A Definition of Freedom
Freedom is one of the most interesting concepts, and at the same time probably one of the most misunderstood and abused terms that we have in the English language.
It is an extremely important idea. Incidentally, we have another word that means much the same thing, liberty.
In fact, the English language is particularly rich in this particular because we do have
two words that mean essentially the same, liberty and freedom. Many languages only have
one depending on where they are geographically, and there are a number of languages, more
or less primitive languages, which do not have the word at all and hence do not have
The word freedom has a very interesting history.
So far as we are able to learn at the present time at least, the word freedom first appears
in writing about 2,000 BC, nearly 4,000 years ago.
It is found in a writing by a man named Urukagina in the Mesopotamian village of Lagash. Urukagina
in writing at that time, and this particular writing will appear in a book by a man named
Myer, and the name of the book is History Begins at Sumer, S-U-M-E-R, History Begins
at Sumer by Myer. And the author here tells us, and he is a Sumerian, a Sumerianologist,
that is he is one of the few men alive who can translate the Sumerian cuneiform script,
which is what he's dealing with, he tells us that this particular essay by Ura Kagena
comes from Lagash and relates to a condition that Ura Kagena found in Lagash at the time
he wrote. Ura Kagena said that the people in Lagash were losing their freedom. And the
reason that they were losing their freedom, he said, was because they had a new political
leader who was sort of an alien and he had increased the taxes and the regulations and
was engaged in virtually enslaving the entire market area. People couldn't exchange or
produce without paying a remarkably higher and ever higher taxes to this politician.
And Ura Kageena offered himself more or less as a reform candidate, indicating that if
If he could become king, why he would change all this, and the taxes would be repealed
and everything would get back to the way he remembered it as being before.
I don't know, and Mayer doesn't make it clear, just how it occurred, but apparently
Ura Kogina won the election, or whatever they had at that time, because he became the ruler
of Lagash, perhaps after he had made this literary appeal in the essay that has been
unearthed.
In any case, apparently the recovery that Ura Kageena invoked, and indeed he did so,
because the essay contains this element.
It explains that after Ura Kageena came to power, the taxes were repealed, the laws were
modified, the regulations were put aside, and there was something in the nature of an
economic recovery in Lagash for a while.
But apparently it was too little, or too late, or both.
Because about ten years after Ura Kageena comes to power, Lagash simply ceases to exist.
It is blotted from the pages of history and has never returned.
Now just what caused that we don't know.
Probably there was an invasion from an outside force.
It may have been aided and abetted by some type of economic collapse from within.
We simply don't have enough data to know exactly what did occur.
We only know that Ura Kagena is the last ruler of Lagash, that he came to power as a reform
candidate somehow and put in the reforms according to this essay.
And this is where we first find the word freedom in writing.
I think that's fascinating.
To think that the first time the word appears in literature is in a complaint about high
taxes.
I think, you know, it's an interesting thing about people.
We tend to value the things that we don't have. And when men are relatively free, they
don't really value freedom because they're not really aware that they have it. It's
just like a man who has a good well and a plentiful supply of water. It's not particularly
valuable to him because it's right there and he has all that he wants and can use.
But then when the well runs dry, or when the person doesn't have his freedom, then he
begins to really evaluate it very highly, and the less he has of it, the more important
it seems to become to him. And I think this, in a sense, is the way we work as people.
I think it could be expressed with the little jingle that perhaps you remember. As a rule,
When a man's a fool, when it's hot, he wants it cool. When it's cool, he wants it hot, always wanting what is not.
And that's just a little way of explaining how our value system works. We value things that are scarce.
And the more scarce they become, if they have a high utility to us, the more we value them. In fact, they become priceless.
And yet, if we have an abundance of the same thing, it becomes less and less valuable to us.
and we are sated by it and finally we grow indifferent to it and in a sense this has
been the nature of freedom.
So anyway, we have the word arising there in the Middle East, in Mesopotamia, perhaps
around 2000 BC.
From that time on the word has a sort of a migration.
It is picked up in other languages.
It crosses toward the north and we find words that are derived from the same stem arising
in the Balkan languages, in the Germanic languages, in the Slavic languages, and ultimately in
the Norse languages. There is a very similar word or words that all come from the same
root. And somewhere in process it also gets into English. Now whether it comes into English
from very early sources in the Akkadian and Sumerian tongue, or whether it gets there
from the Germanic or the Norse languages, I don't know.
