Human Rights in a Big Yellow Taxi by Peter Kerr

Author:Peter Kerr [Kerr, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-908251-18-3
Publisher: Vagabond Voices
Published: 2013-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

Positive Freedom

In contrast with Sir Keith Joseph, the British liberal philosopher T.H. Green argued (1911) in favour of the concept of positive freedom, asserting that anyone prevented from realising their full potential was in a real sense unfree. Green argued that freedom was the ability of people to “make the best and most of themselves” and if they were not able to do this, then they were not free. Freedom to do, freedom from constraint, may look good in theory, but it is meaningless to those who lack the capacity to do what it is they wish to. As Green argued, freedom, to be meaningful, must involve real opportunities, not just theoretical ones. It is one thing to argue that all doors are open to us, it is quite another to be able to access them. As I have already argued, modern Britain, dominated by free market liberalism, is an exclusionary society and becoming more so each day. In theory the doors may be freely open and accessible, but government policy is increasingly ensuring that this remains just theory. The practical reality is that more and more people are being excluded and turned away before they can go through the doors. This is blindingly obvious in health and education policy making. The concept of positive freedom requires that individuals and social groups must be empowered before they can even begin to realise their potential. Until they can genuinely choose between options, they are not truly free. By only emphasising the value of negative freedom, as Berlin rightly points out, you simply erect a society in which the strong are in a position to freely exploit the weak.

As a result, regulatory measures must be taken to ensure that the strong are restrained and the weak empowered. This does not rob the stronger elements of society of their freedoms; it simply restricts total freedom, which is not a desirable social goal in the first place, as freedom is not an infinite resource, and as Lord Bingham pointed out, its limitation is necessary for the proper functioning of the rule of law. To repeat, one person’s exercise of freedom is normally restrictive of another’s. This requires active intervention in political and economic affairs, it requires regulation. It is a form of redistribution, in this case redistribution of opportunity. Any society that restricts potential academic brilliance from flourishing because potential students lack economic resources to access education deprives the wider society of talent and is, quite simply, stupid. A society that allows poor people to die because they’re unable to purchase good health care – now that surely is an evil worthy of the name. I am not restricting your freedom by instituting taxation to pay for health and education: you will be able to access it as well. What I am restricting is your privilege, your ability to jump the queue, to exploit your social and economic position at the expense of the majority. It is no use trying to present this as implementing equality by coercive means, as all elitists try to do.

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