Thoughtful Socio-Economics — Why Freedom Modelled on Economics Does Not Work

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The most fundamental error concerning the nature of liberty is also the one most commonly espoused. It is based on an assumption that is usually disguised and hard to pinpoint. The assumption is that liberty is an alternative to politics. The human world is supposed to be capable of being governed by an optimal set of rules entailing benign consequences and giving rise to a comprehensively advantageous social order. As long as we adhere to these rules we can — in fact, we ought to — do without politics and simply follow our personal desires and strategies.

Here is what is wrong with this view:

(1) No order among human beings can be derived theoretically or practically from a finite number of rules. Also, no such rules exist whose observance gives rise to a comprehensively advantageous order. Disagreement among humans is not due to mere caprice but inevitable and a source of great productivity if handled well. Exposed to unequal circumstances, people develop different interests.

Many of the spontaneous practices and rules resorted to in society are being pursued precisely in order to compensate for the lack of a complete set of rules capable of bringing about a comprehensively advantageous order. Politics is another word for these compensating practices and rules. More accurately, politics is the business of finding and establishing such compensating  practices and rules as well as ensuring that they are socially accepted and enforced — with enforcement being in important institutional and technical ways a category dependent on but distinct from politics.

(2)  Freedom is a state in the development of human society where participation in politics is fully democratised. Every mature person is in principle entitled to impact the competition for compensating practices and rules, i.e. take part in politics. 

Allowing every person to partake in politics is tantamount to admitting virtually every topic to political contestation — there may be culturally enforced taboos or prudentially preferred taboos (such as not to discuss in the parliament different views on religion or sexual games played with your spouse), but in principle no topic is precluded from becoming politically debated. Lifting knowledge from the social ocean is absolutely essential if freedom is to fulfil her task, which is to discover human concerns and ambitions and the chances of coordinating them peacefully and productively.

(3) Both basic principles such as those enshrined in a constitution as well as less general principles, say, as applicable to a trade or a specialised institution, are open to (re)interpretation, considering the large number of circumstances and applications to which they may turn out to be exposed to either by human imagination or during the course of social interaction and experimentation. In short: there does not exist a formula by which to restrict or preordain the number and kind of implications that a practice or a rule may give rise to. Thus the meaning, utility, and social recognition of such rules and practices is indeterminate and hence frequently, naturally, and often usefully subject to revision and contestation.

A set of rules capable of replacing politics is an impossibility. Rules are found, established, assessed, accepted, rejected and revised by political process. This is no less true for detailed and prosaic rules (on refrigeration of vegetables) as for rules of a more solemn air (the right of free speech).

(4) The point of a free society is to make politics more widely available, that is to say: turn it into a means for all citizens, to be applied to all concerns arising in a democratic community - democratic meaning: paying attention to the interests of any member of the demos who cares to make her concern known to the public.

In the first two chapters on "Attempts at Liberty", I emphasise the political nature of freedom.

In the first chapter on "The State", I discuss structures of maximal power.  Establishing minimal levels of freedom from violence and distrust, structures of maximal power are the outcome toward which any human community gravitates so as to be enduringly viable.  

"Politics", which is the subject of the second chapter, refines the structures of maximal power, honing and differentiating their purposes, functions, their styles (dictatorial, democratic etc) and extensions (such as the welfare state). 

The third chapter is going to deal with economics, which can be only appreciated adequately if seen as thoroughly embedded in and permeated by politics.

Neither freedom nor a free economy are alternatives to politics; instead, both are derivations of politics.

An economy is free to the extent that it reflects the political nature and, the empowerment to act politically, the political possibilities, and the permanent presence of political interference in society. In order to fully understand economics in a free society, it is necessary to grasp the primacy of structures of maximal power and their development, refinement, and application by means of political participation. Note, however, it is not formal politics alone that matters. By acting in the context of a civil society almost everyone is constantly taking part in politics. Civil society is a platform of open negotiations accessible to everyone.

First and foremost, freedom is about the quality of politics, not its undesirability or substitutability by more palatable phenomena of social interactions (such as commercial transactions).

   

See also Liberty for Contrarians.