Real Modern Freedom

Real Modern FreedomLawrence Hamilton

Abstract: I argue that ‘negative’ freedom or freedom as absence of impedimentis better described as freedom within a putative ‘private’ sphere, where indi-viduals are allegedly protected from the coercive interference of other agents.As such it is characterised by four problems as an account of freedom undermodern conditions. I then consider two alternatives, within which freedom isidentified with politics or political action, and argue that they are thereforealso inappropriate for understanding modern freedom. Yet, I do not discardthem completely. In the main part of the paper, I draw on Machiavelli’semphasis on institutionalised class conflict as constitutive of freedom and pro-pose a conception of freedom that captures the manifold conditions for free-dom of action today. This realistic, modern conception of freedom identifiesfreedom with power across four domains; and it follows from this, I arguepace Pettit, that representative, partisan political institutions are requirementsfor freedom and democracy.

Keywords: freedom as power, Machiavelli, Marx, negative freedom, republican freedom

In this article I argue that the predominant notion of ‘negative’ freedom orfreedom as absence of impediment is better described as freedom within aputative ‘private’ sphere, where the freedom of individuals is allegedly pro-tected from coercion in general and political interference by the actions ofothers in particular. As such it is characterised by four problems as an accountof individual freedom under modern conditions. I then consider two responsesto this ‘privatised’ account of freedom, both of which share the idea that free-dom is found through politics or political action. I argue that these too areinappropriate for understanding freedom under modern conditions: by neverfully escaping the ancient and early modern conceptions and institutionalarrangements that inspire them they over-emphasise the significance of polit-ical agency for freedom. Nevertheless, one of them, that proposed by NiccolòMachiavelli, is instructive because he reminds us that class conflict constitutesa necessary component of and safeguard for freedom, especially if institu-tionalised in a manner that properly empowers the representatives of opposingclasses. There are now two main interpretations of freedom in his oeuvre, onethat emphasises non-domination, the ‘common good’, virtù and depoliticised

Theoria, Issue 137, Vol. 60, No. 4 (December 2013): 1-28doi:10.3167/th.2013.6013701 • ISSN 0040-5817 (Print) • ISSN 1558-5816 (Online)

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legal institutions (Skinner, Pettit and Viroli) and the other that emphasisesclass conflict, partisan interests and political institutions (Lefort andMcCormick). Given space constraints, I cannot do justice to these elaboratedebates; rather, I simply begin with the first, move on to the second, sidesomewhat with the latter and then show that both interpretations inadvertentlyhighlight problems with adopting ‘neo-roman’ or ‘republican’ freedom formodern purposes.

Yet, it is Machiavelli’s more realistic focus on conflict, power, control andrepresentation as constitutive of freedom, bolstered by a few other thinkers,that leads to the main part of the paper: a proposal and defence of what I call‘real modern freedom’, an alternative conception to both freedom from poli-tics and freedom through politics based on a substantive account of freedomas power through representation, or what I refer to as ‘freedom as power’ forshort. Modern conditions – characterised as they are by high levels of special-isation, interdependence, large complex states, multifaceted interrelations be -tween polity and economy and numerous kinds of associated representation –require an alternative account of freedom that does not look to the purely pri-vate or exclusively political (or some mix of both), but rather the manifoldconditions for freedom of action, which involves power and control over vari-ous social, economic and political domains, more often than not mediated byrepresentatives. This account of freedom is therefore quite distinct from boththe liberal and republican mainstream in the sense that it does not reduce free-dom to one defining feature, be that mere absence of (external) impediments,the ability to decide for oneself what to do (self-determination) or active citi-zenship within a free state (Berlin 1996; Taylor 1979; Pettit 1997; Skinner1993; 1997; 2002a; 2008). Rather, I submit here a realistic rather than a min-imalist conception of freedom that identifies freedom with real and effectivepower and control across four domains. My freedom of action is relative tomy power to: (a) get what I want, to act or be as I would choose in the absenceof either internal or external obstacles or both; (b) determine the governmentof my political association or community; (c) develop and exercise my powersand capacities self-reflectively within and against existing norms, expectationsand power relations; and (d) determine my social and economic environmentvia meaningful control over my and my groups’ economic and political repre-sentatives. Freedom is therefore power in the sense that it depends upon mypower, control and self-control across these four dimensions.1 So real modernfreedom here is identified with and as power in that it conceives of freedomas a combination of my ability to determine what I will do and my power todo it, that is, bring it about. The way in which these various dimensions offreedom as power are integral to one another and underpinned by, in particular,political representation, is then discussed. Finally, this alternative conceptionis contrasted with Pettit’s ‘updated’ republican account of freedom, whichagainst the grain of Machiavelli defends a ‘depoliticised’ account of freedomand democracy.

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‘Private’ Freedom: Four Problems

What is it to be free? Some argue that to be free is to act unimpeded, to dowhat one wants or chooses without external obstacle or impediment. JeremyBentham and later, more famously, Isaiah Berlin, maintained that it is for thisreason that freedom is a ‘negative’ concept: its presence is said to be markedby the absence of something, in particular an impediment or obstacle thatinhibits the agent from doing what she or he wants or chooses (Bentham1970: 254; Berlin 1996). This has its source in the work of Thomas Hobbeswho defends a diligently naturalist and negative conception of freedom in hisfamous seventeenth-century tract, Leviathan (1996: 91, 145–6): freedom herejust means non-obstruction of action.2 Humans are free in this sense just asthe water in a canal (or ‘Channel’) is free when unimpeded (Hobbes 1996:146). Hobbes distinguishes this kind of freedom from the ‘freedom of thesubject’, that is, the freedom that is possible within civil society, which pre-supposes the existence of a legislator and established laws and authoritieswithin a commonwealth. But here too freedom is negative. It is marked bythe absence of something: whatever freedom one enjoys in civil society con-sists in ‘the Silence of the Law’, that is, the absence of regulation in a partic-ular area of life, an area regarding which the legislator has chosen to remainsilent (Hobbes 1996: 152; cf. Hallendius 2012). A little later in the seven-teenth century, John Locke identifies freedom within the law, arguing that itis law that counters the actions of others from restraining one’s own will andaction (Locke 1998: 306; cf. Hobbes 1996: 147). In other words, laws areseen as a means of ensuring freedom because they ensure that other agentsdo not constrain or coerce a person’s own agency. In both forms, then, themain threat to freedom is perceived to be impediments to or constraints onindividual action, particularly those brought about by coercion or the con-scious deliberate actions of other humans to make a person act ‘against hiswill’, in Hobbes’s case the action of the legislator and in Locke’s case theactions of other citizens.

This emphasis on coercion as the main potential threat to freedom is thenechoed through the ages, from Bentham to Berlin and beyond. Bentham arguesthat liberty is to be found in the absence of coercion (Bentham 1970: 254;Mill 1991: 13–17, 59, 91, 116, 121–2). Most contemporary liberals and liber-tarians are equally unequivocal. As Berlin puts it: ‘to coerce a man is todeprive him of freedom ... [this] “negative” sense [of freedom], is involved inthe answer to the question “What is the area within which the subject – a per-son or group of persons – is or should be left to do or be what he is able to door be, without interference by other persons”’ (Berlin 1996: 121–4). BothBerlin and Hayek state explicitly that this is only possible (coercion is onlypreventable) if the individual is able to secure for himself ‘some private spherewhere he is protected from such interference’; ‘a frontier must be drawnbetween the area of private life and that of public authority’ (Hayek 1960:

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138; Berlin 1996: 124).3 Contemporary libertarians conceive of ‘individualliberty’ in similar terms (Carter 1999, 2008; Kramer 2003, 2008; Steiner2006), and liberal contractarianism in its Rawlsian or Nozickian form alsoduly follows suit, with the added notion that this ‘private sphere’ is safe-guarded by inalienable rights that keep state intervention to a minimum.4

The leitmotif of this latter influential tradition is that the only coherent wayof thinking about liberty is the negative one of being unimpeded or free fromconstraint while carrying out actions (Rawls 1971: 176; and Hayek 1960: 16;Carter 1999: 16; but cf. MacCallum 1972: 176). Freedom and unfreedom areunderstood relative to potential impediments or obstacles created by theactions of others and dependent upon whether they had a right to act as theydid (Nozick 1974: 262; cf. Cohen 2006: 169–72). On this definition, I amunfree only when someone prevents me from doing what I have a right to do,so that she, consequently, has no right to prevent me from doing it. In otherwords, the actions of others constrain or impede freedom, it is supposed,because they are the result of conscious deliberate human action in the face of‘natural’ rights.5 To be free is to be free from the constraints imposed by othercitizens and the state so as to enjoy what is naturally yours; freedom is a matterof private determination, safeguarded by general laws and rights applicable toall. Freedom is therefore to be found by means of the law, but outside of poli-tics and the state, and can only be restricted by government for the sake offreedom (Russell 1935: 173; Hayek 1960; Rawls 1971).

