Freedom and Civilization

Freedom and Civilization by Bronsilaw Malinowski

Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 1944

(11)  We shall see that all action is in itself a temporary surrender of freedom.

(21)  One thing can be demonstrated scientifically: this is the essential dependence of all freedoms and every freedom and freedom in general upon the elimination of collective violence.

(25-26)  The individual's freedom consists in his ability to choose the goal, to find the road, and to reap the rewards of his efforts and endeavors. Those men are free who are able to decide what to do, where to go, what to build. All claims for freedom remain idle and irrelevant unless planning and aiming can be translated into an effective execution through well-implemented and well-organized behavior. The determining conditions of freedom are therefore to be found in the manner in which a society is organized; the way in which the instrumentalities are made accessible; and in the guarantees which safeguard all the rewards of planned and purposeful action and insure their equitable distribution

(33)  Neither ontogenetically nor phylogenetically is “man born free.”

NB:  Free applies only to man's law 

(36)  The ability to foresee and to plan ahead, that is, the ability to use past experience in order to establish future conditions corresponding to the needs, desires and the aspirations of man, is the first essential prerequisite of freedom.

(37)  Thus the maintenance, the management, and the development of the psychological mainsprings in inspiration, invention, and contribution are the first and foremost conditions of freedom. The formation of social loyalty, on which every institution is built, is the second condition. The way in which the cultural values, that is, the enjoyment of economic, social, political, moral, and spiritual benefits, are distributed – in other words, freedom in the pursuit of happiness – is the last and perhaps the main condition of liberty.

(39)  Freedom is neither more nor less but full success in action. It is activity spontaneously planned, efficiently executed, and enjoyed in its results by all those who have contributed.

(43)  “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one.”  Thus spoke Abraham Lincoln in his Baltimore address on April 18, 1864.

(45)  The intuitive emotional and subjective meaning of freedom, as felt rather than formulated by the man in the street, conceives of freedom as the ability to do what one likes or to do nothing. The claim that liberty is the absence of restraint, trammels, and of hindrances is persistent.

(46)  When we are told by Cicero that "we are all the law's slaves, that we may be free", the implication is clear: freedom can only be achieved through restraint.

(47)  Free action must imply some control of circumstances and other people.

(54-56)  We find there [chart page 55] that intangible of freedom felt intuitively, rather than capable of clear definition:  the feeling of absolute absence of all restraint.  This is flanked by the libertarian postion that freedom flourishes outside the trammels of rule and law;  and by the postion that discipline is essential to freedom.

NB:  Freedom requires responsibility and brings consequences whether we like it or not

(59)  Real freedom is neither absolute nor omnipresent and it certainly is not negative. It is always an increase in control, in efficiency, and in the power to dominate one's own organism and the environment, as well as artifacts in the supply of natural resources. Hence freedom as a quality of human action, freedom as increase of efficiency and control, means the breaking down of certain obstacles and a compensation for certain deficiencies; it also implies the acceptance of rules of nature, that is scientific laws of knowledge, and of those norms and laws of human behavior which are indispensable to efficient co-operation.

NB:  Not dominate but dance with, aiki, geotheraphy not geoengineering

(71)  The best education makes work into play.  Yet play contains always an element of make-believe, an element of"freedom" to do what the child wishes at the moment. The trick of successful education consists in the use of such freedom by turning it into the chains of spontaneously accepted desire to follow up a determined course of activity.

(75)  adventitious - happening or carried on according to chance rather than design or inherent nature; coming from outside; not native.  BIOLOGY formed accidentally or in an unusual anatomical position

(81)  Once more we see that the most important scientific task is to be quite clear as to the context of our argument.  We have to scrutinize whether such a context is real;  whether it is relevant;  and whether it represents a legitimate isolate of human behavior.  In all cases we rejected freedom as an independent, substantial and spontaneous absolute.  Such an absolute, holding the cornucopia of unlimited choices, does not exist in reality.  It exists only in the metaphor of speech.

(83)  Perhaps a good deal of the success of that most recent form of magical mysticism which we find in the doctrines of Nazism, communism and fascism, is due to the combination of real mechanical power on the executive side with the feeling of indefinite possibilities in sentiment, and lust for political and economic self realization.

