DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

DO NOT CITE OR DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT AUTHOR’S PERMISSION

What is Economic Freedom?1

Prepared for APSA 2012

Alex Gourevitch

This essay is an exercise in critique. I take a concept – freedom – as it is conventionally

defined and show that its logical extension leads to conclusions that are in tension with

standard or existing beliefs about freedom. In particular, I show that the concept freedom,

when applied to economic relationships, leads to rather different conclusions than current

defenders – and critics – believe.

A feature of mainstream philosophical debates is that those broadly classified as ‘right-

wing’ present themselves as defenders of economic freedom, understood as the defense

of lightly regulated markets, and robust rights of property and contract. Meanwhile, those

broadly classified as ‘left-wing’ present themselves as limiting or reducing economic

freedom in the name of other values, like justice or solidarity, understood as restricting

property and contract for the sake of redistributing resources and economic opportunities.

But these positions rest on an inconsistent and vague use of the language of freedom.

Right-wing defenders of economic freedom are not engaged in a consistent defense of

freedom. And there is no logical reason why the left-wing position must be presented as

the limitation of freedom for the sake of other values. If we take the common

1
I would like to thank Corey Brettschneider, David Estlund, Javier Hidalgo, Charles Larmore, Laura
Phillips, Jeppe von Platz, John Tomasi, Kevin Vallier, and participants in the Brown Political Philosophy
Workshop for their comments on an earlier draft.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

understanding of freedom seriously, new conceptual possibilities open up for

appreciating an alternative position, committed to economic freedom, but with a different

set of institutional arrangements in mind.

Since this is a critical enterprise, I present no full moral defense of the alternate position

that I develop. I only show that there are a number of propositions that are logically

coherent and consistent with the standard definition of economic freedom but that are

illegitimately excluded. Moreover, my interest is in following out the logic of the concept

of freedom, not the other relevant concept – ‘economic’ – even though that concept, too,

is due for critique. As a last bit of groundclearing, I must mention that, though I

occasionally use the categories ‘right’ and ‘left’ wing, I will make no effort to defend my

use of those categories, and further acknowledge that they are often as misleading as they

are helpful. None of the substance of my argument rests on accepting my use of those

categories.

Here is a standard definition of freedom: freedom is non-interference. An external

critique would attempt to defend an alternative definition or conception of freedom, but

my critique is internal. I am willing to accept this definition and follow out its logic to

show the errors and missed conclusions in its normal usage. In the discussion of

economic freedom, there are at least two conceptual problems: inconsistency in the use of

the term freedom, and vagueness with respect to the definition of the economic liberties.

These mistakes jointly lead to misrepresentations about the range of possible positions

one might take on economic freedom, and give the ‘right-wingers’ an unjustified
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

rhetorical advantage by claiming to defend economic freedom – an advantage ‘left-

wingers’ are too quick to concede.

Inconsistency in the use of the term freedom has made the left-wing critique of poverty,

and of markets generally, appear to be a concern with inequality in means to enjoy

freedom, not with freedom itself. That is a mistake. Vagueness about the ‘economic’ ends

that we should be free to pursue makes the left-wing position appear to be about positive

liberty, or security, or happiness. That too is a mistake. When the left argues that it

defends real economic freedom, it is not arguing for more ‘means to enjoy’ freedom but

for more freedoms, and it is able to make that claim using a standard definition of

freedom as non-interference.2

In the first part of this paper, I lay out the standard view of freedom as non-interference,

clarify that the relevant interference is human interference, and identify legal interference

as the most significant form of freedom-denying human interference. In the second part, I

restate G.A. Cohen’s argument that poverty is liability to interference, and thus a

restriction on freedom. This fact has been overlooked by an inconsistent use of the term

freedom. In the third and fourth parts, I extend Cohen’s argument to reconstruct part of a

left-wing position. I show a) why the Left can coherently argue both for redistribution of

money as a redistribution of freedoms and b) why it might coherently argue against using

markets for distributing certain freedoms.

2
At the end of this paper I will qualify this by arguing that, in certain ways, the standard view of freedom is
insufficient, on its own terms, and in particular to understand the left-wing view. However, that argument is
supplemental to the concerns regarding inconsistency and vagueness.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

In the fifth section I turn to the vagueness about ends that we should be free to do or

achieve. I show that this vagueness has not only occluded a left-wing view, but has also

introduced conceptual confusion into normative debates about economic liberties. In the

final, sixth section, I show that the distinction between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ conceptions of

basic economic liberties hides as much as it reveals. There is more than one ‘thick’

conception of economic liberties, and it is unclear what it would mean to speak in very

general terms about ‘thick’ economic liberties in the first place. Further, the dispute about

what counts as basic economic liberties is not just a dispute over “conflicting ideals of

persons”3 but about how to conceptualize the liberties that might or might not count as

essential to the development of those persons.

i. Freedom as non-interference

Let us start with a standard definition of freedom as non-interference.4 On this view, I am

free to do something when somebody does not interfere with my doing that thing. So I

am free to use my apartment for shelter so long as nobody interferes with my use of it.

What does interfere mean here? For the purposes of argument, let us adopt the standard

view that the relevant interference is human interference, and that the relevant human

interference is lawful interference. So natural obstacles are not the kinds of interference

that restrict my liberty. If a tree falls and blocks my door, it is normal to say that I am still

3
Samuel Freeman, "Capitalism in the Classical and High Liberal Traditions," Social Philosophy & Policy
(2011): 55.
4
On freedom as non-interference, see Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Four Essays on Liberty
(Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 123, Ian Carter, "How Are Power and Unfreedom
Related?," in Republicanism and Political Theory, ed. Cecil Laborde and John Maynor (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2008), G.A. Cohen, "Freedom and Money.", Quentin Skinner, "A Third Concept of Liberty,"
Proceedings of the British Academy 117, no. 237 (2002).
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

free to leave my apartment but I am not able to. However, if I were under house arrest, I

am able to leave the house but I am not free to leave because I will face the coercive

interference of the state.

The restriction on the definition of freedom to refer only to human interference is not

valid in all conversations about freedom. When the adventurer Aron Ralston slipped

down a crevasse and a boulder pinned his hand to the crevasse wall, he eventually

liberated himself by cutting off his arm.5 He did not remove, prevent or experience any

human interference, but we still acceptably say that he freed himself by escaping the

natural obstacle of that arm-pinning boulder. Nevertheless, in current discussions about

economic liberties, it is reasonable to distinguish between freedom and ability in terms of

human v. natural obstacles because in that discourse the concern is first and foremost

with social and political freedoms, or those obstacles and opportunities that are the

product of human design and institution. For the sake of this paper’s critical enterprise, I

will accept these distinctions.

Note that the standard concern is not with all forms of human interference but with

legally permitted interference. That is because social and political freedoms are those

doings and beings that are protected by the coercive power of the state. If I am playing

pick-up soccer, and I try to use my minimal soccer skills to steal the ball from my friend

on the other team, but instead he dribbles around me, there is no question of social and

political freedom. He did not prevent my access to the ball by invoking his economic

freedom, he just used his skill to make it impossible for me to get it. I was always free to
5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aron_Ralston
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

take the ball, but I was never able to. However, if later that evening, out of a desire to

avenge my humiliation, I want to break into my friend’s house and steal his ball, and I

even have the skills to do so without detection, I am not free to steal his ball. The ball is

his property. He can invoke a property right in his house and in the ball and demand that

the state interfere with me. He can, if he catches me in the act, interfere with me himself

by saying that he will call the cops. That his threat alone is enough to limit my freedom

alerts us to the fact that the threat of state coercion is enough to count as liberty-

restricting interference. That explains why, even if I successfully steal the ball, I was still

not free to do it. Though I did not experience any human interference in the moment, I

was and remained liable to interference – to enforcement of the relevant laws prohibiting

theft and breaking and entering. I am unfree to do something when I am liable to legally-

permitted interference with that action. I have a liberty to do something when there is no

legal obstacle to my performance of that action.

