By LUIZ MARQUES*
Neoliberals believe that the reign of freedom coincides with the free market for the goals of accumulation
The concept of freedom is present in the revolutions that founded modernity: (a) the English Revolution, in 1642, to defeat absolutism towards constitutional monarchy to submit the king to Parliament; (b) the United States Revolution, in 1776, whose Declaration of Independence put an end to the exogenous Anglo-Saxon domination over the thirteen colonies and; (c) the French Revolution, in 1789, which overthrew the absolute monarchy in the name of the Republic and humanity itself.
Individual freedoms are decisive for achieving triple sovereignty — representative, national and popular. Historically, civil rights preceded political and social rights. Freedom then had a revolutionary vector, it opened horizons, it was not confined to shopping malls.
David Harvey, in Anticapitalist chronicles, resumes themes with anarchist features with an emphasis on authoritarianism by suggesting that libertarian ideals are the hallmark of May 1968, due to the demands for: (i) freedom from state coercion; (ii) freedom from market coercion; (iii) freedom from coercion by corporate capital and; (iv) freedom from moral coercion and customs. Everything tempered in equality.
Neoliberalism's response to absorbing and neutralizing the high tension in institutions is to channel individuals' legitimate desire for autonomy into market aspirations. Bourgeois transformism throws the agendas of terrible enfants to mix and redirect batteries against state regulatory bodies, throwing all available energy into the mill of capital.
The eclipse of freedom
The art of making heads eclipses freedom and triggers a “cultural war”. Paradoxically, to brand the Workers' Party (PT) as authoritarian, which emulates the Participatory Budget (OP) and the World Social Forum (FSM), the movement of movements. In this parallel reality, it manufactures idolatries like Viktor Orbán (Hungary), Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel) and Donald Trump (USA) for whom the democratic rule of law is an instrument to configure exceptional regimes. The new reason for the world subjects democracy and freedom to deregulation, privatization and fiscal adjustments to stop social spending. Demagoguery and fake news are part of the menu.
Neoliberals believe that the reign of freedom coincides with the free market for the goals of accumulation. The economistic vision relegates the achievement of human beings to the background. It is easy to identify think tanks of added value. “Everyone thinks like an owner”, in the words of an exponential member of the Institute of Business Studies (IEE). From charming Mont Pélerin, neocolonizers project the globalization of the hierarchy of command and obedience onto the world.
“Economic planning and control have been attacked as a denial of freedom, while free enterprise and private property are considered essential to freedom”, emphasizes Karl Polanyi, in the great transformation. In effect, the goal is not to build equality, but inequality. Unemployment is premeditated to weaken the union apparatus and legitimize wage cuts, presented as a modernization of labor relations with the class support of the judiciary. Thus, conservative dystopism converts the goal of the welfare state into a serious fiscal imbalance.
The political advances achieved in job creation and income distribution are denounced “as camouflage of slavery”. Transgressions to the laissez-faire of the market-god. Measures to heal the pain of inequities frustrate profits. Folly prefers downward indicators in the Human Development Index (HDI). Societies built on different foundations do not deserve the baptism of “free”, even if they can contemplate more and better the population. Individualism and indifference to the suffering of the people injects the narrative, in a vein, that evokes Margaret Thatcher's plague: “There is no alternative”. All that remains is voluntary servitude.
In the dialectic of this wall, the capitalist can: (a) maximize exploitation rates by increasing productivity and decreasing labor predicates and; (b) prevent the breaking of patents on technological innovations in favor of communities. While the worker can: (i) choose the job and; (ii) resist based on freedom of conscience and association, which make up the list of civic prerogatives in the program of democratic socialism. Such is the current systemic “can-can”.
To rescue freedom
Universal access to housing and the sphere of public sociability are exchanged for “commodity totalitarianism”. The Washington Consensus is presented as a panacea. London had 60% of social housing not valued at exchange value, but at use value; today, as a result of methodical speculation, it has less than 20%. In Brazil, the My home, my life It seeks to protect itself from the real estate Wild West that dynamites community grammar to treat everything as a commodity.
Property-owning democracy confronts the historical construct of citizenship and the constitutionality of modern nations. Tough luck for the losers if New York has 65 thousand homeless people in 2023, and São Paulo leads the Brazilian ranking of helplessness with 55 thousand delivered to the heart of Father Júlio Lancellotti. The Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) is an antidote to the disruptive tendencies of the market. “The truth is that we are building cities for people to speculate, not cities for people to live”, concludes David Harvey. Affordable housing is becoming volatile with the explosion of properties for the consumption of wealthy people.
This is the structural obstacle to initiatives for the reconstruction of Rio Grande do Sul, by the federal government. The ineptitude of authorities at state and local level combined with the lack of sufficient homes, at a cost of up to R$200, are the obstacles that stand in the way of resolving the disaster. Megabuilders prefer to invest in skyscrapers and luxury buildings. Democratizing the housing process means reinstating it as a social good. Barcelona banned ten thousand rentals airbnb. No municipal Master Plan should protect the profits of rentiers.
It is valid for mass transport, water supply and electricity. Privatized services worsen “natural” tragedies and excuse incompetent misgovernment, without transparency. Outsourced government practices contribute to the material and symbolic destruction of communitarianism. Financialization uses socio-environmental events to disengage public entities and deepen eugenics. It is up to the left to unfurl the flags along the way: “In the fight of classes / all weapons are good / stones / nights / poems”, according to the samurai poet Paulo Leminski.
It is urgent to break the shackles of dehumanization. The possibility of an authentic existence, with the radical expansion of freedom, presupposes overcoming the reign of necessity and alienated work. The consolidation of a minimum level of dignity provides the socialization of brand new values. With subsistence assured, society benefits from everyone according to their ability. But in order not to fall into a sterile utopianism, it is necessary to establish the political elements of the transition period.
In a debate with Rahel Jaeggi, Nancy Fraser emphasizes: “A desirable society, capitalist or post-capitalist, that does not grant an important role to planning is inconceivable. Planning can and should be democratic. It does not require the nomenklatura or the government of specialist technicians. Could we tackle an issue like climate change without some large-scale planning? A systemic blockade of this scale cannot be carried out by small collectives.” The current ecological crisis highlights the urgency of transnational articulations. Only global democracy guarantees a long life for Homo sapiens and locavorism, for local food production.
Only with planning and democratic control over the social surplus, with regulation (from outside) of the economy and modifications (from within), is it possible to consolidate the emancipatory contents. Interrupting the change in the planet's climate for the enjoyment of personal life depends on a culture of solidarity and participation. Palliative positions underestimate the danger around the corner. Virtue is not at the center, but in the real collective struggle to defeat neofascism and neoliberalism and their conservative appendage. Prey sows unhappiness, atomization. It ruins plural sociability. Transformative praxis strengthens the mottos of the Modern Age: freedom, equality, fraternity.
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
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