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Mask how? Yes, people are convincing, but that is in no way comparable to force. The fact that many people are convinced to do things that suck for them in no
by microcolonel 7y ago
Mask how? Yes, people are convincing, but that is in no way comparable to force.
The fact that many people are convinced to do things that suck for them in no way justifies a switch to deliberate, overt state imposition of what is supposed to be good for them.
If people are being convinced of unwise or unreasonable things, you have an obligation to do your own convincing.
- claudiawerner 7y agoThe mask is as follows: firstly in a particular ideological and political conception of freedom as the freedom to buy and sell whatever you want (including your own labour), along with some things given by the liberal egalitarian state, secondly in the liberal construction of "free will" as the opposite of coercion. Marx criticized liberalism for its narrow conception of what it means to be free, and before that, Spinoza outlined why it is meaningless to talk of "coercion" and "consent" as proponents of negative liberties tend to talk about them. It is not enough to be free, freedom lies, as Zizek says, in the freedom to define your own idea of freedom outside of the ideological context in which it is given to you, whether that's a Western capitalist ideology or one given to you by the CCP.
- microcolonel 7y agoThe thing is, only one of those spectrums of freedom is fully contained within the other. You are free at any moment to commit your excesses to the state, or to any institution.