Liberté, égalité, fraternité: Haiti needs to live up to its motto

The world needs a motto like Haiti’s

Haiti is so different, and its differences mark out its failures. Even its coat of arms isn’t proper heraldry. But what it gains in its armorial singularity it loses in its quest for a motto, for it possesses two, both of which it shares with other countries.

Haiti’s heraldic motto is, coincidentally or otherwise, the same as Belgium’s: L’union fait la force. This is met with pride and, sometimes, derision in Belgium. Our king is one of the few institutions that in fact does unify our country—King Philippe does so in an exemplary manner—which is otherwise splintered into three regions, three communities, ten provinces, three languages. Haiti, it must be said, is splintered into far more than even that. It is easy to be cynical about mottos, about how they were contrived and what they’re supposed to portend. I do sometimes wonder in what measure l’union fait la force can be equated to Auschwitz’s Arbeit macht frei: le travail fait la liberté. It’s undeniably true, if macabre.

Haiti has another, general motto, which is the same, this time, as France’s: liberté, égalité, fraternité. Haiti is a former French colony and the only colony in the world ever to have won its freedom by way of a successful slave rebellion. It rose up in 1791 and was crowned with its freedom in the January of 1804. That was, however, by no means the end to Haiti’s problems at the hands of neo-imperialists, whether French (again), American (who else?) or, indeed, its very own ….

The motto is of debated origin in France, but one convincing source is Maximilien Robespierre’s seminal work Organisation of the National Guard. Robespierre’s document was fundamental to the French revolution and even inspired the Chartist movement in England, although Robespierre would later fall victim to the Terror he helped spawn, going to meet with Madame Guillotine in 1794.

It’s strange that Haiti, the erstwhile Saint-Domingue, adopted a motto that was being vaunted by its colonial masters: clearly Haiti saw Robespierre as more of a symbol for its own cause, which culminated in 1804, than for that of France, which had executed the pauvre mec ten years previously.

Every tourist to France knows this falling cadence: liberté, égalité, fraternité. It’s on France’s postage stamps, government headed notepaper, coat of arms, police uniforms and lots more besides. But, beyond a rallying call to muster at the barricades, what do the words actually mean?

Image: Eugène Delacroix’s emblematic painting of Liberté guidant le peuple, celebrating the French revolution of 1830. In his popular history book 1,000 Years of Annoying the French, Stephen Clarke identifies France as a somewhat broken LP, turning at a speed of one revolution per century.

These three elements: freedom, equality and brotherhood are the fundamentals to where democracy lies. When Robespierre set the terms down in print, he did more than name three elements that are nice-to-haves in a nouveau régime; they are essential, and, what’s more, they only work as a trio. If one removes freedom, then equality and brotherhood will erode each other, as men seek to regain their lost liberty by compromising that of their brothers.¹ If one removes equality, then one instead institutes inequality, and no brothers who felt themselves unequal ever lived in harmony. If one removes brotherhood, one ends up with Plato.

The Greek philosopher Plato scorned democracy as unworkable. For a Greek, that’s quite surprising. The American president John Adams sympathised with Plato: he asserted that all democracies eventually commit suicide.² Adams was wrong: they don’t get a chance to commit suicide, they are stillborn. That is, they are stillborn unless all three of the requisite elements are present, which they never are.

The problem identified by Plato was that, in its functioning (as opposed to its constitution), a democracy relies on two things: all men are equal under the law; and all men enjoy freedom within the bounds set by the law. The equality imperative implies that no one may be above the law and that no law may set any one man above any other man under its terms. For the rest, the freedom imperative implies that all must be free to act within the bounds that are set down by the law, by lawmakers who are subject to the same law, to the same extent as all others. Plato’s problem with this was that it is in the very nature of man to arrange matters in terms of unequal laws, whereby hierarchies, castes, classes, strata, aristocracies, privileges and preferences are created, and preserved by self-perpetuating mechanisms that are conventionally deemed to constitute systems of unequalled, albeit spurious, fairness but which thus entrench, not equality but inequality, which ultimately destroys democracy. It is the speed at which such things happen that renders democracy’s death tantamount to stillbirth.