Though I take this to be the standard view, it is not always consistently applied.

Inconsistency in its application leads to misleading statements about poverty, markets and

freedom.

ii. Freedom lost: an inconsistency in the use of liberty

To see the inconsistency, let us begin with the distinction that Rawls first made in A

Theory of Justice between ‘having a liberty’ and ‘the worth of a liberty.’ According to

Rawls, “radical democrats and socialists” tend to argue “that while it may appear that
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

citizens are effectively equal, the social and economic inequalities likely to arise if the

basic structure includes the basic liberties and fair equality of opportunity are too large.”6

Rawls introduces his distinction between having and worth of a liberty in response to this

challenge. He argues that it is important to

distinguish between the basic liberties and the worth of these liberties as follows:

the basic liberties are specified by institutional rights and duties that entitle

citizens to do various things, if they wish, and that forbid others to interfere. The

basic liberties are a framework of legally protected paths and opportunities. Of

course, ignorance and poverty, and the lack of material means generally, prevent

people from exercising their rights and from taking advantage of these openings.

But rather than counting these and similar obstacles as restricting a person´s

liberty, we count them as affecting the worth of liberty, that is, the usefulness to

persons of their liberties.7

To support this move Rawls argues that “the distinction between liberty and the worth of

liberty is, of course, merely a definition and settles no substantive question.”8 I am not so

sure that the definition settles no substantive question. If having a liberty and enjoying

the fair value of a liberty get different substantive, moral treatment, which it turns out

they do in most theories of justice, then a conceptual move distinguishing a liberty from

the worth of a liberty will be one way of settling substantive questions. In this instance,

the exercise in (re)definition already settles one substantive question. It transforms the

6
John Rawls, The Basic Liberties and Their Priority (Revised Tanner Lectures) (1981), 40.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid., 41.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

“radical democrat and socialist” argument into a concern with the worth of liberty, not

with the possession of liberty nor with the amount or kind of liberty a person possesses.

Poverty, for instance, tends to be seen as merely “affecting the worth of liberty” rather

than “restricting a person’s liberty.”

Rawls’ distinction between worth and possession of liberty, and his view that poverty

affects the worth of liberties, is not unique. James Nickel, says that “social and political

freedoms are concerned with some but not all impediments to action. People who are

unable to leave their beds owing to illness, who have no money to spend on travel, or

who cannot even imagine going somewhere distant lack the ability to travel but may

nevertheless have (and indeed be exercising by staying put) freedom in the area of

travel.”9 Isaiah Berlin, too, says to offer freedom “to men who are half-naked, illiterate,

underfed, and diseased is to mock their condition; they need medical help or education

before they can understand, or make use of, an increase in their freedom. What is

freedom to those who cannot make use of it?”10 It is common to argue that poverty limits

the usefulness, worth, or value of a liberty, but not liberty itself. I am picking on Rawls

because he sees somewhat more clearly than others that the distinction between worth

and possession of liberty is a response to a particular kind of left-wing challenge

regarding poverty and freedom.11

9
James W. Nickel, "Economic Liberties," in The Idea of a Political Liberalism: Essays on Rawls, ed.
Victoria Davon and Clark Wolf (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 174fn5.
10
Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," 124.
11
John Tomasi has also recently characterized the left-wing challenge in this way, when arguing that his
“market-democratic” theory of justice “attends to the socialist concern that the worth of people’s liberties is
connected to their control of material resources.” John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2012), 191.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

But Rawls mistranslates the left-wing view. The left-wing view is that poverty limits how

much freedom a person has. This is misunderstood because, as G.A. Cohen has noted,12

there is an inconsistency in the way the distinction between liberty and worth of liberty

gets used. The inconsistency is in the tendency to assimilate poverty to other natural

obstacles to the use of certain freedoms, as opposed to seeing it as liability to legal

interference. I shall develop this thought in a moment, but to appreciate its force we first

must appreciate one further aspect of the definition of ‘having a liberty’ with which

Rawls is working. He says that he is working with Gerald MacCallum’s theory of liberty.

MacCallum argues that freedom is a “triadic relation”13 between agents, obstacles, and

ends. Differences about whether someone is free, on MacCallum’s account, are really

differences about how to view the three “term variables:” i) “the (“true”) identities of the

agents whose freedom is in question” ii) “what counts as an obstacle to or interference

with the freedom of such agents” and iii) “the range of what such agents might or might

not be free to do or become.”14 Nobody is just ‘free’ except insofar as saying ‘I am free”

is understood to be shorthand for ‘I am free from certain obstacles to doing certain

things.’

Note that, using MacCallum’s definition to motivate the distinction between a person

having a liberty and enjoying the worth of that liberty requires a specification of which

obstacles “count” as obstacles and a specification of what beings and doings they

obstruct. Rawls keeps with the standard ‘non-interference’ view that the relevant

12
Most forcefully in Cohen, "Freedom and Money."
13
George MacCallum, "Negative and Positive Freedom," in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, ed. W.G.
Runciman Peter Laslett, Quentin Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 314.
14
Ibid., 319.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

obstacles are legal ones: “I shall discuss liberty in connection with constitutional and

legal restrictions…persons are at liberty to do something when they are free from certain

constraints either to do it or not to do it and when their doing it or not doing it is protected

from interference by other persons.” So, for instance, of freedom of conscience

“individuals have this basic liberty when they are free to pursue their moral, philosphical,

or religious interests without legal restrictions requiring them to engage or not to engage

in any particular form of religious or other practice, and when other men have a legal

duty not to interfere.”15

It is at this stage that one version of the ‘radical democratic and socialist’ counter might

appear. The left-wing argument might be that liberals care only about legal obstacles but

lefties care about economic obstacles to doing things. That is what they mean when they

talk about being for effective not merely formal freedom.16 However, this is not the

strategy I wish to pursue, in part because it might run into exactly the same inconsistency

that plagues the broadly speaking ‘liberal’ position. What I will show next is that the

inconsistency lies is in believing that poverty affects the worth of a liberty because

poverty is about inability rather than liability to legal interference. In fact, poverty is

really not about inability at all. It is about liability to legal interference, or lack of

freedom.

iii. Freedom re-examined: Poverty and the redistribution of freedoms

15
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1999), 177.
16
Norman Daniels makes a version of this argument in Norman Daniels, "Equal Liberty and the Unequal
Worth of Liberty," in Reading Rawls: Critical Studies on Rawls' a Theory of Justice, ed. Norman Daniels
(New York: Basic Books, 1975).
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

Recall that on the standard view freedom is distinguished from ability because ability

refers to the capacity to overcome physical and mental obstacles to doing things, not

human, legal ones. As Hobbes once famously said “when the impediment of motion, is

the constitution of the thing it selfe, we use not to say, it wants the Liberty; but the Power

to move; as when a stone lyeth still, or a man is fastned to his bed by sicknesse.”17 Illness

is a powerful illustration of disability because it is an obstacle to an agent’s taking

advantage of a freedom even when that freedom exists. If I am bed-ridden with

pneumonia, I still enjoy my freedom of association, I just am unable to use it. Perhaps

drawing inspiration from Hobbes, those who attempt to see poverty as disability liken

poverty to sickness: “People who are unable to leave their beds owing to illness, who

have no money to spend on travel, or who cannot even imagine going somewhere distant

lack the ability to travel but may nevertheless have (and indeed be exercising by staying

put) freedom in the area of travel.”18 On this account, illness, poverty, ignorance, are all

disabilities because they are lack of physical and mental means to do things (also

Rawls19).