We only know that the word freedom does get into English, and that's generally the way
it has migrated.
It originated in the Middle East and then seemed to go north, and possibly north and
west.
Now, the word liberty, on the other hand, is of Greek origin, or possibly pre-Greek.
As to that, I cannot be sure at the moment. Certainly it is a Greek word, or a word of
Greek origin. The Greeks used it. It was translated from the Greek into the Latin, and the Romans
used it. They used the word liberty, not the word freedom. The French picked it up from
the Latin, and they have a word for liberty. And then the English language got it either
from the French or the Latin. And so in English we have both words, the word of liberty and
and the word of freedom, and both mean essentially the same thing. The concept apparently was
more or less a commonly held concept dating to a very early time in human experience,
and this is how the concept was originally. Etymologically speaking, it was formed with
this thought in mind, that freedom is a condition that relates to the in-group. That is, within
a clan or a tribe or, if you like, within the fray trees or the gens. The people there
are free. That is to say, they are not under suspicion. They can do as they please. We
trust them because they are part of our group. But everybody outside of our group must be
viewed with suspicion and potential enmity because they are not free. Thus, freedom was
not viewed as a general condition or even a condition that could be considered as desirable
on any kind of a general base. It was simply a privileged condition. We thought of it that
way as a privilege inhering to those persons who are on the inside. They are a part of
our family. They are a part of our particular culture. Then, of course, in the early days
What would happen would be an individual would perhaps come into a territory where he was
not a member of the in-group and he would be taken in very much under suspicion.
He would be watched, possibly treated very badly for a while until we began to trust
him, at which point there would usually be an adoption ceremony and he'd be adopted
into the tribe.
Actually, what would happen would be that at the moment of his adoption, he is granted freedom.
That is, the freedom is bestowed upon him that would be the same kind of condition that would
exist among the other members of the tribe. He's accepted as a brother and then has freedom the
same as everyone else. So actually, the word related to a privilege condition at the outset.
Now, with the passing of time, people began to apply the word in a more broadened sense.
It related to a general condition in which two or more people could be together and no
rules would be invoked on anybody.
In other words, the concept then developed as follows, that if two men are in the same
in general locality, and neither man imposes force or interferes with the will of the other
man, then a condition of freedom pertains. However, the minute one person takes control
of the second person, then we have lost the concept of freedom and something other than
and Freedom exists. Now, it would be very easy to see that the word freedom, then, has
a moral connotation. It would exist in what I have called the moral theater, which is
the area of human behavior in which interpersonal relationships occur. And freedom only has
application in that area. Obviously, if we have a man alone on an island, and there's
no other person there, he would really have no use for the word freedom. Of course he
would be free. There would be no one there to inhibit him. So naturally, his freedom
is not in question, and the idea that he is free, or might not be free, would perhaps
This never even occurred to him. It would be the same as, say, the word theft. What
use would the word theft be to a man on an island by himself? The concept is inconceivable
because theft would be impossible. These words that have moral context always relate to an
inter-human relationship. So when we think of a condition of freedom, we think of a condition
in which more than one person is present but none of the persons in present impose their
wills on any of the other persons and that would be a condition of freedom.
Now it is obvious that the opposite of the word freedom at least in one sense is the
word slavery.
If a person is enslaved, well certainly he cannot be free and it follows that if he is
is free, he is not a slave. These would be mutually exclusive terms. And I think we recognize
that. Most people have had a very strong feeling of antipathy toward slavery. We don't like
it. We don't like it for ourselves. We certainly don't approve of the condition generally.
We are opposed to slavery. At least we're in the record books as opposing slavery. We
certainly favor freedom. And yet this word is subject to all kinds of interpretations. In fact,
I think there's a very profound difference of view here. Possibly Abraham Lincoln put his finger on
this difference about as well as anyone has ever done it. I can't quote him precisely here, and I
And I don't have the quote handy, but he did say at one point that the world needed a good
definition of freedom or liberty.
I don't remember which word he used.
I think he used liberty.
But he said the world was very much in need of a good definition of liberty.
And apparently we were somewhat confused about it because with some the word meant the right
of a man to do as he pleases with himself and the products of his labor.
