Freedom as Insight into Necessity
1. Above the Clouds
“Above the clouds, freedom must be limitless –
All fears, all worries remain hidden below.”
Reinhard Mey sang this in 1974. In 1977, during the Landshut hijacking by the RAF, the song was banned. When Mey sang it in 1989 at the Palace of the Republic, it marked the end of East Germany. But if we follow the singer, it seems:
Freedom knows no borders.
It’s clear that not everyone experiences freedom above the clouds. Anyone who has ever sat in a Ryanair plane knows that the cramped space can be suffocating.
Obviously, freedom above the clouds is for the few. For pilots, for instance—hence why Hans Albers and later the band Extrabreit sang in their song “Fliegerlied”:
“Pilot, greet the sun for me!
From the North Pole to the South Pole is but a stone’s throw.
We fly the route in any weather.
We do not wait; we start!“
Today’s “pilots” are people like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel. They are deeply convinced that, due to their wealth and supposed genius, they are entitled to limitless freedom. This has given rise to an entire political movement.
Libertarians want to be unbound by the limits of physics, the finitude of life, or laws.
This libertarian freedom is exclusive. It’s about their freedom to do whatever they want—unrestrained by rights, laws, or majorities.
This is why Thiel and Musk invested significant money to help Donald Trump become U.S. President. They have also influenced the choice of J.D. Vance as vice president. Above all, they have clear political goals.
Musk and Thiel are not only against the separation of powers and the rule of law—they despise the market economy and competition. Their aim, as they have openly stated, is to establish monopolies along with monopoly profits.
For Musk, deregulation is empowerment—allowing him, as a government delegate, to crush competitors and weaken troublesome environmental and consumer standards.
This politics aims to break the system.
Whether in Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, the EU, North or South America—people live in a relatively successful societal model: democratic capitalism. It’s the combination of a market economy and democracy that promises both individual freedom and prosperity.
This model has long faced a systemic rival: the authoritarian state capitalism of Chinese provenance. But now, a new systemic rival is emerging from democratic capitalism.
The libertarian model opposes democratic capitalism with a private monopolistic capitalism. In it, monopolists hold the state to enforce their interests.
That’s why Peter Thiel no longer believes that “freedom and democracy are compatible.” He wants democracy sacrificed for his boundless freedom.
Libertarian freedom presupposes the lack of freedom for many.
I would counter this unbounded libertarian notion of freedom with Friedrich Engels and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In Anti-Dühring, Engels quotes Hegel:
For Hegel, “freedom is the insight into necessity.”
We want to explore the understanding of limits in three ways today:
- Praise of borders
- The limits of limits
- And: Why borders are not politics
2. Praise of Borders
Before we consider physical limits, we should take a look at man-made, political, state borders.
Borders can make sense. Borders can secure peace.
That’s how it seemed to seven Warsaw Pact states, fifteen NATO states, and thirteen neutral states in 1975. They committed themselves to mutual renunciation of force, declared the inviolability of borders, and adopted the Helsinki Final Act. This was the basis for the European peace order.
The CSCE Final Act of Helsinki laid the foundation for forty years without war between states in Europe.
It was a novelty in European history—so many years without war between states had not been experienced on the continent for a long time.
The peace order established in Europe in 1975 by Gerald Ford, Leonid Brezhnev, Helmut Schmidt, and Erich Honecker has been destroyed. By Vladimir Putin.
What the Soviet Union agreed to uphold its status quo, Putin’s Russia has shattered.
Russia’s imperial annexations in Georgia, in Ukraine, the attack to overthrow the government in Kyiv—all of this is an expression of revisionist policy.
If the people of Europe want to live in peace and security, borders must once again be respected and defended.
The law of the strongest must not determine the order of the continent.
Helmut Kohl once crossed a border—the one to France. There, he tore down a barrier post. He did this alongside young French men and women. Together they fought for a united Europe without borders.
