Here’s a second post inspired by Dustin Howes’ Freedom without Violence.

War has often been seen as a contest, a way of testing men both against themselves (i.e. can they overcome their fear to act bravely) and against others (who will prove the superior in combat?).  This competition has proved undeniably attractive for some men throughout history—and can be tied to freedom, if freedom is considered the ability to control oneself, the ability to master one’s fear or other contrary emotions/desires on the way to doing something that is difficult.  Foucault in his final books was interested in exploring this idea of freedom as self-control or self-mastery.

But the paradox, of course, is that soldiers are in many ways the least free beings we can imagine.  They are bound to obey—or die.  Robert E. Lee was executing deserters up to five days before his surrender at Appomattox.  A great mystery to me is how “boot camp” tactics manage to create fierce loyalty to the organization among those who have been systematically abused and humiliated.  There seems to be only two plausible answers: 1. A pride in having survived the worst that could be dished out. 2. The complete break-down of the prior self and its sense of dignity/worth—and then a reconstitution of that self as only having an identity within the organization.  If some version of the second is true, then complete subservience to and dependence on the social body (the army) underlies the hyper-masculinity of war.  There appears to be a deep masochism at the heart of masculinity, a desire to submit to power within contexts that glorify the possession of power (including the power to kill) through the establishment and maintenance of a strict hierarchy.  (See Dan Duffy’s comment on the previous post for an argument–which I agree with–that the army aims to undermine any self-sufficiency, that it wants to create complete dependence of the individual on the unit.  My discussion here is meant to consider how this acceptance of deep dependence is squared with heightened notions of masculinity–and how the soldier’s hyper-dependency is compensated for by his participation in extreme power.)

Howes several times references Gandhi’s belief “that freedom means doing one’s moral duty” (189).  Kant holds a similar view—and links it with a fierce insistence on individual autonomy.  The self must determine its own duty, must follow its own conscience.  Where duty is dictated to the self by a collective body, the result is not freedom, but at best passive obedience, at worst full-scale tyranny.  Yet collective action appears to require the merger of selves into some kind of purpose that transcends the self.  Charismatic figures are often as central to progressive social movements as inspirational leaders are to an army.

Furthermore, it seems indisputably true that people often find their lives most meaningful when devoted to a cause that transcends them.  Soldiers put their lives on the line—and are nostalgic ever afterwards about their war-time experiences.  This suggests that “freedom” is not the only political or personal good.  There are other goods people seek, other considerations that motivate them.  I would say that people want to be needed, to have their contribution solicited and valued, want to make a difference through their participation.  It is not that such desires are necessarily incompatible with freedom, but I think (along with Isaiah Berlin, whom Howes discusses) that it is a mistake to twist definitions of freedom around in order to say that immersion of one’s self in a larger enterprise is “true” freedom or a species of freedom.  It makes more sense to retain the word freedom for the ability to choose one’s own course of action and for possession of the capabilities to act on those choices.  Participation in a larger enterprise often means doing things one would rather not do but does undertake for various reasons, ranging from fear of punishment (from ostracism to physical punishment) to willingness to not make waves in the name of group harmony.

Hannah Arendt gets at some of these issues in her discussion of “superfluousness.”  Arendt sees the ills of unemployment in the 1930s as having generated large numbers of people who feel their existence is pointless.  They may be free but they have no role to play in the world, no enterprise that wants their contribution.  The Nazis come along and offer a collective vision, a full-scale social mobilization.  People are given something to do—and a purpose: the glorification of the nation.  And it turns out people are capable of amazing sacrifices and of horrible crimes in support of that purpose.  It is that capacity in people that I am trying to describe in this post, that I am saying is activated by armies when creating their loyal cadres.

Here’s the connection to my previous post: if violence is sometimes a way to remove obstacles to one’s self-sufficiency (and, thus, as Arendt surmises, always linked to impotence, to the lack of power over one’s environment and over others), then selves can find very attractive the surrender of self-sufficiency to participate in a collective fantasy of group-level sufficiency, a fantasy called the nation and linked to notions of sovereignty. (I am inspired here by Howes’ meditations on sovereignty.) Identification with the strong leader or with the nation provides access to a kind of power the isolated self does not possess.  But the goal remains the same: achievement of non-dependence, of complete self-sufficiency.  And this collective enterprise remains as enchanted by punishment, by the lashing out at those who would threaten the integrity and independence of the nation.  Someone must be to blame for the fact of failure, for the fact of continued vulnerability, and that someone must be punished.

Finally, Arendt’s reading of why Naziism was so attractive to the unemployed masses puts a different gloss on the “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign that hung over the entrance to Auschwitz.  (Howes is fascinated by this sign and discusses its possible significance several times in his book.)  The notion that “work makes freedom” can be seen as referring to the Nazis, not to the camp’s inmates.  The Nazis have provided work, have provided a social role, to the German people—and have, as Berlin worries, twisted the notion of freedom to claim that participation in that collective work is what makes one free.  In addition, we should note that “macht” is the German word for “power.”  If we take “macht” as a noun, not a verb, the sign reads: “Work, Power, Freedom.”  The Nazis are promising their followers not just freedom and work, but also power.  And surely that dream of participating and sharing in power—after the self-destroying and humiliating impotence of unemployment with its revelation of how dependent I am to having society give me something to do—is central to the Nazis’ appeal.

