From the Other Shore
By: Eugène Ehren
Tags: Herzen, Covid, Political Philosophy, Liberty, History

What one 19th-century book can teach us about freedom at a time when freedom is in retreat

Of all the books bandied about in discussions of our current quasi-dystopian reality (more than a year and counting), Alexander Herzen’s From the Other Shore is not one likely to be mentioned. Nor is Herzen himself much of a household name. Such is the paradoxical fate of this eminent thinker and fervent advocate of freedom, celebrated by Bolshevist ideologues in Russia, where Herzen was born, and mostly consigned to oblivion in the West, where he eventually settled and died. Yet From the Other Shore is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why our societies have so easily relinquished their freedoms, and what we can do about it.

A polemical collection of essays, From the Other Shore was written in the wake of the failure of the revolutionary wave that had swept over Europe in the late 1840s. The failure left Herzen, who witnessed it first-hand, profoundly disenchanted with mankind’s prospects of emancipation. The idea that people strive towards freedom, he writes, is an illusion. “The masses are indifferent to personal liberty and freedom of expression; they enjoy authority . . .”. Few wish to be free, and most want to be governed: “To govern themselves doesn’t enter their heads” (all translations are my own).

The Rousseaus and Voltaires of the world make impossible demands upon humanity and then wring their hands when their Procrustean ideals prove to be unattainable. This is no different from an eccentric who wants fish to fly and despairs when they don’t. If our natural state is indeed that of servitude, the interludes of freedom enjoyed by Western societies might well be aberrations. This makes for a pessimistic conclusion, but Herzen prefers cold realism to delusions that terminate in historical cul-de-sacs.

Whereas freedom in the late 1840s was renounced for bourgeois comforts, as Herzen believed it was, freedom in 2020 was given up for the illusion of safety and security. People allowed their governments to decide when, where, and under what circumstances they could leave their homes; whom they could meet and in what numbers; and what they had to wear when they were allowed to step outside.

Freedom is not an absolute concept, and there are situations in which public security needs to take precedence. However, basic freedoms were abrogated to protect society from a virus that, though certainly lethal to some and a challenge to healthcare systems, has a mortality rate that is somewhere in the low single digits. Additionally, the removal of our freedoms was implemented with popular consent and, if polls and my personal observations are reliable, it continues to enjoy the broad support of the public.

This is an important point. Herzen argues that a collective surrender of freedom is worse than the loss of freedom in a fight against an oppressive state. This is because voluntary slavery has a more insidious effect on societies than imposed slavery: “The latter”, Herzen writes, “is based on violence; the former, on the corruption of the will”.

Corruption of the will is exactly what’s happened to us. The suspension of our freedom was supposed to be temporary; the restrictions are meant to be lifted once the virus is “defeated”. But what if it isn’t? Here in Canada, governments at all levels have moved the goalposts throughout the pandemic and continue to do so. The pandemic has revealed the extent to which government officials cannot be trusted or counted upon to be taken at their word; miraculously, they still are.

Some six months into the vaccine rollout, the latest goalpost seems to be “zero COVID” and a 100% vaccination uptake if we are to return to normality. In theory, at least, this means restrictions in some form might last forever, if only (or primarily) for the unvaccinated — which makes it even worse since this amounts to medical apartheid. In any case, a society whose citizens are obligated to present proof of vaccination in order to enter a bar or an office cannot be seriously considered a free society. Increasingly, the idea that the vaccines would restore our liberties — the original sales pitch — is looking like a bad joke. Yet such is the extent of the corruption of our collective will that much of the public is not only happy to accept the “new normal”; it demands its continuation.

Consider that the state of emergency declared in Nazi Germany in 1933 did not end until 1945, and it allowed Hitler to foist his agenda on the nation while it lasted. This is, of course, meant to be an example and not a comparison, for such comparisons have only limited value. So haunted is the civilized world by the ghosts of the 20th century that it can hardly conceive of any harbingers of dictatorship other than mustached demagogues hurtling invective in beerhalls. Consequently, we may have become too complacent to identify a credible danger to our liberties when one emerges. Scouring the horizon for vituperative orators, we forget that oppression has to fit the era in which it operates. Herzen reminds us that history has no libretto; it “rarely repeats itself, using every random opportunity to knock on a thousand gates . . . ”.

Herzen fiercely opposes the idea that one should suffer now for some grand future purpose. Soviet revolutionaries professed to admire Herzen (Lenin referred to him as one of the greatest thinkers of his time, and in the former USSR streets were named after Herzen), but the recipient of their encomia would not have admired the revolutionaries. Though a staunch opponent of tsarist Russia and its gross injustices, Herzen condemns utopias that offer distant dreams at the price of near sacrifices. People live for the present and not for some inchoate future, however glorious. “Life always pours itself into the present moment and gives people the ability to enjoy themselves as much as possible; it guarantees neither existence nor pleasure, and provides no assurances that either one will continue”.

