essay liberty is growth

Essay on Liberty 500+ Words

Liberty, dear young friends, is a precious and fundamental principle that shapes our societies and lives in profound ways. In this essay, we will explore the significance of liberty, understanding why it is a cornerstone of our democratic world.

Liberty, also known as freedom, is a concept that has been cherished by people throughout history. It means having the power to make choices and decisions about our lives without interference or control from others. Let’s delve into why liberty is so essential.

A Foundation of Democracy

Liberty is one of the foundational principles of democracy. In a democratic society, people have the freedom to express their opinions, choose their leaders through elections, and participate in the decision-making process. Without liberty, democracy cannot thrive. According to statistics, countries that respect individual liberties tend to have more stable democracies.

Individual Rights and Liberties

Liberty protects our individual rights. It ensures that we can practice our own religion, speak our minds, and peacefully assemble with others who share our beliefs. These rights are enshrined in documents like the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution and are crucial to our daily lives.

Economic Liberty

Economic liberty allows people to pursue their dreams and build a better future for themselves and their families. In societies that value economic liberty, individuals have the opportunity to start businesses, invest, and create jobs. This leads to economic growth and prosperity for everyone.

Cultural and Artistic Expression

Liberty extends to artistic and cultural expression. Artists, writers, and creators have the freedom to express themselves through their work. This artistic liberty enriches our culture and allows for a diversity of voices and perspectives.

Lessons from History

Throughout history, we can find examples of people fighting for liberty. The American Revolution, led by figures like George Washington, was a struggle for freedom from British rule. Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent movement in India sought liberty from British colonial rule through peaceful means. These historical figures show us the power of liberty as a driving force for change.

Liberty and Equality

Liberty and equality go hand in hand. When people are free to make choices, they have a better chance of achieving equality and social justice. For example, the civil rights movement in the United States fought for the liberty of African Americans to live free from racial discrimination and prejudice.

Expert Opinions

Renowned thinkers and leaders have emphasized the importance of liberty. Nelson Mandela, who fought for freedom and equality in South Africa, once said, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” His words remind us that liberty should benefit all members of society.

The Global Struggle for Liberty

Around the world, people continue to fight for liberty. In countries with oppressive governments, brave individuals risk their lives to advocate for freedom of speech, democracy, and human rights. Their struggles remind us that liberty is not universal and must be protected.

Conclusion of Essay on Liberty

In conclusion, liberty is a powerful and essential principle that underpins our democratic societies. It is the foundation of democracy, protects individual rights, fosters economic prosperity, and allows for artistic expression. Through the lessons of history and the wisdom of experts, we can see how liberty has shaped our world for the better.

As you grow and learn, remember that liberty comes with responsibilities. It is the responsibility of each citizen to use their freedom wisely, respecting the rights and liberties of others. In doing so, we can continue to build a world where liberty is a blessing that all people can enjoy.

Also Check: List of 500+ Topics for Writing Essay

On Liberty: Positive and Negative

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• Don A. Habibi 4  

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 85))

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One century after the publication of On Liberty , Sir Isaiah Berlin delivered his celebrated Inaugural Lecture before the University of Oxford entitled “Two Concepts of Liberty.” 1 Berlin’s lecture is described by Ronald Dworkin as “the most famous modern essay on liberty” and praised by John Gray as developing “an argument of unsurpassed perspicuity.” 2 It is therefore understandable that scholars would consider it alongside the famous nineteenth-century essay On Liberty and apply Berlin’s ideas to those of John Stuart Mill. Unfortunately, imposing Berlin’s two concepts on Mill’s theory has been a source of confusion and has added to the misunderstanding that surrounds Mill. The goal of this chapter will be to clear up this confusion and thereby regain a better understanding of Mill’s theory of liberty.

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Mill’s On Liberty was first published in February, 1859. Berlin’s lecture took place on October 31, 1958, and was published later that year. All page references to Berlin are taken from Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969). In addition to “Two Concepts of Liberty” (pp. 118–172), I will be citing Berlin’s “Introduction” (pp. ix-lxiii), and his essay “John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life” (pp. 173–206).

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Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 267; John Gray “On Negative and Positive Liberty,” Political Studies 28:4 (1980), p. 508, reprinted in Gray’s Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 46. Dworkin also praises Berlin in “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Edna and Avishai Margalit, eds., Isaiah Berl in: A Celebration (London: The Hogarth Press, 1991), esp. p. 100; and, in the opening paragraphs of “Liberty and Pornography,” New York Review of Books ,August 15, 1991, reprinted as “Pornography and Hate,” in Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 214ff. More recently, Lesley A. Jacobs echoes Dworkin’s sentiment when he describes Berlin’s essay as: “The single most important and influential analysis of freedom by a modern political philosopher.” See An Introduction to Modern Political Philosophy: The Democratic Vision of Politics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), pp. 72, 83. William L. McBride describes Berlin’s work as “a most unusually influential essay.” See “’Two Concepts of Liberty’ Thirty Years Later: A Sartre-Inspired Critique,” Social Theory and Practice , 16:3 (Fall, 1990), p. 298. See also Susan Mendus, “Tragedy, Moral Conflict, and Liberalism,” in David Archard, ed., Philosophy and Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 191–92.

Berlin, p. 121.

Ibid., pp. xliii, xlix, 122, 130, 132, 160, 166, (cf. p. 158).

According to J. P. Day, Plato was the creator of the concept of positive liberty. See “Individual Liberty,” in Of Liberty , A. Phillips Griffiths, ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 17. (Cf. Berlin, pp. xl, 129.) On page 18, Day also points out that Jeremy Bentham coined the term ‘negative liberty.’ For this see Bentham’s letter to John Lind (March/April, 1776), in The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham , vol. I, Timothy L. S. Sprigge, ed. (University of London: Athlone Press, 1968), letter #158, p. 310.

This has already been done by others. See for example William A. Parent, “Some Recent Work on the Concept of Liberty,” American Philosophical Quarterly , 11:3 (July, 1974). A good discussion is found in John Christman’s “Liberalism and Individual Positive Freedom,” Ethics , 101:2 (Jan., 1991). See also George G. Brenkert, Political Freedom (London: Routledge, 1991), ch. 1, sect. II.

Berlin, p. lvi.

Ibid., p. 127 (emphasis Berlin’s).

Ibid., pp. 122–23. Beyond negative liberty (and also social and political liberty), it is not clear if inabilities (such as not being able to fly) and unfulfilled wishes (such as not being a movie-star) would count as unfreedoms, since they are not caused by deliberate human interference. If we understand ‘freedom’ to mean the absence of constraint to actual and possible desires, and we understand a ’constraint’ to be whatever prevents satisfaction of an actual or hypothetical desire, then it follows that we are unfree to do what we are unable to do, regardless of the source of our inability. However, if we accept this reasoning, and consider any unfulfilled wish as unfreedom, then we run the risk of making freedom an ’utterly empty and unapproachable ideal.’ For a discussion on this point, see Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), ch. 1, esp. pp. 8–9, 12–14. Feinberg suggests that “We should think of freedom as related to actual and possible wants rather than idle wishes.” (p. 8.)

Ibid., pp. 121–22, 130.

Ibid., p. 144.

Ibid., p. xlvii.

Berlin takes the position that negative liberty is valuable in and of itself, and not just instrumentally as a requisite for positive forms of liberty. But he also points out, in his response to critics, that “The freedom of which I speak is opportunity for action, rather than action itself.” (p. xliii.)

Berlin, p. 131.

Ibid., pp. 122, 130. See also page xlvii.

Ibid., pp. lvii, 132, 144.

Unless otherwise stated, all citations in this paragraph and the following are from Berlin, p. xliv, or p. 132.

Berlin, pp. 132, 150.

Ibid., p. 148. Here, Berlin is commenting on Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Du Contract Social [1762], Bk. I, ch. 7, sect. 54) and other prominent thinkers who claim that paternalism actually liberates us. Martin Hollis makes an interesting point when he likens Mill to Rousseau on this matter. “The final comment on Mill’s expostulation that ‘the principle of freedom cannot require a man that he be free not to be free’ is Rousseau’s that, men, being born free and being everywhere in chains must be forced to be free.” “J. S. Mill’s Political Philosophy of Mind,” Philosophy , XLVII:182 (Oct. 1972). Cf. John Plamenatz, “On le forcera d’Être libre,” Annales de Philosophe Politique , vol. 5 (1965), reprinted in Maurice Cranston and Richard S. Peters, eds., Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 318–332.

Ibid., p. 157. Here, Berlin quotes Immanuel Kant.

Ibid., p. 152.

Ibid., p. 154.

Ibid., p. 131, see also p. 144.

Ibid., p. 141.

Ibid., pp. 141–44.

Berlin connects negative freedoms with liberal political theory. See for example pp. 122–31 (esp. pp. 127–29), pp. 139, 163, 164.

Berlin, p. 134.

For example, Leslie Paul Thiele writes that Berlin thought positive liberty was treacherous. See hinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient , Modern , and Postmodern Political Theory (Chatham, New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1997), p. 176.

Berlin, pp. 127, 128, 139, 155, 160–61, 163, 165. See also “John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life,” p. 197.

Ibid., p. 160.

Ibid., pp. 127–28.

The closest Berlin comes is when he notes that some of Mill’s reasons for desiring liberty have little to do with his conception of freedom as noninterference (p. 160). Still, it does not occur to Berlin that Mill might also advocate positive freedoms. See also the introduction to the Four Essays , where he suggests that Mill saw ‘democratic self-government’ (an aspect of positive liberty) as a means to the attainment of happiness (p. xlvii).

In addition to Berlin, a legion of writers view Mill exclusively or primarily as a proponent of negative liberty. Among them are: Anonymous, “Mill on Liberty” The National Review , v . VIII (April, 1859), p. 407; Matthew Arnold, “A Courteous Explanation” (1866), cited in Douglas Bush, Matthew Arnold: A Survey of His Poetry and Prose (New York: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 150–51; Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill (London: Longmans Green, and Co., 1882), p. 104; Brian Barry, Political Argument (New York: Humanities Press, 1976), p. 42, pp. 141–45; Richard Bellamy, “T. H. Green and the morality of Victorian liberalism,” in Richard Bellamy, ed., Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth-Century Political Thought and Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 135; Fred R. Berger, Happiness , Justice , and Freedom (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 250–51 (cf. p. 229); Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 46–47; Howard Cohen, Equal Rights For Children (Totawa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1980), pp. 63–65; Stefan Collini “Liberalism and the Legacy of Mill,” Historical Journal 20:1 (March, 1977), pp. 237–38; Roger Crisp, Mill on Utilitarianism (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 198–99; Lawrence Crocker, Positive Liberty: An Essay i n Normative Political Philosophy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), pp. 1, 71; J. P. Day (op. cit., endnote 5), pp. 19, 22, 29; Morris Dickstein, “Introduction: Pragmatism Then and Now,” in Morris Dickstein, ed., The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought , Law , and Culture (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 14; Wendy Donner, The Liberal Self John Stuart Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 162; Gerald Dworkin, “Paternalism,” in Morality and the Law , Richard Wasserstrom, ed. (Belmont CA: Wadsworth, 1971), pp. 107–8; William Ebenstein, “John Stuart Mill: Political and Economic Liberty,” in Nomos IV: Liberty, Carl J. Friedrich, ed. (New York: Atherton Press, 1962), p. 94; James S. Fishkin, Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 39–40; F. W. Garforth, Educative Democracy: John Stuart Mill on Education in Society (Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 9, and, John Stuart Mill’s Theory of Education (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979), pp. 89, 165; James W. Garner, “Government and Liberty,” Yale Review XV (Feb., 1907), p. 364; Gerald F. Gaus, The Modern Liberal Theory of Man (London and Canberra: Croom Helm, 1983), pp. 164–65, 196 n. 5; Robert Goehlert, “Individuality and the Active Society: J. S. Mill’s Man as a Progressive Being,” Ph.D. thesis, Indiana University, 1981, pp. 27–29; James Gouinlock, Excellence in Public Discourse: John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Social Intelligence (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986), pp. 47, 51; F. L. van Holthoon, The Road to Utopia (Assen, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum & Company, 1971), p. 24; Richard Holt Hutton, “Mill On Liberty,” The National Review, vol. 8 (1859), p. 407; Lesley A. Jacobs, An Introduction to Modern Political Philosophy: The Democratic Vision of Politics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), pp. 69–75; Stewart Justman, The Hidden Text of Mill’s Liberty (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), pp. 4, 25, 66; Charles E. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 47; H. J. McCloskey, “A Critique of the Ideals of Liberty,” Mind 74:296 (October, 1965), p. 486 (cf. John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study [London: Macmillan, 1971], p. 104); C. B. MacPherson, Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1973), essay V, and, review of On Liberty and Liberalism, Mill Newsletter, XI:1 (Winter, 1976), p. 23; Michael S. McPherson, “Mill’s Moral Theory and the Problem of Preference Change,” Ethics, 92 (January, 1982), p. 267; Robert H. Murray, Studies i n the English Social and Political Thinkers of the Nineteenth Century, v. II (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1929), ch. VII, p. 301; William Allan Parent, “Mill’s Conception of the Summum Bonum,” Ph.D. thesis, Brown University, June, 1970, pp. 390, 401–2; Philip Petit, “Negative Liberty, Liberal and Republican,” European Journal of Philosophy, 1:1 (April, 1993), p. 34; Peter Radcliff, ed., Limits of Liberty: Studies of Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1966), intro., p. 4, Berlin selection, pp. 74–81; Andrew J. Reck, review of Gouinlock’s Excellence in Public Discourse, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 27:1 (Jan. 1989), p. 166; J. C. Rees, Mill and His Early Critics (University College, Leicester, 1956), pp. 14, 39 (Cf. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985], p. 49); Melvin Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and His Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 201; George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 3rd edition, 1961), p. 711 (cf. pp. 708, 715, 729); Vardaman R. Smith, “Friedman, Liberalism and the Meaning of Negative Freedom,” Economics and Philosophy , 14:1 (April, 1998), p. 78; David Spitz, preface to On Liberty (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975), p. x; Leslie Paul Thiele, Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient , Modern , and Postmodern Political Theory (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1997); Anthony Thorlby, “Liberty and Self-Development: Goethe and John Stuart Mill,” Neohelicon , 1:34 (1973), p. 93; David F. B. Tucker, Essay on Liberalism: Looking Left and Right (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), p. 3; W. L. Weinstein, “The Concept of Liberty in Nineteenth Century English Political Thought,” Political Studies , 13:2 (June, 1965), p. 145; Alan R. White, Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 138; Robert Wokler, “Rousseau’s Perfectibilian Libertarianism,” in The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin , Alan Ryan, ed. (Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 237, 245; and, The London Review , v . XIII (October, 1859), p. 274 (unsigned). I should point out that Berger, as well as Ebenstein, Garforth, Goehlert, the posthumous Rees, and Sabine recognize that elements of positive liberty are found in Mill’s writings, and therefore have a more balanced view of Mill’s theory of liberty. The ranks of those with a balanced view on Mill’s theory have grown significantly since I noticed the problem with applying Berlin’s two concepts to Mill. Among those who see both negative and positive liberty in Mill are: Christian Bay, The Structure of Freedom (Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 54; John N. Gray, “On Negative and Positive Liberty,” Political Studies , 28:4 (December, 1980), pp. 519, 523, and Liberalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), ch. 7; Alan S. Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt , John Stuart Mill , and Alexis de Tocqueville (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) ch. 4; Bruce Mazlish, James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1975), pp. 384–85; Maria H. Morales, Perfect Equality: John Stuart Mill on Well-Constituted Communities (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), p. 110; Peter Nicholson, “The reception and early reputation of Mill’s political thought,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 484–88, 495 n. 84 (Nicholson points out that Thomas Green and Bernard Bosanquet construe Mill to be a negative libertarian); Richard Norman, Free and Equal: A Philosophical Examination of Political Values (Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 11, 12, 35; Alan Ryan, Property (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 39, 42; Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein , second edition (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 228; John Skorupski, John Stuart Mill (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 343 (cf. p. 20); and, his “Introduction” to The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 4; Paul Smart, Mill and Marx: Individual liberty and the roads to freedom (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 2, 9799; G. W. Smith, “The Logic of J. S. Mill on Freedom,” Political Studies 28:2 (June, 1980), pp. 244–47; Gail Tulloch, Mill and Sexual Equality (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989), p. 150; and, E. G. West, “Liberty and Education: John Stuart Mill’s Dilemma,” Philosophy 40:152 (April, 1965). See also Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989), pp. 47, 146.

