Neoliberalism and Freedom

The concept of freedom stands as a fundamental value at the centre of neoliberal ideology. In reality, however, it has little to do with actual freedom. When I think of freedom, I associate it with ideas such as the absence of performance pressure or imaginary lines on a map that dictate how we are allowed to move. Broadly speaking: the absence of external constraints. Such ideas are incompatible with neoliberalism. It would certainly be disproportionate to speak of active external constraints in our society. And yet there are constraints that drive our society. They simply unfold in a more subtle way. Even if not as subtle as our privileged, student perspective on the world might suggest.

The neoliberal concept of freedom is based primarily on economic freedom. Corporations should, put simply, regulate social life through freedom in the market. Society itself should be organised like the market. This functions according to the principle of competition. This means that the actors are in a competitive relationship, which results in a handful of beneficiaries and a whole lot of losers.

Through the organisation of society according to market principles, individual life becomes a competitive struggle in which, as in the economy, there are winners and losers. Whoever wants freedom must fight for it and make sacrifices. Here, neoliberal theorists like to point to the so-called "equal opportunity" that is supposed to emerge through a neoliberal organisation. Inequalities in society can be explained with this thinking by saying that every person who emerges as a loser from this struggle simply did not try hard enough to assert themselves within the competition-oriented society. The responsibility to create a "good life" thus lies entirely with the individual. Freedom becomes in this sense the price for the won struggle against fellow citizens, the "competitive advantage". I call this constraint indirect because, technically speaking, one cannot be directly forced to participate in this society. However, the sanctions we impose on people who do not participate – whether voluntarily or involuntarily – have such grave consequences that one is indeed forced indirectly. The societal arsenal of punishments for people who do not fit the system ranges from social ostracism to a life below the subsistence level. Reason enough to simply surrender to the whole thing, right? After all, everyone has the same chances, doesn't it? Wrong.Whoever goes through life with open eyes will quickly discover that this struggle is by no means balanced, that the much-vaunted "equal opportunity" is exposed as a lie, and that it is not individual achievement, but systematic mechanisms of oppression that decide who comes under the wheels in capitalism and who benefits from it. According to a survey by the Federal Statistical Office, approximately 16% of the German population was at risk of poverty in 2018. This corresponds to approximately 13 million people. 13 million people who were too lazy to take their lives into their own hands, or who did not try hard enough and therefore lost the struggle for the "good life"? It is this self-responsibility for one's own plight that society tries to convey to us, even though this objectively does not correspond to the truth.Poverty can have many causes, but laziness or insufficient effort are certainly the rarest of cases. Of the 13 million people at risk of poverty in Germany, 27.8% had a migration background and 35.2% did not have German citizenship. These figures go well beyond statistical chance. They are one of many pieces of evidence that not everyone here has the same chances. Another example would be that only about 21% of children from non-academic families begin university studies, whilst this figure rises to 74% for children from a family in which at least one parent has an academic education. This shows how false, unjust and destructive the endless spouting of some form of equal opportunity is.

Poverty can have many causes, but laziness or insufficient effort are certainly the rarest of cases. Of the 13 million people at risk of poverty in Germany, 27.8% had a migration background and 35.2% did not have German citizenship. These figures go well beyond statistical chance. They are one of many pieces of evidence that not everyone here has the same chances. Another example would be that only about 21% of children from non-academic families begin university studies, whilst this figure rises to 74% for children from a family in which at least one parent has an academic education. This shows how false, unjust and destructive the endless spouting of some form of equal opportunity is.

Poverty can have many causes, but laziness or insufficient effort are certainly not among them in the vast majority of cases. Of the 13 million people at risk of poverty in Germany, 27.8% had a migration background and 35.2% did not have German citizenship. These figures go well beyond statistical chance. They are one of many pieces of evidence that not everyone in our country has equal opportunities. Another example would be that only about 21% of children from non-academic families begin university studies, whilst this figure rises to 74% for children from families where at least one parent has an academic qualification. This demonstrates how false, unjust and destructive the endless rhetoric about some form of equal opportunity truly is.

And yet these notions are actively maintained.
For what implicitly follows from prejudices towards poor people is a profiling of the rich according to the motto: "I deserve to be rich because I – unlike you – am not lazy." Thus financial freedom, which in truth can only be explained by the possession of certain privileges, is declared to be one's own achievement. This suggests that absolutely everyone can manage it. From dishwasher to millionaire. We now know, however, that equal opportunity is pure window-dressing. So let's conduct a little thought experiment. We continue to operate economically as we do now, everything stays the same. Except for one difference: there is perfect equal opportunity, whatever that might look like. Everyone can become rich, regardless of what background they have. Some do, others, for unknown reasons, do not. Would our society then be free? No, because the exploitative characteristics of capitalist economic practice remain intact nonetheless. We continue to live in a class society. A free, just society is a society without poor and rich, with a multitude of equal people – a classless society. Now the contradiction in the neoliberal concept of freedom finally becomes clear: freedom does not exist for everyone, but only for some privileged few. And indeed at the expense of the freedom of the rest of society.r can manage it. From dishwasher to millionaire. We now know, however, that equal opportunity is pure window-dressing. Then let's conduct a little thought experiment. We continue to operate economically as we do now, everything stays the same. Except for one difference: there is perfect equal opportunity, whatever that might look like. Everyone can become rich, regardless of what background they have. Some do, others, for unknown reasons, do not. Would our society then be free? No, because the exploitative characteristics of capitalist economic practice remain intact nonetheless. We continue to live in a class society. A free, just society is a society without poor and rich, with a multitude of equal people – a classless society. Now the contradiction in the neoliberal concept of freedom finally becomes clear: freedom does not exist for everyone, but only for some privileged few. And indeed at the expense of the freedom of the rest of society.

I do not wish to pretend that all the existing injustice in our society can be eliminated through the establishment of a new concept of freedom. That can probably only happen through the overcoming of capitalism itself. Nevertheless, I would like to conclude by presenting an alternative concept of freedom.

At the beginning of this text I described freedom as the absence of external constraints. In philosophy, such a definition is called "negative" because the defined concept has no actual content, but only becomes clear through demarcation from other concepts. Leo Kofler, an Austrian-German Marxist sociologist who lived from 1907 to 1995, expanded this negative concept of freedom in his 1951 essay "The Marxist Concept of Freedom" by adding a further positive moment: freedom should no longer be thought of merely as an individual category, but as a social principle. According to Kofler, "man can only then fully enjoy freedom […] when he has arrived at that level of social development at which the free development of his personality into totality and harmony has become practical." Simplified, this means that the individual is only free when all members of society enjoy the same freedom. This concept of freedom stands in obvious contradiction to the neoliberal concept of freedom elucidated above.

A society that takes the freedom of all seriously will therefore sooner or later have to overcome capitalism, or as Karl Marx himself once formulated it: "The realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases."