Sociologija. Mintis ir veiksmas ISSN 1392-3358 eISSN 2335-8890
2023, vol. 1 (52), pp. 60–80 DOI: https://doi.org/10.15388/SocMintVei.2023.1.6
Algis Mickūnas
Ohio University
amuali@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1601-8331
https://ror.org/01jr3y717
Abstract. This paper examines the distinction between autocracy and democracy, proposing that these political systems are best understood at the level of civilizations, where cultural traditions provide methodological access to their core principles. It traces the historical connection between autocracy and theocracy, showing how the divinization of rulers—exemplified by doctrines such as the “divine right of kings”—enabled universal claims and underpinned practices of expansion and colonialism. Within this framework, the paper contrasts the relative stability and social welfare associated with aristocratic rule against the volatility and arbitrary power of opportunistic autocracy. The Russian Empire’s transformation into the Soviet Union is analyzed as a paradigmatic case, illustrating how one autocratic form was replaced by a more ruthless successor without producing substantive benefits for the population. In counterpoint, the paper develops the concept of “authentic revolution,” drawing on classical Greek thought and the emergence of the polis as a juridical state grounded in self-awareness, collective responsibility, and mutual consent. Such a revolution aims to safeguard human freedom and rights. By contrast, “second liberation” movements such as Marxism are critiqued for subordinating individual rights and institutions to collective control, thereby undermining the very freedom they claim to achieve.
Keywords: power, freedom, rights, revolution, liberation, public domain, law.
Santrauka. Straipsnyje svarstoma autokratijos ir demokratijos problema, teigiant, kad šias politines sistemas būtina analizuoti civilizacijos lygmeniu, o jų pagrindinius principus metodologiškai geriausia suvokti tik atsižvelgiant į jų kilmės kultūrines tradicijas. Straipsnyje parodomos istorinės autokratijos ir teokratijos sąsajos, kaip valdovų dievinimas, išreikštas „dieviškosios karalių teisės“ doktrinoje, leido formuluoti universalius visuomenės sąrangos principus ir tuo pagrindė ekspansiją ir kolonializmą. Šiame kontekste aptariamas santykinis stabilumas ir socialinė gerovė, susijusi su aristokratine valdžia, su oportunistinės autokratijos nepastovumu ir savavališka valdžia. Rusijos imperijos transformacija į Sovietų Sąjungą pateikiama kaip pavyzdinis atvejis, iliustruojantis, kaip viena autokratinė forma buvo pakeista dar žiauresne, nesuteikdama gyventojams jokios realios naudos. Straipsnyje plėtojama „autentiškos revoliucijos“ koncepcija, grindžiama klasikinės graikų minties tradicija: kartu su polio atsiradimu užgimsta ir unikali teisinė valstybė, grindžiama savimonės, kolektyvinės atsakomybės ir abipusio sutikimo principais. Tokia revoliucija siekia apsaugoti žmogaus laisvę ir teises. O „antrojo išsilaisvinimo“ judėjimai, kaip antai marksizmas, kritikuojami už tai, kad subordinuoja individualias teises ir institucijas kolektyvinei kontrolei, taip pakenkdami tai pačiai laisvei, kurios jie teigia siekiantys.
Pagrindiniai žodžiai: galia, laisvė, teisės, revoliucija, išsivadavimas, viešoji sfera, teisė.
Received: 22/12/2022. Accepted: 12/08/2023.
Copyright © 2023 Algis Mickūnas. Published by Vilnius University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The task of any philosophy is to disclose final principles of any discipline or topic and do so across numerous variants. This involves a requirement that a given thesis must maintain its principled position without introducing features which would transgress the principles of such a position. A transgression introduces principles which ground an entirely different region of awareness and explanation. Thus, so-called empirical sciences defy empirical principles by introducing mathematics – a formal science completely distinct from empirical phenomena. Another example would be a conflation of capitalism with democracy. Taken by itself, capitalism has nothing to do with democracy, and the latter was required to introduce public laws to prevent murder, theft, and slavery. Contemporary American rejection of democracy by various theocratic movements reveals the fact that theocracy, in whatever form, cannot be mixed with democracy. Thus, to be a Christian democrat is a contradiction. In this discussion an effort will be made to draw strict distinctions between various domains and their principles to demonstrate their incompatible claims – one such claim was made in Medieval Europe that there can be an accommodation between faith and reason.
Another task is to show that some accommodations are impossible and thus might comprise a “clash of civilizations”. A minor suggestion is in order. Many scholars, sociologists, historians, and anthropologists are accustomed to speaking about cultures – indeed, culture today has become iconic: everything is culture and humans are submitted to the power of cultural discourses – to speak with former German chancellor Angela Merkel, we live in a “multi-kulti” world. A minor error should be avoided: there is no Chinese, Indian, European, Middle Eastern, Mayan, Inca cultures. They are civilizations each having a variety of cultures. Take the Middle East: it is Abrahamic, Semitic civilization with its variety of cultures: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and their various branches – despite the fact that at times these branches assume the name of civilization, such as Islamic, Christian, or even Judaic civilization. I once asked a Japanese scholar of comparative civilizations how to solve the Middle Eastern endless wars. His answer: I do not interfere in family struggles. The same holds for China or India, not to speak of Europe. So when one speaks of autocracy or democracy, one must speak at the level of civilizations such that their cultures might constitute a methodological access to fundamental principles of a civilization.
The conjunction between autocracy and theocracy is warranted due to the phenomenon of divinization of autocrats and the autocratic imagery of the celestial region. This is obvious even in European Christian kingdoms with the use of the phrase “divine right of kings”. By the nineteenth century, the term revolution has become a norm for any change, from “revolution in genetic science” to Islamic, Russian, and sexual revolutions. But are the latter three revolutions? To answer this question, we must consider that in most autocratic social organizations, from monarchy, aristocracy, plutocracy, to theocracy, there appears a common feature when each is pushed to the limit: in the final instance, who determines who does what, who gets what, and why. An exemplary case would be a Middle Eastern tradition, in the form of Persian Empire; it was completely autocratic, despotic, lending itself solely to an “imperative ordering” by the autocrat. While it is possible for an autocrat to be benevolent toward the population, his benevolence depends purely on his momentary dispositions, and the latter can coincide with the power of the laws the autocrat prescribes; he is the sole owner of everything and everyone – body and soul – in his empire. Those who fail to obey the autocrat’s will are destined to various degrees of punishment: we hear the chains from Siberia, the cries of holy wars from the Middle East, and Middle Ages, and the torture cries from the dungeons of the theocratic papacy. Even the West has imported or accepted an exportation and imposition of a JudeoChristian-Islamic tradition stemming from, and completely correlated to, the Persian autocratic mode of exercising power.
