Freedom in Tension: Between Anarchic Ideal and Fascistic Reality

The American anarchist and political economist Benjamin Tucker once called himself an adherent of “unterrified Jeffersonianism.” That phrase, half tongue-in-cheek and half serious, captures the contradiction at the heart of freedom: it is at once an ideal of perfection and a struggle against imperfection.

We cannot conceive of freedom without imagining some sense of completeness, a guiding image of what it might look like in its purest form. Yet freedom itself is not absolute, not a finished whole. If it were, we would all be born perfectly free and remain so, with no need for declarations of human rights or constant battles against oppression. The very fact that we argue about rights and fight for them shows that freedom is fragile, relative, and contested.

Freedom Under Constraint

Freedom exists both as an abstract idea and as a lived condition. It is always shaped by its opposition. In authoritarian societies, for example, the ability to act freely is smothered under the threat of punishment, imprisonment, or death. People are not only stripped of their own liberty but often forced into roles where they must help oppress others in order to survive. That is what makes authoritarianism uniquely corrosive: it demands obedience at a personal cost, while ensuring resistance comes at an even higher one.

Ironically, resisting authoritarianism can itself mimic the logic of authority. When things get rough enough, you must adhere to rebellion or pay a certain (or, in some cases, uncertain) price. It's not that every one of history's rebels truly wanted to live that role. Often, they had to, or possibly lose everything.

The problem is: Gandhi’s hunger strikes worked in part because they unfolded in a society where people still cared about human suffering, and because the strikes could not be fully silenced. In a regime willing to bury dissent entirely, even peaceful defiance risks becoming invisible.

This tension shows why it is misleading to say something like, “freedom is complete in itself, and nothing can detract from its essence.” In fact, freedom reveals itself most vividly when contrasted with its negations — when history forces us to see what life is like without it. That's why, unfortunately, sometimes things need to get worse before they can get better.

Still, the longer we wait to remove current impediments to freedom, they harder they usually are to get rid of.

Old Anarchists, New Problems

Thinkers like Mikhail Bakunin were wrestling with these dilemmas 150 years ago. Writing in a world defined by war, concentrated government power, and entrenched property systems, he argued for a society without authority, one that could escape such rigid hierarchies. That struggle, in different forms, continues today.

Even in the so-called “information age,” the questions remain familiar. Technology has not dissolved the state or ended the fight over liberty — it has simply shifted the battlefield. Micah Altman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and scientist at MIT Libraries, echoed the late historian Melvin Kranzberg’s maxim that “technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” As Altman put it:

“In the last 50 years, the internet has been transformative and disruptive. In the next 50, information, communication and AI technology show every sign of being even more so. Whether historians of the future judge this to be good or bad will depend on whether we can make the societal choice to embed democratic values and human rights into the design and implementation of these systems.”

In other words, technology can liberate or dominate, depending on the values we embed within it.

A Transition, Not an Endpoint

Despite centuries of critique, the modern state is far from dead. If anything, global systems of governance, economics, and surveillance are more entrenched than ever. Yet that does not mean history is static. We are living through a transition, one where political institutions, cultural norms, and definitions of freedom are all under revision.

But talk of anarchism or libertarianism, when reduced to conferences or posturing, risks becoming a sideshow. If self-styled radicals do nothing to create alternatives — real, lived models of freedom from the ground up —then their claims ring hollow. They look less like revolutionaries and more like false advertisers, no different from a bad online date: the profile pic promised something bold, but reality showed nothing new.

The Unfinished Work of Freedom

Freedom is not perfect, final, or absolute. It is defined in part by what constrains it, and it must constantly be rebuilt in response to new threats. The old questions about power, authority, and oppression remain, but the tools and terrain keep changing. Whether under monarchs, industrial barons, or algorithms, freedom is never secure — it must be fought for, reimagined, and, most of all, lived.