In his last political treatise, Eliphas Levi Zahed, better known as just Eliphas Levi, he wrote in an unpublished essay on the French national motto: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity! Three words which seem to shine are in fact full of shadow! Three truths, which, incoming together, form a triple lie! For they destroy one another. Liberty necessarily manifests inequality, and equality is a leveling process which does not permit liberty, because the heads that rise higher than others must always be forced down to the mean. The attempt to establish equality and liberty together produce an interminable struggle . . . that makes fraternity among men impossible.” (Tract currently owned by Geoffrey Watkins)
Currently, in the United States of America, we have a cultural shift that is attempting to do what the French have tried to do through many years of wavering between socialism and democracy; between the freedoms of the individual vs. the greater good of all its citizens equally. The failed efforts of the French and other socialist – and ultimately communist – countries prove time and again that the socialist system doesn’t work in a world where men and women desire their free will to achieve, accomplish and attain the highest – whether that is material wealth and riches, the highest in their occupations, or the highest in their spiritual and religious endeavors.
Levi was wise to note what all thinking, intelligent people need to understand: that no matter how good something appears on the outside, underneath lies traps that many of the masses cannot realize would be to their detriment if actually implemented. Words hold tremendous meaning, and out of words are created many a system than can hold mankind in the grip of slavery and destitution. That is the shadow that Levi says exist in the French motto; words that sound so wise and so good and so beneficial to mankind but which hide the chains of imprisonment. As Levi points out, these three words “destroy one another.” These three words cannot coexist in their fullness for each contains the seeds destruction of the other.
“Liberty necessarily manifests inequality . . .” How is this so? When men and women have their individual freedoms – indeed if they are free in every sense of the word – they are free to achieve – or not achieve; they are free to become what they will and want to become – or not become. Those who take the freedoms offered by such a nation as the United States of America and use those to educate themselves, innovate, create, achieve their goals, their dreams and their ambitions will naturally become the leaders of business and industry, of education and the sciences, and create the means by which everyone can follow to their own aims and goals.
But the key to freedom – the absolute freedom upon which the United States of America was built – is responsibility. Liberty creates inequality because not everyone is equally responsible for their lives. That is why freedom is not loved and honored by everyone; not everyone wants personal responsibility for their lives. They would rather blame their lack of achievement on someone else; on others in society hold them down or holding them back, and thus they would want those who are blamed to pay for this – to provide for those who are unwilling to take the freedoms they have been given and use them to bring their dreams to fruition or achieve their deepest desires of success.
Obviously, that type of achievement takes work and many find it easier to take from those who have achieved. There is much talk about the great divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in this country; between the richest 2% and the rest – the 98% who supposedly do not have the wealth they believe they deserve. To obtain the wealth they feel they deserve they demand a ‘redistribution’ of the wealth of others (the 2%) to the 98%. Thus, true Liberty by its nature creates inequality.
What people fail to see is that in a country such as the United States of America, everyone has equality where it counts: first, they are free to educate themselves. This doesn’t necessarily mean they must go into debt to get a college education. There are many ways in which people are free to educate themselves. Unlike Communist countries where information is withheld and education is skewed toward only that information the government deems necessary to keep people at the level where they can be easily governed, people in the United States have freedom of information. The Internet is (thus far) free from government interference or censorship, and one is free to get more information on any subject in the universe than one can even consume in a lifetime.
One is also free to work hard at any job one determines is the right job, or to work at a job that pays a living wage until one can achieve the work that they desire with all their hearts to achieve. One is free to learn through apprenticeship programs, internship programs, to find a mentor that can provide instruction on-the-job so that one can pull oneself up by the boot-straps as it were, and become a so-called “self-made man” or woman. But this requires ambition, desire and hard work which many find distasteful.
Socialism, the precursor to Communism, can create equality in terms of material wealth if that is all that is important to people. As the Bolsheviks did in Russia at the turn of the 20th Century, governments can ‘redistribute’ the wealth of individuals who have achieved success, built companies and businesses by taking those private entities and making them government entities. The government can then dictate which jobs a person will hold. Without allowing the freedom of people to choose their vocation or the avocation, the government must fill these jobs to ensure that the jobs critical to the welfare of the masses are filled and performed. That is how someone who is a great pianist is forced to drive a garbage truck; an innovative company creator (such as a Bill Gates) is ousted and put into prison or given a menial job such as sweeping the streets.
When individual freedoms are stripped away from people by those who cry foul over the inequality of rich and poor, the entire nation suffers. When the rich are stripped of their wealth, their businesses, and their ability to create more wealth for their employees, everyone suffers. This ‘Robin Hood Economics’ – robbing from the rich to give to the poor – results in equality, for certain. Everyone becomes equally poor. That is everyone except those in the highest echelons of government, because of course a Communist country must be one in which people are tightly controlled and regulated, which takes someone of a body of government officials at the top to do the controlling and regulating.
Levi says there that “equality is a leveling process which does not permit liberty, because the heads that rise higher than others must always be forced down to the mean.” Socialism and Communism do create equality, but at what price? It forces everyone to be mediocre and allows no one the privilege of personal success that ultimately can result in the betterment of all. Successful people who are allowed the freedom to attain their highest aspirations pave the way for the rest of us to achieve our greatest dreams. What good would it do for me to be a successful writer if there were no one who could read my words and buy my books and essays? What good would it do for someone to be a great artist if there were no one who could buy my works and be a benefactor to my efforts? Would I rather be ‘equal’ or ‘free?’ That is such an easy answer because I feel myself to be both. I am equal with every other human on this plane of consciousness in that I have the opportunity and the ability to make of my life the best I can with what I have been given in mortality and physicality. While I have less than many people, I have much more than others. Would being ‘equal’ with any of these others in terms of my material wealth, talents, knowledge, etc. make me happier than I already am in my current station? No, absolutely not! But does being free to carve my path, create my life, seek out and find my meaning, speak my mind and become all that it is possible for me to become in this lifetime give the greatest joy? Yes, absolutely!
Thus, true Liberty always creates inequality. And many of these Socialist and Communist countries that we have read about in the news during the 20th century and continue to read about in the first decade of the 21st century, have reaped – and are reaping – the disasters that having a nation of equality in material possessions creates. They have learned (like Russia did) and are learning (like Greece and Spain) that when the wealth has been redistributed, or the wealthy have taken their wealth to a foreign country that permits individual freedom, there is no more wealth left to redistribute and those for whom an entitlement government was created (resulting in an entitlement mentality) suffer the most.
When we each have learned this – that to be responsible, to dream great dreams and work hard to achieve them, to love all sentient beings with equal fidelity and compassion – then we have fraternity. For as long as we enjoy liberty wherein we can learn not to desire another’s achievements or the fruits of another’s labor, but strive for our own we will always be most content in our efforts.
Thus we can have Liberty – true individual liberty that requires great responsibility on the part of each and every person in order to have a liberty that is true freedom – or we can have equality in which our freedom to rise to our highest ambitions and achieve our greatest dreams are muted and ultimately crushed all for the sake of a word. But we cannot have both.
# # #
