My basis for that is a tentative, conditional and, no doubt, partial understanding of how people, society and state interact based on reflecting on history and empirical evidence, the shape of the comment I referred to above.

Nice soundbite, but when formalised that argument will likely come out as invalid.

Ok, how about an egalitarian moralised conception has led to decay and, sometimes, death and destruction on a massive scale, whereas the the classical liberal moralised conception has led to material prosperity on a scale unprecedented in human history.

I think you’ve missed my point somewhat. I do not claim that moral rights are a social construct. Rather, I claim that talk of freedom is conceptually independent from whether we in fact have particular rights. We can be free to do things that we have no (moral) right to do. For example, we can imagine a society which allows men to own slaves. Here, they are free to do something (ie. own slaves) that they have no moral right to do. We can also be unfree to do things that we do have a moral right to do. Some unsavoury regimes restrict free speech, or trades union membership for example. The people who live under these regimes are not free to do something that they do have a moral right to do. The possibility of these examples shows that talk of freedom is conceptually independent from whether we have particular rights.

You mention Locke. Locke himself had a moralised conception of freedom. He said something along the lines of (I don’t have a text to hand) “that ill deserves the name of confinement which only serves to keep us safe from bogs and precipices”. So, because particular things (eg. fences around bogs) are clearly sensible and justified, Locke thinks that they do not restrict our freedom. I (and Cohen, presumably) disagree with Locke. We think that fences around bogs and precipices *do* restrict our freedom, but that they are *justified* restrictions.

You seem to suggest that instead of choosing between moralised conceptions of liberty, we have the option of a non-moralised conception? How would that work?

Cohen’s (and a properly understood Berlinian presentation of ‘negative’ liberty) is an example of a non-moralised conception of freedom. So, Bob is free to X only if nobody will interfere with his doing X. That analysis of freedom does not make any moral claims (ie. whether Bob ought to be able to do X) and hence is non-moralised. It does however, have the implication that the poor are negatively unfree to do all sorts of things that the rich are not negatively unfree to do (maybe that’s a good thing though. Cohen leaves that question unanswered, at least in FREEDOM AND MONEY).

Hope that helps to clear things up.

Again, this has been a fruitful and interesting discussion!

Bishop Hill @ 44,

I understand up to the word “non-interference”. After that I can’t parse the grammar of what you have written in any way that makes sense. I may be being dim here, so could you spell it out for me?”

- We want to lay out conditions which, if satisfied, mean that we are unfree. For example, Nozick would say something along the lines of “we are free if nobody violates our natural rights”. Berlin’s ‘negative’ freedom offers different conditions of freedom to Nozick. We are negatively free to do X if nobody interferes (forcefully, presumably) with my doing X. So, I am negatively free to give a speech on Speakers’ Corner if nobody (eg. the Police) forcibly prevents me.

Does that make sense? If not, you’d probably get a better explanation from an introductory book on the subject.

“The point about the railway is that if I, as the railway operator, throw you off the train, it is because you have tried to interfere with my negative liberties by taking a ride on my train without paying. You are no more justified in doing this than I am to wander into your kitchen and help myself to the contents of your fridge because I’m a bit peckish. I am entirely within my rights to chuck you off.

- This talk of “rights” is completely beside the point. I can be unfree to do X, even if I have no right to do X. For example, in the UK I am not free to rape people. I am negatively unfree with regard to rape. Yes, it’s good that I am unfree in that particular way. But that’s a different question. I’m only interested here in the conceptual point that private property rights limit the negative freedom of those who lack them. This is only a conceptual point. It does not follow from this (on its own) that we ought to redistribute wealth, or anything like that. Likewise, it (obviously) doesn’t follow from the fact that laws prohibiting rape limit negative freedom that we ought to legalise rape. I repeat – I’m only interested in the conceptual point here.

It’s clear by your talk of rights that you’re committed to a moralised conception of freedom. Fine. But you owe us the argument as to why your moralised conception of freedom is superior to an egalitarian moralised conception of freedom (eg. Dworkin’s). That’s pretty damn difficult.

This doesn’t follow at all. If the poor cannot afford to do something it does not mean they are negatively unfree to do it. Nobody is stopping them. They just don’t have the financial means. The word liberty is entirely tied up with coercion and the absence thereof. Its meaning comes from the latin word for the removal of restraint when a slave was freed. His liberty arrived at that point, although no doubt a slave was very poor indeed at the time.