All this makes the notion of “collective self-rule,” a notion crucial to Howes, problematic.  That’s what I will discuss in my next post.

I am going to take some time (and several posts) to respond to Dustin Ells Howes’ remarkable book, Freedom without Violence: Resisting the Western Political Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2016).  My posts are going to be more a report of thoughts inspired by his work than a direct engagement with his specific arguments.  In short, I have found the book inspiring—and want to get down on paper (or in cyberspace) what it has inspired me to ponder.

Howes’ resistance to the tradition of political thought in the West focuses on contesting two assumptions found in much of that tradition: 1. that violence is an expression of freedom; and 2. that violence is necessary for the defense of freedom.  I will attend to the first issue today, reserving discussion of the second for subsequent posts.

At first glance, we might be tempted to say that #1 (violence as an exercise or expression of freedom) is “ancient,” and #2 (violence as a regrettable necessity to ward off threats to freedom) is “modern.”  Just think about the re-christening in the United States of the Department of War as the Department of Defense.  We collectively seem much less willing today to think of war as heroic, as a cure for creeping effeminacy, or a joyous (Nietzschean) expression of virile, vital, noble energies.  Such associations surface from time to time among our more enthusiastically militaristic neo-cons, but are rarely official discourse.  Since World War I, at least (or so the story we most often tell ourselves goes), the idea that war is heroic has been put to rest.  Instead, war is a grim necessity, one to which we only resort reluctantly.  And we don’t expect it to bolster the national character.  Rather, it’s a dirty job that soils all it touches, but that someone has to do (the necessity argument).

Howes does a very good job of showing that, official pieties aside, violence as an expression of freedom has not really disappeared.  But he is not arguing about some kind of self-delusion or hypocrisy.  Yes, of course, notions of honor and manliness are deployed—especially by the Marine Corps—in the contemporary US.  Such misplaced and pathological (to my mind) associations are not Howes’ subject.  Rather, he is interested in what might be called the “deep logic” of how we understand freedom—and the link between that understanding and violence.

The key to this logic, it seems to me, is the notion of self-sufficiency.  An individual—or a nation on the collective scale—is free when it does not need to rely on anyone else to achieve its willed aims.  In other words, I am less free insofar as I am dependent on another to successfully do what I want to do.  That dependence gives them power over me, gives them a way to limit what I can do—and any such limitation is a lessening of my freedom.  We can heighten this sense of dependence on –or vulnerability vis a vis—others when we say that one of the things I most desire is to be admired and/or respected and/or loved by others.  I cannot command the admiration/respect/love of others. I am always subject to the judgment of others.  They will think of me what they will.  And this fact is maddening.

So here’s the logic: if freedom is understood as self-sufficiency, as having utter control over all the factors that might stand between me and the achievement of my desires, then freedom is, in fact, unattainable.  Those utterly wedded to that unattainable notion of freedom will be drawn to (not inevitably, but surely often) an attempt to eliminate the perceived obstacles to freedom.  That attempt will underwrite violence.

That such violence will not be effective, will not achieve self-sufficiency, does not seem to sink in. Humans keep relying on this failed strategy.  Why?  Does violence provide some kind of satisfaction of frustration, even when it doesn’t truly remove the source of the frustration? (That is, violence might remove the proximate cause of frustration, the person currently standing in my way.  But it cannot remove the ultimate cause: my non-self-sufficiency.)  Does this proximate/ultimate distinction suggest a time delay: i.e. violence momentarily provides some kind of self-sufficiency even though it cannot permanently alleviate our dependence on others?  Howes does not ask these kinds of questions, but I would like to be able to think about ways violence “feels good” or situations in which it seems effective.  I think such satisfactions are also deeply implicated in questions about punishment, in the moral indignation that inflicts harm on those who “deserve it.”  Even if I can’t get what I want, I can make the others who are frustrating me pay a steep price.

In addition to dependency leading to frustration, being unfree—and being perceived as such by others—is shameful.  Howes documents how Greek notions of freedom were very dependent on the alter-image of the “slave” as the opposite of freedom.  Being a slave is the worst fate a man could suffer, even worse than death.  Maybe that’s why Greek men are killed following their defeat in battle, while their wives are carted off as slaves.  It was the height of un-heroism, of dishonor, to accept slavery over death.  This leads us all the way to Hegel’s understanding of the master/slave dialectic, where it becomes a choice of kill or be killed in order to avoid being a slave.  So here’s the second way violence is baked into the zero-sum game that views any dependence on another as tantamount to unfreedom, to slavery.

Undoubtedly, such notions are deeply implicated in ideals of masculinity.  Dependence is not usually seen as a disaster for women—and women are historically much less prone to violence than men.  What Howes shows us is that freedom has been linked to a certain understanding of power—defined as the capacity to achieve one’s ends without relying on the help or permission of others—that has been with us for a very long time.  And he shows us that violence, while not an absolutely necessary concomitant of that understanding of freedom/power, is an unsurprising companion of it.