This way of thinking about freedom obviously captures something impor-tant: it is part and parcel of the insight that political power can easily corruptand become corrupted and thus must be checked in various ways. However, itruns into at least four major difficulties.

The first and most glaring problem is the notion common to all these thinkersthat an obstacle or impediment is a restriction on human freedom only if itresults from a conscious deliberate human action. Why assume this? Berlin jus-tifies the assumption through the use of the argument that politics is about whatpeople consciously and deliberately do to each other, especially through theemployment of formal collective social power, and not about ‘natural’ obstaclesto action or other forms of human obstruction. But, what of obstacles that arethe result of nature or fortune? In constraining us do they not also make usunfree? (Geuss 2001: 95; cf. Cohen 2006). And, especially given constant tech-nological advance, may not some of these supposedly ‘natural’ obstaclesbecome obstacles that humans have the power to overcome? Even something assupposedly ‘natural’ as the human life span is becoming more and more subjectto human and thus political control. Pandemics of fatal diseases such asHIV/AIDS and the various means of controlling its affects on the human lifespan only reinforce the importance of human and political control over thesematters. Once medical and social factors make it possible to prolong the ‘naturalhuman life span’ or prolong the AIDS-afflicted life span, then a supposedly ‘nat-ural’ obstacle becomes an object of human deliberation and political decision.

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If such things as the natural human life span are not generally seen as obsta-cles, the reason is not that they do not result from deliberate human action, butrather that we assume that they could not be changed by any action we couldundertake. As soon as they can be changed, that is, as soon as they come underour control, they will be deemed obstacles to freedom. If, in South Africa, forexample, anti-retroviral treatment is obtainable to prolong my life as a suffererof HIV/AIDS, but the government does not make it available, this is quicklydeemed an obstacle to freedom, as expressed well by the Treatment ActionCampaign (TAC) (Nattrass 2003). So, really what is at stake here regardingwhat should count as a possible relevant obstruction to freedom is not some-thing that is or is not the result of conscious deliberate human action, but any-thing that is the kind of thing that could or could not be changed by humanaction (Geuss 2001: 95–6; cf. Carter 1999: 173). And it is a mark of fully mod-ern societies that nothing is sacred, beyond bounds, off limits or ‘natural’ (in asense that excludes possible human control and decision), something that Marx,Weber and Heidegger – the political left, centre and right – all agree on (Geuss2001: 96). And, given the degradation of the planetary environment, that weaffect, and thus can control our natural environment is now beyond doubt. Inother words, the relevant matter as regards freedom is our individual and col-lective power and control over our natural, social and political environment.

The second problem with this ‘privatised’ way of thinking about freedomis that the reality of communal existence poses a problem from the outset.Rawls, for example, argues that we are all rational egoists and, as such, wehave an ‘inclination to self-interest’, a disposition to increase our freedom ofaction as far as possible, even at that expense of others. And, following Locke,Bentham and Mill, Rawls notes that, given this tendency, this ‘fact of limitedaltruism’, before long we find ourselves encroaching upon, interfering withand disrespecting the liberty of others (Rawls 1971: 3–5, 239–40; Locke 1998:306). Rawls attempts to resolve this problem by finding a fair means of regu-lating the tendency of self-interested individuals to threaten the freedom ofothers; a means, that is, of adjudicating between rational egoists. The problemis allegedly solved via a two-step process: first, the acceptance of a formulafor justice in which each person can enjoy an equal right to the most extensivesystem of basic liberties compatible with a like system of liberty for all, orRawls’s ‘first principle’ of justice (Rawls 1971: 302); second, the delineationof a sphere of freedom, the so-called ‘private sphere’, into which the coercivepower of the state and other citizens cannot trespass. So, in my individualsphere of action I am supposedly sovereign, that is, free to pursue my ownprojects subject only to the constraint that I respect the spheres of others.6

Given the interdependence of our lives within most social and politicalassociations and groups but particularly modern ones, to what extent is thisnotion of an independent sphere of action a realistic one? The ‘private sphere’does not describe a completely solitary existence, and so to what extent couldwe speak of it being free of interference, constraints, impediments or obsta-



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cles? As feminist scholars have argued convincingly, even with only two peo-ple in a couple, for example, familial relationships constantly involve powerrelations, interference, inequality, domination, coercion, subjugation and soon, not to speak of more complicated and extended personal relationships andfamilies (Mackinnon 1989; Butler 1997; Hirschmann 2003). It seems that,starting from the theoretical notion of a state of nature, in which we all havenatural rights and are free if unimpeded, the complications of our interdepen-dent lives within political associations has lead many of these thinkers to seeksolace in the bosom of the family or private sphere. It is as if they are substi-tuting the hypothetical picture of a truly free single individual alone on anisland (Robinson Crusoe) with the notion of the modern individual who suc-cessfully seeks liberty outside of society as he moves between home andHomebase or family and fashion. This is a very stylised and truncated accountof freedom. It rests upon a series of unrealistic assumptions regarding the pos-sibility for non-interference and simply ignores a large part of our social andpolitical existence.7 What of liberty beyond the private sphere? What of polit-ical participation or resistance to political power? Is this only of instrumentalvalue, as a means to our successful achievement of private freedom?

The third major difficulty with this reductive approach to freedom is that itis justified on the basis of an unrealistic, sharp distinction between that whichbelongs to the content of the concept of freedom and that which belongs onlyto the conditions of its utilisation or realisation. On the basis of this sharp dis-tinction ‘positive’ accounts of freedom are then accused of being bloated amal-gams, incorporating components of the concept of freedom with conceptionsof happiness, the good life, rationality and so on. This then leads some downdead-end paths. Berlin, for example, suggests on the basis of this distinctionthat there is a kind of elective affinity between ‘positive’ liberty and totalitar-ian oppression: he maintains that being positively free means living and actingin a certain way; and if freedom is a way of life, someone else might knowbetter than I do what constitutes that way of life and thus could legitimatelyforce me to adopt that way of life and thus force me to be free (Berlin 1996:xliii–xlix). But this argument is fundamentally flawed. As Geuss has arguedconvincingly, Berlin has misdiagnosed the basis of the threat of totalitarianism.The culprit is some thesis about the relation between individual and socialagency and not the positive conception of freedom: knowing what would begood for you does not give me a warrant to coerce you; to get there one needsto add the existence of a social agency (a state, say) who is ‘the real me’ andthus all of whose actions are really mine so that none of its actions against mecan even in principle count as coercion (Geuss 1995: 90–1). Contrary to thelineage traced by Berlin and his followers, it is Hobbes with his relentlesslynegative conception of freedom that provides an account of the state that hasthe clearest totalitarian conclusions.

