90. FREEDOM DAY - An Anarchist Account
When UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced that the UK would be lifting all legally enforced rules on the wearing of masks and keeping social distance from July 19th, as an anarchist, I should have been happy. Johnson seemed to be singing right from the anarchist playbook when he proclaimed a “move from a universal government diktat to relying on people’s personal responsibility” in the fight against COVID-19. After all, we anarchists have long known that government isn’t needed to keep society safe, and certainly here in the UK, the Conservative government’s repeatedly ill-conceived approach to pandemic-management has made us suffer time and time again. From one delayed lockdown and its premature easing to the next, Boris Johnson and his Cabinet have got it wrong since the start.
Yet Johnson’s announcement filled me with concern, not celebration. Anarchism is not as simple as ripping away all laws and hierarchies and leaving us to figure things out for ourselves. Yes, we might agree that laws and hierarchies need to be abandoned, but only in tandem with the rise of a civil culture which places our freedoms within the context of our shared and person-affecting existence. To have “personal responsibility” is to make choices which take into account how our actions will affect not only ourselves, but all the other people with whom we share our newly freed societies and spaces. We cannot make such choices without meaningful information that allows us to properly understand our options. Nor can we say such choices are truly our own when other inescapable and competing concerns - such as the need to earn a living - crowd out some options and coerce us towards others.
Given that we do not yet live in an anarchy, and on July 19th we will still be living in the same exploitative capitalist system which limits so many of our options and choices, the end of these particular laws does not mean we are being given radical new freedom by our government. The only thing being given the green light here is capitalism, to resume its exploitation as usual at the continued expense of our wellbeing.
If this was really about “personal responsibility” there would be no propagandist talk of “Freedom Day” and “big bang” re-openings which emphasise all the commercial options which will once again be available to us and say little about social connection. (For instance: on July 19th many children will be returning home full-time for the six week school summer holiday and yet the Prime Minister has chosen this as the date to tell parents or carers that they should no longer be working from home). There would instead be a surfeit of relevant information on which to make meaningful decisions. The science on why wearing a mask is effective against transmission of the virus and counter-narratives to the weak but pervasive “but it’s uncomfortable” argument. Shared knowledge about when masks are useful and when they aren’t, connected to similar information about why keeping distance still remains a useful rule of thumb, even for those fully vaccinated. The vaccines, after all, are not a cure. They might minimize the impact of an infection and keep us out of hospital, but another piece of important information necessary for making an informed choice would be the fact that so little remains known about the long-term impact of COVID-19, especially "long covid" on the body. After all, people dying in hospital, unable to breathe, is only one facet of this virus’s virtuoso toolkit. The range of long-term physical and neurological symptoms it seems to be causing appears to be growing all the time and so much still remains unknown. Not to mention the mutations which, as we are seeing with the Delta variant, may be able to get past some of the vaccine’s defences.
Were this the narrative when Johnson speaks of reopening, then the move from “government diktat” to “personal responsibility” would truly chime with the socially connected anarchism I know and love. We would no longer be being told we must follow the rules because they are rules, but being asked to make informed and autonomous choices based on what we think will keep our communities and ourselves safe. A mask on our face out of choice, not coercion, despite its unpleasantness, because we agree in many circumstances it would be the right thing to do. Anarchists wear masks despite the personal discomfort to keep others safe. We do this because their health is just as important as ours and if they did the same, we would be kept safe too. We keep physical distance for the same reason, all the while recognising that social distance doesn’t have to mean distancing ourselves from all that is social. That it is, in fact, through choosing to put in place these minor mitigating actions against transmission of the virus that we don’t have to stay locked down in our isolated homes and away from each other through coercive lockdowns. By ensuring that in all public spaces even the most vulnerable will be protected from unnecessary risk, we all get protected in solidarity and can carry on with our interacting and interdependent lives as safely as possible. Not because we’ve been told to wear a mask and keep our distance, but because we understand the good medical reasons for doing so until we have this virus under control and have therefore chosen some minor individual discomfort for a desired collective good.
But Johnson’s notion of “personal responsibility” - as with most historic conservative uses of the concept - is one focused only on making the rich richer and freeing privileged people from any liability for potentially harmful actions. By removing requirements for social distancing, businesses can return to full capacity, regardless of any potential damage this may do to healthcare services, workers, or their customers, and freed from any obligation to invest in expensive or profit-limiting protective measures. The end of track-and-trace means businesses no longer have to care if their desire to turn a profit ends up being responsible for your ill-health. If you caught the virus on their property, due to their lack of mitigations, it was your “personal choice” to go inside, even if, in fact, you had no choice.
Anarchists don’t endorse freedom merely for freedom’s sake, or freedom as the sole good above all others. Anarchists centre their freedom around related ideas of non-domination, social solidarity and commitment to a wide range of collective goods. No anarchist wants to live in a world of “government diktat” and legalistic coercion, but that doesn’t mean that in its absence they must automatically reject the ends to which they were previously being coerced. Currently, for instance, there are laws and government diktats coercing us into not murdering, raping and stealing from each other. Take away the laws and I still don’t want to murder, rape or steal. If “Freedom Day” was to be a day which ended all coercive laws, not merely those relating to COVID-19, you could either turn it into The Purge by accentuating all the things you can now “get away with”, or you could remind us that while the coercion will be ending, the reasons for the original laws remain unchanged. A truly anarchist version of The Purge would see the laws get lifted and people continue not harming each other, just as the majority of us didn’t harm us before. Remember, after all, that even with the current diktats, murders, rapes and robberies still take place, just as - since the preventative measures for COVID-19 were first “enforced” - many continued to wear masks uselessly around their chins or push close to vulnerable strangers at the supermarket, despite the ostensible laws against it. It is never, ultimately, the law which keeps us safe - it is our collective decision to follow it, both as individuals and as a community. However, certain social conditions can influence those personal choices in one direction or another. I am far more likely to kill, for example, if we are a society at war. And I am more likely to choose not to wear a mask from July 19th if all I ever hear about is the negatives of wearing one and am seldom told about their positive benefits.
We do not yet live in an anarchy and are not used to what true freedom might look like, intertwined as it must necessarily be with all other equally important interests. While we continue to be governed and live in unequal and deeply coercive economic structures, our learnt dependency on laws enforced from above and frequent state of external domination means access to true “personal responsibility” is often structurally impeded despite our best intentions. Trained to look for guidance instead of trained to guide ourselves, when we look to the “rules” and see only that rules are lacking, we shrug our shoulders and assume that their absence means only permission, not reasoned self-restraint.
On July 19th nothing actually changes.
The Covid 19 virus remains a threat to our communities.
Just as many people remain protected or unprotected from vaccines they have or haven’t received.
The virus continues to transmit in ways which can be mitigated through the simple use of masks, keeping distance and good airflow ventilation through indoor spaces, etc.
We can choose to see "Freedom Day" as a day to ignore the science and knowingly put ourselves and others at increased risk, or we can choose to see "Freedom Day" as a day to continue choosing to do the sensible and independently justified precautions that the law is too afraid to acknowledge remain morally right.
In fact, given that July 19th will give authorities - be they governmental or organisational - the "freedom" to shirk any responsibility for public safety they previously had, it is only through our collective commitment to making the right personal choices in spite of the laws of the land that we can guarantee each other's safety. To continue, where necessary, wearing masks and keeping distance in the offices, shops and buildings that no longer demand we do. To refuse our business to the businesses which are reckless with our wellbeing.
It never was and never will be the law which keeps us safe. It is, was, and always will be us.
Author: DaN McKee
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