Chapter 2. Forms Of Liberty

CHAPTER TWO

FORMS OF LIBERTY

IN SPEAKING OF LIBERTY, relationships between persons are sometimes classified into types.

One such attempt was the listing of the “four freedoms” — freedom of speech, of worship, from want and from fear — which seems deficient since all these freedoms are enjoyed by an inmate of a federal penitentiary. Anyone who considers these freedoms to be complete in their coverage, and who is distressed because he does not now enjoy full freedom, can easily acquire “freedom” for the rest of his life by committing a crime leading to a life sentence in a penitentiary.

There have been other attempts to list the types of liberty. There could be any number of listings, because any classification must of necessity be arbitrary.

It may be useful, however, to consider three distinct areas of liberty:

1. Beliefs — thoughts, ideas, faiths

2. Physical relationships

3. Economic affairs

The nature of the first and second — beliefs and actions — includes such commonplace items as one’s belief about the shape of the earth or the existence of a Deity, and the association of courtship or of a fishing trip.

Economic affairs are those of production, exchange and use of goods and services, which are involved in human activity because they are both desired and scarce enough not to be free — potatoes, houses, opera and all the others.

Confusion among the three areas of liberty may result from their being joined, as they commonly are in daily affairs. All three are involved, for instance, when two workmen discuss religion while operating at the ends of a crosscut saw, or when a man pays alimony for having beaten his wife after she had expressed her opinion of him.

The three aspects will be discussed separately, or unscrambled, as an aid to understanding the elements of the problem of liberty.

A BELIEF is a purely personal matter, always inalienable so far as liberty is concerned. It is not a thing exposed in the same manner as a physical act or an economic act. One person cannot hold a belief for another, as he can hold the other’s hand or his horse. Nor can a belief be bought and sold like wheat.

Such a concept of beliefs may be difficult to grasp, because beliefs are commonly confused with the overt evidences of belief. The distinction is important, however, in gaining a clear concept of the problem of liberty as it relates to matters of beliefs, such as thoughts, ideas and faiths.

A belief is only in a person’s mind. He may choose to reveal his belief to others, by speaking it or writing it. When he does so, the thing revealed is an overt expression of belief instead of being the belief itself. One may, in fact, proclaim a belief that is the direct opposite of the belief he truly holds, if he wishes to mislead his listener.

The difference between a belief and the expression of a belief may be illustrated by events in the life of Columbus. He believed the earth to be round, but that belief was independent of its being either expressed to anyone or indicated by any action. He expressed the belief to Queen Isabella in the hope of gaining financial help for his expedition to the Indies, and also by the act of setting sail. He might have falsified his belief, to avoid scorn or persecution, by declaring that he believed the earth to be flat while continuing to believe it to be round.

Communism offers another illustration. It is said to embrace falsehood as a proper weapon for purposes of concealment and defense. Laws and regulations aimed at it by its enemies must depend solely on evidences of belief that fall within the area of possible falsehood. How can a sincere denial of membership in the communist party or of devotion to that cause, be distinguished from a false one?

Expressions of belief are worth no more than the integrity of the person, and integrity is not to be judged by mere expressions of one’s belief or by any claims of integrity. The best evidence of belief is the nature of one’s action. When Columbus set sail, he was offering worthy evidence of his actual beliefs. When a person opposes measures which give vehicle to the points in the Communist Manifesto, that is worthy evidence of his beliefs.

Liberty is not in danger so far as a person’s belief is concerned, because in this respect he is of necessity a hermit and unavoidably free. He is at liberty to continue to believe as he will, in spite of all the dictators in the world and in spite of all the power they can grasp. The dictator may take a person’s land, his cattle, his family, his life; but he can never grab a person’s belief, because it lacks a handle for grabbing.

It is the expressions of belief, not the beliefs themselves, that are threatened with loss of liberty. The danger is in connection with those devices by which one reveals his beliefs to others, such as printing and distributing evidences of them through the mails, using the radio, or meeting with others in a church for purposes of overt expressions of religious belief. These are the things attacked by those who would destroy liberty.

Tools for the expression of beliefs are mainly economic matters. If they are not directly economic matters, they at least employ economic devices for carrying out the exchange of information or for the demonstration of beliefs. The newspaper or the radio, or some land and a building where a meeting is to be held, all involve physical acts or economic considerations. The problem of liberty arises only in these spheres.

