Rupture: On the Emergence of the Political

Chapter Five. Freedom

CHAPTER FIVE Freedom Freedom functions as the watchword of contemporary neoliberalism and even more generally of today's global capitalism. Whenever the nations aligned in the neoliberal consensus want to intervene elsewhere in the world, the justification almost necessarily involves a reference to this privileged signifier. When the United States, for instance, wanted to justify the March 20, 2003, invasion of Iraq, the name given to the military action itself indicates the privileged role that the idea of freedom has in current ideological struggles. Rather than labeling the attack Operation Weapons of Mass Destruction or Operation Defend America (identifying the ostensible reasons for the war), the American leadership called it Operation Iraqi Freedom.1 The freedom being brought to Iraq, like the freedom that neoliberalism celebrates, is only secondarily political freedom. First and foremost, it is the capacity to pursue one's private economic interest without intrusive state regulation.2 In the contemporary imagination , freedom exists in contrast and in opposition to law, which serves as a brake on individual freedom if collective life is to be possible. Law and regulation are necessary but unfortunate evils that must be minimized in order for individuals to enjoy their freedom to produce and consume. The response to the economic crisis of 2008 followed directly from the neoliberal understanding of freedom. Remarkably, it took over a year after the crisis for the American Congress to take up the prospect of enacting regulation that might prevent a future collapse, and the types of control passed both in the United States and around the world showed an extreme reluctance to restrict the economic freedom of even those who had helped to bring about the crisis. The economic measures taken to forestall the economic woes-with the exception of the initial (undersized ) American stimulus, a singular and highly controversial actionfurther demonstrated the power of the neoliberal definition of freedom. The plans around the world and especially in Europe called for "austerity " in state spending and an economic policy seemingly informed by the 137 138 Chapter Five revived motto of the Tea Party movement: Don't Tread on Me. Despite the deflationary threat that the austerity plans created, governments pursued them because they minimized the state and left the market free. Neoliberal freedom demands that the law simply get out of its way so that capital might tread with greater force on the poor and disempowered. In one sense, this conception of freedom has its origins in the political philosophy of John Locke, who figured heavily in the thinking of American founders like Thomas Jefferson.3 Locke posits what he calls the"Natural Liberty of Man," which is a right to live without legislative restraint.4 With this formulation, Locke seems to set natural liberty as the absolute contrary of law or legal authority, but later he asserts, in a way that will contrast with his neoliberal descendants, that law is not opposed to freedom but its guarantor and a vehicle for its development. In the Second Treatise on Government, he states, "The end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: For in all the States of created beings capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom ."5 Rather than seeing an opposition, Locke understands here law as supplementing freedom. But this conception of law becomes too sanguine for the philosophy that animates today's neoliberalism. For someone like Milton Friedman, some law might be necessary to ensure freedom, but this necessity will always also constitute a barrier to freedom, which means that Friedman's project involves minimalizing law in order to maximalize freedom.6 In the name of economic and political freedom (which he sees as mutually reinforcing), Friedman condemns even those restrictions on liberty that would seem commonsensical to most people. For instance, Friedman sees the licensing of various occupations as an unnecessary constraint. He notes, "A citizen of the United States who under the laws of various states is not free to follow the occupation of his own choosing unless he can get a license for it, is ... being deprived of an essential part of his freedom."7 Basic efforts to regulate public interactions and transactions for the sake of the safety and security of those involved is, according to this perspective, an infringement on freedom. From Locke to Friedman, liberalism's view of the opposition between freedom and law becomes increasingly acute. The idea that law and freedom exist in an antagonistic...