Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 17:36:55 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Re: free will


I wrote:

>>The recognition of necessity thing is important in the sense I took up
>>recently with the quotes from the opening fanfare of 18 Brumaire: "Men make
>>their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not
>>make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances
>>directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of
>>all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the
>>living."
>>
>>This is not cryptic in the least. Once you recognize  what is constraining
>>you, and how much of it is changeable (or not), you can act consciously to
>>change the bits that *are* changeable. The more people and the better
>>organized "you" are, the more "you" can achieve. This is the only freedom
>>that matters.

James H came back reading what sounds like a hobby-horse into what I said:

>Your reading of the passage from Marx is, I think, wrong, at least as
>far as you can go in that short rendition. The problem is that you paint
>the relationship between freedom and necessity analytically as a
>definition between the two, as if the question was answered by
>indicating the boundary between them, where one ends and the other
>begins. This, I suggest is the reason that especially anglo-American
>philosophy has grappled so fruitlessly with the freedom/necessity
>counterposition.
>
>I think I am right in saying that the original quote from Engels is that
>freedom is the recognition of necessity and the leap from necessity, ie
>in coming into consciousness of itself, (human)necessity is transformed
>into freedom.
>
>By contrast the english freedom/necessity problematic is rigidly
>definitional. Freedom is the space in which round pegs rattle in the
>necessity of their square holes. But freedom must contain necessity as a
>subordinate moment, otherwise it is not freedom, to put it in Hegelese.

 Well, if we're going into this sort of thing, Hegel says somewhere that
freedom is being "bei sich" -- "at home with oneself", "chez oneself",
"with oneself". Shorthand for not alienated. He had a genius for putting
things in remarkably pared-down and simple words. If you're at home with
yourself, you are aware of all the constraints and possibilities pertaining
to you given your political, social, human, biological and physical
circumstances. All your acts are both constrained by laws you can do
nothing about and an expression of choice in relation to constraints that
you *can* do something about, whether they're subject to scientific laws or
not.

The next step is the big one, as it involves the question of whether
someone in possession of such awareness will necessarily act to increase
the realization of human potential and to reduce the human constraints
brought about by poverty, oppression and exploitation by fighting to
abolish them. As Blake says: "Truth can never be told so as to be
understood, and not be believ'd", so if we can help the right people (the
ones capable of bringing about the needed changes in society, ie the
working class and its allies) reach an understanding of where they're at
(and why they feel so bad) and how they can get somewhere else that's
better (where they will feel good), we'll have cracked it. On this point I
go with Kant and his categorical imperative, only I'd go further and say
it's not just a "should" or "ought to" but a "must", in the sense of a
drive, a bit like sex and food. Anyone knowing what's right and not doing
it gets in deep trouble with themselves -- what the existentialists called
bad faith.

This is an example of subjective discomfort caused by knowledge of freedom
that's not being transformed into action for freedom, and it's very very
common. It's the fundamental explanation behind the sickness of our society
whose surface (and some deeper) aspects are so well diagnosed and described
by good writers and thinkers looking at symptoms of modern social dis-ease
(including Reich on sexual emancipation versus authoritarian repression and
rigidity and the Frankfurters, such as Fromm on concentration and Marcuse
on alienation).

All of this is in fact an expression and result of the crisis of
proletarian leadership in the working class, as people know something
should be done, and that they could help, but they see no viable organized
political way available of getting it realized and turning interpretation
into change. Which is why me and my comrades (and this goes for orthodox
Trotskyists beyond the LIT, such as Dave B and Rob M here on the list)
think the building of a strong, authoritative Fourth International as a
revolutionary world party is of such fundamental importance. It is a
political necessity, a precondition without which we will have no freedom
of action to change things.

I think James was pegging an absolute either/or interpretation on to what I
said that has nothing to do with my way of seeing things. But it was a
useful reminder of how not to approach the question of necessity. Has
anyone got any good stories of Calvinists and predestination, or other
free-wheeling religious or political fatalists?

Cheers,

Hugh

PS Thanks to James for the words of appreciation.




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