Concepts of Liberty: Reflections on Quentin Skinner’s Genealogy of Liberty

I've been listening to and reading quite a few things by Quentin Skinner on the genealogy of liberty, examining the historical development of the various ways in which the term "liberty" has been used. It's quite fascinating. It is quite interesting how one's political views will change based on how one defines liberty.

So, this got me to thinking, and I started to skim through various political theorists: Aristotle, Rousseau, Rothbard, Hayek, Marx; and I started looking at how they each define "liberty."

Aristotle and Rousseau both had a concept of civil liberty as "absence of domination": to be free is to not have another person in a position with the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with one's actions. Rothbard, however, defines liberty as "absence of interference in one's property rights." Hayek defined it as "absence of coercion." Marx defined liberty in positive terms: one is free to the extent that they have the capacity to act according to their own will. Kropotkin basically had a dialectical approach and synthesized liberty as lack of coercion with liberty as positive capacity to act as one desires.

It turns out that a great deal of what each thinker thinks about everything else really follows from their definition of liberty.

Classical Republican Liberty: á la Aristotle & Rousseau

Aristotle and Rousseau defined liberty as the absence of the capacity of another to arbitrarily interfere in the free exercise of one’s will, such that their interference would force one to act according to another person’s will rather than their own. If you define liberty as the absence of domination, in a civic republican fashion, you end up naturally being for democracy and equality. A person is free as long as no one else is in a position with the capacity to arbitrarily interfere in an arbitrary way due to an asymmetrical power relation. If all "are ruled and rule in turn" and there is not too much inequality in the distribution of wealth and power, then all are free even if society does have the power to restrict their actions through the creation of rules and regulations. Any situation in which one has the capacity to arbitrarily interfere in another’s actions is a situation in which the other is less free, even if one does not choose to so interfere. Thus, if an employer has the capacity to manipulate his employee, so that the employer is forced to act according to the employer’s will, then the employee is less free to the extent that the employer has that capacity, regardless of whether or not the employer chooses to utilize that ability. Thus, a logical implication is that government ought to intervene in order to minimize instances where one person has such a capacity to coercively intervene in the affairs of another. If a monopoly on drinking water were to emerge, their existence would make people less free, so government ought to prevent the emergence of such a monopoly.

Classical Liberal Liberty: á la Hayek

Hayek defined liberty as the absence of arbitrary interference in the free exercise of one’s will. If you define liberty as absence of coercive intervention in one’s own free exercise of their will so as to arbitrarily make one act according to another’s will, then certain situations that naturally arise from free trade are anti-libertarian. Thus, a monopoly refusing to sell at a reasonable price can constitute a violation of consumers’ individual liberty. An employer using the threat of dismissal as leverage to control a worker, when the worker is dependent on the job for survival and there are no other options, is actually a violation of the employee’s liberty. However, if the monopolist’s item is not a product that constitutes a necessity for survival, their refusal to sell at a reasonable price (or refusal to sell at all) does not constitute coercion. And the employer having the capacity to leverage a threat of dismissal in order to coercively control their employee does not restrict the liberty of the employee, so long as the employer does not use that leverage. (Cf. F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, Ch. 9)

An implication of Hayekian liberty would be that a slave is totally free as long as their master does not ever tell them to do anything that they don’t want to do, even though their master does reserve the right to coercively intervene in the free exercise of their will at any time. Furthermore, interference is only defined as coercive if it is arbitrary, so democratic government is not necessarily incompatible with liberty. Thus, Hayek follows Aristotle in holding that liberty is not infringed if there is the rule of law or isonomy, equal of law. (Ibid., Ch. 11) If there are democratically established laws that apply equally to all under the same circumstances/conditions, then the law does not infringe upon individual liberty. As long as no functionary or individual has the power to arbitrarily interfere, freedom is not infringed. This point about the rule of law is a point in which he agrees with Aristotle and Rousseau. However, Hayek differs from both insofar as he advocates laissez-faire or free enterprise. The reason for this is that another person having the capacity to coercively intervene due to monopoly privilege does not violate liberty, so long as they don’t act upon that capacity, which means that government ought not to intervene in the marketplace in order to prevent monopolies from arising. Government ought only to intervene when a monopoly actually does abuse its ability to coerce people.

Anarcho-Capitalist Liberty: á la Rothbard

Murray Rothbard conceived liberty as the lack of arbitrary interference in the actions of others when they are acting upon their own persons and property. If you define liberty as freedom from interference in the exercise of one's absolute dominion over their own property, then democratic government is always illegitimate. Exploitation does not constitute a reduction of liberty. Laws regulating what a person can or cannot do with their own property, beyond one law asserting that they cannot interfere in other people's liberty to do whatever they want with their property, is always an illegitimate violation of liberty. The only legitimate government, then, would have to be grounded in private property. Thus, Rothbard advocated anarcho-capitalism, the abolition of the State by privatizing government. Instead of democratic institutions, he wants private law, private courts, private police, etc. (Cf. Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, Ch. 27 and 28)

Marxian Socialist Liberty: á la Marx

Marx rejected classical liberal and propertarian conceptions of liberty as "bourgeois liberty." Instead of these negative conceptions of liberty as the absence of external interference, Marx defined liberty in positive terms as the capacity to pursue one’s own will or desire. In order to maximize liberty, upon this definition, one needs to be provided with all the things that are necessary for survival. I cannot do what I want until I have first done what I need to do in order to survive. If I want to make a sculpture, I need access to the material and tools to do so. Everyone must be given equal access to the resources that are needed in order for one to act upon their own desires. Marxian liberty, then, cries out for equality of outcome or equality of conditions, rather than mere equality of opportunity.

Communist Anarchist Liberty: á la Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin, however, can be said to have combined the concepts of positive liberty and negative liberty. Liberty, to the anarchists, meant both the lack of arbitrary interference by others in one’s actions and the capacity to pursue one’s own desires. To maximize liberty in this sense, one needs to abolish the State, so that there is no institution with the capacity to arbitrarily interfere in the voluntary actions of individuals but also to abolish private property, money, and markets and replace them with communistic arrangements in order to equalize conditions and ensure that everyone has equal access to those things that are necessary in order for them to pursue their desires.

What do you think?

So, who do you think is right? What does liberty mean to you? What do you think are the pros and cons of these various concepts of liberty?