And with others it seemed to mean the right of a man to do as he pleased with other men
and the products of other men's labor. And clearly, here are two different and contrary
things, and yet we tend to call them both by the same name. Obviously, that is merely
to confuse meanings, and we better have different names. And if the one is freedom, then its
opposite must be slavery. And of course, I think we've pretty well accepted that view,
as Mr. Lincoln expressed it, and let me go on record as accepting it right now. I think
freedom in essence means that a man may do as he pleases with himself and whatever it
is that he owns. And I think that if a man does something with another man or with something
that the other man owns, that that is not freedom or liberty, that in fact I would have
Now, in trying to find a good definition for freedom, possibly the best and the most succinct
definition that I have ever heard has been this. It is a human condition in which there
is a total absence of coercion. And I have no real objection to that definition, providing
only that it is thoroughly understood. I'd like to show you where the danger is in that
definition unless it is thoroughly discussed and grasped. You see, freedom is a condition
that occupies a middle ground. It is in essence a medium of human exchange. It's a little
Money is a condition that makes exchange possible between people.
Now we are aware that slavery is the opposite of freedom. If a man is a slave, clearly he is not free. If he is free, clearly he is not a slave.
The Tyrant is the person who creates the slave.
But very few of us think of the tyrant as being a person who has lost his freedom.
Rather, we think of the tyrant as a person who has full freedom.
In fact, he may be having a little more freedom than the average person, because he's not
only free to do as he pleases with himself, but he's free to do as he pleases with another
person. And so we don't think of the tyrant as being the antithesis of freedom. Rather
we think of the tyrant as being another free man. But now we have two types of free man.
We have a free man who is neither a tyrant nor a slave, and then we have a free man who
who is a tyrant but not a slave. Now clearly that would have to confuse us because then
when we say a free man we don't know whether we're referring to a non-slave or possibly
we might be referring to a tyrant who is a non-slave because there could be two types
of non-slaves. There could be a free non-slave and there could be a tyrant non-slave. So
Our language hasn't quite made this point clear. I would like to stress the fact that the real enemy
of freedom isn't the slave. The slave is merely the victim of a lack of freedom.
The real enemy of freedom is the tyrant, but we usually don't think of the tyrant as being opposed
to freedom. In fact, let me tell you what we do. When we think we're in danger of being enslaved,
Institute. Our natural tendency is to try to become a tyrant over the guy that we think
might enslave us. So we become the prime foe of freedom in an effort not to lose freedom.
We become the very force that enslaves others in order to prevent us from being enslaved.
Now clearly that is not an absence of coercion. That is coercion. But somehow we don't see
that very well. We recognize coercion when the other fellow is invoking it. But when
we invoke it on the other fellow, well that's justified and it's not really coercion, you
see. And this is precisely the problem. We are very, very much opposed to slavery. But
But we are not nearly as opposed to the practices that create it.
The reason is that we don't want to be a slave, but we really don't object to being a tyrant.
If only we could be a successful tyrant and enslave everybody else, why how great that
would be because then we really would be free.
And now we've made a complete circle intellectually and have gone back to the early primitive
times where the word freedom is not a word relating to a general condition, but is only
Clearly a word relating to a particular in-group and we will use all the force we need to make
everybody else a slave just so that we'll be free and we call this the process of making
certain that we are free. Isn't that appalling? Clearly it is not freedom that we are talking
about. We are merely talking about our license to have power over the other fellow for any
Any one of a whole series of reasons that we could easily drum up. Our ability as rational
beings relates to our fundamental ability to infer and to rationalize a situation in
our own favor. And so we could create arguments by the score to justify the enslaving of other
are people because, one, they have a different background. Therefore, they could not be free.
Because their freedom could endanger us. Or maybe they're of a different race, so clearly
they should be enslaved. Or perhaps they have different economic resources. Or perhaps they
speak a different language. Or perhaps they have a different religion. Or whatever difference
they may have, they must belong to some other group. And it's only our group that is entitled
of Freedom. So freedom is going to be the privileged situation that we have within our
own boundaries and everybody else can be enslaved because that makes us free. And I would like
to suggest that freedom means the absence of slavery, not the absence of your enslavement
or my enslavement, but the absence of the condition of slavery. And that means the absence
Freedom is a condition between men in which slavery and tyranny are absent, coercion is
absent all the way around. When you have that, then you have freedom. Now, we're talking
in terms of trying to find a world, trying to create a social arrangement that will be
The beneficial that will tend to upgrade human living that will create a far more meaningful
way of our getting along with each other.