“Thought control” is then an impossibility, in any direct sense, because thought is a personal process with no handle for direct control. Possibilities of control are restricted to the devices for influencing thought, which are usually economic matters. Devices for control include prohibiting free exchange of ideas, or the mechanisms for censoring factual information and the expression of ideas. Hitler burned the books which seemed to him to interfere with the expansion of his power. In Russia there has been censorship of the Mendelian ideas of inherited traits. Unknown to most of the youth of Europe, due to censorship and neglect, are the concepts of a liberal society; these ideas are to them unknown rather than rejected, because one cannot reject an idea without knowing what it is. So it is only the range of choice that may be narrowed by the use of censorship.

“Freedom of the press” relates to the several means of transmitting ideas, which are mainly economic means. The issue of freedom of the press is fought over the right of a person to own and operate a newspaper, or to use newsprint, or in some other way to use economic goods and services in the transmitting of ideas to others.

“Freedom of speech” relates to the expressing of ideas to others rather than the having of ideas. As a problem of liberty, it is closely akin to the right of assembly, where the censorship of speech takes the form of trying to break up assemblages of persons who would listen to a speaker. It is impossible to prevent these persons from thinking and believing what they will, but it is possible to control the use of places where the meetings might be held.

“Religious liberty” is ever secure. Since one’s religious beliefs are a personal matter, the threat to liberty is restricted to the overt manifestations of religion — the church property where a meeting is to be held, the right to print and distribute literature, or the right to hire a specialist to teach matters of religious belief.

“Political liberty” is a problem only in connection with the expressing of political beliefs, rather than the having of these beliefs. It has to do with the usage of the political machine, and with the selection of those who will operate it. This political machine, however, operates mainly in matters of economics, and in that sense has to do with economic liberty rather than with liberty of beliefs. Votes buy things, and votes are bought.

Perhaps nowhere is the cause of liberty so much maligned as over these issues having to do with belief and ideas. One is prone to forget the personal nature of beliefs, with the result that other liberties are marauded in the futile effort to control something uncontrollable. We are prone to attack the professed beliefs of others with the weapon of power rather than reason. This complex problem of liberty as it relates to differences of opinion is, however, something aside from the main line of this discussion.

TO WHATEVER EXTENT a person prevents the freedom of action of another, the liberty of that other person has suffered encroachment.

Two persons may desire to stand in the same place at the same time. This is a physical impossibility, and so long as both persist in their desires, the liberty of one or the other must suffer a loss. How can such problems be solved? Is there any way to preserve liberty in situations like that of two persons who may desire to stand in the same place at the same time, or who may bump into each other in other ways?

Physical relationships take many forms, among them being the outstandingly important one of “association.” The hermit avoids the problem by associating with no one. But all except the hermit must face the problem of choice in association.

The only way to be totally “non-discriminating” in association with persons would be to share one’s time and love equally among all persons on earth. As far as the time element of this plan is concerned, an average lifetime would allow a little less than one-half second of one’s time for each other person.

Probably nobody wants to be a hermit. And total non-discrimination is a technical impossibility, even if one should desire to try it. So the problem of selection of associates is unavoidable; the question then becomes one of who shall have the rights of selection.

The selection of associates can be either by the person himself or for him by someone else. There is no other alternative.

Selection of associates by others can be illustrated by many commonplace events. A person in prison has his associates selected for him, for the duration of his stay. One who is forced to become a cog in a military machine, or who is assigned to civil tasks by a government that controls the labor force and employment, has lost his liberty in that realm of association. Parental or political selection of a spouse violates liberty in association, in a most important part of a person’s life. Sometimes, for purposes of personal prestige or for other personal reasons, one may bring pressure to bear upon his spouse to join a club or a parent may make little Susie go to a party where the children in attendance are not to her liking. All these are instances of trespass on liberty in the matter of association.

Every voluntary association is a two-way deal, willingly accepted by both parties in the same manner as the free exchange of goods in the market place. The insistence of one person that another associate with him against the other’s wishes is a violation of the other’s liberty, in the same manner as forcing one to sell at a given price in the market place violates his liberty in that realm. In some of its more intimate forms, violating liberty of association is judged to be a criminal offense; but in other realms one is forced by law to violate his preferences as defined under liberty and freedom of choice —he is legally forced to “discriminate.”

Under liberty, the right to select associates is sacred. One person may prefer to concentrate his association largely on one or a few other persons; another may prefer to scatter his association widely. There is no one “right” way to do it.