Even the basic analytic definition of freedom belies the assumption that wecan make a strict distinction between the content of the concept of freedom

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and that which belongs only to the conditions of its utilisation or realisation,or, in other words, between freedom as absence of constraint and freedom asbeing free to do or be certain things. As MacCallum puts it: ‘Whenever thefreedom of some agent or agents is in question, it is always freedom fromsome constraint or restriction on, interference with, or barrier to doing, notdoing, becoming or not becoming something’ (MacCallum 1972: 176). Free-dom therefore always involves a relation between three things: an agent, cer-tain prevailing conditions, and certain doings or becomings of the agent.Freedom is about specifying what is free or unfree, from what is it free orunfree, and what is it free or unfree to do or become. The dichotomies between‘negative’ and ‘positive’ freedom and ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’ arethus false dichotomies. I may fail to be able to do something either because ofobstacles or because of lack of power: for black people living in apartheidSouth Africa there existed a series of formal and real obstacles to their employ-ment in certain areas and professions, but even now that there no longer existsobstacles created consciously and deliberately by other humans, a black personin South Africa may not be free to find employment. This may be the case fora number of possible reasons: (a) because she lacks the relevant skills as aresult of lack of opportunities or application; or (b) because of the existenceof certain real and serious internal obstacles, such as a phobia towards mathe-matics due to poor education; or (c) because, as is the case in many instancestoday, the market has failed to create sufficient new jobs. Moreover, whatcounts as an obstacle is not in most cases an independently specified magni-tude, but is relative to my state of power. Even the formal obstacles to employ-ment for black people in apartheid South Africa were eventually overcomethrough, amongst other things, the collective power of the individuals andactions of those opposed to it.

Finally, the fourth problematic issue is that the search for freedom in theinner citadel of the private sphere disassociates my individual freedom fromthe form of political regime within which I happen to live. Berlin and Hayekadmit, on the negative view of freedom, I am free even if I live in a dictatorshipjust as long as the dictator happens, on a whim, not to interfere with me. Thesepositions are the direct heirs of Hobbes, who in opposition to the republicantheory of liberty, argues that it is sufficient for us to be free that we enjoy ourcivic rights and liberties as a matter of fact; whether or not arbitrary powerexists within any civil association does nothing to subvert our liberty.‘Whether a Common-wealth be Monarchicall, or Popular, the Freedome isstill the same’ (Hobbes 1996: 149). There is no necessary connection betweenfreedom understood in terms of absence of constraint and any particular formof government (Mill 1991: 17; Carter 2008; Kramer 2008). According to thisaccount of freedom, it therefore becomes possible to argue that under certainconditions or at certain moments, black South Africans were free in apartheidSouth Africa. For what, then, did so many give their lives? It even becomespossible to imagine a situation in which a slave can be free: a slave can enjoy



a great deal of non-interference from a benevolent and absent master. This isan odd outcome for an allegedly comprehensive account of freedom. It admitsof the possibility that, under certain conditions, even the institutional epitomeof unfreedom can generate freedom. As many ancient and modern republicanthinkers have argued, this is so wide of the mark because the matter is notabout whether or not an individual is, in fact, physically constrained or inter-fered with; what makes slavery the quintessence of unfreedom is that the slaveis permanently liable to inference of any kind. Slaves lack freedom becausetheir lives are dependent upon the good will of another, even if they experienceno actual coercion (Skinner 1997: 50–3, 69). The slave is ‘dominated’ becausehe is permanently subject to the arbitrary power of his owner (Pettit 1997).

Freedom Through Politics: Machiavelli, Mostly

This catapults us into the modern ‘neo-roman’ or ‘republican’ alternativeaccount of freedom as resurrected by Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit,amongst others. Like theirs, my account of freedom as power derives inspira-tion from republican thought in general and the thought of Machiavelli in par-ticular. But unlike theirs, it emphasises a different reading of Machiavelli andthus proposes a distinct account of freedom. This section on Arendt andMachiavelli helps me clarify exactly why: (a) my account is not guilty of con-ceiving of freedom as equivalent to political agency; (b) it draws from Machi-avelli to argue, pace Pettit’s emphasis on ‘the people’ or the common good,that the maintenance of freedom depends upon empowering normally disem-powered classes and groups via partisan political institutions that safeguardpartisan interests. Arendt develops the most extreme version of the freedomthrough politics thesis and Machiavelli its most measured and thus helpful(Hamilton 2014a).

Freedom, for Arendt, is only possible through politics or political action.She restates Aristotle’s argument that man is a political animal as a theory offreedom and maintains that ‘freedom ... and politics coincide’ and that ‘thisfreedom is primarily experienced in action’ (Arendt 2006: 60–3). She con-trasts this with what she calls ‘inner freedom’, the notion that freedom is to befound in an inward space free of coercion, an absolute freedom within one’sown self. She argues that this notion of freedom has its origins in estrangementfrom the world, exemplified best by the writings of Epictetus (c.55–c.135 AD),the slave-philosopher, who defends the absolute superiority of inner freedomand argues that a man is free if he limits himself to what is in his power, if hedoes not reach into a realm where he cannot be hindered.8 She argues thatfreedom as inherent in political action is best illustrated by Machiavelli’s con-cept of virtù or virtuosity, ‘the excellence with which man answers the oppor-tunities the world opens up before him in the guise of fortuna ... an excellence

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we attribute to the performing arts, where the accomplishment lies in the per-formance itself and not in the end product’ (Arendt 2006: 64).

An account of Machiavelli’s notion of virtù that focuses only on the per-formance as distinct from the consequences of political action is at odds withthat provided by most contemporary scholars of Machiavelli (Arendt 2006:66; Hamilton 2014a: ch. 2), but what is most revealing about this analysis isthat Arendt takes freedom not simply to be equivalent to political action perse but political action that displays all of the characteristics of the virtuosoprince or leader: ‘freedom as virtuosity’ (Arendt 2006: 66). In other words,freedom is only possible for ‘great men’ actively involved in the ‘publicrealm’ in a virtuoso manner. Freedom is therefore the unique preserve of thevery few, who leave the security of the ‘private realm’ and display courage inthe ‘public realm’.

What of the rest of us? Under modern conditions we cannot all be involvedactively in virtuoso political acts. In fact very few of us are even involved inpolitics; we elect representatives for that. Arendt’s conception of politics issteeped in Greek antiquity, where citizens’ freedom was related directly totheir active involvement in politics and by means of which they were distin-guished from the rest of the population (slaves, women and metics or residentaliens). Under modern conditions, this is no longer possible, except possiblyin exceptional circumstances, such as during revolutions or liberation strugglesfrom imperial or colonial oppressors. But even then it is questionable whetherthis kind of political action is equivalent to freedom. For example, there islittle doubt that the leaders of the ANC during the liberation of South Africawere involved in countless courageous and virtuoso acts that may have madethem feel powerful and free, but to argue that they were therefore free wouldbe to make a mistake – many of these actions were carried out from the con-fines of jail or exile.

In contrast to Arendt, Machiavelli would have agreed with the proponentsof freedom as absence of constraint to the extent that, for him, the principalwish of people is to pursue their own ends so far as possible, without insecurityor unnecessary interference (Machiavelli 2003: I. 5. 116).9 They want to livewithout fear, to bring up their family without anxiety, and to be in a position‘freely to possess their property without distrust’ (Machiavelli 2003: I. 16.154–56; Skinner 2002b: 162). However, Machiavelli then parts with this com-pany. He argues that this kind of individual freedom is only possible within afree state, a state based on free institutions in which all of its citizens can par-ticipate and which is therefore kept entirely free from subjection to the will ofanother. Free states govern themselves according to their own will (‘by theirown judgment’), that is, the will of the body politic, the citizens (Machiavelli2003: 1. 2. 104–11). Machiavelli maintains that it is only possible to attain theends that are desired by all individuals by living within a community thatenjoys a free way of life: a political community free from dependence or servi-tude, whether imposed by an external conqueror or by a tyrant from within:



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the citizenry as a whole must be sovereign (Machiavelli 2003: 1. 16. 153–7, I.35. 197–8). Rousseau, later, makes this a dictum of republican freedom.10

