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Title: Fanatics of freedom
Author: Amedeo Bertolo
Date: 1989
Language: en
Topics: Freedom
Source: Retrieved on 17th May 2021 from https://autonomies.org/2020/10/amedeo-bertolo-fanatics-of-freedom/
Notes: This essay was presented at the seminar “La libertà, le libertà, i libertari”, in Milan, 2–3 of December, 1989, later revised and published in Volontà, n. 3–4, 1996. An abridged English translation of a previous version of this writing was published as “Fanatics of Freedom” in Our Generation, vol. 23, n. 2 (1992), pp. 50–66. (An Our Generation Magazine archive is available online).

Amedeo Bertolo

Fanatics of freedom

I am a fanatical lover of freedom.

Michail Bakunin

Anarchism is an exaggeration of the idea of freedom.

Karl Popper

My title and the epigraphic quotations must already show very clearly

which way my argument is to head. I hope that this will allow us to

avoid losing our way in the labyrinth of the more than two hundred

recognized meanings of the word “freedom”.[1] This “porous”,

“proteiform”, constantly appearing word is probably the most used word

in the world of politics, whether in its doctrine, its practice or in

political news.[2] With the events in Eastern Europe over the past few

months, the inflation in the use of the word freedom is in danger of

reaching monstrous levels. And, as we all know, with inflation money

loses value. With the current inflation in the use of the word freedom,

too, its semantic value is in danger of plummeting with the speed of

some South American currencies … Even the fascists feel themselves to

have the right to speak of freedom, in one of its many aberrations,

called “positive” freedom (to which we will return later). As indeed had

Stalin, as had Wojtyla. Or, somewhat more nobly, as had Plotinus or

Montesquieu. In Plotinus’ words: “Man becomes free when he moves towards

the Good.”[3] Or from Montesquieu: “Freedom consists in being able to do

what one must want” (italics mine) …[4]

So, out of the more than two hundred meanings for the word “freedom”,

the only ones that interest us are those which serve to define the

theoretical and practical dimension of anarchist freedom, of freedom in

its anarchist sense.

With what purpose? With the purpose of redefining my, our identity, as

anarchists, on the basis of the central value of our imaginary, with the

purpose of reaffirming the inexhaustible diversity of anarchism,

especially when confronted with a complementary and today “triumphant”

liberal democracy. But, at the same time, we can reduce this diversity

to its essence, so as not to waste it in defending the indefensible,

such as, for example, statements of the kind, “from an anarchist point

of view, dictatorship and democracy are one and the same.” And finally,

in order to find, if it is indeed possible, a lay or secular concept of

freedom, that is to say a “neutral” area which will allow real

communication and action between anarchists and non-anarchists. We are

different and should remain so, as it is our diversity which gives

meaning to our existence and to our resistance to assimilation (to

homologation, as it is said today). Different, yes, cultural mutants,

yes – but not Martians. We share a great part of the common cultural

heritage of humanity and, in particular, as far as values are

considered, a great part of European culture and, more specifically, of

the culture of the Enlightenment and the post-Enlightenment. There are

some differences which are important, indeed fundamental to our identity

– but only some, after all. To pursue the genetic metaphor, our

diversity concerns some few cultural genes out of millions … which

however make the difference. Think: between humans and chimpanzees,

there is but a 1–2 percent difference in DNA.

It is in this direction that the following reflection moves. But for

this goal, one single definition, one single accepted meaning of the

word “freedom” is not enough. We need several, though it is necessary to

reduce them to one central meaning. There are different levels,

different environments, different contexts which reflect, directly or

indirectly, the anarchist concept of freedom in both its descriptive and

prescriptive understandings, in both its effectual and valuative

meanings.

Brief excursus. The distinction between value-related and descriptive

terms (or, better, concepts) is far from clear and is more a matter of

convention than of “objectivity”. To term a “fact” a fact is already

something of a value judgment. The meaning of “value” is itself

difficult to define clearly – in the words of one dictionary of

philosophy – “because this word most often expresses an unstable

concept, a step from fact to right”.[5] For example, the statement (from

the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Art. 1) that “All men are born and

live free” is presented as an assessment of fact, whereas it is at the

same time a value judgment.

According to Max Planck, “the problem of freedom leads to the heart of

those dark woods in which philosophy lost itself.”[6] We are looking for

the path or better, a path.

Hannah Arendt writes: “to raise the question of ‘what is freedom?’ seems

an impossible task. … In its simplest form the difficulty can be

summarised in the contradiction between our conscience which tells us we

are free and therefore responsible, and our everyday experience of the

world around us, in which we are directed by the principle of cause and

effect.”[7] Freedom and causality…

In 1963, a tiny group of anarchists (of which I was one) founded and

produced, albeit briefly, a periodical entitled “Materialismo e

libertà“. As we were (or felt we were) materialists and, at the same

time we considered ourselves (and were) profoundly libertarian, we

considered that there could not, indeed should not, be any contradiction

between the two things. Had Bakunin himself not talked of the

“materialistic conception of freedom”? If the “grand old man” said it…

At that time I was twenty-two.