A person is not able to tell exactly why he selects certain persons as associates rather than others. If he cannot tell for himself, he is certainly unqualified to pass judgments for others. No person can have the insight into the preferences and wishes of another sufficient to justify his trying to manage these affairs for another. A parent probably knows his own child as well as one person can know another, yet attempts to judge the child’s preferences in association usually end in utter failure.

Selection of associates is, to be sure, “discrimination.” But if that right under liberty is to be judged improper or illegal, we shall have to make some drastic changes in our concepts about the propriety of monogamy, about the wisdom of several of the Commandments, and about other important concepts of morals and justice in human society.

It is often falsely assumed that liberty in the choice of associates means irresponsibility in those relationships. But legal and non-legal contractual obligations, founded on free choice in the origin of the arrangement, can be made binding under liberty; forms with which we are familiar include marriage and employer-employee relationships. Contracts are not a violation of the tenets of liberty, but liberty requires that there be freedom of choice by the parties to the deal regarding the terms of the contract.

The only possible way to preserve liberty in physical relationships is to have acceptance of rules of the game such that situations of possible overlapping or conflicting desires are resolved in advance. What is needed is to have “rules for a ball game,” such as those discussed in later sections, accepted by the players in advance. Acceptance of necessary and workable rules of the game prevents it from developing into mayhem. There is no other way by which the game of human relationships can be played without destroying the liberty of someone.

Surrender, forced upon one by the other, is not a solution consistent with liberty. It may serve as a truce during conflict, but that is all.

Forced arbitration, for the same reason, is not to be confused with a voluntary solution that is in harmony with liberty.

THE PROBLEM of economic liberty touches every exchange of goods and services, the ownership of property, and every contractual arrangement involving these “economic” affairs, because human relationships are involved in all of them.

Economic liberty is absent to whatever extent a person is prohibited from using his talents and his property to produce and sell (or exchange) anything he desires, at whatever price is agreeable to him and to the buyer. If he is prohibited from doing this, by another person or by any combination of persons who are not direct parties to the deal, his liberty is thereby transgressed. And further, it makes no difference, so far as liberty is concerned, under what name the act of prohibition is paraded; or whether it is by a corporation, a cooperative, a labor union, a trade union, the government, or what not.

Economic goods and services come into being as a result of the physical and mental acts of persons. Property and income have been called, quite appropriately, “the economic extensions of the person.” What has been said about liberty in physical relationships, therefore, applies also to all economic affairs.

Economic affairs absorb a large part of all human thought and action, either directly or indirectly. If one considers carefully his every thought and action for a day, he will see that economics touches nearly every part. Although the most highly-prized things of life may be those beyond the economic pale — love, beauty, religious faith — the economic things of life tie in with most of these or are used in their behalf. Love may be expressed by gifts that are bought; intellectual enjoyment is aided by books; the trip to a religious meeting may be by auto or by train, to a meeting hall located on land owned by someone.

A high level of economic liberty is thus a requisite to all other liberties. Historical evidence shows that economic slaves enjoy none of these liberties, except as their masters may choose to allow a temporary slackening of their chains. The slave in old Rome, who is reported to have said to Caesar that he never really knew freedom until he became Caesar’s slave, should have been the court jester; he exhibited a rare ability to compound foolishness!

A dictator who has full economic control over his subjects has in his hands the tools by which to deny them all other forms of alienable liberty, leaving them no recourse except rebellion. The dictator can use economic means to deny any person a place to stand and speak his mind, and even a place to sit and think, merely by having control of all the land.

Thoreau, who attempted withdrawal from society in his pursuit of liberty, was caught and jailed for refusing to pay his taxes — a small handle with great powers over liberty.

Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovakian patriot, was called a great defender of freedom. But he said: “… Czechoslovakia must work out the synthesis between Russian socialism and Western liberty … I’ll go all the way with Russia — all the way up to one point. Socialistic economics — okay. But if anyone tries to take away our freedom — freedom to think and say what you believe — the right to your own thoughts, your own soul….”

That was early in 1946. On March 10, 1948, after living for a time under the socialistic economics he had okayed, Masaryk plunged to his death from his office window in Prague. We may never know what induced him to suicide, but it may well have been that he came to realize the emptiness of his hope — the hope that persons can live in liberty after they have given up economic liberty.

It may be incorrect to say that economic liberty is the only form of liberty, but it seems correct to say that economic liberty pervades the entire problem of liberty and is an absolute requisite to liberty in general.