However, poverty is not lack of ability. True, being poor might be the reason a person is

sick or unable to get necessary medicines, or why a person cannot conceive of traveling

17
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 [1651]), 146.
18
Nickel, "Economic Liberties," 174fn5.
19
“ignorance and poverty, and the lack of material means generally, prevent people from exercising their
rights and from taking advantage of these openings. But rather than counting these and similar obstacles as
restricting a person´s liberty, we count them as affecting the worth of liberty, that is, the usefulness to
persons of their liberties.” Rawls, The Basic Liberties and Their Priority (Revised Tanner Lectures), 40.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

to distant places. Poverty might be a reason why someone experiences a disability.20 But

the essence of poverty is not a deprivation of ability but of freedom. That is because,

without money, a person faces legal interference with the actions he would otherwise

attempt to perform. As G.A. Cohen puts it, when it comes to most goods, “giving money

is both necessary for getting them, and, indeed, sufficient for getting them, if they are on

sale. If you attempt access to them in the absence of money, then you will be prey to

interference.”21 Indeed, the reason poverty can cause disability is because a person is

unfree to remedy a disability. To see why poverty is unfreedom not disability consider

the following example.

Imagine Karl devotes his meagre income to food and clothing. He is too poor to rent, let

alone own, a house. His only way of finding shelter is by squatting. But if he tried to

occupy a rich person’s vacation home, an unsold home in foreclosure, or even an

abandoned warehouse, the relevant owner of each of these properties would have the

legal right to force him to leave. Therefore, Karl has no way of getting access to housing

without facing legal interference. To make the example as clear as possible, assume Karl

does not lack the physical or mental ability to access housing. Karl is physically able to

break down the front door, slip unnoticed through a side window, or climb over a

protective gate to get into one of the buildings. The only obstacle in the way of Karl’s

access to housing is the law. Specifically, he faces interference by the owners, who

20
This is, I think, a forceful reason for worrying that the boundary between disability and unfreedom can be
too quickly drawn. We can imagine a number of situations in which a disability is the product of human
interference, and thus to simply call it a disability would be to naturalize a condition that is the product of
human choice and will. A crippled shooting victim, for instance, is permanently unable to walk, but that
disability is the product of human interference.
21
Cohen, "Freedom and Money," 12.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

possess the legal authority to call in the police to force Karl to leave.22 Karl is liable to

legal interference because of his poverty, so his poverty is a restriction on his liberty.

Of course, every non-owner of those buildings is liable to interference in just the same

way that Karl is. They are all liable to interference if they try to access the building

illegally. But it would be a mistake to infer from that fact that everyone is thereby equally

unfree. What marks out Karl is that, because he is poor, he has no way of removing legal

obstacles to his access to housing. In virtue of his poverty, Karl is liable to interference in

at least one of two ways different from a non-poor person.23 First, Karl faces legal

interference with respect to all possible sources of housing, whereas all (non-poor)

persons have at least one building with respect to whose use they do not face legal

obstacles. Karl’s unfreedom, or liability to legal interference, is by that token greater.

Second, a sufficiently wealthy person even has enough money to buy one of the

properties mentioned in the example, thereby removing a legal obstacle and acquiring the

freedom to occupy and use those properties as he or she wishes. Karl, however, is liable

to interference in access to housing and has no way of eliminating that liability.

To be clear, the argument is not that housing is important. I am not arguing that you are

not free unless you have housing. That would be a point about the ends in relation to

which we do or do not face obstacles, not about facing legal obstacles themselves.

Rather, the example illustrates the way in which poverty makes one liable to interference,

or restricts one’s liberty, in ways that having money does not. I have simply chosen a

22
Note here that the interference is by private owners, but the owners could be public – if, for instance, a
city made it illegal to take up residence in a public park or state building.
23
I would like to thank Jeppe von Platz for pressing me to clarify this point.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

plausible good such as housing to illustrate the way in which poverty is freedom

restricting because it leaves a person with fewer ways to remove legal obstacles to

acquiring goods. It therefore restricts a person’s freedom with respect to property. I chose

housing, but, per the example, Karl could forego food or clothing, instead of housing.

Indeed, he could forego clothing and housing and buy food and lottery tickets, or food

and books, and so on. As G.A. Cohen puts it, money is like a state-issued ticket that “lays

out a disjunction of conjunctions of courses of action that I may perform.” A “disjunction

of conjunctions” is a list of all the various possible choices the ticket (money) makes

legally permissible: “I may do A and B and C and D OR B and C and D and E OR E and

F and G and A, and so on. If I try to do something not licensed by my ticket or tickets,

armed force intervenes.”24 Money is that kind of state-issued ticket but without all the

possible uses of it written down. It is in virtue of having fewer of those tickets, or less

money, that Karl faces many more ineliminable legal obstacles than a person with more

money. Since money is the only way to remove legal obstacles to goods Karl’s freedom

is more restricted than someone with more money. That unfreedom is a general feature of

his poverty.

So far, I have merely been laying out G.A. Cohen’s argument that poverty limits a

person’s freedom, not the worth or ability to use freedom. The key thought has been that

money is not ‘means’ or ‘ability’ in the way, say, physical strength or bodily health is. As

Cohen puts it, money is not a thing at all: “money (as opposed to gold) is not something

material, like muscles (and gold), whose practical significance society affects, but social

24
Cohen, "Freedom and Money," 19.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

in its very essence.”25 It is a social relation, or a way of shaping relations of constraint

among human beings. Money is “social in its very essence” because the special role of

money is to remove legal not natural obstacles, and legal obstacles are social

constructions.

Although Cohen only hints at it, a straightforward implication of his argument is that

there might be other social conventions, besides use of money, that could eliminate legal

obstacles to accessing goods. For instance, with regard to the example of Karl, one might

ask, what if Karl has a friend named Fredrick who will let him live in Fredrick’s home

(and perhaps pay for the rest of his needs…)? In that case, it is true, Karl now has the

freedom to access housing because legal interference with his access to housing has been

removed. Fredrick removed it with his generous gift – the gift of using the house. Note

that Karl’s liability to interference with access to housing has been eliminated even

though he remains just as cash poor as before. So there are ways, besides money, to

eliminate legal obstacles to accessing goods.26 But note further that, if this pattern of

charitable access to goods were generalized, then we would be talking about a utopian

gift-economy, in which it was standard for any person to have access to goods like

housing without having to pay for them. There would be a new convention for removing

and distributing rights of interference.

