Freedom Utopia
GSNews
Belief in Leaders withers on their word:
from political to the economic era
Frankfurt, Germany
September 23, 1999
Frankfurter Rundschau
Happiness or Freedom
by Beat Wyss
A basic, methodical principle in the sense of information right up front:
history runs according to coincidental necessity. Coincidental, as in the
decision to choose a number in roulette, the mixture of jetons and the
degree of force used by the croupier; necessity, as the centrifugal
force, the friction of resistance, and the slope at which a ball finally
comes to rest on the wheel. Events in the present can no more be predicted
than can a turn of the wheel, unless they have already happened. When
future prognoses can no longer be made, like an oracle on events which
have already occurred, then the threshold of news is nothing other than
the future turned around into present history. The impact of a large
meteor can be calculated a couple of weeks before life on earth is
extinguished. The really unforeseen surprises which came to us from the
past have to do with epidemics: the plague, syphilis, cholera.
Unfortunately, historical text is only aware of unexpected turns of events
as being evil; No case is known where an inexplicably appearing, massive
happiness or an epidemic of self-propagating well-being has been reported.
In particular it was the epoch of modernism which flooded humanity with
unstoppable promises. A unique contrast: the phantasm of the
predictability of human progress is confronted with the fact that the 20th
century will be entered as the darkest in the annals of human history.
Future generations will see these decades in abbreviated hindsight as
being shadowed by world war, political crises and mass, ethnic
persecution. The modernistic era was a time of forceful prognoses in
science, politics and society. "Utopia" is one of the words which has been
overused in every era. When I get involved with it, though, then I do so
with the same caution used by one who clears away land mines, one who is
disarming a dud from a past war. Ernst Bloch distinguishes two types: the
utopia of happiness and the utopia of freedom. The former and elder of the
two was developed by humanists like Tomas Morus, who rediscovered "Platons
Politeia" for the new age. The ideal state is that in which the king is a
philosopher, holds meetings with philosophers, serves as the guiding star
for completely diverse interests: he ennobles the politics of absolutism
and aroused the sympathies of early socialists and anarchists until he
finally came to exist in real life and began in Lenin's and Stalin's areas
of influence. The goal of this type of utopia was the bestowal of
happiness upon humanity by the elite who, in their wisdom, knew what was
good for the people. It is characterized by its often grotesque
over-emphasis of ideals about economic and social relationships. The
leaders have a magical trust on the effectiveness of the word. The arts
are ascribed a higher value as a means of relations than are political
conviction, persuasion or palliation.
The utopia of happiness has run its course; the second, newer utopia, that
of freedom, has kicked into power. Actually, it is the opposite of the
first. Happiness is now a private matter; everybody is so free that they
can strive for it on their own, as confirmed by the American Constitution.
Even though freedom was brought upon the world by the European
Declaration, shortly after the French Revolution it had to emigrate to the
United States, because the old utopia remained valid in Old Europe with
its old relationships, more or less until after the Second World War. The
utopia of freedom is not directed by politics, but by the economy. In this
system, politicians are scapegoats for alarming statistics and falling
profit curves which change slope daily. In is not the inability of the
politicians that makes this looks so precarious, but the fact that they
seem to think that their speeches can extensively influence social
relationships.
The old utopia of planned happiness from above was incapable of keeping
step with the irresistible developments of economy and information
technology. The principle of centralization is, in any case, capable of
operating steam engines, steel mills and concentration camps; but it it is
not compatible with the personal computer, the lead instrument of the
freedom utopia. The advantage of a "freedom" inspired society is the
declining readiness for war. Not because people have learned anything from
history or have gotten any better from the practice of the free market
economy, but simply because war does not fit in. Racism, however, will not
die out. Mistrust and hate of strangers reside within humanity; like
inherited scabies they break out at any time on the remote fringes of
society, where the poor live. But there will no longer be a political
lobby which foments racism for gain. The Yugoslavian conflict was called a
"war" in error: it was an early lesson for the old political era from the
new economic; it will guarantee the monopoly of power in the future less
through standing armies than through market law. That is the good news.
No appropriate place will be found in a cultural newspaper column for the
camp of those who are already poor. Now we come to the bad news for the
minority of cultural performers: your significance is withering. The
political era was, in its need for symbolic markings, a promoter of art.
The economic era is not. We are witnesses to a dramatic decline of state
managed and sponsored cultural politics. The closing of the German Goethe
Institute in foreign countries is a gesture of abdication. Where modern
colonization once europeanized the globe, now globalization has begun the
colonization of Europe. The only noteworthy difference between Frankfurt
and Saigon will soon be only the climate. We will all turn into threshold
countries, not least of all in regard to public promotion of culture.
German museums in the 21st century will take on the moving, dusty charm of
institutions for ethnology, as have the colonial agencies in Mozambique or
in Georgetown, Guyana. The utopia of the free market needs no great words,
no great expressions - its power of conviction lies in the wares, the
stuff from which the dreams of consumers are made.
Unlike the era which lies behind us, where political attempts at happiness
had a constant braking effect, the epoch of freedom in the next century is
without competition. Not even fundamentalist Islam can maintain its push
for victory, because the financing of terrorist attacks is dependent upon
the world market's circle of regulation. The lone opponent of the
successful phenomenon which we animate with the good, old word of
"capitalism" will arise from within itself. Its principle of freedom is
easy to infiltrate by the lawlessness of the mafias and sacrally cynic,
tightly managed sects - any distinct society which operates better and
more at ease without the state. What happens when the freedom utopia is
controlled by an alliance of the Cosa Nostra and Scientology escapes any
possible realization.
Beat Wyss is a professor of art history in Stuttgart.
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