In Defense of Radicalism

...They may miscalculate, and their last state of frustration may be as bad, or worse, than their present one...

...No man feels free unless he can to some extent participate in forming the prohibitions to which he submits...

...I still believe in the "illusions" of the 18th century—Reason, Science, Freedom—so far as one can believe in abstract slogans at all...

...If anyone thinks it unnecessary to find some basis of mutual respect, it may be because he repudiates the application of moral notions to politics altogether...

...He could not maintain that actions are to be divided into political actions and non-political actions...

...I only see the difficulty of calculating at any particular time where the greatest threat to freedom is and how it ought to be resisted...

...If he thinks that he can only learn by accumulated experience what is good and worth pursuing, he will claim no final certainty for himself, and therefore will at least hesitate before overruling the different decisions of others...

...One reads these days unashamed platitude about the possimany cries of despair, rumblings of bilities of progress or the needs of engloom, dark hints of the inadequacy lightenment...

...It seems to me that it could not...

...they can only be explained and expanded by showing the philosophical reasoning associated with them...

...Where such conditions exist, it seems to me that any effective protest or movement of revolt, even including voting for allies of the Communist Party, may be a defense of cultural freedom...

...But it is quite pointless, on such an occasion as this, to disguise an alliance of expediency as an agreement of principle...

...This is a necessary qualifying condition without which there can be no freedom at all...

...These signs, still evident in America, seem to me to be becoming fewer in Western Europe as we lapse into a Restoration mood, soon to find Bonalds and de Maistres all around us and little Chateaubriands...

...His enemy will always be changing, as one preponderating group succeeds another...

...it has only become more dangerous and disagreeable to defend it...

...Freedom of choice generally shows itself, whenever it is felt to be growing in any section of society, in public arguments, in new forms of pleasure, in travel and in movement, in experiments in building, in pride in cities, in changes of custom and morality and in the complaints of those who are dispossessed, in the new emigre nostalgia...

...And so do we, if we take sides against them, from fear of Communism, without trying to provide some alternative means of breaking out...

...Moral standpoints cannot be demonstrated...

...But what is freedom...

...It seems that it would be impossible to break out and to start again...

...A man must acknowledge responsibility for all his actions, if he acknowledges responsibility for any of them...

...some classes of persons lose some of their liberties, others, formerly oppressed and almost left off the pages of history, gain a freedom of choice that they never had before...

...2) If his manner of life, his activities, and enjoyments have been chosen by himself from a wide variety of alternatives open to him...

...And why is it always right to defend and extend it, in preference to anything else...

...If Catholic repression is most evident and unconcealed in Spain, it also exists in less crude forms in other Catholic countries...

...for freedom is not something which has to be safeguarded, but rather something which has to be extended...

...One is unlikely to find many unconditional advocates of freedom between 5th and 4th century B.C...

...governments have wished to stand still, digging in to defend established freedom against Communism, and consequently have fallen into mild repression...

...The Roman Catholic Church, many of the Protestant Churches, the Communist Party, and many puritan and secular moralists would certainly claim to know what is positively good for men, beyond the possibility of error, in at least some domains of human conduct...

...But I could not prove that any such claim to knowledge of positive ends must involve logical confusion...

...There can be few certainties, either in judgments of practical possibility or in judgments of right and wrong...

...Because the old tensions, within England, have largely disappeared or change their form, there is the illusion of stability, and the new tensions may pass unrecognized...

...If I did so argue, I would be implying that, like Hobbes, I take avoidance of conflict to be the end...

...Throughout Africa the advance of Africans towards greater freedom is generally obstructed...

...He will see in this phrase the conservative assumption that the degree and distribution of liberty already existing in a society is to be taken as the permanent standard...

...but those who have no freedom to lose immediately may hope to use this lever of power, the only one they have, and then throw it away later...

...In the countries where the power of the Church is greatest, and conspicuously in Spain, there is always some degree of repression, not only in the legislation affecting heretics and freethinkers, but in less crude ways in policies of censorship, in university appointments and teaching, in schools, in the enforcement of a particular sexual morality, and in the suppression of dangerous knowledge...