It is when democracy is patent in its lack of equality and freedom that life gets breathed into totalitarianism. Even though it is clear that autocracy limits freedoms, it at least does so for everyone. And, in that sense, a system that achieves one of the criteria for democracy is deemed preferable to one that achieves neither of them. Adams manifests despondency about the destiny of democracy. He is defeatist: what he instead should have done is breathe inspiration into addressing the root cause of democracy’s failures. He’s right to say democracy is doomed if it comprises but the first two elements: liberté, égalité. What we must do is incorporate the third, not just as a slogan but as an act of faith: fraternité.

This is what (with respect) Plato missed, and Robespierre (with a tad more respect) didn’t. And the Haitian philosophers may not have missed it either, but the Haitian body politic, like all the rest, did miss it, and has missed it for the intervening 220 years: brotherhood. Not brotherhood in some anodyne sense of a sports club or a band of actors, or even in the sense of a group of self-help Black gays.³ What brotherhood implies is tantamount to the fundamental love as ye would be loved message of Christ Himself: what, in the 17th century, Europe had come to know as enlightenment.

I touched upon this in a previous article, and cite the relevant passage in the indented portion below. You can skip it if you’ve read it already:

War-torn Ukraine has introduced a law to guarantee the rights of LGBT people. Bravo. And it has proclaimed a determination to stamp out in the greatest measure possible the corruption that has plagued the nation for 30 years (and more, truth be told). Why should anyone believe their sincerity on either score? Do you?

I do. And for no better reason than that, together, they stand to reason. First, I cannot look into the future and foretell the lot of gays, lesbians and others who fall under the LGBT umbrella in Ukraine, or their prospects of a free existence in a tolerant society. Nor can I assure anyone, least of all myself, that the days of corruption in Ukraine are counted and Ukraine is destined to shoot miraculously up the transparency index. But, of one thing I am certain: that the one will not happen independently of the other. Either they will both fail; or they will both be crowned with success.

I am as convinced of this as I am that the decriminalisation of homosexuality across the African continent will inevitably and consequentially go hand in hand with a reduction in that continent’s sleazy involvement in acts of corruption and bribery. Because its relinquishment of a lever of control will indicate its readiness to stand or fall by its own efforts, to operate not just systems of justice but a society imbued with a sense of justice. It may even see the union of Senegal and The Gambia in a spirit of corruptionless, cohesive cooperation, who knows? And that will send a magnificent message to the world: that global development assistance is destined for safe, competent hands, in which it will be put to work for the benefit of those for which aid is intended: the peoples of these nations, be they heterosexual, homosexual or whatever.

The gay sideshow is being played out now before America’s eyes and, if the pressure promised by anti-money-laundering legislation (AML) comes actually to be felt in the pockets of those who evade it, we can be sure that human rights issues and anti-gay sentiment will burgeon in other nations too. The conjurors who have duped their law enforcement agencies with mountebank gestures for so long will, when the audience sees the switch, themselves switch to a new distraction.

One is sadly tempted to conclude that gay rights cannot exist in a world that forbids money-laundering. And that pulling the plug on money-laundering will see gay rights gurgle down the plug hole along with it. And that honesty and liberty are incompatible. And that retaining human rights is the trade-off for dishonesty. But there is a state in which both honesty and liberty can co-exist: a state we call enlightenment.

Plato invented the idea of democracy and condemned it in the same breath. Because democracy is equality under the law and freedom for all within the law’s constraints; and the freedom we enjoy under democracy allows our elites to favour some above others under the law, so that equality is nibbled at as freedom flourishes. We reach a point where the cards get stacked so much against us that we are cheated blind before our very eyes, as we celebrate the crumbs of freedom that are bestowed upon us. If we turn tail and attack those who abuse freedom to enrich themselves, they will sure as anything turn tail and attack the freedoms we have enjoyed in counterbalance of their lucrative dishonesty. Unless they are enlightened.

The matter of the impingement of human rights (and the right to be homosexual is a human right) is something that has many effects but its prime effect is that of an exercise of control. However, the exercise of that control has a secondary function, and that is to detract attention from other matters of a more material nature. The conclusion has to be that, where human rights are impinged on, those who do the impinging either wish to subject the victims to their control for material gain (slavery is the extreme example of this) or, where no direct material gain is to be had, in order to detract attention from something else that is worthy of censure. When Ukraine seeks to relieve the LGBT community in that country from the pressures otherwise resting on it and also avows its will to reduce corruption there, that speaks to a sentiment of enlightenment, because it voluntarily opts to dispense with a means by which it might otherwise be able to detract from a practice that is reprehensible and, without such a distraction, its policy of stamping out corruption can be taken as sincere.

