THE LOVE OF POWER AND THE LOVE OF LIBERTY ARE IN ETERNAL ANTAGONISM.

The greatest 20th-century Spanish author Gabriel Garcia Marquez explores the conflict between power and liberty in his novels. Through his trademark style of ‘Magical Realism,’ Marquez delineates the concept of ‘Solitude of power’ in his celebrated novel. ‘The Autumn of the Patriarch’ tells the story of a powerful dictator in a village in Bolivia who ends up chaining himself by the use of excess power.

Several other works pose questions about the eternal antagonism between the love for power and the love for liberty. Both these desires run against each other in several forms. For example, in George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm,’ the passion for liberty in animals drives them to overthrow the seat of power of the owner of the farm. A strange sequence of events renders them powerful but ultimately lacking any liberty.

Power may be defined as ‘control over resources or ideology’. “You either tell them what to do or tell them what to think” is a classic excerpt from the Orwellian dystopian novel ‘1984’. This notion of power is in direct contrast to liberty.

The Stalinist regime in USSR derived its strength from Lenin’s principles of communism along with the hopes and desires of the proletariat that had brought over the Russian Revolution in 1917. However, Joseph Stalin’s ‘love for power’ reached a stage where the liberties of the subjects of the state were exceedingly curbed. Thus the love for power and liberty were natural rivals.

The above case is at the level of the state. We must also consider the ‘eternal antagonism’ on the levels of the individual and the society subsequently. The individual’s yearning for power may occur as a desire for respect and authority in the family or friend circle. This however may cause him to behave in a certain way. This desire for power would drive his mannerisms, thus restricting his innate or natural perspective and ultimately restricting his liberty of thought and action.

At the level of society, a community may conceive its position in the social matrix in a certain way. The typical example of the caste system the varna ashrama dharma in the context of Indian society exhibits a constant battle between the powerful Brahman and the powerless Shudra. These ‘dharma’ roles have translated into social stereotypes that thrive even today. These erode the liberty of the ‘have nots’ as opposed to the power and privilege of the ‘haves’ thus perpetrating the ‘eternal antagonism’.

Beyond the levels of individual society and the state, the conflict between the love of power and the love of liberty is prevalent at the level of humanity. As John Locke, one of the greatest thinkers of the age of enlightenment remarks a persistent battle between inalienable rights and their suppression by totalitarian forces within or outside is the story of humanity.

Similarly, the theory of ‘class conflict’ by Karl Marx is built on the foundations of the antagonism between power and liberty. The renowned paper ‘on liberty’ by Johan Stuart Mill puts forward the potential of power to do ‘maximum good’ to ‘maximum people’ thus propagating the ‘utilitarian’ definition of power.

The utilitarian notion that stems from Jeremy Bentham and occupies a respectable position in the colonial ideology that aided the British in ruling the Indian subcontinent, is refuted by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji focuses on the primacy of the soul and the continuous fight between power and liberty within itself. He emphasizes the value of truth that would help in resolving the fight. The power of truth, he remarks, is what liberates the soul.

Gandhi’s perspective is amongst the first to collaborate power with liberty. This collaboration power with liberty. This collaboration is consolidated further by the constitution of India. The preamble categorically mentions the promotion of ‘liberty’ along with equality justice and fraternity. It also mentions the source of the power of the document which is ‘We, the people’. Therefore, it marries the power of the people by ensuring their liberty.

The political notion of power has pervaded the human imagination since the liberty of the citizen came to be at stake during the French Revolution. This revolution has been the fountainhead of ideas all across the world. However, even this event failed to resolve the crisis between power and liberty. As we notice, the love for the power of France’s Napoleon was overarching and oppressing the love for the liberty of the French post-1794 after the Jacobins tried to do the same.

We have come a long way since the 1789’s revolution. So much so that we realize that power is not always ‘politically’ rivaled by liberty. Swami Vivekanand gave a call to delve into social service as each individual was powerful enough to liberate his suffering as well as the suffering of society. Acharya Vinoba Bhave of Sarvodaye Samaj too believed in a similar concept of power. According to him, power did not lie in the potential to do good but in the intention to do good.

The great debate of the post-enlightenment world is the debate between the opposing ideologies of ‘Capitalism and Socialism’. These ideologies differ massively when we look at their orientations while the former is ‘power oriented’ the latter is ‘liberty oriented’ but with limitations. Liberalism and Conservatism are also oriented differently to power and liberty, however the former is a clear supporter of liberty in the antagonism it faces internally from the corridors of power.

Despite the acknowledgment of the eternal antagonism between the love of power and the love of liberty, we must realize that their relationship is also complementary. Power checks liberty and liberty checks power. A concept that is the basis of the separation of power between the Judiciary, Executive, and Legislative all three have power and liberties that are in turn checked by each other’s jurisdiction.

The power-liberty relationship is supplementary as well. Consider GWF Hegel’s theory of ‘dialectics’ a balance between thesis and its antithesis is not antagonistic but supplementary to establish balance in the system of synthesis. Therefore, according to Hegel, power and liberty form a synthesis.

We must also consider the view of Kautilya here as it is imperative to see the eternal antagonism of power and liberty in the context of Ancient India which was marked by a monarchial mindset. The ‘Arthashastra’, in one of its volumes, puts down the timetable/routine of a king that he must follow daily. A simple look at this brings us to notice how even after having exponential power the king’s liberty is bound by the virtue of serving his subjects.

Another interesting observation in the context of power and liberty is the Suffragette movement. This movement was aimed at gaining women the right to vote. In other words, the ‘liberty’ to exercise their vote would add ‘power’ to their political rights.

Hence, we have seen how liberty begets power and how in some cases power results in increased liberty. However, the eventual assimilation is something that is intangible and might be exceedingly abstract from the materialistic approach of looking at it. This brings us to two antagonistic views that demarcated the world war era as a direct challenge between ‘power’s love’ and ‘liberty’s love’.

Adolf Hitler in ‘Meim Kampf’ writes about how power needs to be taken away from a certain section of people and given to the ‘higher’ race that deserves it. This idea stemmed from ‘eugenics’ - a philosophy completely rejected by Roosevelt, his American counterpart. The Allied powers and Axis powers both hinged on acquiring ‘power’ - whatever the means but this withered the liberty of their populations through war practices such as compulsory recruitment, increased industrial output, and mandatory national duty rendering. Thus, they imposed shackles on their liberty to acquire power - an illustration of eternal antagonism.

Liberty and power, as we have seen, are in confrontation with each other since time immemorial. However, this ‘constant duel’ must continue as it is a source of an abstract discourse that can lead to enlightenment by knowing more about human virtues. The Upanishads also state that the knowledge of the self (atma) is the knowledge of the universe (Brahman).