310
PARTISAN REVIEW
When one is free of disease, free of ignorance, free of poverty, one is
free in this meaningful sense. Furthermore, once the idea of self-causation,
self-determination, origination or personal initiative is left philosophically
unsupported-and, especially, scientifically hopeless-the sense of being
free when no one intrudes upon one, or when no other person aggresses
upon someone, carries little significance. Aggression from others under
such conditions is but a natural impediment, no different from the "aggres–
sion" that a tornado or virus will manifest. The only true freedom is what
Marx advanced, following Hegel: freedom from natural necessity.
Actually Hobbes also held the view that what human beings are most
in need of is this kind of "freedom of impediments," a notion embraced
by some neo-classical economists, such as the late George Stigler.
According to them, freedom is really nothing more than diminished cost,
the reduction of obstacles one must overcome in one's life. Furthermore,
since no one is more deserving of success than another, since everything
just happens, nothing is ultimately up to any of us.
In
a just society every–
one ought to have as much of everything good as possible to arrange via
effective collective, state action. That, too, leads to a polity in which basic
positive freedom is prized above everything else.
Actually, classical liberalism, which has had certain affinities to modern
scientism, has contributed in some measure to an understanding of human
nature as passive, inert, incapable of self-determination, something that has
spawned support for the welfare state.
In
other words, one of the paths to
classical liberalism can lead, as well, to contemporary welfare statism.
In
that outlook, it is central that people are taken to be victims-or, rather,
casualties-of their circumstances deserving neither credit nor blame for
their lot in life.
But it is contemporary welfare-state liberalism that is most clearly
loyal to that version of freedom which arises from the understanding of
human nature as basically inert, as all matter is in the framework of the
ontology of classical mechanics. So what people need is not to be left free
by their fellows but to be made free by removing natural impediments to
their motion and development. (That this poses a paradox-since how can
anyone then initiate the action to make others free becomes very prob–
lematic-is not often noticed.)
Actually, neither classical nor modern liberalism is spared scorn from
some of our major political philosophers. MacIntyre, for example, states:
[T]he Marxist understanding of liberalism as ideological, as a deceiv–
ing and self-deceiving mask for certain social interests, remains
compelling.... Liberalism in the name of freedom imposes a certain
kind of unacknowledged domination, and one which in the long run
