blackheath philosophy forum

TRANSCRIPT OF TONY LYNCH'S PAPER "FREEDOM, CHOICE, AND SECURITY" DELIVERED ON SATURDAY JULY 8, 2006, AT THE BLACKHEATH FORUM

Part I.
Beyond Left & Right: Freedom and Security, Tony Lynch.
Philosophy & Politics, University of New England,
June, 2006.

(Note from the Forum Webmistress: apologies to Tony Lynch if some book titles referred to in his talks are not in italics due to transposition to the site)


Introduction
The idea that politics in the liberal and social democracies of the West has somehow moved past the traditional opposition between the Conservative Right and the Socialist Left, and that this is somehow "a good thing", has been a feature of much "intellectual" commentary and self-congratulatory political rhetoric.

Often the claim is a political guillotine - it is used to silence those on the Right who might object to what they see as an attack on traditional values and social structures, and those on the Left who might object to what they see as an attack on the most vulnerable in our communities, or in the failure to provide for, or to protect, equality of opportunity. Used this way it serves to rule out politics as a sphere in which we might express our concern for others - for their traditional values and communities, or for their capacity to satisfy their vital needs and to live flourishing lives. Such concerns are said, in a derisory tone, to be "out of date", to reflect a "fear of the new", to manifest an "hostility to change", to embody a sentimental insistence on "looking backwards", even - in the most egregious of caricatures - just what you would expect from "elites" still hopelessly opposed to the radical transformation of our lives by the real elites. In this sense the topic is hardly worth talking about philosophically because it has no other tone but the exercise, deployment and enjoyment of power.

But it is the job - or curse - of the philosopher to be trained to try and find sense even where it isn't clear that there is sense to be found. Charity may not always be appreciated, thanked, or profitable, but it is to a sense making charity that philosophers are committed. And so I want to try and find the sense - if any - behind the familiar rhetoric of a politics "Beyond Left and Right".

Being Upfront

Let me be up front: I think there is something in the claim that we have a politics that is "Beyond Left and Right". (i)

In my view, the Right and the Left both took individual freedom to be a fundamental value; and both took this freedom to presuppose a secure choice environment of the kind only a politically organized world could provide. Against this view - and in different ways - we have the modern positions of Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Conservatism. In the name of individual choice Neo-liberalism detaches (the value of) individual freedom from a politically facilitated security. What individual freedom requires is a politically unsecured choice environment. Neo-conservatism takes a different tack. Now the idea is that individual freedom can only be delivered and secured by a political authority whose power is unfettered and untrammeled. Yes, individual freedom matters, but it can only be securely provided if the state - that is to say, those who man, and so naturally see themselves as embodying, it - have the freedom to do as they see fit in the name of securing our freedom.

Freedom: the Right & the Left

To begin the story let us return to the politics of freedom of the Conservative Right and the Socialist Left.

The Right has always emphasized the importance of individual freedom. What makes it distinctive is that it does situates this freedom against the background of an established social order that sustains a robust ethical system; freedom consists in the exercise of one's traditional liberties and the pursuit of conventionally sanctioned moral values. Without an established socio-ethical order freedom degenerates into mere "license", and is to be repudiated as soulless "decadence". The task of politics is to protect and preserve individual freedom by protecting and preserving the established social order and conventional ethical system. The challenge of politics is to do this without falling into a reactionary elitism in which traditional liberties are curtailed for the unrestricted prerogatives of the powerful, or into a reactionary reification of present conventions that denies the (occasional) need for adaptive change.

The Left too, has always emphasized the value of human freedom. Where it differs from the Right is in connecting this idea of freedom very closely to the idea of equality. For the Left it is an obvious truth that without social, political and economic equality, freedom becomes, on the side of the less than equal, a constrained system of desperate choices, or, more often, of the desperate absence of choices; while on the side of the more than equal, it transmutes into a deplorable (and self-damaging) capacity for exploitation and oppression of others. The task of politics is to provide material security for all, and to provide equally for citizens an array of opportunities through which they might develop their capacities. The challenge of politics is to do this without turning freedom of opportunity into an enforced uniformity, and to make sure that where political power expands into new areas it is freedom-enhancing, not freedom-restricting.
Let me turn now to neo-liberalism.