Herzen would have balked at the idea that Bolshevik violence was a proper justification for a radiant future, for paradise here on earth. Nor would he have accepted the notion that defending the right to enjoy one’s freedom today is selfish, if only because egoism, in Herzen’s view, is as much an integral part of the human condition as is selflessness. The two complement each other. The endless appeals of moralists to a sense of duty and to the need to make sacrifices are nothing more than recyclable Christian pieties, as silly as they are harmful. “People are egoists because they are individuals . . . Destroy a man’s selflessness, and you’ll end up with a raging orangutan; destroy his egoism, and you’ll end up with a tame monkey”.

In the last year, we have become quite used to exhortations to be selfless. We may not have turned into raging orangutans, but have some of us not become a bit like Herzen’s tame monkeys? Should caring about others entail turning into a docile creature that requires two masks and aisle arrows to navigate a grocery store?

The Bolshevik movement that so admired Herzen, conveniently overlooking some of his key beliefs, was chiliastic in nature. Though a secular ideology, Bolshevism had a millenarian view of history: the war of the classes was to culminate in a huge conflagration, and the righteous would then inherit the ensuing paradise. Other ideologies have also shown millenarian reflexes, and the influence of religion on the development of secular ideologies has been much commented upon. People and societies seem to be unable to do without faith; in a secular society that rejects religion as its foundation, the need to believe will simply manifest itself elsewhere.

Now that the great ideologies of the 20th century are moribund, it is possible that science may have become the new religion. Ironically, much of what currently takes place in the name of following the science appears to have distinctly religious features. The language itself is quite revealing. There is something absurd about the notion of “following the science”. One follows Moses on the way out of Egypt, or Christ and the apostles. Science is about looking at facts, testing hypotheses, and reaching conclusions based on the findings that are obtained. The case for following science begins to make sense precisely when people start to treat science as a religion.

The language leads to everything else: the health authorities delivering their oracular pronouncements in front of cameras, threatening the non-compliant with fire and brimstone; the faithful worshippers who, not content with wearing their masks outside, also pose with them on social networks, as if to broadcast their unwavering allegiance to the new faith; the ritualistic sanitizing of hands and everything else that can be safely disinfected; the somewhat cultic banging of pots and pans on balconies to celebrate health workers (the new saints and martyrs); the peccatogenic explanations of the origins of the virus and the stentorian calls to revisit our relationship with nature; the endless reminders to “stay safe” used in parting; the vaccine stickers and badges that represent full conversion to the faith — it is hard not to see religious overtones in people’s pandemic habits.

As with religions historically, those who refuse to comply with the dogma are shamed and chastised; and if there are no current plans to burn at the stake those who refuse to get vaccinated, heretics are threatened with second-class status that will effectively ban them from full participation in society. If this new system of belief contradicts UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (Article 6), so much the worse for UNESCO and its declaration. In the new religion, vaccinations represent salvation; those who don’t want to be saved deserve damnation.

Tellingly, the major religions — institutions that ought to have remained the last bastion of some healthy sense of fatalism — seem to have embraced the religion of science. The Dalai Lama has got himself vaccinated and encouraged others to follow suit. The Vatican initially said all of its employees would need to get the jab if they were to keep their jobs, though there has been some softening of the stance in the face of criticism. The Russian Orthodox Church has threatened its faithful with lifelong atonement for the sin of vaccine hesitancy. A sixty-something churchgoer I spoke with recently told me he’d stopped attending Sunday service, having been made to feel unwelcome for showing up without a mask. Religions now defer to the religion of science.

Herzen understands this phenomenon all too well. “Having disposed of positive religion”, he writes, “we have preserved our religious habits; having disposed of the heavenly paradise, we still believe in the advent of an earthly one and boast of it”. He could have been writing about our own times. Herzen insists that only a complete overhaul of our society, root and branch, can stamp out these deleterious vestiges — but few are prepared to step towards that abyss.

Short of a complete overhaul, what is to be done? Herzen valued freedom above all else and chafed in the straitjacket of the societies in which he was destined to live. But, as he makes clear in his essays, freedom should be first found inside before it is sought externally. Inner freedom endows individuals with power; this power will then draw others into its orbit. And if it doesn’t? That’s no great tragedy, either — for the individual and for those not drawn into the orbit. Ultimately, “we live for ourselves and not to entertain others”. Assertions to the contrary are mere human vanity.

Using the decay of ancient Rome as an example, Herzen mentions that the wisest Romans — disillusioned with the present, deprived of the past, and unwilling to accept the future — simply scattered around the Mediterranean and disappeared into the mists of history. They were lost to humanity, but they were not lost to themselves — and Herzen believes that made them the real winners in the end. Though a “negative action”, withdrawal is a legitimate solution. “Perhaps this negative action will be the beginning of a new life,” Herzen writes. “In any case, it will be a virtuous action”. Don’t take this as a call to resignation. We must stand up for our rights and freedoms, always, and fight to the bitter end. Should we fail, though, some philosophical detachment might be in order. Herzen’s book will help us cultivate it.