Today the “materialistic conception of freedom” seems to me to be a far

more complex philosophical problem than I or we believed then. In

particular, I see freedom (not just in the “anarchist” sense, but

freedom pure and simple) as incompatible with a reductionist concept of

materialism – mechanicism – that we so boldly proclaimed. Today, when we

are no longer sure what is the real nature of nature (matter? energy?

-try to find an answer from sub-atomic physics and astrophysics as they

stand today). Today, when we do not know exactly what is the “reality of

reality” (do we present reality in a certain way because it “is” like

that or “is” reality in fact like that because we present it in a

certain way? Or … [8]).

And yet … And yet, I still consider myself to be a “materialist”. The

quotation marks are a candid admission of uncertainty concerning this

philosophical term. This “materialist” is, and probably always was, to

be seen to hold to a “Popperian realism of common sense”.[9] I am a

materialist in that, unlike the various types and degrees of idealists,

I see “matter”’ (in the sense of the physical world) as the model of

reality, in the sense that, unlike the various orders and levels of

mystics, I believe I need the instruments of reason to explain reality

and to transform it (although this is not of course the same as

“instrumental rationality” – indeed far from it).

Today, if we want to find a rational explanation of “things”, we must

cope with the – enormous – problem of the relationship between

determinism (cause and effect as a necessary relationship between

phenomena, even if with all the complexities of retroaction and the

other devilries of contemporary epistemology) and freedom. If reality

can be reduced to purely deterministic relationships, how can “freedom”

exist and be conceived of? If everything is determined, then the

“freedom” of a choice – of every choice – is purely apparent, no more

than a way (as is “chance” as well) of describing our ignorance of all

the causes that have necessarily determined that sequence of phenomena

that we have chosen. But, to paraphrase Bakunin speaking of the

non-existence of god, “man is, wants to be free, therefore, absolute

causal determination does not exist”.[10]

There is a watered-down version of determinism, also called

“auto-determinism” (although if this term is looked at closely, it has

very little to do with what I will later be calling self-determination)

which is interesting, almost convincing, from the point of view of a

“libertarian materialist” – but it is still not quite enough. This soft

determinism, as one critic has referred to it,[11] according to which

(quoting Berlin[12]): “The nature and the structure of the personality,

the emotions, attitudes, choices, decisions and other acts that occur

would play a fundamental role in what happens, but would therefore be

the result of causes, whether psychological or physical, social or

individual, which in their turn are effects of other causes and so on in

an uninterrupted succession. According to the best-known version of this

doctrine, I am free if I do what I what I want to (…) However my choice

is itself ‘causally‘ determined, because if not it would be a ‘chance‘

event.” (my italics)

Chance is the bête noir of the determinists, both hard and soft. I,

however, while I have always felt close to the determinists’ position

(as a good materialist, first without quotes and then with them), I

believe that the solution to the philosophical dilemma of freedom can

only start with the introduction of “chance” at the side of causal

determination.

Chance has been a category of thought since very ancient times[13] which

seemed to have been swept disdainfully aside by modern science (in

theory if not in practice) as mere ignorance of the relationships of

cause and effect, until almost the end of the 19^(th) century, when

quantum indeterminacy and the subsequent developments in physics and

genetics brought it back into question, not only at a subatomic level

but also at the macro-molecular one.

So chance seems to have been firmly ensconced at the side of cause and

effect as a “scientific” fact. Reality presents, at its various levels

of organisation, chance breaking into the causal chain.

But naturally this is not yet freedom. Causal indeterminism (although

probability may go some way to reducing it to the domain of the

“determinable”) is no more freedom than is causal determination.[14] The

two together, however, are the presuppositions of freedom, the logically

necessary conditions of its appearance at a human level, that is, at the

socio-cultural level.

Freedom, understood as individual or collective choice of behaviour from

among various possibilities, in the face of a certain state of

things,[15] calls for both an openness to behaviour which is equally

compatible with the pre-established present state of things and the

voluntary intervention (therefore determined by chance) in the causally

determinable elements of this state of things.

Chance can also be seen anthropomorphically as a sort of physical

predecessor of freedom,[16] but this, in its most fundamental meaning

(and so that which interests us here) appears only – as we were saying –

with the emergence of human nature, with the emergence, that is, of an

animal whose behavior is essentially not determined by the “laws” of

biology[17] (although they cannot of course be ignored). It is true that

other species of animals also exhibit behaviour which is in some degree

voluntary,“free”, but it is only in the human being that this dimension

of freedom, of the voluntary nature of behaviour, has become essential,

characteristic and identifying. This was a qualitative leap analogous to

that when the biological developed out of chemical and the chemical out

of physical.

Every subsequent “level of organisation”[18] of reality absorbs within

itself the “laws” of the preceding levels, adding and superimposing its

own “laws” on them. The hydrochloric acid in my stomach reacts

chemically, that is to say according to the laws of chemistry, with the

substances it encounters, but the stomach cannot be explained by those

laws, nor even the release of hydrochloric acid in the gastric tract.

For that we have to turn to the biological level.

