Freedom, private property, the market and redistribution

Justified redistributive taxation does not infringe the freedom of those who are taxed
because their claims to the property in question cannot be established in the first place.
• Ronald Dworkin (b.1931): leading egalitarian liberal alongside Rawls
◦ when we take property from those whose claim to it is not justified, we should
not think of ourselves as restricting their freedom at all
▪ what counts as restriction of freedom depends upon judgements about what
property rights are justified in the first place
▪ action - restriction on freedom = justified is same question
• G. A. Cohen (b.1941): Canadian philosopher
◦ freedom is restricted whenever someone interferes with my actions, where right
or not
▪ action – freedom and justification are different.
• Overlap between these approaches to freedom and the variant of positive freedom
that identifies it with autonomy
• distinction between moralised and non-moralised conceptions of freedom
◦ redistribution = justified on non-freedom grounds

Even if justified redistribution does not restrict the freedom of those who are taxed, and
whether or not it increases the freedom of those who benefit, it makes them better off in
other ways and can be justified on these non-freedom grounds
 redistribution of property justified in the name of other values
 legislation is justified because it makes people better off than they would otherwise be,
even though it does this by restricting their freedom?

Redistribution reduces the effective freedom of those who are taxed, but is justified
because it makes for more effective freedom overall.

Private property rights and market relations encourage people to misconceive their real interests
and hence render them heteronomous and unfree

Freedom = autonomy, autonomy = rationality, rationality = morality, morality = justice, justice =

redistribution, therefore the person who recognises her duty to redistribute her resources is herself
freer than the person who does not recognise that duty.

Resisting the Totalitarian menace

1. Promoting people's autonomy can involve just providing information and helping
them think for themselves
• Education =  effective freedom
• but do ignorance and lack of deliberative capacity = obstacle to freedom
• if learning about the world = autonomy, then autonomy not scary
2. To recognise that there can be internal obstacles to freedom is not to say that
anybody other than the agent herself is the best judge of when they exist
• negative conception of freedom = rejects idea there can be internal obstacles to
freedom
◦ personal defect
• but individual the best judge
• best judge ≠ right
3. To recognise that there can be internal obstacles to freedom is not to identify with
rationality
 • internal obstacles to freedom – Kant's divided self
• first order and second-order desires
◦ first: actual things
◦ second: desires about having things
• capable of evaluating desires
4. To identify freedom with rationality is not to claim that the same thing is rational for
each person
• autonomy = rationality
◦ not absurd = rational person is more free
◦ individual = not rational
• positive freedom = monism for Berlin
5. To identify freedom with rationality is not to claim that there is a single thing that is
rational for any individual
• many answers to what is rational
• different ways of life equally rational for one person
• a state that weighs these rationalities is not berlin's totatilitarian state
6. To identify what would be rational for a person does not necessarily justify
interfering with their irrational action
• different things may be rational for the same person
◦ thus pluralistic state, not totalitarian
• rational = yes, but can not justify the interference to get the person
to do it
• morally required to make her rethink her position, but not justified
7. Interference aimed at getting people to act rationally might be justified while
acknowledging it does involve a restriction on freedom and without claiming that it is
justified
• discussion need not be couched in terms of 'freedom' and 'property'
• freedom is only one value among many
• justification matters

CONCLUSION
1. Concepts of liberty is used in many different ways
2. MacCallum's model of 'x is free from y to do (become) z' provides clarity
3. There is a clear difference between the two liberal responses:
• Mainstream left argued that the right seemed part. Concerned with the freedom
of those who had property and not interested in the freedom of those who did
not have it
• The marxist and radical left questioned the very idea that property and freedom
were connected, arguing that treu freedom required transcendence of the
capitalist framework that relied on and fostered a 'bourgeois' conception of
freedom
4. Tony Blair was arguing a variant of the first strategy
5. Freedom as autonomy need not be dangerous
6. Berlin showed how the conception of positive freedom into something that could be
invoked to legitimate oppressive regimes in the name of freedom