This wonderful utopia is not ours, but it does alert us to the relevant point about money

when it comes to liberty. Money is just one social convention through which the legally

25
Ibid., 23.
26
As Cohen puts it, money is an “an inus condition of the freedom to acquire, an insufficient but necessary
part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition.” Ibid., 14.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

sanctioned power of interference over things is conferred. The more that access to goods

is dependent upon them being offered on the market for money, the more that money

serves its conventional or social function of (re)distributing freedoms. In the utopian gift-

economy, a different convention, based on general goodwill and personal charity,

determines the liability to interference. With sufficient development of that social

convention, money would just cease to be money because it would no longer play its

conventional role in distributing rights of and liability to interference. Lack of money,

therefore, would cease to be a source of unfreedom because the normal case is to enjoy

access to goods out of the spontaneous generosity of fellow citizens who happen to

possess those goods.27

But we live in a capitalist society. In a capitalist society, the standard means of removing

legal obstacles to having goods is by paying for them. As Adam Smith famously said, “it

is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect

our dinner, but from regard to their own interest.”28 So even if we can find many cases of

sharing and gift-giving, in the vast majority of cases possession of money, not the

goodwill of others, is the only way of acquiring goods. More money is therefore more

freedom; lack of money is less freedom. So even if Karl happens to find some other way

of escaping liability to interference in the case of housing, his poverty still leaves him

27
It may very well be that in this society property ownership itself would lose its meaning because of the
generalized, spontaneous sharing of goods. And that is indicative, since property rights are the main ways
of establishing zones of non-interference in a market-society. In the utopian world it would appear that
ethical culture would serve the function of law, as the givers would be less possessive of goods and the
takers (perhaps) naturally more moderate in their demands. There would be no need for legal coercion to
protect property rights. This is roughly the kind of society that William Morris describes in his utopian
novel News From Nowhere.
28
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund, 1976 [1776]), I.ii.2.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

liable to interference in his attempt to acquire access to most goods. What is at stake for

Karl in the case of housing is not the worth of his liberty to own property, nor his ability

to use that liberty, but the degree to which he has that liberty. It is therefore inconsistent

for theorists to argue as they have: that liberty is non-interference, that interference is a

matter of liability to legal obstacles, but that poverty is disability not unfreedom. Lack of

money is nothing but increased liability to interference in the access to goods, and is

therefore restriction of liberty. The poor man who breaks into a pharmacy to steal

medicines that he cannot afford goes to jail. The rich man too sick to make it to the

pharmacy does not go to jail, he is simply unable to buy the medicine. The poor man is

unfree, in virtue of his poverty; the rich man is disabled, in virtue of his sickness.

So at least one part of the liberal response to left-wing criticisms is not valid. The “radical

democrats and socialists”29 to whom Rawls believes he is responding are not worried

about the worth but about the extent of liberties. While there might be a reason to

distinguish between having a liberty and the worth of that liberty, the conventional way

of drawing that distinction depends upon the freedom v. ability distinction. As our use of

Cohen’s conceptual analysis has shown, it is inconsistent to use the concept of liberty to

say that poverty is a disability. Since poverty is liability to legal interference, it is not a

matter of disability but unfreedom. Once we reject the view that poverty is disability,

then we cannot say that it merely affects the worth of liberties. That is, unless what one

means when speaking of poverty in this way is that ‘the worth of one liberty depends

upon the possession of another liberty.’ For instance, one might say ‘I have the liberty to

own property that I have acquired legally.’ But ‘the worth of that liberty depends upon
29
Rawls, The Basic Liberties and Their Priority (Revised Tanner Lectures), 40.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

my possession of another liberty, the liberty to actually acquire some property – i.e. that I

have enough money to possess some physical property without being liable to

interference in the use of that property.’ This, however, is not what is normally meant by

saying poverty threatens the worth of a liberty but not the possession of that liberty.

Moreover, this way of putting things only works by recognizing the way poverty cannot

be assimilated to disabilities like illness and ignorance but should instead be seen as

unfreedom.

iv. Freedom regained

I mentioned at the outset that one reason for drawing attention to the inconsistency in the

use of the term ‘freedom’ is to make visible a left-wing view that current theory occludes.

We can now see two features of that view. The first we have already stated: a concern

with poverty is about the amount of freedom a person has, not the worth of that freedom.

Second, the argument for redistributing income, and for in-kind provision of goods, is not

an argument for restricting a liberty in the name of some other value. The argument for

various redistributive schemes is for the sake of redistributing liberties, and increasing the

liberties that the poor have.

- Taxing to increase freedom

Consider, for instance, a less utopian situation than the gift-giving economy, one in which

money would not be the only systematic means for removing human interference to
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

access to the relevant good: socialized provision of housing. Imagine the state made an

apartment available to anyone unable to afford rent, simply upon request. Nobody,

neither private individual nor state agent, would have the legal permission to prevent Karl

from gaining access to housing. Even though Karl would have no money for it, once

again he would have a freedom he did not have before because legal obstacles to

accessing housing would now have been removed. We could even imagine a familiar

welfarist measure, whereby the state gives Karl an adequate monthly stipend such that he

could afford to pay a landlord monthly rent. This too would reduce Karl’s liability to

legal interference. Now say that the state pays for providing housing, in either way, by

taxing the wealthy. On the standard liberal view that I have been criticizing, this ‘taxing

and spending’ is seen as the restriction of a liberty – liberty of property – to increase the

worth of a liberty or to increase a person’s ability to use his liberties. But on the left-wing

view, there is a restriction of a liberty in the name of providing a liberty. Coercive

taxation restricts the wealthy person’s liberty; the supply of legal access to housing

increases the poor person’s.

Note two further implications of the argument that money is a way of distributing legal

constraints.30 One implication is that, in a capitalist society, income-transfers are less

freedom-restricting ways of providing access to goods than in-kind transfers. When most

goods are exchanged in markets, in-kind transfers impose more limits on the interference

that a person is able to remove as compared with cash. In our housing example, a person

with a monthly stipend from the state can remove interference with his access to housing

30
I say the following arguments are implications because I have not seen Cohen himself make the
arguments anywhere, but also because I do not know if he would have defended them.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

across a wide range of rental housing options, but a person with a claim on in-kind state-

provided housing can only remove interference with access to the narrower range of

public housing options. However, this argument holds only if the relevant goods or

services, like housing, are for the most part provided through a market. Income-transfers

are most freedom increasing when money is the dominant convention for altering powers

of interference with access to goods and services.

- abolishing markets to increase freedom

This feature of money is important because it points to the second implication of the

analysis of money and freedom. If money only fully serves its role in removing legal

obstacles when most goods have been commodified, then an argument against the use of

markets can be an argument about preferring one mechanism for distributing freedoms

over another. That is to say, like an argument for taxing and spending, an argument

against using markets can be an argument for restricting freedom in the name of freedom.

While some arguments for abolishing markets in certain goods come from some non-

freedom related moral concern, like human dignity, religious observance, or social

cohesion, there is a freedom-related version of the argument.

The conceptual logic of a liberty-based argument against a market for certain goods takes

the same form as any other argument that restricting one liberty or set of liberties is

necessary to guarantee another liberty. The relevant freedom-providing restriction is

more absolute because, on a possible left-wing view, mere restructuring of the market
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

(say, redistribution of money, or means-tested in-kind transfers) is thought to be

inadequate to guarantee the relevant liberties. Again, I am not providing any moral or

empirical defense of the virtues of any particular argument to restrict a market in the

name of freedom. I am only redeeming the conceptual claim that we can see arguments

for redistribution, and even abolishing markets, as about redistributing and expanding,

not just restricting, the possession of liberties.

A radical example of the argument that abolishing a market is a way of providing, not

just restricting, a liberty, is the market for productive assets. On the classical liberal and

the libertarian views, private ownership of productive assets ought to be a basic liberty.

