On Freedom: Book Review

On Freedom: Book Review

On Freedom, Timothy Snyder (2024). The book covers a lot of material and has several perspectives that are thought provoking. It’s also a difficult read. Synder makes a multitude of categorial statements, most of which seem over the top about topics that are complicated. What’s particularly lacking is a good understanding of economics. Given that, it’s still an important read. He’s an academic and quotes various philosophers, dissidents, and others.

Preface. “Freedom is not just the absence of evil, but a presence of good. … It takes collective work to build structures of freedom. [In Ukraine]: We chose freedom when we did not run. We are fighting for freedom. … Freedom meant a normal life with prospects. An individual is free when the government is out of the way. … We need structures, just the right ones, moral as well as political, Virtue is an inseparable part of freedom” (p. x). In Ukraine it meant removing repression. Security is necessary, as included in the Constitution: “the blessings of liberty, the general welfare, and the common defense.” Russians in Ukraine apparently viewed freedom and “liberated” as free to murder and steal.

Synder considers five forms of freedom: sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, factuality, and solidarity. Unpredictability is somewhat puzzling, apparently meaning the individual can make unexpected decisions at any time. [Our granddaughters, for example, made choices. One joined the high school band and theater, the other played tennis and softball.]

Introduction: Freedom, Jubilee. Snyder discusses the 1976 stamp of the Liberty Bell and the legend of the Declaration of independence as a call for freedom. Presumably, white men could themselves be free if they had slaves and dominated women, one perspective of negative freedom. As a student Snyder admired Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents.

According to Snyder economists think markets do the thinking for us. [Economists usually have a more nuanced view.] Karl Marks believed that capitalist societies would be transformed when private property was abolished. The Soviets developed planned economies. What happened when the USSR failed? Capitalists thought democracy and free markets would develop. Laissez-faire did not come about. Americans gave bad advice to Russia: privatize now: ignore culture. Again, oligarchy happened.

After 9/11 freedom was sacrificed for safety, promoted by the Bush/Cheney team. Then incompetent attacks and more. There was the 2003 invasion of Iraq for bogus reasons, which was a disaster (“an adventure of negative freedom”). It strengthened Iran. Driving out al-Qaeda in Afghanistan led to trying a democracy spending a trillion dollars or so, a total failure.

US capitalists drove toward monopoly power and wealth concentration, with success through both political parties. Trump tried a coup d’etat to stay in power in 2020, aided by lawyers who didn’t recognize their own potential for being prosecuted for lying (and more). 

As the Soviet Union collapse capitalist gave poor advise to Russia, resulting in rich kleptocrats. They had their own culture, not conducive to capitalism. Putin took power becoming the “boss of bosses, consolidating power through terror and wars” (p. 15). The invasion of Ukraine showed an aggressive want-to-be emperor. How did Ukraine survive? Freedom had a lot to do with it, plus preparation, and corruption and incompetence by the Russian military. President Zelensky was staying to lead the fight (“send ammo, not a taxi”—not what he said, but sounded perfect). Snyder called this positive freedom. “An unfree person can always try to run. But sometimes a free person has to stay. Free will is character” (p, 19).

Sovereignty—the first form of freedom. Leib: “body,” used by German philosopher Edith Stein (who died at Auschwitz). “A sovereign person knows themselves and the world sufficiently to make judgments about values and to realize those judgments. … Empathy is a precondition for certain knowledge of the world. Negative freedom is the self-deception of people who do not really wish to be free (ignore the Leib). … Negative freedom is not a misunderstanding but a repressive idea” (p. 21).

Mein Kampf viewed Jews as foreign objects or parasites in Germany. Before Jews were killed, they were robbed and humiliated. “Jesus is neither litigious nor vengeful, emphasizing instead the simple laws of loving God and loving one’s neighbor” (p. 26). Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan shows compassion on a random wounded person: “it is the Samaritan who is free. … Freedom is positive. It is about holding virtues in mind and having some power to realize them” (p. 27). Happiness relates to what we value. Freedom House measures freedom based on civil and political liberties. America is mediocre on these measures. Even worse is our lack of universal healthcare. “Advances in medicine made possible a profound gain of freedom. … Freedom is neither the lack nor the acceptance of constraints, but rather the use of them” (p. 38). There is a distinction between values and things: the law of freedom versus the law of necessity.

