Freedom

[Yefim Zverev]

What does it mean ? According to your philosophical or political way.

For example if you are an anarchist what does "freedom" mean to you ?

Which meaning of it gained acceptance in the history ?

Really need some good answers on this.

[Left Leanings]

One comment I can make, is on the difference between positive and negative freedoms.

It's often said, for example, by the rich and the employers, that the UK is a 'free' society, because no one is actually compelled to work for them. They can choose to take a job or not. But this is actually a negative freedom. It's negative, because although people aren't literally forced to take a job, they have no choice but to take one, because they need money to live on. If they are on the dole, they are not literally forced to participate in workfare schemes. They could choose to sign off the dole and avoid them. But then they would have no income. Again, a negative freedom.

On the other hand, a positive freedom on this matter, would be where people could choose not to work, and were actually able to make this choice, because they had a lot of money in the bank to live in, or else people who were prepared to support them.

So a negative freedom is where you are free to do something, but you are unable to.

A positive freedom is where you are free to do something, and you are actually able to.

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

Freedom is the mental cognition of exercising power in various forms and undertaking the liberty of those demonstrations for acts of self-desire.

Freedom has never existed in a true sense, and it never will. Society will not allow it. Restriction, or regulation of the conscience of society is essential in securing the fallacy of safety and control.

Freedom is anarchy, it brings the human population to her earliest primitive forms of survival and existence.

In the sense of liberty, it's the right to coexist with your demographic (state, community, society) with the right to choose your demographics destiny. Although many nations assert this right, it too doesn't exist.

[Leftsolidarity]

Freedom from oppression and exploitation. Ability to do whatever pleases you without being an oppressor/exploiter.

[Ocean Seal]

It means absolutely nothing in our societies and in general without context.

[seventeethdecember2016]

Freedom assumes that you have absolutely no influences on you, and that your ideas are completely authentic. We know that is not true whatsoever.

Freedom is nothing more than rhetoric which is used as a tool to control the classes. The same goes for religion.

[The Jay]

Freedom is the ability to act in a certain set of rules. Different sets of rules, or moral/legal systems, provide varying amounts of freedom that may differ in form and function than other sets. I believe that anarchists want to maximize freedom by aiming for a world without hierarchy and exploitation.

[Zav]

Freedom means a lack of oppression for all parties involved in a situation.

While dividing freedoms into positive and negative is useful for speed and simplicity, a negative freedom, say the 'freedom' to employ others to make a profit from them, I do not consider to be a freedom at all, as someone is being exploited.

[Luc]

i thouht negative and positive freedom was like:

negative freedom = freedom from something

positive freedom = freedom to do something

:confused:

[Zav]

i thouht negative and positive freedom was like:

negative freedom = freedom from something

positive freedom = freedom to do something

:confused:
Interesting, but I don't think anyone uses the phrases that way. Positive and negative freedoms are rooted in personal ethics, and so have a lot of gray areas.

[Positivist]

i thouht negative and positive freedom was like:

negative freedom = freedom from something

positive freedom = freedom to do something

:confused:

Yes these are the definitions I am familiar with but Left Leanings still raises some good points. His statements would have been more accurate if he contrasted the judicial rights of Europeans and Americans with their economic realities. I have to go but I'll do such a contrast later if no one else does.

[Luc]

Interesting, but I don't think anyone uses the phrases that way. Positive and negative freedoms are rooted in personal ethics, and so have a lot of gray areas.

Indeed, I actually just randomly came across someone's post here saying this than did quick read from wiki and that's what I remember :lol:

[Positivist]

There is a stark difference between what is judicially permitted and what one's economic status affords to them. This is demonstrated in many advanced capitalist "democracies" such as the USA. The prime example is of wage, salary, and even commission labor. Each field of labor (with the rare exception of certain salary and commission jobs) alienate their workers from the product of their labor, from the natural fulfillment felt when engaging in labor creatively, and from meaningful relationships with one another. Wage jobs may also take a heavy toll on the worker physically. Now legally workers may avoid these jobs and their crippling effects but economically they cannot afford to. If regular people in capitalist countries wish to continue eating it is necessary that they take on these undervalued, alienating jobs. So since their economic conditions demand that they sell their labor power, workers are not truly free to determine their own lifestyle (recognizing that occupations are responsible for shaping their lifestyles) and therefore aren't free.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

For me,as a Queer activist, it means sexual orientation and sexual identity equality. The freedom to be who you are without fear of assault, discrimination and so forth.

[MotherCossack]

i think freedom is about knowing that you live in a fair and just society and that you and your children and friends etc are going to have just as good a crack of the whip as anyone else.
which means that there is every reason to go for things and strive to be as good as you can... because there will be rewards and it will be worthwhile and you will be appreciated and your life can mean what you want it to mean.

but i think my version of freedom is a very broad use of the word.
it would be so bloody wonderful though.

[DividedandUnited]

I am an anarchist.

I will start with stating that authority is an illusion.

