liberty and revolutionary violence

“We must remember that liberty becomes a false ensign – a “solemn complement” of violence – as soon as it becomes only an idea and we begin to defend liberty instead of free men. It is then claimed that humanity is being preserved despite the miseries of politics; in reality, and at this very moment, one is endorsing a limited politics. It is the essence of liberty to exist only in the practice of liberty, in the inevitably imperfect movement which joins us to others, to the things of the world, to our jobs, mixed with the hazards of our situation… An aggressive liberalism exists which is a dogma and already an ideology of war…In contrast, true liberty takes others as they are, tries to understand even those doctrines which are its negation, and never allows itself to judge before understanding” (xxiv)

When I think of the word liberty, after all of our previous conversations in the course, I am not even sure I know what it means anymore (Similar to the way we’ve seen the word “truth” or “justice” go from something we feel was concrete in our minds, to something completely arbitrary) Here, liberty is defined as having a “false” and a “true” meaning. While Merleau-Ponty claims the false conception of liberty comes from liberalism, I am not sure if the “true” definition of liberty is given to us strictly from his own perspective, or if he is assigns it as inherent to something else. I am not convinced by this “true liberty” he describes. It seems to abstract and somewhat idealist or utopian. Nevertheless, I feel it is an interesting passage to look at.

“For it is certain that neither Bukharin nor Trotsky nor Stalin regarded Terror as intrinsically valuable. Each one imagined he was using it to realize a genuinely human history which had not yet started but which provides the justification for revolutionary  violence. In other words, as Marxists, all three confess that there is a meaning to such violence – that it is possible to understand it, to read into it a rational development and to draw from it a humane future” (97).

I chose to highlight this quote because it seems as though Merleau-Ponty is justifying revolutionary violence as a means to “draw from it a humane future.” I struggled with this throughout the book because I don’t know exactly what he means by revolutionary violence, and I don’t see why anyone would justify the use of temporary violence as a way to bring about change.