THE COMPLEXITY OF FREEDOM AND SOURCES OF CONFUSION

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CHAPTER 3 FREEDOM

INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter, the difficulties of defining democracy, its variants and intellectual roots were examined. There is no consensus among scholars on whether democracy should be defined normatively in terms of values or ends, procedurally as a method, or substantively as a form of government (or as a type of regime). Substantive definitions are broader in scope – including democratic principles, institutional arrangements and stressing political participation – than definitions of democracy as a procedure. However, democracy is commonly characterised as government for the people (whoever they are, and however they are determined), referring to indirect or representative democracy. It is also clear that the direct democracy of government by the people of ancient Athens, and the democracy espoused by the founding fathers of the United States of America are philosophically very different to the democratic variants prevalent in the twentieth century. Originally democracy had nothing to do with freedom, but everything with direct rule of the masses, with certain qualifications and exclusions.
The roots of twentieth century democracy may be located in the nineteenth century, particularly in the phenomenon of liberalism. Classical nineteenth century liberalism stood for negative freedom, freedom from state intervention, laissez-faire capitalism, respect for the individual which included freedom of expression and (lawful) association, and equality of all before the law. It excluded equality of opportunity and property (Bramsted & Melhuish 1978:xviii; Heywood 1997:41).
From the late nineteenth century, however, “a form of social liberalism” (Heywood 1997:41) or welfare liberalism, emerged which favoured a positive conception of freedom, linked to personal development and the achievement of self-realisation, necessitating welfare reform and economic intervention. This emphasis became characteristic of modern or twentieth century liberalism. State intervention to provide social welfare was seen to expand freedom by protecting individuals from the hazards of daily existence (Heywood 1997:44). A broader notion of the individual was developed which also required the individual to be rescued both from the arbitrariness of political decisionmakers and the tyranny of the majority who claimed increasingly that its standards and values were binding on everyone in modern democracies (Bramsted & Melhuish 1978:xviii).
Present day democratic thought then is social or popular in character. This development, however, does not negate the historical philosophical contributions to democratic thought by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau taken up by liberalism in approximately the middle of the nineteenth century. The notion of social democracy (generally also called welfare state) became entrenched as the democratic model of the twentieth century. Whereas democratic and liberal thought in the nineteenth century emphasised individualism, collectivism and its egalitarian tendencies with greater, even enforced equality of participation in the political, social and economic spheres, characterised much of twentieth century thought on democracy. Logically and practically liberal democracy can develop into social democracy. The contrary is also possible. Social democracy can become more liberal, or more collectivistic along a continuum ending with Talmon’s (1970) conception of a totalitarian democracy. Whether totalitarian systems and the emerging ‘democracies’ in Eastern Europe, Asia, China and Africa can properly be called democracies, albeit participatory democracies or people’s democracies, is contentious, depending to a great extent on how democracy is defined (see Sartori 1987; Holden 1988; Mcpherson 1969; Femia 1993).
Democracies in Western Europe and America are now popularly characterised as social democracies or welfare states in varying degrees, depending on the emphasis placed on liberal or social elements. The issues, namely, whether democracy has to be liberal (or not), or whether it has to further freedom (or not), are closely related to the relation between freedom and democracy. The examining of the relation between freedom and democracy requires clarity on the meaning and the type of freedom, and the kind of democracy or democratic theory involved to avoid conceptua obfuscation. Furthermore, the relation necessitates an overview of the association of freedom and liberalism with democracy, as well as the association of socialism (or variants of socialism) with democracy with regard to emerging democracies or people’s democracies, and the liberal democratic adherence to freedom as a primary value.