Gerald MacCallum, in a footnote, challenges Berlin for lumping philosophers into positive or negative camps; however, he pays no special attention to Mill. “Negative and Positive Freedom,” Philosophical Review , 76:3 (July, 1967), p. 321. R. J. Halliday criticizes commentators for saying that Mill adopts a negative notion of liberty, but he cites only George H. Sabine’s A History of Political Theory , ch. 32, for evidence. Sabine does not actually say this; he develops his interpretation of Mill along different lines. Halliday goes on to suggest that the positive/negative distinction did not exist during Mill’s lifetime. John Stuart Mill (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 115.

As far as I know, only five writers call Mill a positive libertarian. See Richard Vernon, “John Stuart Mill and Pornography: Beyond the Harm Principle,” Ethics , 106:3 (April, 1996), pp. 623–24; H. S. Jones, “John Stuart Mill as Moralist,” Journal of the History of Ideas , 53:2 (April-June, 1992), p. 299; D. D. Raphael, Justice and Liberty (London: Athlone, 1980), p. 56, and Moral Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 83; Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (New York: Macmillan, 1954), p. 403; and, Bernard Semmel John Stuart Mill and the Pursuit of Virtue (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 14, 166, 170–71, 196–97. While Semmel emphasizes positive liberty, he does recognize the negative dimension to Mill’s theory of liberty.

Berlin, p. 161. See also pp. xlvi, 163, 165, where Berlin places Mill squarely in the liberal tradition.

Mill did approve of authoritarian rule for underdeveloped countries, but only insofar as it promoted individual improvement and social progress. (On Liberty , p. 224.) I shall discuss Mill’s views on dominion and authority in chapters six and seven.

Berlin, p. 202. See below, endnote 40.

For instance, Berlin is mistaken when he writes of Mill that “His father brought him up in the strictest and narrowest atheist dogma.” (p. 203.) James Mill was an ordained Presbyterian minister who later turned to agnosticism. In his Autobiography ,Mill writes of his father: Finding, therefore, no halting place in Deism, he remained in a state of perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to the conviction, that, concerning the origin of things nothing whatever can be known. This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for dogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those, whom the world has considered Atheists, have always done. Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), p. 28 (Collected Works I, p. 41). Others make a similar oversight. See, for example, Geoffrey Scarre Utilitarianism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 83; William Stafford, John Stuart Mill (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 1998), pp. 10, 19 [cf. pp. 26, 45, 64]; and, J. Salwyn Schapiro, “John Stuart Mill, Pioneer of Democratic Liberalism in England,” Journal of the History of Ideas , 4:2 (April, 1943), p. 128. [Cf. James E. Crimmins “Bentham on Religion: Atheism and the Secular Society,” Journal of the History of Ideas , 47:1 (Jan-Mar., 1986), p. 99, n. 21; Crimmins’ Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); and, Crimmins’ “Introduction: Secular Utilitarian Critics of Organized Religion,” in Utilitarians and Religion (Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1998), pp. 263ff.] As far as J. S. Mill’s beliefs are concerned, he denies atheism in his correspondences to Charles Westerton (June 21, 1865), and Frederick Bates (November 9, 1868), Collected Works XVI, pp. 1069, 1483. [Cf. the closing of Mill’s letter to the newspaper Republican (January 3, 1823), p. 26 (Collected Works XXII, p. 9).] Mill’s most substantial work on theology is his Three Essays on Religion (Collected Works X). The interested reader should also see Alan Millar, “Mill on religion,” in John Skorupski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1998); David Berman, A History of Atheism in Brita in: From Hobbes to Russell (London: Croom Helm, 1988), pp. 235–47; Jim Herrick, Against the Faith: Essays on Deists , Skeptics and Atheists (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1985) pp. 170–75; George C. Kerner, Three Philosophical Moralists: Mill , Kant , and Sartre (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Bernard Lightman The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987); and, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872–1914 (Vol. 1) (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), pp. 47–48.

Berlin seems to see Mill through rose-colored glasses. Writing on Mill, he asks: “Can anyone doubt what position he would have taken on the Dreyfus case, or the Boer War, or Fascism, or Communism? Or, for that matter, on Munich, or Suez, or Budapest, or Apartheid, or colonialism, or the Wolfenden report?” (p. 202.) I have many doubts about what position Mill would take on some of these events and institutions. Mill’s record on colonialism is mixed at best. He did criticize the British government’s colonial policies on certain occasions; nevertheless, he was among the chief architects of colonial policy in India for over thirty years. He lived during the heyday of the ‘Empire’ and he thought that colonization could be useful for easing England’s economic and political problems, relieving overpopulation, spreading ’civilization,’ and stimulating progress. His impression of most non-Western peoples was unflattering. It is therefore reasonable to doubt Berlin on what stand Mill would have taken on colonialism, Suez, and the like. Several works bring out this darker side of Mill. See Eileen P. Sullivan, “Liberalism and Imperialism: J. S. Mill’s Defense of the British Empire,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 44:4 (Oct.-Dec., 1983); Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford University Press, 1994); Jeanne Clare Blarney, “Savages and Civilization: References to Non-Western Societies in the Theories of John Locke and John Stuart Mill,” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, June, 1983; E. D. Steele, “J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform, and the Integrity of the Empire, 1865–70,” The Historical Journal ,13:3 (1970), pp. 435–36. Cf. Abram L. Harris, “John Stuart Mill: Servant of the East India Company,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science , 30:2 (May, 1964). I will take up the issue of Mill on colonialism in greater detail in chapter six below. Unfortunately, Berlin is not the only reputed scholar guilty of projecting his political opinions on to Mill. See, e.g., John Gray, Liberalisms (op. cit., endnote 2), pp. 2–3.

In one passage, Berlin writes: “I am not in agreement with those who wish to represent Mill as favoring some kind of hegemony of right-minded intellectuals. I do not see how this can be regarded as Mill’s considered conclusion.” (p. 206n.) Of course, Mill never advocated a dictatorship of the intellectuals, but he endorsed and relied on the ‘instructed classes’ to educate and lead society. To support his view, Berlin points out that Mill warned against Comte’s elitist despotism. It is true that Mill opposed Comte’s plan for the distribution of power, but this was because it involved the wealthiest members of society, was based on governmental coercion and a controlled press, and was ’so liable to perversion.’ Mill’s ideas on elitism and a clerisy differed greatly from Comte’s. See Mill’s August Comte and Positivism , Collected Works X, pp. 302–3, 313–15, 326–27, 352. See also, Mill’s Autobiography , pp. 148–49 ( Collected Works I , p. 219). For a discussion on Mill’s disagreements with Comte’s elitism, see Maurice Cowling, Mill and Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 22–23.

Peter P. Nicholson, The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists: Selected Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 120–26.

Ibid., esp. p. 126. Nicholson makes the point about Green’s sparing use of the term ‘positive liberty’ on p. 121, and he cites Green’s Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract (1881), in Works of Thomas Hill Green , R. L. Nettleship, ed. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1906), Vol. III, pp. 372, 384. For other scholars who follow Berlin’s lead in misconstruing Green’s theory of freedom, see Nicholson’s endnotes, particularly note 31 on p. 269, and note 9 on p. 270.

Philosophical Review , 76:3 (July, 1967), p. 314. MacCallum was not the first to conceptualize liberty in this fashion (see his endnote 2, p. 314). Francis W. Garforth develops a similar format in his article, “The ‘Paradox of Freedom,”’ ( Studies in Education , 3:4 [July, 1962]). I should point out that MacCallum and his predecessors do not focus their attention on Mill; rather, they approach the subject of liberty from a general point of view. For another viewpoint advocating a single concept of liberty, see Stanley I. Benn, A Theory of Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 1988). See also Rodger Beehler, “For One Concept of Liberty,” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 8:1 (1991), and Kristjan Kristjansson, “For a Concept of Negative Liberty—but which Conception?” Journal of Applied Philosophy , 9:2 (1992). Kristjansson’s Social Freedom: The responsibility view (Cambridge University Press, 1996), offers a thoughtful analysis of negative liberty. For a critique of MacCallum, see Tom Baldwin, “MacCallum and the Two Concepts of Freedom,” Ratio 26:2 (1984), pp. 125–42.

Responding to MacCallum, Berlin rejects his triad on the grounds that “A man struggling against his chains or a people against enslavement need not consciously aim at any definite further state. A man need not know how he will use his freedom; he just wants to remove the yoke.” (p. xliii, n. 1.) See also Claude J. Gallipeau, Isaiah Berlin’s Liberalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), chapter 4, esp. pp. 91–93. In other words, negative liberty can be an end in itself. As a limited case, Berlin’s (and Galipeau’s) point makes sense, however, in the context of Mill , negative liberty is never an end in itself, and so Berlin’s objection has little relevance here.

Collected Works XVIII, p. 217.

Ibid., p. 293.

Ibid., pp. 226, 294.

Berlin, pp. 127, 139.

See John Stuart Mill’s Theory of Education , pp. 89, 165. Garforth repeats himself, practically verbatim in Educative Democracy , pp. 103–4. (Both books are cited above in endnote 33.)

John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study, pp. 104–5.

William Parent, “Mill’s Conception of the Summum Bonum,” p. 399 (op. cit., endnote 33.)

Autobiography , p. 170 (Collected Works I, p. 249).

Lawrence Crocker, Positive Liberty: An Essay in Normative Political Philosophy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), p. 1.

Ibid., pp. 69–74. Crocker recognizes Mill’s enthusiasm for diversity, however he fails to understand how this complements Mill’s theory of liberty. This is because he does not recognize that Mill’s conception of liberty extends beyond the absence of restrictions. Crocker follows the common interpretation and classifies Mill as a strict negative libertarian. He therefore figures that Mill’s enthusiasm for diversity must be an exception. (p. 71.) Like Berlin and Garforth (and most everyone else), Crocker is guilty of analyzing Mill and On Liberty too narrowly, and this leads him to overlook some basic features of Mill’s theory of liberty.

On Liber ty , pp. 262–63.

Berlin, pp. 150–52. As mentioned above, Berlin goes further to connect positive liberty and elitism with paternalism, authoritarianism, and other forms of despotism.

See above, endnote 41.

The discussion in the remainder of this paragraph follows On Liberty , pp. 266–69. The two quotations that are not marked by endnotes are taken from page 267. Numerous examples of Mill’s elitism can be found throughout his writings. Garforth offers scores of references to Mill’s elitism in chapter four of his Educative Democracy (op. cit., endnote 33). See also, Joseph Hamburger Intellectuals in Politics: John Stuart Mill and the Philosophic Radicals (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 81–107; F. L. van Holthoon, The Road to Utopia (Assen, the Netherlands: Van Gorcum & Company, 1971), chapters four and five.

“Sedgwick’s Discourse,” London Review , April, 1835 (Collected Works X, p. 66). For a further analysis of Mill’s views on elitism, see below, chapter seven.

Many writers overlook this point, and charge that Mill’s elitism neglects the common man. See Manfred Weber, Verbesserung Der Menscheit: Untersuchungen zum politischen Denken John Stuart Mills (University of Munich, 1971), pp. 170–71; Paul Smart, Mill and Marx: Individual liberty and the roads to freedom (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991), pp. 97, 104, 108ff; and, Judith N. Shklar, The Faces of Injustice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 92. Maurice Cowling, whom I discuss in the following paragraphs, takes a similar view. These critics fail to consider Mill’s concern for the development of everyone and the elites’ role in elevating the masses. They do not account for important passages in On Liberty (e.g., pp. 243, 270). For other discussions demonstrating Mill’s concern with advancing the interests of the common people, see his letter to D’Eichthal (Nov. 7, 1829), Collected Works XII, p. 40, and The Early Draft of John Stuart Mill’s “Autobiography , ” Jack Stillinger, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), pp. 188–89. See also, Wendy Donner, The Liberal Self John Stuart Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 129, 159ff, and “Mill’s Utilitarianism,” in John Skorupski, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Mill (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 271.

Mill and Liberalism , pp. 86–93. (In 1990, Cambridge University Press published a second edition of Cowling’s work.)

Ibid., chapter 1. Cowling describes Mill’s works as a “morally insinuating, proselytizing doctrine.” Continuing, he writes: Mill was a proselytizer of genius: the ruthless denigrator of existing positions, the systematic propagator of a new moral posture, a man of sneers and smears and pervading certainty. It is in this respect that he has now to be considered. (p. 93.) For another critical interpretation of Mill advocating an intolerant, proselytizing ‘militant liberalism,’ see Aleksandras Shtromas, “Ideological Politics and the Contemporary World: Have We Seen the Last of ’Isms’?” in Aleksandras Shtromas, ed., The End of “Isms”? Reflections on the Fate of Ideological Politics after Communisms’s Collapse (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 193–94.

Ibid., p. 117, p. xii.

See Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), chapters 2 and 3, esp. pp. 64–71; H. J. McCloskey, John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study , p. 97; and, Shirley Robin Letwin, The Pursuit of Certainty (Cambridge University Press, 1965). See also, Stewart Justman, The Hidden Text of Mill’s Liberty (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), p. 122ff.

C. L. Ten offers a thoughtful refutation of Cowling’s thesis in Mill On Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 144–51. See also, Graeme Duncan, Marx and Mill: Two Views of Social Conflict and Social Harmony (Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 276–80.

Berlin, p. xliv (see text above, corresponding to note 17).

In Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore Jr., and Herbert Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), pp. 86, 93, 106.

Ibid., p. 83. The interested reader might find it interesting to read Ariel Dorfman’s, “The Infantilizing of Culture,” in Donald Lazere, ed., American Media and Mass Culture: Left Perspectives (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987). This is excerpted from Dorfman’s The Empire’s Old Clothes: What the Lone Ranger , Babar , and Other Innocent Heroes Do to Our Minds (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983).

Ibid., p. 111.