We've discovered that wherever you have aggression or the imposition of tyranny, you have frustration.
The frustration leads to other aggression and we have this interrelationship of cause
Today, many people are afraid of freedom. And I can certainly sympathize with them and
understand why. Because there are so many people running around who are equating freedom
with their right to do as they please with other people and with other people's property.
And of course this is not freedom. This is license. This is to invoke tyranny. But the
cure being offered is to enslave them so that they can't do it, and that's tyranny too.
That is not the way to proceed. The correct way to proceed is to recognize that danger
to Freedom comes from either side. And the free man makes up his mind that he will be
free through processes that do not involve either his becoming a slave or his becoming
a tyrant. So the free man will simply not participate in any kind of an action which
which would cause him to be a part of an enslavement process.
Now, curiously, this is fascinating to me, curiously, it's easier to avoid becoming
a tyrant than to avoid becoming a slave because the tyrant is made with my energy and I can
control my own energy, but the slave is made by somebody else's energy, you see.
And so I have control of my own energy, and I can definitely decide that I will not be a tyrant.
Whether or not I'm enslaved is another question, and naturally I don't want to be enslaved.
But if I can ever get it through my head that I can deal with other people in such a way
that I can retain my freedom and in process not enslave or inhibit them, not coerce them,
And I'm on the right track. And that is precisely what I think we must do. Now, the interesting thing,
if we understand the nature of man sufficiently well, we can detect practical steps, practical
ways and means wherein we can avoid this universal tendency that we've had for perhaps ten thousand
years to try to preserve our own freedom at the expense of everyone else, and instead
move practically and realistically along a line that will take us into a condition where
we simply operate in freedom without invoking coercion on anyone, and at the same time without
being willing to accept coercion on ourselves. That's the point.
You know it's interesting. Man begins, as many scholars say at least, in a state of
of Nature. Now whether this is true or not, I don't want to debate, but let me assume
that it's true for purposes of making this illustration. Clearly it is true that man begins
his experience in this world we live in, in a condition where he's not organized, and
we can call this a state of nature. That is, however many men there may be, they live in
a condition where they are dealing directly with nature and they aren't organized, and
And quite frankly, when they aren't organized at all, where nothing has been put together properly,
they are a marginal existence case. They can hardly make it. They need the help of each other.
They need to get organized. They're in a condition of freedom. Oh, sure. Completely free.
There's no organization. There's no arrangement. There's no contract. There's nothing to prevent them from being free.
So they're free. But they don't value freedom because they've got a lot of it. What they value is organization.
So then they get busy and they start organizing. And they organize how to put the pieces together
so that they get precise and predictable results which is what they want, what they've got
to have. And as they do this, then they become impatient and they want to organize more and
more and get more and more results because this is the way you get results. You put the
pieces together. And so we become impatient of each other. We are no longer necessarily
content by working with the man when he wants to work with us. But we say let's use a little
were in process. And so now we don't have that. And remember what we don't have becomes
very valuable. So we discover that freedom is gone and we say, gee whiz, we've got to
get our freedom again. And so we begin to squirm and wiggle and we begin smashing up
organizations or getting out of them because we can't stand the pressure and the oppression
that they invoke here because they've been done incorrectly. And presently we either
where we either overthrow the organization that we have or we expel ourselves from it
and then we sweep back all the way across and we come into a condition of non-organization
where again we're free.
And the minute we get there we say, wow, we're in trouble.
We don't have any economic goodies anymore.
Let's get organized.
And so we start the same process again and this is precisely what humankind has done
for millennia.
We've gone back and forth between the extremes of non-organization and freedom on the one
and tight compulsive organization and non-freedom on the other hand. Now, somewhere in the middle
is where we're going to maximize human well-being. Somewhere in the middle we're going to find
out how to organize human energy along libertarian lines so that we do not invoke either tyranny
or Freedom. Many people look at a libertarian and wonder if he is a person on the extreme
right or a person on the extreme left. I'd like to suggest that a libertarian is a person
in the extreme middle. And that's where we are. We want to understand what the truth
is and work to make a maximization of human well-being. Thanks very much.