But, in Africa, where the detraction is given such emphasis, one is left wondering what it is that is then being detracted from. The same applies in American politics at this time. In other parts, human rights may be being compromised for control purposes. Or being left alone because the facility with which nefarious practices can be developed is not subject to constraint.

A question remains, therefore, for those places where AML is ineffective, and therefore human rights remain untouched, as to what developments in relation to human rights can be expected should the effectiveness of AML be beefed up to stem the flow of illicit funds into legitimate channels. Is there a correlation? Well, let’s beef up AML’s effectiveness, and we may yet find out.

Only when AML is truly effective and human rights remain untrammelled by oppression can we say that enlightenment has taken root.

To sum up: without enlightenment, Plato and, in short, Adams as well, are right. Democracy is ultimately unworkable. Equality and freedom will always contrive to militate against each other. Partly for this reason, it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that the French took up their national motto! Maybe it was then that they needed its propaganda value, having long since lost sight of its philosophical cogency and its practical imperative.

If brotherhood is added in, then equality and freedom start to take on a far more compatible form. In French, enlightenment translates as lumières, which, unlike its English equivalent, doesn’t immediately communicate, at least in motto form (lights), what the English would convey (enlightenment). Hence, brotherhood can validly stand in for enlightenment: both terms equally convey the sense of Christ’s message from God, love as ye would be loved, albeit in a secular fashion, more in tune with revolutionary France.⁴ That said, it is a recasting of the sentiment that can easily be distorted (an allusion to Shakespeare’s band of brothers in Henry V, perchance).

Nonetheless, if one reflects on brotherhood as not being some collaboration in unity against a common enemy (in Henry V’s sense) but as a collaboration for the mutual benefit of the collaborators inter se,⁵ one arrives at a realisation that self-service, rather than communal service, will always ultimately destroy the very thing that freedom and equality are striving to achieve; that democracy can only work effectively with a healthy dose of enlightenment in the mix; and that a highly self-critical view of what is and is not done in the general interest of all sisters and brothers is required in order to ensure the peace, stability and harmony for all that only all three together can in fact achieve.

What poor, beleaguered Haiti has lacked—big time—for 220 years is precisely enlightenment—from without⁶ as well as from within.⁷ Having won its freedom from France, it squandered any equality that might have then still been within its reach, by failing to realise what was there to be seen in its own motto, right before its eyes, the whole time: brotherhood. If Haitians—indeed, if any people—can regain their brotherhood, their enlightenment, they will gain their equality and their freedom, for all their people, as assuredly as night follows day, as freedom follows slavery, and, but for which, as slavery, eventually, follows freedom.

1. In view of the use of the word brotherhood, the discussion is restricted to the masculine gender.

2. I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never. (John Adams: The Letters of John and Abigail Adams.)

3. I may yet correct myself: yes, in fact it is brotherhood in these anodyne senses. Not in terms of men banding together to view others as an enemy and engage battle with them, but in terms of men engaging on a field of play with a clearly understandable set of game rules, to which they endeavour, for the sake of the game, to adhere, and with an impartial judge, and with equanimous support from the sidelines, egging on the best plays, rather than the favoured players. That kind of brotherhood. That kind of enlightenment.

4. The French revolutionaries were keen to distance themselves from all notion of God, which was recast as the Supreme Being. An allusion to any form of love would likely have been seen as anathema, especially if drawn from a background of Christianity, as well as being bogged down with romantic overtones. Brotherhood fits the bill of enlightenment without risking a venture into the world of optical physics, and fits the bill of love without directly or indirectly alluding to Christ or the bedroom.

5. First Epistle of John, 4:21: And this commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. See also footnote 3.

6. E.g.: the 150 million franc debt (later abated to 95 million francs) demanded by France for recognition of Haiti’s independence (redeemed only in 1947); the US occupation 1915-1934 at the behest of Citibank; UN peacekeepers from Nepal who introduced cholera to the country in 2010.

7. E.g. the Haitian invasion of Santo Domingo (the Dominican Republic), 1822-1844. Haiti held its first free, fair elections no less than 186 years after winning its freedom from the French Empire.