Alternatives to Freedom

Arguments and Opinions

William L. Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317890959
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This authoritative text concerns itself with freedom and `alternatives to freedom', based on original survey research of public attitudes to civil and political rights.
It combines and connects explicit and implicit arguments for freedom, with the judgements of public opinion on two levels the general public and politicians encouraging the reader to think about issues both in terms of political theory and public opinion.
The issues considered, all of which may be viewed as alternatives to the narrow conception of freedom as the absence of coercion, are:
* parliamentary sovereignty
* the national interest
* responsibility
* accountability
* equality
* the moral community
Alternate chapters present powerful arguments from political figures such as Lord Armstrong, Lord Jenkins and Roy Hattersley, based on practical experience, and then assess public opinion for each issue.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Alternative values

WILLIAM L. MILLER

‘Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.’ George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Act 3.

Defining freedom

This book is concerned with freedom, and with ‘alternatives to freedom’ including some important and seductive ones. It combines and connects explicit and implicit arguments for freedom, or the alternatives to freedom, with the judgements of public opinion on these issues. Throughout this book, alternate chapters present the arguments of distinguished political figures and detail the opinions of the people. It is a revealing exercise to confront the carefully argued views of distinguished political figures, arrived at after lengthy and practical consideration of such questions, with the more immediate reactions of the British people to the same or similar questions.

The arguments are put by experienced politicians and civil servants based on key civil rights issues they have had to face during what has often been a lifetime in politics and government. They argue from a variety of political standpoints but each argues his particular case with the understanding and passion that comes from direct practical experience. They focus on issues of practical politics not mere political theory, though these same issues have intrigued political theorists for long enough.

By contrast, our analyses of public opinion are necessarily dispassionate. Public opinion cannot prove or disprove arguments. Majorities need not be right: they may be ill-informed, perverse, prejudiced, or easily swayed by plausible demagogues. Nonetheless, we need to connect arguments with opinions if we are to understand public debate fully. Particularly in a democracy, it matters how many people hold a view as well as whether they are right or wrong. After all, the object of democratic debate is not just to present well-informed and logically sound arguments but to convince a majority. And conversely, although majorities may well be wrong, a fundamental tenet of the democratic faith is that majorities are less likely to be consistently wrong than minorities; that even when we disagree profoundly with majority opinion we should listen to it and take it into account; that debates with public opinion must – and should – be a two-way process. Public debate in a democracy must include a voice for the public as well as for the experts, intellectuals and top politicians. From that perspective, the contours of public opinion are more than facts: they too are arguments.

But what is freedom? Notoriously, there is no agreement among philosophers on this question, and different definitions are frequently linked with different political ideologies. Freedom may or may not be what philosophers call an ‘essentially contested’ concept, but that it is actually contested there is no doubt. Nor can there be much doubt as to why this is so. The term ‘freedom’ is almost universally taken to refer to something good, even to one of the greatest goods of human life. There is therefore an obvious motive for philosophers and politicians to define the term in such a way as to attach it to something they value highly. Furthermore, freedom is an idea sufficiently general and abstract to allow considerable scope for ‘persuasive definition’, so there is opportunity as well as motive.

For the purposes of this book, it is not necessary to decide which definition of freedom is ‘correct’, but rather to select a definition suitable for our purposes, and to make as clear as possible what that is and what it is not. For our purposes here, we need a definition of freedom which is both relatively simple and relatively narrow. It needs to be simple, so that it can be embodied in questionnaires put to a general public unfamiliar with complex philosophical concepts and arguments. It needs to be relatively narrow, because our purpose is to discuss the relation of freedom to other, alternative and competing, values. Broad definitions of freedom (as well as philosophically complex ones) have a tendency to incorporate these competing values into freedom itself, and would thus tend to frustrate, or at least confuse, our enterprise. For these reasons, we adopt what Isaiah Berlin called the ‘negative’ concept of freedom. It so happens that this definition is generally favoured by liberal and libertarian thinkers. However, by adopting the ‘negative’ concept of freedom we do not intend to indicate agreement with the views of such thinkers, only to facilitate and clarify discussion of the issues. Thus, for example, the argument advanced by Roy Hattersley in his chapter is not an argument for freedom as defined for our present analytic purpose, but for other values. This does not mean, of course, that Hattersley is wrong, either in his attempt to broaden the definition of freedom, or in his substantive views. Our choice of definition is analytic, not moral.