NB:  Myth, fairy tale, magic, freedom

(90)  War most certainly was not the chronic state of primitive evolution.  Real warfare makes an appearance late in human evolution.

(92)  Let us once more examine the three phases [purpose, execution, results] of freedom in human action. The purpose, as we saw, is nothing else but the planning of an activity for the achievement of definite results.

…  In short, examine whichever type of freedom you like – of framing purposes, individual or social – and you will find that the claim to freedom of action is implicit.

…  Thus freedom of action implies free access to material wealth as well as the scope for organization and cooperation.

(93)  Here freedom consists in the scope given to individuals and groups to organize and to implement all such purposes as they may choose. It resides in what is usually called "freedom of combination", a freedom enjoyed in democracies but denied in societies either where the state takes over all initiative or else where slavery, serfdom, or the caste system debar certain groups from any initiative and supply others with an excess of power.

Finally, the freedom of achievements and results refers to the standard of cultural enjoyment for the members of the community. Here problems of freedom hinge on such tangible and concrete facts as the distribution of wealth, the freedom of vertical mobility or the freedom of movement across certain territorial boundaries. Here also enter the problems of how far the finer gifts of culture, such as recreations, intellectual and artistic enjoyments, and all the religious and spiritual benefits, are distributed within the community.

(94)  As regards action, liberty means personal choice and a full scope for group organization, with adequate access to all the necessary implements and legal privileges for organized activity.

…  As regards the liberty of enjoyment, that is, the liberty of one's fair share in the communal standard of living, we see that this is curtailed by the existence of parasitic privilege given to few at the expense of the many who are exploited.

…  True democracy must always aim at the curtailment of all the current increments in power and wealth, and of the ability of consuming goods, material and spiritual, which have been produced by others.

(95)  The denial of freedom is always embodied in political, legal, or economic restrictions or in adequacies which prevent human beings from maturing their purpose, realizing it, and achieving the results in the form of an adequate standard of living.

(99)  First, we assume that we are interested in existence, that is, in action. The freedom of the spirit must be left over and understood as a by-product of our definition of freedom and action. Secondly, we assume that any definition of freedom in terms of one individual and his exclusive interests is not viable, since one man's power is or may become the slavery of another, indeed of many others.  We thus affirm that freedom must be predicated with reference to groups in cooperation.  Thirdly, we also assume that the element of instrumentality, that is, of material goods, whether implements or consumers' wealth, has to be included in our definition.  Man never acts under conditions of culture without the equipment of his material mechanisms, and in this he has to submit to certain rules inherent in the mechanism, the laws of ownership or of usufruct determine the rights of use and the limitations of abuse, as well as the distribution of benefits.

(101-102)  Thus freedom here means once more the smooth and effective run of a process which can again be analyzed into three phases.  We have the initial drive which starts an activity;  we have conditions for an effective course of this activity;  and we have the reward of satisfactory results in the satisfaction of the drive.

NB:  animal freedom 

(103)  It is well to remember that the moments of freedom to be free are very rare in human life.

(105)  The freedom of survival thus consists of two fundamental installments:  the freedom of security, that is, the freedom from fear;  and the freedom of prosperity, that is, the freedom from want.

NB:  less fear, less want;  less want, less fear

Four Freedoms - Freedom of speech. Freedom of worship. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear.

calefaction - the act of warming or heating; the production of heat in a body by the action of fire, or by communication of heat from other bodies.

(111)  We are thus led again to the leitmotif of our argument:  the distinction between the rules and constraints which effectively establish freedom and those which abrogate it.  Rules which are intrinsically determined by the requirements of purposeful and concertedly executed action in which the results are equitably distributed, are rules and freedom.  On the other hand, rules and principles of organization in which, through the monopoly of physical force, wealth, and supernatural influence, an individual or a group can compel others to act without giving the workers any share in planning or in the enjoyment of the results, are rules which deny freedom in its sociological sense.

…  Freedom in primitive communities is very definitely associated with a conservative  attitude towards well-established rules and values.  Even at a high level of development it is dangerous, theoretically and in practice, to associate freedom with subversive, disruptive, and revolutionary movements.

