{"id":9822,"date":"2011-04-30T11:42:48","date_gmt":"2011-04-30T10:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=9822"},"modified":"2011-04-30T11:42:48","modified_gmt":"2011-04-30T10:42:48","slug":"libertarianism-a-concept-the-left-needs-to-reclaim-for-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/04\/30\/libertarianism-a-concept-the-left-needs-to-reclaim-for-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Libertarianism – a concept the left needs to reclaim for itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Polly Toynbee's written a strong piece in the Guardian<\/a> this morning, clearly\u00a0inspired\u00a0by her (reasonable) reaction to the royal wedding.<\/p>\n

She concluded:<\/p>\n

Few yet realise the scale of the conservative revolution in progress. Professors\u00a0Peter Taylor-Gooby and Gerry Stoker<\/a> have just revealed that by 2013 public spending will be a lower proportion of GDP in Britain than in the US. They write in the Political Quarterly: \"A profound shift in our understanding of the role of the state and the nature of our welfare system is taking place without serious debate.\" Can that really be done without rebellion? That will be the test of what kind of nation we are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let's be clear: I don't think Polly is inciting riot. The Oxford dictionary defines rebellion as:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

rebellion |ri\u00cb\u02c6bely\u00c9\u2122n|<\/p>\n

noun<\/p>\n

an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler : the authorities put down a rebellion by landless colonials <\/em>| Simon de Montfort rose in rebellion. <\/em>See note at uprising <\/strong>.<\/p>\n

- the action or process of resisting authority, control, or convention : an act of teenage rebellion.<\/em><\/p>\n

ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French, from Latin rebellio(n-)<\/em><\/strong>, from rebellis <\/em><\/strong>(see rebel <\/strong>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And yes, we do need to resist authority right now.<\/p>\n

But not for the sake of it. We need to do so\u00a0because\u00a0authority has been subverted. The authority we now have is actively seeking to destroy rights, and that is why it should be\u00a0opposed. I haven't time to explore this in depth now, so let me borrow this instead<\/a>, which seeks to\u00a0explain\u00a0the logic based on the work of\u00a0Isaiah\u00a0Berlin (and Kant, when you get back to basics):<\/p>\n

Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting \u2013 or the fact of acting \u2013 in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The post war\u00a0consensus\u00a0was built on the basis of positive\u00a0liberties. I am a positive libertarian on that basis, and proud to be so. Neo-liberalism\u00a0and its vision of libertarianism is\u00a0negative\u00a0by this\u00a0definition.<\/p>\n

And what we're seeing is the state - the agency that should enforce positive libertarian rights - being used to reinforce the negative libertarian rights of few.<\/p>\n

That's the core of this issue.<\/p>\n

That's the core of Blue\u00a0Labour\u00a0too by the way - as I see it. The\u00a0collective\u00a0is\u00a0positive.<\/p>\n

The imposition of the individual over the\u00a0collective\u00a0- and the denial that the collective\u00a0exists\u00a0- as Thatcher suggested - is what is threatening our society, destroying trust, undermining democracy, increasing fear and seeking to destroy the well being of the majority in the interests of a minority.<\/p>\n

That's what Polly is saying we need to rebel against. And she's right.<\/p>\n

And let's not forget - it's a libertarian act to rebel for our collective rights.\u00a0Positively\u00a0libertarian. In\u00a0itself\u00a0a word the left need to reclaim - with precisely the connotation I put on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polly Toynbee’s written a strong piece in the Guardian this morning, clearly\u00a0inspired\u00a0by her (reasonable) reaction to the royal wedding. She concluded: Few yet realise the
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-labour"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}