- Someone IS stopping them. Suppose I am poor, and I try to pick a sweater off the shelf in Selfridges. What will happen when I try to leave the shop? I will be interfered with (by security guards, and eventually, the police). You are free to take the sweater only if you have the money for it. Therefore, those who lack the financial means are not free to take the sweater.

Jim-type situations aren’t excluded by the definition of liberty as non-constraint. They are excluded by combining that definition with the analytic insight that property rights constrain liberty, so defined, and with the normative premise that all people ought to have some liberty (as non-constraint). But the normative premise wouldn’t give you this result – excluding Jim-type situations – unless you accepted the analytic point about how property rights constrain liberty. That’s the point the Jim-type case is supposed to make.

As discussion of this post seems to be winding down (famous last words), I just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who commented for their comments. Although I have stuck rather doggedly to my opening position(s), the comments have given me a lot of food for thought, and I’m very grateful for them.

- All property acquisition and transfer must not impede people from doing what they could have done had all property been unowned.

Now that might well have some tough consequences for some resources that are unique (perhaps those should be left in common ownership without specific agreement). But for many resources (things like arable land), that allows for quite widespread ownership without constraint on other individuals. The point is the Joe-example is already excluded by all seriously proposed definitions of negative liberty. This isn’t a moralised view, just an unpacking of what liberty as non-constraint must mean (it must include some restriction on property acquisition, in exactly the same way that it precludes the acquiring of non-consensual slaves).

My point about how property rights constrain liberty is not based on a revision of what freedom means in ordinary language. It is based on logically following through the implications of what people do mean by freedom in ordinary language – if freedom is freedom to do as one might wish without being subject to interference by others, which is certainly central to what people mean by freedom in ordinary language, then property rights constrain freedom (with respect to non-owners).

To ignore this kind of logical implication in the meaning of a word – that, I fear, is to abuse language. Unless we take the meaning of words seriously in this way, then a concept like ‘liberty’ does no real work in our political philosophy. Lacking clear content, the term becomes a slippery term we can manipulate as we like to suit our immediate argumentative purpose. I think liberty deserves better than that.

If there is enough resources left in common for everyone who does not own property, then their negative liberty has not been infringed, because they are as well off or better than they would have been if everything had been left in common ownership. That is why the “private property is a constraint on negative liberty” thesis needs to be stretched into the Joe example. But as any theory of negative liberty includes a proviso of some sort on just acquisition, we will never reach that example. I don’t think we have produced a moralised conception of liberty by doing that. We have simply unpacked the analytic content of what “liberty as non-constraint” must mean, namely:

1. Individuals are not to be subject to violence or the threat of violence.

2. Private property acquisition and transfer doesn’t get in the way of individuals doing anything they could not otherwise have done if all resources were unowned.

That’s always been the case, and is a reason to support a citizen’s basic income as it assure that any startup operator can still eat while finding clients and similar.

Second barrier is access to land to set the business up. The restraints of green belt and other planning restrictions combined with the unequal access to property given by our current allocation of land ownership (what, for example, has the current Duke of Westminster or of Cornwall done to gain the rent of their massive landholdings?) mean that an innovative economy is, in many respects, stifled.

We both know that in a truly open market, profits are reduced down to virtually nothing, but is that really the case in a lot of sectors?

The banking crisis is a case in point, of course, how hard is it to get a banking licence these days? Clegg and Cable were making this point and saying easier market entry was needed a year ago, still no movement, despite massive failures by the old oligopoly.

its just that the words used are unfortunate.

Yes, that is what I was attempting to say and I miserably failed.

You are surely not suggesting that we design a system based on the exceptional circumstances we face today. Throughout 99% of historic times people wanting to start a business have been able to go to the banks and get a loan.

The essence of good system design is to try to deal with the pareto 70% first and then deal with the other 30% as exceptions. This is why Jim, in the example above should not guide decision-making. It’s also why systems designed by politicians never work.

If you marched on parliament calling for ‘negative liberty’ bystanders would assume you were calling for someone to be locked up.

Anyway, I digress: hurry back when you finish your chores

Hence defining your terms is good, but once defined, using them correctly is perfectly acceptable, and essential for any abstract discussion such as this, where there are a lot of very similar concepts being discussed and precision is necessary.

Regarding the freedom to buy a train ticket thing, I think while that’s a good hypothetical, it’s not as useful within outcome based discussion.

For me, I favour a fully effective market economy with strong competition. Thing is, in order for there to be strong competition, you need to ensure there are no barriers to entry.

