Freedom in a Complex Society [ 261 ]
peace. The system worked through the instrumentality of those Great
Powers, first and foremost Great Britain, who were the center of world
finance, and pressed for the establishment of representative govern-
ment in less-advanced countries. This was required as a check on the
finances and currencies of debtor countries with the consequent need
for controlled budgets, such as only responsible bodies can provide.
Though, as a rule, such considerations were not consciously present in
the minds of statesmen, this was the case only because the require-
ments of the gold standard ranked as axiomatic. The uniform world
pattern of monetary and representative institutions was the result of
the rigid economy of the period.
Two principles of nineteenth-century international life derived
their relevance from this situation: anarchistic sovereignty and "justi-
fied" intervention in the affairs of other countries. Though apparently
contradictory, the two were interrelated. Sovereignty, of course, was a
purely political term, for under unregulated foreign trade and the gold
standard governments possessed no powers in respect to international
economics. They neither could nor would bind their countries in re-
spect to monetary matters—this was the legal position. Actually, only
countries which possessed a monetary system controlled by central
banks were reckoned sovereign states. With the powerful Western
countries this unlimited and unrestricted national monetary sover-
eignty was combined with its complete opposite, an unrelenting pres-
sure to spread the fabric of market economy and market society else-
where. Consequently, by the end of the nineteenth century the peoples
of the world were institutionally standardized to a degree unknown
before.
This system was hampering both on account of its elaborateness
and its universality. Anarchistic sovereignty was a hindrance to all
effective forms of international cooperation, as the history of the
League of Nations strikingly proved; and enforced uniformity of do-
mestic systems hovered as a permanent threat over the freedom of na-
tional development, especially in backward countries and sometimes
even in advanced, but financially weak countries. Economic coopera-
tion was limited to private institutions as rambling and ineffective as
free trade, while actual collaboration between peoples, that is, be-
tween governments, could never even be envisaged.
The situation may well make two apparently incompatible de-
mands on foreign policy: it will require closer cooperation between
[ 262 ] The Great Transformation
friendly countries than could even be contemplated under nine-
teenth-century sovereignty, while at the same time the existence of
regulated markets will make national governments more jealous of
outside interference than ever before. However, with the disappear-
ance of the automatic mechanism of the gold standard, governments
will find it possible to drop the most obstructive feature of absolute
sovereignty, the refusal to collaborate in international economics. At
the same time it will become possible to tolerate willingly that other
nations shape their domestic institutions according to their inclina-
tions, thus transcending the pernicious nineteenth-century dogma of
the necessary uniformity of domestic regimes within the orbit of
world economy. Out of the ruins of the Old World, cornerstones of the
New can be seen to emerge: economic collaboration of governments
and the liberty to organize national life at will. Under the constrictive
system of free trade neither of these possibilities could have been con-
ceived of, thus excluding a variety of methods of cooperation between
nations. While under market economy and the gold standard the idea
of federation was justly deemed a nightmare of centralization and uni-
formity, the end of market economy may well mean effective coopera-
tion with domestic freedom.
The problem of freedom arises on two different levels: the institu-
tional and the moral or religious. On the institutional level it is a mat-
ter of balancing increased against diminished freedoms; no radically
new questions are encountered. On the more fundamental level the
very possibility of freedom is in doubt. It appears that the means of
maintaining freedom are themselves adulterating and destroying it.
The key to the problem of freedom in our age must be sought on this
latter plane. Institutions are embodiments of human meaning and
purpose. We cannot achieve the freedom we seek, unless we compre-
hend the true significance of freedom in a complex society.
On the institutional level, regulation both extends and restricts
freedom; only the balance of the freedoms lost and won is significant.
This is true of juridical and actual freedoms alike. The comfortable
classes enjoy the freedom provided by leisure in security; they are nat-
urally less anxious to extend freedom in society than those who for
lack of income must rest content with a minimum of it. This becomes
apparent as soon as compulsion is suggested in order to more justly
spread out income, leisure and security. Though restriction applies to
Freedom in a Complex Society [ 263 ]
all, the privileged tend to resent it, as if it were directed solely against
themselves. They talk of slavery, while in effect only an extension to
the others of the vested freedom they themselves enjoy is intended.
Initially, there may have to be reduction in their own leisure and secu-
rity, and, consequently, their freedom so that the level of freedom
throughout the land shall be raised. But such a shifting, reshaping and
enlarging of freedoms should offer no ground whatsoever for the as-
sertion that the new condition must necessarily be less free than was
the old.
Yet there are freedoms the maintenance of which is of paramount
importance. They were, like peace, a by-product of nineteenth-
century economy, and we have come to cherish them for their own
sake. The institutional separation of politics and economics, which
proved a deadly danger to the substance of society, almost automati-
cally produced freedom at the cost of justice and security. Civic liber-
ties, private enterprise and wage-system fused into a pattern of life
which favored moral freedom and independence of mind. Here again,
juridical and actual freedoms merged into a common fund, the ele-
ments of which cannot be neatly separated. Some were the corollary of
evils like unemployment and speculator's profits; some belonged to
the most precious traditions of Renaissance and Reformation. We
must try to maintain by all means in our power these high values in-
herited from the market-economy which collapsed. This, assuredly, is
a great task. Neither freedom nor peace could be institutionalized un-
der that economy, since its purpose was to create profits and welfare,
not peace and freedom. We will have consciously to strive for them in
the future if we are to possess them at all; they must become chosen
aims of the societies toward which we are moving. This may well be the
true purport of the present world effort to make peace and freedom se-
cure. How far the will to peace can assert itself once the interest in
peace which sprang from nineteenth-century economy has ceased to
operate will depend upon our success in establishing an international
order. As to personal liberty, it will exist to the degree in which we will
deliberately create new safeguards for its maintenance and, indeed, ex-
tension. In an established society the right to nonconformity must be
institutionally protected. The individual must be free to follow his
conscience without fear of the powers that happen to be entrusted
with administrative tasks in some of the fields of social life. Science
and the arts should always be under the guardianship of the republic
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