The power can be spread by the sword and become a specific form of colonization. Of course, apart from militaristic colonization, Judeo-Christianity and Islam correlated militarism to verbal, i.e. textual colonization. Peoples had to be converted into believers of imported texts. If they refused, they would be regarded as false and evil, and hence abolished. The refusal means a rejection of being a property of a specific religion; in principle, the latter assumes that a human being belongs to the Lord of Lords, King of Kings. There is a close correlation of universalization of particular “eminent text”, (such as Judeo-Christian Bibles or Islamic Koran) proclaiming an absolute truth, with militaristic colonialism. This is well reflected in one, among numerous others, structural designs: imperial Persia and the divinities signifying such a structure. To understand this correlation, we must attend briefly to the question of legitimation, allowing the treatment of the population as property, at the pleasure of the Lord, owner.
The ambiguity of legitimation of possession of everything and everyone as property can be dispelled mainly with respect to story imagery. The story is peopled by figures that are structurally isomorphic with the power inhabiting the solar-imperial palaces. There is the celestial LordKing, his Queen, their retinue, their subservient supplicants, and worshipers, each with a sign of appointed and anointed rank, and hierarchical position given by the Lord. This is precisely the imperial regality. In principle, the story composition coincides with the ruling composition. This is to say, there is no legitimation here, since the story does not justify the imperial claims and deeds, but is identical with them. The emperor can claim, without fear of contradiction, that “we are divine”. Thus, we find that the Persian imperial morphology and the JudeoChristian-Islamic composition also coincide. The ruling emperor is the lawgiver and the law, and there should be neither deviations nor questions concerning the power of such law. The language here is one of edicts and imperatives, couched at times in the pronouncements of prophets. The latter are there to ensure that the highest authority is once again installed and recognized without interrogation. All that lives and exists must obey and be subordinate to the edicts, indeed must act in ways that would constitute a support and enhancement of the edicts. No one can question the imperial force of the law, specifically when the law coincides with the mythical power of the divine “maker of the world”. At this level, we are faced with an understanding of verbal power that becomes coextensive with making, and indeed with an indistinction between word and event. The power holder’s every uttered wish becomes coextensive with deed and reality. A variant of this principle is the “divine right of kings”, such that the king is also the head of the church. This was and continues to be the practice in Russian Empire where Putin is the head of state and church and, despite rhetoric to the contrary, an owner of everything and everyone. We shall expound on this shortly.
We must point out that the coincidence between the ruling powers and the divine allows the ruling powers to claim universality and, by extension, colonialism. Our divinity rules over all, and hence demands us to rule over all. This trend toward universality is still prevalent in stronger or weaker forms in current Islamic, and Judeo-Christian practices. Each claims the universality of their texts and the right either to proselytize it by verbal colonization, move into specific lands because they are promised, or to have a holy war against all who are incapable of recognizing the sole and universal Lord. The unbelievers are evil by definition and hence destined for total destruction. It is of note that Europe was colonized by one of the proclamations of universal truth – the Judeo-Christian – both by word and at the cost of millions of lives.
Having submitted to this truth, and having become, in turn, the propagators of this truth, the Europeans became neo-colonials. At the same time, being called to spread this truth, the Europeans, at one level of their civilization, became colonizers. Anywhere they went, they claimed the lands and the populations to be the property of their Divine King. This level of colonization extends all the way into fascism, communism, and current claims, in some quarters of the United States, that this continent is the promised land to the white Christian believers. We can only mention that this sort of colonization is nomadic. The bearers of the truth, of the “good tidings”, go everywhere and establish their rule (fortresses, temples, castles, and enterprises) and compel the indigenous populations to submit (with slavery as one mode of such submission). Such nomads rule either as divinities, or as direct representatives of divinities. Moreover, since they have a higher task to perform - preoccupied with spreading and then maintaining, enforcing, and enhancing the master’s will, they must leave the mundane labors, such as tilling the land, planting and reaping, in general, producing, to the lesser beings.
The higher officers, who were closest to the ruler, could be trusted the least, since they knew the ruler’s weaknesses and resources. They were therefore always on the lookout for mobility and were constantly exposed to royal disfavor. The ministers who served the ruler had to demonstrate their efficiency, and at the same time secure their own position against the ruler they served. Thus, if the defence minister is to maintain his position, there must be spies everywhere, as well as some support for the ruler’s opposition. In other words, there must be enemies if there is to be the power of police, and even if the enemies win, one should not expect the result to be anything else but another despotic ruler favoring his own clan —for the moment. After all, they too will create their “enemies”. In the modern West, we know the extension of these practices in fascism and communism (practices mirrored in current trends toward autocracy). Both had leaders anointed either by heaven or by history, who practiced the many ancient strategies of maintaining power: spies spying on spies, ministers plotting against other ministers, changing allegiances, and complete disregard of the population. The birth of the Soviet Union was nothing more than an opportunist deposing a despot and ruling the same empire from a position of an absolute autocrat—of course “anointed” by the rhetoric of scientific materialism and historical inevitability.
Among the various ways of achieving and maintaining power discussed so far, there appear two trends concerning the supremacy of one form of power over another. Initially, the first form of power, at least with respect to society, was aristocracy, which could at times be centered in monarchy. It has been suggested by numerous writers, including Kautilya and Sun Tzu, that aristocracy is more beneficial to the population than any other form actually available at that time. The reasons for such a suggestion include: 1) the interests of the rulers in their peoples and populations, even if the interests were selfish; 2) the aristocratic code of duty both to one’s own peers and to the population, i.e., to the defence of the population against external violators; 3) the stability of the rulership due to an orderly transmission of power to the successor. Although this might at times involve family squabbles, the population would not be devastated because of point 1); and 4) the absence or at least the minimalization of opportunism. No other group could hope to usurp power and claim legitimation; only the aristocrats were legitimate power holders, and hence their modus operandi did not require them to grab power, get all they could, and run. Their power was sanctioned by family and tradition, while the opportunists were interested only in plunder for their own immediate benefit and – if successful – the prolongation of their power.
In the context of Kautilya’s writings, it is obvious that the opportunist, unbound by any tradition or custom, rules with complete arbitrariness, unpredictability, and disregard for anyone or anything unless they fit his momentary plans for the increase of power. Seeing enemies everywhere, he has no choice but to constantly expand his power in order to secure his “future” and to prevent his enemies or competitors from getting an edge over his position. This constant need to expand power in order to maintain its edge is another reason for the tyrannical rule of the opportunist. He constantly needs more wealth, more persons to serve him, more armies to field, and more power vacuums to fill lest they be filled by his enemies. There is no holding back once one wrests some power from others and begins the arduous trek “to the top”. The very logic of power requires this expansion and terrorization. Kautilya, of course, saw this rule by power in its purity. The logic of the opportunists, in their initial activity of destroying all institutions (as was done by fascists and communists, and currently by conservatives in the West), also accepts this level of pure power—the destruction of all opposition. What will come after the destruction is, for the time being, not yet clear.