NB:  freedom as conservative

(121)  It became clear that at the primitive level there is a very little scope for real oppression.  For in every institution we have the same limiting factors: such groups consist of kinsmen, hence of people related by blood and the sentiment of blood, since kinship runs right through the structure of the tribe.  In all the groups people depend very much on each other, hence the sanction of reciprocity or retaliation is always present. The high degree of mutual dependence between the leader and his followers is another factor which under primitive conditions prevent the abuse of personal authority. Primitive conditions also do not lend themselves easily to the accumulation of power either through physical force or wealth, or the use of spiritual intimidation.

(127)  Every phase of such a process, every rule of co-operation and ownership, every object necessary as a consumer commodity or as an implement, become appreciated or acquired value and are surrounded with the rules of appreciation and respect. Education consists in the transmission of such rules and in the teaching of language, which is the main instrumentality for the framing of rules, precepts, and imperatives.  Our thesis is that freedom is found in obedience to such laws.

(137)  The relation therefore of value to freedom is clear.  Value is the driving force which determines purpose, and in choice of purpose, its translation into an effective action in the full enjoyment of the results.  We find thus that value is the prime mover in human existence.  It pervades all forms of activity and is the driving force throughout culture. Man is moved to effort, not under an immediate physiological drive, but instructed by traditional rules, moved by learned motive and controlled by value.  Man works to obtain the things that he values, whether this be an object, a way of life or a belief. The way by which he values – freedom of conscience, of dogma, of devotion to ideals – are established as one of the main installments in freedom or bondage.

(141-142)  We shall see that human beings can either be trained to be free, or trained to be rulers, tyrants, or dictators, or else they can be trained to be slaves.  Thus the understanding I've educational mechanisms and conditions is essential to our appreciation of the reality of freedom as it occurs differentially in human societies.

(142)  With reference to our concept of freedom we see that a man has to learn how to form his purposes.  From the wide and chaotic range of ever-changing whim, impulse, or drive which leads to random behavior, the individual learns to select a limited range of fixed and determined values.  Motives and purpose are always the acceptance of cultural values or its reinterpretation and at times revolt against it.

(146)  In primitive communities at the low level of development we find no caste or rank hierarchy to any tangible degree. Such distinctions as are implied in age-grades, secret societies, and sex-linked distinctions are the only equivalent of class or rank. Yet except for differentiation by sex which as a rule is functional rather than oppressive, we find that freedom of choice and of access to training is equally distributed.

It is only when through the development of monopoly and power, wealth and spiritual constraint the discriminative institutions of caste and rank, as well as of wealth and power, that freedom as regards birthright and the full development of personality become seriously curtailed.

(147)  Unemployment is in some ways one of the most acute and istressing forms in which the freedom of exercising one’s abilities and skills is denied.

(148)  The individual is never free of bond except through his relation to socially organized groups.  His birthright is defined by his parentage.

(153)  Freedom is primarily related neither to the isolated individual, nor even to society, nor yet perhaps to the potentialities of freedom and slavery given to man by machine. The real instrument both of freedom and oppression is always the organized partial constituent of a community:  the institution.

(153-154)  The significance of this discovery is due to two facts, first, that in institution always presents the same structure, and second, that institutions are of universal occurrence;  thus the institution is the real isolate of culture.

NB:  institution as culture

(155)  main types of institutional organization

1.  Family and derived kinship organizations (extended family;  kindred groups;  clan)

2.  Municipality  (local group; horde;  village; township; city)

3.  Tribe as the political organization based on territorial principle (primitive tribe; polis; tribe-state; state; nation-state; empire)

4.  Tribe as the culturally integrated unit (primitive homogeneous tribe; tribe-nation; nation)

5.  Age-group (age-grades; age hierarchies; professional age distinctions)

6.  Voluntary associations  (primitive: secret societies and clubs; advanced: benevolent, political, and ideological societies)

7.  Occupational groups  (primitive: magical organizations; economic teams; artisan guilds; professional associations; religious congregations)

8.  Status groups based on the principle of rank, caste, and economic class.

…  Our sequence: the formation of purpose, its implementation into activities, and the distribution of benefits resulting from the activity, is in a sense applicable to the individual.

