The Drip Drip of Freedoms That Results in Serfdom

Quite often it is our best intentions that lead us, or others, into unintended consequences. Many people feel they are helping out, but really they are saying something you would rather was kept quiet; maybe they are keeping quite when really they should speak out. Or maybe a piece of legislation is passed that is intended to help and protect, but results in harm and confusion.

And so it is. That is life and there is no getting away from it no matter how hard we try. We are human, we are fallible and we are usually convinced we are right otherwise we would not act. In a group scenario it is often the case that it is the group that perceives its intentions as correct while the leader or leaders have an altogether different plan. This has happened throughout history.

And it is from history that we can learn our greatest lessons, although we tend to blind ourselves to them.

In the 1920s and 1930s, a great rise of Left and Right came about. The Communists and the Fascists thrust across Europe, seeking a new order. In Spain they went head to head. In most cases it was the Right that won out, the promise of freedom under one leader better then freedom under a committee. Many tens of millions were taken in. But what is it they were seeking to reform?

The simple answer is that, following the Great War, democracy was seen as failing, there was little or no direction and the reform that those returning soldiers wanted was being held back by an imperial class from a bygone age. Feelings of failure in Germany and its allies manifested itself in nationalism, a loss of pride opened a wound to be exploited.

That is all quite correct. However, as Hayek explains in The Road to Serfdom it was more complicated than that. Freedom was what was wanted. Freedom from the upper classes, the landowner, the factory owner, the foreign power, the enemy within. Freedom for the masses was promised, their empowerment with control over their land and jobs. An uprising of the people being led by a strong and decisive leader or committee that would make the big decisions quickly.

The reason we have the term libertarian is largely due to the hijacking of the term liberal by the Left in this period. Their perception of what freedom is was taken very much as a freedom from as opposed to a freedom to do.

We live in similar times. Our world is ravaged from recession, our sense of national pride is in the balance. We are at war, although it seems like we have already lost it many years ago. Unemployment is high, industry suffers. To be rich is to be free and to everyone else it is a daily grind. The Left, like the progressive liberals of yesteryear, are in power but not really delivering what the people want because it isn't possible. The conservative right is weak and the Far Right are on the rise, exploiting the wound.

We are no longer, not in the same way at any rate, under the control of a ruling elite from a different era, rather we are held back by a State that makes too many decisions on our behalf, has removed to much power to the centre and has created a climate of fear and surveillance.

What people want from this is freedom. Freedom from in order to be free to do.

The main place that promises of freedom are coming from is that of libertarians. A reigning in of the State and the restitution of powers to the people. This is what the people want and I believe that over the course of the next decade, it is something they will increasingly demand.

However, within that promise lies the rub. Rather than simply reduce the State, reduce taxes, reduce the bureaucracy of government and repeal the laws that limit freedom of movement, of speech, of expression, it is proposed to go beyond this and into areas that show a perception of freedom that will in fact result in the direct opposite.

Most of this is piecemeal, it is not joined up into one larger picture and therefore the end result is not seen, just as in the 1930s the masses saw socialism as only milk and honey and could not envisage the horrors that would unfold.

We have the propertarians who espouse that private property on any scale and in any location with any purpose gives the owner whatever rights they wish to impose. If it results in the removal of all liberty, then so be it. However, many of the gated developments in the UK already consist of thousands of homes and businesses and are owned by large investment companies. They include leases that are huge, in excess of 30 or 40 pages in most cases, that contain so many covenants it is difficult to see the wood for the trees. In fact research at Sheffield University shows that only 2% of residents have even read all of their document, as explained in Anna Minton's excellent book 'Ground Control...'.

The largest on the way is the Olympic site, which contains a clause that all freedoms of movement will be suspended when the circumstances require it. No definition is given. Robot spy planes as used in Iraq, are already in use in Liverpool and are to be used in Stratford to keep an eye on the unsuspecting multitude.

This is the privatisation of public space, a complex area of law that removes the fundamental right of movement that is fundamental to the English since the Conquest. Rights of Way are stopped up, common land removed, highways taken out of public hands. When this happened in America there was a march on Congress, here is is ignored and by some seen as a right to freedom for the property owner.

