SIMMEL: Individual Freedom (The Psychology of Freedom)
In
last week’s reading Georg Simmel made his case that an economy based on
monetary transactions allows for maximum individual freedom. Money gives us many more choices about how we
earn a living, where we live, and what we do with our leisure time. Exchanging money for goods and services make
us more dependent on the system but less dependent on individual people. There’s both an upside and a downside to this
kind of economic arrangement. Here’s an
example of what Simmel is talking about.
He says “the personality as a mere holder of a function or position is
just as irrelevant as that of a guest in a hotel room.” The upside of this arrangement is the
depersonalization of business transactions.
A waitress at a restaurant or a clerk at a convenience store won’t
refuse me service just because they don’t like me. The downside of this arrangement is the
depersonalization of business transactions.
Under a monetary system I’m just another customer and as irrelevant as “a
guest in a hotel room.”
Not
everyone is comfortable with this kind of arrangement. Tocqueville once remarked that “I know of no
country in which there is so little independence of mind and freedom of
discussion as in America.” He’s talking
about the power of the majority but the principle also holds true for a people
utterly dependent on commerce. In order
to conduct business Americans are compelled to act, and even think, in certain
ways. For Tocqueville being dependent on
such a system is in reality a limitation of freedom. Simmel doesn’t agree. Simmel thinks “we are compensated for the
great quantity of our dependencies by the indifference toward respective
persons and by our liberty to change them at will.” If I don’t like my boss I can find another
job. If I don’t like my neighbors I can
move. Money gives me freedom to change
my relationships to other people. I can
make my own choices about who I do business with and for Simmel “this is the
most favorable situation for bringing about inner independence, the feeling of
individual self-sufficiency.” Simmel
points out that “the vassal could change his master whereas the serf was
unalterably tied to the same one. This
reflects an incomparably higher measure of independence for the vassal compared
with the serf… It is not the bond as such, but being bound to a particular
individual master that represents the real antipode of freedom.”
Simmel
and Tocqueville seem to have a fundamental disagreement about what freedom
means. They both emphasize the psychological
as well as the financial component of freedom.
But Simmel says “The slave could not change his master even if he had
been willing to risk much worse living conditions, whereas the industrial
worker can do that at any time.” Knowing
we can choose to change our circumstances is the key to freedom for
Simmel. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll
be better off, at least financially.
Simmel admits that “there is no necessary connection between liberty and
increased well-being.” But there’s a line
from an old George Strait song that goes “I ain’t got a dime but what I got is
mine; I ain’t rich, but Lord I’m free.” That
may be true but Tocqueville counters with this argument. “Fetters and headsmen were the coarse
instruments which tyranny formerly employed; the civilization of our age has
refined the arts of despotism… in democratic republics the body is left free
but the soul is enslaved.” I’m free to
leave my job and work for someone else or I can start my own business. But I’m
still dependent on the same system.
Simmel thinks freedom means not being “bound to a particular individual
master.” Tocqueville worries about something
much worse. Being bound to majority opinion
and having many anonymous masters is a worse fate than having a particular
individual master. Better to deal with the
devil you know than the many devils you don’t know. This is the psychological tension Freud spoke
about in Civilization and Its Discontents (GB1).
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home