(157)  The institution as the organizing means of realizing the values, the techniques, or the contributions to human welfare embodied in its charter, is the very cultural instrument of freedom, if freedom be the realization of purpose and reaping the benefits thereof.  Because, as we have been insisting throughout, no man ever achieves anything, new or old, fundamental or peripheral, sound or fantastic, through his own unaided efforts.  It is clear that the freedom of his personal purpose and its pragmatic success is always a by-product of the freedom of institutionalized activities.

(160)  The Folklore of Capitalism by Thurman Arnold

(167)  The partial surrender of freedom in the fragmentary phases of human behavior is an ineluctable quality of the cultural process.

(170)  When the purpose is chosen by the group as a whole; when the action is taken by autonomous responsibility; and when the results are shared among all the members of the group, we find freedom within that institution. When the purpose is accepted by command or instilled by indoctrination; when the action is controlled by coercive authority; and when the results of the activity are doled out for the advantages of those in authority, we find a denial of freedom.

…  The denial of freedom within an institution occurs therefore through an abuse of the authority held by those who organize and control the institution.

…  In every case, the middle factor of our sequence, implemented action, is the one where freedom grows and where it receives its restrictions. Freedom is born there and freedom is killed there.

(171)  The real abuse of authority, however, begins when discipline has to be made chronic, permanent, and pervasive.

(177-178)  We see also throughout our arguments that all of the messages from nature to man are embodied in human tradition.  The realization of natural determinism is thus received by each generation from culture. We see here are the foundations of the confusion from which even now as users of words we are suffering – the confusion between law as a phase of natural determinism and law as a human precept. This comes from the fact that although Law(1) is embodied in the outer reality, it comes into the hands of man invariably as Law(2). The commands of nature or of the supernatural are, therefore, easily confused with commands of man.

(179)  The main ethical principle of all primitive tribes is that conformity to tradition is good and deviation bad.

(180)  In primitive cultures, as we know already and will perceive even more fully, oppression and exploitation do not occur except in minor matters and on rare occasions.

(184)  The general importance of equity, that is, freedom, is embodied in the fact that no virtue is rated higher in primitive communities than generosity.

(188-189)  The real difference between free cultures and cultures pervaded by serfdom and bondage, lies in whether they are constituted for the avoidance of crises in their reduction to a minimum; or else whether they are constituted on preparing crises, thriving through crises, and using the creation of crises is the main means to the end of establishing more slavery.  There is only one type of crisis which has beset humanity, which, starting at a late stage of evolution, has lasted throughout recorded historical times, and which has survived as the fountainhead of all present evils. This is the crisis of war.

NB:  living in crisis as a symptom of addiction

(189)  Civilization also has worked continually so as to prevent epidemics, reduce infection, and build up the resistance of the human organism against its main enemies, disease, disability, and accident.

NB:  Trmp

(197)  Once more we come to recognize that freedom is a quality of more or less simple or complex systems of organized activity, in which a degree of discipline is necessary for effective action.

(199)  Discipline  reaches its highest level when any such complicated, high-powered, and fully organized type of activity is faced by a crisis.  A ship's company when storm breaks out, when shipwreck threatens, or when a U-boat is sighted, cannot enjoy any freedom of thought, deliberation, or discussion. One and all have to obey the orders of the ship's master. Each has to carry out his differential task with supreme submission to the rules of skill, of division of functions, as well as of conscience and morale.  They have to fall back on discipline, unquestioning and mechanical. The same is true when a factory or a house is on fire and this has to be extinguished or localized by a fire brigade, volunteer or professional. Once more, strict discipline is the condition indispensable for any successful effort.

(201)  It is a great tribute to the intellectual qualities of the Italian nation that Fascism was not able to make the Italian armies invincible.

