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Freedom as Power
The account of freedom as power that underpins this argument is
distinct from both the Liberal and Republican mainstream in that it
does not reduce freedom to one defining feature, be that mere absence
of (external) impediments, the ability to decide for oneself what to do
(self-determination) or active citizenship within a free state. These are
Berlin’s ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ conceptions of freedom and the rival
Republican account respectively. [3] Rather, this alternative account of
freedom rejects the common tendency to favour a minimalist conception
of freedom above a realistic one. It captures the substantive, concrete
nature of freedom by identifying freedom with power in at least one
important way. When I say ‘I am free’ normally I am not saying, ‘I am
externally unimpeded’ or ‘I am self-determining’; no, what I usually
mean is ‘I am free to do X’ which concretely means ‘I have the power
or ability to do X’. So real modern freedom here is identified with and
as power in that it conceives of freedom as a combination of my ability
to determine what I will do and my power to do it or bring it about.
This way of thinking about freedom chimes very well with a
number of the reasons and concerns that have driven most, if not all,
of the various struggles for freedom across the ages, from the sharp
distinction between freedom and slavery in Antiquity and beyond, and
the various associated slave revolts, via the myriad liberation struggles
against colonialism, apartheid, and domination based on race, gender
or class (or some mixture of all of these), to the everyday attempts to
gain more independence and freedom from others, the state, the law,
poverty or crime. In other words, it captures well an important fact
about human existence: people are interested in freedom as a human
ideal, goal or aspiration not in and of itself but because it is thought to
be connected with the actual attainment of ‘something’, that is, some
good or set of goods; and the actual attainment of that ‘something’
depends on my having the power to attain it. The liberation struggle
in South Africa did not have as its goal the abstract idea of being
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FREEDOM, POWER AND
REPRESENTATION
Lawrence Hamilton
3
Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’, Four Essays on Liberty (OUP 1996), pp. 118-172; Skinner,
‘The Idea of negative Liberty’, Vision of Politics Vol II (CUP 2002), pp. 160-185; Pettit,
Republicanism; Taylor, ‘What’s Wrong With Negative Liberty?’, The Idea of Freedom, ed.
Ryan (OUP 1979), pp. 175-93.