Then, after the biological level, we find, in natural history the level

of the socio-cultural, that is, the typically human level. It is here

that freedom appears as a new dimension of reality, which introduces

itself between causality and chance. Freedom is neither determinism nor

indeterminism: it is self-determination. And it is at this point that

socio-historical creation[19] takes over from the simple interaction

between chance and necessity in the appearance of the new.

In the course of the development of the human race, instinct has come to

play an ever-decreasing role[20] and has been replaced by culture, that

is, by norms, rules, codes of communication and interaction. As I have

written elsewhere: “It is precisely in this substitution where human

freedom at its highest level is situated: self-determination.”[21]

This freedom of human beings, which belongs to the species as Homo

Sapiens, but also and unavoidably to every individual member of the

species, is a freedom which, with all the reservations already

mentioned, lies in judgments of fact. It is not a freedom as value. And,

as I have already said, it is freedom as a value that interests me.

Nonetheless this “anthropological” dimension of freedom – not yet

ethical but open to ethical questions – is the albeit fragile foundation

of every possible interpretation of freedom as value – including ours.

This assumption seems to me to be essential to our discussion.[22]

This brings us to another problematical step, intricate but unavoidable,

in a discussion of anarchist freedom. It is the fact that freedom is not

a value in itself. No value, in any axiological system, is independent

of other values. There are no individual values but only systems of

interconnected values. This is equally true of the anarchist system of

values, whose essential nucleus (as with those of its siblings, children

of the Enlightenment, liberalism and socialism) refers back to the

Enlightenment-revolutionary triad (revolutionary in the sense of the

French Revolution):

liberté-egalité-fraternité/freedom-equality-brotherhood.

So we are faced with not a unique value but a configuration of values,

whose reciprocal relationships are determining. Unfortunately our words

can only follow the linear path of spoken thought, becoming, at best,

two-dimensional with ramifications, deviations and excursus. But to

really speak of freedom, we should be able to speak in three or four

dimensions at the same time, so as to be able to include all the

“configurations” of values. The only artifice of logic which I can think

of is that of projecting onto to freedom all of the other essential

anarchist values, thereby also attributing to it the features of its

relationships with the other elements of the axiological configuration.

This is as much as to say that we may project the solid whole on to one

plane or rather we can say that we will incorporate the other values

into freedom, which may indeed be less of a misuse of words than it

seems. Freedom in the axiological configuration of anarchism has a

specific value, an “exuberance” which is such that other values can,

albeit with a little effort, be recognised as premises or consequences.

At this point, however, we must consider these other anarchist values,

to render explicit what may then be taken as implicit.

The foremost of these is – predictably – equality, which the liberals

continually label the enemy sister of freedom. Today, we are in this

continuity. But it is not difficult to show that, at least from an

anarchist point of view, the two values not only can, but inevitably

must, be compatible. We need only point out the different – indeed

opposing – logical and value content of diversity and inequality.

Diversity is the opposite not of equality but of uniformity. We need

only show that diversity is a category in itself and raise it to the

rank of an explicit value, to see that equality ceases to be its

negation.

This is not mere word play, but is rather a semantic operation which is

very much in line with our tradition and even with the most honest of

liberal traditions. In our tradition, anarchists have always seen

diversity as implicit in freedom as a value, as their inevitable

individualism, their obvious “extravagance”, continually go to show. It

is also in the best liberal tradition, as when John Stuart Mill, for

example, writes: “My writings on freedom form a sort of philosophical

manual of a simple truth (…) that is to say the importance for man and

for society of a wide variety of characters and of a complete freedom

for human nature to develop in innumerable different directions.”[23]

It is time to make explicit what was implicit (as I already suggested

ten years ago).[24] It is time to see that diversity – understood as

difference devoid of any hierarchical connotation – is a value in

itself, which is to give value to an incontrovertible fact of nature:

the infinite diversity of reality.[25] This reflects the analogous

operation by environmentalists and feminists. At the same time, the

negative value of inequality, of difference inherent in hierarchy, must

also be stressed.

At this point we are left with equality as a value cleansed of

ambiguity, a value reduced to its essential form of qualitative

equality: equality in freedom. This does not, of itself, obviate the

quantitative dimension of equality as defined by Castoriadis:

“arithmetic” (“possessed equally by all”) and “geometric” (“to each

according to …”, “in proportion to …”).[26] However, this quantitative

dimension can be reduced to applications and measures which are only

partial and can be debated in the light of qualitative equality, that is

to say, equality with respect to power and so, according to my

definition of power[27], with respect to freedom. Even such an honest

enemy of equality as Raymond Polin can admit this from the start,

writing, “It is true that even I hold it to be undeniable that men are

born free, that is to say capable of freedom, and also that they are

born fitted to exist in freedom. The capacity for freedom and awareness,

which are in fact one and the same thing, is the very essence of human

nature. It does not follow that men must be considered equal in their

capacity to be free.”[28]

Nonetheless, in order to be equally free, human beings must be equal, if

I may be forgiven the word play. Equality must be seen as a value if we

are to go on.

