Sunday, June 12, 2011

Kenneth Boulding on Freedom

"Freedom is a troublesome concept and all the more important for being troublesome... The confusion arises because freedom is a concept with more than one dimension, and all its dimensions are important. A great deal of unnecessary political controversy and many false images of the world arise out of the failure to recognize the existence of these various dimensions. A person or society may be moving towards more freedom on one dimension and less freedom on another. Under these circumstances it is not surprising if we concentrate on the dimension which is favorable to us and neglect the dimension which is not. Hence we get into seemingly irreconcileable arguments about the meaning of these movements, with each party perceiving himself as becoming more free and the other party as becoming less." from The Dimensions of Economic Freedom, 1964

6 comments:

  1. Hayek makes the same point in greater length and detail at the beginning of the Constitution of Liberty--he lays out the various dimensions and so forth.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The essay went on to talk about what dimensions he had in mind (power, law, and understanding), and he saw three major dimensions of social organization that they acted in (threat, exchange, and integrative). I'm still getting a sense of what he means with all this - I'd be interested in knowing how Hayek thought of these dimensions.

    His distinction between exchange and integrative methods of organization fits very well into recent discussions I've had here and on Bob Murphy's blog where an unfortunate number of commenters are sloppy in their use of the word "market", and seem to think that all voluntary relations are market relations.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hmm--maybe I spoke too soon. Hayek's is different. In chapter 1 of the CoL, Hayek lays out a variety of meanings of "freedom". There's liberty in the original sense, the negative sense, security from coercion by the arbitrary will of another. Then "political freedom", the freedom to choose a and participate in government. He points out that men who have political freedom may not be free men, and free men may not have political freedom. Then "inner" or "metaphysical" freedom, the extent to which a person is guided by his true will rather than impulse or necessity--e.g. "slave of his passions." Communique like to harp on this one when they complain about how capitalism means people have to satisfy the will of others to satisfy their own. It also seems related to libertarian paternalism. Then liberty as "power", physical capability. He accuses progressives like John Dewey of substituting this meaning of liberty for the original.

    It's interesting to think about in terms of tradeoffs. There's nothing inherently desirable about the original kind of liberty, but its preservation allows all the other kinds to be pursued.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The best work I've ever read on the concept of freedom was Orlando Patterson's "Freedom in the Making of Western Culture." He also has a three part definition of freedom.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Also, agree with Daniel viz. over expansive definition of market. Think some of the confusion might have to do with fact that economic laws ordinarily applied to markets apply to other human systems as well--Gary Becker and so forth.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is obligatory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugR-Iyp-e1k

    ReplyDelete

All anonymous comments will be deleted. Consistent pseudonyms are fine.