Ibid., pp. 112–13.

Ibid., pp. 84, 90. For a liberal’s response to Marcuse, see David Spitz’s “Pure Tolerance: A Critique of Criticisms,” Dissent , 13:5 (Sept-Oct., 1966), pp. 510–25 [reprinted in The Real World of Liberalism (University of Chicago Press, 1982), ch. 4]; and Alasdair Maclntyre, Herbert Marcuse: an Exposition and a Polemic (New York: The Viking Press, 1970). The interested reader should also see Alex Callinicos, “Repressive toleration revisited: Mill, Marcuse, Maclntyre,” in Aspects of Toleration: Philosophical Studies , eds., John Horton and Susan Mendus (London and New York: Methuen, 1985), pp. 53–74.

I believe that Mill’s vagueness was intentional. On this point I disagree with Brenda Almond, who writes that in On Liberty , Mill “argued that a clear line could be drawn in answering such questions between the parts of a person’s conduct that concern or affect only that person, and those which also affect others.” The Philosophical Quest (London: Penguin Books, 1988), p. 55. See also Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 182; Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 76ff; and, H. J. McCloskey, John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study , p. 107.

See, for example, Robert Paul Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 24; J. R. Lucas, The Principles of Politics (Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 174–75, 345; and, J . A. Hobson, The Social Problem: Life and Work (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1901), pp. 88–89. See also John Allet, New Liberalism: The Political Economy of J. A. Hobson (University of Toronto Press, 1981) pp. 185–86.

See for example, Lord Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), ch. 1 (cf. ch. 6). See also James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Cambridge University Press, 1967).

Autobiography, p. 177. (Collected Works I, p. 259.)

The Subjection of Women (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1869), p. 1 (Collected Works XXI, p. 261).

Ibid., p. 27 (p. 271).

Ibid., p. 98 (p. 302).

Ibid., p. 178 (p. 336). In this context, Mill writes: “After the primary necessities of food and raiment, freedom is the first and strongest want of human nature.

Ibid., p. 114 (p. 309).

Ibid., p. 182 (p. 338).

See, for example, James Fitzjames Stephen (op. cit., endnote 75), p. 167; Willmoore Kendall, “The ‘Open Society’ and Its Fallacies,” American Political Science Review, 54:4 (1960) [reprinted in both the Norton Critical Edition of On Liberty, David Spitz, ed. (op. cit., endnote 33), and Limits of Liberty, Peter Radcliff, ed. (op. cit., endnote 33)]; Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill, pp. 33, 272, and On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society, ch. IV, esp. pp. 76ff, 104ff; James Gouinlock, Excellence in Public Discourse: John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, and Social Intelligence (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986), pp. 47, 75; Max Lerner, introduction to Essential Works of John Stuart Mill (New York: Bantam, 1961), p. xxviii; Oskar Kurer, John Stuart Mill: The Politics of Progress (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), p. 192; James A. Colaiaco, James Fitzjames Stephen and the Crisis of Victorian Thought (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), ch. 7, esp. p. 134; Stephen Holmes, Passions and Constraint (op. cit., endnote 73), pp. 185, 195–96; and, Thomas Hurka, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 148.

At least, this is what Mill claims. Several writers have challenged Mill’s claims and contend that he was not a utilitarian or that he does not argue for liberty in a utilitarian way. For reasons given in chapter three, I do not subscribe to this view.

The Letters of John Stuart Mill, Hugh S. R. Elliot, ed. (London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1910), Appendix A, p. 379 (Collected Works XXVII, p. 661).

For instance, Willmoore Kendall, who never notices Mill’s message of growth, finds it easy to conclude that extending the freedoms Mill advocates in chapter two will “constitute a major onslaught against Truth.” (American Political Science Review [op. cit., endnote 83], p. 979.) In this egregious article (which has been reprinted several times in anthologies on and about On Liberty) , Kendall attributes an extremist position to Mill, against which he then argues. He claims that Mill confronts the reader with a choice between ‘unlimited freedom of speech or all-out thought control.’ On Kendall’s interpretation, Mill’s over-enthusiasm for liberty (and disregard for truth and improvement) blind him to the dire consequences that unrestricted freedom brings. Kendall writes: a society as Mill prescribed, “that regards unlimited free speech as its primary value,” will descend ineluctably into ever-deepening differences of opinion , into progressive breakdown of those common premises upon which alone a society can conduct its affairs by discussion, and so into the abandonment of the discussion process and the arbitrament of public questions by violence and civil war. (p. 978.)

I do not wish to imply that liberty or individuality serve no other functions. To be sure, liberty is highly valued for numerous reasons beyond making individual expression possible. Individuality is highly valued as well. (See, for example, On Liberty ,p. 261.) For those who construe Mill’s utilitarianism in a narrow way, this is puzzling. Garforth offers a thoughtful discussion of the value Mill places on individuality in Educative Democracy (op. cit., endnote 33), pp. 82–84.

Utilitarianism (Collected Works X, p. 216). See also Mill’s review of the second volume of Democracy in America (Collected Works XVIII, p. 169) and Principles of Political Economy , Bk. V, ch. xi, s. 6 (Collected Works III, p. 943). Several of Mill’s critics seem not to notice that he balances the principle of individuality with other values. See, for example, Frederic Harrison, “John Stuart Mill,” Nineteenth Century , 40:235 (July-December, 1896), pp. 493, 504; Henry D. Aiken, “The Justification of Social Freedom,” in Nomos IV: Liberty , p. 124; Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989), pp. 44, 71; Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 23, 30, 216; and, Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 133, 141. See also Gertrude Himmelfarb, On Looking into the Abyss (op. cit., endnote 73), pp. 79ff; and, James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought , 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 52.

On Liberty, chapter four, p. 277.

On Liberty, p. 266.

Ibid., p. 267; see also Autobiography p. 179 (Collected Works I, p. 260).

Ibid., p. 261. In an article entitled “The Negro Question,” Mill writes: “spontaneous improvement, beyond a very low grade,—improvement by internal developement, without aid from other individuals or peoples—is one of the rarest phenomena in history.” (First published in Fraser’s Magazine, XLI [Jan., 1850], p. 29 [Collected Works XXI, p. 93].)

Ibid., p. 270.

See Principles of Political Economy, Bk. IV, ch. vii, s. 6–7 (Collected Works III, pp. 790–96); see also pp. 768, 942.

On Liberty, p. 274.

Ibid. See also Mill’s letter to De Tocqueville (May 11, 1840), in Collected Works XIII, p. 434. For brief discussions of Mill’s “Sinophobia,” see Edward Alexander, “The Principles of Permanence and Progression in the Thought of J. S. Mill,” in John M. Robson and Michael Laine, eds., James and John Stuart Mill/Papers of the Centenary Conference (University of Toronto Press, 1976), p. 134; and, Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism, pp. 49, 67.

See, for example, James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 80, 84; and, Susan Mendus, Toleration and the Limits of Liberalism, p. 27. See also, John Gray, Mill on liberty: a defence (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 87.

On Liberty, p. 272. For a different view on ‘custom,’ see Principles of Political Economy, Bk. II, ch. iv.

John Stuart Mill: A Critical Study, p. 104.

Of course, Mill would agree that the freedom to make mistakes is indeed freedom. On this point, see Berlin, p. 148, note 1, and p. 192; and, F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 18. See also below, chapter seven.

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Habibi, D.A. (2001). On Liberty: Positive and Negative. In: John Stuart Mill and the Ethic of Human Growth. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 85. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2010-6_4

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Liberty (2nd edn)

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Liberty is the new and expanded edition of Isaiah Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty , a modern classic of liberalism. These essays, of which the best known is ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, do not offer a systematic account of liberalism, but instead deploy a view of being, knowledge, and value which was calculated by Berlin to rule totalitarian thinking out of court. The new edition adds to the four, ‘From Hope and Fear set free’, which reinforces Berlin’s argument and which he wanted to include in the original edition. Three further essays, and three autobiographical appendices have been included, so that all Berlin’s principal statements on liberty are gathered together. The whole is introduced by Berlin’s editor, Henry Hardy.

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• Published: 14 August 2018

Individual liberty and the importance of the concept of the people

• Regina Queiroz 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  4 , Article number:  99 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Through publically agreed laws that correspond to a common set of public restrictions, the ‘people as a sovereign body’ serves to protect against violations of individual liberty and despotic power. Where no such common body exists, individuals are deprived of this protection. In such cases, individuals must obey without liberty, while those in power command under a state of license. Neoliberal theorists maintain that any common personality, with its corresponding set of public and arbitrary positive and negative restrictions on liberty, undermines individual liberty. Neoliberal theory only allows for private restrictions on liberty. Against these neoliberal assumptions, we argue that rejecting public restrictions on liberty does not promote individual liberty. To the contrary, it creates conditions in which free individuals become servile and political inequality becomes entrenched, where citizens are divided into those who obey and those who command. Tracing the consequences of neoliberalism, we argue that unless we take seriously both the people as a political category and the right to equal and reciprocal coercion, individual liberty will be at risk. The article argues that neoliberalism ultimately leads to the total exclusion of certain citizens under the veil of full liberty . With the vanishing of the people’s will comes the utter disappearance of certain citizens , who live in a spontaneous society as if they were stateless or lawless persons. To better understand the connections between the rejection of the concept of the people, private restrictions on liberty and the fostering of the servile citizen, this paper considers the political philosophy of Hayek and Nozick. It also considers key ideas from Locke and Kant—theorists who, despite the differences between their philosophical perspectives, and despite the fact that they both provided crucial inspiration for Hayek’s political economy and Nozick’s libertarianism, stressed the protective role of the people with regard to individual liberty.

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Through publically agreed laws that correspond to a common set of public restrictions, the ‘people as a sovereign body’ serves to protect against violations of individual liberty and despotic power (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). Where no such common body exists, individuals are deprived of this protection. In such cases, individuals must obey without liberty, while those in power command under a state of license, i.e., a state of unrestricted liberty. Neoliberal theorists maintain that any common personality, with its corresponding set of public restrictions on liberty, undermines individual liberty (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). Therefore, in addition to promoting the idea of private, atomized individuals and denying the existence of “the people” (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ), neoliberal theory permits only private restrictions (positive and negative) on liberty (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ).

Against this neoliberal assumption (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ), we shall argue that rejecting the concept of the people and public restrictions on liberty while preserving the general law, its protective function, and coercive institutions and instruments for enforcing neoliberal law poses a serious threat to individual liberty and ultimately risks reducing the majority of free individuals to servile—and in some cases lawless—persons.

The literature has already demonstrated the incompatibility between neoliberalism and the notion of the people as a political category and reality (Brown, 2015 ; Dean, 2008 ). The impact of neoliberalism’s exclusion of the people and its reliance on the concept of publicity without a public has also been demonstrated (Queiroz, 2017 ). Related to this, the literature has addressed how neoliberalism fosters the development of a docile and disciplined citizenry (Foucault, 2008 ). Nonetheless, the political consequences of the exclusion of the people and the protective role it plays in the preservation of the political state—namely the transformation of free individuals into servile, and ultimately lawless, persons—has yet to be addressed, in particular from a political-philosophical point of view.

The importance of this issue is clear. There has been much emphasis on the economic nature of neoliberalism, which has obscured the fact that, more than an economic position, neoliberalism is a political outlook and reality (Bruff, 2014 ). Although neoliberalism has become deeply tied to economics (Hall, 2011 ; Read, 2009 ), this is mainly due to the fact that its theoretical understanding of the state as a political institution is made in analogy with the economic market and the subsequent political redefinition of the latter’s aims and scope (Foucault, 2008 ). Thus, without neglecting the significance of neoliberal economic analysis, in shifting the focus to neoliberalism’s political character we aim to disclose its political-philosophical foundations and to translate its allegedly purely economic aspects to the political sphere. As we will see, the imposition of fiscal equilibrium, fiscal consolidation, cuts to social security, the privatization of public property, the liberalization of collective bargaining, and the shrinking of pensions (Barro, 2009 ) are connected not only to the rise of poverty and inequality but also to the transformation of free citizens into dependent and servile persons.

The underlying philosophical principles formulated in Hayek’s political economy, political philosophy and legal theory, as well as in Nozick’s libertarianism, have spilled over into politics. Although, as empirical studies frequently show, there is always a gap between theoretical statements and practical reality, these principles now provide, at a national and international level, the law’s substantive content (Brown, 2015 ; Gill, 1998 ; Hall, 2011 ; Klein, 2007 ; Overbeek, 1993 ).

For these reasons, we do not intend to evaluate the “exegetical” value of Hayek’s and Nozick’s philosophical views (for example Hayek’s mistaken reading of Kant’s ethical and political philosophy; Gray, 1989 ). At the same time, we cannot here explore the important material basis of neoliberal ideology, namely concrete neoliberal activities, processes and powerful neoliberal social and political forces, such as multinational corporations (Brown, 2015 ; Gill, 1998 ; Hall, 2011 ; Harvey, 2005 ; Klein, 2007 ; Overbeek, 1993 ). Instead, we aim to show that the philosophical assumptions underlying Hayek’s political economy and Nozick’s libertarianism allow us to clarify the connection between the exclusion of the people as a political category and neoliberalism’s promotion of a servile citizenry.

To better understand this connection, this paper will consider the Lockean and Kantian concepts of the people. Despite the differences between Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies (Gray, 1989 ; Williams, 1994 ), for both thinkers the people serves the function of protecting individual liberty against despotic power, a condition which is commonly referred to as political obligation under liberty. Hayek and Nozick explicitly refer to the Lockean and Kantian foundations of their views, for example the Kantian universalization test for establishing the validity of the abstract rules of the market state (Hayek, 1976 ). Nozick’s use of the Kantian understanding of the person as an end in itself to justify the rejection of substantive principles of justice (Nozick, 1974 ) provides an additional reason to consider Locke’s and Kant’s conceptions of the people in detail.

There are of course important differences between our current social, political and technological context, which is characterized by globalization, and Locke and Kant’s modern nation states. We ought also to consider the differences between how we conceive of the people, e.g., whether we define peoples in terms of national commonality (Miller, 2000 ) or whether we ought to stress the role of democratic politics in creating this sense of political belonging (Habermas, 2008 ). Equally significant is the fact that, contrary to neoliberalism, Locke’s liberalism depends on homo politicus and juridicus rather than homo economicus , which generates significant tensions between his rights-based view and modern views based on interests (Foucault, 2008 ). Equally, we wish to overlook neither Locke’s and Kant’s controversial statements and practices, for example Kant’s exclusion of non-property-owners from the social contract (Kersting, 1992 ), nor the limits of Locke’s and Kant’s theoretical constructions of political personality (Badiou, 2016 ). The weaknesses of past democracies, expressed in the exclusion of woman from equal citizenship, the existence of slavery, and contemporary populist perversions of democracy, do not entail that we must abandon the ideal of democratic political power, however. The negative aspects of Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies should not erase their strong commitment, from a liberal perspective, to the importance of the concept of the people when it comes to protecting individual liberty.