And then, what of brotherhood, or less ideologically, of solidarity, the

Cinderella of the triad? For me too it remains something of the

Cinderella as it seems only slightly problematic, although of course

necessary in the context of the present discussion of freedom. It is

clearly necessary on an effective level, such an eminently social animal

as the human is inconceivable without a wide and growing practice of

mutual aid.[29] The autonomy of individual human beings must needs

coexist with social interdependence (“interdependence”: yet another term

which is quite rightly dear to ecological thought). But solidarity is

also necessary at the level of the pursued values, as the “mortar” of

freedom, equality and diversity, to ensure that freedom does not decline

into indifference, and diversity does not become inequality. And also to

ensure that justice is not blind, avoiding, as Bookchin says, an

inequality of equals, an “inequality in fact” of “equals in right” and

safeguarding the differences of, and means for, an equality of

diversity. Solidarity is necessary to give a sense of coherence to a

seeming paradox: “the communitarian individualism”, to which Alan Ritter

effectively reduces the axiological nucleus of anarchism.[30]

This call for a sense of community, however, must not distract from the

fact that anarchist solidarity is not limited to small units. It goes

beyond the family, the clan, the lodge, the corporation, the nation… to

take in the entire human species, although inevitably in a series of

concentric circles of decreasing intensity (and with particular

attention for the weakest). The intensity of this solidarity may

decrease but its nature remains unchanged, never becoming extraneous.

This, then, is a brief sketch of the context of the anarchist

interpretation of freedom as a value. The first step in fleshing it out

may be with the words of Bakunin.

Is this an appeal to authority? Nothing of the sort. This is rather due

to the fact that I have quite honestly failed to find anything better to

define the essence of that interpretation, its most profound meaning,

even though Bakunin’s definitions are intuitive (and must be understood

intuitively) rather then being wholly explicable by logic. On the other

hand, the anarchist conception of freedom, in its fundamental nature,

probably lies outside the scope of logical analysis and cannot be

reduced to a precise and complete rational definition. It is almost

intangible and can only be explained in metaphors. However, even I,

atheist and rationalist since my early adolescence, must cede – a little

– before the fact that the founding principle of my system of values is

not completely reducible to logic.

I am in no way ashamed of this, as Bakunin himself said that freedom is

first and foremost aesthetic, a passion, before it is political and

even, perhaps, before it is ethical. The grand old man said, “I am a

fanatical lover of freedom”. A lover, do you understand? This brings us

entirely within the aesthetic dimension, the realm of “feeling”. I like

freedom, I like it to death (literally, I would even, in the last

resort, die for it). I love freedom. But, getting back to the more

tangible, if still slippery level of the ethical-political, Bakunin

said, “I can say that I feel free only in the presence of other men and

in relationship to them … I am only free and human insofar as I

recognise the freedom and the humanity of those around me … A slave

owner is not a man but a master.” And he goes on to reach the heart of

the matter: “… the freedom of others is far from being a limit to or a

denial of mine, on the contrary it is a necessary condition which

confirms it. I can only be truly free through the freedom of others so

that, the more free men around me, the wider, deeper and more

far-reaching their freedom, the wider, deeper and more far-reaching is

my own.”[31] And yet again, “I am speaking of that freedom in which each

individual, rather than feeling limited by the freedom of others, sees

it as his confirmation and his gateway to infinity.”[32] What then is

this freedom which produces an effect of “collective force”,[33] so that

the final result when individual freedoms are added together is greater

than their sum, analogous to that which Proudhon described for the

economy? Clearly, it is anarchist freedom which is strongly and

necessarily tied to equality, solidarity and diversity,[34] strong

equality,[35] strong solidarity, strong diversity. It is this

“strength”[36] which makes them compatible, in contrast with the feeble

conception[37] of freedom and equality which weaken each other,

retaining and even reinforcing their seeming contradictions …

It is perhaps then this peculiar configuration of freedom, equality,

diversity and solidarity understood in the strong sense, traceable,

finally, to that very strong Bakuninist conception of freedom, which

could represent the “hard core” of anarchism, and be a good and useful

definition of anarchy. This is a definition of anarchy as a moral

imperative of the kind, “be neither slaves, nor masters”, but expressed

positively. It is a definition of anarchy as an organising principle of

reality and action, as a central element of an imaginary, that precisely

of the anarchist, which translates as much as is possible both sides of

the Janus face of being anarchists: that of living with libertarians and

acting for a social transformation in the libertarian sense.

Posterior Digression. In a recent article in “Volontà” [Il

fondamentalismo anarchico, n. 1, 1996, pp. 173–191], Pietro Adamo

utilises, for some reflections on anarchism, the epistemological model

of Imre Lakatos. In Lakatos’ model (conceived of for “scientific

programmes” in competition between themselves), for each programme, a

“core” of founding ideas and a “protective belt” [of “auxillary

hypotheses” – TN.] are identified which contain “everything that is

useful for the ideas of the core and for the growth of the programme

itself”.

