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Dialectics of Freedom
by AGinsberg
Oct-15-2014 (UTC)

Many people have called for freedom, many of whom didn't actually want
freedom. Many people don't seem to understand what freedom is or do
but encourage things which are against freedom. I am a strong
supporter of individual freedom but I disagree with many proponents of
individual freedom on how it should be attained. In this essay, I will
describe what I think is the best way to attain the most amount of
individual freedom.

    First, I think we must start with the simple (or not so simple)
question, "What is freedom?". To put it simply, freedom is the lack of
restraints. Everyone wants to be able to do what they want to do,
therefore everyone wants, in a sense "freedom". The problem this leads
to is that some people want to take away others freedom. If we were to
have true "freedom" then this must mean that we must also allow people
to take away other people's freedom, this means that even things like
murder must be allowed. However, this leads to quite a dilemma, since
you may lose your freedom because someone else took it away. In our
current Capitalistic system, we encourage people to take away other's
freedom. In our system there are people who have true "freedom" or
close to it, at least, but the majority of people lack freedom, they
are at the mercy of the people who pay them wages and the people who
sell them goods and services. To gain the most freedom you can
possibly have in this system you must crush other's freedom, i.e. by
employing sweat shop workers. Despite right-wing Libertarians [1]
being proponents of "individual freedom", they actually encourage a
system where most people do not have individual freedom. Since, if we
have true "freedom" we must allow people to take away other's freedom
but this then means that there will be people without freedom,
therefore, I must conclude that we cannot have a system where everyone
has absolute freedom. [2]

   I propose, however, that we create an abstraction of freedom.
Freedom, in the sense that everyone can do whatever they want as long
as they don't infringe on other's rights. I do think that, at least,
theoretically that this abstract freedom is quite possible. I think we
should have a State that's stated primary goal (or, maybe, only goal)
is to protect Freedom. [3] Of course, there are still some issues
which need to be addressed when defining this abstract freedom. Some
people believe that they have the right to go out in public and not
hear and/or see something that is offensive. For example, public sex
is a crime and some people think that this is justified because of
their right to not be offended. When you talk about the right to not
be offended, you remove the ground on which Freedom of Speech stands.
Someone saying or doing something that is offensive does not restrict
you from doing anything, you can still leave the house, you just may
not like what you see. Also, anything can be offensive, it's likely
that there were plenty of people offended by people who said blacks
shouldn't have to be slaves, for example. I think it should be stated
explicitly, that if the only way in which you are a victim is
mentally, then what the offender did was not a crime. Not only does
the offensive expression not really restrict you, disallowing it would
destroy the whole concept of Freedom of Speech. People often call for
the censoring of someone else's expression but when someone does it to
them they aren't happy about it. However, thinking rationally about
this issue, we must conclude that if you want to speak your mind
without legal consequence you must allow others to do so too. It may
be true, that currently your opinion is the popular one and therefore
X type of speech is censored and your speech isn't, but it is quite
possible that someday you may find yourself in the minority. As Rosa
Luxemburg said, "Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters."

   Capitalism encourages taking away other's freedoms. In a
Capitalist society, you most likely will be working for someone, in
which case you will be at the mercy of your employer because you need
money. To have the most amount of freedom, I think we must abolish
Capitalism. We must not allow anyone to have the amount of power an
employer has over their employees. We must also not allow monopolies.
I think we should try to keep organisations as local as possible, so
that no one producer has too much power. I think we must have a system
where workers own the means of production of their respective
workplace and a system with no exchange of things for other things (in
other words, no money.) However, I don't think that by itself will
lead to Freedom.

    Another major problem which will stay with us even after
Capitalism, is that the platforms on which we express ourselves are
being increasingly privatised and therefore, there is no
accountability. For example, sites like Facebook are enemies to
Freedom. Facebook and sites like it offer a service which allows you
to make your page and express your views, however, they have the power
to censor you and do. Anyone can have their own website in which they
can say whatever they want to (well, that's how it's supposed to be!)
but if you use a platform like Facebook you can be censored. I
believe, that sites like these should not be allowed to do that. If
the majority of people use Facebook or a similar platform as their
primary means of communication, it will be hard for anyone to hear
your ides without using such services, this leads to the problem that
Facebook or something like it may censor you, this means that,
practically, you don't have Free Speech. Since there will not be
money, there is no need to worry that these platforms for internet
societies will be losing profit. If they want to to offer a Platform
for Internet Communities they must be willing to do it without taking
away other's Freedom. I should take a moment to define a Platform for
Internet Communities. Any community is allowed to kick people out, for
example, an internet forum for the discussion of some topic can kick
people out of their community, just like an organisation can do off of
the internet. But a service that provides you with the ability to host
your own community or your own page should not be allowed to censor
you, but the individual or group of individuals who operate the page
or community can remove you from their page or community. The site
reddit allows you to create "subreddits", which are pretty much
communities on their website. The administrators of the site itself
should not be allowed to remove you from the entire site or any
community in which they are not one of the administrators of. The site
Facebook should not be allowed to restrict you from expressing what
you want on your page or on someone else's page but that "someone
else" could restrict you from saying something on their page. A
non-web example is IRC networks. [4] The owners of the IRC network
should not be allowed to remove you from the network and should not be
allowed to remove you from channels which they are not operators of.
To be clear, I will once again point out this should only apply to
platforms for the creation of internet communities not the communities
themselves. [5]

    I hope that I have convinced the reader that to have the most
amount of freedom you must allow Freedom of even the most hated of
society but also restrict the freedom to take away other people's
freedom.

Notes:
[1] By "right-wing Libertarians" I mean any libertarians that supports
"free markets".
[2] Unless, of course, there exists no person who wishes to take away
anyone else's freedom.
[3] If the word "freedom" is capitalised, then I am talking about
abstract freedom.
[4] IRC is a chat protocol.
[5] I mean "should" in the sense of the law, I'm not saying that the
communities should be intolerant of dissident ideas or anything like
that.

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