An
often repeated message of these postings has been that our liberty is
built upon equality. Given much of our current political punditry,
you would think that equality and liberty are antagonistic – to
bolster one, it is said, is usually at the expense of the other. For
example, if you decide on a policy that promotes equal opportunity
through investment in public education, that means higher taxes and
higher taxes diminish the liberty of citizens who have to pay those
taxes. Of course, libertarian thought, the bedrock view of such
movements as the Tea Party movement, has this idealistic vision that
we not only should have lower taxes to bolster liberty, but that
government and other collectives are counterproductive – that they
are oppressive by their very nature and they cause many more problems
than they are even able to address, much less solve. Such a view is
weary of any approach that diminishes the individual, individual
initiative, and self-reliance. Those who share this view look at
communal and governmental means to address societal problems as
attacking their liberty – their ability to be autonomous. Here is
my take: liberty depends on the social, the community, the
government. This posting is dedicated to making this point, but to
provide context, let me just add at the beginning that, like any good
idea, a concern over overbearing or overreaching government, if taken
to the extreme, oversimplifies reality.
Let
me amplify. Effective community relies on viable government because
once communal arrangements are formed, competing interests are
inherent. From the most basic to the most complex social settings,
there will be those who want X and those who want Y. Conflicts occur
in a real world of limited resources so there will be winners and
losers in these conflicts. To resolve these unavoidable conflicts,
authoritative power will be needed. Short of having that authority
vested in the hands of established government, people will take
matters into their own hands. While the establishment of government
does not guarantee a just resolution of conflict, conflicts that are
left to the involved parties will easily deteriorate into
“resolution” that favors the party with more coercive power,
especially as the stakes of these conflicts reach significance to the
parties involved. This, in turn, will result with some combination
of force and oppression that will tend to establish itself,
permanently transcending the immediate conditions. For social
settings beyond those of families or small groups, government is that
institution that can provide legitimate authority; that is, authority
that handles conflicts objectively. Only then can one be reasonably
hopeful that the conflicts one encounters will potentially be settled
fairly; only then can one speak of a system of justice being
possible. Assuming one sees these social qualities as essential for
normal life, to avoid needing government one has the choice of
living a hermit's life – an option some take. For most of us, such
an option is unthinkable. Therefore, a meaningful conception of
liberty has to be within the context of a social, communal existence
governed by a government with sufficient power to resolve conflicts.
With
that context, what do we have? How do such realities relate to the
desire for liberty; how do they relate to our striving to be
autonomous? Autonomy is that state in which liberty exists. To be
autonomous means to be able to reasonably control our conditions of
life, to, as Richard Dagger puts it, be able to “self-govern,
self-rule, or self-legislate.”1
He points out that in order to harbor such capacities, certain
social processes and conditions need to be in place and that those
processes and conditions depend on a communal arrangement that can be
only minimally dependent on one's self-initiative. He emphasizes two
such processes and conditions: educating and the availability of
opportunities.
I
believe that libertarians have a very limited view of autonomy. They
see it as this quality of life in which humans are entitled to just
do their thing and enjoy unhampered the fruits of their labor. But
autonomy presupposes a set of competencies we acquire. After all, we
don't just see infants, children, or even teenagers as being
autonomous. They lack the skills, physical dexterity, and/or
maturity to self- rule. To cast them out into the real world before
their time and tell them to take on an autonomous existence would, in
most cases, lead to disastrous consequences. We see autonomous
people as having at least some minimal level of skills, physical
dexterity, and maturity to be considered autonomous. And even then,
we can say some are better at being autonomous than others. And how
do we get to be skilled and mature enough to take on an autonomous
status? We are taught by others. And that teaching presupposes a
communal arrangement of some sort. So important is this teaching
that all societies develop appropriate institutions to provide that
instruction. Prominent in providing this instruction are the
institutions of the family and of the schools, but there are others
such as the world of employment and its related practices and the
media. Through both formal and informal modes of instruction, one
learns those capacities that make up what one needs to know in order
to be autonomous. We don't learn all of that by our very lonesome.
Now
let's think about the implications of such a reality. In order to
promote that autonomy, that liberty, for a general population, one
needs a fairly strong commitment toward equality. We can't really
make the claim that a people are free if the availability of
appropriate education is not sufficient among the different strata of
a society. Otherwise, liberty will be the province of the few – to
those who are advantaged by wealth and/or status. How do I know
this? A cursory look at history provides the evidence. From the
social conflicts that befell ancient Rome to the long cycle of
competing interests of any modern nation, we have the class clashes
that characterize the histories of nations and empires. And one of
the conflicts that is part and parcel of a class clash is the
question of who will receive that education that will provide for a
more meaningful and fuller autonomy. As Thomas Jefferson is famously
quoted as saying: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in
a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will
be.”
Associated
with these conflicts has been the developing number of choices
societies offer individuals as a result of evolving social structures
and advancing technologies. Meaningful autonomy reflects one having
choices and the number of choices a people or an individual has
determines the quantity and quality of that autonomy. Again, the
individual can work toward making more options available,
characterized as broadening his or her horizons, but he or she does
not determine the number of potential options within a given society.
That number is determined by the social conditions of that society –
it is a product produced by the collective of a given society.
Therefore, the quality and quantity of autonomy is again determined
by social conditions in which the more the members of the society can
participate and expect viable opportunities, the more there will be
diverse options. Look at our own society, as technology – again
dependent on education and other infrastructure assets including a
viable government – has opened up avenues to success, more chances
to attain that success become available. Those changes are
equalizers; they pry open demands for more diverse skills and
competencies. When differing people take part, they in turn bring
into the mix different ways of seeing things and innovations continue
to multiply. This reality, along with the need to be educated by
others in order to experience meaningful autonomy, is the product not
of individual effort, but of a social interdependence that functions
more productively and efficiently under a general
institutionalization of equality. Our liberty and its meaningful
enhancement is born, maintained, and strengthened under a system of
equality.
All
of this is complicated in practice and, as with extreme
individualism, extreme collectivism is simplistic and dangerous.
Reality cannot be bottled so easily and attempts to do so have proven
tragic, often at the hands of well-intentioned groups. Those who
engage in such thinking and action are swayed by an ideology held by
a form of traditional thinking – a thinking that is concrete and
definite. Under a guise of principled commitment, they deny the
existence of those realities that don't disappear so as to
accommodate their demands. We are left with and must come to terms
with both a need to respect the individual and our social condition.
Both are advanced when we understand the relation between equality
and liberty.
1Daggar,
R. (1997). Civic virtue: Rights, citizenship, and republican
liberalism. New York, NY:
Oxford. The argument presented in this posting relies on the ideas
expressed by Dagger, especially that portion of the argument that
relates to the functions of education and societal options.
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