Curiously, about a dozen years ago, while having no knowledge of

Lakatos, I employed in “Volontà” a similar image in

research/experimentation for a “post-classical” anarchism. I wrote about

a “shared core of values” and added that starting from this “‘utopian’,

hard core, of anarchism, all of the possible and imaginable wealth of

experience, sensibilities, individual and collective creativity, visible

and hidden, should be mobilised to think and make a living rainbow

anarchism.” And two years earlier, again in “Volontà”, I wrote, with a

slightly agronomic metaphor, of a “hard core” of anarchism that must be

surrounded by a “pulp” of flexible, experimental, disputable, and

absolutely non-dogmatic thought and action …

This would be, in my opinion, both in theory and practice, a more

proficuous definition than the more traditional and negative definitions

of a society (or model of society) “without government” or, already

better, “without a State”, or, much better, “without hierarchy or

domination”. Even though, I admit it, there are no lack of good

arguments in favour of a “negative anarchism”, that is, to cite the poet

Eugenio Montale, “we can only say this, what we are not, what we do not

want” … Let us leave then to a kind of “protective belt” all of the

positive attributes (classical and emergent) of an auspicious model of

anarchist society and all of the strategic and tactical conjectures and

experiences.

We have taken a step forward in the direction of a more complete

verbal-logical, formal definition of the anarchist conception of

freedom. At this point, it may be useful to distinguish between two

categories which roughly correspond to the “public” and the “private”

spheres. This is a logical distinction, rather than a real contrast or

contradiction. The juxtaposition of freedom from politics and freedom in

politics, to use Arendt’s term,[38] is not important here. The anarchist

conception brings together, in Benjamin Constant de Rebeque’s term, the

ancient and the modern ideas of freedom.[39] They are brought together,

while remaining separate.

They must, perhaps, remain formally distinct, if, as Norberto Bobbio

tells us, “the problem of freedom is how to act in such a way that we

can distinguish a public sphere and a private one, so that man is not

entirely reduced to the citizen.”[40] This gives us two manifestations

of the same phenomenon: of freedom as self-determination and

self-realisation of the human being, of all concrete individual human

beings. Human beings determine and realise themselves by actively and

directly participating in the process of cultural determination, of

socio-historical creation, the process of decision making in the

“political” sphere. And human beings determine and realise themselves by

their choices in the “private” sphere, that is, in everything that has

to do with individual life styles.

The first sphere, the public or “political”, is that of the generalised

grid of social determinations of behavior. And these determinations may

not be external or extraneous to (imposed on) the individual, but only

if the individual participates in their continual creation and

re-creation (modification or confirmation) on a basis of parity. Only

thus is the second sphere, the “private”, not a residual refuge of

freedom (a “privatized” freedom), but rather the space of another game

of freedom, that of individual freedom within the network of collective

freedom, or rather (as the term “collective” freedom may be ambiguous)

the collective game of freedom. I use the word “game” intentionally as

all games have rules (and it is even a game to invent new rules).[41]

There are, of course, games which are almost completely governed by

rules or by chance, but these are the least enjoyable. Or at least I

think so.

So the juxtaposition of freedom from politics and in politics has

nothing to do with us (as anarchists), it is a dilemma which only faces

those who see politics, the “public” sphere, social norms, as the sphere

of non-freedom, of necessity, or, alternatively, those who want

everything to be controlled, decided and predictable and see individual

freedom as an absurd claim, an intolerable disorder. But for anarchists,

as Élisée Reclus said, “anarchism is the highest form of order” …

The problem of the distinction between negative and positive freedom,

between freedom from and freedom to[42] is analogous. It may be useful

on the level of logical analysis for studying and testing the different

conceptions of freedom. It is well-known that positive freedom is prone

to gross mystification. If “real” freedom is freedom to move towards the

“Good”, a good which may be defined in a hundred different ways, both

religious and lay, everything is possible in the name of “real” freedom:

the Gulag, the Inquisition and the like. But a purely negative

conception of freedom is equally liable to mystification, particularly

because it undervalues or even in fact deprives individuals (in the game

of freedom) of that sphere of power, of functions instituted and

controlled by society, which is fundamental to our humanity, to our

being fully human. And even in the private sphere we may only too likely

see the return of an interiorised pseudo-freedom in the form of freedom

from: from sin… from our worse nature… [43]

It is probably true, as Berlin says, that positive freedom and negative

freedom have generally developed historically in different

directions.[44] But it is not true, it is in fact absolutely false, in

the case of anarchism, which represents the historically most complete

synthesis of the two “freedoms”. To the anarchists, both freedoms have

always been closely and strongly linked. They are two ways of saying

essentially the same thing. To return to Bakunin, “…not that

individualistic, egoistic, narrow-minded, sham freedom practised by the

school of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and by all the other school of bourgeois

liberalism, which consider the so-called rights of all, represented by

the State, as the limits on the individual and which inevitably end by

reducing the rights of the single individual to zero … No, I mean … the

freedom that consists of the full development of all material,

intellectual and moral activities that are latent in each and every one

of us” (my italics).[45]

This brings us to the final knot to be unraveled in my train of thought

(although obviously not to the end of the unending discussion of

freedom). This last knot concerns the existence (or not) of a “neutral”,

or better, a lay conception, acceptable to different “faiths”, even

though a purely neutral conception of freedom, stripped of values, is a

contradiction in terms.[46] Is there or not a conception of freedom

which allows for communication and action, including but not limited to

(and herein lies the problem), the specific anarchist conception of

freedom?