This necessarily entails that there should be a relatively unregulated market in productive

assets. However, a left-wing argument is that when means of production are privately

owned most people are unfree actually to control any productive assets. They face

interference in their access to the means of production. After all, private ownership

means that the owners may exclude workers from the use of those productive assets, and

only give them access by giving them wages and benefits, not ownership or control. It

further means that there can be a group of unemployed people, who do not even enjoy

wages and benefits. Any unemployed person who wants a job faces legal interference if

he or she attempts to gain access to means of production without the owners’ permission.

Of course, we can say that, if productive assets are owned by the state, then everyone

faces legal interference in their attempt to fully appropriate the means from themselves

individually. But that might be the restriction of liberty necessary to provide a different

liberty – control over some portion of productive assets. We could imagine a society in
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

which, as part of the state ownership of the means of production, everyone gets an

‘access-ticket’. This ticket can be redeemed for employment in any state-owned

enterprise, and if no existing manager of a state-owned enterprise will accept this person

as an employee, then that ticket becomes a legal claim against the state to supply him

with some form of employment – say building roads and bridges or, just as likely,

pushing paper around in an office.

One liberty – private ownership of productive assets – has been restricted, but another

liberty – freedom from legal obstacles to having some job or another – has been

increased. The abolition of a market in productive assets is, on this view, necessary for

everyone to have some other liberties.31 To put a point on the example, add a further,

somewhat more ambitious, detail. Imagine that all day-to-day operations of state owned

enterprises are cooperatively run by the workers, such that every worker has a share in

the decision-making activities about how to organize and deploy productive assets. In this

case, abolishing a market in productive assets not only increases a different liberty (from

legal obstacles to having a job), but also increases something like the same liberty. The

‘same liberty’ being freedom from legal obstacles to exercising control over some

productive assets. So one can at least see that it is theoretically coherent to claim that

abolishing a market in productive assets would expand the number of people with the

liberty to control productive assets.

31
Though his interest was first and foremost in responding to the socialist calculation controversy, Oscar
Lange made more or less this claim I narguing for the virtues of a market in consumer goods but public
ownership of the means of production. Oskar Lange, "On the Economic Theory of Socialism: Part One,"
The Review of Economic Studies 4, no. 1 (1936): 60-68.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

Of course the desirability and feasibility of this view depends on many more moral

arguments and empirical claims, none of which matter for the immediate purposes of

conceptual clarification. My aim is to illustrate the conceptual logic of a left-wing

position that a) prefers income-transfers, so long as a market exists, but b) why, from the

standpoint of concern with having and guranteeing freedoms, the same position might

replace the market with other mechanisms for distributing rights and powers of

interference. Note, finally, that the coherence of this left-wing view depends only on a

consistent use of the standard view of freedom as non-interference, not on any positive

liberty claims about essential human ends or purposes. It just cannot be said that left-

wingers want to restrict ‘freedom’ in the name of some other value.

- Freedom and Institutional Evaluation

Now one might think that at least one part of my argument is quite congenial to a certain

libertarian/classical liberal view. If having more money means having more freedom,

then surely that only strengthens the position that, once basic civil and political liberties

are secured, a just society should primarily be interested in increasing the income of the

worst off. As John Tomasi recently argued, “Increases in prosperity increase the value of

liberty…In many ways, wealth fuels the experience of freedom itself.”32 Any defense of

workplace democracy, or some other set of opportunities, is therefore an attempt to trade-

off freedom for something else: “The personal experience of affluence gives each a

measure of power and independence when facing life’s diverse challenges and

opportunities. If offered the chance to have their wages lowered and their opportunities to
32
Tomasi, Free Market Fairness, 190.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

participate in workplace committee meetings increased, market democracy is skeptical

that many ordinary citizens would (or should) accept. After all, a reduction in wages

amounts to a reduction in people’s effective power to use their rights in pursuit of

projects that are central to their lives.”33 If we are concerned with individual economic

freedom, especially of the poor, we should exclusively be concerned with the amount of

money they have. The view that ‘money equals freedom’ translates into an argument that

lightly-regulated markets, which generate the most growth, coupled with some small

amount of economic redistribution.

Tomasi’s claim rests on a number of assumptions. One, which we must put aside, is a set

of assumptions about the tradeoff between workplace democracy and growth, and about

the connection between market regulation and growth.34 The argument most relevant for

our discussion of freedom is the one connecting money, markets and freedom. Tomasi’s

is but one version of a familiar argument stating that, if money equals freedom, then we

should want the most extensive, least regulated, markets possible. Each regulation or

elimination of a market is a limit on choices – choices mediated by poessession of money

– and is therefore a limitation of individual freedom. This, however, is a tautology – a

tautology produced by failing adequately to grasp the point about money and freedom.

Recall that money is an instrument of freedom because it eliminates legal barriers to the

acquisition of goods and services. It is a social relationship, not a thing. Or, more

specifically, it is a thing (piece of paper, plastic card, electronic data), that only becomes

33
Ibid., 191.
34
For an excellent reply to Tomasi on this point and on related issues, see Samuel Arnold’s ‘Right-Wing
Rawlsianism: A Critique’ forthcoming in Journal of Political Philosophy.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

money under certain social conditions: when the paper, plastic or digital information is

socially recognized as legal tender. More money is more freedom because more money

means that more legal barriers can be removed to the access of goods and services. Give

the poor man some money, he is now free to buy the medicine that will cure him.

However, recall a further point about money as a social relation: it only serves as an

instrument of freedom so long as there are markets where goods and services are

available for sale. The greater the commodification of goods and services, the more

money serves its function of removing legal barriers. In other words, more money means

more freedom only on condition that there are already well-developed markets in goods

and services. If money increases freedom only on that condition, then it cannot also be

used as an argument for why that condition of lightly-regulated markets should exist in

the first place. That is the tautology in which a explains b and b explains a: if markets

then money is freedom, money is freedom therefore markets.

The wider point here is that the attempt to compare and evaluate entire economic systems

from the standpoint of the degree to which they are freedom respecting cannot rest

merely on whether one generates more or less money value. That confuses means with

ends. The end is freedom, understood as legal non-interference. Money is but one means

of avoiding legal interference, and that only under certain institutional conditions. Under

other institutional conditions, there might be a much more limited role for money, but

there might be other instruments for removing and distributing legal barriers to action.

One example would be the powers of management and control that workplace democracy

offers each employee, or a nationally guaranteed right to a job.

 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

To be clear, this argument is once again purely conceptual. I make no empirical claim

about which institutional arrangements generate more ‘growth,’ is more efficient, or

generates the most desirable set or distribution of freedoms. My point is simply that

libertarians/classical liberals move too quickly from the money-equals-freedom point to a

therefore-markets argument. They do that only by indulging in a tautology – a tautology

that rests on flipping the means and ends of freedom around. Here, then, is a moment

when my critique of freedom excludes a conclusion, and opens up other possible ones. It

does so by insisting on a consistent use of the term freedom as non-interference. If

freedom is non-interference, then the avoidance of legal interference can be attained in a

variety of ways – each dependent upon the socio-economic institutions that exist. It will

not do to assume liberal capitalist institutions and then ask which economic freedoms are

important and in what form because that puts the cart before the horse.