Finally, we do not wish to ignore past conceptions of the people, such as Greco-Roman conceptions, republican conceptions (Cicero, 1999 ; Habermas, 2000 ; Rousseau, 1762 (1964)), Marxist conceptions (Badiou, 2016 ), and other current alternatives. Despite their differences, they share certain features with the liberal approach, such as assigning a protective role to the people. In the face of the political consequences of neoliberalism’s exclusion of the people, we should appeal to what Rawls ( 1993 ) calls overlapping consensus, i.e., agreement on the people as a political category on different grounds.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 provides a brief presentation of the main concepts and neoliberalism’s rejection of public restrictions on liberty and the right to equal and reciprocal coercion. In the second section, we show that, contrary to neoliberal assumptions, far from fostering individual liberty, the exclusively private restriction of liberty implies a political distinction between those who obey and those who rule. It also entails the division of citizens into those who obey and those who command, where the latter are given unequal protection by the government and thus an unequal share in the public coercive power. Similarly, it involves the introduction of two familiar political categories, originally deployed in neoliberal political society: self-serfdom on the one hand and invisible, voiceless citizenship on the other. At the end of the paper, we provide a brief account of the protective role of the people as a political body when it comes to individual liberty. We show that by ensuring the equal and reciprocal right of coercion, the people as a body protects individual liberty.

The people vs. the private coercion of liberty under neoliberalism

As an imprecise and nebulous concept, there is no single “pure” form of neoliberalism. Instead, there are varied articulations that make up an extraordinarily messy amalgam of neoliberal ideas and policies at multiple sites (Latin America, Europe, China; Harvey, 2005 ), on multiple scales (national, international, transnational, global; Brown, 2015 ; Hall, 2011 ; Klein, 2007 ; Overbeek, 1993 ), and within the many versions of the welfare state (Kus, 2006 ). Additionally, according to England and Ward’s ( 2016 ) taxonomy, neoliberalism can be thought of as a form of statecraft that promotes the reduction of government spending while increasing economic completion (Mudge, 2008 ), or as a form of governmentality that comprises social, cultural and economic practices that constitute new spaces and subjects (Foucault, 2008 ). In addition, neoliberalism can be seen as a reaction to the disenchantment identified by Weber, ( 1978 ) following the rise of bureaucracy. Neoliberalism expresses a kind of re-enchantment with the exclusively individual rational actor, who claims a non-alienable space of liberty against a bureaucratic “iron cage”. Although some see neoliberalism as a privatized version of economic and bureaucratic despotism (Lorenz, 2012 ) or as a totalizing global bureaucracy (Hickel, 2016 ), this re-enchantment can explain the enthusiastic endorsement of neoliberal principles by a wide spectrum of political and ideological forces, for example by the Labour party under Blair in Great Britain, the SPD under Schröder in Germany, and followers of Pinochet in Chile.

Finally, neoliberalism has been viewed as a conception of the world, or a “total view of reality” (Ramey, 2015 , p. 3), which is meant to be applied to the political realm and the entirety of human existence. Integrated into common sense, its main ideas stem from the everyday experience of buying and selling commodities on the market, a model that is then transferred to society. As a total view of reality, neoliberalism entails “a new understanding of human nature and social existence [and] the way in which human beings make themselves and are made subjects” (Read, 2009 , p. 28; see also Foucault, 2008 ).

While acknowledging the disparate criteria for defining and assessing neoliberal theory and practice, we maintain that neoliberalism is a political outlook and reality (Bruff, 2014 ) which has evolved in part in accordance with the framework of the theoretical premises of Hayek’s, ( 1976 ) political economy and Nozick’s, ( 1974 ) philosophical libertarianism. For instance, neoliberal theoretical principles now provide, at a national and international level, substantive content to political constitutions (McCluskey, 2003 ), the establishment of laws governing the executive (Foucault, 2008 ; Read, 2009 ), and the reformulation of laws governing citizens (LeBaron, 2008 ; McCluskey, 2003 ; Supiot, 2013 , p. 141; Wacquant, 1999 ). They also shape our comprehension of the world and ourselves (for example the reduction of the citizen to an entrepreneur; Peters, 2016 ). Thus, although there is no purely neoliberal society or state—neoliberalism evolves within various societies in different ways (see Harvey, 2005 )—neoliberal political theory allows us to clarify the political premises that underlie the disparate versions of neoliberalism.

In preserving the political state, neoliberal individualistic premises do not accommodate the notion of the people , i.e., the citizens of a given political community or a unitary political body ( demos or populus ), understood as an ultimate intentional lawmaker or sovereign (Locke, 1679 (1960)). The category of the people is a political criterion, which refers to the main act of the people’s sovereignty: their giving law to themselves, in the form of rights and duties (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977); Rousseau, 1762 (1964); Sieyes, 1789 (1989)). Putting to the side the relationship between political (Dahl, 1998 ; Rawls, 1999 ; Sieyes, 1789 [1989]) and ethnic (Habermas, 2000 , 2008 ) criteria, this act unifies individuals who belong to different ethnicities, cultures, and linguistic traditions. The results of this act are the civic, political and social human rights which have traditionally been the privileged content of the laws of peoples (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977); Marshall, 1950 ; Rawls, 1971 , 1999 ).

It is true that women and slaves have historically been excluded from the category of the people. It is also undeniable that such exclusion has not been completely overcome and that new categories of exclusion have emerged, such as ageism and digital exclusion. Important political differences within peoples on the axes of class (Badiou, 2016 ), gender (Elstain, 1981 ), race (Wilson, 2012 ), and citizenship remain. Nonetheless, the content of the laws of peoples has provided political criteria for denouncing and reducing, if not eliminating, these exclusions (e.g., in South Africa with the end of Apartheid).

Despite the complexity of the relationship between the state and the sovereignty of the people (Habermas, 2008 ), the political criterion stresses the subordination of the state to the sovereign people. It also points to the reformulation of the powers of states, “specifying that their legislators must not make certain laws, or must advance certain objectives” (Pyke, 2001 , p. 205). For example, instead of exclusively preserving peace or economic and financial efficiency, states ought to ensure the well-being of their citizens. In the absence of such restrictions, the overestimation of states’ economic goals (such as low inflation, the removal of trade barriers and foreign currency control, and minimal regulation of the economic labor market) can result in the undermining of welfare at the national (Brodie, 2007 ) and international level (Beck, 2002 ).

Some argue that nation states provide a criterion for determining political belonging (Miller, 2000 ). However, the political criterion points to the fact that one’s relation to a given nation state should be based on common laws, not ethnic or cultural differences. Rawls’s, ( 1999 ) liberal approach to international relationships argues against cosmopolitan principles of justice that are blind to the political (and moral) differences between peoples, for example the difference between liberal and decent peoples, where the former is based on an individualistic tradition and the latter on a ‘corporative’ tradition. Despite the perils of extending sovereign power to the global order (e.g., populism) and people’s incomprehension of the full import of economic and political factors, this order should respect the sovereignty of peoples. Neoliberalism’s “global policy of boundary removal” (Beck, 2002 , p. 78) undermines the sovereignty of the people (Beck, 2002 ; Overbeek, 1993 ). Indeed, the growth of international law affects domestic legal systems, limiting the political choices of legislators and voters, and competition in globalized markets does not allow nations or states to regulate their industries and workplaces. As Hickel notes, for example, financial liberalization creates conditions under which “investors can conduct moment-by-moment referendums on decisions made by voters and governments around the world, bestowing their favor on countries that facilitate profit maximization while punishing those that prioritize other concerns, like decent wages” (Hickel, 2016 , p. 147).

Peoples are the main ‘actors’ in the international and global arena, their sovereignty, along with their constitutional power, cannot dispense with common laws. Despite the crucial issue of the existence of mechanisms for enforcing those laws, human rights such as freedom from slavery and serfdom, mass murder and genocide can provide their content (Rawls, 1999 ). Although the political manipulation of the law by national-hegemonic principles (Beck, 2002 ) and the enforcement issue (Lane, et al. 2006 ) must be kept in mind, the human rights approach is relevant to Locke’s and Kant’s concepts of the people. There is a difference between the national order underlying Locke’s and Kant’s approaches to the sovereignty of the people and our contemporary international and global order, human rights can create, at the national, international and global level, a sense of political belonging (Habermas, 2008 ; Lane et al. 2006 ; Rawls, 1999 ). As political criteria, human rights preclude resolving persistent political conflicts on the basis of ethnic or national criteria, as occurs with populism and nationalism, respectively.

Given this intricate theoretical framework, as well as the complexity of the notion of a sovereign people (Butler, 2016 ; Morgan, 1988 ; Morris, 2000 ), we stress that whatever its scope, the sovereign people plays a protective role with regard to citizens’ liberties in general and against despotic power in particular (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). Locke, ( 1679 (1960)) and Kant, ( 1793 ([1977)) assume that the sovereign people guarantees individual liberty in any human association. Both thinkers hold both that human associations (or societies) of free persons cannot deny the political facts of power, obedience and command (Locke, 1679 ([1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)) and that, in natural (rather than political) conditions, individual liberty is unrestricted. Since in the state of nature it is possible for one to obey unconditionally, having only duties, while the other in turn commands unconditionally, having only rights, the unrestrictedly obedient enjoy no protection against unrestricted power, at least concerning their right to life (Locke, 1679 ([1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). From this perspective, i.e., from the perspective of individual liberty, the practical (as opposed to theoretical) challenge consists in conceiving of an alliance between individuals that does not undermine their individual liberty. The people as a political body expresses precisely this alliance: an inter-protective construction that replaces the state of unconditional obedience and command.

Following the controversial model of the contractual act (Gough, 1957 ), individuals transfer to the political power their unrestricted natural right to liberty. This transfer transforms them into “one people, one body politic” (Locke, 1679 (1960), II, p. 89). As members of the people, individuals equally consent to restricting their liberty under a political order and to preserving an equal coercive power, which prevents them from being reduced to servile persons and, correlatively, prevents any one of their numbers from becoming a despotic lord (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). As such, they establish public law —a system of laws for a people, i.e., an aggregate of human beings, or an aggregate of peoples (Kant, 1793 (1977))—which allows them to live in a lawful state.

Through public law, i.e., laws based on their will, the people provides to each individual a unique set of liberties with regard to the use of material goods and imposes on each a unique set of restrictions (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). When pursuing their personal well-being, as members of the people, individuals cannot ignore this common set of rights and restrictions. When pursuing their well-being, individuals are also, but not exclusively, bound to demands that are independent of their individual interests.

Public vs. private law

Neoliberal theory and practice does not preclude a common law (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ; Hayek, 1976 ). The common law that it involves is not, however, a law of the people that provides liberties (rights) and imposes a unique set of restrictions (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ; Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). Indeed, neoliberal political theory does not allow for the transformation of individual personalities or isolated natural selves into a collective or single public, viewed as the ultimate intentional lawmaker, which is the model we find, for example, in Locke, ( 1679 (1960)), Kant, ( 1793 (1977)), and Rawls, ( 1971 ). In Nozick’s political theory, when private persons establish a contract to govern their use of the possessions over which they have a private right (Nozick, 1974 )—this conception of rights includes both material possessions and natural talents—they are always separate units that remain separate even when they form associations (Nozick, 1974 ). They do not constitute a common person subject to common legislation that defines and regulates political authority and applies equally to all persons. This mirrors Hayek’s suggestion that it is absurd to speak of rights as claims which no one has an obligation to obey, or even to exercise (Hayek, 1976 ). On this view, human rights result from personal interests, and persons cannot be bound to claims that are independent of their private interests. These claims presuppose a public obligation (or the possibility of coercion), which involves a political organization in which decision-makers act as collective agents: as members of a people rather than individuals. Yet on the neoliberal conception, collective deliberation of this sort limits, and even undermines, individual liberty (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ; Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ), leading to oppression (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ), if not to serfdom (Hayek, 1960 ).

Viewed from the neoliberal standpoint as a meaningless or mystical political category (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 )—“a fairy tale” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 35)—the political deliberation of the people imposes obligations on individuals, undermining their liberty and well-being. The people as a political body is based on the supposition that someone (the people) can intentionally prevent or promote certain results, which, via end-rules, guiding organizations can compel individuals to attain. In addition to their “epistemological impossibility” (Gray, 1993 , p. 38), however—individuals’ multiple interactions produce unpredictable and unforeseen results—end-rules interfere with individual liberty and worsen the positions of all (Hayek, 1976 ), in particular those who are better off (Nozick, 1974 ). Interference (or intervention), which is “by definition an […] act of coercion” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 129), is “properly applied to specific orders [that aim] at particular results” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 128). Moreover, interference and intervention occurs “if we changed the position of any particular part in a manner which is not in accord with the general principle of its operation” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 128).

The general principle of the operation of the spontaneous society is negative liberty, or “the absence of a particular obstacle—coercion by other men” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 18) in one’s pursuit of maximal individual well-being. Requiring that the situation of the less well off be improved via the principle of the equality of opportunity, for example, involves restricting individual liberty in order to improve the situations of others (Hayek, 1960 , 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). This improvement is thought to be unacceptable because, in addition to presupposing that we can determine the circumstances under which individuals pursue their aims, binding persons to claims that are independent of their private interests constitutes an interference in their liberty (Hayek, 1976 ). Even if it is admitted that the principle of equal opportunity entails neither complete control over the circumstances in which individuals pursue their well-being (Rawls, 1971 ), nor equality of results (Rawls, 1971 ), nor the worsening of the position of the better-off (see Rawls’s principle of difference, Rawls, 1971 ), the fact that it involves changing the positions of individuals via a public rule means that it constitutes the imposition of an illegitimate obligation on individuals (Hayek, 1960 ; 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). The public law limits the overall sum of well-being—the greater the privatization, the greater the well-being—and restricts the unlimited intensification of individuals’ purely private interests (see Hayek’s, ( 1976 ) and Nozick’s, ( 1974 ) criticism of the utilitarian and Rawlsian theories of social justice). “Inconsistent” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 129) with individual liberties from the perspective of negative liberty and with the unlimited intensification of individuals’ purely private interests, public rules are transformed into private rules (commands or end-rules).

On the neoliberal view, the pursuit of individual ends ought to be based on historical principles (Nozick, 1974 ) or Hayek’s abstract rules, which only set out the procedures for acquiring and preserving individual well-being and which do not refer to a common purpose, such as social justice: “Freedom under the law rests on the contention that when we obey laws, in the sense of general abstract rules irrespective of their application to us; we are not subject to another man’s will and are therefore free” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 11). Under this negative conception of liberty, abstract rules allow for the improvement of “ the chances of all in the pursuit of their aims”; they are therefore truly public rules :

To regard only the public law as serving general welfare and the private law as protecting only the selfish interests of the individuals would be a complete inversion of the truth: it is an error to believe that only actions, which deliberately aim at common purposes, serve common needs. The fact is rather that what the spontaneous order of society provides for us is more important for everyone, and therefore for the general welfare, than most of the particular services which the organization of government can provide, excepting only the security provided by the enforcement of the rules of just conduct . (Hayek, 1960 , p. 132 emphasis added).

