One form of liberty
Freedom is not a static passive thing, it is a description of a process. You cannot grab a lump of freedom and stick it in a box so that you have it or don’t. You can only either act freely or be stopped from acting freely. Of Isaiah Berlin’s two forms of freedom it is Negative Liberty allows people to act to gain Positive Liberty, but not the other way around.
The reason that positive liberty cannot create negitive is easy. As soon as negative liberty is meddled with it cannot be unmeddled with. It might be good for the people involved, it may well be in their best interests and put them in a position to take control of their lives later and realise their full potential. Perhaps later they will wish they did not have to be coerced. But that can never change that they where.
For negative liberty allowing positive, while negative liberty may stop the state from trying to help people it does not stop people from banding together voluntarily to help themselves. It will even stop anybody trying to stop them. So negative liberty allows people to create whatever structures they themselves need for them to achieve positive liberty.
Take this example from the real world. Socialism is often supported on the grounds of the positive liberty of taking control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes by removing you from the requirements of captialist production, but rarely in terms of negative liberty and being free of coercion. It is all about positive liberty, but history has shown the only way it can be set up with the result actually giving positive liberty is within the framework of negative liberty.
When Socialism was set up in in all the Socialist Republics it was outside of the framework of negative liberty therefore allowing trying to achieve this goal through coercion. The revolutions had swept away the the old orders so now was the time for the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to build Socialism. This dictatorship had no inhibitions about coercing people as it was their intention to build a better world. All that happened was; a destruction of both forms of liberty, the enslavement of the people, and that little matter of mass murder on an unprecedented scale.
However when Socialism is set up on a basis of voluntary co-operation, as is required when within the framework of negative liberty, as happened in the Israeli Kibbutz movement it can actually work for a while. People in these did live following the code of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs' and because they freely choose to accept the restrictions that this, especially in our resource limited world, will always impose on them and therefore not try to cheat the system (too much). Also since it is all on a voluntary basis the enslavement and mass murder that followed Socialism everywhere else was impossible, should the leaders have tried it everybody else would have simply withdrawn their co-operation and walked away.
The reason that positive liberty cannot create negitive is easy. As soon as negative liberty is meddled with it cannot be unmeddled with. It might be good for the people involved, it may well be in their best interests and put them in a position to take control of their lives later and realise their full potential. Perhaps later they will wish they did not have to be coerced. But that can never change that they where.
For negative liberty allowing positive, while negative liberty may stop the state from trying to help people it does not stop people from banding together voluntarily to help themselves. It will even stop anybody trying to stop them. So negative liberty allows people to create whatever structures they themselves need for them to achieve positive liberty.
Take this example from the real world. Socialism is often supported on the grounds of the positive liberty of taking control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes by removing you from the requirements of captialist production, but rarely in terms of negative liberty and being free of coercion. It is all about positive liberty, but history has shown the only way it can be set up with the result actually giving positive liberty is within the framework of negative liberty.
When Socialism was set up in in all the Socialist Republics it was outside of the framework of negative liberty therefore allowing trying to achieve this goal through coercion. The revolutions had swept away the the old orders so now was the time for the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to build Socialism. This dictatorship had no inhibitions about coercing people as it was their intention to build a better world. All that happened was; a destruction of both forms of liberty, the enslavement of the people, and that little matter of mass murder on an unprecedented scale.
However when Socialism is set up on a basis of voluntary co-operation, as is required when within the framework of negative liberty, as happened in the Israeli Kibbutz movement it can actually work for a while. People in these did live following the code of 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs' and because they freely choose to accept the restrictions that this, especially in our resource limited world, will always impose on them and therefore not try to cheat the system (too much). Also since it is all on a voluntary basis the enslavement and mass murder that followed Socialism everywhere else was impossible, should the leaders have tried it everybody else would have simply withdrawn their co-operation and walked away.
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