- From inconsistency to vagueness

So far I have been concerned only with the implications of being consistent in the use of

the concept freedom. However, at a certain point, the emphasis on consistency collides

with a vagueness problem. Even if we remain consistent in the use of the term freedom,

accept that poverty is freedom restricting, and recognize the connection between money,

freedom and markets, there is a further conceptual vagueness polluting contemporary

debates.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

v. Freedom lost, again: the vagueness of ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ economic liberties

So far, I have been arguing that there is an inconsistency in the way freedom is used in

discussions of economic freedom. But there is not just inconsistency about obstacles,

there is also vagueness about ends. Recall that to have a liberty involves a triadic relation

between agents, obstacles, and ends. What I have been calling the standard view tends to

emphasize the problem of legal obstacles to achieving certain ends, in part, I believe,

because many thinkers want a value-neutral definition of freedom. Whether I have a

liberty should not depend on whether I actually achieve a particular end or fulfil a

particular human purpose. Whatever the validity of this concern, it cannot justify the

vagueness about ends, or what a person is free to do, that has crept into the debate about

economic liberties. This vagueness has muddied the waters of moral contention by

creating a false impression that the only disagreement is over whether one is dedicated to

a ‘thick’ or ‘thin’ conception of basic economic liberties.

Consider, for instance, the familiar claim that some defenders of social justice wish to

restrict liberty in the name of justice. Berlin famously argued “To avoid glaring

inequality or widespread misery I am ready to sacrifice some, or all, of my freedom: I

may do so willingly and freely: but it is freedom that I am giving up for the sake of

justice.”35 Again, and more recently, “high liberals restrict the range of economic liberties

they recognize as basic rights. By constraining the private economic freedom of citizens,

they make room for expanded governmental activity in pursuit of the distributive

35
I have slightly abbreviated the quote, which continues “or equality or the love of my fellow men.” Berlin,
"Two Concepts of Liberty," 125.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

requirements of social justice.”36 High liberals accept this characterization of themselves

as restricting (economic) liberties for the sake of social justice: “the classical tradition

also gives priority to robust if not unqualified rights of private property in productive

resources and other economic liberties...[whereas] the measures needed to put into place

and maintain Mill’s or Rawls’s ideas of property-owning democracy would require the

curtailing of many economic liberties and powers that classical liberals regard as

fundamental.”37 In response, libertarians and classical liberals claim to don the mantle of

defending ‘thick’ conceptions of economic liberty against the ‘thin’ conceptions of high

liberals. So John Tomasi argues that his classical liberal theory “affirms a thick

conception of economic liberty as part of a broader scheme of rights and liberties

designed to enable citizens to exercise and develop their moral powers…and affirms a

general right of economic liberty”38 the high liberal view “includes only two narrowly

crafted economic liberties: a right to own personal (nonproductive) property, and a

limited right to occupational choice.”39

But this is a strange description of discursive possibilities. It is peculiar because the

concept ‘economic liberty’ is extremely vague. For instance, what is supposed to make

the classical liberal view ‘thick’ is that it defends a basic right to ownership of productive

assets, not just personal property. But a “liberty to own productive assets” can mean a

number of things. Recall that one has a liberty when one does not face legal obstacles to

doing something. The ‘liberty to own productive assets’ could be interpreted to mean that

36
Tomasi, Free Market Fairness, 68.
37
Freeman, "Capitalism in the Classical and High Liberal Traditions," 52.
38
Tomasi, Free Market Fairness, 69.
39
Ibid., 74.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

everyone should enjoy formal rights to acquire productive assets legally. In truth, the

“liberty” here is about not facing legal obstacles to (legal) acquisition of productive

assets. That liberty is perfectly consistent with a society in which most people have little

to no chance of owning any assets, and with a society in which it would be impossible for

everyone to own productive assets. That is to say, it is consistent with a society in which

most people face unremovable legal obstacles to having control over any productive

assets. On this account, the “liberty to own productive assets” is therefore consistent with

a society in which most people do not have a liberty to control productive assets. Indeed,

the “liberty to own productive assets” can only be secured if everyone’s “liberty to have

control over productive assets” is severely restricted.

But what if “liberty to own productive assets” is interpreted to mean everyone is free

from legal obstacles to having control over some share of productive assets. Of course, a

society that secured that particular liberty would have to restrict40 formal rights to acquire

property in productive assets. It might have to restrict these formal rights to acquire in

order to guarantee the liberty to control productive property. But this restriction is not a

mere narrowing of economic liberties. It is a restriction of one right in order to ensure

everyone enjoys the relevant economic liberty. A famous example of just this kind of

restriction comes from the early American agrarian radicals, for whom land was the

dominant productive asset. They argued that each person deserved economic

40
As Rawls says “we must distinguish between [the] restriction and [the] regulation” of liberties.
Regulation of a liberty allows that liberty to be exercised in its “central range of application,” but ensures
that the exercise of this liberty does not interfere with the exercise of other basic liberties in their central
areas of application. A regulation of a liberty is consistent with that liberty being basic – though the
regulation must be only for the sake of other basic liberties. A restriction, on the other hand, limits the
exercise of a liberty even in its central area of application, or in the name of non-basic liberties and other
values. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Paperback ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),
295-96.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

independence, or control over enough land to be self-sufficient.41 In the name of this

economic liberty, the state should limit the possession of land by any individual, impose

inheritance taxes, and redistribute property in land to any able-bodied person arriving at

the age of maturity.42 We can restate this as a claim to impose significant restrictions on

certain formal rights of ownership of personal and productive property to make possible

that everyone has a claim right against the state for a share of productive assets. Universal

extension of that claim right, alongside the restriction of the other property rights, affords

each person the overall “liberty to own productive assets.”

So the “liberty to own productive assets” can mean at least two things depending on

which end or activity we are free from legal obstacles to doing. There is every reason to

see either meaning as a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the definition of the

economic liberty to own productive assets. But it is not clear what it would mean to say

that one view is a ‘thicker’ or ‘thinner’ conception. Each conception makes a liberty

available on condition that other related liberties are restricted. Formal rights to acquire

41
This argument as in part an interpretation of Locke’s famous, if elliptical, claim that a person only has a
natural right to property so long as he leaves “enough and as good” for everyone else. John Locke, "Second
Treatise of Government: An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government," in
Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1689]).
For the radical Lockean argument for the redistribution of land and other property see Richard Ashcraft,
"Liberal Political Theory and Working-Class Radicalism in Nineteenth-Century England," Political Theory
21, no. 2 (1993). Note that the agrarian radicals in the US employed not just Lockean natural rights
arguments but ‘republican’ arguments for citizen independence. See fn 37.
42
The first (that I know of) such American proposal explicitly defending the use of the state’s coercive
powers to distribute land is Thomas Paine, "Agrarian Justice," in Thomas Paine: Common Sense and Other
Writings, ed. Joyce Appleby (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005 [1795-96]). This particular demand to
“equalize property” became the position of the early workingmen’s parties in the 1820s and 30s. E.g.
Stephen Simpson, The Working Man's Manual: A New Theory of Political Economy, on the Principle of
Production the Source of Wealth (Philadelphia: Thomas L. Bonsal, 1831), Thomas Skidmore, The Rights of
Man to Property! (New York: Alexander Ming, 1829). On land reform and the radical agrarianism that
emerged during the 19th century see Mark A. Lause, Young America: Land, Labour, and the Republican
Community (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005). Also "Agrarianism," The Atlantic Monthly III,
no. XVIII (1859).
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

and control are protected only if each person’s claim to have control over some

productive assets is restricted, and vice versa.

Note that, under this analysis, it would be available to the ‘high liberal’ position to argue

that it is working with a different not narrower conception of the economic liberties.