...At any time in any society there will always be a more or less complicated set of tensions of this kind which will enter into the temporary politics of that society...

...There are always ruling or privileged groups who have the power to make a wider range of choices open to the suppressed, but usually they will not yield unless they are threatened or forced...

...These may be called the principles of 1789...

...Throughout history, very few privileged societies have enjoyed that degree of personal freedom which is today enjoyed by large sections of the population of America, of most of Western Europe outside Spain, of Spain, of many parts of the Englishspeaking Commonwealth, and of some other countries comparably prosperous and democratic...

...and they are in consequence ready to disregard the freedom of choice of individuals within these domains...

...If he thinks that nothing can be shown to be either good or bad except in its relation to the will and feeling of some individual, he will unhesitatingly admit that he has no right to override the free choices of others in pursuit of any end of his own choosing...

...Whatever else men may seriously desire, need, or attach value to, they will tend to agree, in spite of other differences, in wanting and needing freedom to pursue their own ends, whatever, these other ends may be...

...There seems no good hopelessness of progress...

...I shall call anyone who accepts it a radical...

...4) If those who have executive power in the society can be influenced by his preference through some regular voting procedure...

...but perhaps this is because of the discomfort which their application is beginning to cause, particularly to those who in Western Europe have hitherto enjoyed liberties not widely shared elsewhere...

...Consequently I think that anyone who uses political powers in order to promote some positive end, which he believes to be the best of all ends, acts wrongly, if he at the same time restricts the freedom of choice of the adult persons affected...

...Freedom is only safeguarded by supporting every movement which aims at providing some greater diversity of choice for the mass of the people in any country anywhere, and which at the same time respects the right of minorities to vote, and equality before the law...

...The greatest repression for which English men, and other Western Europeans, are now responsible happens at a convenient distance and is not very fully reported: it happens in colonial territories...

...Any political and social system which can only be maintained by mass arrests without trial, withholding of the right to vote, concentration camps and movements of people away from their homes, is evil for the same reasons that Communism is evil...

...There must always be a running change in the distribution of power within States and between States...

...This assumption seems to lie behind M. Raymond Aron's recent article in Encounter, which analyzes English politics with scarcely a reference to what has become the most serious issue of government—policy in Africa and colonial policy generally...

...Similar freedoms will be, and are being, won by rebels and radicals in Asia and Africa, largely at the expense of Europeans...

...In fact, I believe that the extension and safeguarding of every individual's equal freedom to choose his own manner of life for himself is the end of political action...

...If one tries to stand still, only defending the freedoms already established, one unavoidably finds oneself slipping backwards into repression...

...opportunity seems dead unless there is some sign of revolt...

...it is a temporary ally against Communism, which is certainly a much greater threat to freedom than is the Catholic Church...

...and freedom can only be served by siding with those who have so far been excluded from the full enjoyment of the liberty which the more powerful groups possess...

...The third philosophy is unrestricted liberalism...

...freedom of choice is not in itself the end of political action, but it is indispensable to human welfare and progress, which is the ultimate end...

...Athens and 18th century France: at the best, only benevolent neutrals, like Machiavelli...

...The Catholic Church is everywhere opposed, in principle and in practice, to the extension of each man's freedom to choose his own way of life for himself, at least in some essential domains...

...LASTLY, there is a certain degree of poverty, a drabness and despair in the conditions of life which still makes the poorer parts of some cities in Europe, and also the poorer villages in the country, seem like prisons in which all ambitions are hopeless...

...I do not see where they have failed...

...There is no other equally wide basis of agreement on which mutual respect and consent could be founded...

...THE FIRST of these three philosophies seems to me definitely mistaken, in the sense that it involves logical confusions about the nature of moral judgments...

...There are places where almost everybody does only what he must do in order to live, and where there is no alternative, no moment of free choice...

...We are surely required to mark clearly the issues of principle, the lines of division, in fun damental opinions...

...Those who believe in freedom must wish to see it indefinitely extended and, as far as possible, equally distributed...