(202)  Here we have the systematic and scientifically thought out preparation of artificial disaster for humanity as a whole, so that a small section shall retain a permanent control over mankind through scientifically organized violence.  In this lies the real, the gigantic crime of totalitarianism. It means the denial of freedom even to the average member of the master nation. It is the negation of all economic freedom so as to create national autarchy.  It is the negation of political freedom for the creation of full national discipline. It is the denial of spiritual independence so as to produce a community with a single purpose. The system thus aims at enslaving the world and also its “master-nation", so as to establish the exclusive privilege of a party, its centralized executive and finally one leader. Let us remember always that the destruction of real and integral liberty is not conceived here as a temporary measure during the crisis, but as a permanent establishment of human civilization.

(203)  The fundamental difference between discipline in a democracy at war on the one hand, and totalitarian discipline on the other, is to be found in the fact that for us discipline is a means to an end, while to the Nazis it is an end in itself.

NB:  means and ends

(209)  All religions are essentially pragmatic.

NB:  Anything that isn’t pragmatic, useful, practical drops out.  Anything that is practical can become a practice.

(212)  Another reason why we have to distinguish active magic from mere daydreaming is because all magic is traditionally standardized.

…  Psychologically magic represents the efficiency of standardized optimism.

(213)  Those who have studied the techniques of real propaganda, as this has been developed in the totalitarian countries, will realize that the thrilling promises, the affirmations of power and efficiency, as well as the canalizing of hatreds and passions, are built up essentially on the technique of a magic spell.

(214)  All the arguments of the present essay hinge round the simple proposition: freedom is the essence of civilization because freedom is neither more nor less than obedience to the rules of science, of social justice, and of ethics. These rules are not arbitrary. They are founded in the order of material process, of organic reality, and of cultural structure.

(219)  Propaganda starts with monoply in the dissemination of truth, a monopoly based on force.

(222)  It is hardly necessary to prove here by a detailed analysis of facts that growing Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany were not merely movements of opinion, but also organizations of violence. A state which under the charter of sovereignty ought to have the monopoly of all armed force, and which at the same time allows a determined minority to preach its own gospel and to constitute itself an army for the overthrow of the state, obviously signs its own death warrant.

…  Hence Hitlers and Mussolinis may be allowed to speak. They must not be allowed to organize armed private police forces.

(223)  It is the relation between opinion and the possible acts of a criminal nature to which it may lead that has to be considered every time we grant full freedom of conscience, thought and speech.

(228)  Democracy as a cultural system is the constitution of the community which is composed of collaborating groups. Each such group is an institution, which is itself built on democratic principles, and in which initiatives, purposes and constraints are well distributed. The democracy of the whole group lies in the relations of institutions to one another, and in the relations of 

individuals within each institution.

…  A wider and more elastic, more fundamental definition of the concept of democracy implies the maximum of discipline with the least amount of coercion. It implies obedience to law without the need of physical enforcement. Discipline must not occur except where concerted action demands it.

(229)  The most important cultural aspect of democracy, the autonomy of institutions, is seldom, if ever, considered in theoretical argument for practical application. This autonomy of institutions really contains and embodies all the other principles of democracy.

(231)  Thus democracy can be defined as a cultural system devised so as to allow the fullest opportunities to the individual and to the group to determine its purposes, to organize and implement them, and to carry out the activities upon which they are intent. A modern democracy has also the duty to guarantee to its members an equitable distribution of rewards, the full enjoyment of recreation, the privileges of knowledge and of the arts, and of all that constitutes the spiritual prerogatives of contemporary man.

…  We can sum up the main aspects of democracy as follows: 

(1)  No centralized power which dictates all aspects of life

(2)  Distribution of influence to those who do the work

(3)  No accumulated monopolies

(4)  No secrets or open centers of oppression by violence, blatantly illegal or camouflage, from which there is no redress and no appeal

(5)  Access by one and all to most avenues of influence and self-expression.

(242-243) Freedom in its essence is the acceptance of the chains which suit you and for which you are suited, and of the harness in which you pull towards an end chosen and valued by your self, and not imposed. It is not, and never can be, the absence of restrictions, obligations of law and of duty….