Consider, for instance, Samuel Freeman’s argument that the difference principle

distributes

not only income and wealth, but also the primary social goods that Rawls calls

“powers and positions of responsibility.” By “powers” he means legal and other

institutional powers of various kinds, primarily those powers required to make

economic decisions, including powers of control over productive resources. What

primarily distinguishes property-owning democracy from welfare-state

capitalism, Rawls says, is that the former involves less inequality in primary

social goods—income and wealth, and economic powers and positions—and

greater worker ownership and control over productive resources and over their

workplace conditions.43

Although Freeman is not much more specific than Rawls himself about the nature of

these “powers of control over productive resources” note that they are “legal and other

institutional powers.” This must mean that this control is secured by various legal rights

which guarantee the non-interference with the worker in the exercise of certain kinds of

control (perhaps hiring and firing of managers, establishing working conditions, setting

hours), as well as in the enjoyment of certain benefits of ownership (perhaps profit-

43
Freeman, "Capitalism in the Classical and High Liberal Traditions," 50.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

sharing or the like). But, as we have seen, that is just to say that we are talking about

having certain liberties. So when Freeman says that the difference principle regulates the

distribution of “economic powers and positions” he is saying that it regulates the

distribution of certain economic liberties. And by extension, a reason for denying a

particular right (to own whatever productive assets you happen to have legally acquired),

is to make available a wider distribution of other economic liberties. That is what the

language of ‘legal and institutional powers’ is about. Why call this a commitment to a

narrower set of economic liberties, rather than to a different set – potentially a ‘thicker’

set of liberties.44 High liberals could say that.

One possible reason why neither Freeman nor Rawls make such a move is because the

‘thick’ v. ‘thin’ distinction is supposed to describe the basic liberties, and there are very

few liberties that high liberals are willing to make basic. The reason for making this

distinction might be a purely moral one. Unlike libertarians and classical liberals, the

high liberals wish to reject the idea that the liberty to own productive assets is a basic

liberty because they do not think it is necessary for the development of the two moral

powers. While this is undoubtedly one dimension of the debate, I do not think it is the

entirety of it. I think high liberals have too quickly accepted the dominant assumption

that the “liberty to own productive assets” just means the formal right to acquire

ownership and control as possible of productive assets if you happen to be able to acquire

them on a market. That is one reason why they have accepted and then defended the view

that a) they have a narrower conception of basic economic liberties and b) the difference

44
After all, the “economic powers and positions” are exercised by a small number of people in the classical
liberal world when compared with the high liberal one.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

principle distributes ‘powers and positions’ but not, somehow, liberties with respect to

workers control of productive assets. But, as I have shown, this is to accept the definition

of an economic liberty that has, in fact, been stated in terms that are too vague for us to

know what the liberty really is. I think this conceptual issue makes it difficult to resolve

or even address some of the moral disagreements that arise regarding the economic

liberties.

vi. Freedom regained, again

To be clear, in showing that the high liberal view could be represented as defending a

different and potentially ‘thick’ set of economic liberties, I am not trying to provide a

better defense of the high liberal view. Rather, I am showing that there is a vagueness in

the definition of a key economic liberty. Though I picked the “liberty to own productive

assets” as an example, the vagueness spreads across the definition of a number of

economic liberties. The vagueness is with respect to what it is, exactly, that a person does

not face legal obstacles to doing. This conceptual vagueness occludes a left-wing view

regarding economic liberties in just the same way that the conceptual inconsistency,

discussed in the first part of this paper, does. In particular, this vagueness makes

imperceptible the left-wing claim to defend ‘real economic freedom.’

To see how the left-wing view gets occluded by conceptual vagueness, consider the

moment when Rawls, in Justice as Fairness: A restatement, returns to a “familiar

objection, often made by radical democrats and socialists (and by Marx), that the equal
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

liberties in a modern democratic state are in practice merely formal.”45 Rawls again

represents this objection as if it were about the worth of the basic political liberties.46

In the first part of this paper, I noted an inconsistency in viewing the left-wing view this

way. But there is further problem – the vagueness in the definition of economic liberties.

The left-wing argument is that some economic rights limit the economic liberties of most

people. For example, on the left-wing view, the formal right of private ownership of

productive assets means that some are forced to sell their labor to others, and that many

are forced to take meaningless, hazardous, or stultifying jobs.47 This right, on the left-

wing view, compromises or even wholly deprives a worker of what in the current debate

is called ‘freedom of occupational choice.’48 But ‘freedom of occupational choice’ is

simply assumed to mean freedom from legal obstacles to sell one’s labor as one sees fit.49

Yet it is not clear that freedom sell one’s labor is the end with respect to which we should

not face legal obstacles. Another left-wing argument is that the formal right of private

ownership of productive assets also deprives many, even most, of the liberty to control

some productive assets and shape working conditions. That is because it allows for

monopolization of productive assets by a limited section of society. Put together, these

are claims that legal protection – especially absolute legal protection of a right as a ‘basic

liberty’ – deprive many of other economic liberties. It does so by placing legal obstacles

45
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 148.
46
“social and economic inequalities in background institutions are ordinarily so large that those with
greater wealth and position usually control political life and enact legislation and social policies that
advance their interests,” rendering the “basic rights and liberties” merely formal. Ibid.
47
One version of this argument is G.A. Cohen, "Are Disadvantaged Workers Who Take Hazardous Jobs
Forced to Take Hazardous Jobs?," in History, Labour, and Freedom: Themes from Marx, ed. G.A. Cohen
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), G.A. Cohen, "The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom," in History,
Labour, and Unfreed: Themes from Marx, ed. G.A. Cohen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
48
For a superb account of forced labor and its relevance to what the freedom of occupational choice entails,
see Lucas Stanczyk, ‘The Right to Free Choice of Occupation’, (unpublished).
49
Tomasi, Free Market Fairness, 76-77.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

(in the form of that formal right of private ownership) in the way of non-owners

exercising the relevant kinds of control over productive assets and access to employment.

Much more theoretical and empirical argument would be required to defend these left-

wing claims. My point is here is to illuminate the structure of the left-wing argument. The

left-wing view is about having certain economic liberties, not, as high liberals appear to

think, about the fair value of political liberties. But this is obscured because certain very

economic liberties, with respect to working and ownership, are stated at a very high level

of generality, yet assumed to have one specific meaning. The left-wing position is an

alternative ‘thick’ conception, if we wish to use this vocabulary, insofar as it claims to

protect a more extensive system of economic liberties for all persons than other views.

Moreover, and this is difficult to prove decisively, I think the misrepresentation of the

left-wing view has to do with a too quick assimilation of the broad “liberty to own

productive assets” to one (classical liberal) definition of that liberty as ‘formal right to

acquire private ownership and control of productive assets.’ This slippage holds for many

of the economic liberties.

To be clear, I am not singling out high liberals for vagueness. James Nickel, for instance,

claims one of the basic economic liberties is a “liberty of holding” property, which covers

the “legitimate ways of acquiring and holding property.”50 Yet, as we have seen, there is

more than one way to have a liberty to acquire and hold property. One is to possess a

formal right, but to have no actual property; another is possess a legal right that

eliminates legal obstacles to actually having and holding some property. Both are
50
Nickel, "Economic Liberties," 157.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

liberties, though of different sorts, but they are collapsed into the same ‘liberty’ without

further analysis. Or, to give another broader example, consider John Tomasi’s argument

that his interpretation of classical liberalism “affirms a general right of economic

liberty.”51 Tomasi argues that securing certain formal rights of property and contract52

satisfies this ‘general right of economic liberty’.53 But the left-winger also claims to

affirm a ‘general right’ to economic liberty. He simply interprets the relevant rights and

powers that compose that liberty much differently. Both are coherent views, but the very

general invocation of a ‘general right to economic liberty’ or ‘liberty of holding’ is too

vaguely stated to tell us which liberty is actually at stake. More precision about the ends

and activities that we are free to do is required before we can be clear about the terrain of

theoretical contestation. And as I have been arguing, I think more clarity allows a

somewhat ignored, left-wing position to come into view.