Machiavelli is not suggesting that the liberty of the individual is secondary tothe liberty of the state. The argument is that the best means of securing indi-vidual liberty is not in opposition to the state and its law, or when one is freefrom politics, but through or by means of the state and its law for the bestmeans of preventing one’s government from falling into the hands of tyranni-cal individuals or groups is to ensure that it remains in the hands of the citi-zen-body as a whole. And this is only possible if all citizens are willing toexercise their talents in defence of the good of the community (Machiavelli2003: III. 8. 426–99, III. 41. 514–15). Freedom, for Machiavelli, is thus a kindof service, since devotion to public service is held to be a necessary conditionfor individual freedom.11 Machiavelli sums this up by arguing that liberty canonly be maintained if the citizen-body display the quality of virtù – the will-ingness to ‘follow to the uttermost whatever course of action will in fact savethe life and preserve the liberty of one’s native land’ (Machiavelli 1998: 18,62; 2003: III. 41. 514–15).12

The role of the law, he maintains, is to deter us from corruption and imposeon us the necessity of behaving as virtuosi citizens (Machiavelli 2003: I. 29.183, I. 42. 217). For Machiavelli, as with Rousseau later, laws make men goodand for a free way of life to last any length of time, ‘the populace must be“chained up by laws”’ (Machiavelli 2003: I. 3. 112, I. 58. 256).13 But how,exactly, does the law protect our liberty? Initially, Machiavelli sounds likethose that think of freedom in terms of absence of constraint. He argues thatlaw enables individual freedom by stopping other people from interfering withour freedom to pursue our own ends, especially corrupt, powerful and rich cit-izens who can abuse the power of their wealth in a number of possible ways,such as engineering for themselves a position of supreme civil or militaryauthority (Machiavelli 2003: I. 34. 194, I. 55. 243–8, I. 37. 200–4).14 Thisdepends upon levels of inequality: ‘corruption of this kind and ineptitude fora free mode of life is due to the inequality one finds in a city’ (Machiavelli2003: I. 17. 160).15 However, the second part of his response leaves him farfrom the proponents of ‘private’ freedom. He submits that the main role of thecoercive power of the law is to liberate us from our natural but self-destructivetendency to pursue our selfish interests. It can force us to promote the publicinterest and therefore preserve our own freedom, that is, ‘force us to be free’(Skinner 2002b: 177; cf. Rousseau 1997: 51–3).16

This is less dramatic than it sounds. Machiavelli is not suggesting that thatthe main function of the law is to bring our desires in line with some form ofrational or higher self (for nothing can make us perfectly virtuous). Rather,the law forces us to be free by channelling our self-interested behaviour insuch a way that our actions have consequences that, although not intended,promote the public interest. This is achieved, he argues, via two main mecha-nisms: the constitution and religion, in particular a republican constitution

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founded on a bicameral legislature and a strong consular or presidential ele-ment (Machiavelli 2003: I. 2–4, 104–15; Skinner 2002b; Hamilton 2014a: ch.2). Were we to add the need for an independent judiciary, this would not be farfrom the normal liberal position espoused by, for example, Rawls (1971: 224).But that is where the similarity ends. For liberals like Rawls, besides theslightly dubious claim that this form of constitution ensures equal access topower, the special purpose of the constitution is to prevent encroachment onpersonal rights and thereby defend the liberties of persons, or our freedomfrom politics (Rawls 1971: section 36). For Machiavelli, the main advantageof this kind of constitution is that it converts private vices into public benefits,which it does by exploiting the rivalry and conflict that exists between the twomain classes that exist in every type of civil association – the upper classes,nobility or grandi and the ordinary people, populace or popolo (Skinner2002b: 179; Crick 2003: 39–45). In Rome, for example, the representatives ofthe two opposed groups, those of the grandi in the Senate and the popolo inthe Tribunate, maintained a continuous watch over one another, thereby ensur-ing that neither side was able to act simply to promote its own interests. Incontrast to those in Machiavelli’s time and ours who argue that liberty andjustice depend upon consensus or that freedom depends upon the republictracking ‘common, recognizable interests’ (Pettit 1997: 291), freedom accord-ing to Machiavelli was only made possible by the constant conflict betweenthese classes: ‘In every republic there are two different dispositions … and alllegislation favourable to liberty is brought about by the clash between them’(Machiavelli 2003: I. 4. 113).17

The centrality of class conflict for Machiavelli’s account of freedom as awhole cannot be over-emphasised. In fact the very discussion of being‘chained up by laws’ alluded to above is part of an argument for why ‘govern-ment by the populace is better than government by princes’: popular, republi-can governments are ‘more prudent, more stable, and of sounder judgmentthan the prince’ (Machiavelli 2003: I. 58. 255–6). For Machiavelli, there aretwo main reasons that freedom depends upon the clash between the differentdispositions or humours of the popolo and the grandi, with the second beingthe most important: (a) because politics represents the competitive pursuit ofpower and glory at the service of the res publica – the public thing or business– and this would only generate freedom if there existed institutions thatenabled this in a manner in which the popolo and the grandi could satisfacto-rily compete with one another (Fontana 2003: 89–90)18; and (b) the naturaldisposition of the grandi, in particular, must be kept in check for they aremotivated by an oppressive appetite, a wish to command and dominate thepopolo. In contrast, the popolo wish to resist or avoid domination, they desireonly not to be commanded or oppressed by the grandi (Machiavelli 2003: I.4–5. esp. 116). This fact, Machiavelli claims, makes forms of government thatdo not check the political power of the grandi very dangerous indeed: they arealways likely to lead to less rather than more freedom as the grandi make full



use of the political powers granted them to dominate the state in general andthe popolo in particular. By contrast, he argues, the desires and actions of thepopolo ‘are very seldom harmful to liberty because they are due either to thepopulace being oppressed or to the suspicion that it is going to be oppressed’(Machiavelli 2003: I. 4. 114–15). In other words, his praise of the popolo’ssuperior political judgement in achieving and safeguarding freedom is notbecause he thinks they are more astute than the grandi, but because their nat-ural disposition to guard against oppression makes them so. In fact he thinksquite the opposite regarding the relative cleverness of the grandi and thepopolo.19 Thus, despite being generally less clever, poorly resourced, disin-clined towards aggression and even craven, at least in comparison to theirwealthier compatriots, the popolo are the real guardians of freedom.20

Freedom, therefore, depends on empowering the popolo, both in the senseof giving them a share in the administration of the government, but also inchecking the power of the grandi. Machiavelli therefore suggests that thepopolo be armed with weapons and training and empowered politically andconstitutionally with tribunes and assemblies. In other words, he argues thatthe people led by consuls in the field and tribunes at home, bound together inlegions while at war and in assemblies within the walls of the republics, shack-led by laws and yet given the power to make concrete judgements, will provewiser than either the grandi or a prince (Machiavelli 2003, I. 7. 44, 58; Lefort2012: 240–79). A healthy republic, and thus a free people, is only possible, heargues when the popolo are authorised not only to choose magistrates, butalso discuss and ultimately decide legislation in assembly and to judge politi-cal trials collectively. He provides the following practical suggestions for eliteaccountability and popular empowerment: (1) assemblies that exclude thewealthiest citizens from eligibility; (2) magistrate appointment procedures thatcombine lottery and election; and (3) political trials in which the entire citi-zenry acts as final judge over prosecutions and appeals (McCormick 2011:vii. 26, chs 3 –5). Rome remains the main exemplar not only because theseinstitutions are drawn directly from that republic but also because Romedemonstrates better than any other political order, he argues, that freedomdepends upon institutions that enable and safeguard competitive and opposingsocial groups in their antagonistic pursuit of power.21

In sum, for Machiavelli, the main advantage of laws and constitutions isnot that all laws are good since they keep politics and thus the determinationof freedom out of the hands of those with power (grandi, wealthy, oligarchs)or out of the hands of the people (popolo, populace, plebs), but that thoselaws that enable the institutionalisation of class or social group conflict aregood since they succeed in converting private vices into public benefits. Andthey do this not because they instantiate reason or generate virtù or clear-sighted perception of the ‘common good’, as suggested by Pettit in particular(Pettit 1997: 201, 284, 290; 2004: 52–65), but because they institutionaliseclass conflict, providing both classes with the capacity or power to control



one another. So, by means of coercion at the level of law in general and withregard to the institutions and practices governing class conflict in particular,the citizens will be assured of liberty. In contrast to the tradition of thoughtthat thinks of freedom in terms of absence of constraint in which the law isgenerally seen as an obstacle to individual freedom, and thus freedom is to befound in realms free from laws and politics, Machiavelli therefore sees law asa liberating power.