Neo-Liberalism

In a nutshell, neo-liberalism not only denies the internal connection between the provision of a politically secured choice environment and individual freedom, it sets the two at loggerheads. Thus a secure choice environment is - of its nature - an impediment to "real" freedom; and "real" freedom involves the imposition, and welcoming, of a politically unsecured choice environment. The slogan is "Free to Choose", or of "the Right to Choose", and the range of choices is thought to be potentially (and properly) unlimited. The more choices there are around, the more freedom there is to be found. And there are obviously more choices around, and so the more freedom, when less in the choice environment is guaranteed, either by a politically defended traditional social order, or by the secure provisions of government welfarism. The neo-liberal rhetoric of freedom is not, as it was for the Right, a matter of traditional liberties tied to an established social order and conventional standards of moral evaluation, nor, as with the Left, a matter of developing our capacities, and so tied to the provision of material well-being and to standards of social and political equality; it is tied instead to the notion of "risk" (2). The idea is that the more risks one faces, then the more one's capacity for free choice has been unleashed. The rhetoric of freedom as risk is that of "flexibility", "deregulation", "privatization", of "letting managers manage", of "portfolio careers", of "individual responsibility", of "winners and losers", of - in short - the maximal opportunities for individual choice.

Whereas for the Right and Left individual freedom was taken to have its meaning in so far as it keyed into the idea of an individual life, and so of a life worth living, with choice entering insofar as it was a matter of enacting our traditional liberties, or of furthering the development of our capacities, for neo-liberalism freedom is detached from this embedded and extended temporal perspective, and is identified with the act of choice. It is for this reason that the model for freedom comes to be the model of the consumer and the metaphor - or model - for social existence becomes that of the laissez-faire market. Under this model, the task of politics is its self-effacement. Politics is not the means to the freedom guaranteeing security the Left and the Right, in their own ways, take it to be; it is rather the dismantling of such guaranteed security, and so of its own dismantling.

I call this act-of-choice conception of human freedom pre-political. I do so not just because of the self-abolitional politics it involves, but because it was precisely this kind of freedom that characterized human life in what liberal political philosophers, from John Locke onwards, termed the "state of nature" - where this means human life outside of (any) political society (3). The significance of seeing neo-liberalism in this light is that in the liberal democratic tradition within which the Right and Left fought their battles, politics had been conceived as a means of defending and furthering individual freedom by dealing with the problems that arise from the operations of individual freedom in the state of nature; yet it is precisely this vision of the politics of freedom that is refused or denied in the neo-liberalism

Rather than leap into the details of Locke's arguments - sound though I think they are - let us try to see in as simple as possible a way why we might see politics as a solution to the problems of unfettered individual choice; and why we might see a politics which dealt with such problems as a contribution to human freedom.

The basic idea is this: Freedom is a good thing, but there are many kinds of choice which - on any sane view of things - can hardly be thought of as a good thing, and so cannot be a contribution to freedom. In fact many kinds of choice seem to undermine, diminish or destroy, freedom; at least to destroy the kind of freedom which we might value for the place it has allowing us to live meaningful lives.

With no claim to give an exhaustive list (it isn't), let me suggest that there are at least three kinds of choices which tell against, not for, human freedom. They are cases in which the choice is the product of an underlying, unwanted, necessity; cases in which the choice, while not in itself undesirable, is undesirable when collectively available; and cases where the choice is irrelevant, distracting, unnecessary, or trivial for us as we seek to pursue those things we value in life.

For an example of the first category, consider Sophie's Choice: which of her children to leave to the executioners, and which to save (4). This is a choice which no-one should have to face. Facing it does not extend Sophie's freedom - just as having the choice between being electrocuted or hung does not extend the freedom of the condemned. When one must make - or refuse to make - choices in situations in which no-one should have to, or would want to, find themselves, then whatever freedom there is, is simply the unwanted product of an underlying, and terrible, necessity. While Spinoza may have had a word in favour of this as the epitome of human freedom, for most of us it is surely true that Sophie's freedom woul