Literature in search of liberty by mario lvargas losa

By MARIO VAR­GAS LLOSA, WSJ

What is lost on col­lec­tivists is the prime impor­tance of indi­vid­ual free­dom for soci­eties to flour­ish and economies to thrive.

The bless­ings of free­dom and the per­ils of its oppo­site can be seen the world over. It is why I have so pas­sion­ate­ly adhered to advanc­ing the idea of indi­vid­ual free­dom in my work.

Hav­ing aban­doned the Marx­ist myths that took in so many of my gen­er­a­tion, I soon came to gen­uine­ly believe that I had found a truth that had to be shared in the best way I knew—through the art of let­ters. Crit­ics on the left and right have often praised my nov­els only to dis­tance them­selves from the ideas I've expressed. I do not believe my work can be sep­a­rat­ed from its ideals.

It is the func­tion of the nov­el­ist to tell time­less and uni­ver­sal truths through the device of a fash­ioned nar­ra­tive. A story's sig­nif­i­cance as a piece of art can­not be divorced from its mes­sage, any more than a soci­ety's prospects for free­dom and pros­per­i­ty can be divorced from its under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples. The writer and the man are one and the same, as are the cul­ture and its com­mon beliefs. In my writ­ing and in my life I have pur­sued a vision not only to inspire my read­ers but also to share my dream of what we can aspire to build here in our world.

Those who love lib­er­ty are often ridiculed for their ide­al­ism. And at times we can feel alone, as there appear to be very few ded­i­cat­ed to the ideals of true "liberalism."

In the Unit­ed States, the term "lib­er­al" has come to be asso­ci­at­ed with left­ism, social­ism, and an ambi­tious role for gov­ern­ment in the econ­o­my. Many who describe their pol­i­tics as "lib­er­al" emphat­i­cal­ly favor mea­sures which desire to push aside free enter­prise. Some who call them­selves lib­er­al show even greater hos­til­i­ty toward busi­ness, loud­ly protest­ing the very idea of eco­nom­ic free­dom and pro­mot­ing a vision of soci­ety not so dif­fer­ent from the failed utopi­an exper­i­ments of his­to­ry's social­ist and fas­cist regimes.

In Latin Amer­i­ca and Spain, where the word "lib­er­al" orig­i­nat­ed to mean an advo­cate of lib­er­ty, the left now uses the label as an invec­tive. It car­ries con­no­ta­tions of "con­ser­v­a­tive" or reac­tionary pol­i­tics, and espe­cial­ly a fail­ure to care for the world's poor. I have been maligned in this way.

Iron­i­cal­ly enough, part of the con­fu­sion can be pinned on some who cham­pi­on the mar­ket econ­o­my in the name of old lib­er­al­ism. They have at times done even more dam­age to free­dom than the Marx­ists and other social­ists.

There are those who in the name of the free mar­ket have sup­port­ed Latin Amer­i­can dic­ta­tor­ships whose iron hand of repres­sion was said to be nec­es­sary to allow busi­ness to func­tion, betray­ing the very prin­ci­ples of human rights that free economies rest upon. Then there are those who have cold­ly reduced all ques­tions of human­i­ty to a mat­ter of eco­nom­ics and see the mar­ket as a panacea. In doing so they ignore the role of ideas and cul­ture, the true foun­da­tion of civ­i­liza­tion. With­out cus­toms and shared beliefs to breathe life into democ­ra­cy and the mar­ket, we are reduced to the Dar­win­ian strug­gle of atom­istic and self­ish actors that many on the left right­ful­ly see as inhu­man.

What is lost on the col­lec­tivists, on the other hand, is the prime impor­tance of indi­vid­ual free­dom for soci­eties to flour­ish and economies to thrive. This is the core insight of true lib­er­al­ism: All indi­vid­ual free­doms are part of an insep­a­ra­ble whole. Polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lib­er­ties can­not be bifur­cat­ed. Mankind has inher­it­ed this wis­dom from mil­len­nia of expe­ri­ence, and our under­stand­ing has been enriched fur­ther by the great lib­er­al thinkers, some of my favorites being Isa­iah Berlin, Karl Pop­per, F.A. Hayek and Lud­wig von Mises. They have described the path out of dark­ness and toward a brighter future of free­dom and uni­ver­sal appre­ci­a­tion for the val­ues of human dig­ni­ty.

When the lib­er­al truth is for­got­ten, we see the hor­rors of nation­al­ist dic­ta­tor­ship, fas­cism, com­mu­nism, cult fanati­cism, ter­ror­ism and the many sav­ageries that have defined all too much in the mod­ern era. The prob­lem is less pro­nounced in the Unit­ed States, but here there still remain prob­lems result­ing from the aban­don­ment of these key prin­ci­ples.

Many cling to hopes that the econ­o­my can be cen­tral­ly planned. Edu­ca­tion, health care, hous­ing, money and bank­ing, crime con­trol, trans­porta­tion, ener­gy and far more fol­low the failed command-and-control model that has been repeat­ed­ly dis­cred­it­ed. Some look to nation­al­ist and sta­tist solu­tions to trade imbal­ances and migra­tion prob­lems, instead of toward greater free­dom.

Yet there is rea­son for hope here and else­where. The Amer­i­can sys­tem still allows for open dis­sent, the hall­mark of a free soci­ety, and in a healthy fash­ion both left and right prac­tice this cher­ished free­dom. Through­out the world, anti-Americanism and ant­i­cap­i­tal­ism are in decline. In Latin Amer­i­ca, out­side of Venezuela and Cuba, dic­ta­tor­ship of the old social­ist and fas­cist vari­eties is dead, with mar­ket reforms sweep­ing even nom­i­nal­ly left­ist regimes.

The search for lib­er­ty is sim­ply part of the greater search for a world where respect for the rule of law and human rights is uni­ver­sal—a world free of dic­ta­tors, ter­ror­ists, war­mon­gers and fanat­ics, where men and women of all nation­al­i­ties, races, tra­di­tions and creeds can coex­ist in the cul­ture of free­dom, where bor­ders give way to bridges that peo­ple cross to reach their goals lim­it­ed only by free will and respect for one anoth­er's rights. It is a search to which I've ded­i­cat­ed my writ­ing, and so many have taken notice. But is it not a search to which we should all devote our very lives? The answer is clear when we see what is at stake.

Mr. Var­gas Llosa, the 2010 Nobel lau­re­ate in lit­er­a­ture, will receive the Alex­is de Toc­queville Award on Nov. 15 from the Inde­pen­dent Insti­tute at its 25th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. He wrote this essay for the occa­sion.