At first glance Machiavelli’s account of freedom seems very convincing,especially given his realistic approach to the centrality of power, conflict andcompeting interests. But two problems remain. However compelling the ideathat Machiavelli’s account of political liberty is at core also an account offreedom as absence of impediment (Skinner 1993, 1997, 2002a: 178 fn.81,2002b; cf. 2008; Pettit 2002), it is obvious that the republican citizen is notdefined as an individual who possesses and administers private goods as amatter of right, or for whom the good life is simply the pursuit of their ownplans and enjoyments (Dunn 1990; Ivison 1997: 73). The republican citizenmay have to be coerced by law, but at least under the circumstances in whichMachiavelli wrote, the goal towards which the coercion was aimed was notcompletely anathema to the norms of his society and thus the associated dutiesand obligations that any individual may in fact be drawn to. These included,first, the courage and martial virtues needed to defend one’s republic (Machi-avelli 1998: chs XII–XIII; 2003: II. 2. 274–81, II. 12, 305–10, II. 20. 339–41;Pocock 1975: 183-218; Viroli 1992: 162-164) and, second, a form of civicprudence that enabled them to play an effective role in the decision-makingprocesses of the state, true of both grandi and popolo in their assemblies(Machiavelli 2003: I. 9. 131–4). In other words the everyday sentiments andattitudes of the age included qualities and institutions defended by Machi-avelli. Do these qualities and institutions chime with the values, sentimentsand desires of the citizens of twenty-first-century states? Do they make sensewithin highly complex modern states characterised by extensive division oflabour, specialisation and representation?

Freedom as Power Through Political Representation

Like Constant, in his famous speech given in 1819 at the Athénée Royal inParis, I think not. But unlike him I do not think the answer lies in simply‘learning to combine’ ancient and modern liberty (Constant 1998: 327–8).Modern conditions require an alternative account of freedom that does notconceive of freedom in purely private or exclusively political terms (or somemix of both), but in terms of the economic and political conditions for freedomof action, which involves power and control over various social, economic andpolitical domains of modern existence, while remaining realistic about thefact that this control must of necessity be enacted, in most cases, via political



representatives. In contrast to the reductionist tendencies in both the liberaland republican mainstream, the alternative account of freedom proposed herelinks our thinking regarding freedom to real and effective power. It capturesthe concrete nature of freedom by identifying freedom with power in at leastone important way. When I say ‘I am free’ normally I am not saying exclu-sively, ‘I am externally unimpeded’ or ‘I am self-determining’; no, what I usu-ally mean is ‘I am free to do X’ which concretely means ‘I have the power orability to do X’. So real modern freedom here is identified with and as powerin that it conceives of freedom as a combination of my ability to determinewhat I will do and my power to do it, that is, bring it about.

Freedom as power in this sense chimes with most of the struggles for free-dom across the ages, including the sharp distinction between freedom andslavery in Antiquity, subsequent slave revolts like the Haitian Revolution andlater liberation struggles against colonialism, apartheid and domination, andthe everyday attempts to gain more independence and freedom from, say, thestate, the law, the churches, the community, poverty and so on. Frantz Fanonargues, for example, that the human condition is to be free and that freedomresides in the capacity to choose and to act (Fanon 2008: 180). In other words,it captures well an important fact about human existence: people are inter-ested in freedom as a human ideal because it is connected with the actualattainment of ‘something’, that is, some good or set of goods; and the actualattainment of these depends on my having the power to attain them. The lib-eration struggle in South Africa, for example, did not have as its goal theabstract idea of being ‘free from impediment’ or ‘living in a free state’.Rather it had more concrete political, economic and social goals: having thepower to determine who rules and how they rule; to produce, exchange andconsume; to love, procreate and seek entertainment; to bring up one’s chil-dren, and so on; all in conditions free of poverty and racial and gender dis-crimination and domination.22 The same is true for less stark struggles forfreedom in less tyrannical conditions. The constant clamour for freedom ofspeech, for example, is associated with a set of perceived goods. Citizens andthe press do not defend press freedom simply because they think freedomdepends upon being able to act unimpeded. They do so because they thinkthis form of freedom brings with it a series of associated benefits that weought to safeguard and value, such as the power to criticise our governments,the power to disseminate information and so on. And the same kind of argu-ment also underpins claims to academic freedom and freedom of artisticexpression (Hamilton 2014a: ch. 4).

It turns out, moreover, that thinking about freedom as both about beingable to determine what one will do and having the power to do what onedecides to do is more common than is normally supposed. A number of polit-ical thinkers from right across the political spectrum associate freedom andpower in exactly these terms. It is a mainstay of much of Antiquity. As theRoman historian Titus Livy put it, ‘freedom is to be in one’s own power’.23



The association is also made by a number of modern thinkers, as diverse asThomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill(Hobbes 1996: 91, 146; Rousseau 1997: 82; Burke 2004: 91; Mill 1991: 7,16-17, 116, 121). Thus, a whole array of thinkers, even thinkers that Berlinlauds as standard-bearers for his ‘negative’ conception of freedom, are ulti-mately concerned with whether or not someone is able to exercise his or herpower to act, that is, bring something about, to do something.

However, it is in the work of Karl Marx that we find the full efflorescenceof the account of freedom as power that underpins my argument here. Marxunequivocally identifies freedom with power. In The German Ideology, and inother later political works, Marx distinguishes three concepts of liberty. Thefirst is that which he associates with the anarchism of Max Stirner, but intoday’s parlance we would call ‘negative’ freedom or, more exactly, the ‘purenegative’ freedom of libertarianism (Marx and Engels 1976: 304–6; Carter1999, Kramer 2003; Steiner 2006; Geuss 2009: 56–7). The second concept offreedom Marx discusses he identifies with Immanuel Kant’s view of freedom,which he defines as the ability a creature has to make its own decisions orgovern itself (Marx and Engels 1976: 193–5). The third concept is the oneMarx calls the ‘materialist’ notion of freedom that identifies freedom withpower and is, he maintains, the full, sophisticated notion of freedom. Follow-ing this account, freedom comprises ‘the conjunction of the ability to deter-mine what one will do and the power to do what one decides to do’, andanything less than this is a mere shadow of the concept of freedom (Marx andEngels 1976: 305–6; Geuss 2009: 56–7). This means that for Marx the othertwo concepts he discusses, and a fortiori the main three concepts analysed inthe modern literature, are poor approximations of this real form of freedom.

Another way of construing the importance of this more substantive accountof freedom is that it provides a means of thinking about how freedom relatesto the exercise of our powers as individuals and how we are enabled and dis-abled by a variety of internal and external abilities, obstacles, mechanismsand power relations. Here freedom is conceived as ‘effective power’, that is,freedom is rightly identified as a precondition for certain desirable ‘beingsand doings’. Nietzsche, for example, puts the association well: ‘That we areeffective beings, forces, is our fundamental belief. Free means: “not pushedand shoved, without a feeling of compulsion” ... Where we encounter a resis-tance and have to give way to it, we feel unfree: where we don’t give way to itbut compel it to give way to us, we feel free ... – man’s most dreadful anddeep-rooted craving, his drive to power – this drive is known as “freedom”’(Nietzsche 2003: 16, 57). Then, in another key, so does Dewey: ‘Liberty ispower, effective power to do specific things ... The demand of liberty is thedemand for power’ (Dewey 1968: 111). Finally, perhaps somewhat surpris-ingly, the association is also evident at the heart of analytical political philos-ophy, for example in Joel Feinberg’s account of freedom: ‘There are at leasttwo basic ideas in the conceptual complex we call “freedom”; namely, rightful



self-government (autonomy), and the overall ability to do, choose or achievethings, which can be called “optionality” ...’ (Feinberg 1998: 1).

