Choose Your Servitude
On republican freedom
Recently, when scrolling through that vast discursive wasteland formerly known as Twitter, I came across a firebreather attacking someone who was arguing for a better train system in the United States.
“Cars are freedom machines,” the firebreather spewed back.
How many people, I thought, look at a machine, any machine, and associate it with freedom? Of course, I know the answer: a whole lot. This is especially true with cars.
In a beautiful new book, On Freedom—recommended to me by a friend of Civic Fields—the historian Timothy Snyder writes,
I worry that, in my own country, the United States, we speak of freedom without considering what it is. Americans often have in mind the absence of something. . . . An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense. . . . Is it not as important, perhaps even more important, to add things?
If we want to be free, we will have to affirm, not just deny. Sometimes we will have to destroy, but more often we will need to create. . . . We need structures, just the right ones, moral as well as political. Virtue is an inseparable part of freedom.
I, too, worry that we have little idea what we are talking about when we talk about freedom. If cars are “freedom machines,” then what has freedom come to?
Let’s imagine a dialogue with our auto-philic freedom-fighting online firebreather. To make him more docile, we have offered him some Dramamine, which he willingly accepts, as he frequently suffers from car sickness.
Us: Tell me about these “freedom machines”? Why “freedom”?
Firebreather: Movement.
Us: Trains move too.
FB: Movement on your own terms.
Us: Really? Don’t you need to follow the terms of the road?
FB: Ok, yes. But there are lots of roads.
Us: Still, you are talking about movement within limits?
FB: Yes. But you can drive anywhere you want.
Us: Don’t you mean anywhere there’s a road?
FB: Yes. Once on the road, you're free to move as you want.
Us: What about traffic lanes, stop signs, or red lights?
FB: Ok. So there are limits there, yes. But within those limits, you are free to move as you want.
Us: And speed limits?
FB: You can violate them.
Us: Are you free to do so?
FB: As long as you don’t get caught.
Us: And when the car breaks down?
So much for the freedom machine. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been circling around “republicanism” here at Civic Fields. When the American republic was formally founded in the late 18th century, republicanism was the political ideology that carried the day (liberalism, in fact, had never been heard of). Today, “republicanism” is a strange word, easy to confuse with the Republican Party, or, if we are able to get past that, with old-fashioned white guys (like me?).
Indeed, the Republican Party was named after republicanism, though it has long since abandoned it. And yes, some white guys do hold up old-fashioned republicanism these days, but so do really insightful younger black guys, labor-oriented historians, and feminist political theorists. Republicanism is far from exhausted by conservatives. In fact, it is darned near impossible these days to find any conservatives who take it seriously. In thoughtful American conservative circles (they do exist, though very quietly), Burkeanism—as in Edmund Burke—has decisively triumphed over Madisonianism. But that’s a story for another day.
Republicanism was central not only to the American founding but also, in the decades after the American Revolution, to the founding (or refounding) of numerous other countries across the world, ranging from France to Holland to Haiti to Colombia. Republicanism, and not liberalism, was the political program the Enlightenment offered to the world as an alternative to monarchy. America was widely seen as the crown jewel of republicanism.
There’s a lot more one can say about all this. No doubt, I will say more here at Civic Fields in the future. But now I want to focus on the conception of freedom that is particular to republicanism.
Hang with me here.
First, you have to be able to conceive of different kinds of freedom. When Snyder, in the quotation above, asks if Americans even know what freedom is, he seems to be assuming that freedom, like chocolate, is a thing that has a definition. In fact, as the rest of his book shows, he knows full well that “freedom” is a contested concept, and that not all freedoms are alike.
Here’s where republicanism comes into play.
In the technical language of political philosophy, republicanism understands freedom as “non-domination,” or, more simply, a condition where no person or persons subjugate other persons.
Republicanism typically pits its own approach to freedom against another, more popular, view of freedom, what philosophers label “freedom as non-interference.” Here freedom means simply being left alone. This latter view of freedom is often associated with “liberalism,” another loaded and sometimes confusing word. Here we are talking about it not in terms of Left and Right, but as a more general and encompassing political program with adherents on both sides.