Freedom is the possibility of "self-realization" based on personal choice, on free contact and spontaneous endeavor, or individual initiative…  The greater the opportunities of self-realization there are for more people, the more freedom there is.  However free a political constitution, and however diversified a culture, the individual is obliged, stage to stage and step by step, to renounce certain freedoms;  in choosing his vocation; in choosing his mate; in the acceptance of certain decisions and commands.

(248)  The only monopoly which occurs is in objects of a magical or religious character.

(251)  It is therefore always round the distribution and organization of authority, violence, and wealth that the problem of freedom hinges.

(253)  Those outside the tribe are not regarded as full human beings.

NB:  Tribal politics can become eliminationist

(257-258)  We see therefore that the tribe-nation or nation is the very instrument of freedom, constituted as it is for the peaceful exercise of culture.  This point is of great importance to us in our analysis of freedom.  Throughout the development of humanity, there have always existed two principles of integration or unification:  the principle of unification by national culture, embodied in the tribe-nation or nation; and that of unification by political force, embodied in the tribe-state or state.

(265)  In reality, the state and government are one among many institutions. The fundamental difference, however, which contributes to all the mystic attitudes towards the state is that it is the only historic institution which has the monopoly of force. This is the main source of all our present-day troubles.

…  The birth of the tribe-state is the danger signal in the history of humanity, for with it occurred the birth of militarism.  The tribe-nation as we have already seen is the unit of cultural cooperation, and must not be confused with the tribe-state, which is the political unit, based on centralized authoritative power and the organization of armed force.

(270)  The real origins of political organization are to be found in the fact that power is inevitably a part of any organized life, and that the sources of power are to be found in violence.

(280)  War however is not a permanent state of affairs in any type of tribal culture….  

The earliest intertribal fighting – and we must remember that this starts only at the end of the paleolithic or the beginnings of the neolithic stage – is only an occasional affair and occurs on a relatively small scale.

(283)  The primitive always considers that only he, himself, and his tribesmen are men. The others fall outside the scope of legitimate humanity.

(284)  The charter of war and the charter of slavery are essentially cognate in principle. They are also related in actual occurrence. Slavery without war hardly ever occurs in human cultures.

…  The common charter of both institutions is the doctrine that a relationship between two human beings or groups can be based on the abrogation of all human rights of one for the benefit of the other.  This principle changes the foe into a non-human object fit for killing and destruction during the fight. After victory it changes him into an object to be used as the means for the master's ends.

(286)  I mean the institution of slavery.  Human material was, perhaps, the first type of wealth to be effectively looted.

(296) To the slave a doctrine that he has no right to act as he chooses is not so agreeable or acceptable. It implies also, however, that he has no right to think or to feel. Thoughts and feelings, as we know, are worthless unless they can be translated into action.

(297)  War is the direct denial of the freedom of survival since its essence is killing. Slavery is the denial of all biological freedom except in the self-interest, not of the organism, but of its master. The slave also is deprived of all those satisfactions which culture guarantees to man as the price paid for the trammels which it imposes. The slave does not enjoy the protection of the law. His economic behavior is not determined by profits and advantages. He cannot mate according to his own choice. He remains outside the law of parentage and of kinship. Even his conscience is not his own.

(300)  Vigilance is not only the price of freedom, it is also the price of slavery.

(305)  To live, totalitarianism has to create crises where these do not exist.

(306)  In Nazi Germany, this supremely effective machinery of  force is combined with a doctrine of the crudest mysticism.

(307)  Totalitarianism is thus primarily a cultural revolution.  It is intimately associated with the integral subordination of all cultural acitivities for the emergency of war, revolution or counter-revolution.

(324)  in times of war, human beings are integrated on the political principle, that is, the legalized use of violence. The political state is intimately associated with war, and the use of violence as the main argument and drive to action is essential to war. Before violence can become effective as a political principle, it must first be used within institutions. War again, in the military preparedness which it implies, in its main activity of fighting, and and it's aftermath of victory and subjugation, is the permanent source of all the curtailments of freedom.]

(325)  The relation between man and machine at the point where a monopoly of control can be established is probably the essential problem of freedom in human evolution.

…  The main thesis of this analysis hinges on the concept of violence as the greatest enemy of freedom. All freedoms are dependent on the elimination of collective violence.