Ukraine: for Stalin it meant resources. For Hitler it was living space. Ukranians were ignored or considered sub-human. Putin would call them “Nazis, Jews, gays, Satanists, ghouls, zombies, vermin. … Equal dignity is easy to grant in theory. But how do we recognize others in practice? … Empathy is the only way to become a reasonable person. … Russia has become a genocidal fascist expire for many reasons … and America has become a flawed republic threatened by oligarchy and fascism” (p. 43). “The Roman historian Livy defined freedom as standing upright oneself without depending on another’s will. … Edith Stein: creation of capabilities belongs to freedom.   We can learn to govern ourselves only with the right kind of guidance, at the right stage of life” (p. 54). “Freedom is not about being right, which is elusive, but about trying to do right” (p. 62).

Unpredictability: Improbable States. Czech dissident Vaclav Havel, a country dismembered by the Nazis in 1938, then communists took over in 1948. Havel was blacklisted. Communism became conformity rather than ideology. “Cynicism about the system slips into nihilism that serves the system…  and the gradual erosion of all moral standards. … Havel’s essay ‘The Power of the Powerless,’ a profound meditation on freedom. … Normality in this sense of normalization has no substance, only form. … The pretending was what Havel called unfreedom, the concession of the authentic self” (p. 64).

Normal could be what everyone does or what a person should do. What about loyalty versus honesty. What are the choices given circumstances and various values? Havel stresses moral standards. “Dissidence was just a matter of trying to live according to virtues rather than conforming” (p. 75). The Soviet Gulag was an “embargo on normal human aspirations.” Human rights: defending prisoners in Russia, culture in Ukraine, music in Czechoslovakia, labor in Poland.

Aldous Huxley on communism: “lash, then leash.” Should law be associated with a world of values, following moral standards? Necessity versus freedom. Zelenski stayed in Ukraine to feel free in an unpredictable world.

Silicon Valley-based social media went from utopia to total nihilism. Engagement most often turned to hate. “We need to manipulate software that is designed to manipulate us. Freedom involves possible futures, unpredictable to aspiring tyrants and uncaring machines. … Many things are possible, but not everything is possible” (p. 85). Not surveilled, harried, and nudged.

Ukranians looked toward Europe for lives with better prospects and freedom. Putin stepped in with propaganda. Putin used propaganda against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Social media makes people vulnerable, including what people like, then what they fear (behaviorism). Confirmation bias: information we agree with is believed, which social media can reinforce. Cognitive dissonance: we view what we don’t like as false. Orwell introduced double think and the thought police. Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 had firemen burn books to make people spend their time in front of a screen. Politicians test phrases online before using them. China is something of a country-wide prison. The unpredictability of history.

Mobility: Wolf’s World. Mobility is the third type of freedom, changing locations and values, plus access to the necessities like food, water, and public goods. Healthcare and retirement allow greater freedom. Poverty impedes mobility. A 1946 court case banned segregation in law but not practice. That was after more than a million African Americans served in World War II. John Lewis was beaten up and spent time in jail as a Freedom Rider. “Mobility feels personal but is political” (p. 120). Hitler had a hideous form of negative freedom on the Jews.

In Karl Marx’s view of the world, private property was a singular evil, and its abolition would restore to each person that lost essence” (p. 122). Stalin’s plan was to collectivize farms and industrialize. The result was the starvation of four million Ukrainians. The Nazis saw the Soviet Union as a future colony. Putin’s wars on Ukraine were neo-colonialism. Post-WWII national self-determination became the norm: “Nationalism was effective as resistance, defining freedom collectively and negatively as the removal of imperial rule. But it provided no formula for the freedom of the individual” (p. 129). European and Canadian welfare systems allowed Europeans individual freedom, then creation the European Union to enhance freedom.

The American welfare state (developing the liberal consensus) included the New Deal, New Frontier, and Great Society, meant to enhance mobility and freedom. Reagan’s policies reversed this trend, claiming that the government can only hurt people. This promoted the welfare of the wealthy. Reagan linked welfare and race (remember the “welfare queen”). This also included the mass imprisonment of Blacks, promoting prisons over schools.