Neoliberal “public” rules are therefore abstract rules that exclude common concern . Organizations “sanction” the rights resulting from individuals’ interactions under abstract rules (Hayek, 1976 ). This means not only that governments ought to mirror that order—they cannot provide any rights of themselves—but also that the judicial system ought to be redesigned to fit with the Great Society. Indeed, Hayek critiques the enslavement of law by “false economics” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 67), i.e., economics that are dependent on the existence of public goods, and “prophetically” foresees the disappearance of this law in the spontaneous society (Hayek, 1960 ). Other neoliberal theorists have conceived of the neoliberal impact on law in similar terms, envisaging a legal system based on “true neoliberal economics”, which transforms the law into a bond “oblig[ing] one party to behave according to the expectations of the other” (Supiot, 2013 , p. 141; see also LeBaron, 2008 ; McCluskey, 2003 ; Wacquant, 1999 ).

This model cannot accommodate the idea of a public person, the people, to whom individuals belong; indeed, the role of ultimate intentional lawmaker is taken from the people and given to the spontaneous order , the Great or Open Society. Understood in analogy with the economic market, and equating to abstract rules applied to “an unknown number of future instances” (Hayek, 1976 : 35), this spontaneous order constitutes the sovereign lawmaker (Queiroz, 2017 ).

Neoliberal political intervention under private law

Under the negative conception of liberty, individual freedom is compatible with impediments and constraints (liberty is not bare license, which ultimately undermines negative liberty; Berlin, 1958 ). Abstract rules allow for private restrictions on liberty, and neoliberal governmental organizations ought to ensure that any restrictions on liberty are limited to the private realm. Neoliberal theorists do not understand this protection as a form of intervention or interference, however. Hayek, ( 1960 ), for example, argues for this notion by establishing a distinction between repairing and intervening. When a person oils a clock, they are merely repairing it, securing the conditions required for its proper functioning. In turn, when a person changes “the position of any particular part in a manner which is not in accord with the general principle of its operation” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 128), for example by shifting the clock’s hands, this counts as intervention or interference. In other words, just as oiling a clock provides the conditions required for its proper functioning, so governmental protection of the private scope of restrictions on liberty allows for the proper functioning of the Great Society. Both merely create the conditions under which individual wellbeing can be maintained, if not increased. In turn, just as shifting the hands of a clock is not in accord with the general principle of the clock’s operation, public rules, which impose illegitimate obligations on individuals, constitute an intervention into the functioning of the spontaneous society.

When establishing the particular character of organizations’ rules, and excluding “the security provided by the enforcement of the rules of the just conduct” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 132), this enforcement means that neoliberal politicians intentionally intervene, but only to prevent the auto-destruction of the “mechanism” itself. They permanently adjust the rules to the neoliberal common law.

Consider a situation in which two people, A and B, are involved in cooperative activity and in which both establish a common rule to safeguard the maximization of their interests. Under this rule, A and B both contribute to the maximization of their own well-being. Although it accepts the interdependence of individuals when pursuing their personal well-being, neoliberal reparation does not allow for a common right to the results of that cooperative interdependence (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). In denying the existence of a public person, a public will, and in ultimately challenging the idea that there is a common right to a share in the total well-being that results from the contributions of all, neoliberalism not only allows, but also requires , that one party has a claim to the exclusively private enjoyment of the benefits of their mutual relationship. Accordingly, neoliberal repair (a metaphor for neoliberal government) ought to remove public law, which allows for the common right to well-being, and should replace it with private law. In this way, the proper functioning of the Great Society—which permits the unrestricted preservation and increasing of individuals’ private wellbeing—can be reestablished. The resulting intensification of poverty and inequality (Greer, 2014 ; Matsaganis and Leventi 2014; Stiglitz, 2013 ), the diminishing security of employment and income (Clayton and Pontusson, 1998 ; Stiglitz, 2013 ), and growing authoritarianism (Brown, 2015 ; Bruff, 2014 ; Kreuder-Sonnen and Zangl, 2015 ; Orphanides, 2014 ; Schmidt and Thatcher, 2014 ) are not problems in themselves. To the contrary, to the extent that it undermines individual liberty, any attempt to redress these effects violates the law of the neoliberal state, which, Hayek would say, is based on “true economics”. Accordingly, when choosing between the intensification of poverty and inequality and allegiance to the right of non-interference, non-interference must prevail, thus preventing political and social action to reduce (or compensate for) poverty and inequality. Notwithstanding the underlying theoretical debate on the legitimacy and justice of the acquisition of private rights (Hayek, 1976 ; Marx, 2000 ; Nozick, 1974 ; Rawls, 1971 , 1993 ), enforcing the rules of the Open Society deprives one part of that society of the right to their well-being and to their contribution to the general well-being . Under the neoliberal model of government and law, certain citizens are deprived of the right to enjoy the public goods that result from their collective activity, while others enjoy a private right to goods that result from the contribution of all. Since those who benefit are not able to acknowledge the contribution of others, they erase it and privatize the public law. This privatization shows that the neoliberal trinity of privatization, flexibilization and deregulation ultimately results from the original privatization of the public or common law .

Private restrictions on liberty and coercive positive liberty

Aside from the controversy concerning the epistemological value of the distinction between negative and positive liberty (Berlin, 1958 [1997]; Gray, 1993 ; Rawls, 1971 , 1993 ; Taylor, 1979 ), theoretical disagreement about their meanings (Taylor, 1979 ), and the caricatures by which they are often understood (e.g., positive liberty as a form of being “forced-to-be-free”; Taylor, 1979 ), governmental protection of private restrictions on liberty under neoliberalism shows that neoliberal political theory does not dispense with the coercive feature of positive liberty (see Gray, 1989 for a reading of Hayekian freedom as more than merely negative).

This not a negligible issue; neoliberal political philosophers establish a relationship between the main act of the people’s sovereignty, or its constitutional power—establishing a public law that provides to each person a unique set of liberties with regard to the use of material goods and imposes on each a unique set of restrictions—and the violation of individual liberty (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). The replacement of the people’s sovereignty with the spontaneous order is thought to be justifiable because “when we obey laws, in the sense of general abstract rules irrespective of their application to us, we are not subject to another man’s will and are therefore free” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 11). When arguing against the oppressive nature of the rules that issue from the people, neoliberalism relies on the positive meaning of liberty (freedom to be one’s own “master”; Berlin, 1958 (1997)). A private right to a good that results from the (perhaps unequal) contribution of all constitutes a coercive act of positive liberty—“coercing others for their own sake, in their, not my, interest” (Berlin, 1958 (1997), p. 397). Similarly, the imposition of that right on society as a whole through legislation, including those who have been deprived of their well-being, also constitutes positive coercion . Citizens who are deprived of their well-being must simply accept the neoliberal diktat , i.e., the transference of their well-being to the few (Stiglitz, 2013 ). In a paternalistic way—according to Berlin, ( 1958 (1997)), positive liberty is always paternalistic in some sense—neoliberal politicians argue that there is no alternative (TINA) to neoliberal political legislation (the government knows best). Consequently, under the veil of state juridical and political violence, neoliberal politicians present governmental rules as an ultimatum , precluding consent, i.e., forcing individuals to give up their political right to challenge that deprivation (see the political meaning of TINA , Queiroz 2016 ; Queiroz 2017 ). The rejection of all public right, i.e., the exclusion of peoples, introduces into the core of the theory (and its practice) the despotic feature that neoliberalism attributes to the general will. In other words, the neoliberal political order mirrors the despotic nature that neoliberals attribute to the meaningless or mystical general will (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962 ).

The neoliberal ultimatum not only protects those citizens who apparently do not need the state’s intervention but also ensures that the law only protects their interests (which constitutes the privatization of legal protection). Neoliberal theorists understand public rules as means of protection, as if private interests were not highly dependent on law. Indeed, Nozick’s distinction between ‘public’, “paternalistically regulated” citizens (Nozick, 1974 , p. 14) and free citizens, who dispense with state intervention, obscures the existence of private, “paternalistically regulated” citizens. These citizens are protected by the reparations of neoliberal “public” law. In addition, however, rather than accepting the collective protective scope of the law, they demand a monopoly on it. Although neoliberalism casts them as utterly independent actors—lone Robinson Crusoes—they are highly dependent not only on the contributions of others for their well-being but also on the positive law. This shows that unless there is a common law to prevent others from interfering with one’s liberty and to provide certain means, negative liberty is an empty claim.

Insofar as the protective function of the government and the positive law include both legislative and coercive power, instead of coercing others for one’s own sake, neoliberal positive liberty allows private individuals to impose, without consent, public restrictions for the sake of their private interests. Neoliberal positive liberty thus leads to the establishment of legal and political inequality: some command without consent, i.e., without restriction, while others obey without consent, i.e., without liberty. Ultimately, making use of the benefits of negative liberty depends on the (political) attribution to individuals of certain legal and political statuses, under which they can make use of their liberty.

Moreover, the positive liberty that underlies the spontaneous order not only deprives certain citizens of their share of the general well-being but also leaves no room to claim a right against that deprivation. Besides protecting negative liberty in the maximization of individuals’ well-being, this order does not provide any concrete rights. Hayek explicitly says that it “is meaningless to speak of a right in the sense of a claim on the spontaneous order” (Hayek, 1960 , p. 102, II). Indeed, although framed by abstract rules, rights are always obtained under particular circumstances, i.e., in terms of differences between “individuals”, for example natural and social talents (Hayek, 1976 ; Nozick, 1974 ). Despite the interdependence of all individuals, individuals always remain separate unities and are thus deprived of the right to claim a common share of the fruits of their relationships—as if belonging to a common body entailed personal indifference and the abandonment of private interests. Accordingly, if the Great Society, which replaces the will of the people, does not provide rights to citizens, and if those citizens do not obtain them from their private interactions, it is meaningless to claim such a right or to complain that such a right has been denied them. There is nothing to claim or to complain about . In other words, where there are no rights, there can be no deprivation of rights.

Even if individuals wish to complain about the deprivation of their rights, the neoliberal state—which considers such rights imaginary, fictitious, mystical—does not contain institutions that can address such complaints. Under the neoliberal state, both the people and public institutions vanish into thin air. As Beck stresses with regard to neoliberal globalization, neoliberalism is the power of Nobody (Beck 2002 ). Alluding to Odysseus’s clever escape from the cyclops Polyphemus in the Odyssey (Homer, 1996 , 9, pp. 414–455), Beck suggests that the Nobody created under neoliberalism does not establish, protect or enforce equal individual rights. Even though Nozick (unlike Hayek) accepts the existence of natural rights and liberties, his rejection of a public person and public restrictions shows that the assumption of natural rights does not guarantee their enjoyment. In other words, when the will of the people becomes a mirage, individuals’ natural rights are also rendered illusory, as the neoliberal spontaneous society illustrates. Accordingly, instead of allowing for the “creat(ion of) conditions likely to improve the chances of all in the pursuit of their aims” (Hayek, 1976 , p. 2), private restrictions on liberty deprive certain citizens of the chance to pursue their aims (Brown, 2015 ; Gill, 1998 ; Hall, 2011 ; Klein, 2007 ; Overbeek, 1993 ; Stiglitz, 2013 , 2016 ). Instead of protecting individual liberty, the rejection of the “fairy tale” of the people allows for the emergence of two familiar political statuses, originally deployed in neoliberal political society: those who live under free self-serfdom on the one hand and the invisible and voiceless on the other.

Free self-serfdom and voiceless persons

A free serf is someone who, although deprived of political protection—whether this is understood as it was in the medieval era (Bloch, 1961 ), which made a distinction between the protector and the protected, or as it was understood in the liberal tradition (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)), in which each person is simultaneously protector and protected—can still satisfy their bodily needs through selling themselves or their labor. Neoliberal private restrictions on liberty cannot override the unrestricted autocratic deliberation of those who, in the absence of public law, can freely renounce their liberty in situations of extreme need, thus voluntarily enslaving themselves. The rejection of a public limit to individual liberty, along with the overlapping of public law and private interests, allows for unrestricted orders and, correlatively, for obedience without liberty (on work precariousness see Gill and Pratt, 2008 ; on work conditions in sweat shops, see Bales 1999 ). Consequently, neoliberal political theory and practice allow for the creation of a situation in which some citizens (serfs) only obey while others (lords) only command.

One may argue that despite social and economic differences, along with their non-negligible impact on individual liberty (Marx 2000 ; Rawls, 1971 ), neoliberalism’s Great or Open Society is not compatible with serfdom. Regardless of the lack of clear political criteria for defining an individual’s legal and political status (Bloch, 1961 ), human relationships have evolved under conditions of legal and political inequality (for example the superior free person vs. the inferior serf or vassal). This legal and political inequality is at work, for example, in systems where lords offer protection in exchange for total obedience (on the part of serfs and vassals) (Bloch, 1961 ). From the perspective of neoliberal theory, we are all equal: neoliberal society does not contain legal or political inequality and does not divide citizens into those who are superior and those who are inferior. It also does not include “protective relationships” or juridical and political obligations. To be at the disposal of someone else who can do whatever they please and to whom one owes unrestricted obedience entails neither that one has an inferior legal status nor that the political relationship at stake is one of a superior to an inferior. Persons have the same legal constitutional status (they all are seen as equally free), and all are equally entitled to pursue their private interests. Even if people sell themselves, this concerns the private restriction of liberty from the perspective of neoliberalism and does not conflict with the conditions required for the proper functioning of the spontaneous order, i.e., with individuals’ private liberty. Still, the private scope of individuals’ mutual service—the forbidding of serving others for the sake of those others’ well-being —does not prevent a person’s serving another as a means of ensuring their own private well-being, in which case it would not be appropriate to understand their relationship in terms of servant and seignior.

Besides entailing what is known in political philosophy as the liberty of slaves, i.e., the liberty of choosing either to comply with the orders of the master or to be beaten to death, the privatization of the well-being that results from individuals’ cooperation is based on the coercive restriction of liberty, under which some obey without liberty and others command without restriction. Thus, even if in neoliberal spontaneous societies people are not assigned explicitly different political statuses, which entail different political rights and duties, neoliberal political society does not prevent people from becoming servile or, correlatively, from becoming despotic. This fact reveals the extent to which neoliberalism entails a dangerous process of what some authors have called refeudalization (Supiot, 2013 ; Szalai, 2017 ), full analysis of which deserves examination of its own.

Nevertheless, when obeying without liberty , if citizens fail to acquire their rights they risk becoming something less than a free serf, i.e., a free excluded citizen. A free excluded citizen is a citizen who lives in a free society without having the personal, social or institutional resources to make use of their own liberty . When the neoliberal spontaneous order does not provide any concrete rights, and when another’s wellbeing has no bearing on one’s own, one is unrestrictedly free to pursue one’s own wellbeing even to the detriment of others unilaterally (the fully alienated person can be thrown away). In this case, voiceless and invisible citizens can only enjoy purely negative liberty, in the absence of the personal, social and institutional resources with which they might otherwise achieve well-being. Neoliberalism also entails the continuous risk of passing from servile (or docile) citizenship into lawless personhood. As such, individuals’ social existence is excluded from the neoliberal subjectivation procedure itself (in which human beings make themselves and are made subjects, Foucault, 2008 ).