We come to the Russian–Byzantine–empire; purely autocratic where the head of the empire is also the head of church. In brief, when he speaks – God speaks. The Tsar is also the head of a family and a ruler of aristocracy; the latter swore allegiance to the Tsar, and he appointed them to serve in various posts of the state. As in all autocracies, those closest to the emperor were most dangerous – they knew the weaknesses of their Lord. Also, as in all autocratic empires, there were family murders and ascent to the throne by another family member – it was simply a tradition. The emperor spread his power and territory as much as his finances and cunning could bear. After all, Russian empire expanded both east and west (incorporating the Baltic states). All is well, but the Tsar should have studied Kautilya’s writings, warning about opportunists. And they came, till Lenin concentrated them under his domination and total discipline, allowing him to overthrow the Tsar, his family and aristocracy, and become an autocrat of the same empire. The first task is to eliminate all the vestiges of claims to the throne by the old aristocracy, by the educated, the talented, the productive, and hand the reigns of power to the dull, illiterate and allow them the pretense that they are “the people” in whose name the new autocracy is empowered to be masters and lords over everything. As an opportunist, Lenin and his cohorts appropriated all the wealth of the entire empire, subjected the population to total control by his opportunists, creating a system of suspicion where everyone might be a spy for the new autocracy. The so called “collectivization” for economic equality and benefit was a veil; in reality collectivization was the best means to herd the “people” (those who survived mass murder) so they could be watched, controlled, punished, and become completely subservient and docile. There was no Russian revolution: in principle, a traditional autocracy was overthrown by opportunistic autocracy without any essential changes for the population. In fact, the opportunistic autocracy was more ruthless and arbitrary. Just as in any empire, all wealth and all that is alive, belongs to the autocratic class and, in principle, to the “head” of the autocratic group.
The opportunists extended the spy system of the old aristocracy to include entire families, where normal conversation by grownups had to be “discussed” in schools so that the “teachers” could discover some hints of “wrong” thoughts and thus eliminate the “reactionary” members of society. Even extended family relations were no exception: if a suspected person – and everyone is suspect – is accused, his uncles, cousins, grand parents and acquaintances are also suspect: they might have been infected by the “virus” of the wrong class, inappropriate opinions and even secret thoughts. This is the case of Soviet Empire, where the leaders know what is the “good” for the population without any input from such a population. The “enlightened party” and its technocrats could claim that widespread participation in making policy is unnecessary, since the common weal can best be served not by ignorant masses, but by enlightened elites armed with knowledge of history, society, and what is, in the final analysis, the ultimate aim of history.
Given this “theoretical” background, it is necessary to account for the “communist revolution” in Russia. Russia was an autocracy with feudal population, ruled by decadent aristocracy. For a communist revolution to occur, according to Karl Marx, there must be a capitalist economy and an industrial working class as a condition for revolution. But that was not the case in Russia. What must be the basis for revolution when the Marxian theoretical account does not provide any reason? After all, to have a revolution one must have a purpose, a criterion by which to judge the contemporary situation as unacceptable, and a criterion which could be posited to judge the shape of the future society. None were available both in Marx’s theory and in Russian society. This is to say that a criterion of what the future communist man must be – for whose sake the revolution must take place, cannot yet be understood dialectically. In texts of Marxism-Leninism the newly formed Soviet Union had the following composition: the capitalist conditions for revolution toward the new communist man were not available in Russia; this means that even the capitalist man was not established on the basis of which capitalist production could be unfolded to reach a breaking point for socialist revolution. As a matter of debate in the then communist party, Georgi Plekhanov argued for the necessity to build a capitalist industrial-technical base which would evolve to produce a capitalist man, with individualistic qualities and political institutions to support a capitalist system. Only then could a socialist revolution take place. Lenin wanted a revolution without such a base and thus make a dialectical leap which was not warranted by material conditions. He was in a right place at the right time to grab power or pretend that he is a “consciousness” above the historical setting in which he acted. Such a consciousness allows an autocrat to be absolute dictator, brooking no deviations from his edicts.
In this context it is understandable that human life is irrelevant, since what is given both in Russian feudalism and Western capitalism are, from an absolute consciousness, completely redundant. Having abolished all civil institutions, Lenin established “revolutionary justice” which allowed him to claim that to us everything is permitted, adding, let there be blood, since victory is not possible without the cruellest of terror. Having consolidated total power, Lenin could claim the opposite from what he promised before the revolution: “we do not promise any freedom or any democracy”, to which, his associate Leon Trotsky added that “we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life”. The absoluteness of the autocratic rule became completely clear when sailors asked for free elections, free trade unions, free press, and the abolition of Cheka, secret police. Lenin’s answer was a final revelation that not only no opposition, but also no demands by “the people” will be tolerated. Under Trotsky, he sent 20,000 troops with an order that no mercy should be shown to the sailors. We can recall Kautilya’s conception of pure autocratic rule: if you wish to rule, be prepared to employ any means, since any show of weakness might spell your downfall.
A brief reminder of the ways an opportunist functions in relationship to his gang of supporters and conspirators. Beginning with Lenin, any of his supporters, who showed any deviation from his momentary edicts as a challenge to his authority, were eliminated – the case is with the sailors who won military battles for Lenin, and who requested a participation in public decisions, were destroyed – as were millions of peasants. After Lenin’s death, Stalin had trials to condemn just about all the leading party members for “betrayal” and, of course, as a possible threat to his total rule. Poor Trotsky, who escaped to Mexico, could not avoid Stalin’s power. After all, Trotsky was one of the leading members of the party and thus a threat to Stalin. Hitler and his “party” were extremely adept at finding opportunities to take over Germany and then to destroy all “enemies” internal and external. In Russian empire (Soviet Union) and in Germany (The Third Reich), there were purges and elimination of any sign which would threaten the “leader” and his absolute power. There is no need to go into the cunning of forming “alliances” or even treaties as somehow valid; valid yes – for momentary convenience to lull the “enemies”. And everyone is an enemy. This follows the power logic depicted by Kautilya. Just as now my enemy is becoming my friend and my friend is becoming my enemy.
But the way of power requires a total annihilation of the opponent by various tricks: flattery, sharing in the spoils of victory, giving aid, and even feigning fear. Recent modern history testifies to these tactics. Hitler and Stalin are the more pronounced examples. The former signed a pact with Poland, and hence isolated Poland from its French allies; then the Poles were “invited” to share in the spoils when Hitler invaded the neighboring Czechoslovakia. All these “friendly” gestures were a shield that hid the knife. The annihilation of the enemy is well noted in the communist eradication of the “bourgeoisie” and “revisionists”, and the fascist eradication of all of the “enemies” of the people. As the saying goes, a surviving remnant of the enemy is like a remnant of smoldering fire or unpaid debt; all are bound to increase with time. Hence the best policy is total annihilation. This includes “inconvenient” party operatives, generals, and trusted officials of one’s own group. This is not a novelty. If one reads the biographies of the Roman emperors, or the accounts of ancient Persia, Muslim records of the caliphates at Baghdad, Cairo, and the histories of the Ottoman power, one comes to a conclusion that power for its own sake has this logic. Everyone is always endangered, exposed to expected, although unsuspected attacks, even when one is armed to the teeth. At the highest level life is tragic; all sorts of palace intrigues, assassinations, revenge, upon revenge rule the day and night. No one is fully a master of the situation, and with time, no one is a master at all. One is doomed from the outset, yet one pretends to be “on top”. Fratricide, poison, and the dagger comprise the order of social power. And the daggers can come in most numerous forms, from steel to money to the mere words of accusation and enticement to riot. Putin’s Russia is currently a good example.
