EXISTS FREEDOM WITHIN CAPITALIST SOCIETY?

EXISTS FREEDOM WITHIN CAPITALIST SOCIETY? 
by Rafael Silva
"The capitalist" freedom "is the freedom of the strong to dominate, that is, to exploit, the weak"
José López

"Under capitalism, the laws that give freedom to money are imposed on those that regulate human affairs"
Carlos Fernández Liria and Luis Alegre

"If we do not develop a critical spirit and a sense of search for alternative information to formally established ways, we are condemned to misinformation, to the inability to understand our world and, therefore, incapable of acting in freedom"
Pascual Serrano

Beautiful word, freedom. Used from the most remote times of the History of the Humanity, it acquires a very special meaning in the current times, when we are hostages of this wild and cruel capitalism. We speak of a concept of such a high level that has been approached by philosophers, thinkers and writers of all times. To begin with, our Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy of the Language gives us many meanings about the meaning of this term. The most general of them all tells us that Freedom is the "natural faculty that man has to act in one way or another, and not to act, for which he is responsible for his actions".

He then offers us other curious meanings, such as "Faculty that is enjoyed in well governed nations to do and say anything that does not oppose the laws or good manners." Substantial and committed definition, as can be seen, unless we internalize it for a while, since we could ask for example what "well-governed nations" are, what "good customs" consist of, or that the principle of legality it is situated above the principle of freedom ... but what would happen then when the principle of legitimacy, superior to that of legality, is violated in these "well-governed nations"? Should we superimpose in these cases the principle of freedom? I leave it to the reflection of the readers.

The Dictionary also tells us that freedom is "prerogative, privilege or license", "daring familiarity", and it tells us about the different contextual variants of the concept, applied for example to "freedom of worship", "freedom of thought" or "freedom of conscience. " Before continuing, let's think if we really enjoy all these "freedoms" in our current society. And after many others, finally consider three meanings that I would like to highlight: the one that refers to freedom as the "lack of subjection or subordination", the "State of who is not imprisoned", and the "State or condition of who is not a slave. " Perhaps it is the latter that can cause more debate, because the sense of "slavery" must also be updated with the times. Let's reflect to what extent we can consider ourselves "slaves" of many aspects of the world that surrounds us: of our work, of new technologies, of consumption, of the system ... slaves of the system. The word "Freedom" also has a relation with "Liberate", in fact procuring the liberation of something or someone leads us to achieve their freedom, as when we speak of "liberation of women".

Is all "freedom" good? Perhaps yes if we consider it only in the ontological sense of the term, but to little that we reason and we extrapolate, we verified that it is necessary to put many shades, and to limit many situations. We will give an example. The expression "Freedom of choice of educational center" (of the parents in relation to their children) may seem at first a positive and desirable concept, but we will cite on this, for example, the affirmations of Rosa Cañadell: "The right to choosing, when we speak of public services, should not exist for several reasons: first, because it is not possible for the Administration to guarantee all individual preferences; second, because public money can not be used to satisfy personal interests, but must serve to guarantee equality of service for all citizens; and third, because the right to choose is nothing more than the privilege of a few who have the possibility of doing so, either because their money allows them (and they can pay for a private or private concerted center) or because their social situation allows them to have access to more information, so they can find the right strategies to enroll their children in the center they want. Therefore, the freedom of choice is nothing more than a strategy to place education within the market and, like everything that works according to the laws of the market, the negative effects always fall on the classes with fewer resources ".

 It seems that we are entering a field where we can conclude that freedom in Western societies, in that "free world" (which the West manufactured to try to differentiate itself from the East, when part of it reigned communism), is a true myth. It does not exist as such, at least considered in its full meaning. Words like "autonomy", "independence", etc., remain at least very low if we look at our inclusion in the orbit of supranational institutions (EU, UN, OECD, WTO ...), which control our lives, our ways of function as a society. They are the same organizations that internationally condemn, harass and threaten the countries that, precisely trying to make use of their freedom, design a social and economic system different from capitalism, as is happening to Venezuela. We live therefore under an illusion of "freedom", when in reality we are part of a real dictatorship, capitalism, a sophisticated and very perfected dictatorship, but a dictatorship after all. And so, Western democracies, in the "parliamentary" style, are actually bourgeois democracies that are designed to govern alternating in power various political formations (usually two, Republicans and Democrats in the USA, PP and PSOE in Spain, etc.). , where none of them really questions the deep foundations of the system. The eminent American thinker Noam Chomsky defines the Democrats and Republicans as "the two wings of the only party that exists, the capitalist party."

And so, behind the perverse facade of "Democracia" that they sell us (based only on the fact that we vote every 4 years), a very powerful and small minority, a small social elite, is the one that truly makes the decisions, and He has control over the functioning of power and its institutions. When most people think, they think they do it freely, but this is not the case. Actually, they think and feel as the dominant thought has ordered them to do it. For this, from small we are bombarded with millions of subliminal messages (in school, in the media ...), so that our mind is limited in its capacity of imagination and thought, and encorse to the limits of the dominant thought. Where then is freedom? Freedom under western capitalist systems is only a mirage, an illusion. If we were aware of the number of institutions, media, companies, banks, agencies, governments, etc., that "order" us how we have to think, surely we would be surprised.