Neoliberalism does not reduce to fostering the entrenchment of political inequality: the division of citizens into those who obey and those who command. It also does not merely imply a situation in which some are protected by the state while others are not, where private interests have a monopoly on legal protection and rights while others are denied political protection and only have duties (on work precariousness see Gill and Pratt, 2008 ). Similarly, it does not exclusively entail political arbitrariness; the private reduction of the “public” law allows for the unilateral institution of the rules (or their revocation). Ultimately, neoliberalism risks leading to the total exclusion of some citizens under the veil of full liberty . The vanishing of the will of the people results in the invisibility of certain kinds of people, who are then forced to live in the spontaneous society as if they were stateless or lawless persons.

It is true that under the distinction between neoliberal theoretical premises and neo-liberal practice individuals’ lack of protection does not correspond to these extreme cases. There is a distinction between neoliberal theoretical premises and neoliberal governmental laws within the many versions of the welfare state, for example neoliberalism’s reshaping of previous (welfare) state policies along neoliberal lines (Kus, 2006 ). Neoliberalism has retained some of the elements of that state (such as the protection of the rights of the most vulnerable), although these elements have been reshaped by the market approach to social welfare (Hartman, 2005 ; MacLeavy, 2016 ). On this basis, neoliberal officials have assigned public goods and services to private market providers, redesigning social programs to address the needs of neoliberal labor markets rather than personal wellbeing and establishing partnerships between the state and the private sector (Brodie, 2007 ).

Moreover, some argue that neoliberalism’s market approach to social welfare was an attempt to overcome certain economic and social difficulties of the welfare state. For example, economic internationalization has affected the competitive viability of the welfare state (Boyer and Drache, 1996 ; Rhodes, 1996 ). Also, the expansion of the state weakened intermediate groups and jeopardized individual liberties, subjecting citizens to increasing bureaucratic controls (Alber, 1988 ). We shall not dwell on a full analysis of these developments. The neoliberal market approach is, however, incompatible with the very idea of a welfare state. Indeed, despite the differences between the socialist, conservative and liberal versions of that state (Esping-Andersen, 1990 ), welfare states protect social rights, such as the right to education and health, and therefore provide social policies to enforce them (Marshall, 1950 ; Esping-Andersen, 1990 ), such that “[t]he provided service, not the purchased service, becomes the norm of the social welfare” (Marshall, 1950 , p. 309). Moreover, the functioning of the welfare state requires the contribution of fellow citizens (Marshall, 1950 ; Esping-Andersen, 1990 ). By contrast, the market approach rejects in principle all social rights, such as the right to education and health, and requires that individual welfare be an exclusively private enterprise (Brodie, 2007 ; MacLeavy, 2016 ). Instead of being provided, such services ought to be purchased (Brodie, 2007 ; MacLeavy, 2016 ).

Moreover, if the economic market only identifies solvable needs, and if individuals cannot signal their lack of resources, the neoliberal welfare state cannot prevent individuals who have been deprived of their rights from becoming invisible, along with the resulting institutionalized insecurity (Brodie, 2007 ), intensified poverty and inequality, and diminishing of security of employment and income for many wage earners (Clayton and Pontusson, 1998 ; Stiglitz, 2013 ). If the spontaneous society and its governments do not provide any rights, and if individuals do not acquire them in the economic market, there is no reason to claim such rights (including social rights). In this case, neoliberal social welfare reduces to charity (Clayton and Pontusson, 1998 ; Raddon, 2008 ; Mendes, 2003 ). Under this reduction, neoliberal theory fosters individuals’ dependence on the private goodwill of citizens who, after legislating with their own interests in mind, and after denying others the right to enjoy the fruits of their own contributions, then establish government spending as a “free lunch” of sorts (all the while paradoxically arguing that “government spending is no free lunch” (Barro, 2009 ); see Nozick’s, ( 1974 ) defense of charity)). The neoliberal conception of welfare also shows how neoliberal theory and practice do not prevent the subordination of certain individuals to non-consensual external mastery.

Neoliberalism is equally committed to state retrenchment or permanent austerity (Whiteside, 2016 ). By requiring fiscal consolidation, cuts to social security, the privatization of public property, the liberalization of collective bargaining, and the shrinking of pensions (Barro, 2009 ), austerity not only undermines all attempts to establish social security but also challenges the liberal and democratic basis of society. First, neoliberal austerity neglects people’s well-being. A Portuguese neo-liberal politician declared in 2013 that even if under austerity measures the well-being of the people had worsened, the country was better off Footnote 1 . The fact that neo-liberal policies have improved the state market is more relevant than the fact that the Portuguese people have been neglected and severely harmed (Legido-Quigley et al. 2016 ).

Second, neoliberalism excludes in principle the will of the people, i.e., it obliges citizens to obey private laws to which they have not consented. Consequently, it excludes citizens’ rejection of its harmful effects, such as poverty and inequality, and rejects all appeals to alternative policies. Following the political referendum of 2015, for example, where the people voted against neoliberal politics of austerity Footnote 2 , the Greek government nonetheless imposed a third harsh and austere economic program Footnote 3 .

Accordingly, neoliberal political principles, embedded in austerity policies, cannot prevent certain citizens from becoming invisible and voiceless citizens, i.e., Nobodies . As voiceless citizens, their preferences can only be registered through illiberal and antidemocratic channels, such as populism. Only following the election of US President Trump did the deteriorating life conditions of American citizens living in the rust belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin become widely known (Walley, 2017 ). Treated as nothing, and having becoming Nobodies, these citizens face the oppressive and violent institutional neoliberal Nobody, with its no less violent and oppressive political body.

The rise of populism

There is a lack of consensus on the definition of populism (Collier, 2001 ). It can, however, be described as an organizational or a strategic approach (Weyland, 2001 ) and ideology (Freeden, 2016 ; MacRae, 1969 ; Mudde, 2013 ; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013 ). The organizational perspective of populism stresses the importance of the personal leader, who bases his or her power on direct, unmediated, and institutionalized relationships with unorganized followers (Weyland, 2001 ). In turn, as an ideology, i.e., a set of beliefs, values, attitudes, and ideas, populism combines (not always coherently and clearly) political, economic, social, moral, and cultural features with several characteristics that appear together, such as emphasis on the leader’s charisma: “the populist can demand the highest principles in the behavior, moral and political, of others while being absolved him or herself from such standards” (MacRae, 1969 , p. 158). Beyond these features, however, and despite the fact that the concept of the “pure” people and the corrupted elite can be framed in different ways (Canovan, 1999 ), the pure and homogenous people and the corrupt and homogenous elites are core concepts that underlie populist ideology (Mudde, 2004 ).

Since neo-liberal officials do not consider citizens’ and peoples’ political claims and are not entitled to address the political, economic, and social consequences of their policies, the perception that neo-liberal politicians are corrupt elites has been on the increase (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013 ). This has helped populist leaders to replace neo-liberal politicians, allowing populism to fill the emptiness that has resulted from the failure of those in power to address the people’s claims.

Although the relationship between neoliberalism and populism deserves its own examination, the exclusion of the people, along with the right to reciprocal coercion, is a point of tacit agreement between neoliberalism and anti-liberal, anti-democratic political forces (Weyland, 1999 ). Populist leaders have employed modern, rational models of economic liberalism—such as fiscal consolidation, cuts to social security, the privatization of public property, the liberalization of collective bargaining, and the shrinking of pensions to undermine intermediary associations, entrenched bureaucrats and rival politicians who seek to restrict their personal latitude, to attack influential interest groups, politicians, and bureaucrats, and to combat the serious crises in Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s (Weyland, 1999 ). In turn, neoliberal experts use populist attacks on special interests to combat state interventionism and view the rise of new political forces, including populists, as crucial for determined market reform (Weyland, 1999 ). We therefore ought to be careful not to criticize neoliberal authoritarianism while neglecting the hidden powers that secretly support neoliberalism’s disdain for the people, such as mafias (Schneider and Schneider, 2007 ). Indeed, those who do so may take pleasure in seeing the blame for authoritarianism fall exclusively on the shoulders of neoliberal theory and practice, even though they too endorse a form of governance and the administration of the state apparatus that does away with the people.

When individuals’ relationships evolve in the absence of the people and of laws to protect against despotic and abusive power, an increase in illiberal and antidemocratic forms of resistance to neoliberal policies can only be expected (Gill, 1995 ; Hickel, 2016 ). As Locke, ( 1679 (1960): II, p. 225) put clearly:

Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient Laws, and all the slip s of human frailty will be born by the People, without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of Abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the People, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going; ’tis not to be wonder’d, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands, which may secure to them the ends for which Government was at first erected.

If we accept that (a) impoverishment and inequality are on the increase; (b) governments are refusing to provide political remedies for this impoverishment; (c) and citizens’ political choices are being neglected in a long series of abuses, it is not surprising that voiceless citizens may try to put the ruling power into illiberal hands that will achieve the purpose for which government was first established: securing the common public good. Under the neoliberal transformation of private rules into public rules, citizens are witnessing a continuous disregard for their collective well-being (see the relationship between the election of Donald Trump and the deteriorating life conditions of American citizens living in the rust belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; Walley, 2017 ).

Instead of welcoming populist reactions, however, we should be clear that the anti-liberal and antidemocratic hijacking of the citizens’ revolt against neoliberalism in no way respects the need for public rules. A call for the establishment and protection of public law is a call for personal and institutional liberal and democratic sovereignty , which differs fundamentally from populism and the neoliberal model of sovereignty (Dean, 2015 ; Foucault, 2008 ). This claim also rejects the political (and nightmarish) choice between neoliberalism and populism. Indeed, even if the relationship between liberal democracy and populism deserves investigation of its own, liberal and democratic sovereignty does away with the distinction between the pure and homogenous people against corrupt and homogenous elites. It also rejects the idea of the personal and benevolent leader/protector, who bases their power on direct, unmediated, and institutionalized relationships with unorganized followers.

First, although the distinction between corrupt elites and the pure people rightly points to the problem of the legitimacy of the rulers’ power, the people is not a homogeneous or pure body, whatever the criterion of belonging (ethical, ethnic, racial, economic). Far from referring to an undifferentiated and homogeneous corpus , the people is a heterogeneous political body, which includes gender, racial, and economic differences (along with disagreement about personal and collective ends), and which ultimately entails non-alienable individual rights and duties (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977); Sieyes, 1789 (1989)).

Second, the solution to this gap is not its elimination through the immediate relationship between the leader and the pure, homogeneous people. In the liberal political tradition, there is no immediate political power. Rawls’s, ( 1993 ) political liberalism, for example, points to the gap between the political principles of society (e.g., the principles of justice), which are embedded in its basic political institutions (e.g., constitutions) and in “executive” institutions (parliaments, courts, governments), and the individuals in everyday life. Accordingly, the sovereignty of the people ultimately means that, whether at the political, local, national, international, or global level, citizens’ relationships are always mediated by law embedded in their public institutions (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977); Rawls, 1993 ).

Even if there are many points of ideological disagreement concerning the concept of the people, sparked mainly by its use by controversial figures from the standpoint of liberalism, such as Rousseau’s concept of the general will, in Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophy the sovereignty of the people does not mean that the people can pursue its immediate and unbridled wishes. A charter of rights or constitutional principles always binds the will of the people (Locke, 1679 (1960); Kant, 1793 (1977)). In the absence of such restrictions, the people can itself become a despot, a danger which has been acknowledged since at least the time of Aristotle, ( 2002 ; see also Cicero 1999 ; Locke, 1679 (1960); Rawls, 1971 , 1993 ).

Third, in Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies, the protective role of the people aims to ensure a political society of free and equal persons, not a society of minor and inferior subjects who need benevolent protectors, such as populist leaders (see Locke’s claim concerning the constitutional protection of individuals’ political rights (Locke, 1679 (1960)) and Kant’s rejection of paternalistic and despotic political power (1793 (1977)).

Liberal theory challenges the underlying neoliberal and populist Manichean opposition between personal interests and the general will of the people (“either there is a general will or individual liberty is repressed”, “if there is individual liberty, the general will is excluded”). If, when protecting the homogenous people against corrupt elites, populists endorse the first alternative, and if the neoliberal exclusion of the people corresponds to the second, both approaches remain blind to the political responsibility of free persons. Ultimately, whether by imposing on others the unrestrictedly and selfish pursuit of well-being or by appealing to the unlimited will of the people, both undermine individuals’ political freedom.

For these reasons, personal and institutional liberal and democratic sovereignty is more than a childish claim to state protection against political irresponsibility and blindness to public contributions to individual private well-being. It is a claim to one’s own political responsibility, for oneself and others, as this claim is clearly formulated in Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies.

The social safety net

Although Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies do not require individuals under public law to positively foster others’ social, economic and cultural well-being, their perspectives on the public challenge indifference towards the increasing poverty and inequality that we are currently witnessing under neoliberalism (Greer, 2014 ; Stiglitz, 2013 ). They also speak against the state authoritarianism that neoliberalism engenders (Brown, 2015 ; Bruff, 2014 ; Kreuder–Sonnen and Zangl, 2015 ; Orphanides, 2014 ; Schmidt and Thatcher, 2014 ). Of course, we may disagree on the extent of the success or failure of Locke’s and Kant’s theoretical political constructions of a political personality, understood in analogy with a single body. Some criticize the illiberal nature of Kant’s general will (for example the representatives’ betrayal of the people’s interest in the liberal social contract; Badiou, 2016 ). Nevertheless, these weaknesses challenge neither individual liberty, nor the people, nor the inter-protective role of the people and public law. Indeed, they remind us of the political meaning of ‘the body politic’.

Despite their strong commitment to the protective role of the people, along with their awareness of our political responsibility for the fairness of the public rules that affect us all , Locke and Kant do not fully explain the necessity of the notion of the people when it comes to producing a social safety net created by the will of the sovereign people. They also do not consider democratic procedures for arriving at collective support for a social safety net. With the differences between ancient and modern democracies acknowledged (Bobbio, 1988 ), the fact that Locke and Kant endorse democracy’s core feature, the existence of a people (the entire body of citizens) with a right to make collective decisions (Bobbio, 1988 ), does not make them democrats, at least in our modern sense (Bobbio, 1988 ).

Following our premises, and acknowledging the various ways in which globalization impacts states and people, democratic governments should establish democratic procedures at the national and international level to secure collective support for the political and social safety net. These include public laws based on the will of the people that provide each person with a unique set of liberties with regard to the use of material goods which impose on each a unique set of restrictions. These liberties and restrictions will ensure that individuals have an equal coercive power to prevent their becoming servile persons and, correlatively, to prevent any one of them from becoming a despotic lord. They also require the assumption of the cooperative nature of individual well-being, and therefore the pursuit of social justice with regards to the fruits of that cooperation. The political translation of the common right to the results of social cooperation through public policies that protect social rights, such as the right to education and health, is also desirable. This requires the “direct or indirect participation of citizens, and the greatest possible number of citizens, in the formation of laws” (Bobbio, 1988 , p. 38). Again, it is necessary to recast the political principle of provided (not purchased) services as a norm of public and social welfare. Finally, it requires awareness of the fact that in the absence of a political body to protect and enforce individual liberties, individuals will lack the personal, social and institutional resources to make use of their own liberty .