A principled requirement of an authentic revolution is ontological and autocratic/theocratic transformation of human self-awareness. This authentic revolution was established by classical Greek thinking in the writings of poets and theatre. We shall take a couple of examples of this revolution.
Myths, as artistic stories, combine and connect clans and generations, traced in actions depicting squabbles, taking sides, and, at times, shifting positions. Yet tragic myths depict an endless carnage, demanding revenge and counter-revenge, that involve clashing and demanding divinities and cosmic forces. As noted earlier, the autocratic families led a tragic life – family intrigues, murder, counter-murder, divine interventions, and legitimation ruled the day. Greek tragedy begins at this level and locates the first signs of reflective consciousness. This is to say, the human recognizes itself by her/his efforts to make choices, to intimate either/or logic, and yet cannot extricate itself from the cosmic polar tensions and requirements traced out in the names of divinities. Whichever way the human moves, it will bring failure and disaster. In this writing, some Greek tragic plays will be combined to extricate their character and to show to what extent the inescapable cosmic polarities offer a solution to tragedy – a solution that the Greeks called the polis. The latter was not devised by the conception of oppressed people fighting for democratic institutions but by a command to live in a very specific and novel way – unheard of in the world of heroes, demigods, and all-pervasive cosmic figures. Indeed, the latter had to be pushed into the background – although not out of sight – in order for the polis to become a reality.
The first tragic myth that bodes well for the understanding of the birth of the polis stretches across numerous Greek plays. The characters of Agamemnon, Iphigeneia, Clytemnestra, Electra, and Orestes; divinities such as Apollo and the earth powers appearing as the Furies; and, finally, Athene, comprise the complex interplay of forces, dimensions, and genders that lead to the solution of tragic life depicted in myths by an establishment of the polis, or democracy. First, let us look at the paternal figure, Agamemnon, the “head” of heroic manhood. It is depicted by Aeschylus, who shows the world of the lion and all of its tragic requirements. To achieve his heroic purpose to conquer Troy Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter, who is also the daughter of Clytemnestra. And this is where the trouble begins. Stranded with his fleet of ships in a windless port of Aulis, and following the signs of an oracle, Agamemnon orders the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia. His wife and mother of Iphigeneia, Clytemnestra, is incensed and plots revenge with the help of her lover Aegisthus. Upon Agamemnon’s return from the war, they form a plot, murder him, and she declares herself the ruler of the land. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, who grew up in a foreign land, is commanded by Apollo to avenge the death of his father. Heeding the command, Orestes murders both his mother and Aegisthus. No sooner is the holy deed done the the Furies set in revenge upon Orestes to haunt him unto death. There is no reprieve for this cycle, and the three episodes of killings would prompt further killings, reaching to murder of brothers, of spouses, children and cannibalistic rituals.
Orestes has not placed himself in the situation to murder his mother in order to be true to his father. He is at a point of intersection that reflects all sides without being able to extricate himself from the realities he reflects. To speak metaphorically, he is a mirror that participates in the drama he reflects. His only “guilt” is being a son. None of his own passions should move him to the tragic deed. Only the command of Apollo, the master of his world, binds him irrevocably to murder his mother, even in contrast to all his efforts to resist such a deed. And yet he must also accept the consequences of his deed and be guilty in the face of the powers of blood and the earth goddesses.
But such a reflection is important for the understanding of the birth of Polis from tragedy. The latter, in its own “essence”, is “blind”, following vital needs and passions that have no restrictions, no other rules but its own “blood lust”. Each deed is already and always in the aura of counter-deeds, equally surrounded by other cunning counter-deeds. Indeed, the forces clashing, annihilating, and being annihilated are regarded in cosmic terms. The human is only a play of such forces that are impossible to overcome, resist, or escape. He reflects on the stage all that constitutes the essence of Greek tragedy. Whichever side he selects, he will be culpable. If you don’t, you are damned, and if you do, you are damned. His very being as a son must bear the entire tragic suffering of the earth. Hence, if there is a way out, it will be his burden to find it.
Obviously, Orestes does not reveal anything that could count as a manly outrage against the Furies. It was a divinity that demanded the murder of the mother and the spilling of blood to atone for the spilled blood of the father. It is Apollo who provoked the Furies. There should not be any reason to demand Orestes’ blood unless he is guilty against himself; after all, all life comes from the same source – Mother Earth – and thus is related by blood. Whoever spills blood offends a common mother and provokes the revenge of her daughters. Orestes too must submit to the law of the earth, including blood vengeance which seeks constantly re-establish a balance of the earth. Yet in a unique turn of this logic, all blood is Mother Earth’s blood and hence the murder of the mother cannot be justified, since she is the principle of life from which come all other justifications. In this sense, for the Furies Apollo is not only one of the guilty parties, he is THE only one who is totally guilty. Here appears the justification of Clytemnestra’s murdering of Agamemnon: she did not turn against the source of life, since it is not murder to turn against one’s own blood.
Apollo is confused by such logic, since more sacred and most dear to man than ties of blood is honour. The strife between Apollo and the Furies is not just between two divine regions, but between two world orders, each sanctified by its own divine images. There is the world of earth goddesses, the world of coming and passing of life, where one senses direct blood-body connections wherein the seeds of life circulate. Here the woman-mother is holly, she is the family and law of the earth. Man is needed only as an occasional means but not an essential aspect; he might as well live in the wilderness. The region of Apollo, the sky, does not spring from the earth and is not held together by blood, but is an invention of man proclaiming his freedom from the earth.
If man’s imagery is to survive his own short life span, he must be concerned with his continuation through blood. The children, born of the mother, must become his own. Hence, man had to accept family life and transform it in a way that he becomes a master of the woman and submits both to the rules of honour. Following this path, he becomes a chief, a leader of a tribe, a king, and his order, sanctioned by sky figures such as Apollo, guarantees peace. Of course, having to be tied to a family diminishes man’s nomadic ways, his wanderlust. Yet he still ventures into wars and leaves his family alone. This is the case with Clytemnestra, who, in the absence of her husband Agamemnon, finds a companion who did not wander off to war. The rest of the story is obvious.
