The Record on Liberty

Earlier, we noted that political philosophers have identified five principal aims of government. So far, we have examined the extent to which four of these aims—welfare, security, order, and justice—have been achieved in the world’s monarchies and republics. The fifth aim of government is liberty.

One of the first things that may come to mind when the reader hears the word liberty is freedom of expression. Yet freedom of expression was not historically the first or most fundamental issue of liberty. Before people could speak freely, they first had to be freed from slavery, personal dependence, and the denial of the most basic rights. To understand the meaning of liberty, it is therefore useful to begin with the relationship between rights, choice, and liberty.

In earlier sections, we noted that for thousands of years land was the most important means of production, and that a large share of human needs was met directly or indirectly through it. In an age when industry and technology were limited, human labor was enormously important. Landowners and governments therefore sought to secure that labor at the lowest possible cost. As a result, many societies developed laws that recognized slavery, serfdom, and various forms of dependence on land or landlords.

Slaves were deprived of many of the rights that we now regard as fundamental human rights. Serfs, too, were often unable to choose freely where they lived, what occupation they pursued, or where they worked. The more limited a person’s legal rights are, the fewer choices that person has; and the narrower the range of available choices, the less liberty that person enjoys.

If a serf is permitted to work only on the land of a particular landlord and cannot possess land of his own, he loses the ability to choose what to produce, where to work, or how to organize his life. A slave whose labor and wages are controlled by someone else cannot choose an occupation or decide how the fruits of that labor will be used. A girl denied the right to education not only loses the ability to choose her educational path in childhood; as an adult, her lack of knowledge and skills will also leave her with fewer options for building the life she wishes to lead.

In past societies, governments often assigned different rights to different classes, occupations, religions, and sexes according to their own interests and those of the groups that supported them. The social position into which a person was born largely determined his or her rights and course of life, while movement from one legal status to another was often extremely difficult or impossible.

Religion and custom sometimes reinforced and institutionalized these legal distinctions. Some restrictions took the form of religious rules, while others, even without direct legal or religious authority, were enforced through tradition and social pressure. In this way, government, religion, and custom often restricted the range of choices otherwise available to individuals and thereby shaped the extent of their liberty.

With the emergence of natural-rights theory and modern political philosophy, the idea gained strength that human beings are naturally free and possess fundamental rights. From this perspective, the role of government is not merely to maintain order or carry out the commands of rulers. Government must also create conditions in which each person can choose the way of life he or she prefers and pursue happiness in his or her own way, so long as doing so does not violate the equal rights of others.

This responsibility presents government with a difficult problem. On the one hand, maintaining security, order, and the rights of others necessarily requires restrictions on certain forms of conduct. On the other hand, government must avoid unnecessary restrictions and preserve the widest possible range of lawful choices for its citizens. In the liberal conception of government, liberty does not mean the absence of all law; rather, it means that everyone should enjoy the greatest liberty compatible with equal liberty for others.

Within this framework, the more extensive the legal rights enjoyed by citizens, the greater the range of choices open to them and the greater their practical liberty to shape their own lives. We will now examine the extent to which monarchies and republics recognize and protect the rights and liberties of their citizens.

A Note on the Concept of Class Society

It is important here to distinguish between two different meanings of a “class society.” In many historical societies, different classes did not enjoy equal rights under the law. Nobles, clergy, serfs, slaves, women, and members of different religious communities were subject to different rights and obligations, and movement from one legal class to another was often extremely difficult.

In the modern world, however, the term class is also sometimes used to describe differences in income and economic position. Economic inequality is not the same as legal inequality. Members of a society may have different levels of income and wealth while the law grants them equal civil rights and equal rights to property, education, employment, and social mobility. Such a society may be economically unequal, but in the historical and legal sense it is not necessarily a society based on hereditary classes with unequal rights.

This distinction does not imply that economic inequality or inequality of opportunity is unimportant. It simply means that differences in income should not automatically be equated with the legally stratified class systems of earlier societies. Historical experience has also shown that attempts to eliminate economic differences entirely, when accompanied by restrictions on property rights, occupational choice, and freedom of exchange, may themselves reduce both liberty and general welfare.