Since we pose the question, we must obviously accept the idea that there

is no one true conception of freedom (that is, ours). The anarchist idea

is “obviously” (for me, us) the most beautiful, the richest, the most

promising, the most in line with human nature… But it is not the only

one, nor that one which is the most widespread in the collective

imaginary today. Far from it. It will not, I believe, be difficult to

accept this statement, which is both a statement of fact and a value

judgment (and so in fact the anarchist conception is not and cannot be

the only conception of freedom because freedom, by its very nature,

cannot be reduced to one particular interpretation without denying

itself),[47] and so we must determine whether or not the anarchist

conception of freedom is not only essentially different but also

incompatible with other conceptions.

If we apply the mix of utopia and common sense that I suggested to

anarchists some years ago[48] to this dilemma (which is theoretical, but

also – strongly – practical), I arrive at the almost obvious

hypothetical reply: the freedom of the anarchists is fundamentally

irreducible to other freedoms, however similar they may seem, (the

utopian dimension), but at the same time it is compatible with them (the

common sense dimension). I believe that there is, or at least may be, a

lay idea of freedom in which different conceptions, including the

anarchist one, can confront each other and coexist. Some, but not all,

that is, as the fascist interpretation, to take one example, or the

Leninist one, would automatically be excluded once this lay dimension of

freedom has been more or less broadly defined.

I will try to define it. This is not an easy task, partly because I have

only just started to think about it. We need definitions which are not

overly neutral, as otherwise everything could be included, from

Wojtyla’s “freedom is wanting what must be”(1983) to some pseudo-poets’

“freedom to be enslaved by your beautiful black (or blue or green…)

eyes”. So not overly neutral, but obviously acceptable in principle to

various doctrinal approaches. In view of my cultural make-up, I am

thinking of the other two great schools of post-Enlightenment thought,

liberalism and socialism (including but not limited to the Marxist

variety). So I am seeking definitions which can appeal to the less

hierarchical minds of these two traditions, to their genuine “weak”

libertarian (and/or egalitarian) natures. I would like to start with

Berlin: “Anyone who sees a value in freedom in itself has believed that

freedom of choice is an inalienable element of what makes human beings

human. This is the underlying factor in both the positive demand for a

voice in the laws and practices of the society in which one lives, and

in the demand for a personal space .. in which one is one’s own

master.”[49] Freedom is also a “negative space in which a man is not

obliged to account for his actions to anyone else as long as this can be

compatible with the existence of an organised society.”[50]

Although a somewhat “weaker” version than the anarchist one, it includes

both freedom as participation in power and freedom as the arbitrariness

of individual choice (limited only by the “equal freedom of others”). It

is, or could be, a basis for a constructive dialogue, together with a

series of struggles for freedom, for individual and collective freedom,

in the “private” and the “public”. We may move progressively, through

“successive dislocations”, towards a widespread acceptance of the

anarchist conception of freedom, while still remaining within the “lay”

context.[51]

“Having a voice” in politics may quite well lead to direct democracy in

the political sphere (that is to say the negation of the State as a

principle of hierarchical organization).[52] “Equal freedom” may provide

equality and lead quite logically to self-management in the economic

sphere. And the limit of the freedom of others may, also quite

logically, come to seem a pseudo-limit. We may well discover and prove,

both in theory and in practice, that (or better, if, keeping doubt

alive) the equal freedom of all may not reduce but rather reinforce the

freedom of each, of the freedom of all and of everyone.

As, after all, that “grand old man” Bakunin said.

Notes

[1] “The meaning of this term […] is so porous that it will allow almost

any interpretation” (I. Berlin, Quattro saggi sulla libertà,

Feltrinelli, Milan, 1988, p. 188). I too would prefer to avoid

“discussing either the history of the more than two hundred meanings

that have been recorded for this proteiform term by the historians of

ideas” (Ibid.).

[2] “Freedom is possibly the most frequently used word in political life

and doctrine… It tends to be used by all and sundry to designate

whatever action, institution, directive or political system that they

may hold most dear, from obedience to the law (positive or natural) to

economic well-being” (F.E. Oppenheimer, Dimensioni della libertà,

Feltrinelli, Milan, 1982, p. 121).

[3] Quoted in Oppenheimer, op. cit, p. 175.

[4] Quoted in H. Arendt, La Crise de la Culture, Gallimard, Paris, 1989,

p. 209, (my italics).

[5]

A. Lalande, Dizionario critico di filosofia, ISEDI, Torino, 1971.

[6] Quoted in Arendt, op. cit., p. 188.

[7] Quoted in Arendt, op cit., p. 188.

[8] Arendt, op. cit., p. 186.

[9] It is worthwhile considering Karl Popper in this context, as he has

attempted a useful approach to reality that is neither monistic (all is

matter/all is spirit) nor dualistic (matter/spirit). Popper

distinguishes three levels of reality, which he terms World 1, World 2,

World 3. World 1 is the world of physics, chemistry and biology; World 2

of psychology (both human and animal), that of fear, hope, the impulse

to act, of all type experience, including those of the subconscious and

the unconscious; World 3 is the world of the products of the human mind

(works of art, ethical values, social institutions, scientific works,

books, theories – including the false ones as Popper is quick to

specify). This World 3, which only begins with the evolution of a

distinctive human language (“in the beginning there was the Word and the

Word was man”, one might say) is every bit as real as Worlds 1 and 2,

and its “objects” are in “close interaction” with those of the other two

levels of reality (see K. Popper, L’Indeterminisme n’est pas suffisant,

in L’Univers irresolu, Hermann, Paris, 1984, pp. 93–107).