Apollo sees the claims of the Furies as wasted nonsense, originating with barbaric times. With his rule, a superior order has been established. He is so certain of the higher position that for him even the natural mother right – which cannot be avoided without surrendering man’s continuity – must stem from man. The creative act of life’s generation and continuation belongs to man, while woman is a mere soil for accepting and nurturing his seed. Here, man is elevated to such a height that he is not only denaturalized, but woman is completely disempowered and regarded as hardly necessary for life. For the divinity of light, this state of affairs seems unquestionable, and he demands and receives praise for his achievements. After all, Apollo is crowned by Zeus himself. This does not provide the resolution between the two cosmic forces, each demanding human blood revenge.
Finding no way out, the population appeals to the wisdom of Athene – the goddess of Enlightenment. Athene assumes the role of a judge and moderator between the cosmic forces. Athene is well aware that gods and goddesses must have an equal claim as valid powers of the cosmos. As became obvious, the situation comes to a dead end, such that the case of Orestes is well beyond a solution by divinities like Apollo or the Furies; it seems hopeless. Athene does something completely unexpected. While she was appealed to by humans, who have reached a hopeless situation, to resolve the issue by her wisdom, she simply points to a terrestrial human possibility that would be fitting to make humans into what they are in essence. But this possibility was unheard of and radically new, invented and founded by the goddess: the city of Athens. This means a moment in human history when the healing and welfare of humans is handed back to them. It is not handed to some singular hero, who is usually a supporter of his own group, but to the totality of individuals who, in their mutual work with each other, will establish harmony. This mutuality is valid only if it stands under the rule that all matters of life and death shall be the affair of the humans. Humans will take on the burden of freedom if they develop the very essence of humanity and become zoon politikon. This is to say, only with the acceptance of such freedom and responsibility can the humans lead a full life with each other. But this freedom also recognizes that humans are fallible and thus responsible for admitting and correcting their mistakes.
Athene suggests that to escape the strife, humans must establish their own court. The time and place for the establishment of such a court must be immediate, since the law of blood vengeance, whether demanded by mother earth or the will and honour of the sky god, has become helpless to solve this human problem and thus must surrender its unworkable and destructive solution. If humanity as humanity is to continue, it must find a new way. The artist introduces a surprising move on the stage: entirely a new scene, a new place, and a new time are introduced. It is the mountain of Athens, crowned by the imagery of Athene’s cult, that constitutes the center of the space where the settlers set up a wall against the wildness of nature in order to live securely among themselves. In this peaceful setting enters the murderer of his mother, Orestes, and right behind him the entire blood-demanding swarm. Not willing to abandon his favored Orestes, Apollo also shows up to show his contempt for his opponents in this peaceful setting. How will Athene protect the people of her city from being drawn into this self-destructive strife?
Another surprise follows: not only she does not shield the citizens from this furious confrontation, but she in fact draws them into the very center of the fiery controversy. From among the honorable citizens, she devises a court that will be empowered to decide the case of Orestes. How could her act be responsible? As the very heart of the forming society, sanctioned by her own name, she seems to expose the citizens to a deadly game. After all, her own view suggests that the problem far surpasses human capacities and cannot even be decided by divinities; in fact, it is a strife between divinities. She seems to risk the very society she attempts to found. Yet it is obvious that she is willing to put her new society to an extreme test in order to be certain that it could survive the test. She throws down the gauntlet at the citizens’ feet, demanding the abolition of blood vengeance without abolishing the sanctity of life. Of course, Athene does not leave the citizens “hanging” with this problem; she leads them to the only way that it could be mastered: the court should take over the responsibility of making judgments concerning guilt or innocence of any citizen and thus break the chain of blood vengeance. But what lends the court such wondrous power and wisdom that no divinities possess?
It is significant that by proposing a court, Athene excludes the passions of affected persons; an impartial court need not consider personal hates, loves, commitments to bloodline, or allegiances to groups. Thus, the question of revenge is equally abolished. Moreover, a judgment does not come from one person, whose views might be narrow, but from persons who are selected for their known honor, honesty, and truthfulness. Moreover, the court, in its judgment, will be charged not only with considering the well-being of the individual, but above all with considering the entire society. The judgment should follow the majority vote cast for or against a person after careful consideration of motives, witnesses, and validity of arguments. Yet another possible suspicion should be avoided: the conspiracy of the judges to rule in a specific way in a given case. Thus, while the court proceedings are common, each judge will make his decision without consultation with others. In brief, no “party” formation is allowed. Only individuals, with their sense of responsibility for the community, comprise the final decision. Truth here emerges from the integration of partial decisions, where each brings to bear on the whole to the extent that each judge has also a view as to the good of the whole.
It can be seen from what has been said that when Athene hands over all the affairs of justice to humans as their own responsibility, she also implies that this human freedom must observe limits, the transgression of which would prove fatal. The limit is transgressed when the court fails to act in accordance with the conditions set out above, or when citizens fail to adhere to the rules requiring each to respect the law. If these implications are accepted, then the human settlement, established by Athene, will become the Polis. But the citizens must be reminded of what occurs when the limit is transgressed. That is why, given the tragic human condition, the understanding of Polis (political society), as it is depicted by Aeschylus, does not come after the age of the lion – the hunter and hunted but from its very essence. Only if the Polis can be built on the forces that were oriented toward each other’s destruction can they be turned to counter their own passions. In order to prevent the forces from destroying the newly built Polis, each citizen must be watchful for the explosive powers which are built directly into the Polis.
Our discussion of tragedy suggested a revolutionary transformation initiated by a goddess, who demanded that humans themselves run the affairs of society. This appears most clearly in the myth of Prometheus, who rebels against Zeus’ edict that forbids fire to humans. The supreme authority, Zeus, in his anger, denies humans the use of fire. Divine intervention initiates human suffering, if not tragedy. Here, a mythological figure suggests the presence of power as arbitrary, based on momentary passion that becomes a law. In brief, Zeus transgresses the limit of his position by going beyond the limit of human needs – forbidding fire. Prometheus, moved by the unnecessary suffering of humans, steals fire from the gods and gives it to humans. Here we have practical assistance for which Prometheus does not ask anything. He does not wish to rule or to have others follow his way of life. He does not form a party or demand to be a judge on the court. There is no revenge against anyone, nor obedience to some divine command. He simply regards Zeus’ law as unjust and, indeed, premised on one aspect of tragedy: revenge by Zeus against humans. What is interesting is that the Greeks accepted the action of such a rebel as a noble violation of bad or even unjust laws. Although, speaking formally, the act of Prometheus was considered “bad” or, with respect to mythological power play, his personal nobility and his positive attitude and qualities outweigh his formally bad act. Prometheus could be regarded as practically rational and as a worldly “materialist”. His aim was to help others but with this help he changes the notion of justice. Even Zeus accepts this change by admitting that his edict prohibiting fire to humans was a bad law. The worldliness – secularism – of Prometheus appears in his personality, which is independent of any authority. He has his own views and is capable of planning his own future, based on his own knowledge and choices. If he makes mistakes, as all humans do, he admits them and corrects them. After all, Prometheus had decided to support Zeus in the battle against the Titans but after the battle he recognized that Zeus had become a tyrant. Thus, he decides to correct his mistake by rebelling against Zeus’ laws, simply because he decides that such laws are practically unjust. Here, the highest authority is negated as unacceptable in principle without regard for his one’s own benefits. Humanity here is in charge of its own affairs and demands that gods no longer intervene. This is an answer to tragedy, where even gods could not find a way out and thus left the solution to fallible humans.
