Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

"Freedom" - What A Pleasant Word!

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • "Freedom" - What A Pleasant Word!

    "FREEDOM" - WHAT A PLEASANT WORD!
    Boris Kagarlitsky

    Eurasian Home Analytical Resource
    January 28, 2010

    Last week the Heritage Foundation published the 2010 Index of Economic
    Freedom. According to that rating, Hong Kong is the world's freest
    economy, it is much freer than the USA. Armenia is freer than Brazil,
    Estonia is much freer than Germany, and Kazakhstan is freer than
    India. Russian economy is not free, Tajikistan outstrips it.

    It is interesting that the authors of the 2010 Index, while supposing
    a direct connection between the level of "economic freedom" in
    a country and its wellbeing, do not care about the countries'
    real achievements. When reading the list one can see that there
    is no correlation between the countries' positions in the rating
    and their economic progress. It is impossible to say that all the
    "free" economies prosper, while "non-free" countries are on the
    decline. But the contrary cannot be stated either. For example, the
    rating of Latvia, which faces bankruptcy, is far higher than India,
    which develops dynamically. On the other hand, Japan and Germany
    outstrip impoverished Armenia only by 1 or 2 points (those three
    countries are the rating leaders).

    If to consider the 2010 Index more carefully, it is getting clear that
    its authors used a strange system of factors. Evidently, the liberal
    ideologists believe that the economic freedom is the lack of the
    state control and of its interference in the economic processes. But,
    at the same time, there is such a factor as "protection of the
    property rights". I wonder how a state will protect those rights with
    interfering in nothing. And what does the freedom have to do with it?

    Protection of somebody else's property from my encroachments is
    limitation of my freedom. For example, I like my neighbour's cap. I
    take the cap from him and put it on. So I act as a free man, who is
    not limited by any state rules. If my neighbour protests, this is
    his problem. He is also a free man, and can fight with me, run away
    or take a cap from anyone who is weaker than he is.

    Is it cynical? Not at all. Thomas Hobbes, a founder of the modern
    political philosophy, whose works fundamentally influenced the
    formation of the liberal thought, described the freedom in such a way.

    It was quite clear to the classics of liberalism that laws limited
    freedom, that the power of law and the freedom of persons, including
    the economic players, contradict each other, but the development of
    society requires balance between these factors and freedom has to be
    limited if we want to preserve it. However, modern liberal thinkers
    are not interested in those details.

    Meanwhile, the freedom itself may be a terrible phenomenon. If to
    return to the initial thesis and to declare a state's non-participation
    in economic processes to be the freedom criterion, then today the
    maximum of potential freedom is in Haiti, which, after the earthquake,
    has no government at all. But the economic life continues to exist. The
    stolen humanitarian aid can be sold perfectly according to the market
    laws for the price that buyers can offer, to those who have money
    or some barter resources. Therefore, those, who do not have enough
    money or the resources, can die of starvation unless they have guns
    by means of which the people can solve their problems.

    True, here is a question that is unpleasant for liberal thinkers:
    what is of more importance - the property rights or the human
    rights? The theorists believe that those two things automatically
    imply each other, so one should not discuss those subjects. But the
    practitioners have their own problems - for example, they should
    decide if it is permissible to open fire on starving people trying
    to ransack food depots. If to allow them to pilfer the food, which
    they cannot afford to buy, what about the property right? And would
    their killing be a violation of human rights?

    Haiti's experience visually illustrates an old, but unpopular fact: the
    bourgeois standards and rules are effective only in a well-established
    bourgeois society, because they are created only for this kind of
    society. In the same way, the football rules are good for football,
    but they are bad for hockey.

    The rules themselves do not create the society. The rules are being
    formed simultaneously with the society, but it is impossible to
    build the social relations system if only to proclaim the rules and
    values or to pass the laws. It is extremely naïve to think that if
    you introduce in your country the official standards inherent in the
    developed bourgeois society, like the Western society, you can create
    a European democracy. The situation would be completely different -
    the rules would not be effective. At best, they will be ignored.

    The rules of the respectable bourgeois society are ineffective in
    the earthquake-destroyed Haiti, and they would be ineffective in a
    peripheral capitalist society, which the modern Russia is, as well.

    They were ineffective in Western Europe about three hundred years ago,
    when the bourgeois system was imposed on the people through violence,
    repressions, revolutions and dictatorships. The societies were always
    and everywhere modernized in such a way.

    Only when the people were trained against their will to a certain
    system, when the resistance of opponents was suppressed and alternative
    standards, rules and values were abolished, when the government
    intimidated everybody - then the foundations of the freedom in the
    respectable bourgeois society were laid down.

    Maybe, it is not necessary to repeat this way for such a long time.

    Three hundred years is a too long period for our rapid life. For
    example, fifty years may be enough. But the question is if it makes
    sense to repeat that way in the first place.

    Boris Kagarlitsky is a Director of the Institute of Globalization
    and Social Movements
Working...
X