[10] “While, along with Doctor Johnson, Alfred Lande and other sensible

realists, World 1 (see preceding note) is the real model of reality, I

am not for this re but rather a pluralist (Popper, op. cit., p. 107).

[11] “If man is free so, at least in part, will nature be as well”

(Popper, op. cit., p.105); and “Our universe is partly causal, partly

probabilistic and partly open” (Ibid., p. 107).

[12]

W. Jones, quoted in Berlin, op. cit., p. 13.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “Everything that exists in the universe is the fruit of chance and

of necessity” (Democritus, quoted in Monod, Il caso e la necessità,

Mondadori, Milano, 1986, p. 9).

[15] Despite the protests of Einstein, quantum mechanics has introduced

what may be termed a “god playing dice”… [But] the indeterminism of the

laws of probability, does not, of itself, lead to human liberation. What

we are seeking to understand is not how we can act in an unpredictable

and fortuitous fashion but rather how we can act deliberately and

rationally… Indeterminism is necessary but, in itself, is insufficient

to bring about human freedom and creativity” (Popper, op. cit., pp.

102–103).

[16] This definition is virtually the same as that of Ludovico Geymonat

(La libertà, Rusconi, Milano, 1988, p. 27), whose ideas on liberty have

been of little assistance overall.

[17] Moreover, we can also accept the ideas of a “creativity” of nature

which goes beyond pure chance and which can be considered as the matrix,

to use Murray Bookchin’s term (The Ecology of Freedom, Cheshire Books,

Palo Alto, 1983), of creativity and so of human freedom, but which is

not totally identifiable with the latter.

[18] “Recent research in anthropology suggests that the prevailing view

that the mental dispositions of men are genetically prior to culture… is

incorrect… the final stages of the biological evolution of man occurred

after the initial stages of the growth of culture [and] implies that…

tools, hunting, family organization, and, later, art, religion, and

‘science’ molded man somatically” (Clifford Geerz, quoted in A. Montagu

(ed.), Man and Aggression, Oxford University Press, New York, 1973, p.

15). Therefore, “man’s brain began to grow and develop in a simultaneous

feedback interaction with culture” (Montagu, Ibid.)

[19] See C. Castoriadis, L’Imaginaire: la creation dans le domain

socialhistorique, in Domaines de l’homme, vol. II, Seuil, Paris, 1986,

pp. 219–237.

[20] Under the selection pressures exerted by the necessity to function

in the dimension of culture, instinctive behavior would have been worse

than useless, and hence would have been negatively selected, assuming

that any remnant of it remained in man’s progenitors. In fact, I also

think it very doubtful that any of the great apes have any instincts”

(Montagu, op. cit., p. 15). Or, less extremely, “the higher the animal

on the evolutionary scale, the more its tendencies are shaped, developed

and organized into behavior by its interactions with its environment”.

And, “a number of distinguished zoologists and animal psychologists

insist that even if insects and lower animals are largely guided by

instincts, man himself is almost instinctless” (M. Hunt, in Montagu

(ed.), op. cit., p. 21).

[21]

A. Bertolo, Potere, autorità, dominio: una proposta di definizione,

“Volontà”, 2/83, p. 59.

[22] “If we accept classic determinism, we cannot pretend (as do any

philosophers) to be endowed with real freedom and creativity” (Popper,

op. cit., p. 102). The point of view of classic determinism “leads to

predestination, to the idea that hundreds of thousands of years ago, the

elementary cells contained the poetry of Homer, the philosophy of Plato,

the symphonies of Beethoven, just as the seed contains the flower”

(Ibid., p. 105). If determinism was shown to be thus, it would require a

drastic review of all the language of ethics” (Berlin, op. cit., p. 22).

“In effect, the idea of a morally responsible being would be, at best,

the result of a myth” (Ibid., p. 17) However, “until now we have not

been given valid arguments against the openness of the universe or

against the fact that radically new things are continually appearing,

nor have we been given any valid reason to doubt human freedom and

creativity” (Popper, op. cit., p. 107).

[23] “If man is free so, at least in part, will nature be as well”

(Ibid., p.105); and, “Our universe is partly causal, partly

probabilistic and partly open” (Ibid., p. 107).

[24] Quoted in G. Giorello, Introduzione to J. Stuart Mill, Saggio sulla

libertà, il Saggiatore, Milano, 1984, p. 7. But, following the liberal,

we can turn to what contemporary Italian marxists write: “We must free…

difference from its hierarchical element” (R. Gagliardi, “II

Bimestrale”, a supplement to “il manifesto”, 31-1-1989); and,

“Egalitarianism in social practice, in the concrete dimension of its

conflicts and micro-conflicts, has never [well!!!] attacked difference

but rather hierarchy, never a world of diverse beings but one made up of

inferiors and superiors, of rulers and subjects, inequality as a

principle of command and a system of Domination” (M. Bascetta, “II

Bimestrale”, Ibid., my italics; for I feel like I am dreaming and

reading the words of an anarchist!).

