Freedom
Freedom is the capacity to act in accordance with aims and interests, relying on a knowledge of objective necessity. In the history of social thought, the problem of freedom was traditionally reduced to the question of whether people have free will — in other words, whether their intentions and actions are governed by external circumstances. The materialist conception of history as held by Marxists rejects the idealist view of individual freedom as individual consciousness independent of objective circumstances. Marxism also opposes the metaphysical belief that there is an antithesis between freedom and necessity — a view that was widely held by philosophers and natural scientists of the 17th through 19th centuries. The Marxist conception of freedom in dialectical interaction with necessity is opposed to voluntarism, which asserts the arbitrary willfulness of human actions, and to fatalism, which regards actions as predetermined. Unlike the idealists, including Hegel and the existentialists, who limit the problem of freedom to the realm of consciousness, Marxism argues that without the possibility of realization, the consciousness of freedom is merely an illusion.
In their everyday activity people encounter not an abstract necessity but its concrete, historical embodiment in existing social and economic relations that determine the range of people’s interests, as well as in the material means for achieving desired goals. People are not free to choose the objective conditions in which they function, but they do possess a certain freedom in their choice of goals, since at any given moment there are usually several real possibilities of varying feasibility. Even when there is no alternative, people are in a position to forestall undesirable developments or hasten desirable ones. In addition, they are more or less free in their choice of the means for attaining a particular end. Thus, freedom is not absolute but relative, and it is made real through the choice of a definite plan of action. The degree of freedom increases as people grow more aware of their real possibilities, as they gain greater access to the means of attaining desired goals, and as their interests coincide more with the aspirations of many other people and especially with those of entire social classes, as well as with the objective trends of social progress.[1]
Varieties
Bourgeois freedoms
"It is difficult for me to imagine what 'personal liberty' is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread." — Joseph Stalin
The freedom and civil rights under capitalism is known as bourgeois freedoms as they are intended, although often not explicitly in bourgeois democracy, to serve the interests of the owning class rather than the working class. For instance, "freedom of speech" is rarely able to be fully enjoyed by workers, yet can be by wealthy capitalists who own vast news publications and other media outlets. Similarly, "economic freedom"[a] is rarely, if ever, able to be enjoyed by workers, who often have little choice their employment, educational options,[b] income level, etc. and who are fully subjugated to the constant uncertainty of capitalist society.[2]
Proletarian freedoms
Under socialism, freedom takes on a new character of proletarian freedoms, freedoms and rights which have importance to the vast majority of the population. Unlike with capitalist societies, human necessities such as housing, healthcare, employment, etc. are regarded as human rights and are provided to the population with little-to-no cost. Political rights such as electoral voting is likewise transformed as the working class no longer has to decide between what grouping of exploiters to "represent" them in parliament (as is the case with capitalism), have power over the state machine itself, being able to partake in elections themselves or election people of their own community without concern for the impossible wealth barriers which are found in capitalist elections.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ "Freedom". Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
- ↑ Karl Marx and Frederich Engels (1848). The Communist Manifesto, II. "Proletarians and Communists".
And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.
By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.
But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend."
- ↑ Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1936).
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