From my own writings and understanding of indoctrination we pass on a fundamental flaw that we believe that we can teach, tell, mold, train or even enforce freedom. Freewill/thought/etc is something that must be experienced on a very personal level. For it to exist, there must be a personal understanding that one must take upon themselves self-reliance and responsibility.
Do you believe that someone who was raised in the same town as ones parents grew up in, same religious acceptance or tolerance, taught equally among classmates in school is free or has he been indoctrinated into a way of life? For if I were to move to this town and my upbringing was completely different from everyone else in this town what effects do you suppose I may have on these people? Would I be accepted for my differences or would I be oppressed?

My position is to rethink the very words different, weird or strange when applying them to a person. To consider or be considered any of those words is be looked at is to be living the point of what freedom is.

For a free society to ever work the word tolerance needs to be replaced with acceptance. Superficial differences will have to become just that, superficial. Until we stop labeling men like we label colors, until we all accept blame for own actions. A completely free society will never work and that is a goal I am for.

[Rafiq]

Freedom does not exist beyond mere ideological rhetoric. Humans as a species are a collective and can never be individually "free", i.e. they can never break from this social grasp, else they become mentally impaired.

What does it mean to be free? It depends on the class telling you. For a communist, to be free is to be emancipated from Bourgeois society, which necessitates it's overthrow.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Freedom to me means I'm no longer being exploited, objectified, taken advantage of and so on. That I can have clothes, food, shelter, and live my life as a man or woman undisturbed with those that I love.

[Desperado]

Warning: Class analysis required

[Valdyr]

My understanding of freedom is, at base, the ability to develop our capacities how we see fit as the sort of creatures we are, in and through a community.

Why do I add the qualifiers about "the sorts of creatures we are" and the "in and through a community?" The latter point is less abstract; I simply mean that in order to really do anything we want, we need a community which enables us. If I want to, say, hike the rocky mountains, I need someone to bring me there, someone to make my jacket...you get the idea.

This kind of freedom (I guess we'll call it political freedom) is not the negation of community, but can only exist through it. I'm a communist, and I think that on this point, communism doesn't so much deny capitalist individualism as transcends both it and vulgar collectivism (as in feudalism, many ultra-nationalist movements, etc.)

As for the more abstract question of freedom, I'd largely agree with Engels here, who takes a view somewhat similar to that of the philosopher Spinoza, and also that of Hegel:


Freedom therefore consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature, a control founded on knowledge of natural necessity; it is therefore necessarily a product of historical development.
-Anti-Duhring

Thus, freedom and necessity are actually a unity, rather than totally exclusionary as in either the vulgar determinism of mechanical materialism/reductionist naturalism or the banal free will of religion.

[Jimmie Higgins]

"Freedom" is an abstraction I think. Because we can say we fight for freedom, but we wouldn't allow people the "freedom" to enslave or oppress others. Capitalists say they fight for economic "freedom" but economic freedom to them means wage-slavery for us.

I think revolutionaries fight concretely for Liberation, not "freedom" - liberation from class oppression and state repression.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Freedom is anarchy, it brings the human population to her earliest primitive forms of survival and existence.


So what you're saying is that humans were free, but that we have been enslaved as we left our natural, primitive state of being? I don't really buy such human nature-arguments.

[Revolution starts with U]

Meaningless rhetorical term outside of specific contexts. Commoners wanted the freedom to vote, slavers wanted the freedom to own slaves, etc.
it basically relates to autonomy... but only in so much as autonomy advances the ideology brought forth by the speaker. Freedom, liberty, etc... these are just buzzwords, only deriving meaning subjectively.

The real meat of the issue comes in equality. Equality is clear and objective. Some stand for it, others against it. We stand for equality of power; that is proletarian freedom.

[Zukunftsmusik]

I will start with stating that authority is an illusion.

Depends on what you mean. The bourgeois class rule is by no means an illusion, it is expressed in social (material) relations.


Interesting, but I don't think anyone uses the phrases that way. Positive and negative freedoms are rooted in personal ethics, and so have a lot of gray areas.

Actually, in a philosophichal context (non-marxist), this is the most normal way to use positive and negative freedoms.

[Raúl Duke]

What does freedom mean to me?
Someone already raised the issue of positive/negative freedom...

I guess, in a political sense, I can only accept a "social freedom" as ideal. By that I mean a freedom born out of political/economic equality. Because in an unequal society, we can only have an unequal type of freedom. Like this society, for example, I see the rich as having more freedom than the unfortunate. Since I'm not part of the elite, I don't see myself as "free."

In an existential sense, I guess I agree with what they have to say about freedom but I wish they tempered their sense of freedom with Fanon's sense of structural oppression. In a vacuum, in an existential sense, we may have this "radical freedom," etc that Sartre, et al claim but we live in a world with a human society and this human society predominately has class systems and other things which limits our freedom. But I'm hoping that the revolution will bring the social freedom that humanity needs.