Currently, perhaps the most restrictive plot in terms of freedom, is freedom of expression. And not only for the consequences of the current "Gag Law", authentic corset to curb the desire for free expression of ideas and opinions, but because we can not freely express our views without that act has dire consequences, and not to violate moral principles or basic ethics, but for transgressing the limits that the system considers "acceptable", hidden, but narrow and well defined. There are plenty of examples that we can put of this matter, pulling only the casuistry that occurred during the last two or three years. We can express ourselves "freely" as long as we do not go beyond certain ideological parameters, otherwise our discourse will be demonized and attacked. Is there then freedom, if our ideas are censored and persecuted?

The capitalist system plays with the concept of freedom, trying to give legitimacy to a lot of aspects that do not have to, in order to justify the validity of its proposals. And from here, other terms begin to flood us, of similar meaning, but with many nuances, which come to complicate our lives, rather than to make it easier for us. Terms that have appeared a few years ago, and that have gained a lot of force in our society, are those of "liberalization", "flexibilization" or "deregulation", among others. They are concepts that have a lot of relationship with each other, and in turn can be understood as nuances to the idea of ​​freedom expressed in different spheres. In reality, they are traps set by the system, to lead us along its path, which is none other than the absence of freedom. Has the liberalization of telecommunications been good? Has the flexibility of the labor market been good? Has the deregulation of the financial market been good? To deregulate means to leave without rule (norm, law) something that had previously, and that was binding for all, for which the law of the strong over the weak will prevail. Ultimately, the illusion of freedom that we can feel the system gives us is only the freedom of the dominant classes.

Because according to these new directions, freedom has much to do with justice, and therefore, we conclude that freedom can not exist when the Law (Justice) does not protect everyone equally, nor protects the most disadvantaged, or the most needy. For example, applied to the last Labor Reform, which dismantles the Collective Agreements, and urges the negotiating capacity of both partners. One of the previous definitions of freedom that we have given, referred to the situation of "lack of subjection or subordination", so applied to this area of ​​work, does anyone believe that there is no subordination among employees with respect to their bosses? Does deregulation, flexibilization or liberalization really bring us greater freedom? However, the tendency in this phase of capitalism is to deregulate as many more aspects of economic life, obeying the false and manipulated mantra of freedom.

In this way, laws that were emerging to defend citizens, users, consumers and customers from market abuses are being weakened and repealed, leaving them increasingly defenseless against their outrages. And while, for example, the Bank of Spain called for the deregulation of the labor market, it allowed financial institutions to cheat their clients, in the interest of market freedom, and the absence of public interventionism. I rescue the example so illustrative that Pedro Luis Angosto proposes: "Until recently we had in Spain, also in other European countries, a single and odious telephone company that abused its monopolistic situation. The deregulation of the telecommunications market has arrived and now we have a handful of odious operators that act in common agreement and impose their tariffs without anyone intervening in it. Have we won anything telephony users? I think not, before the State regulated those rates, received a substantial part of the benefits that were used for public investment and had offices where to claim. Now everything is virtual and, in addition to the amount of tricks they invent daily to falsify the receipts to maximize profits, try to solve a problem with them via phone is much more difficult than climbing the Anapurna barefoot and with a hair shirt at the waist. The same happens with the gas companies, with the financial entities formerly called banks, with the electric companies, with the oil companies, with the airlines, all are deregulated, nobody supervises the quality of their service, nor their prices, nor their abuses, leaving the citizen at the risk of a series of instances as ethereal as cumbersome and inoperative. In the economic world, under the umbrella of freedom, an unbreathable world has been built in which the user only has the obligation to pay what they ask and impose and the right to kick, tantrum, ulcer or recourse to very expensive judicial instances that for that very reason are prohibitive to him ". I think it's clear.

The word freedom, therefore, within capitalism, has been denatured, prostituted, distorted, tainted, and in the name of it, the vilest abuses have been committed and continue to be committed. Under its radius of action, all that is sought is to mask the true purpose of the measures that are being taken: to give more and more power to the most powerful, at the cost of plunging the weakest. The conclusion we can draw is that there is no freedom in the capitalist system, because all human aspects are subordinated to Capital. The forces of production, institutional propaganda, the ways of consuming, manufacturing, distributing, customs, jurisprudence, commercial practices, and above all education, as the basis of the pyramid that builds a future world that ensures the survival of their dogmas, and the absence of questioning of them. Based on this, when we hear attacks on socialist systems arguing that "there is no freedom", let us seriously consider whether, at heart, even with their possible and apparent restrictions and restrictions, they are not systems that guarantee more freedom than the capitalist .