What is liberty? There are so many ways to approach this question, not just because different fields of study have their own methods of defining the term, such as politics, economy and philosophy, but also because the term itself is interpreted in many varied ways with very nuanced differences.
Image by TheDigitalArtist - source: Pixabay
The word "liberty" is often primarily associated with "natural rights" as opposed to "legal rights." This immediately opens up a whole can of worms, because I've never understood what "natural rights" are. I know what the definition is, but when I read that, I see a description of something that doesn't exist. They are supposed to be eternal and unalienable, we're all born with the rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Well, I'm sorry, but that's just fantasy island; if you're born in the wrong place or time, you just die, or become a feral child, or stay bound to a fate of a life long struggle for survival. There are no natural rights, so sorry, Locke, Rousseau et al, you're just wrong. There are only the rights we permit each other to have.
So, what is freedom? Broadly speaking it is the ability to do as one pleases, which implies the absence of any elevated power. But as we're talking about "the ability" to do something, we should add that liberty is what one has the power to do. Since freedom implies the absence of any elevated power, the maximum amount of freedom for the maximum amount of people can be achieved only when all individuals can wield the same amount of power; in a free society power needs to be distributed as evenly as humanly possible. We've devised a tool to approach this ideal situation and it's called "democracy."
Actually it's not a tool, but much more a cultural trait; we've been raised with the myths of freedom, the aforementioned "natural rights" being a part of that mythology, as well as the fairy tales about benevolent kings and sleeping beauty princesses and future kings turned amphibian. It's a mishmash of stories, memes and societal structuring in which free people are married to age old power structures. But we're nevertheless raised with a strong sense of our individuality, agency and freedom, and the democratic principle begins within the family. Gone are the days of the authoritarian families, when dad earned all the money and made all the decisions; now even something as important as which school to visit, or as trivial as where to go on vacation, are all discussed between the partners and even the children have a vote when they're old enough. A democracy isn't just a form of political organization, but much more than that; it's our human approximation of the natural rights we imagine we're born with.
Tribute To Rockefeller (1937)
The story of the benevolent king now has a modern counterpart; the philanthropic billionaire. It's just one of the many memes that fools us into believing the impossible; that freedom can be achieved in a society with a rigid power structure. Material wealth is the foundation upon which all power rests and it doesn't matter if it's the king or the billionaire who wields it; the ultimate goals is ALWAYS to keep the structure intact, to not shake it's foundation. That's why benevolent kings and philanthropic billionaires are such an integral part of our shared cultural headcanon; in the video above you can see how John D. Rockefeller, one of modern history's greatest criminals who became the world's first billionaire in 1916, is depicted as a genuine saint. This saint learned how to do business from his father, William Rockefeller Sr., who was a traveling snake-oil salesman; traveling because he was always on the run from customers whom he had cheated. For a more accurate description of the world's first philanthropic billionaire, see the video at the end of this post.
Eternal vigilance is indeed the price of liberty, and being aware of the memes that support the plutocracy is step one. Capitalism is founded on the accumulation of material wealth, and thus power. It's just the newest iteration of the justification of the age old power structure that has been with us all through human history and has had many social manifestations, like slavery and feudalism. Traditionally, the most famous use of "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" that’s included in books of quotations is from a speech made by the American Abolitionist and liberal activist Wendell Phillips on January 28, 1852.
Speaking to members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society that day, Phillips said:
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity."
source: this day in quotes
So little has actually changed. Democracy exists in our culture, in our heads and as a way of doing things on very small scales, but not as a political or economical reality because we still believe in benevolent kings and abide by the rules of the game that creates their modern counterparts through the accumulation of individual wealth. As long as this is the case, we will never achieve a state maximal freedom. "Eternal vigilance" in this reality entails the redistribution of wealth from top to bottom. Many will recoil at the thought of "wealth-redistribution," but I ask you to consider what an economy is. I'll help you: economy in itself IS the redistribution of wealth, it's just that we've foolishly agreed upon a method that redistributes from bottom to top, a trickle-up economy.
The Last Word on Snake Oil
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