...At any time he will align himself with that group of interests which can most effectively resist the concentration of power most likely to obstruct or prevent the extending of equal liberty within the society...

...freedom of choice must be disregarded in the making of policies, if the manner of life likely to be chosen is not that manner of life which is known to be best...

...They do less for fredom if they remain crushed and inert...

...I wonder why this has of Reason (and reasoners), of the happened...

...The bitterness and brutality of the opposition is not an excuse, but rather a condemnation of the social system which brought this bitterness into existence...

...Most of the freedoms which we have wished to safeguard in Europe were won by rebels and radicals...

...It is impossible to pretend that the Catholic Church, taken as a whole, wishes to defend cultural freedom...

...His conception of freedom, the positive content he gives to this informal word in any actual situation, may become out of date as the pattern of society changes and new groups call for new freedoms...

...this would be the fallacy of confusing domains of inquiry with divisions in reality...

...I do not wish to argue against this position simply on the ground that it increases the opportunities for conflict...

...It is better to leave alliances of expediency to the moments when, as politicians, we are required to make the material calculations responsibly...

...This is the very simple reason why radicals are apt to distrust any congresses, or other organizations, for the defense of freedom...

...The fabric of political arrangements and institutions ought to be continuously adjusted with a view to securing the greatest possible freedom of choice to each individual equally and under an equal law...

...A RADICAL will tend always to distrust those who speak of safeguarding our liberties...

...In the last few years radicalism has lost impetus in England, and in America and in Western Europe generally...

...He is the enemy, however worthy the positive end which he pursues...

...But there are others, equally well worn, which must surely be mentioned again...

...And yet it is natural that those who at any time talk most insistently of the defense of freedom should be those who have the most freedom to lose...

...Any revolutionary assertion of the individual's right to some share of the means to think and choose for himself deserves sympathy and support for the same reasons that would make us sympathize with an effective revolt of scientists, peasants, or other groups in the Soviet Union...

...There is only the necessity of argument and of sympathy...

...Every serious attempt to break out from this condition seems to me to be right, provided that it is restrained by some respect for the elementary natural rights of those who still stand in the way, and for democratic procedures, where these already exist...

...The class or group whose freedom of choice is in this way confined will, sooner or later, prepare to assert its rights, if it is sufficiently numerous and if it is not completely enslaved and ignorant...

...An alternative manner of life may be said to have been "open" to him if he would not, in fact, have been prevented from living in that way, had he so chosen, by anything other than his own abilities...

...and sometimes and in some places it may be true that only the Communist Party is in fact sufficiently formidable and only temporary support of the Communists will count as an effective protest...

...Therefore, either we think it is unnecessary to find an agreed basis for mutual respect in politics, or we will judge the rightness or wrongness of any political action by reference to some principle of freedom...

...At the best, ground for despair or gloom, if we one expects invocations of Orwell and are really concerned with freedom in Tocqueville, at the worst, of Burke the world in general, and not only and Kierkegaard, and certainly not an with a few particular liberties long familiar in Europe...

...And in some countries outside Europe, where the great majority of people have lived at the subsistence level for many generations, one may see two kinds of men, the two kinds seeming almost two species: those who, having wealth, may choose their own form of life and work, who may think for themselves and move to other places and follow their own ambitions and curiosities, and those who are never in a position to refuse the kind of life which circumstances impose upon them and who cannot even reflect upon alternatives...

...and the government of South Africa does not even pretend to believe in extending the freedom of Africans...

...They will support any movement of liberation among a suppressed section of humanity, provided that it does not bring with it some greater enslavement of others...

...in which case he ought in consistency to repudiate the distinction between right and wrong entirely...

...As a matter of principle, he will support any effective resistance to the predominating power of a small group in society, provided that this resistance does not itself take totalitarian forms and override the first and last conditions of freedom given above...

...Most of the political thinkers of the past, beginning conspicuously with Plato, were in fact enemies of freedom...

...If a man thinks that he knows what is good for men, and knows beyond the possibility of error, he may naturally consider himself justified in overriding the freedom of choice of others...