We have shown that neoliberalism’s rejection of the existence of the people seriously harms individual private liberty and does not prevent the transformation of the majority of free individuals into servile persons. More specifically, we have shown that forbidding the public restriction of liberty (which is inherent in the concept of the people) while exclusively defending private restrictions of liberty (a) deprives the majority of citizens of the equal right of coercion, and therefore of equal liberty, and (b) promotes the rise of different political statuses, a division between those who obey and those who command. We have also shown that neoliberalism lacks the resources to prevent the total alienation of liberty.

In comparing neoliberalism to Locke and Kant’s political philosophies, we have shown how the protective role of the people is compatible with individual liberty. Since it requires an equal right of coercion, it allows for the protection of individual liberty. We have also shown that this is not an exclusively collective task. It also depends on each citizen. In Locke’s and Kant’s political philosophies, the protective role of the people aims to ensure that political society is free and equal, not a society of minor and inferior subjects who need benevolent protectors (Locke, 1679 (1960)); Kant, ( 1793 (1977)). We concluded that, against neoliberalism’s faith in the powers of the spontaneous order, individual political autonomy depends on the public safeguarding of liberties. We also pointed out that unless there is a political turn toward the acknowledgement of the people or peoples, along with recognition of the significance of their political deliberation, neo-liberalism cannot be separated from illiberal and antidemocratic political choices. Similarly, if individuals’ relationships evolve beyond the existence of the people and lack laws to protect against despotic and abusive power, we cannot prevent the development of slavish and servile relationships among citizens. The fact that these relationships remain politically forbidden in neoliberal states, for example in the European Union, only reveals that neoliberalism’s dismantling of liberal and democratic political institutions has not fully succeeded. In the absence of the people, human rights depend exclusively on individuals’ interests; the spontaneous order thus cannot prevent neoliberalism from descending into slavery and serfdom, i.e., self-slavery and self-serfdom.

Future research should ascertain how, in the aftermath of neoliberalism’s devastating social and political effects on public cohesion, it might be possible to reconstitute a sense of political belonging (Habermas, 2008 ) and the sovereignty of the people (Pyke, 2001 ) under globalization.

Future research should also continue to evaluate the dangerous process of what many are calling refeudalization under neoliberalism (Supiot, 2013 ; Szalai, 2017 ). It is worth comparing the feudal alienation of political liberty, for example the different perspectives on vassalage (Bloch, 1961 ), with contemporary forms of inferior political status.

Finally, future research could evaluate how, as a reaction to the disenchantment with the rise of bureaucracy identified by Weber, ( 1978 ), neoliberalism might express a kind of re-enchantment with the exclusively individual rational actor, who claims a non-alienable space of liberty against the bureaucratic “iron cage”.

Data availability

All data analyzed is included in the paper.

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Queiroz, R. Individual liberty and the importance of the concept of the people. Palgrave Commun 4 , 99 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0151-3

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A Brief History of Liberty

David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan, A Brief History of Liberty , Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 267pp., $29.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781405170796.

Reviewed by Michael Clifford, Mississippi State University

Nevertheless, that is precisely (with dutiful apologies and caveats, of course) what the authors, David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan, attempt to accomplish in A Brief History of Liberty. One of Wiley-Blackwell’s A Brief History of … series, this book is a set of reflections on liberty — understood as "personal freedom’ — generated, at least in part, at the University of Arizona Center for Philosophy of Freedom, although it is not entirely clear for whom this book is written or at what level of academic engagement. It consists of an introduction and six chapters, each of which begins with a “thesis” and concludes with discussion questions, except for Chapter 1, on the “pre-history” of liberty, which oddly lacks the discussion questions. These questions are thoughtful and thought-provoking.

The Introduction begins with the thesis: There are several forms of liberty. Whether they are conflicting or complementary is a matter of historical circumstance.

The authors claim that this is "a history of liberty, not a history of theorizing about liberty," (1) but the distinction is not immediately clear or adequately exposited. In fact, any view of what liberty really is presupposes a theoretical model about how to interpret any given state of political affairs, which is itself controversial and problematic. The introduction then proceeds to attempt to “clarify” the matter by considering a number of (unapologetically Western, mostly traditional liberal) theories of liberty, ranging from Hobbes to Pettit, focusing on the distinction between negative and positive freedom. This overly schematic analysis ultimately concludes with the assertion that negative and positive freedoms are not really at odds with one another, and in fact are mutually supportive. The authors attempt to sidestep the theoretical conflict, however, by stating, "This book’s overall purpose is to tell a story of liberty, and to tell it briefly, not to argue for liberty or for any particular way of defining the term ‘liberty.’" (18)

This conceit in many ways structures the entire book. In point of fact, however, the authors appeal to a rather narrow, Western ethnocentric, even Whiggish definition of liberty: “We concentrate on liberty in its individual forms,” (5), as opposed, for example, to a quasi-Marxist communal idea of freedom, wherein “real” liberty is largely a history of generating "more real choice" for the individual, through the rule of law and economic “progress,” both of which “free” the individual from the Hobbesian state of nature and its attendant inconveniences.

Chapter One ,“A Prehistory of Liberty: Forty Thousand Years Ago,” begins with the thesis: The greatest threat to and best hope for a better life, in the long run, comes from other human beings. Historically, trade has been a great liberator. (30) Appealing to an almost cartoonish anthropological comparison of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens , the authors assert that the former suffered extinction because they lacked the latter’s “evolving propensity to truck and barter.” (31) From this they extrapolate a conclusion that is a central theme of the book: that liberty depends on commerce! The Neanderthals died out because “they were not entrepreneurs,” say the authors, whereas the precursors to modern man, these prehistoric Donald Trumps, flourished precisely because they engaged in trade with other humans. This in turn facilitated the development of speech and language, and eventually the sort of “rudimentary rule of law” necessary to govern their transactions, which would lay the groundwork for the sort of constitutional rights upon which our liberty is based and preserved.

There are at least two major problems with this analysis, as I see it. First, the authors provide no real baseline to what it is to be unfree . They seem to assume some Hobbesian state of existence wherein the lack of liberty is identified with the difficulties attending basic survival, difficulties which are relieved through commerce. But, the claim in the thesis that trade has been a “great liberator” is easily undermined by the observation that it has been a great enslaver as well, that the so-called liberties of capitalist regimes are precisely those that serve its perpetuation (Marxist concerns in this vein are cursorily dismissed by the authors; post-structuralist analyses of capitalist exploitation and disenfranchisement, such as Jameson, Deleuze, Baudrillard, Irigaray, and others are not even considered). The authors simply take it as a given that prehistorical peoples were unfree and that true liberty is achieved through economic progress. Without a more adequate baseline definition of freedom/lack of freedom, these assertions are unpersuasive. Moreover, and this leads to the second, related problem, why should we assume an identity or even causal correlation between liberty and commerce? Many non-Western perspectives see the two as largely antithetical to each other. In Ancient Futures , Norberg-Hodge observes,

I used to assume that the direction of ‘progress’ was somehow inevitable, not to be questioned… . I do not anymore. Community and a close relationship with the land can enrich human life beyond all comparison with material wealth or technological sophistication.

I mention this counter-view not in advocacy, but to suggest that both views are naïve if they assume that something as complex, ephemeral, and institutionally-contingent as liberty can be achieved under either scenario. In fact, it is not clear what liberty even means in either context.

In any event, this Whiggish and uncritical identification of liberty with economic progress continues in chapter two on “The Rule of Law: AD 1075.” The thesis for this chapter is, The evolution of the rule of law provided the essential foundation for the explosive economic progress of recent centuries that liberated the West from extreme poverty. This chapter traces the rise of liberty from feudalism to the Magna Carta, ascribing it to the usurping of capricious ecclesiastical and monarchical governance by various constitutional constraints underpinning the rule of law. Chapter 3 does something similar with regard to religious freedom. The discussions are persuasive, given the point of view, and, although schematic, a student can learn much from it. I found the discussion of the under-appreciated Grotius to be particularly informative.

Chapter 4, “Freedom of Commerce: 1776,” begins with a thesis which states, in part, Freedom of commerce under the rule of law empowers people to cooperate on a massive scale, liberating each other from poverty. The chapter begins with an anecdote about Nixon showing a model of a typical American home to Krushchev in 1959. Krushchev was incredulous. Citing the episode is a transparent attempt by the authors to suggest that American prosperity is the real measure both of freedom and, interchangeably, capitalist superiority over the Soviet model. The chapter then goes on to cite a vast range of statistical evidence on economic expansion since 1900, on farming and food production, steel manufacturing and the rise of factories, advances in medicine, automobiles, skyscrapers, all of the modern innovations and conveniences of so-called “friendly societies” built upon a market economy. (125) At one point the authors even claim that “the market produces” Mozart and Beethoven (along with, they grudgingly admit, Britney Spears)! In short, free trade is the engine behind our personal freedoms and the culture in which it thrives. The rule of law allows these freedoms to be exercised in a productive manner. Property rights aren’t simply inalienable entitlements, but the grease for capitalist innovation.

There are so many things wrong with this chapter that I don’t know where to start. With the simple-minded equation of rising wages to quality of life? With the casual dismissal of the Third-World worker and resource exploitation that helps to support First-World standards of living? The fact that in so-called prosperous societies like ours, the poor suffer more from obesity and early-onset diabetes than from malnutrition or starvation? The authors are so sanguine about the connection between personal freedom and commercial prosperity that they seem to be advocating a kind of economic neo-imperialism. They would do well to read a recent study by Anand Giridharadas on the effects of exporting the Western market model. When the first McDonalds restaurants appeared in India, customers literally fought with each other to place orders. Eventually, they were persuaded to form lines. However, line-jumping was so prevalent that customers were forced to press their bodies tightly against each other. Giridharadas extrapolates from that experience to cast serious doubts upon the alleged connection between freedom and so-called economic progress. To generalize, following the Hobbesian model, we move from a state of nature — Giridharadas refers to it as a “scrum” — to the rule of law that governs how we interact with each other. The rule of law turns the scrum into formal lines, a metaphor for equality of opportunity; everyone has to wait their turn. But a market economy creates market exemptions, i.e., those who have the resources to pay to get ahead of / out of the line. The line represents equality, presumably, but does it represent true liberty or merely freedom from the scrum? Freedom to queue up, to follow orders for the sake of order, to adopt a passive posture of submission to a market regime that determines your desires, your needs, your very identity. And what kind of freedom is that when measured against those “free” to escape the lines altogether? The promise of the capitalist axiom defended by the authors is that we all, potentially, at least, can achieve the market exemption. But the logic of that axiom suggests otherwise, and even if it were possible, would that not push us toward a new form of scrum, as we have seen on Wall Street recently and in the “Wild West” of Russian capitalism?

The thesis for Chapter 5, “Civil Liberty: 1954,” is: The security of civil rights, and ultimately liberal society within the rule of law, depend both on a culture of freedom and individualism, and on individual heroic catalysts. Here the “cult of the individual” that animates the entire book becomes explicit. This chapter is dedicated to the heroic exploits of such champions of freedom as Thomas Jefferson, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, and, of course, Rosa Parks, with a passing wave at feminists and gay rights advocates. Here again the discussion appeals to an uncritical notion of autonomous individuality, a Cartesian subject who gradually, with heroic perseverance, achieves his or her freedom. There is no acknowledgement, or even apparent awareness, of the fact that scholars such as Foucault have long argued that the “individual” is not a metaphysical given, but a historically-contingent construct, whose emergence coincides with the idea of liberty and rights, in service of a power regime to which its very existence is bound.

The final chapter, “Psychological Freedom, the Last Frontier: 1963,” continues this characterization of personal freedom as an “achievement”: “Freedom of the will is not an on/off switch, something you have or not. Instead, real-world freedom of the will is an on-going achievement” (212).

Here, the authors turn inward; the “shackles” that the individual must overcome to achieve freedom are psychological, such as social pressure (citing the well-worn Milgram electric-shock experiments), self-deception, confabulation, discontent (the grass is always greener syndrome), and even the “dearth of shackles” (paralysis caused by having too much choice). (228) The underlying metaphysical questions never get sorted out, so it is unclear exactly what is being shackled. Is it the self-deluded Cartesian subject impeded by her own will, or is it the “achievement” of freedom that is (or at least could be) the self? In any event, the entire chapter is tangential at best, and arguably rests on an equivocation of the word “freedom.” For my money, it seems out of place in a study of political liberty.

Concept of Individual Liberty in Society Expository Essay

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Introduction

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Liberty argued moral and partisan code that seeks to discover the form in which human beings are able to govern themselves. Liberty is how we visualize the roles and tasks of the distinct in society in connection to the idea of free will. Individual liberty entails the freedom of a person from outside obligation (Mill, 1).

People ought to act in agreement with their own free will. In the administration, perspective, Government has a duty to ensure distinct liberty whereas at the same time improving the condition of those with least benefit.

Liberty proclaims that freedom established in a person’s aptitude to trial agency has resulted from the right to develop funds to move out their own will. John S. Mill was the first to know the diversities among liberty as the choice to act, and liberty as the lack of force (Mill, 1).

Why is an individual liberty of interest?

Individual liberty is an admirable thing because it delivers protection from the ruling class or political rules. Social liberty limits ruler’s authority, so that they would not be capable to use the influence on their own desires and make verdicts which could be detrimental to society.

People should have the right to air their own opinion in the government’s resolutions (Mill, 1). Mill said that social liberty was “the nature and restrictions of the supremacy which can be rightfully used by humanity over the distinct”.

The attempt can be done in two ways: by gaining credit of certain political rights and also by the formation of a structure of legitimate checks (Mill, 1). Mill’s on liberty discourse the nature and restrictions of the power that can be lawfully applied by the society over the distinct.

Individual is coherent enough to make choices about their moral being and select any belief they want. Government should restrict when it is openhanded guard to the society. The power can be lawfully applied over a member of enlightened community, in contradiction to his wish, in the imperative to prevent harm to other people (Mill, 1).

The primary challenge of government in all ages has been the understanding of distinct and social interest. The protection beside popular administration, is as crucial as a safeguard against political dictatorship. The people may wish to harass a part of their population, and protection must be taken against any other abuse of power (Mill, 1).

The only drive, for which authority can be fairly applied over any member of enlightened community, is to avert harm to others, by either his action or indecision. The only share of the behavior of any person is the one which worries others.

The only freedom concern is the one which pursuits its own right in societies as long as we do not rob others. The peculiar wicked of quieting the expression of view is to rob the whole human race, present and future (Mill, 1). Mill’s prominence on human feeling and other human characters are vital improvement and response in contradiction to the unemotional.

What are principal arguments, which favor maximizing liberty?

Argument in favor of liberty states that persons can make superior decisions alone, and there is a risk of letting society agree with the finest way for people to overshadow any benefits that such meddling may incur (Mill, 1). Mill says the tussle for distinct liberty can be rewarded against dictatorial governments.

This battle can be won with the formation of democracy in which the administration was accountable to the people. The government could not be trusted with authority, as it was the citizen who uttered the use of such power. This belief evidenced to be untrue.

In a democratic society, the people with power are the popular, and the freedom of the rest of people still not protected against “the dictatorship of the popular”, and against the administrative authority, which is submissive to “modern popular”; opinion. Individual liberty in such a condition can be endangered both by cruel rules, and use of extra-legal ways to force the prevalent views (Mill, 1).