This theatrical depiction suggests something unique about the Greek overcoming of irrational passions, destructive motives, personal squabbles, and group antagonisms. First, while not modern Western egoistic individualism, it is an individualism that actively demands freedom to challenge authority and be responsible for doing so. Second, such a freedom also entails the duty to participate in demanding that the highest authority may not act arbitrarily. Third, this freedom and duty are not based on some private interest or personal reward, but on a universal quest for justice and truth, despite the cost to the individual who must accept his responsibility. As we know, Socrates is a prime example of this quest and the price he paid for it. Yet this uniqueness seems to be accessible to everyone. This means that there arises a possibility to challenge any authority, including divine edicts, to interrogate them sensibly, and thus to change them. Given this composition of awareness, classical Greek understanding of story figures could not escape democracy and philosophy. Every position, tradition, even the thinking of the highest figures, could be openly interrogated, investigated, analyzed, and required to justify itself in the full light of public and poly-logical debate or in a public court. If a given position, and even an accepted tradition, cannot be justified by reason and by the well-being of humans, it can be openly rejected. This is the reason that classical Greece comprised an arena of intellectual tension among multiple positions, views, all calling for an open public space in which such a tension could be maintained. From mythos arose the polis with its ethos.
We must emphasize one demand that Athene placed on the citizens of the new Polis: they can be free only if they cease to follow their own interests, needs, and power aims, and thus are released to attend to things as they are without any personal obfuscations. Without such freedom, no truth could be attained, and no attained truth could be exposed to human fallibility and hence responsible correction. It is important that this requirement abolishes a priori any claims that appeared even in Greece that “man is the measure of all things”. If this were true, there would be no possibility to reach for philosophical understanding for the love of wisdom that grasps things in their own right. This means that such freedom is not arbitrary, not ruled by will, but limits itself in face of things and the respect for what they are. We shall see how this freedom plays its destiny in philosophy and how it has been subverted by the metaphysics of the will and its expression in power.
What kind of relationships must there be between humans to allow the emergence of a political society? This is to say, what distinguishes political communities from other human associations. The answer lies in a unique relationship between the human as a rational being and as a political being. Most forms of human relationships are based on common purposes, and indeed the origin of political society might have numerous common purposes; yet there is an essential difference, which belongs to the founding itself. This is to say, the founding and the existence of the political society are inextricably related. While we have other purposes toward which we aim in common, the political community is its own purpose. The very purpose of human relationship in political community is this very relationship, i.e., the purpose of the origination of this community is the very existence of the community. The community is not a means for other purposes or a common purpose, but rather the unification of humans into a political community is its own purpose. The origination and continuation of political community are thus a fundamental purpose in itself: it is selffounded. For this reason, the political community cannot be compared to any other human relationship; the relationship of humans, as a purpose in itself, and not a relationship for the sake of other purposes, is what maintains for the human the source of its own essence. This means that the very origin of man as man can be maintained and preserved only within a political community. In this sense, the human as human must be essentially political if he is to preserve his original human essence. This should be considered more closely in terms of the various levels at which the relationship between the human and the political community is fundamental. What constitutes the human, in one basic sense, is rationality, i.e. his capacity to function in the world in light of humanity’s own purposes. Yet in order to manifest this rationality, humanity must establish a political community in which the freedom of each person, in the multifarious relations with others, is guaranteed when the free activity of an individual is tied to a condition: the consensus of free members with one another to the extent that the consensus is guaranteed by universally accepted laws. This condition defines and determines the essence of public rights, comprising the totality of laws which rule the freedom of each in relationship to the freedoms of others.
The conception of human freedom requires a political community in which the freedom of the individual is guaranteed through the free establishment of laws and the free submission to them. The free establishment of laws is, at the same time, constitution of a political community whose sole purpose is itself, i.e., the existence of freedom of each individual to freely posit and submit to laws which guarantee the very freedom to posit the law. In this sense, the political community is its own purpose, within whose context other purposes can be agreed upon and attained in freedom. By contrast, other forms of society are purposive rather than political, i.e., such forms are established for the sake of purposes such as power, economy, or psychological security, none of which are political in themselves. In the POLIS, each member meets as a political being with only one “interest”: the maintenance of what each already is – free. The public arena of the Polis is the place where free persons gather for the sake of the maintenance of freely established law, and thus to sustain their own freedom. Following the laws means that persons respect freedom. The respect of such freedom and the law is not some natural occurrence but calls for constant maintenance of the law and its free origins; after all, such a law is not simply there, but is a continuous “ought”, not in some moral sense, but in a public political sense. The continuous “insistence” means that freedom is not a pre-given reality but an established condition and hence requires maintenance.
The first democratic institution is the public domain accessible to all members of a society. This step is coextensive with the very constitution of freedom for each member of a community as a human being. Each has a right and a duty to engage in and continuously found the public domain and freedom. In turn, each can establish her own way of life, shaping her destiny, under the condition that she allows others to do the same. A political community must be constantly reminded that, to understand itself as political, it must remain aware of this principle in order to maintain and guarantee the mutual freedoms of all its member. At times this principle is misread, especially in the face of the immense difficulties in adjudicating within the public sphere various claims and counterclaims. Hence, too often the task is left to the “fathers” of a political community to handle the affairs of the state. This mode of “governing” turns out soon to be “paternal”, i.e., the governed are the children who need to be told what to do and who cannot be told everything. Benevolent paternalism leads to the notion that all benefits derive from the “new idol”: the state which in its supposed omnipotence and omniscience must be entrusted to the “leaders”. This is one form of despotism which abolishes the rights of the citizen in the sense that the citizen has acquired duties but no rights. Such a tendency may even arise within parliamentary democracies, when the representatives begin to think that political decisions are best left in the hands of the expertise of some more “preeminent” leaders or even the representatives themselves. The theory of “limited understanding of the subordinates” can emerge as the main view of the representatives, even if this view is hidden under some other name, such as “popular leadership”. In fact, such a hidden domination tends to attack any criticism from the “intellectuals” as a criticism that stems from a “pretense” to “know better” than the population, all the while maintaining the subordination of the “dumb population” under the unquestioned popularity of the representatives. This “paternalistic benevolence” takes its model from the family, with the father at its head. The state begins to be interpreted as a “family”. Another threat to the public domain is the proclaimed “national unity”, tending to abolish the public participation by arguing that all human relationships are power-laden, and hence the leaders must assume power in order to “protect the citizens” from all sorts of internal and external enemies. This strategy crushes public debate and opposition. It is a way of using power by positing “external” and “internal” enemies which must be guarded against, and hence by instilling a false pride in the national unity and power.
