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PARTISAN REVIEW
By the end of the 1950s, the claims for political independence and
sovereignty by many countries that had been imperial colonies were
rapidly being realized. Thus, Berlin was able to celebrate the fulfillment
of positive liberty in the achievement of governments of popular sover–
eignty in the new nation-states of Asia and Africa. Yet his delineation of
the two concepts of liberty provided an implicit argument for the neces–
sity of the countervailing balance of negative liberty. Without institu–
tions and traditions that would protect negative liberties, the promise of
the postcolonial states would not be realized .
Berlin's approach to the emergence of socialist states in the twentieth
century was characterized by a similar balance, derivable from his struc–
turing of freedom as requiring both positive and negative liberty. He
assessed the transformational vision and the utopian illusion of social–
ist ideologies and recognized the ways in which such a vision could
obscure the errors, brutalities, and other abuses of individual rights on
the ideologically charted road to freedom. His lecture came within a few
years of Khrushchev's public admission of Stalin's crimes, and took spe–
cial note of totalitarianism with its record of repression and genocide
during the 1930S and 1940s. This context heightened the impact of
Berlin's formulation of the importance of "negative liberty," even within
movements dedicated to social or economic progress.
The international context of the 19 50S was marked by the division of
the world into two consolidated strategic alliances, as well as by the
Bandung effort to develop a Third World neutralist coalition which
tilted ideologically toward the socialist bloc. Berlin's delineation of the
two concepts of liberty, while avoiding appeasement or endorsement of
any political camp, formulated in a non-ideological and nuanced way
the stakes for human freedom that were present in international conflict.
While recognizing the basis in human aspiration and human history
for a concept of "positive liberty," Berlin asserted the constant, unerod–
able need for "negative liberty" with its demarcation of the wall that
protects or insulates the individual from the forces of coercive power.
Thus, the connection between the interpretations of freedom and major
sources of political conflict had been identified and clarified as a poten–
tial guide to the political agenda of the twentieth century.
IN THE
19605,
A THIRD CONCEPT
of liberty related to the changing polit–
ical agenda achieved prominence within radical movements, both in the
West and in developing countries. This different interpretation of
human freedom involved a new set of political priorities that shifted the
