Positive Freedom

I was at a loss what to say for today's post. There are many stories which should be given attention, and also so many people giving them the attention they deserve. I keep hoping (and this is probably hubris) that I can say something just a little bit different or at least point readers in a direction of a novel way of looking at a news story or a nuance that isn't being talked about loudly enough. Then, at the very last gasp, I found it.

Julian Baggini has an excellent opinion column today in the UK's Guardian newspaper on why the British political left has gained a certain amount of an American accent, and an accent of the American right at that.

Baggini's central thesis is that the British left have allowed themselves to become infected with a notion of the American right: namely that the only freedom is freedom from interference to run one's own affairs. Baggini calls this "negative freedom".

On the personal level, this means a lack of coercion or intrusion from government in the lives of citizens. At the national level, it means a lack of intervention from outsiders in the life of the country. In both cases, the key idea is that the individual and the nation are both entities which alone have the absolute right to determine their own destinies for themselves.

However, there is another kind of freedom, which Baggini describes as "positive freedom".

Negative freedom is vitally important. But the left has always recognised another from of liberty: positive freedom. This is the practical ability to actually make choices and live your life in the way you want. The problem is that negative freedom alone doesn't guarantee this. If you have no opportunities in life, the fact that the government isn't interfering with your business is small consolation...Freedom only becomes real if people are empowered to make choices for themselves, and they may need the help of others to do so.

Historically, the political left in Western Europe has recognised the importance of both types of freedom. Thus they have pretty much rejected central state socialism while still seeing the virtues of social security and the welfare state, unionisation, free universal health care and other such socialist programmes. I grew up in a leftwing heartland, a son and grandson of coal miners. I may well be the first member of my family to gain a University degree in seven generations. I am utterly certain that without these benefits of "positive freedom" I and my parent would have been too busy struggling with life to ever conceive of such a happenstance as my staying in further education. To me, these virtues are self-evident.

In the U.S. however, and never more so than in this recent election, "positive freedom" is automatically "more government and more taxes" and this knee-jerk reaction is even made by those at the bottom of the heap who without the benefits of "positive freedom" will always be poor simply because the fight to live any kind of life takes all their energy and resources. They have bought the right's vision of "negative freedom" and swallowed it whole, along with the notion that the Democrats are snobbish elitists who will take away that freedom.

Thomas Frank touches much of the same ground in his interview What's the Matter with Democrats? for AlterNet today. He identifies the Republican theme:

Instead of it being blue collar against white collar, or workers against the Fortune 500, it is average Americans – or "authentic" Americans – versus an affected liberal elite. They use this language of class all the time and it is there in every single one of these issues. It’s just below the surface – usually not even below the surface. It’s right there.

This [class issue] was not a problem for Democrats fifty years ago. Calling Democrats an elite group back then would have been laughable. The idea of liberals being elite was ridiculous because liberals were autoworkers in Detroit, sharecroppers in Alabama. And that’s who they still are, to some degree. But they have to rediscover that identity.

Frank also says (in so many words)that the Democrats should rediscover their passion for "positive freedom" as an answer to the accusation that they don't know what they stand for.

I think with everybody agrees that this is one of the Democrats’ central problems. This has always struck me as very odd because I know exactly what they’re about: number one, equality; number two, security.

I don’t mean national security but economic security: security from booms and busts, security from the business cycle, security in old age, looking out for the weak.

As for equality, if you look back to the founding of this party and Andrew Jackson, this is what it’s all about: equal rights for all, special privileges for none. That is fundamentally who the Democrats are.

In Britain, after 13 years of Thatcher, the left became electable again when it excised the old abuses of power it was prone to but retained it's reliance on "positive freedom". Now, if it loses that, it may be in trouble with the populace. The left in America finds itself in the same wilderness now, facing Thatchers ideological offspring. If the left is to become electable in the U.S., it will have to launch an Operation Positive Freedom.