Lest this argument seem like mere parsing, consider at least one reason why the

vagueness issue matters even if someone is wholly uninterested in an occluded, left-wing

argument about real economic freedom. Samuel Freeman recently argued that

If there is any progress to be made in debates about the importance to liberalism

of capitalism, robust private property rights, and the essential role of markets in

establishing economic justice, it will require awareness and discussion of the

51
Tomasi, Free Market Fairness, 69.
52
E.g. “Regarding the liberties of holding (or ‘owning’), for example, classical liberals affirm not only right
to ownership of personal property…but rights to the private ownership of productive property as well.”
Ibid., 23. Not here, ‘rights to the private ownership of productive property’ is too vaguely stated. Though
the thrust of Tomasi’s argument tells us that he means rights to own productive property should it be
legitimately acquired, one might also reasonably interpret such a right to mean everyone has some right to
own productive property.
53
See also the list of liberties to ‘labor’, ‘transacting,’ ‘holding,’ and ‘using’ Ibid., 22-24. Tomasi takes
these categories of the liberties from Nickel, "Economic Liberties."
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

different and conflicting ideals of persons and their social relations that liberals

implicitly rely upon in the positions they advocate. At issue in these debates is not

simply the nature of our economic and social relations, but ultimately the kinds of

persons that we are and can come to be.54

Freeman presents the core of the disagreement about economic liberties as a moral

dispute about the kinds of persons “we can come to be” and about the kinds of liberties

we need to “come to be” those kinds of persons. Freeman’s opponents agree that this is

the crux.55

However, alongside a moral dispute over “conflicting ideals of persons” stands a

conceptual conflict, or really vagueness, about the liberties that are supposed to allow the

relevant personality to develop. For instance, consider one of the most developed

attempts to connect an economic liberty to the development of moral powers. John

Tomasi argues that citizens deserve a wide range of economic liberties to guarantee “the

ability of those people to be responsible authors of their lives.”56 This is the standard

liberal argument about the role of economic liberties in enabling the development of

moral powers. One of these liberties Tomasi calls “liberties of ownership.”57 Tomasi

argues for a number of connections between liberties of ownership and the development

of the capacity of self-authorship. Liberty of ownership secures personal security,

because citizens know that they “hold something that cannot be taken away from them.”58

54
Freeman, "Capitalism in the Classical and High Liberal Traditions," 55.
55
See, e.g. Tomasi, Free Market Fairness, 88. See also Jeppe von Platz’s excellent analysis of the modality
of the high and classical liberal claims regarding the connection between developing moral powers and the
possession of economic liberties. Jeppe von Platz, ‘Are Economic Liberties Basic Rights?’, (unpublished).
56
Ibid., 77.
57
Ibid., 78.
58
Ibid.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

It also provides independence because property in productive assets and personal goods

“can shelter people from domination by others.”59 Finally, the use of private property can

“serve as an expression of identity.”60 Having security, independence and opportunity to

express one’s identity are all, on Tomasi’s account, constituent elements of developing

the capacities of self-authorship, and enjoying a basic liberty of ownership guarantees

those experiences of security, independence, and self-expression.

But note the vagueness in the meaning of “liberties of ownership.” If the argument is that

independence means owning both personal goods and controlling some productive assets,

then the relevant liberty is not ‘freedom from legal obstacles to possibly acquire

sufficient personal goods and productive assets.’ Rather, one would think the relevant

liberty is freedom to actually have some private control over and ownership of productive

assets. But, if the central thought is that acquisition and use of property is only ‘identity

expressing’ if that property was acquired through one’s own efforts (however that is to be

understood), then the relevant liberty would be a right to acquire, but not necessarily to

have. And that requirement would be in contradiction, or at least very strong tension

with, the right to actually have property that was generated by the concern with

independence. One can run the argument the same way for security. Yet all of these

aspects – security, independence and identity-expression – are supposed to be secured by

some very general but unspecified “liberties of ownership.” The moral claim cannot be

substantiated because even if we knew with much greater detail what ‘security’

‘independence’ and ‘identity-expression’ are, we do not know which actual liberties of

59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

ownership are being defended. Importantly, it is inadequate simply to argue that we can

wait for further, downstream specification of these basic liberties once their ‘basicness’

has been established. The point is that the liberty has been defined in too vague and

indeterminate a way for us to know how it is connected to its foundations in the

development of moral powers, let alone to serve as a guide for dealing with potential

contradictions between, say, having v. acquiring property.

So long as the economic liberties are stated at a level so general as to be vague about the

relevant ends one is free to do we cannot evaluate causal claims about the connection

between the development of human capacities and the possession of these liberties. Even

if we can agree on the ideal of the person and even if we can agree about the modality of

the claim regarding whether a certain liberty must be ‘necessary’ or ‘sufficient’ for the

development and exercise of a person’s moral powers, it is not at all clear which liberties

are being considered in the first place. Thus we might say, using Freeman’s words, that

“if there is any progress to be made in [current] debates,” then “it will require awareness

and discussion of the different” particular economic liberties that a person could possibly

enjoy. For instance, an economic liberty to hold property has to be specified in much

greater detail – hold what kind of property? acquire it or have it? how much? – before we

would be able to evaluate most claims regarding this liberty’s status in relation to the

development of moral powers.

Conclusion
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

While I believe the discussion of economic liberties suffers from both inconsistencies and

vagueness, conceptual clarification is insufficient to resolve any normative disputes. It

can only open up further areas of investigation by showing how existing positions

misinterpret or obscure alternative possibilities. I hope to have done at least that much.

One last point. I limited myself in this paper to the standard view of freedom as non-

interference because I wanted to show that, even on its own terms, the concept is

inconsistently and vaguely used. I also wanted to show that a coherent left-wing view can

be made largely on the basis of that standard view. However, there are points at which I

think the left-wing view (and perhaps others) push past the standard view. For instance, I

do not think there are strong reasons for thinking that only human, not natural obstacles,

constrain freedom. Gravity might keep me from jumping to the moon, or to New York,

but the invention of air travel has overcome, or at least reduced, gravity as an obstacle. It

seems to me that with air travel I have more freedom, in virtue of the way a natural

obstacle has been removed, than without air travel. Or take the invention of artificial

lighting, and especially electricity. The progressive development of technology to the

point where we now do not have to wait for the sun to rise to enjoy visibility seems like

the elimination of a natural obstacle to my being able to write a paper at three o’clock in

the morning. And I am freer for it. I cannot defend this conceptual move here, but it is

worth flagging because it speaks to a long-standing defense – across the political-

ideological spectrum – of technology as emancipating, not merely ‘enabling.’ It is not

entirely clear to me why removing natural obstacles is not normally included in

definitions of economic freedom – though note that MacCallum’s definition does not
 DRAFT – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE

exclude it. Perhaps it is because moral theories tend to be most concerned with the bad of

a person’s (unjustified) interference with another’s choices, rather than with all of the

goods of that other person’s choices.61 If a new technology increases our choices, why

not consider that an increase in our freedom?

I believe there are a few other limits to the standard view, but I am sure I have said

enough as it is.

61
I would like to thank Javier Hidalgo for proposing this formulation to me.