Liberalism, historically speaking, came after republicanism and in many ways tried to modify it, if not replace it. It took freedom to be an expression above all of tolerance. Those in positions of power agreed to leave certain activities alone—for example, different religious practices—rather than interfere in them. In this “liberal” framework, freedom of worship was in essence an accommodation made by the government to help things go more smoothly in society. “Let’s stop fighting over religion,” liberals said. “Live and let live.”
Republicanism had a stronger view, however: no person, it would say, had the right to dominate another person with regard to worship, or to lord religion over others.
The distinction becomes a bit clearer if we consider kings, who in the 19th century could be more or less “liberal”—that is, more or less tolerant.
But kings could never be “republican.” Why? Because monarchy was always a form of domination, no matter how “liberal” the monarch. With monarchy, one person subjugates others, even if they do it very nicely.
In the late 18th century, when the American republic was founded, “republicanism” therefore signified one big idea to almost all ears: the idea of a state without a monarch. And to be without a monarch was to be without a royal court—hallelujah!
I admit that these distinctions confused me for a long time. Philosophers write about them as though they are self-evident. But they weren’t to me.
I also admit that it took me a while to grapple with why such distinctions really mattered. It seemed to me like I was being asked to do something akin to staking a flag for Golden Delicious over Honeycrisp apples, when the difference, as far as food goes, is negligible. As far as I could tell, the difference between freedom as “non-domination” and “non-interference” was small indeed.
If in both the “liberal” world and the “republican” world people are free to worship, or speak, or move as they see fit, what’s the big deal?
But there is in fact a difference; it's not that small, it matters quite a lot, and I think neglecting it is one big reason the freedom-loving USA is in such a sorry state right now.
Somehow, we’ve come to think freedom means free to do as one will without interference.
It may be.
But it depends, really, on how seriously we take the historic republican argument.
Let’s stick with cars and take, as an example, small-town speed traps.
Officer Jones is the cop in the one-cop town of Canon. She is a rule-follower, but not obsessively so. If you are going 5 mph over the 30 mph speed limit, she’s going to let you drive on by. But if you are upwards of 10 mph over, you are getting pulled over... every time.
Deputy Smith in the tiny town of Raptor, on the other hand, has a thing for pretty young women. If you fall into that category, you might get pulled over for going 3 or 4 mph over the speed limit. On the other hand, if you are not a pretty young woman, you might be able to speed right by Deputy Smith with impunity. He has other interests.
Different towns, different freedoms.
Why? Because Deputy Jones is a rule-follower and Deputy Smith is a predator? Republicanism might start there, but it has something more profound to say than that.
In Canon, where Officer Jones is in charge, drivers enjoy freedom as non-domination. Why? Because rules rule the road rather than the will of a person. In Raptor, by contrast, most drivers, except for pretty young women, enjoy freedom as non-interference.
But no one in Raptor, not even ugly old men, enjoy freedom as non-domination. No one enjoys “republican” freedom. Why? Because the conduct of policing in Raptor comes down to the peculiar predilections of a deputized man.
Canon could grow by 100,000 people, and Raptor by 150,000, with the number of law enforcement officers growing proportionally, but as long as everyone in Canon took after Officer Jones and everyone in Raptor took after Deputy Smith, the principle would remain the same. For the old folks in Raptor, it may be a great place to live, just great. “Cops are fantastic,” one resident says. “They let you speed by and don’t do a thing.” This is “freedom as non-interference.” But the residents of Raptor would still be living under domination, for the only reason that they can speed is because Deputy Smith and his colleagues have decided to run the town that way. Raptor runs on the predilections of law enforcement.
Canon, by contrast, runs on rules. Before the rules, all are equal. Non-domination means an absence of arbitrary discrimination. Officer Jones serves the law within reason, faithfully doing her duty. The citizens of Canon may be pulled over more frequently than those in Raptor. They may be “interfered” with more often. They may complain about the speed traps. But they can honestly say they are not living under domination, for in Canon rules rule rather than the preferences of law enforcement. No man is in charge; the law is in charge.
Rules rule: that’s the starting point of the republican concept of freedom, and it is what makes it different from most other concepts of freedom.