Kohl’s peaceful transgression of borders was the answer to the violent border transgressions that Germany inflicted upon its neighbors in two world wars.
Recognizing borders is a prerequisite for overcoming them peacefully.
The peaceful overcoming of borders can create lasting peace. That is the legacy of great Europeans like Robert Schuman and also Helmut Kohl.
3. The Limits of Borders
This legacy is at risk of being forgotten. Whether in the U.S., in Europe, or even in Switzerland—the narrative that we could solve the crises and tribulations of the world at our national borders is gaining popularity everywhere. We simply need to raise borders higher, increase control, and deport more—and then “it will finally be the way it never was before” (Joachim Meyerhoff).
This reveals a misunderstanding of borders. Borders are not one-sided. They close off and open in both directions—leaving aside inglorious exceptions like the Berlin Wall (no one can leave) or the wall through El Paso (no one can enter).
We, as holders of a Swiss or EU passport, are accustomed to being able to travel almost anywhere. U.S. citizens in Brazil are now experiencing what happens when countries in the Global South reciprocate the immigration policies of those in the Global North.
In a multipolar world, countries like India, South Africa, or Brazil will not permanently tolerate double standards.
Nonetheless, the idea of using national borders to limit migration remains popular. This narrative is shared by conservative democrats, right-wing populists, and open fascists alike.
- Wilders and Merz want to send migrants back to their neighbors—whether Germans, Austrians, Poles, or Swiss.
- Trump wants not only to make the fence to Mexico even more impassable but also to deport millions of people working illegally in the country.
- The AfD wants to deport millions of Germans with “calculated cruelty” (Björn Höcke).
- The SVP wants to pass a quota for immigrants in Switzerland.
With all due respect to borders, here borders reach their limits.
The first question to ask is: Is limiting migration through borders a wise idea?
Let’s look at Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. There, a third of the population recently voted for an openly far-right party, the fascist AfD. They did so not out of protest, but out of conviction, as election research tells us. At least this third demands strict immigration limits.
But where do they live? They live in areas that are not marked by immigration, but rather by emigration. Areas with declining social infrastructure.
There is no competition for cheap housing between locals and refugees here, but rather tens of thousands of vacant apartments. The few buses often don’t run because there aren’t enough bus drivers. There’s a lack not only of doctors but also especially of nursing staff for an ever-aging population.
Germany’s labor shortage will worsen—not only in structurally weak regions. The Federal Employment Agency estimates that the labor demand must be met by immigration of 400,000 people annually.
But it’s not only Germany that depends on migration. There are also German emigrants. The most popular destination for German migrants is Switzerland, where over 300,000 Germans live.
They don’t stand out at first glance—until they try to buy raclette cheese at Migros, revealing that the country doctor of Luthern is an anesthetist from Berlin, the manager of an insurance company comes from Bremen, and the business consultant hails from Göttingen. They speak written German. Even less recognizable are their children, who passed the raclette purchase test with flying colors, having gone to school here.
These 300,000 Germans came to Switzerland because there was and still is an urgent need for them here. This need will grow. Aging societies need migration to sustain their prosperity.
Those who want to stop migration at the border will limit prosperity.
The second question is: Can national borders limit migration?
The answer is no.
The migration that I turn back at my border doesn’t disappear. It ends up somewhere else, with our neighbors, in poorer countries. Closed borders do not reduce migration—they shift it. The reason for this is grim.
Globally, the causes of displacement are increasing.
These causes cannot be addressed with national policies. Of course, Spain alone did not heat the Mediterranean to the point that it led to the catastrophic heavy rainfall with over 200 dead in Valencia. It was global fossil growth.
The climate crisis is one of the major drivers of displacement and migration. When people can no longer live in their homeland, they start moving. Neither the Mediterranean nor the tides of the English Channel will stop them. The World Bank estimates there could be 150 million climate refugees by 2050.