Berlin’s ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, in Four Essays on Liberty (1969: 118–72), is the classic analysis of different ideas of freedom. Despite its title, it deals with considerably more than two concepts. Some consideration of its themes will serve to make clearer the usage we adopt in this book, the alternatives we do not adopt, and why. According to Berlin, the two concepts of liberty (or freedom) are the ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ concepts. ‘Negative’ freedom is defined thus: people are free to the extent that their actions are not interfered with by other persons, or insofar as they are not prevented by others from performing actions, or not coerced by other persons. Berlin claims, correctly, that this is the normal meaning of the word. It follows from this definition that every law (however desirable or justified) reduces freedom (though it may also increase freedom, if it prohibits interference or coercion), and that inaction (however deplorable) does not by itself reduce freedom.

What of Berlin’s ‘positive’ concept of freedom? This, he says, ‘consists in being one’s own master’ (p. 131). What is the difference between being one’s own master, and not being interfered with or coerced by others? The difference is that other things besides interference by other people can prevent one from being one’s own master, from being in control of one’s life – for example, poverty, ill health, lack of education. Looked at in this light, legislation aimed at attacking these evils can be looked on (as by Roy Hattersley) as increasing the sum of freedom, and failure of governments so to act can be described as reducing freedom. From the standpoint of the negative conception of freedom, however, to say this is to confuse not being free to do something with being unable to do it. Interference by others is only one of several possible causes of people’s inability to do what they want.

There is no need to adjudicate this dispute. Suffice it to say that, for our present purpose, the negative concept is more convenient, in that it allows us to treat (economic) equality as an alternative value to freedom, which may conflict with it. This is preferable to (because simpler than) treating the conflict as being between two kinds of freedom.

There are other, more esoteric ways in which theorists of ‘positive’ freedom have argued that people may fail to be their own master. They may, for example, be unable to master their ‘passions’, or their desires, but instead be mastered by them. In that case, it is argued, they are not free. Such a conception, of course, implies that the passions, or desires, are somehow external to the person’s true (or higher) self or will. What, then constitutes human beings’ true (or higher) self? An answer is frequently given in terms of the faculty that supposedly distinguishes the human race from the rest of creation – reason. Thus, people are free insofar as their actions conform to reason, insofar as their reason masters their ‘irrational’ passions, impulses or desires. This, as Berlin tells us, was the view of Kant, among many others. Berlin calls it ‘free-dom as rational self-direction’ (p. 145). But what does this mean? How do people act if they act rationally (and thus freely)? Perhaps this question cannot and should not be answered, but many philosophers have tried to answer it, in various ways. Kant’s answer is of particular interest: to act rationally is to act in accordance with the moral law. To act freely, therefore, is to act morally, controlling one’s passions, desires, and interests. However subtle this argument may be, and however desirable it may be to act rationally and morally, this definition of freedom is not suitable for our purposes. For one thing, it is too far removed from the everyday understanding of the idea, and for another, by identifying freedom and morality, it makes it impossible to treat them as alternative and possibly conflicting values, or to investigate relations between them. We need a concept of freedom according to which freedom can, in principle, be misused.

One further version of Berlin’s ‘positive’ liberty deserves mention. If individuals are thought of primarily as members of a group, their self-mastery (or self-direction, or self-government) may be identified with – become merged into – that of the group. Then, the individual is free if the group to which he or she belongs is self-governing. In this way, freedom can become identified with democracy. The classic example is Rousseau (though he did not put it exactly in this way). In Rousseau’s social contract, individuals give up their ‘natural liberty’ in exchange for ‘civil liberty’, that is, for a share equal to that of all other citizens in the sovereign law-making power. To be free in this sense is to be governed by the General Will. It is not clear to what extent this idea of Rousseau’s derives from what Berlin defines as the ‘positive’ concept of liberty, and to what extent it is a democratisation of the classical republican concept of ‘free’ (i.e. non-monarchical) government; that is, what Benjamin Constant (1988: 307–28) called the ‘liberty of the ancients’. What is clear, however, is that a concept of freedom which identifies it with democracy is not suited to present purposes. We want to be able to examine tensions between individual freedom and democracy, just as we wish to look at tensions between freedom and morality, and between freedom and equality.

Alternatives to freedom

In principle, there is near universal support for freedom. It has, in the words of de Tocqueville, an ‘intrinsic glamour, a fascination in itself, apart from all practical considerations’ (de Tocqueville 1966: 188). In principle, freedom is not just a means to an end – though it may, happily, encourage innovation, initiative, efficiency and prosperity in the long run – but it is an end in itself.

