october 1932

Of Liberty

Benedetto Croce

Volume 11 • Number 1

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Vol. 11 OCTOBER, 1932 No. 1

OF LIBERTY

By Benedetto Croce we BETWEEN the orderly Europe that used to know and the distracted Europe of today is fixed the great gulf of the World War. We remember the old Europe with its ease riches, its flourishing trade, its abundance of goods, its of sense we see new ? life, its bold of security; today the Europe impoverished, discouraged, crisscrossed with high tariff walls, own too each nation occupied solely with its affairs, distraught to pay heed to the things of the spirit and tormented by the fear worse come. once of to Gone is the gay international society the or com pride of Europe's capitals; extinct, almost so, is the old of munity thought, art, civilization. How many astounding changes there have been in frontiers and in political relationships! In the place of the Germany of the Hohenzollerns we see the Ger man Republic; Austria-Hungary has been dismembered and cut up into new states; French sway has been reestablished over the provinces lost in 1870, and the Italian frontiers now include the unredeemed territories and extend to the Brenner; Poland has been reconstituted; Russia is ruled, not by the Tsars but by the Soviets; and the United States has become a dominant factor in European policy. we to Yet if pass from externals essentials and try to identify the forces now at we soon two controlling work, discern that these so Europes, dissimilar in appearance, have continuity and homo we out a geneity. When leave superficial impressions and make careful we the same analysis detect characteristics in both, though in the Europe of today they have been exaggerated by the war. same same are The proclivities and the spiritual conflicts there, though aggravated by the general intellectual decay which was to a war be expected after which counted its victims by the millions, accustomed its survivors to violence, and destroyed

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the habit of critical, constructive and concentrated mental labor. Nationalistic and imperialistic impulses have seized the vic are torious nations because they victors, and the vanquished because they are vanquished; while the new states add new na new to tionalisms, imperialisms the list. Impatience with free in to or stitutions has led open masked dictatorships, and, where not to dictatorships do exist, the desire for them. Liberty, which the war was a or at a before faith, least routine acceptance, has now men even departed from the hearts of if it still survives in an certain institutions. In its place is atavistic libertarism which more ever than ponders disorder and destruction, gives rein to and and sterile extravagant impulses, produces spectacular works. Indifferent and contemptuous, its followers scorn meditative a reverent and loving labor, labor with affection for the past a and courageous mastery of the future. They scorn actions which spring from the heart and speak to the heart, speculations which on a hold the germs of truth, history based realization of all that man has achieved by painful struggle, poetry which is beautiful. name Under the of socialism, communism had already been introduced into the political life and institutions of Europe be war. fore the Now it has reappeared, crude and disruptive. Lib as eralism it ridicules something naively moralistic. Like atavism, a into which it often blends, this communism is sterile thing that art: to kills thought, religion and seeking subjugate them to its own purposes, it can only destroy them. All the distortions and decrepit sophistries of historical materialism have reappeared in as were the current opinions and theories of the day if they new man a and full of promise, although any with slight knowledge of criticism and the history of ideas passed judgment upon them long have taken on an air of and ago. They novelty modernness merely because, although originally introduced by Europe to Russia, now come out are more they of Russia; if anything they immature and shallow than ever; but in this age of unprecedented callow ness and crudity they gain unprecedented credence. Catholicism, war to new moreover, which before the sought draw strength from the forces of irrationalism and mysticism, has been gathering once into its fold many weak and bewildered souls. Thus again is heard that chorus of pessimism and decadence which echoed through pre-war literature, this time announcing the decline of race western civilization and of the human itself. According to OF LIBERTY 3 to these prophets it is about to sink back the level of beasts after to man. having failed reach the estate of All these are facts, and it is useless to deny them or to say that are they true only of certain people in certain countries. Like the are common to situation from which they spring they all Europe are and all the world. And since they facts, they must have a function to fill in the of the human and in so development? spirit cial and human progress if not as direct creators of new values, at as resources then least and stimuli for the deepening and broad ening of old values. This function, whatever it may be, will be understood and described only by the future historian. He will as a we have before him completed story the movement in which are now involved and its subsequent developments. We cannot understand it or even attempt to describe it as a whole because we are we part of it. Being in it, moving with it, can, it is true, observe and understand many of its aspects, but that is all. us And what practical moral is there for each of in the fact that we cannot know the future? This: that we must take part in on not waste our what is going about us, and forces in the contem we plation of the unknowable, that must act, to the degree that our each of us can, as conscience and duty command. Those who in disregard of the ancient admonition of Solon strive to under a stand and judge life "before it is finished," and who lose them on selves in conjecture and surmise, should be their guard lest a snare a these digressions into the unknown prove set by bad demon to them from their " keep goal. a Not history of the future" (as the old thinkers used to define a prophecy), but history of the past which is summed up in the we our present, is what need for work, for our action. And what we need most at the moment is to examine, or at least to review, are those ideals which generally accepted today. We must dis cover to or or whether they contain the power dissolve surpass correct the ideals which we ourselves hold; so that thereafter we or our may change modify ideals, and in any event reestablish a them upon surer, sounder foundation. a The ideal of transcendental system of truth, and, corollary to a on it, of system of government from high, exercised on earth a a by vicar and represented by church, has not yet acquired the intellectual proof which past ages found it to lack. Like all obvious statements one runs this the risk of seeming ungenerous. None the a less, it is fact that the spiritual impulse which has prompted many 4 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

or to persons to return to Catholicism take refuge in it (or in similar a if less venerable and authoritative havens) is merely craving, a amid the turmoil of clashing and changing ideals, for truth that is a some cases fixed and rule of life that is imposed from above. In a itmay have no nobler basis than fear and renunciation, childish terror in the presence of the perception that all truth is absolute and at the same time relative. But a moral ideal cannot conform to the needs of the discouraged and the fearful. Nor can a moral ideal conform to the purposes of those who are drunk with action for action's sake; for action thus conceived a leaves only nausea, profound indifference toward all that has an stirred the human race, and incapacity for objective work. Hu manity has drunk deep of nationalism and imperialism and the as taste of them is already bitter gall: invent amariorem feile. Those who love action for its own sake still rage on. But where is their are serenity of soul, their joy in life? The best of them enveloped mass are raw in gloom; the great of them merely and stupid. Communism, it is the fashion to claim, has passed from theory to and is inRussia. But it is practice being ?applied being practised not as communism but in with its inner contradiction ? keeping as a form of autocracy, as its critics had always predicted would are even be the case. Under it the people of Russia denied that faint breath of freedom which to obtain under the they managed " autocracy of the Tsars. The abolition of the State, that transition to from the r?gime of necessity the r?gime of liberty" about which Marx has not taken Communism has not theorized,? place. abolished the State it could not and never will be able to do so ? one most but, as irony would have it, has forged for itself of the state to In oppressive systems which it is possible imagine. saying we are not to that there were circum this trying deny perhaps stances which forced the Russian revolutionists to choose the we to course they did and no other. Neither do wish detract from to the immensity of their endeavors develop, under these circum do we min stances, the productive forces of the country. Neither to en imize the importance of the lessons be learned from their deavors, or fail to admire the mystic enthusiasm, materialistic and them from though it be, which inspires them keeps sinking on own beneath the load which they have put their backs. It is to on this enthusiasm which gives them courage trample religion, on in a word which we in the West thought, poetry, everything revere as sacred or noble. OF LIBERTY 5

Nevertheless the Russian Communists have not solved, nor ever will their violent and repressive methods enable them to solve, the fundamental problem of human society, the problem of freedom. For in freedom only can human society flourish and bear un fruit. Freedom alone gives meaning to life: without it life is an bearable. Here is inescapable problem. It cannot be eliminated. It springs from the very vitals of things and stirs in the souls of all those countless human beings whom the Communists are to trying control and reshape in accordance with their arbitrary on concepts. And the day that this problem is faced, the material istic foundations of the Soviet structure will crumble and new and very different supports will have to be found for it. Then, even as now, pure communism will not be practised in Russia. Outside of Russia this pseudo-communism has not gained much ground in spite of the fascination that always attaches to things remote ? as e in time and space the old adage has it, maior longincuo reverentia. Two conditions present in Russia are indeed lacking inWestern and Central Europe: the Tsarist tradition and was mysticism. Miliukov not far from the truth when he wrote of Lenin some twelve or more years ago that "in Russia he was on building the solid foundations of the good old autocratic tra dition, but that as far as other countries were concerned he was merely building castles in the air." Even if such experiments coun should develop in other parts of Europe, the fact that other tries differ so from Russia in civilization, education, cus ? religion, ? toms, traditions in historical background, in short would name produce something quite new, whatever its and appearance; or an else, after indeterminate period of blind groping and strug sooner or gle, there would later emerge that liberty which is only another name for humanity. For liberty is the only ideal which unites the stability that once Catholicism possessed with the flexibility which it could never attain, the only ideal which faces the future without pro posing to mould it to some particular form, the only ideal that can a survive criticism and give human society fixed point by which from time to time to reestablish its balance. There are those who question the future of the ideal of freedom. To them we answer more a that it has than future: it has eternity. And today, despite the contempt and ridicule heaped upon it, liberty still endures in many of our institutions and customs and still exercises a benefi cent influence upon them. More significant still, it abides in the 6 FOREIGN AFFAIRS

