Everything about Political Freedom totally explained
Political freedom is the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression. The members of a free society would have full dominion over their public and private lives. The opposite of a free society would be a
totalitarian state, which highly restricts political freedom in order to regulate almost every aspect of behavior. In this sense ‘freedom’ refers solely to the relation of men to other men, and the only infringement on it's coercion by men.
Types
The concept of political freedom is very closely allied with the concepts of
civil liberties and
individual rights. Most
democratic societies are professedly characterized by various freedoms which are afforded the legal protection of the
state. Some of these freedoms may include (in alphabetical order):
Views
Various groups along the
political spectrum naturally differ on what they believe constitutes "true" political freedom.
Friedrich Hayek famously noted that "liberty" and "freedom" have probably been the most abused words in recent history today.
Milton Friedman observed that:
The essence of political freedom is the absence of coercion of one man by his fellow men. The fundamental danger to political freedom is the concentration of power. The existence of a large measure of power in the hands of a relatively few individuals enables them to use it to coerce their fellow men. Preservation of freedom requires either the elimination of power where that's possible or its dispersal where it can't be eliminated. |
Those on the
political left define freedom as the ability of the individual to realize one's own potential and pursuit of happiness. Freedom in this sense may include freedom from want, poverty, deprivation, or oppression.
However
Friedrich Hayek criticized this as a misconception of freedom:
the use of ‘liberty’ to describe the physical ‘ability to do what I want’, the power to satisfy our wishes, or the extent of the choice of alternatives open to us...has been deliberately fostered as part of the socialist argument...
Once this identification of freedom with power is admitted, there's no limit to the sophisms by which the attractions of the word ‘liberty’ can be used to support measures which destroy individual liberty, no end to the tricks by which people can be exhorted in the name of liberty to give up their liberty. It has been with the help of this equivocation that the notion of collective power over circumstances has been substituted for that of individual liberty and that in totalitarian states liberty has been suppressed in the name of liberty. |
Many
social anarchists see negative and positive liberty as complementary concepts of freedom.
Some treat freedom as if it were almost synonymous with
democracy, while others see conflicts or even opposition between the two concepts. For example, some people argue that
Iraq was free under
Paul Bremer on the grounds that it was a rational, humanist, non-subjugating government, long before elections were held . Others have argued that Iraq was free under
Saddam Hussein because Iraq wasn't a colony, while a third claim is that neither Dictatorial nor Colonial rule in Iraq are examples of political freedom.
Environmentalists often argue that political freedoms should include some constraint on use of
ecosystems. They maintain there's no such thing, for instance, as "freedom to pollute" or "freedom to deforest" given that such activities create
negative externalities. The popularity of
SUVs,
golf, and
urban sprawl has been used as evidence that some ideas of freedom and
ecological conservation can clash. This leads at times to serious confrontations and clashes of
values reflected in advertising campaigns, for example that of
PETA regarding
fur.
There have been numerous
philosophical debates over the nature of freedom, the claimed differences between various types of freedom, and the extent to which freedom is desirable.
Determinists argue that all human actions are pre-determined and thus freedom is an illusion.
Isaiah Berlin saw a distinction between
negative liberty and
positive liberty.
In
jurisprudence, freedom is the
right to determine one's own actions autonomously ; generally it's granted in those fields in which the subject has no
obligations to fulfill or
laws to obey, according to the interpretation that the hypothetical natural unlimited freedom is limited by the law for some matters.
Freedom in
politics is generally used as a governing tool.
"For what we call freedom is given only to those who obey, it's then when you stand for what you believe and fight back against oppression you lose those freedoms, and when what is taken away should be your
inalienable rights what choice does one have but to obey?" - Joseph Garcia
Further Information
Get more info on 'Political Freedom'.
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