In practice, however, there is much less support for freedom. When practical choices have to be made, many people, often a majority, take sides against freedom. Why do they do so? Hypocrisy is one explanation: they never were really committed to freedom in the first place. Intellectual incapacity is another: they lack the ability to connect principles and practice, they simply fail to appreciate the relevance of their general principles to the particular issues at hand.

There is some truth in both these explanations but there is a third, less critical, explanation. As de Tocqueville himself realised, people have other values and goals apart from freedom which may or may not be compatible with it. He instanced two: first, a concern for order and good government; second, a concern for equality. Traditionally, those on the right of the political spectrum have valued order highly, while those on the left have valued equality. Both have valued freedom. So those on the right have to weigh their concern for freedom against their concern for order and efficiency while those on the left have to weigh their concern for freedom against their concern for equality. We shall show that despite elite scepticism, principles – and combinations of principles – really do influence attitudes to citizens’ rights and freedoms in particular scenarios and influence them strongly, even amongst the general public, though more so amongst politicians.

De Tocqueville’s alternatives to freedom – order and equality – were not new even in his time. Indeed popular concern for order and good government almost certainly pre-dates popular concern for freedom. Without modern methods of opinion research we can never be sure of that of course, but de Tocqueville confidently asserts that half a century before the Revolution the Trench people, if consulted’ (which they were not) would have shown little enthusiasm for liberty:

What they wanted was not so much a recognition of the rights of man as reforms in the existing system, and had there been on the throne a monarch of the calibre and temperament of Frederick the Great, he would certainly have initiated many of the sweeping changes made by the Revolution in social conditions and the government of the country, and thus not only preserved his crown but greatly added to his power.

(de Tocqueville 1966: 185)

This same concern for strong central government and administrative efficiency is evident in contemporary politics. Professor Raymond Plant (1986: 9) wrote of the ‘sense that across parties there seems to be a tacit admission of the failure of the British state to govern efficiently, justly and authoritatively’. Insofar as Thatcher-ism had any ideological coherence¹ it seemed to aim at reducing the scope of government while increasing its authority (Kavanagh 1990: 13) – though as time went by there seemed more stress on increasing its authority than reducing its scope (ibid: 284). To her admirers, Mrs Thatcher was twentieth-century Britain’s Frederick the Great. Her governments recognised only ‘high politics’ and ‘no politics’: government should either withdraw altogether from certain areas of policy, handing them over to private companies or individuals operating in the market place, or insist upon its absolute and unchecked right to govern.

In pursuit of a dominant role in the steadily widening field designated as ‘high politics’, central government in the 1980s either abolished or curtailed the power of what de Tocqueville called ‘deliberative assemblies, secondary organisations vested with local powers and generally speaking, all those counterpoises which have been devised by free peoples at various stages of their history to curb the domination of a central authority’ (1966: 180). In Britain that meant that such ‘secondary’ or ‘intermediate organisations’ as the Greater London Council (GLC) and the Metropolitan County Councils were abolished, functions and powers were switched from the remaining elected councils to appointed boards, proposals (some would say promises) to set up devolved regional assemblies for Scotland and Wales were abandoned, the powers of the trade unions were curbed by law and by unemployment, the BBC was roundly attacked and subjected to further legal controls, and outspoken clerics were brusquely told to stick to religion and keep out of politics. The press was harried by government in the courts, and the police raided the BBC studios in Glasgow to prevent the Corporation revealing government secrets. In the 1990s, the process of centralising authority by abolishing elected local governments or curtailing their powers continues, and the scope of ‘high politics’ has been extended downwards to include even the details of primary-school curricula.

In opposition, Lord Hailsham attacked the centralisation of unchecked power as an ‘elective dictatorship’. He wrote: ‘I have never suggested that freedom is dead in Britain. But it has diminished, and a principal cause of its impairment has been the absolute legislative power confided in Parliament, concentrated in the hands of a government armed with a parliamentary majority’ (1978: 127).

How can anyone accuse an elected Parliament of being opposed to freedom? Surely parliamentary sovereignty is the cornerstone of English liberty? Rousseau claimed, ‘The English people think they are free but in this belief they are profoundl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Alternative values
• Part One Freedom versus Parliament
• Part Two Freedom versus the National Interest
• Part Three Freedom versus Responsibility
• Part Four Freedom versus Accountability
• Part Five Freedom versus Equality
• Part Six Freedom versus the Moral Community
• Suggestions for further reading
• Index