...A MAN is free and feels free: (1) If he is not liable to be killed, imprisoned, or otherwise maltreated without redress under an equal and impartial law...

...3) If none of these many alternatives open to him was made ineligible by human threats and sanctions...

...For a radical the right of each man to choose for himself his own manner of life, as long as he does not disregard the equal right of others to do the same, is the sole criterion in political decision...

...but this is a moral opinion, which again I could support by arguments but could not prove...

...They are now often derided as illusions...

...There are more destructive bombs in the world, but there is not less freedom...

...Any equilibrium in a society is only a temporary adjustment of groups competing for greater power and freedom...

...Clearly freedom, in this sense, admits of degrees correlated with the number of alternative modes of life open...

...and we have every reason to believe that almost all statements of this form are either false, or too vague to be used, or too rudimentary...

...But if the freedom of choice of some men, or of some group, was to be sacrificed in the interests of human welfare generally, could human welfare be the sole criterion by which the sacrifice was to be justified...

...The enemies of freedom who, having the power to alter them, allow such conditions of life to exist, are immovable unless they feel themselves threatened by a force that is really formidable...

...An attack on established freedom has to be met, not by digging in for defense, but by going forward to offer new freedom to those who now have little freedom to lose...

...and it is always easy for him to miscalculate the direction from which the greatest threat to the most essential liberties comes...

...But what other calculation can they make if there exists no other power which seriously threatens those who bar the way to improvement...

...There has always been in every society some group or class of persons who had a conspicuously narrow range of choice of different ways of life open to them...

...while still using the same good words, he may find himself, to his surprise, on the reactionary side in the dialectical process, a process 'which is, as far as we know, endless and irregular, freedom sometimes retreating, sometimes advancing, and always by the oppor tunist action of individuals...

...The Communist Party will certainly crush even the most elementary liberties of its own followers whenever it achieves real power...

...Anyone who takes the freedom of the individual as his criterion of political decision must support the relatively suppressed groups which are claim ing greater liberty for themselves at the expense of those who now have the greater power, as long as the suppressed groups are not aiming at an even greater suppression of the liberty of others...

...But these are questions of opinion, of moral decision supported by argument...

...Alternatively, he may deny the need of a basis of consent on the ground that a policy is right only if it promotes an end known to be good in itself, irrespective of whether this end is agreed to be good by all or most of the persons involved...

...it is a matter of philosophical opinion, and no such opinion could be justified except by a prolonged argument going through most of the traditional problems of philosophy...

...This was the significance of the mild and limited social revolution which resistance to the Nazis entailed in England...

...The second philosophy is the tempered liberalism of J. S. Mill...

...We I7) have no reason to believe that any statements of the form "All men desire so-and-so," or "All men attach value to so-and-so," or "All men believe so-and-so," are true, where some positive end is stated...

...I see no reason to repudiate them...

...And in many parts of the East, and of Africa, there are growing demands for greater freedom of the individual, and the means of obtaining it are coming nearer...

...They are said to be not free, to some degree slaves, in so far as they are not in a position to choose for themselves among alternative ways of life, and in so far as this inability could be remedied by human action without any equally large loss of liberty by others...

...To notice these facts is the most obvious requirement of sincerity, if we are to talk of freedom at all...

...There are good grounds for taking the attainment of human freedom, in this sense, as the end of political action...

...Any moral standpoint whatever must involve having enemies, unless, following Hobbes, not having enemies is itself made the end of action and the basis of morality...

...If we meet to agree that the old radical ideas of enlightenment are naive, out of date and too simple, and that some new appeal to Burke and the sanctity of tradition is needed, I think that we will have met too late, in time only to show fear...

...Relying upon revealed truth or some supernatural authority, or upon alleged demonstrations and intuitions, they will hold themselves justified in restricting someone's freedom of choice for a purpose other than the protection of someone else's freedom of choice...

...Any prohibition and assertion of power has to be justified, in the last analysis, as the extension of the area of choice open to some men so far too narrowly confined...