Precis Writing on Perfect Freedom



Make a precis of each of the following passages. The precis should be as far as possible in your own words. Suggest a suitable title also for your precis.

What is a perfectly free person ? Evidently a person who can do what he like, when he like and where he like, or do nothing at all if he prefers it. Well, there is no such person, and there never can be any such person. Whether we like it or not we must all sleep for one-third of our lifetime; wash and dress and undress; we must spend a couple of hours eating and drinking; we must spend nearly as much time in getting about from place to place. For half the day we are slaves to necessities which we cannot shirk, whether we are monarchs with a thousand servants or humble labourers with no servants. And the wives must undertake the additional heavy slavery of child-bearing if the world is still to be full of people.
These natural jobs cannot be shirked. But they involve other jobs which can. As we must eat we must first provide food; as we must sleep, we must have beds and beddings in houses with fireplaces and cool; as we must walk through the streets, we must have clothes to cover ourselves. Now, food, houses and clothes can be produced by human labour. But when they are produced they can be stolen. If you like honey you can let bees produce it by their labour, and then steal it from them. What you can do to a bee you can also do to a man or a woman or a child if you can get the upper hand of them by force or fraud or trickery of any sort, or even by teaching them that it is their religious duty to sacrifice their freedom for yours.
So, beware if you allow any person, or class of persons, to get the upper hand of you, they will shift all that part of their slavery to Nature that can be shifted on to your shoulders; and you will find yourself working from eight to fourteen hours a day when, if you had only yourself and your family to provided for, you could do it quite comfortably in half the time or less. The object of all honest governments should be to prevent your being imposed on in this way. But the object of most governments is exactly the opposite. They enforce your slavery and call it freedom. But they also regulate your slavery, keeping the greed of your master within certain bounds. They promise that in future you shall govern the country for yourself. They redeem this promise by giving you a vote, and having a general election every five years or so.
At the election, two of their rich friends ask for your vote : and you are free to choose which of them you will vote for to spite the other....a choice which leaves you no freer than you were before, as it does not reduce your hours of labour by a single minute. But the newspapers assure you that your vote has decided the election, and that this constitutes you a free citizen in a democratic country. The amazing thing about it is that you are foolish enough to believe them.

Perfect Freedom

Perfect Freedom is an illusory thing. None can be perfectly free. Neither the Kings nor the labourers are perfectly free. They also have to obey the natural calls of sleeping, eating, clothing, drinking etc. For fulfilling these calls, we need food, beddings, which is produced by human labour, but which can be stolen also, just as man steals honey from bee hives. In the same way, man exploits other weak people through force or fraud. Strong are the slaves of nature. They in turn, enslave the weak by forcing them to work from eight to fourteen hours a day. This exploitation should have been stopped by the governments, but instead of stopping this, they perpetuate slavery in the name of freedom.

By extending a right to vote, they hoodwink the people with the idea of self governance by choosing their rulers themselves. But the choice is limited because the poor have to choose one rich man everytime who does not bother to give any relief to the poor. The newspapers also make the people feel that they have chosen their leaders and they are befooled to believe that they are the free citizens of a democratic country.