(A-level Politics) To what extent do liberals disagree over freedom?

All liberals seek to maximise liberty for all citizens. Specifically, they champion self-fulfilment (achievement of ‘personal missions’), self-determination (control of individual lives) and self-realisation (discovery of ‘true potential’). In contrast to Thomas Hobbes’ pessimistic view that life is “nasty, brutish and short,” John Locke suggested that liberty could result in a “pleasant” life for individuals, a situation which even existed in the ‘state of nature’ (society prior to the emergence of the state). Mary Wollstonecraft, a fellow classical liberal, continued these ideas and advocated men and women having the same freedoms, including education and rights to divorce. In his 1859 book On Liberty, John Stuart Mill described how “over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign,” arguing that self-reliance resulted in a common desire for freedom shared by all human beings. Crucially, this form of freedom was based on the right to live life in a self-interested manner. Modern liberal thinkers followed this concept, with Rawls arguing that freedom should be available to all, and Friedan updating Wollstonecraft’s ideas of greater liberty for women. Also, all liberals view one of society’s main focuses as individual freedom and see right to property as a symbol of this. Therefore, all liberals agree that freedom should be maximised, based on their view of human nature (that individuals are self-interested) and their belief that liberty should reflect this.Conversely, placing less emphasis on egotism, modern liberals advocate a different form of freedom to classicals, involving greater state intervention. JS Mill devised a theory known as negative liberty, in which individuals are free to pursue their destiny without interference. Consequently, he claimed that individuals should assume they are ‘naturally’ free and the state should ‘roll back’ its frontiers in accordance. Support for this form of freedom has arguably seen a resurgence recently, with some in the UK arguing that the expansion of the welfare state has created a dangerous dependency culture that actually limits liberty. This was supported by classical liberals and other ‘later classical liberals’ such as Samuel Smiles who asserted that self-reliance was still possible, even for members of the working classes in industrialised society. He stated that “if self-help were usurped by state-help, human beings would remain stunted, their talents unknown and their liberty squandered.” In contrast, Herbert Spencer, another ‘later classical liberal’ believed that “the feeble, the feckless and the failing” of Victorian society could only experience freedom if the state extended its powers. Moreover, negative liberty, he argued, resulted in a form of ‘survival of the fittest,’ which he termed ‘social Darwinism.’ TH Green, a modern liberal, updated these ideas in the early twentieth century, believing modern, advanced societies limited individualism and curtailed freedom, asserting that individuals had to enable and empower each other. This was clearly outlined by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971) in which he argued for positive liberty involving an enlarged state which would facilitate freedom through mechanisms such as the welfare state. Also, he used the ‘original position’ to assert that if individuals were placed under a ‘veil of ignorance’ they would choose a society based on positive freedom. Overall, there emerges a clear divide between modern and classical liberals regarding positive and negative freedom.