In context, this was the case with all of the major aristocratic estates built in the 18th and 19th century. Then they were sealed off, manned with watch towers and patrolled by armed guards. People were killed. Those guards, though unamred, can be seen in modern developments such as Liverpool One. The outcry from the Victorians, those classical liberals, at the removal of right of movement led to them being made public as they are today.

In turn we have the current trend to argue for the legal right to arms. Even the English Bill of Rights provides for this given it is not illegal to do so. I feel the current legislation is far too controlling and I see no issue with repealing it to the level it was in the 1970s. However, again, many elements of the libertarian wing see no issue with allowing people to walk around with knifes or guns and certainly no issue with using them in self-defence with no risk of prosecution. Even in America counties and states have restriction on what can be owned and how they can be used.

There is no grey area here. It is black and white for many. You either ban weapons or you allow them, if you ban them you are statist communist, if you allow them it is freedom for the people against the state. There is no in between and if you do have a view that is in between, you are a statist communist.

Then we have the white noise. A fuzzy background sound that is always buzzing away, sometimes louder, sometimes it disappears altogether. But there it is nonetheless. Within the libertarian movement, mainly the propertarian gun advocates, there is a stated distrust of democracy. It is blamed for all the ills and wrongs that we suffer today, it is democracy that has led us down the path to State control. 'There is no other way', they will say, 'but we don't like it all the same'. It is the means to an end not the end itself it is arrogantly explained. Naturally it is, as democracy is there to ensure the freedoms of the people and the accountability of the State, not simply to ensure more democracy.

But it is not democracy that has led us down this path, it is apathy. It is social bribery through the welfare state and the tax system over generations of governments that have caused the British people to stop holding their system to account, preferring to give up and not vote at all. The system needs to be stronger and alterations need to be made, but it is not democracy per se that has caused us the problems we must now correct. In fact it should be a strong belief in a fit and proper democratic country that will increase our freedoms, not the blaming and shunning of it for the reduction of them.

On their own, each of these are elements that can be debated, as they are and as they should be. However, when you realise that the same people hold the same views and that it is these people that are shaping the libertarian direction, it is clear to see the parallels with the events of 80 years ago.

Freedom becomes the freedom from the State, but to be replaced by the dictatorship of the landowning elite. Freedom becomes defending yourself from the State, but also from everyone else. Freedom becomes not a belief in proper democratic accountability, but a realisation that democracy is to blame and does not work.

It has been said many times by propertarians and anarcho-capitalists - who seek to define liberty (an action they levy at everyone else) and who label anyone who disagrees with them as a statist and a social-democrat - that libertarianism, the provision of liberty for the individual, is not about making the world a better place, but is about allowing each individual to do whatever they want to do. If the world would turn out to be even worse than it is now, then so be it, at least there would be no State.

Just a group of landowning corporations with private armies who have removed all liberty from those within their domain.

However, is it not, surely, about giving the individual their liberty so that they may make their own life better, and in that process everyone elses? Do we not seek to limit the State and transfer much of its power to the individual because we believe that the person can make better decisions than the State, not just decisions be they good or bad and no matter the consequence?

What is the point in creating a world where, yes, you have the power to do as you wish within your property, but before leaving the front garden and you have to sign a term of acceptance for whoever owns the next piece of land or get shot? Or a place where a company has built the hundred thousand homes where you live - and have to as it's there or the gutter - and controls every facet of your life, from the volume of your TV and the car that you drive to the people that may visit you and the number of people that may live in your house?

What is the point in a country where the remaining of branches of government are located within a purpose built development, such as More London, where the right to gather or protest has been banned; how is that different to the objections we raise to the removal of the right to protest in Parliament Square?

To say that this would never happen is to be arrogant in your conviction of an unknown future and to be ignorant of history.

Each idea of liberty must be thought through, explored through every notion, the benefits and the ramifications by itself and together with others. If history can teach us anything it is that the promises of freedom must be scrutinised more fully than any other, that they must be questioned over and over again, lest they lead us down the road to serfdom.