From autonomous freedom that is coextensive with the maintenance of the public domain flows equality of each member of the political community. Autonomous freedom, as a source of law in the public domain, constitutes each member of the political community as an equal source of law.
This is the basic law: mutual rational-dialogical consent. This thesis of “consent” has been challenged by all sorts of romanticists and conservatives, from Hegel through Marx and up to date in various sociohistorical and evolutionary theories, who proclaim that the current laws have emerged historically and are composites of social interests and powers, sanctioned by long historical traditions. In brief, they are social laws and, as such, depend on drives, needs, power positions, and shifting group dynamics, resulting in “ideologies” which legitimize the private imposition of one person’s rule over another. But precisely these claims subject law to “factual” contingencies and relationships, to irrational power struggles and postures which cannot yield a law to which one must submit by choice, but a law which is identical with a material force or psychological, biological compulsions. In this sense, we would revert back to the processes depicted by Thucydides. “Politics” ceases and becomes a means for a social aggrandizement of power positions, possessions, and expansion. Social, political, and economic “sciences” share in this conservativism, not by dint of their Marxian explanation that even sciences are ideologies which support the given power relationships in a society, but by their own constitution which compels them to regard the Polis sociohistorically. The argument by the “scientists” is pushed further: there is no “historical” evidence that any state was ever founded on an original “agreement”.
All these arguments miss the essential point: an agreement is the necessary condition for rational and free beings to live together in society, if such a that society is to establish a political state rather than a social empire. To speak phenomenologically, the eidos of the founding agreement relates to the individual as an agent of intentional activity who, while living with others in a society, is related to them in various modes of influence and dependence. The agreement is in a society and becomes political when the individuals assume responsibility for establishing the public domain and, in turn, their own autonomy; from this follow mutual laws to which all agree to submit. The manifold of the eidos allows the law giver to enact laws which originate with a mutual consent of the members of a Polis in such a way that such members can approve of and submit to the law. The eidos is not an arbitrarily invented notion but rather a necessary insight if the human is to be preserved as human and not as a creature of irrational forces. Thus, the eidos does not propose freedom in its abstract essence but in its concrete effectivity. While it is true that the rational being is essentially free, what must be understood is how this freedom relates to other freedoms in a social setting. Hence, the concrete reality of this freedom first manifests itself in an original agreement and not merely in social life. The eidos is what first determines objective political reality and practical interactions in public arena, and not the privatesubjective and social arena.
While the principles enunciated above constitute the basis of Polis, specific laws do not stem directly from them. Individual laws depend on the changing circumstances and shifting human interrelationships. In this sense any law must not only be in accord with the eidos that also includes rights, but also must be interrogated with respect to the range of its necessity. The person appointed to carry out the law, or called upon to establish a law, can make mistakes in two directions: first, she might not notice that her specific implementation might lead to violation of rights, or that the very law leads to an unjust conclusion; and second, she might be mistaken as to the justifiable necessity of a law in a given situation. Given this situation, the constant duty of a citizen is to engage in a dual critique. This establishes, to speak metaphorically, a “podium of public justice”, inclusive of every member’s right to offer an open critique without fear of reprisals. Whoever accuses such a critique of being “against the state” or “against the people” harbors apparently despotic tendencies. When representatives of an open Polis proclaim that criticism and open debate threatens the state, what they are saying in truth is that they are worried about their own misdeeds and positions. They actually fear what they do and begin to hate any critic and open discourse on public issues. In fact, they begin to intimate that the critics are, in fact, a hostile and disruptive element of the state, counter to a “free” and “just order”. They fear their own misdeeds and accuse the members of the public who dare be critical. Such inhabitants of public trust should be dismissed with all dispatch. Laws issued by appointed law givers are binding to the public only insofar as they reflect the agreement of the public. What the public cannot decide about itself, neither can the representatives. And this is the very “self-purpose” which constitutes the Polis: neither the representatives nor the public may abolish the existent freedom of public and mutuality in the public domain. Any attempt to do so would contradict the very concept of the Polis. The political community does not arise from the necessities of life, but conversely. It is established and maintained because the human can preserve in it her freedom in a life of community and a life of needs. To further preserve such freedoms and equality, the decision was made to separate the Polis into three independent institutions: Juridical, Legislative and Administrative, such that none exceeds its proper boundaries.
The attack on human rights and autonomy comes from the claims that democracy cannot be established through representation but must be direct, where the represented and the representatives are one and the same. The problem that remains is that the population has not realized its true will and interests; hence, there must be a transitional period of terror which would “educate” the people to understand their true interests. In this way, the dialectics of liberation must turn into its opposite: educational dictatorship that claims to disclose the true interests of the population – its true will. This is nowadays conceived technologically: the establishment of material conditions which would allow each person to express and live by his/her true will and interests. This constitutes the background for justification of the terror and opinion control in the second and third worlds: the population must be “reeducated”, and the conditions must be established in correspondence with the true will of the people. The liberators presumably know the true will and interests; hence, any deviation from such knowledge, such as asking for human rights is to be suppressed.
While the first phase of the French revolution was realized by the 19th century, the fascination with the second revolution remained. The latter took over the Enlightenment’s notion of liberation and sought to demonstrate how such a liberation could be achieved in practice. Marx is part of this movement and jokes about the first French revolution in his essay On the Jewish Question (1843): “Man did not become liberated from religion; he only achieved religious freedom. He was not liberated from egoism, but acquired egoistic freedom. He was not liberated from property, but gained freedom for property”. Marxism has become the most pronounced and politically the most powerful manifestation of this idea of liberation; but Marx is only one in the continuation of this second French revolution.
The distinction between liberation for rights and from rights does not lie in method but in aim. The liberation for rights might use violence when the state or a group does not respect the rights; the aim is to secure the rights and to liberate people from the oppression by tyrants. But the second revolution invokes the term liberation without being clear what is the aim. Since the aim is the factor that justifies the methods for liberation, then the justification between the two kinds of methods for liberation will also differ. The first revolution will use means to establish institutions for free expression, free assembly, and individual dignity, which will justify the means. The second revolution will use means to establish the scientific-material conditions for liberation, thereby manipulating both institutions and public opinion toward this end. The difficulty is that this revolution does not tell anyone what will take the place of rights, what is the aim apart from the vague notion of “liberation from”, i.e., negative liberation.