[25]

A. Bertolo, La gramigna sovversiva, in “Interrogations”, no. 17–18,

1979, pp. 26–27.

[26] “Each infant differs from the others: no two, except for identical

twins, share a common gene, and even identical twins may differ

phenotypically because of gestational inequalities” (L. Eisenberg, in

Montagu (ed.), op. cit., p. 65).

[27]

C. Castoriadis, Nature et valeur de l’egalité, in L’Exigence d’egalité,

La Baconniere, Neuchatel, 1982, p. 321.

[28]

A. Bertolo, Power, Authority and Domination, cit., p. 60.

[29]

R. Polin, Les deux soeurs ennemies: egalité et liberté, in L’Exigence

d’egalité, cit., p. 277.

[30] See, obviously, P. Kropotkin, II mutuo appoggio, Salerno, Roma,

1981.

[31]

A. Ritter, L’individuo comunitario, “Volontà”, 1/84.

[32]

M. Bakunin, Dio e lo Stato, in Rivolta e Libertà (ed. M. Nejrotti),

Editori Riuniti, Roma, 1973, pp. 55–56.

[33] Ibid., p. 71.

[34] With this question I would also like to say that Bakunin’s

definition is not at all a judgment based on fact. That is to say that

it is not freedom that causes “collective force, but that a freedom can

do so (the anarchist one: “my freedom grows rather than diminishes with

the freedom of others”) if it becomes a central element in the imagined

institution of society.

[35] Bakunin again: “The unlimited freedom of each by means of the

freedom of all; freedom through solidarity, freedom and equality”

(Ibid.)

[36] An “exaggerated freedom”, as Popper says (Società aperta, universo

aperto, Borla, Roma, 1984, p. 26).

[37] Or, as Nico Berti said, in their “ulteriorization” (La dimensione

utopica del pensiero anarchico, “Volontà”, 3/81). And again: “For

anarchists, individual freedom can only be truly realized through the

complete generalization of social equality and social equality can only

be fully realized through the complete generalization of individual

freedom” (Per un bilancio storico e ideologico dell’anarchismo,

“Volontà”, 3/84).

[38] The use of the adjectives, strong and weak, may be misleading as it

seems to indicate a purely quantitative difference; whereas, while

certainly quantitative features of freedom, equality, etc. can be

measured, it is, above all, qualitative.

[39] Arendt, op. cit., p. 194.

[40] “The ancient citizens wanted the division of social power between

all the citizens of a State: this was what they called freedom… The

modern aim is the safeguarding of private well-being and freedom is seen

as the guarantee that the institutions offer for this well-being” (B.

Constant, De la liberté des anciens comparée a cette des modernes, 1819,

quoted in C. Viviani, Enciclopedia filosofica, p. 102.

[41] Quoted in Viviani, op. cit., p. 203.

[42] “…a system of conditional checks which allows the establishment of

rules of the game which are able to cope with a considerable number of

combinations of actions and wishes, without the threat of a radical

rupture of the entire system with opportunities for qualitative

transgression and complete renewal of the rules of the game which

preside over the formation of a new and different system of freedom” (F.

Riccio, S. Vaccaro, E. Fiordilino, Il sapere e le sue parole, Ila Palma,

Palermo, 1989, p. 158)

[43] “If freedom is the absence of obstacles in the way of satisfaction

of a person’s wishes… one way of achieving this freedom is to overcome

one’s own desires… Rather than resisting the pressures crushing me or

removing them, I can ‘interiorize’ them” (Berlin, op. cit., p. 37)

[44] Berlin, op. cit., p. 198.

[45] Bakunin, op. cit., p. 70 (my italics).

[46] It is, of course, possible to look for (and perhaps find) a neutral

definition of freedom, but only if we consider it to be a non-ethical

term – as Oppenheimer, for example, tries to do. But a definition of

this type has no sense and no usefulness in the context that interests

us. We are concerned with freedom as a value, and with one particular

conception of it.

[47] See N. Berti, Libertà dell’etica ed etica della libertà, “Volontà”,

5/87.

[48]

A. Bertolo, Gli ex, il buon senso e l’utopia, “Volontà”, 3/85.

[49] My italics are to highlight the internal contradiction (an

involuntary “slip” – possibly a significant lapse, on libertarian

ground). Berlin in fact cites being one’s own master as a category in

the order of “positive” freedom and not in the “negative” as in this

sentence.

[50] Both these quotations are found in Berlin, op. cit., p. 57.

[51] And then perhaps to its establishment (necessarily

traumatic/revolutionary, as it is incompatible with the principle of

domination) as a central element in the imaginary institution of

society.

[52] “Anyone who is for freedom must be for being governed as little as

possible and for having the least possible government, and so to moving

towards the absence of government, towards anarchism” (Popper, Società

aperta, universo aperto, cit., p. 26) “Participation in self-government

is, like justice, a fundamental human need” (Berlin, op. cit., p. 55).