How do rules rule? Not simply by being there. Both Canon and Raptor have laws. In fact, they more or less have the same laws. The difference is not in the presence or absence of laws, but in the orientation of law enforcement toward those laws. Officer Jones in Canon believes she has a duty to the law. For her, duty is both a kind of virtue and a form of freedom—not her own freedom only, but also the freedom of the community.
There are other things that need to be said about this particular (but not peculiar) conception of republican freedom. For example, it assumes that the laws in place have been deemed good for the whole by a representative deliberative body. Also, the approach to “law” here is not legalistic. Officer Jones lets you drive by if you are going 8 mph over the speed limit. She exercises rule-bound discretion. Her fidelity is to the “spirit” of the laws, not their every last letter. Deputy Smith, by contrast, exercises only his discretion. Officer Jones serves the community by dutifully serving the laws. Deputy Smith serves only himself.
Indeed, the central issue with freedom is not being left alone but who or what we serve and in what way.
The United States was founded on the republican concept of freedom as non-domination. It was to be a place where rules rule. There were nevertheless many people in the republic left in conditions of utter servitude and slavery. This may mean that republicanism was no more than an ideological smokescreen for the raw exercise of domination by white, wealthy landowners. This is the strong critique.
But even if that was so, the historical fact is that republicanism was nevertheless summoned by enslaved blacks and their defenders, women and their advocates, and laborers and their proponents, to argue for freedom from domination. Over and over. Lincoln’s new political party, the Republicans, meant the name. The main problem I have with the strong critique is not where it starts, but how abruptly it brings things to an end.
So here we are in the realm of roots.
Blood, sweat, tears, and many words were shed for republican freedom, or “freedom as non-domination.” Such is what Maurizio Viroli, who I have been quoting on republicanism the last few weeks, calls the “liberty of citizens” as opposed to the “liberty of servants.”
But the liberty of citizens is a form of servanthood, a positive and good one. Viroli quotes the 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso. Tasso was himself a great courtier. If he were alive today, he’d know how to navigate the Trump administration more agilely than most. But he also knew court life had destined him to a form of perpetual and utter servitude. He thus looked fondly upon republics, writing,
[R]epublics and courts are not the same. . . . [I]n republics, a man both serves and rules. Men in the lower ranks obey their leaders, but sometimes the positions are reversed. Then those who used to rule their equals obey, and those who once obeyed rule. And even those who have reached the highest offices are like servants of the laws.
Two hundred years later, this republican system of equal servants of the law periodically trading places would be written into the Constitution of the United States, however imperfectly. Decades later, Abraham Lincoln would try to make the republican Constitution, and the Union it created, more perfect. When the Republican Party was founded, it was a party of actual republicans. Today, it has become a party of a would-be king and his courtiers, and we are all, for the time being, in their unfortunate service.
Field Notes:
The Wall Street Journal has an article (gift link) on the American Right’s embrace of the teachings of the 20th-century Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci (who I have referenced once or twice here at Civic Fields). One way to think about the strange embrace by the Right of so-called “cultural Marxism” is to see in it a kind of sober realism about power: the Right has come to fight fire with fire. Another is to see it as a fool’s errand rooted in a complete misunderstanding of the power of liberalism. A third is to see in it a double betrayal of both of the better parts of the Marxist tradition (they exist!) and American republican principles. All three, I think, are true.
I am seeing more articles out there on those Confidence Machines we call “AI,” though not enough is being written about how the machines are trained to rhetorically behave in the way they do. A good friend of Civic Fields sent me this article from The Times on what the barons of AI, many of whom are frequently drugged up themselves, are now describing as the problem of AI “hallucinating,” a trendy euphemism in AI world for simply “getting things wildly wrong.”
Speaking of hallucinating, Jules Evans, founder of the Challenging Psychedelic Experiences Project, recently penned a piece in the New York Times (gift link) on how right-wing tech barons are now the biggest investors in the burgeoning psychedelic drug industry, writing, “I worry that the psychedelic enthusiasts of Silicon Valley will apply their ‘move fast and break things’ philosophy to mind-altering drugs, approving them too quickly and without adequate protections for Americans.”
What Alfred North Whitehead wrote of the natural sciences is a good maxim for cultural and political analysis: “The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.’” But keep on seeking!