Mill’s put “onward”, his “one truly basic principle” to cure this problem. This principle states that the sole finales for which mankind are defensible, discretely or together, in meddling with the liberty of action of any of their people, is self-protection.

The only reason for which authority can be correctly used over many in an enlightened community is not to cause harm to other people. His own right is not an adequate warranted. He cannot lawfully be forced to do or abstain because it will make him cheerier, since, in the view of others, it would be the right thing to do.

The only portion of the behavior being amenable to the society, is the one which concerns others (Mill, 1). Mill’s theory reviews the dictatorship as a terrible thing that must be protected against. Mill facts come up with two kinds of actions plan.

The actions which hold damage to people, other than the agent and one” which does not embrace harm” to people. Mill maintains that, the government must legislate regarding actions which are harmless to other people in order to uphold the presence of a civil society.

Mill’s argues that the rights produced by the harm principle grow out of useful. It is useful being standard for the genuine range of the administration (Mill, 1). The Mill’s utilitarianism principal states that activities are right in proportion as they have a habit of approving happiness.

Mill argues that the right can be chastised in usefulness. The reason that an individual has a right to his belongings is “without the safeguard from thieves”, his helpfulness can be reduced when his properties can be stolen (Mill, 1).

Does his use of the distinction between self-and other-regarding acts weaken his case?

The self-regarding argument conducts work like a safety net for the Harm Principle. The Harm Principle still embraces factual information on justification of the reaction caused by the government intrusion.

Mill describes this subject harm as “conduct which neither disrupts any precise responsibility to the public, nor occasions noticeable hurt to any assignable distinct except him”. It does not warrant government intrusion (Mill, 1).

Happiness is what people ought to chase in life; this means that joy and desire should be a final reason for undertaking any task in life (Mill, 1). The insight brought to the forefront of the notion of the matchless human aptitude of reason through the growth of this reason, had the prospective for excellence (Mill, 1).

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty, ed. Elizabeth Rapaport. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. 1978. Print.

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Preserving American Freedom

The evolution of american liberties in fifty documents.

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Liberty, diversity, and slavery: the beginnings of american freedom, freedombox 8328.jpg.

Gold box by Clares LeRoux, 1735, given to Alexander Hamilton, Esq., for his defense of freedom of the press in the trial of Peter Zenger. Historical Society of Pennsylvania Treasures Collection (Collection 978), X-88.

The United States of America has a reputation as a beacon of freedom and diversity from the colonial period of its history. From the beginning, however, Americans' freedoms were tied to a mixture of religious and ethnic affiliations that privileged some inhabitants of North America over others. Although European ideas of liberty set the tone for what was possible, those liberties looked somewhat different in colonial North America, where indigenous and African peoples and cultures also had some influence. The result was greater freedom for some and unprecedented slavery and dispossession for others, making colonial America a society of greater diversity—for better and for worse—than Europe.

America's indigenous traditions of immigration and freedom created the context that made European colonization possible. Since time immemorial, the original inhabitants of the Americas were accustomed to dealing with strangers. They forged alliances and exchange networks, accepted political refugees, and permitted people in need of land and protection to settle in territories that they controlled but could share. No North American society was cut off from the world or completely autonomous. Thus, there was no question about establishing ties with the newcomers arriving from Europe. Initially arriving in small numbers, bearing valuable items to trade, and offering added protection from enemies, these Europeans could, it seemed, strengthen indigenous communities. They were granted rights to use certain stretches of land, much in the way that other Native American peoples in need would have been, especially in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. However, Europeans, and all they brought with them—disease, beliefs regarding private property, ever more immigrants, and, occasionally, ruthless violence—undermined indigenous liberty. When Native Americans contested this, wars erupted—wars they could not win. Those who were able to avoid living as slaves or virtual servants of the Europeans (as some did) were driven from their homes.

Occasionally, a colonial ruler who wanted to preserve peace, like William Penn, would strive to respect the rights of indigenous Americans . However, given that both indigenous and European ideas of liberty rested on access to land and its resources , it was difficult for both Europeans and Native Americans to be free in the same territory at the same time without some sort of neutral arbiter. On the eve of the American Revolution , it seemed as if the British government might be able to play that role. After all, British Americans also looked to the monarchy to guarantee their liberties. American independence ended that option. Thereafter, America's original inhabitants had no one to mediate between them and the people who gained so much from exploiting them. Nor did the Africans brought as slaves to work what had once been their land.

For Africans, as with Native Americans, liberty was inseparable from one's family ties. Kinship (whether actual or fictive) gave an individual the rights and protection necessary to be able to live in freedom. To be captured by enemies and separated from one's kin put a person in tremendous danger. Although some captives could be adopted into other societies and treated more or less as equals, most were reduced to a condition of slavery and had little influence over their destiny. Even before they arrived in North America, Africans brought to the New World as slaves had already been separated from their home communities within Africa. Without kin, they had to forge new relationships with complete strangers—and everyone, including most fellow Africans they encountered, was a stranger—if they were to improve their lot at all. Escape was very difficult, and no community of fugitive slaves lasted for long. Unlike Native Americans, who could find a degree of freedom by moving away from the frontier, Africans had to struggle for what liberty they could from within the British society whose prosperity often depended on their forced labor .

Europeans, particularly those with wealth enough to own land or slaves, possessed the greatest freedoms in early America. The French, Spanish, and Dutch established colonies on land that would eventually become part of the United States. Each brought a distinct approach to liberty. For the French and Spanish, who came from societies where peasants still did most of the work of farming, liberty lay in the avoidance of agricultural labor. Aristocrats, who owned the land and profited from the peasants' toil, stood at the top with the most freedom. Merchants and artisans, who lived and worked in cities free of feudal obligations, came next. In North America, the French fur traders who preferred to spend their lives bartering among Native Americans rather than farming in French Canada echoed this view of freedom. Missionaries attempting to convert those same peoples could be seen as another variant of this tradition of liberty, one unknown to the Protestant British. In every colony, Europeans lived in a range of circumstances, from poor indentured servants to wealthy merchants and plantation owners.

Religion was inseparable from the experience of liberty in the European empires. The French and Spanish empires were officially Roman Catholic and did all within their power to convert or expel those who would not conform. The Dutch, on the other hand, had a different approach, befitting their condition as a small, newly independent, but economically dynamic nation. Though only Reformed Protestants enjoyed the full benefits of Dutch citizenship, they displayed an unusual openness to talented foreign immigrants, like Iberian Jews, while they relegated native-born Roman Catholics to second-class status. It was through their ties to Amsterdam, Dutch Brazil, and the Dutch Caribbean that Jews first staked a claim to live and work in North America .

The English colonies played the definitive role in early America's experience of liberty. As immigrants from Scotland, Germany, France, Scandinavia, and elsewhere became incorporated into the Anglo-American world, they staked a claim to liberty through British culture and institutions. The heritage on which the British Empire rested was complicated, however, encompassing a great deal of political conflict (two revolutions in the seventeenth century alone) and religious diversity. The British colonies in North America were home to the Puritans of New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and the Roman Catholics of Maryland, as well as to Anglicans, members of the Church of England. Living in America offered an excellent chance to claim the rights and liberties of Englishmen, even when it seemed like those liberties were imperiled back in Europe. Indeed, the desire to preserve those liberties from the threat of a new British government prompted colonists to fight for independence in 1776.

Liberty in eighteenth-century Britain was associated with the national representational body of Parliament and the Protestant religion, which had been declared the official faith of England in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, a long cycle of constitutional crises, civil wars, and revolution drove home what by the eighteenth century was a commonplace ethos for many Englishmen: liberty depended on Protestantism, property ownership, and a monarchy mixed with representative government. Conversely, Catholicism and absolute monarchy, as existed in Spain and France, brought tyranny and a loss of liberty.

Liberty thus began in America with a peculiar mix of religious, ethnic, political, economic, and legal associations, all of them based on denying civil, religious, and economic liberty to others. Among the free, European-descended, Protestant colonists who enjoyed the most liberty, only men with property—who were deemed eligible to vote and hold public office—gained the full benefits. The liberties of women, children, and men without property depended on their connections to propertied men, whether as relatives, patrons, or employers. As most British colonists understood history, English liberties had been secured only after a long, hard fight, and these liberties were under constant threat—from Roman Catholics, the French, or the greed and corruption that, they thought, inevitably arose when those in government grew too powerful. Liberty, they believed, was limited. The idea that everyone could enjoy similar liberties did not cross their mind; they worried instead about the possibility that everyone in America could be a slave or servant to someone else.

In many ways, the story of American liberty is about how people of different religious and ethnic origins gradually acquired rights that had been associated only with Protestant English men of property. Despite their original association with a particular national, ethnic, and religious group, English liberties proved fairly flexible in America. Americans lived in a society with more chances to attain the ideal of liberty associated with owning property—particularly a farm of one's own—than was possible in England, where property ownership was increasingly restricted to a small elite. Colonies like Pennsylvania granted far more religious freedom than existed in England. The colonial charters granted by the British monarchy protected these liberties, and, in fact, Pennsylvania celebrated the anniversary of these constitutional freedoms guaranteed by the English crown when it the commissioned the liberty bell .

The early American belief in the limited nature of liberty helps us to understand why it was so difficult for those who had it to extend it to others. Americans lived in a world full of slavery—the ultimate opposite of freedom—an institution that had not been present in England for hundreds of years. And yet, the colonial history of America, tied very early to the promotion of slavery, convinced many colonists that the ability to hold non-European people (mostly African, but also Native American) as slaves was a fundamental English liberty. Some even returned to England with their slaves, and expected English laws to protect their property in people as they did in the colonies. Free colonists were surrounded by people—servants and slaves—who either lacked liberty or, as in the case of Native Americans, were rapidly losing it. This paradox helps explain the reluctance of colonial Americans to allow others, like more recent German immigrant s, to share the same liberties they enjoyed. In many ways, their prosperity depended on those peoples' lack of liberty and property. All could try for freedom in colonial America, but not all had equal access to it.

America's history of liberty is inseparable from its history of immigration and colonization dating back to the first Native American treaties. Unfortunately, the liberty Europeans claimed in America was accompanied by slavery and reduced liberties for many others. The possibility of liberty for some was always accompanied by a struggle for freedom for many others.

Evan Haefeli is Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, where he researches and teaches on Native American history, colonial American history, and the history of religious tolerance.

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Essay on Liberty: Importance and Meaning

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Importance of Liberty :

From the very beginning both man and the state have been making efforts for the security of their freedom. Freedom is a very precious condition without which neither the state nor the individuals can make any progress. We remember very well how cruelly the absolute monarchs ignored the claims of liberty in England in ancient and medieval ages.

These absolute monarchs did not pay any attention to the liberty of the individuals and acted according to their will. But people could no longer tolerate it. They rose in revolt and continued their struggle against the absolute monarchy of these cruel rulers till they got their freedom.

As a result of this constant revolt and struggle against absolute monarchy, Emperor John had to bow down before the public and had to ensure freedom to his subjects. After that Tudor and Stuart emperors tried to continue their absolute monarchy. It resulted in the outbreak of the Civil War in their regime.

King Charles I was beheaded and Oliver Cromwell succeeded him. Even in the regime of Cromwell when people failed to attain their freedom, the British continued their struggle for freedom. This resulted into the outbreak of Glorious Revolution in the regime of Charles II and James II.

As a result of it, people succeeded in attaining the absolute monarchy of their cruel rulers for a long period. This long struggle resulted in the outbreak of the famous French Revolution in 1789. But even this political upheaval could not help people in attaining their long desired liberty. The successors of Napoleon behaved like absolute monarchs. At last after the fall of Napoleon III, Third Republic was established and people succeeded in attaining their liberty in the real sense of the term.

After the fall of Third Republic in 1940 and Fourth Republic in 1958, Fifth Republic was established in France. Just as people struggle for individual liberty for a long period of time, so slave countries also go on struggling against the foreign yoke till they succeed in attaining independence.

In nineteenth century, Italy and m twentieth century, India, Algeria and many other countries made untold sacrifice for the noble cause of attaining their independence. These sacrifices bear a testimony to the fact that the slave countries have been attaching a very great importance to their national liberty or independence.

Meaning of Liberty :

The term ‘liberty’ has been derived from the Latin word ‘Liber’ which free from all shackles? The Latin word ‘Liber’ denotes the absence of all restraints. It means one can do whatever one likes, regardless of all conditions. But as a matter of fact liberty does not permit a person to do whatever one likes. Liberty, in the sense of a complete absence of all restraints is not possible. Such liberty cannot exist. The fundamental maxim of liberty is that law is the condition of liberty.

Professor Barker has beautifully pointed out that just as the absence of ugliness does not mean presence of beauty so that absence of all restraints does not mean the presence of liberty. “Liberty is possible only in an ordered state, a state where the legal and political aspects of sovereignty coincide or nearly coincide”.

“Historic experience”, says Professor Laski, “has evolved for us rules of convenience which promote right- living; and to compel obedience to them is a justifiable limitation of freedom”. He defines liberty as “the eager maintenance of that atmosphere in which men have the opportunity to be their best selves”.

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Voice of Vivekananda

Liberty Is The First Condition Of Growth

July 9, 2019 By VivekaVani

To prepare articles for this website we regularly need to study  Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda  and many other books, articles, journals. When I was preparing an article on Swami Vivekananda’s quotations on growth, I found the following quotation—

Liberty is the first condition of growth.

(Yes, I know that every person has “his” or “her” opinion), still, in my opinion, it is a terrific quote. In life, in society or in a country, “growth” of any individual or a group is just not possible if there is no “liberty”, no “freedom”.

Swami Vivekananda discussed this idea “Liberty is the first condition of growth” several times. In this article our attempt will be making a collection of these quotations.

Liberty is the first condition of growth

According to Swami Vivekananda—

• Freedom is the only condition of growth; take that off, the result is degeneration. [Source]
• Liberty is the first condition of growth. Just as man must have liberty to think and speak, so he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage, and in every other thing, so long as he does not injure others. [Source]
• There cannot be any growth without liberty. Our ancestors freed religious thought, and we have a wonderful religion. But they put a heavy chain on the feet of society, and our society is, in a word, horrid, diabolical. In the West, society always had freedom, and look at them. On the other hand, look at their religion. [Source]
• What else can they be under the existing social bandages, especially in Madras? Liberty is the first condition of growth. Your ancestors gave every liberty to the soul, and religion grew. They put the body under every bondage, and society did not grow. The opposite is the case in the West — every liberty to society, none to religion. Now are falling off the shackles from the feet of Eastern society as from those of Western religion. (From a letter written to Alasinga Perumal dated 29 September 1894) [Source]
• You must remember that freedom is the first condition of growth. What you do not make free, will never grow. The idea that you can make others grow and help their growth, that you can direct and guide them, always retaining for yourself the freedom of the teacher, is nonsense, a dangerous lie which has retarded the growth of millions and millions of human beings in this world. Let men have the light of liberty. That is the only condition of growth. [Source]

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Home / Essay Samples / Government / Politics / Liberty

Liberty Essay Examples

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