hearts and minds of many noble men all over the world, men who to a though scattered and isolated, reduced small but aristocratic res publica literaria, still keep faith with it, reverently hallow its name, and love it more truly than ever they did in the days when or no one denied questioned its absolute sovereignty, when the a mob proclaimed its glory and contaminated it with vulgarity now of which it is purged. not And not only does freedom abide in such men, and only does it exist and persist in the constitutions of many important countries and in institutions and customs. Its virtue is operative a in things themselves and is gradually opening way through a many difficulties. We see it at work in the present wish for truce a armaments a in suspicions, reduction in and peaceful settlement true among the nations of Europe. That this is is apparent in the nations must contrive to har general feeling that somehow these are to retain not their monize their plans and efforts if they political even as creators and economic supremacy only, but their leadership of civilization and the aptitudes for this unending task which they have acquired through centuries of labor and experience. are Disarmament and world peace the only statesmanlike proj war ects among the many put forward since the which have not or are faded out been dissipated; rather they gaining ground from to and who were once or year year converting many antagonistic incredulous or faint-hearted. We are entitled to hope that they will not be allowed to fail but will be carried forward to fulfilment in the face of all opposition. It is true that the World War, which as future historians may well regard the reductio ad absurdum of nationalism, has embittered the relations of certain states as a an result of unjust and foolish peace treaty; but it also has made aware that the peoples in their innermost consciousness they common common weak have virtues and defects, strengths and a common are nesses, that they share destiny, inspired by the same same same affections, afflicted by the sorrows, glory in the This in all of patrimony of ideals. explains why already parts we are a new a new Europe witnessing the birth of consciousness, ? are as nationality for nations not, has been imagined, data of nature but results of conscious acts, historical formations. Just as seventy years ago the Neapolitans and the Piedmontese de nation cided to become Italians, not by abjuring their original new so Frenchmen ality but by exalting and merging it in the one, and Germans and Italians and all the others will rise to becoming OF LIBERTY 7 as Europeans; they will think Europeans, their hearts will beat now for Europe as they do for their smaller countries, not for getting them but loving them the better. This process of amalgamation is directly opposed to competi tive nationalism and will in time destroy it entirely; meanwhile to it tends free Europe from the psychology of nationalism and its attendant habits of thought and action. If and when this happens, re the liberal ideal will again prevail in the European mind and we sume its sway over European hearts. But must not see in this a rebirth of liberalism merely way to bring back the "old times" for which the Romantics idly yearn. Present events, those still to take place, will have their due effect; certain institutions of to ones the old liberalism will have be modified and replaced by to new better adapted their tasks; governing classes, made up of new different elements, will arise; and experience will bring forth a new to concepts and give direction the popular will. new In this mental and moral atmosphere it will be imperative to are cer take up again the so-called "social" problems. They tainly not of recent making; thinkers and statesmen have strug case gled with them for centuries, dealing with them as they arose, by case and in the spirit of the times. During the nineteenth were century they the object of deep attention and most heroic were a as to remedies, and dealt with in such way improve greatly to the conditions of the working classes, raise their standards of to living and better their legal and moral status. "Planned" as now a economy, it is being called, although it holds foremost position in talk today is not essentially new; and the question cannot a be seriously raised of finding collective substitute for individual economy or free individual initiative, both of them selves necessary to human life and economic progress. Discussion can turn on or to only the proportions, great small, be assigned to one form of economic rather than to organization another, differ with different times and other circumstances. ing means, places, a This is primarily question for technical experts and statesmen, who will have to devise solutions suitable to the times and fav an orable to increase of wealth and itsmore equitable distribution. a It is question for experts and statesmen; but they will be unable to or fulfil their function attain their ends unless liberty be there to prepare and maintain the intellectual and moral atmosphere to so to indispensable labors arduous, and quicken the legal sys tems within which their duties must be performed.