The Permanent search for Freedom

Social Activist of MST, So Paulo, SP, Brazil

Joo Pedro Stdile

I. When studying the history of humanity and of human beings behaviour, we perceive freedom as the construction of a utopia, a dream linked to liberation! Liberation from what? From all moorings that oppress the human being. If we use historical materialism as a method of analysis of the evolution of history, -although there are other not less important methods-, we can perceive that throughout its history humanity has adopted the most various forms of organisation of production to solve its material problems. Hence, we had the initial form of tribes and local communities, defined as primitive communism. The slavery type of production continued, that later developed towards the feudal and Asian (in Asia and the Americas) type of production. Finally, as from the XIII Century, we have seen the appearance of capitalism, born from commerce and which has gone through many stages, like the industrial capitalism, from the industrial revolution of the XVIII Century. By the end of the XIX Century imperialism develops, as a need of the big capitalist companies to emigrate from their countries to exploit natural resources, manpower and the markets of other peoples. And now, in the last decades of history, we are living the era of the globalisation of the financial capital and of the transnational companies over all the world economy. Throughout the XX Century many peoples have made social revolutions with the dream of overcoming capitalism and have started a transition to socialism. In some countries this experience has been interrupted and they have gone back to capitalism. In others, they have made changes, they resist and continue fighting with the challenge of building another way of production that may overcome the basis of capitalism. II. The history of political regimes created by humanity to organise power in society has gone through many and different experiences. At the beginning, with small groups and clans, chieftaincy
66

and physical force predominated. Later it evolved towards kingdoms and monarchies, where hereditary character defined absolute and centralised powers, always supported by military force or by false doctrines of superiority of the sovereigns over the population. This was so until with industrial capitalism there was a social revolution of the bourgeoisie, as a new dominant class which tried to impose a republican system, in which supposedly all persons would have the same rights and obligations in the organisation of the political power. In most countries, however, organised electoral systems cannot truly record the will of the majority, and elections are manipulated in many ways, with the powers of the economy, money, religions, prejudices, or the concentrated power of the mass media. Even after the bourgeois revolution, that pretended to organise society in a more democratic way, dictatorial regimes have abounded in the entire world until today, controlling the State at the service of one class or of a group interests. III. Observing this economic and political history of humanity, a primary thread is perceived: in all stages there were contradictions that caused changes. Nothing was eternal or absolute. Contradictions always appeared, crisis, mobilisations of the people, and changes. And after them, a new stage, that surpassed the previous one. In this way, over and over again. These dialectic contradictions that are generated in time and space are determined by the objective conditions with which society goes organising production of goods it needs to survive and progress. And they are generated also by the subjective conditions, by the level of knowledge and of conscience that develops in the people. These subjective conditions, related to the degree of social conscience that develops in certain stages in the history of a society, are directly related with the permanent search for freedom of the human being.

Translation by Alice Mndez

IV. But, what freedom is that? The human being looks for freedom according to his class condition, the one he belongs to. A bourgeois owner of land, commerce and factories, will answer, that his freedom is his right to private property, only his, and to do what he wants with those material possessions, which, although they are the result of a social production, collective from thousands of workers, he considers only he, the owner, has the freedom of doing whatever he wants with them. Even dismiss the workers from their jobs! A middle class petit bourgeois, will measure his freedom by the right to go and come, to go sightseeing, to travel to any place he wants, summarising freedom simply as a right of free expression. And the workers, the great majority of the world population, who survive every day by working, so as to feed themselves and reproduce in their families, what would they say is freedom? Freedom for the great majority of the world population probably is the right not to be humiliated; not to be oppressed; not to be exploited, not to be ill-treated. It is the right to live in peace. This means the right to have a decent job and justly remunerated, from the riches he produces. It is the right to have sanitary housing conditions where he can care for his family with dignity. For the poorest population that lives in the outskirts of great cities or in poverty areas away from urban centres, lacking the necessary goods for a dignified social reproduction and deprived even from the knowledge of the reason of their existence, probably the word freedom has no significance. Because the society in which they live transformed them in persons devoid of values and dreams. Their survival condition is levelled to that of animals: having the right to be fed! In this case, freedom starts in the right of daily bread. In these circumstances in which thousands of human beings are suffering the crisis of capitalism, freedom means the right to work. Work not as the condition of being exploited by someone, of transferring our energies, those that produce goods, to someone else to appropriate them. But work as a situation of personal realisation of our skills, our energies, our active participation in any society. Finally, work, the dedication of hours of our time lived, are the princi-

pal way of participation as partners in society. Freedom is having the right to work; being someone in the concert of our society. With no right to work, we are not partners in society, we are outcasts supported by others and therefore humiliated by the rest. V. Freedom should be the right to knowledge, culture, education, as a gate to everything that humanity learnt and registered throughout its history. Freedom is overcoming the law of capital exploitation, which appropriates the days of work and the riches created by it, to accumulate goods and political power. Freedom is being able to choose authentic political representatives, who can perform public functions on their behalf, but respecting the delegated will. And the right to revoke that delegation at any time. Freedom is the right to organise ways of collective decisions, of effective popular participation, in the management of all public property. Freedom is having the right to a time for culture and leisure, for the intellect, the spirit, reflection. Freedom is the right to think with our own head! Freedom is overcoming the mediocrity of prejudices and discriminations that change the different into worse. Or even into enemies! Freedom is being aware that all human beings are genetically and spiritually equal. And, therefore, our differences in sexual options, colour of skin, ethnic origin, size or weight, vocations and personal skills, are just qualities, not deficiencies. Freedom is the utopia that all human beings acknowledge and are aware that we need to live in a society where we are all equal. Thus, freedom is the permanent search of a utopian society. Not as an impossible dream, but as a continuous process perfecting life in society. Away from the collective, the social, the community, coexistence with our brothers, there is no society, no freedom, just an opportunist and ignorant individualism. History of humanity is the history of the construction of freedom, the fight for a society where all human beings are totally free. With its contradictions, challenges and recoils, but always following that path, until one day we reach the q Promised Land of parusia, of Freedom!

67