This emphasis on substantive and effective freedom highlights another factabout freedom: that felicitous talk and action regarding freedom is normallythe result of the existence of internal or external forces (our own selves, otherpeople or natural forces) that are in fact or are threatening to interfere with ourintended actions or, in more complex ways, determining which actions weintend to carry out. As Montaigne, Nietzsche and Foucault suggest, disciplineand freedom are not antithetical but mutually dependent. Or, in other words,my resistance to forces seeking to constrain my freedom is very often neces-sary to achieving and maintaining my freedom. These thinkers see the rela-tionship in human action between freedom, resistance, discipline, control,power and empowerment. They do so because they are concerned to identifythe power relations – roles, institutions, practices – and individual powers thatenable and disable individuals to carry out intended tasks; and that the selfmust ‘make’ or ‘enact’ itself so as to achieve and sustain the characteristicsand powers necessary for freedom (Montaigne 2003: 1070–159, 1173–206),that is, the individual must ‘overcome’ those inclinations that work against herfreedom, and develop ‘free-spiritedness’, a state of being that enhances theself’s courage, power, inventiveness and ‘self-mastery’ (Nietzsche 1994: 40).

Considered through the lenses of these and other authors and struggles forfull political freedom, the main liberal argument that to be free is to act in theabsence of impediments or obstacles, in particular those that result from con-scious deliberate human action, rests on a series of mistaken assumptions thatmask a deep misapprehension about politics. I cannot summarise here an argu-ment that I develop and defend in my forthcoming book, Freedom is Power(Hamilton 2014a). Suffice to say: liberals are concerned with external obsta-cles because they think it is better to have more possible courses of action thanfewer. That is obviously true of some situations, but it is not clear that it is trueof all; but in any case, the number of options open depends not merely on thepresence or absence of obstacles, but the conjunction of one’s power and theinternal or external obstacles that stand in one’s way. Moreover, whether ornot a person, act or institution constitutes an obstacle will itself often dependon my relative power within existing power relations, in particular my positionwithin existing power relations and vis-à-vis existing forms of representation.In short, my freedom of action is relative to my power to: (a) get what I want,to act or be as I would choose in the absence of either internal or externalobstacles or both; (b) determine the government of my political association orcommunity; (c) develop and exercise my powers and capacities self-reflec-tively within and against existing norms, expectations and power relations;and (d) determine my social and economic environment via meaningful con-trol over my and my groups’ economic and political representatives. Freedomis therefore power in the sense that it depends upon my power, control andself-control across these four dimensions.



Under modern conditions, characterised as they are by specialisation, divi-sion of labour and a variety of forms of economic and political representation,these four dimensions of freedom as power are part and parcel of the ways inwhich modern individuals do and must enact their various powers to achieveand safeguard their freedom and that of their fellow citizens. The distinctionsbetween the various dimensions are not strict, substantive distinctions, butmerely analytical distinctions that allow greater clarity regarding whichdimensions of action and power individual modern citizens must focus on toachieve and maintain freedom as power. What follows from this is that in thereal world of politics, more than one of the dimensions may be covered byonly one kind or set of actions. For example, power within dimension (a) mayin some real-world cases be secured by my successfully enacting my citizenfreedom across dimension (c). They are kept separate because, even if in someinstances feature (c), for example, encompasses domain (a), this may notalways be the case; and, moreover, the converse is normally not the case.Dimension (c) identifies self-reflective critique of the excepted norms andpower relations of a citizen’s polity and society that is not a necessary condi-tion of the power expressed by domain (a). Thus freedom as power in (c) is notnormally covered by (a). Moreover, (c) usually requires some form of collec-tive action in the interstices of formal collective action (dimensions (b) and(d)), as exemplified by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the Les-bian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) movements in South Africa.This aspect of collective action is not captured by any of the other dimensions.

These four dimensions of freedom as power are objective conditions forfreedom because they are shared and because all individuals need them asnecessary conditions for the possibility of freedom of action. And they are allpolitical because they cannot be achieved and maintained by individual orspontaneous collective action alone: they all aim at the political empowermentof all citizens, which requires the coercive force of a political authority toensure that they are institutionalised and sustained. This is even true of dimen-sion (a), whose actual enactment is normally purely individual in character:the condition for this individual power depends upon the nature of the prevail-ing political and economic institutions, whose very existence depends uponcoercive legal and political structures and mechanisms. Yet, however objective,this is not an exhaustive account of individual freedom. The full extent of myclaim is that whatever freedom for any particular individual may involve,under the precarious and interdependent nature of modern conditions it willdepend on the power and control individuals are able to exercise within thefour domains of freedom outlined above. The concern is therefore with thebasic necessary requirements for freedom as power, or in other words, indi-vidual power and control within these four dimensions are necessary (but notsufficient) conditions for freedom.

It follows therefore that, taken individually, these dimensions are not nec-essary conditions for freedom and thus, if taken alone, are not definitive of



freedom. So, for example, even if dimension (a), one aspect of which is equiv-alent to negative freedom or ‘the absence of external obstacles’, is one of thebasic necessary requirements for freedom as power, it does not follow fromthis that the absence of external obstacles is definitive of freedom. Taken alltogether they constitute necessary conditions for freedom. Moreover, as I haveargued, freedom as power in dimension (a) usually depends upon freedom aspower across the other three dimensions. There is therefore no contradictionbetween this claim and the other claims regarding freedom as power, particu-larly that freedom is compatible with alien control, as argued below. The rea-son it is not is due to the fact that under modern conditions of social, politicaland economic existence, individuals simply cannot avoid recourse to repre-sentation in general and political representation in particular (Siéyès 2003).Political representatives can be held accountable for their actions to varyingdegrees, and so too can they be given more or less autonomy, but unless onedepends on a very stylised account of democratic rule (or removes oneselfentirely from society), the fact of having to enact one’s freedom through thealien control of another is unavoidable. To assume otherwise is to make aseries of very unrealistic assumptions regarding the nature of modern polities,characterised as it is by interdependence, power relations and elaborate divi-sion of labour.

Our freedoms as powers across these four dimensions are the objective con-ditions necessary for avoiding or overcoming what I call, following Foucault,‘situations of domination’. As I have argued elsewhere, situations of domina-tion arise when the existing power relations do not give citizens the power todetermine their needs (Hamilton 2003).24 This can take various forms. Exist-ing power relations can: (a) mislead me in my attempts to identify my needs,for example patriarchy; (b) ensure that I do not have the means or voice toexpress my needs, for example apartheid South Africa; (c) disable meaningfulevaluation of needs, for example unregulated liberal capitalism (cf. Pettit1997; Lovett 2010).

My point regarding the centrality of representation for real modern freedomis reinforced by the fact that our lives within large, complex modern states arecharacterised by membership of a whole variety of overlapping and interde-pendent groups, and thus our freedom (and avoidance of domination) is deter-mined to a significant degree by three associated matrices of freedom aspower: (a) the material conditions and power of the groups that we find our-selves (or in some cases choose) to be members of; (b) the relative power ofour groups’ representatives; and (c) the relationship between our groups’ rep-resentatives and our formal political representatives.

This is the first way in which this account of freedom as power is distin-guishable from that proposed by Pettit, who defines liberty as the absence of‘alien’ or ‘alienating’ control ‘on the part of other persons’ (Pettit 2008: 102).He describes various kinds of alien control and numerous ways in which itdoes and does not intersect with interference or impediments to action, but



ultimately his main point is that all forms of alien control by another agent areproblematic for republican freedom (Pettit 2008: 103). But, given modern con-ditions and the centrality of economic and political representation therein, thisis to ask much too much of the concept of freedom. To some extent individualcitizens are under the control of an alien power in every aspect of their lives,from the person who creates and sells them their shoes to their representativesin parliament. Whether or not they are under the alien or alienating control ofanother person is not the point. The real question is whether or not existinginstitutional matrices do or do not generate situations of domination and dis-able the possibility for citizens effectively to determine, or at least influence,the decisions of those that represent them. My account of freedom allows forthe identification of the various causal avenues of control that exist betweenindividuals, groups and their representatives, thereby generating an overall pic-ture of their degree of freedom as power.25 In other words, freedom as power issharply distinguishable from freedom from politics and freedom through poli-tics as it takes alien control, at least in the form of economic and political rep-resentation, to be a sine qua non of modern social and political existence.

