
an unfinished civil war and
remains divided between those who
value white supremacy and those
who value democracy. Many white
people in the U.S. are entrenched
in a fight to protect white
supremacy as their old privileges
and senses of themselves as being
special and normative are being
undermined by moves toward racial
equality. As an old saying goes,
“To those used to privilege,
equality feels like oppression.”
Phillips argues that demographic
realities make multiracial
democracy within reach if we
engage in enough of the right kind
of organizing.
This
fight
over the meaning of freedom is
part of the present civil war.
Those on the side of white
supremacy and racial capitalism
are continuing to insist on their
right to act without regard for
others and to cast people of color
outside the realm of those
deserving freedom, legal
protections, or consideration. But
that other sense of freedom, as a
challenge to domination, continues
to have meaning and force in
places like the Iranian call for
“Woman, Life, Freedom.”