Synder noted that railroads in Eastern Europe were better than the US, including Ukraine. Trump was categorized as a sadopopulist, interested in vendettas and telling Trumpers that others suffered more. A basic message was contempt for others and normalizing oligarchy. This included a politics of catastrophe.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union was the politics of inevitability and history was over. Only one future was possible, with everything being good. Too bad about mass disenfranchisement with 21st century wars, claiming destroying bad states would generate good ones. Then a financial crisis in 2008, the election of Trump in 2016, pandemic in 2020, and attempted coup. Plus, massive inequality freezing social mobility, with wealth generated by only a few elites (have yachts versus have-nots). Wealthy lobby against policies helping the middle class and below. “A Trump mocks science; a Putin invades Ukraine with an army funded by fossil fuels; a Musk opens Twitter to a flood of lies about both Russian fascism and global warming” (p. 158).

Factuality: Living Truth. Factuality is the fourth form of freedom. “Forms of negative freedom: just eliminate property (Marx); just eliminate Jews (Hitler); just eliminate the imperialists (anti-colonialists); just eliminate government (Americans)” (p. 162). It begins with knowledge. Fusion: consider the limits of Earth and rules of the universe. Kafka: “In the struggle between you and the world, take the side of the world.”

Al Gore, according to the Supreme Court, lost Florida and the presidency. One reason was the 4 million felons who could not vote, mainly Black men. “Facts enable sovereignty by allowing people to decide for themselves, without relying on authorities. Facts are needed both for court rulings and for elections. … The communist big lie was that the party was always right” (p. 175). Soviet heroes could be executed as traitors 20 years later, then posthumously rehabilitated after another 20 years. And so on, resembling Orwell’s 1984 and his concept of doublethink. For Nazi Germany, it was Jews were always wrong; they’re the ones causing capitalism, communism, physics.

Hitler’s PR strategy: “tell a lie so enormous that your followers cannot imagine that you would deceive them on such a scale. Because of the lie’s very grandeur, people are physically overinvested when they accept it, and they cannot get out without pain. A big lie is an untruth that is too big to fail” (p. 178). Trump seems to have adopted this strategy, backed by Fox News. Then Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Fake news also does well on Facebook. Lord Acton: “There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. “Us versus them” generates fear. Oligarchs claim truth is meaningless and freedom of speech senseless.

Solidarity. Just People. “Solidarity … is a necessary component of a working project of social mobility. … Without solidarity, without protection of free speakers and without the support of institutions that enable listening, freedom of speech (like freedom itself) becomes an empty slogan. … Survivor testimony is now important to our understanding of the Holocaust. … To organize the service of truth as Havel put it, requires solidarity” (p. 195). The Polish labor movement Solidarity was an early (1980) standout, focusing on economic goals and human rights.  Havel wrote “The Power of the Powerless.” The opposite is escapism. “In negative freedom, the cowards—the Putins, the Trumps, the Musks—are the heroes. Wealth preservation perverts politics. The rich making class warfare, like Charles Koch. Social media, especially X, has been anti-evidence and pro-conspiracy.”

The market system is poor in areas like healthcare. Government provides public goods, independent of the market system. Commercial medicine is the most efficient getting money from the sick. Efficiency was a reason for moving manufacturing to China. “Negative freedom objectifies. Positive freedom humanizes.

Conclusions: Government: Awakening. “In normal times, the Ukrainian black earth, extending from this coast northward, can feed about half a billion people. … Ukrainian resistance reminds us that freedom cannot be entrusted to impersonal forces, or to wealthy people or powerful corporations that tell us that there are no alternatives and that there is nothing we can do. … Imperfection enables freedom. … We need government to build the architecture of the American Dream” (p. 228). That includes affordable schooling and functional infrastructure. Virtues cannot be ranked. Is honesty better than loyalty? But they can compete. There is judgment, but still structure.

“Democracy remains the best available way to address differences in value commitments. … Democracy marks sovereignty by establishing the vote. … It opens avenues for unpredictable action. …Democracy invites deliberation. … Elections are a procedure for creating a new government on a regular basis. … Democracy is self-correction” (p. 236).

Objective, fact-based news is important, including at the local level. This is a problem as local newspapers are failing. Much of the news can be: “repetition, speculation, and spin” (p. 265).