I have an analogy in an assignment which compares pool balls to citizens of a nation and they share similarities such as they both require freedom and independence. I need help thinking of ways in which citizens and pool balls are different, related to freedom and independence.

 

We are faced with two relatively different issues: on the one hand, with an indispensable condition, which is called "civil independence", without which someone cannot be considered a citizen properly: that one's own subsistence does not depend on the arbitrary will of another individual. On the other hand, we find that the way to fulfill this condition proposed by the Enlightenment tradition refers to the property -in fact- private.

What do we defend? That the "civil independence" of all citizens (in the sense in which we have just defined it: that the subsistence of no one can depend on the arbitrary will of another) is an inalienable condition of any political project that we can defend (or, if you prefer, a demand of reason, although with this expression we may be pressing on the wrong spring and generating more confusion).

What do we not defend? We do not defend that the private property in which authors like Locke and Kant think is neither the only way to fulfill that condition nor the most reasonable way to do it (given, in effect, a highly socialized productive system that it would be absurd to renounce). For example, a system of Basic Income or Minimum Citizenship Income (provided it is ambitious enough) could perfectly well meet this republican demand in a way that is really more in keeping with the times. Undoubtedly, it would be foolish to propose as a political alternative a system of independent producers that would demand the destruction of the socialization of labor already achieved by capital (as John Brown seems to impute to us by comparing us this time not with Locke and Kant but with Pol Pot and Unabomber; what we do not know is whether we can extract transitive properties from this double comparison). Indeed, with the degree of socialization of production achieved, the goal of civil independence could be achieved, for example, by the establishment of protected cooperatives or even by the stateization of the means of production (in a very classical sense) as long as it is accompanied by a demanding "law of public service" that makes workers not "subjects" or "employees" but rather something of the "civil servant" type (i.e., individuals who, without being owners, are civilly independent insofar as they own the function they perform).

In any case, what is important here is to note the difference between the demand to which the enlightened concept of "civil independence" points (a demand that we certainly defend without restrictions) and the way in which it is met as proposed by the great liberal authors (that is, through private property).

What else do we defend? That (along with civil independence) freedom and equality are also indispensable conditions of any political project that we can defend. In this case, yes, we understand by civil liberty exactly the same as Kant: "no one can force me to be happy in his own way (as he imagines the welfare of other men), but it is licit for each one to seek his happiness by the path that seems best to him, as long as it does not cause damage to the freedom of others to pursue a similar end" (Theory and practice). This freedom of each one should not find more obstacle than the right of others to claim for themselves the same freedom. Therefore, the only mission of the law should be, in principle, to seek mechanisms with which to ensure that the freedom of each can coexist with that of any other, bearing in mind that this is a right that belongs to all. Obviously, the demand for equality refers to the refusal of laws to introduce hereditary prerogatives or privileges of any kind in the exercise of these rights.

Step-by-step explanation

The citizens of a country are like the atoms that form a solid, and the atoms are like identical billiard balls. So the country is like a pool table, and its citizens are like pool balls. The laws of the country are the bumpers that limit the movement of the citizens, and the playing surface is the shared territory they occupy. If the balls cannot roll with the same freedom and independence on the table, the game will not be fair.

We admit that freedom, equality and civil independence are, in effect, a mere ideological fiction under capitalist conditions. We admit that they are, in fact, the main alibi by which the system represents itself. However, that cannot make us renounce these concepts as a condition of any political project we may defend. Because capitalism resorts to "Freedom" to liberalize the labor market or trade in services, can we set ourselves a political objective for a project that does not incorporate the unconditional demand for freedom (in the sense in which we have defined it)? Perhaps because capitalism manages to impose the most obscene privileges without dispensing with the concept of "Equality", we can renounce this principle as a regulatory idea of the political order we defend? Perhaps because capitalism is based on the most absolute eradication of any possibility of civil independence, we should defend a system in which the subsistence of some citizens could depend on the arbitrary will of another individual? Doesn't this seem a little absurd? Won't we need these concepts even to condemn capitalism?