THE COMPLEXITY OF FREEDOM AND SOURCES OF CONFUSION

The question “What is freedom?” has historically elicited a variety of responses, and even conflicting answers. The question itself may be confusing. Is a definition of freedom being sought, or is the question an enquiry into the nature or essence of freedom, or its purpose, or its justification?
Various types of questions concerning the nature, conditions and definition of freedom are central to the debate on the meaning of freedom. For instance, the following questions may be asked. Is freedom a logical (analytic) or a legal concept? Is freedom a philosophical or axiological concept? Is it a value, or a goal, or an ideal to be pursued? (see Levine 1981:33). Does freedom mean unimpeded action according to choice, or does it imply autonomy, self-realisation or self-development as interpreted by some liberal and socialist scholars who tend to regard freedom as a positive concept? Is freedom rather an empirical and a negative concept? Does it mean the absence of coercion? Does freedom from constraint refer only to the political sphere or does it include freedom from economic constraints and constraints imposed by morality, custom, convention or tradition? Can freedom be defined in descriptive (empirical) terms, given its evaluative content?
As in the case of democracy, the numerous definitions and descriptions of the terms ‘freedom’ or ‘liberty’ face the same conceptual difficulties outlined in Chapter 2. Freedom and liberty are generally used synonymously in democratic literature. Because liberty is sometimes used in a legal context, and in a political context as the self-determination and independence of nations, the term ‘freedom’ used in a philosophical and more general contexts, is preferred here. According to Cranston (1967:32) the choice between liberty and freedom is “usually a matter of literary style”.
A discussion of freedom is further complicated by philosophers, political theorists and social scientists using the term in different ways (Cranston 1967:29-30). In contrast with the array of convoluted and abstruse philosophical definitions of freedom (see further on), economists and sociologists interpret freedom as a social relationship involving interaction. For example, to what extent do individuals exercise free choice and enjoy privileges in relation to their fellow human beings? Many political scientists regard freedom as a normative ideal, but define freedom in social-scientific terms, separating what freedom is from any question about the value of freedom (Heywood 1994:196).
The difficulty of discussing freedom is aptly summarised by the following two quotations:
The characteristic eclecticism and imprecision of political discourse and of philosophical thought about politics, is nowhere more striking than in the talk of freedom (Levine 1981:33).
Liberty! There is hardly another word so extravagantly used, praised, and sung about, yet at the same time so bare of clear and definite meaning, as the word ‘liberty’ (Ross 1952:99).
A major source of confusion, as will be seen further on, relates to confusing internal freedom (positive freedom) with external freedom (negative freedom), or to put it differently, confusing the philosophical or normative level of discourse with the practical or empirical level of discourse; and the semantic problem of redefining freedom to give it a different meaning to what it originally had. Two other sources of confusion concern the so-called types of freedom and the association of freedom with other terms.
Many types or kinds of freedom can be identified, namely, political, economic, social, religious, moral, intellectual and psychological. The last three refer to internal freedom. Sartori (1987:298) accepts the usage of types of freedom but is of the opinion that political freedom presupposes and promotes all other types of freedom: political freedom is “a liberty whose purpose is to create a situation of freedom – the conditions for freedom” (Sartori 1962:282).
However, it can be argued that these freedoms are strictly speaking not types of freedom. Describing freedom with adjectives like political and economic serve the important purpose of indicating the context in which the freedom is used.
Cranston (1967:10) holds the view that the meaning of freedom is hardly clarified by placing an adjective in front of the substantive, and that such a practice tends to lead to ambiguity. Economic freedom, for example, has at least two current meanings. In the first place it denotes a free economic system, that is, free from (own emphasis) governmental intervention, and in the second place, an individual free from (own emphasis) economic hardship. Liberal democratic scholars (of a conservative mind) tend to adhere to the former meaning when speaking of economic freedom, while socialists support the latter meaning in which instance people often look to the government to secure freedom from economic hardship. This ambiguity is made unfortunate by the socialist notion of economic freedom only being possible at the expense of the conception of economic freedom as the absence of government interference. For Cranston (1967:10) the equivocation could be eliminated only if the adjective in front of freedom indicates what the freedom referred to is for, or from. Hence, freedom is more clearly understood when it is opposed to a particular constraint. It has less ambiguity as well in political use, for example, in times of centralised oppression, because the constraint from which freedom is sought is understood (Cranston 1967:8).
Hayek (1976:12) thinks that although it is at times legitimate to speak of freedom from and freedom to as kinds of freedom, there is only freedom “varying in degree but not in kind”. Freedom is a social and political relation and the only infringement of freedom is coercion by others. In a similar vein Flew (1989:8) rejects the ‘positive’ in positive freedom, which the Scholastics called “an alienans adjective”. Accordingly, “ [p]ositive freedom is … no more a kind of freedom than imaginary horses or incorporeal substances are sorts of horses or sorts of substances” (Flew 1989:8).

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.2 THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
1.4 MOTIVATION FOR THE STUDY
1.5 METHODOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE CONSIDERATIONS INFORMING THE STUDY
1.6 STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY
1.7 TECHNICAL ASPECTS
CHAPTER 2 DEMOCRACY 
2.1 INTRODUCTION
2.2 SOURCES OF CONFUSION
2.3 THE MEANINGS OF DEMOCRACY
2.4 DEMOCRACY AS AN IDEAL: THEORY AND PRACTICE
2.5 CLASSIFICATIONS OF DEMOCRATIC THEORY
2.6 THE DEMOCRATIC VALUES OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY
2.7 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 3  FREEDOM 
3.1 INTRODUCTION
3.2 THE COMPLEXITY OF FREEDOM AND SOURCES OF CONFUSION
3.3 THE PHILOSOPHICAL MEANINGS OF FREEDOM
3.4 THE EMPIRICAL MEANING OF FREEDOM
3.5 THE LEGAL MEANINGS OF FREEDOM
3.6 THE LOGICAL MEANING OF FREEDOM
3.7 THE MEANING OF FREEDOM AS AN IDEAL
3.8 THE DESCRIPTIVE AND EMOTIVE MEANINGS OF FREEDOM
3.9 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN FREEDOM, LIBERALISM, SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY
3.10 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 4 EQUALITY 
4.1 INTRODUCTION
4.2 THE COMPLEXITY OF EQUALITY AND SOURCES OF CONFUSION
4.3 KINDS OF EQUALITY
4.4 THE ASSUMPTIONS OF EQUALITY
4.5 THE RELATIONS BETWEEN EQUALITY, LIBERALISM, SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY
4.6 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 5  THE TENSION BETWEEN FREEDOM AND EQUALITY, AND EQUALITY AND FREEDOM 
5.1 INTRODUCTION
5.2 FREEDOM ENDANGERS EQUALITY
5.3 EQUALITY ENDANGERS FREEDOM
5.4 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 6 THE AFFINITY BETWEEN FREEDOM AND EQUALITY, AND EQUALITY AND FREEDOM 
6.1 INTRODUCTION
6.2 FREEDOM FURTHERS EQUALITY
6.3 EQUALITY FURTHERS FREEDOM
6.4 CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION 
7.1 INTRODUCTION
7.2 DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM AND EQUALITY
7.3 CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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A CRITICAL AND SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE DEMOCRATIC VALUES OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY