On Freedom

A response to the “Freedom” Convoy

Charles McFadden, February 2022

Part A (First posted on Facebook, February 18, 2022):

It is misguided to abstract the right to protest, including civil disobedience when needed, from the political content of the protest. It matters, for example, whether civil action is on behalf of the inclusive rights of the people to a healthy natural environment or, on the other side of this coin, on behalf of exclusive individual and corporate rights to exploit nature at the expense of collective well-being.

In this respect, it is equally misguided to treat the legal system of a colonial capitalist society such as Canada as a neutral one. Fundamental, in practice, to Canada’s legal system is the protection of private capitalist property rights over collective rights. A system in which justice is purchased by those with the greatest disposable income is not neutral. It is immoral.

When neoliberal capitalist governments respond positively to the demand of the people for them to act on behalf of the greater good, they deserve our encouragement for doing so. When they act, as usual, to support the selfish behavior of those with the disposable income to purchase their support, we need to have the courage to take whatever civil action is necessary to protect our communal right to a future.

Public authorities have been quick to act on behalf of those whose priority is private profit, while acting slowly, if at all, to protect our collective rights to live in a health sustaining natural and social environment. The self-described “freedom” convoy was evidently financed and led by those for whom “freedom” means the right of exclusion. To be “civil”, on the other hand, means to support the freedom of all to be included in a Canada which is equal, just, democratic, and sustainable.

Part B (First posted on Facebook, early the next morning, February 19, 2022, in reply to one of my Facebook respondents):

Contrary to some of the opinions expressed in the comments on my posting, state power by the capitalist class has historically been and is today being contested. Otherwise, the ruling classes would not need a state to maintain their power. Human rights legislation and the enforcement of these rights is the objective – and accomplishment – of struggles by the oppressed and exploited (supported by some from among the more privileged classes). If this were not the case, we would be living in a society without legislated labor rights, public education, public healthcare, and other welfare measures, none of which can be taken for granted.

The results of the four decades of the neoliberal capitalist era provide abundant evidence of the consequences of a weakened resistance to capitalist class rule, in this case the successful engineering by the capitalist class and its political representatives of a global race to the bottom in labor rights and environmental standards and an ever-deepening existential threat to human life and all life on Earth. It is no longer a choice between capitalism and barbarism, on the one hand, and socialism on the other hand. It is a choice between ecosocialism or extinction. There has been and can be no neutrality between such choices.

∞

See: https://www.greensocialdemocracy.org for further arguments, developed collaboratively with Karen Howell McFadden, on the need and means to achieve an ecologically sustainable civilization, including the peer reviewed eleven article argument previously published online by the theoretical journal closely associated with the Green Party of the United States, http://www.greensocialthought.org. These articles, totaling approximately 80 printed pages, 40,000 words, were written to serve those joining the revolutionary movement for ecosocialism as a brief, accessible introduction to a representative selection from the vast and expanding progressive literature that can be drawn upon by those engaged in the current struggle for a future for humanity.