It is characteristic of the second liberation movement that its proponents claim that the evolutionary way – the inner adjustment of the institutions to abolish residua of rights violations – is functioning within the institutions. The only way to liberate from such rights is through revolution, through the suppression of rights and their institutions. In this sense, those who defend existing institutions are branded as conservative, regressive, while those who declare their abolition are celebrated as progressive. In this framework, the eschatological salvation turns into a political hope; here the regressive maintenance of institutions signals “bad consciousness” while the progressive and revolutionary is “good consciousness”.
The catchwords of the second revolution are framed in negative opposition to the rights established by the first revolution: the dissolution of rulers and the rules of man over man, mastery of material conditions, equality, total autonomy, etc. Yet in a unique reversal this leads to the submission to the rule of the sciences, most notably to “scientific socialism”. Spontaneity is reduced to technocracy, and freedom is redefined as a mere “consciousness of necessity”. It is possible to decipher what this liberation is all about, specifically in face of such confessions as those of Arthur Koestler, Ignace Lepp, Manès Sperber, and in the face of the excesses of Leninism and Stalinism, and why the cultural milieu is still there which subsumes and blinds so much of intellectual acuity.
In the second revolution humans are to be liberated who are not yet aware that they need to be liberated. Primarily, it is the act of liberation which depicts the “objective” conditions that allow the subject to realize that he was not free. As long as liberation lies in the future, individuals remain unaware of their need for it and thus live in false consciousness. This presupposes that, despite living under objectively oppressive conditions, some people, whether due to their inherence in the proper class or whether due to their reflective acuity, can anticipate the coming freedom. Thus they have to educate the rest; they relate to the population like teachers to children: “later you will see that what is now done to you is for your own good”. This is a variation of the divine complex.
This conception of liberation divides society into two classes: the enlightened and the unenlightened, the liberators and the liberated. The liberators set the terms of unfreedom and freedom, determining the conditions under which the rest of society must be “freed”. For example, leftist theorists would argue that even if the population embraces the ideology of private ownership of the means of production, it nonetheless lives in a state of false consciousness. On this basis, the liberators claim the right to oppose the majority. By contrast, in a state that upholds institutions affirming human rights, every individual is presumed capable of understanding his or her own needs and interests. The liberators, however, proclaim that the very institutions hinder the population to come to awareness of the true needs: the population must therefore be “educated”. This is the justification of the liberators. The claim by the liberators is the claim for power to control, without any institutional hindrances, the opinions and the direction of human interests. The result is not merely a two-class system, but above all the liberators need not follow any laws or respect any rights, since they themselves know – and not the public – what is the liberated situation and are in a position to get us there. Thus, whenever a state seeks to defend institutionally guaranteed rights, the liberators denounce it as “oppressive”, “authoritarian”, “fascist”, “reactionary”, or even “imperialistic”.
The first revolution, which established human rights, is founded on an ethos that respects human values and human dignity. This ethos is expressed in concepts such as “human-inhuman”, “truthful-untruthful”, “good-bad”, etc. The liberators translate these concepts into “progressive-reactionary”. Thus “good” is transformed into activity that serves “liberation”, while “bad” becomes all institutions that respect human rights and the laws that guarantee such rights. In the first revolution “good” meant an adjustment of social and political processes to ensure human rights, and progress was made when the laws founded on these rights were applied more equitably. With the second revolution “good” is what abolishes the institutions supporting such rights, and progress is the tendency toward absolute liberation from institutions. We find here a hidden return of man’s rule over man. This change in the meaning of concepts is usually obfuscated until finally the “intellectuals” find themselves using them in the name of liberation through whatever means. The result is a change in the conception of morality that reaches from the political to everyday concerns. This is manifested in political arguments where an argument is not refuted by a better argument but by designations such as “conservative”, “reactionary”, or even “fascist”. Thus, the question of whether the argument is true or false is not even taken into account. Those who use opposing arguments are automatically discredited by such imputations that they represent the ruling interests. What is obvious is that those who so “discredit” the argument are no longer interested either in truth or falsity, nor are they interested in maintaining the semblance of rights, not to speak of the institutions that support them.
Why are the liberators attempting to disrupt the institutions founded on and for the sake of rights? The institutions defend the freedom of individuals. But the quintessence of liberation is to dominate the mind. Although superficially it seems that one is intent on abolishing private property, capitalistic imperialism, and exploitation, indeed, these play a role, but only an instrumental and not an essential role; the ultimate and fundamental aim and the fascination is the domination of mind. In place of the freedom of consciousness, we find liberation from consciousness. After all, the Marxian liberators could insist, on the basis of their own theories, that the economic base be guaranteed while mental development is left free; yet precisely the opposite is the case: they ruin the base and use it as a means for the domination and control of minds.
The communist states should not fear to embody the International Agreement on Human Rights, proposed in 1966 and established in 1976. This pact does not claim the freedom of private property. What this pact demands is an all-encompassing protection of human rights against all state intervention; it demands independence of judges from any political commitments, the right to travel, to believe, to communicate, to express, to gather, and to debate. But this is not embodied in the technocratic states; this shows that such states want precisely not a liberation from private property but a domination and control of human thought. The abolition of institutions that protect the freedom of thought means taking on the task of controlling human thought by arbitrary decisions of individuals or groups; after all, they would be above any institutions and laws due to their self-appointed wisdom. While this is more obvious in the communist nations, the same tendency appears globally in the guise of technocratic bureaucracy. The proclaimed ability to establish conditions for equality should, in fact, be accompanied by public discussion and solutions to persistent economic problems; all this is obviously not the case. This suggests that the basic interest is not in helping “the people” but in controlling their thinking. And this is indeed the reason for the fascination Marxism exercises over Western intellectuals. They are well aware of the “base” problems in the “communist” societies, yet they overlook them. This suggests that the basic aim is not the socialization of the means of production but the “spiritual liberation” along the lines taught by the intellectuals. This is the reason for a “spiritual dictatorship” and the justification of terroristic activities.
The liberation from rights is the liberation from the ontological justification of rights and hence a fundamental rejection of human value and the conception that humans are ends and not means. It is a form of reductionism that exposes the human being as a means, as something that can be manipulated through opinion formation and material conditions. Terrorism, i.e., the use of humans and even the taking of their lives as means for liberation movements, becomes justifiable. Liberation from rights is also a liberation from the ontology supporting such rights; but this means that we would lack any justification for treating humans as valuable, i.e., it is an attempt to subvert and pervert any consideration of the human being as something special. What permits this perversion is the obfuscation of the end. The obfuscation is such that one is made to believe that the basic striving for liberation is founded upon human worth; but implicitly, with the abolition of the final justification of human rights, human worth is also abolished, and what one offers is a liberation from this worth, leading to the notion that the human being is a product of conditions and hence that the self-appointed “wise” can change the conditions, manipulate opinion, i.e., use humans as means for a nebulous liberation. The purported battle against injustice, exploitation, imperialism, etc., is fundamentally a battle against the conditions that allow for human rights and the institutions that enhance such rights.