The second way in which my account of freedom is distinguishable fromboth predominant forms of freedom takes us back to one of the four problemsidentified at the start of the paper: that restrictions to human freedom onlyoccur if they result from a conscious deliberate human action. I have made thecase for why the ‘privatised’ conception of freedom is guilty of this, but so toois Pettit’s version of republican freedom: as first formulated, the basis of dom-ination as arbitrary interference is always intentionally carried out by an indi-vidual or a person or an agent; and in later versions, for Pettit, liberty isdefined as the absence of ‘alien’ or ‘alienating’ control ‘on the part of otherpersons’ (Pettit 1997: 25–26, 55, passim; 2008: 102, 106, 108, esp. fn.7). Bycontrast, my account of freedom does not fall foul of my argument against therequirement of conscious deliberate human action: if my power to do X orinfluence my representative to change Y is thwarted by something that is notthe result of deliberate human action but is within our powers to change orhave changed, in that dimension until these powers are exercised I am less freethan I would otherwise be.

Third, in Pettit’s conception of freedom as non-domination or the absenceof alien control, power is not only atomistic in the sense that it is deemed theproperty (or not) of individuals, but freedom is a form not of power but ofanti-power, as the title of one of his earlier essays puts it (Pettit 1996; Pettit1997: 52, 69, 78–9). In other words freedom is not identified with power, butin an apolitical and quite straightforward way it is identified with control overone’s destiny. Not only does this not depart very far from autonomy or self-determination, and thus Berlin’s problematic distinctions, but also it takesthose with power, in the form of dominium or imperium, as always the (poten-tial) source of unfreedom.26 In my account, by contrast, the notion of controland power is non-atomistic in the sense that the individual capacity for free-



dom as power is dependent upon the existence of specific social, economicand political institutions. Citizens gain and retain their freedom as a result ofhaving the institutional means to generate, critique and veto decisions, institu-tional arrangements and forms of representation. Moreover, as one interpreta-tion of Machiavelli’s oeuvre has it, in order to avoid domination (or safeguardfreedom) it may be necessary to institute partisan political institutions for theexpress purpose of empowering otherwise dominated groups and classes tohave the requisite power to carry out these generative, critical and controllingfunctions (McCormick 2011; The Good Society 2011). Following this reading,what matters most in my alternative account of freedom is the relationship ofcontrol that exists between individual citizens, societal groups, their variousrepresentatives and their formal political representatives. (For more on thisand some associated institutional proposals, see Hamilton 2014a.)

Finally, the other important difference between the conception of freedomsubmitted here and the one propounded by Pettit returns to his apoliticalapproach to many questions, best borne out by some of his later institutionalproposals that follow, he maintains, from his account of freedom. He proposesa series of reforms that will, he submits, not only achieve republican freedombut also substantively enhance contemporary democracy. These include a com-bination of rigid constitutionalism and what he terms ‘contestatory democ-racy’: (a) strict division of powers, including the division of legislative,executive and judicial functions, and bicameral and federal arrangements (the‘dispersion-of-power’ constraint); (b) downplaying the centrality of electoralor majoritarian democracy in order to avoid the tyranny of the majority ordomination of the minority by the majority (the ‘counter-majoritarian’ condi-tion); (c) judicial review as a central component of democracy (the ‘empire-of-law’ condition); (d) the support of a series of other unelected andspecifically depoliticised institutions such as ombudsmen and commissionsof experts, whose job it would be to assess individual or group contestation ofproposed legislation; (e) all held together by civility and civic virtue in the cit-izenry and emphasis on the ‘common good’ and the ‘common avowable inter-ests’ of ‘the people’ (Pettit 1997: chs 6–8, 276–81, 2004, 2012). By contrast,freedom as power takes seriously the ineradicable fact of class conflict, powerand partisan interests and thus the need to empower politically the otherwisesocially and economically powerless, especially by means of institutions ofrepresentation for the unique determination and defence of their interests. Thusit does not depend upon citizen virtue, citizen interest in the ‘common good’,policy experts or two of the three conditions – (b) and (c) above – that are cen-tral to Pettit’s institutional proposal. Moreover, here ‘politicisation’ is not theproblem, but part of the solution: it is a requirement for instantiating powerand representation and thus real citizen control over the domains listed earlier(Hamilton 2014a; cf. McCormick 2011: chs 6–7).

These differences from Pettit’s account of freedom also identify the waysin which freedom as power is a real modern concept of freedom. It takes seri-



ously Constant’s distinction between ancient and modern liberty and the factthat the ‘privatised’ accounts analysed above therefore identify, if only par-tially, something unique about modern freedom – that individuals do valuebeing able to choose how to act or be in the absence of internal and externalobstacles – and thus that those accounts that flip the other way and defendpurely political conceptions of freedom err for two related reasons. First, theyassume levels of community solidarity, civic virtue and political action thatare simply unrealistic for citizens living complex modern lives with significantdegrees of everyday independence from the state and other citizens, even ifthese forms of individual power result from political decisions and forms ofpolitical power. Second, in finding inspiration in the rich and fecund world ofancient history, Arendt, Pettit and many other modern republicans romanticisenotions such as the ‘common good’ and ‘the people’ that no longer matter inmodern politics. Some modern individuals may see themselves as part of apeople with a common moral vision, but these are the exceptions to the rule.Most modern individuals are simply too preoccupied with their personal andeconomic lives to place much significance on these older notions. They seethemselves as individual citizens and as members of whole series of overlap-ping groups, only one of which is captured by the supposed ‘community’ thatconstitutes the state. My concept of freedom as power is significantly moremodern as it takes these facts of modern existence at face value, and weavestogether both the individualised dimension and the various group dimensionswith the central role of representation. In other words, in overcoming negativeand republican accounts, freedom as power is not simply an amalgam of thetwo. Modern citizens desire individual freedom for real, legitimate reasons.Yet, in tracing the historical evolution of these sentiments and reasons, free-dom as power identifies their unavoidably political nature. It suggest therebythat the maintenance of freedom is also unavoidably political, not in the senseof requiring constant political action and involvement, but in the sense that itdepends on the creation and maintenance of institutions that enable ordinarycitizens to keep their economic and political representatives accountable forthe decisions they make in their names.

In other words, given the various interrelated domains of freedom of actionand the requirement of representation for individuals to enact their freedom aspower therein, both freedom from politics and freedom through politics arewide of the mark. We value different things to the ancients and early moderns,but cannot avoid being involved in politics, both as means to secure what wevalue (the instrumental reason) and because the citizenry as a whole and, inparticular, their representatives cannot make wise political judgements withoutour involvement (the intrinsic value). Matters of size, scale and complexitymake this form of proposed political involvement quite unlike that whichArendt and many contemporary deliberative democrats propose (as inBohman and Rehg 1997). Under modern conditions, we cannot participateconstantly in politics, but in order to safeguard our freedom as power across



lawrencehamilton

Sticky Note

replace 'suggest' with 'suggests'

the four domains specified here we must be enabled with the power and abilityto determine who rules, how they rule and thus our polity’s norms and institu-tions. It follows therefore that political participation is not best understood asan intrinsic good or an instrumental good. Our freedom of action is in partenacted in political and public ways and we would remain less free in thedimensions I list were we to remain exclusively concerned with our ‘private’freedom or the means to secure it. With the account of freedom as powerdefended here it becomes possible to see how real modern freedom is not pos-sible without politics but nor is it equivalent to political action alone or a lifeof constant active citizenship.

Conclusion

In sum, then, I have argued here that freedom cannot be attained and main-tained without politics but nor can it be reduced to politics or political action.As the four dimensions of freedom as power highlight, freedom is not only todo with power in the sense of my ability to carry out my intended actions, it isalso to do with power in the sense of citizen and societal group control overwho rules and how they rule, in other words over political representatives.Real modern freedom is not captured either by means of ‘private’ freedom or‘political’ freedom. The former generates the unhelpful allergic reaction topolitical regulation found in free market ideologues and most libertarian liber-als and the latter ignores the fact that much of everyday modern freedom isdetermined by the various social, political and economic groups, practices,institutions and forms of representation that enable our power to satisfy ourneeds and overcome situations of domination. Freedom as power brings allthese directly to the fore in an account of the social, economic and politicalconditions for freedom of action.

