FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY: WHY SYRIA IS NOT FREE.
We have witnessed scores of celebrations in the streets of Syria's major cities, and across social media in the aftermath of the collapse of Syria's state. Such scenes are reminiscent of the original 'Arab spring' in 2011.
People have evidently since not learned the lessons of why liberalism is fundamentally incapable of achieving freedom for a people.
Of course, in the aftermath of the collapse of a state there is a great deal of catharsis, joy and reprieve that is felt.
States are definitely imperfect and full of flaws. When they collapse, all of the injustices, flaws, and imperfections of a state immediately feel like they have disappeared.
And they have in a sense: The key word is immediately. The pressure and fear felt by a state authority disappears. It's defects all suddenly disappear. All of its injustices appear to have been avenged immediately.
That is because what is still taken for granted are the necessities provided by the state - security, stability, and most importantly, centralized authority capable of operating at the scale of an entire country.
In the short and immediate term, these do not disappear right away. People acquire the illusion that only all the bad has disappeared - it takes a few weeks for them to realize that the good has been thrown out too.
In the case of today's Syria, this is days. Not days after this 'revolution,' Israel has invaded and destroyed all of Syria's military infrastructure.
Arab Spring style 'revolutions' feel very nice in the short term. The whole country can even feel united to an extent, as a modern state principally unites a country by, at minimum, inflicting upon it the trauma of indiscriminately enforcing universal submission to its authority. But the number one problem with the liberal comprehension of what a state is, is that it is personalized. Everyone blames Bashar for every grievance. Everyone wants to give the state a face, and treat it like the slights committed against them individually are personal.
The brutal truth is that the state is not personal. It is an organ whose subject is an impersonal and collective reality that encompasses a scale that is simply beyond the comprehension of ordinary individual experience. It is no different than a force of nature.
States appear brutal and inhuman because they do not react to individuals, but masses. At the scale of tens of millions, encompassing geographies and territories that are too big for one person to possibly experience.
Think about how cold and inhuman surgeons can often appear. They cannot be emotional and personal when operating on someone - they are dealing with the impersonal reality of physiology, that is blind to our personal sentiments and subjectivities.
And none the less we need our organs to survive and be personal in the first place.
The same is true for states - a central authority that is blind to the individual, capable of enforcing the unity of a territory and its economic intercourse (via taxation, public works, etc.), capable of defending the people from foreign armies with a standing army, is a precondition for the possibility of a peoples free development.
Modern states are necessary for a given population to resist colonial slavery, debt and pauperization on a mass scale by unifying a country’s productive forces and supply chains.
Building modern infrastructure, investing domestically in industry, and ensuring access to electricity, water, and internet even for remote villages is only possible with a modern central authority. The brutality of modern states like Syria's appear senselessly cruel. But such a cruel authority is what it takes to unite a people beyond tribal, sectarian, and ethnic differences.
To govern at the helm of a modern state is to occupy a very wide and long term perspective. This appears inhumane to people who cannot see beyond the scale of their personal and individual experiences.
2March 27, 2025 536 7
