Individual Freedom

The point of view of the idealists is altogether different. In their system man is first produced as an immortal and free being and ends up by becoming a slave...

Individual freedom, according to them, is not the creation, the historic product of society. They maintain that this freedom is prior to all society and that every man, at his birth, brings with him his immortal soul as a divine gift. Hence it follows that man is complete in himself, a whole being, and is in any way absolute only when he is outside of society. Being free prior to and apart from society, he necessarily joins in forming this society by a voluntary act, by a sort of contract-whether instinctive and tacit, or deliberated upon and formal. In a word, in this theory, it is not the individuals who are created by society, but on the contrary, it is they who create it, driven by some external necessity such as work or war.

One can see that in this theory, society, in the proper meaning of the word, does not exist. The natural, human society, the real starting point of all human civilization, the only environment in which the freedom and individuality of men can arise and develop is altogether foreign to this theory....

Endowed with an immortal soul and with freedom or free will which is inherent in them, they are on the one hand infinite and absolute beings and as such complete in themselves and for themselves, self-sufficient and needing no one else, not even God, for being immortal and infinite they are themselves gods. On the other hand, they are beings who are very brutal, feeble, imperfect, limited, and absolutely dependent upon external Nature, which sustains, envelops, and finally carries them off to their graves.

Regarded form the first point of view, they need society so little that the latter appears actually to be a hindrance to the fullness of their being, to their perfect liberty. Thus we have seen in the first centuries of Christianity that holy and steadfast men who had taken in earnest the immortality of the soul and the salvation of their own souls broke their social ties, and, shunning all commerce with human beings, sought in solitude perfection, virtue, God. With much reason and logical consistency they came to regard society as a source of corruption and the absolute isolation of the soul as the condition on which all virtues depend.

If they sometimes emerged from their solitude, this was not because they felt the need of society but because of generosity, Christian charity, felt by them in regard to the rest of the people who, still continuing to be corrupted in the social environment, needed their counsel, their prayers, and their guidance.

In meeting another being which is not itself, it feels itself confined by it and therefore it has to shun and ignore whatever is not itself. Strictly speaking, as I have said, the immortal soul should be able to get along without God himself. A being that is infinite in itself cannot recognize alongside of it another being equal to it, and even less so- a being which is superior and above it. For every other infinite being would limit it and consequently make it a fine and determined being.

In recognizing a being as infinite as itself and outside of itself, the immortal soul would thus necessarily recognize itself as a finite being. For infinity must embrace everything and leave nothing outside of itself. It stands to reason that an infinite being cannot and should not recognize an infinite being which is superior to it. Infinity does not admit anything relative or comparative: the terms infinite superiority and infinite inferiority are absurd in their implication.

God is precisely an absurdity. Theology, which has the privilege of being absurd and which believes in things precisely because those things are absurd, places above immortal and consequently infinite human souls, the supreme absolute infinity: God. But by way of offsetting this infinity it creates the fiction of Satan, who represents precisely the revolt of an infinite being against the existence of an absolute infinity, a revolt against God. And just as Satan revolted against the infinite superiority of god, the holy recluses of Christianity, too humble to revolt against God, rebelled against the equal infinity of men, rebelled against society.

...Society then is formed by a sort off sacrifice of the interests and the independence of the soul to the contemptible needs of the body.

...The individual enjoying complete liberty in his natural state, that is, before he has become a member of any society, sacrifices a part of this freedom when entering society in order that the latter guarantee to him the remaining liberty. When an explanation of this phrase is requested, the usual rejoinder is another phrase of that kind; "The freedom of every human individual should be limited only by the liberty of all other individuals."

In appearance nothing is more just. But this theory, however, contains in embryo the whole theory of despotism. In conformity with the basic idea of idealists of all schools and contrary to all the real facts, the human individual is presented as an absolutely free individual in so far, and only in so far, as he remains outside of society. Hence it follows that society, viewed and conceived only as a juridical and a political society—that is, as a State—is the negation of liberty. Here then is the result of idealism; as one can see, it is altogether contrary to the deductions of materialism which, in agreement with that which is taking place in the real world, makes individual human freedom emerge from society as the necessary consequence to the collective development of humanity.

 

The Political Philosophy of Bakunin. 1953