The Lure of Anarchy

What does freedom mean? Maybe we could ask the Libyans. With Gaddafi's death, they have finally attained freedom from his rule. And so in other Arab countries we see their people fighting for freedom from the rule of their despotic leaders - a phenomenon recognized as the Arab Spring. Egypt is now free from Mubarak, Tunisia from Ben Ali, and now Libya from Gaddafi. 

What we also learn from the news recently, is that on the streets of New York, and in many parts of Europe, anti-capitalist protests are taking place in response to the financial crisis, which is squarely blamed on greedy bankers and evil manipulators of the financial institution. Have we become enslaved by capitalism?

So what is freedom? To me the best definition was given by Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist, "To be free is not to do what one pleases, it is to be master of oneself."

What we must realize, is that freedom from one system, does not entail total freedom from any system - it can only be followed by the rule of another. As what Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher, wrote in his book, Leviathan in 1651,

Cover of the book I'm reading, Leviathan (1651) 

"[Whosoever] thinking sovereign power too great, will seek to make it less, must subject himself, to the power, that can limit it; that is to say, to a greater [power]"

Thus we observe that tyrannical rule is inevitable in every communist state, because to impose the communist economic system (common ownership of all property) it requires a government with unlimited power to restrain men's natural impulse to have all things for himself. 


On the other hand, capitalism (rights to own property), which is practised in democracies, breeds greed and inequality. Hence, we are lured to anarchy (absolute freedom from a central authority). 


Fortunately we are reminded by Hobbes, not to fall into this trap of embracing anarchy, in the same paragraph of his book that I have quoted above, that:

"[Of] unlimited power, men may imagine many evil consequences, yet the consequences of [not having this authority], which is perpetual war of every man against his neighbour, are much worse. The condition of man in this life shall never be without inconveniences"