Essentially, if my employer is running a crappy business, and I know I can do it better, the economy needs a way of letting me set up in competition fairly easily. Currently, our economic structure, while nominally ‘market’, doesn’t allow this, as access to property and similar normally requires excess wealth—one of the reasons the US has a more dynamic economy is that land prices are negligible, for a US business, the biggest cost is staff, for a UK business, the biggest cost is premises.

In addition, setting up a business requires capitol and savings, something not many of us have, and if the banks cut off a supply of investment funding then the economy, and thus competition, falters.

That’s, incidentally, why I favour LVT, a CBI and reforming the inheritance laws to stop it being a death tax &c. It should, hopefully, reduce the barrier to entry and make the economy more competetive and less oligopolistic.

Gah, sorry, that’s less coherent than I want it to be, busy day today and I’m being shouted at to go back downstairs.

May we not start from first principles? I think we are all entitled to freedom from unlawful and unreasonable interference. Our other freedoms (of speech, expression, assembly) can be extrapolated from that, as can our rights to a writ of habeas corpus, a fair trial, and so on. And from there we can get to things like the rule of law.

In this sense does my lack of funds for a train ticket, a CD, or a yacht mean I am ‘unfree’? Well, it seems lawful and reasonable for the train operator, the CD retailer and the yacht salesman to demand I give them something in exchange for the what they are selling. So have they interfered with my freedom? Not in this sense.

surely Jim is unfree precisely because he can’t do anything without violating others’ rights.

Well, sure, in the sense of being ‘unfree’ because Jim’s freedom to extend his fist ends at the tip of my nose. Our freedoms are bounded by the freedoms of others. Jim is not free to occupy the same space as me. Jim is probably not free to fly to the moon. I’m not sure this is what normal people understand by freedom.

What was the question again?

you’re not getting the point of the Jim example. The point of the Jim example – the person who owns nothing in a world where all resources are owned – is not a normative one. Its not meant to show that the world it describes, or any world Nozick would endorse, is unjust. The point is purely analytic – to show that a lack of property rights in a private ownership economy implies a lack of freedom (to do as one might like without interference by others). The fact that Nozick might or might not find such a situation unjust in no way affects the anlaytic point.

Of course, once the analytic point has been made, one might think it has normative relevance. But I made and make no claim that the Jim example, by itself, shows Nozick’s libertarianism (or anyone else’s) to be normatively deficient. One would have to add some specifically normative claims to the example to get such a result.

But no one, not even Robert Nozick’s Anarchy State and Utopia holds that situation to be just, so it is a strawman. Hence the Lockean proviso. People either have to leave some unowned resources for Jim or compensate him for him not having access to them. This proviso follows all transfers of property like a shadow such that it is unjust for a situation to arise whereby Jim can pop into the world uncompensated for not being able to take possession of a share of unowned resources.

But we can tentatively take a much stricter line than that, and even endorse common ownership of natural resources as the initial situation, and still derive free market/private property outcomes (though of a type quite different to what Western capitalism looks like, we can acknowledge). Tom Palmer has quite a good response to Cohen on this: http://tomgpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/papers/palmer-cohen-cr-v12n3.pdf

If that doesn’t always come across in the media portrayal, then I suspect that’s a lot more to do with how the media want to paint him than anything else; it’s worth observing (again) that it’s to the Mail’s advantage to persuade people that Clegg is something they can support—they want Labour out, and in a lot of areas that they sell papers (like Sheffield), the Conservatives have no chance. So this means a lot of media sources will emphasis what they like (the “tax cuts” bit) and not what they don’t like (the “paid for by closing loopholes the rich abuse and taxing environmental damage” bit).

I personally have always viewed libertarianism as being neither left nor right wing, there are right wing Libertarians, but there are also those such as John Mortimer, Noam Chomsky, Chris Dillow etc who are distinctly on the left. I tend to just view it as an extreme form of liberalism, which again is neither left nor right but can be either or both.

The Lib Dems do have a significant social democrat tradition, Chris Huhne and Vince Cable being the most obvious, but the liberalism is always there—my form of socialism isn’t social democratic but is liberal, for example—it would be wrong to assume that all those that left Labour to join the Alliance were social democrats, many would have been liberal socialists instead.

I do look forward to the day when, post electoral reform, we can have that genuine realignment, and maybe the Cooperative party could demerge from Labour and I could feel free to join it.