LAWRENCE HAMILTON is research professor of politics at the University ofJohannesburg, affiliated lecturer in political theory in the Department of Pol-itics and International Studies (POLIS), Cambridge University, and Life Mem-ber of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He is the author of The Political Philosophy ofNeeds (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Freedom Is Power: LibertyThrough Political Representation (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and AreSouth Africans Free? (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to two anonymous readers, the editors of Theoria andnumerous friends, colleagues and students in a number of fora who have com-mented on earlier versions of this paper and related ideas. I am also indebted



to François Janse van Rensburg for truly excellent research assistance and theUniversity of Johannesburg and the South African National Research Founda-tion for institutional support.

Notes

1. Although not discussed at length here, self-control is important because, given the affluenceand consumption levels in the developed ‘Global North’ and the poverty and aspiration to‘develop’ towards this state of affluence and consumption in the ‘Global South’ and thedegradation of the planetary environment, there is much to be said for inducing individualseverywhere to show greater austerity, self-control and self-discipline with regard to theirconsumption and its effects on the environment (Geuss 2009: xiii).

2. I shall follow Hobbes and most other writers on the topic by using ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’interchangeably, as is the case in everyday speech and tract; cf. Pitkin (1988).

3. Freedom, for Hayek (1960: 11), is the ‘state in which a man is not subject to coercion bythe arbitrary will of another or others’.

4. For Rawls, Nozick and their followers, liberty of this kind is a natural right; the preservationof this right is not possible under conditions of coercion; its maximisation is the main pointand duty of liberal governments; and it is protected by a cordon sanitaire of inalienableindividual rights (Rawls 1971: 3; Nozick 1974: 9–12; Skinner 1993: 161).

5. This is normally associated with a moral endorsement of private property, with a claim thatpeople have a moral right to the property they own (Hayek 1960; Nozick 1974).

6. Another version is Mill’s famous ‘harm principle’ (1991: 14).7. The sentiments, needs and interests that we value in the modern age – one of which is indi-

vidual freedom – are themselves only possible because of the complexity and interdepen-dence of our lives; we are able to satisfy our needs and focus on our privacy in the way wedo only because of the existence of others who can focus on theirs and thereby meet ourvarious needs (Hegel 1991; Siéyès 2003).

8. Epictetus, ‘On Freedom’, in Dissertationes, Book IV. I, cited in Arendt (2006: 59), whereshe notes that ‘[i]n this interpretation, freedom and politics have parted for good ... and[man] can be a slave in the world and still be free’; cf. Patterson (1991: xiii, xv, 3–4, 9, 48,51) and Rauflaab (2004: 41–4).

9. The most famous, disputed version of the ‘republican’ or ‘neo-roman’ account of freedomis that to be found in the works of Machiavelli, in particular his Discorsi sopra la primadeca di Tito Livio. Hereafter cited as DL with book, chapter and page numbers.

10. ‘[O]bedience to the law one has prescribed to oneself is freedom’ (Rousseau 1997: 54).11. As Skinner (2002b: 163) notes, Sallust, in a much-quoted passage from the start of the Bel-

lum Catilinae, was the source of the authority for this alleged general truth.12. Virtù, a central component of Machiavelli’s political theory, is therefore the disposition or

ability of a group or individual to act in a way conducive to the good of the republic orstate. In The Prince, Machiavelli focuses on what may be necessary for the preservation ofthe principality (or state). A truly virtuoso prince is one who is willing to do whatever isnecessary to achieve this, unconstrained by the classical and Christian moral virtues, aclaim that leaves many adherents of Christian morality aghast (Viroli 1992, 1998; Ivison1997). Thus I leave virtù and its cognates in the original: it is not equivalent to our notionof ‘virtue’ or even Roman ‘virtus’.



13. ‘[F]or the maintenance of good customs laws are required’ (Machiavelli 2003: I. 18. 160).14. The example is Julius Caesar, who took advantage of the role of dictator bestowed on him

for a limited period for a specific emergency.15. Machiavelli’s solution – ‘a state which enjoys freedom is one that keeps the citizens poor’

(2003: III. 25. 475) is not one that we would now support as we have successfully divorcedthe problem of inequality from the problem of poverty (Sen 1992; Wilkinson 2005; Wilkin-son and Pickett 2009).

16. Contrary to the received wisdom, this is in fact the safeguard against tyranny (Viroli 1990:172; Hamilton 2014a).

17. This goes directly against the conventional humanist – Ciceronian and Aristotelian – beliefof the age that civil discord is ultimately fatal to the maintenance of a true republic and thatthe common good is always a function of maintaining a concordia ordinum (Skinner 1993:135–6).

18. See his fn. 16 regarding the various alternative translations for the Italian umori (‘parties’,‘factions’ [Gilbert], ‘dispositions’ [Walker], ‘classes’ [Price] or ‘humors’ [Mansfield]);and the possible problem with reading back into Machiavelli a notion of class which couldonly have emerged after the Enlightenment, which I take seriously, as I do his final com-ment there – that ‘Machiavelli’s use of humors, based on a pre-modern notion of medicine,demonstrates his belief in the necessary existence of opposing and antagonistic socialgroups as constitutive elements of the body politic.’ So whatever term is used, freedomdepends upon institutions that enable and safeguard competitive and opposing social groupsin their antagonistic pursuit of power.

19. The Prince and DL are filled with episodes that relate the cleverness, awareness, astutenessand practical judgement of the grandi, but more often than not in their own cause, whichnormally results in the further oppression of the populace and thus the opposite of wiserule (Machiavelli 1998: 9, 2003: I. 3. 111–13, I. 5. 116–18).

20. ‘Hence [in Rome] if tumults led to the creation of the tribunes, tumults deserve the highestpraise, since, besides giving the populace a share in the administration, they served as theguardian of Roman liberties’ (Machiavelli 2003: I. 4. 115).

21. ‘To me those who condemn the quarrels between the nobles [grandi] and the plebs [popolo],seem to be cavilling at the very things that were the primary cause of Rome’s retaining herfreedom, and that they pay more attention to the noise and clamour resulting from suchcommotions than to what resulted from them, i.e. to the good effects which they produced.Nor do they realize that in every republic there are two different dispositions [umori], thatof the populace [popolo] and that of the upper class [grandi], and that all legislationfavourable to liberty is brought about by the clash between them’ (Machiavelli 2003: I. 4.113).

22. See The Freedom Charter of 1955 [Internet] and the Constitution of 1996 (2009) as dis-cussed in Hamilton (2014b).

23. ‘Libertas suis stat viribus’: Livy (2005: book 35, ch. 32, p. 11). As Wirszubski (1968: 8–9)argues, what Livy had in mind here is not the autonomy of the will, but self-reliance,enjoyed of right by Roman citizens, the conditions for which were secured by law andwithin social relations of respect and reciprocity.

24. The concept of ‘power’ is a relation rather than a resource or property of persons and isconnected to the abilities of agents to bring about significant affects, either by furtheringtheir own interests or affecting the interests of others, positively or negatively (Lukes 2005:63–5, 109; Geuss 2008: 27).

25. In this sense – the sense that freedom is not absolute and, amongst other things, a quantita-tive matter – freedom as power is similar to the ‘pure negative’ accounts of freedom pro-posed by Pettit’s and Skinner’s main contemporary adversaries, Kramer and Carter.However, that is the only similarity: besides being proponents of the accounts I criticised atthe start of the paper, they are if anything even less explicitly aware of the realities ofpower, control and, especially, representation for an understanding of modern freedom.



26. Pettit categorises instances of arbitrary interference by private parties over other such par-ties as dominium and governmental actions that violate common, recognisable individualinterests as imperium (Pettit 1997: 13, 55, 112, 150, 276–77, 290–2).

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