Dennis O'Keeffe MA PhD
School of Education
University of North London

Modernity and its Ambiguities
The Advantages and Menaces of Post-communism

 

Problems of Freedom

Freedom is a precious gift. The gift is for all time. I mean by this that freedom is both our nature and our human medium. It is an ontological datum and cannot be taken away from us without our ceasing to be human. This truth was obscured by the terrible regimes of the twentieth century - Communism and Nazism (Fascism was a weak, lesser version of the type) - the worst forms of governance ever contrived. Nevertheless, the fact that Lenin and his Marxist and Nazi heirs all failed ultimately, is an oblique testimony to the truth and lightness of this view of our human ontology. Our freedom is always there, however cribbed, cabined and confined, as Shakespeare puts it. It is also by definition constantly assailed by different forms of threat.

There are threats as well as advantages facing countries recently emerged from   Communism. The worst threat comes from the accumulation of bad moral habits from decades of despotic political life. More precisely the outside observer such as myself has been able to detect in post-Communist Europe the legacy of a terrible moral cynicism and fatalism which are not good for the trials and stresses of life in a free society. I will still opine, nevertheless, that the net tally of advantages (the sum of potential advantages minus the sum of potential dangers) is probably more positive, more favourable, in Poland, than in any other post-Communist country. This is because Poland has a strong civil order and a culturally homogeneous population. These factors were indeed instrumental in Poland's being the first nation to break the Communist monolith.

What we must also not forget is that many of the problems facing Poland and the other recently released societies come from the free cultures themselves. As you import beneficial ideas from countries which never lost their political freedom and independent identity to the extent that you lost yours, you will also be bringing in destructive and corrupting ideas and phenomena.

Threat No. I Democracy is itself Ambiguous

The case for democracy turns on the removability of governments. Any regime which cannot be thus removed is by definition a tyranny. The trouble with democracy is that the free voting which it needs and provides has a built-in economic and financial drawback. It enables the poor to vote for themselves a portion of the incomes of better off people. This is economically inefficient and reduces the effectiveness of markets. It produces a global loss of economic welfare. It also encourages parasitism and moral hazard. Western welfare states are undoubtedly too soft on malingerers and spongers. On the other hand the weak and the handicapped cannot be ruthlessly dumped. They have to be looked after. Any other outcome is shameful to a civilised society. This tension will be worse in your country than it is in mine.

In my view Communism has left behind populations more avidly materialist and more given to envy than any one would readily find in the more established free societies, the ones which did not lose half a century to the totalitarian nightmare. Given the always uneven pattern of economic development, post-Communist societies will be especially plagued by an envious, redistributionist politics. If you want to hear more, you must import David Marsland or Digby Anderson into your midst, to inform you farther. But this will undoubtedly be a key problem. It would undoubtedly be in the Polish national interest to privatise your social welfare arrangements as swiftly as possible.

Threat No.2 Pockets of Socialism will Linger On

In all the free societies there are publicly financed arrangements which in some degree subvert the market economy and the civil order. There is no time for me to develop an explanation of this, except to say that humans whose work is publicly financed do not operate according to the same market code of scarcity and choice which envelops those who work in markets. British and American education are vastly inferior to what a putative free enterprise curriculum would deliver. The British National Health Service is a disgrace in the context of such a wealthy society. However difficult it may be, Poland should proceed as fast as may be with the long-run privatisation of these activities. There will be huge opposition, some of it meretriciously clothed in the garb of ostensible common sense. It is not common sense. If Poland does not privatise her education system, for example, in twenty years or less it could become a mischief-maker on the American or British style. As Poland gets richer, so her intellectuals will be propelled by the affluence of the public exchequer into irresponsible postures. You may properly wish for Warsaw to be the Chicago of Central and Eastern Europe in the twenty first century. You surely do not want your universities to be as poisoned as many in the USA or Britain.

Threat No.3 In Free Societies Small Minorities can Tyrannise the Majority

This threat is in lots of ways a continuation of the second threat, but worthy of separate treatment. In the modem Western societies there is a plague of political correctness. Tiny numbers of people can tyrannise the majority. This happens over race, sex, homosexuality and many other issues. Very often it reflects the way irresponsible people can get their hands on public funds. Here too it is imperative that you lower the burden of taxation, develop a small but very strong state, which will not tolerate antinomian behaviour, and encourage people to pay themselves for the intellectual activities in which they engage. Since it is also likely that such an approach will give your country an unparalleled stock of human capital, there are multiple grounds for proceeding with a policy of maximum private finance.

Threat No. 4 Marriage, the Family and the Nation at Risk

This point is related to the last two. In Britain and other countries, small numbers of people pressed for divorce to be made easier, for the stigma to be removed from illegitimacy, for the general downgrading of the marriage status. It has always been apparent to a priori reflection that human beings must live in families where both parents are present and that nemesis will follow any other course. We now know in the empirical sense that this is the case. Civilisation cannot survive without the long-term union of most parents. There is a vast evidence of the social horrors which attach to the one parent child, right across the board. In the US, in Britain, in Sweden, there are astounding levels of illegitimacy, intimately associated with all sorts of social, moral and intellectual difficulties.

Similar groups of powerful people have decided that the nation and patriotic sentiment are passe. It seems to me inevitable that Poland and the other post-Communist countries will run into people advocating these dire conceits. Their ideas must be resisted fiercely. The idea that the end of the nation state is palpably demonstrated is false. There has been no such proof. The pattern of globalisation may well make a focus like the nation more rather than less relevant. Such a shaky and unfounded thesis must certainly not be made the basis of policy. It is as insecure as esperanto in the search for a universal language.