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§ 1 Politics and the Essence of Liberty
What is the essence of liberty?
Answers to this question are likely to centre around the idea of rights that human beings should be able to exercise. Positions will vary as to which rights are important for freedom, and disputes may soon revolve around concepts such as
- negative liberty—based on rights to be free from obstacles to do as one sees fit—or
- positive liberty—based on entitlements to be free to attain human desiderata such as education.
Consider an example. If you enjoy negative liberty so that you are free to act as you see fit and, hence, you have the right, say, to attend school, you may still not enjoy positive freedom, if you are lacking the means and opportunities to attend school.
Those in favour of negative liberty will try to convince you that in a system consistently dedicated to negative liberty people will find creative ways to cover their needs efficiently and fairly; they may point to successful attempts by the poor in Africa to institute effective schools for their children—projects which by themselves are highly educating, teaching people to get things done for themselves when corrupt government fails to attend to its duties.
Defenders of positive freedom may argue that a far greater number of poor children can be given education far more quickly under a regime of positive freedom, where government uses public resources to build schools and make them accessible to the poor lacking funds to provide education for their offspring.
Defenders of positive freedom may argue that a far greater number of poor children can be given education far more quickly under a regime of positive freedom, where government uses public resources to build schools and make them accessible to the poor lacking funds to provide education for their offspring.
Debates along these lines may actually be rather fruitful in that both sides see the positions that they focus on put to the test by alternative ideas and findings, yielding a more complete picture of the strengths and shortcomings of private and public education.
Now let us return to the initial question:
What is the essence of liberty?
I find it useful to answer the question by referring to the way in which politics is done in a free society. Indeed, in a certain sense, the essence of freedom is politics.
For freedom happens when politics is practised in a certain way.
My thesis is easier to understand when we look at the way politics used to be conducted before the age of freedom. Simply speaking, politics used to be the prerogative of a small, powerful elite. Ordinary people had no say in many important matters that affected their personal lives and the community as a whole. And even the powers-that-be were considerably constrained in making an impact on the community and the lives of the people living in it—partly because tradition and religion tied their hands, and partly because they lacked the technological and economic means to influence society.
My thesis is easier to understand when we look at the way politics used to be conducted before the age of freedom. Simply speaking, politics used to be the prerogative of a small, powerful elite. Ordinary people had no say in many important matters that affected their personal lives and the community as a whole. And even the powers-that-be were considerably constrained in making an impact on the community and the lives of the people living in it—partly because tradition and religion tied their hands, and partly because they lacked the technological and economic means to influence society.
This changes fundamentally under freedom. Roughly speaking, society in all its aspects becomes amenable to suggestions from the public. Not all ideas may be good, feasible or accepted, but everyone is part of the game of trying to define society—and politics is the game of trying to define society.
The whole discussion about rights and (negative and positive) freedom, presupposes that we play politics in a certain way—that we follow the political way of freedom, which stands out in history for the fact that it involves larger and larger segments of society as admissible competitors for the definitions of values, norms, laws etc that shape society.
§ 2 Freedom — More Options for Impacting Society:
Civil Society = Political Society
Civil Society = Political Society
Freedom is a way of doing things that is richer in options for action compared to the possibilities we used to be confined to in more repressive societies.
Freedom is about giving everyone more options for action than before.
By extending the range of options for action for everyone, freedom creates entirely new dimensions of society—she creates a public, she creates political emancipation and democracy, she creates a state that is in communication with the public and under its control. Liberty creates a thoroughly political society, where license to influence your social environment is neither limited to the select few nor to participation in the arena expressly designated as political (parties, campaigning, elections, parties, parliament etc.) alone.
Freedom creates the private person, and the private person has extensive leeway and competences to change society through her initiative, and make contributions outside of the political system to try to define society in new ways. Selling computers affordable to almost everyone is a way of trying to define society in a new way. Importing political emancipation and open debate into the marital conversation is another way of trying to define society in a new way. In short: in a free society, politics is not restricted to the political system and the power exerted by the government.
Politics—the making of an impact on what counts as accepted and doable action in society—becomes privatised along many dimensions, some of which having not existed before. Much of what we do in civil society is an alternative form of politics. By living our lives in civil society we wield significant influence on what is accepted and doable in society — which lends enormous importance to civil society as a counterweight, protagonist, and corrective vis-à-vis politics as we are used to picture it. In fact, it is doubtful that formal politics would remain a stable partner of freedom were it not for the profound weight of civil society as a political force in its own right.
Politics—the making of an impact on what counts as accepted and doable action in society—becomes privatised along many dimensions, some of which having not existed before. Much of what we do in civil society is an alternative form of politics. By living our lives in civil society we wield significant influence on what is accepted and doable in society — which lends enormous importance to civil society as a counterweight, protagonist, and corrective vis-à-vis politics as we are used to picture it. In fact, it is doubtful that formal politics would remain a stable partner of freedom were it not for the profound weight of civil society as a political force in its own right.
Probably the most important implication of the fact that freedom is produced by an open access political process is that she can never correspond to an ideology—a partisan formulation—claiming to represent her. For liberty is an ongoing event, whose indeterminate outcomes are driven by agents of divergent views, outlooks and aims: freedom is a collective product. A superposition of innumerable perspectives and forces, nonetheless liberty can be described in outline, even rather precisely for certain purposes—as a set of interacting principles, interrelated and negotiable rights, and a toolbox of methods—but never as a unique blueprint or in the form of indisputable conclusions existing independent of the discursive process, the tactics and resolutions, and the consequences, intended and unintended, of a characteristically inclusive type of politics.
Continued here.
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