Money and Freedom

I’m not the first to spot that the world is a funny old place, nor that recent political developments have created strange bedfellows.

Here’s a new example, prompted by this thread about the fundamental importance of the “freedom to transact”, i.e. the freedom to use money. The point the thread makes is that the effective exercise of various freedoms, e.g. to express one’s views or practise one’s religion, will tend to require spending money. If people refuse to take your money – or if the government stops you from being able to use it – then your freedom is infringed. If your cards stop working and your bank account is frozen, whether that’s because a private company doesn’t like your politics or because a government diktat stops you, then you have less freedom. Seems plausible, right?

But if that is right then surely it follows that, in normal circumstances, people who have more money, and can therefore transact more, have more freedom, and there’s something a bit odd about that.

Let’s go back a few years. The standard right-wing position was to be deeply concerned about whether people in a society have freedom, by which they meant freedom properly so-called, i.e., the freedom to associate as they want, say what they want, make the most of their own lives etc etc. If that resulted in some people becoming rich and other people becoming poor then tough, said the right-wing people, so be it.

The left-wing position, by contrast, was to be more concerned about the distribution of resources in society. Left-wing people took the view that if remedying that distribution meant infringing on people’s freedom to make profits or accumulate wealth then, again, tough and so be it. And so the battle lines were drawn up.

The right-wing position in that debate was that money is nothing to do with freedom. Money was understood to be a good thing, but just one of the many assets with which you might try to persuade other free agents in a free society to do things that you wanted them to do. They can refuse your money, just as they can refuse any of your other attempts at persuasion (you could try using your charm or good looks or family connections or ...), and no question of force or lack of freedom would arise. More money means more options, just as being able to run faster means that there are more places you can get to within a given time period, but none of that is anything to do with coercion, none of that is to do with people with guns putting you in prison or the kind of stuff that affects freedom properly so-called, i.e. the stuff that really matters in politics.

Another battleground in the same war used the terminology of human rights. The Left tried to expand the scope of human rights beyond the old-fashioned ones to do with freedom from torture and arbitrary imprisonment, freedom of speech and so on to include newer economic, social and cultural rights. These, the UN tells us, “include the rights to adequate food, to adequate housing, to education, to health, to social security, to take part in cultural life, to water and sanitation, and to work.” The Right pushed back, saying that these rights are nothing to do with freedom, that they are stretching the concept of “human rights” beyond what it will bear: these kinds of “rights” are just demands for the redistribution of assets and nothing to do with the fundamental freedoms that human rights protect.

So that was the old debate: narrow freedom and traditional human rights on the one hand, versus redistribution and expanded “rights” on the other. Nice and clear.

One of the most interesting contributions to that debate came when the socialist philosopher GA Cohen once delivered a paper at All Souls arguing that lack of money really did mean lack of freedom properly so-called, freedom in the sense that the Right would have to accept. I’m not going to go into it now, but you'll get the idea if you think of banknotes as being like little State-endorsed vouchers that permit you to take potatoes from a shop, say, or ride on a train: if you don't have the little vouchers and you try to exercise your 'paper' freedom of movement to wander into the shop and out again with potatoes, or onto the inter-city train, then you will find yourself physically restrained and eventually jailed.  

You can also get some flavour of the idea from the thread that I linked to at the start. That thread was prompted, I think, by the Canadian truck protests, i.e. by a right-wing concern rather than a left-wing one, but the point holds good either way: if you don’t have money (or the ability to use your money) then your freedom to go about your life in the way you wish, including your freedom of movement/expression/religion etc, is severely impaired. Do you really have freedom of movement if you can't afford to get on the train, or if the petrol station won't take your money and refuses you petrol? We might even decide to park the debate about whether it is really ‘freedom’ that you don’t have if you have no (usable) money in your wallet, but we can at least agree that you lack something valuable to do with freedom, or something that gives value to freedom.  

Let’s return to everyday life, where money can be used and bank accounts are not frozen. Having the “freedom to transact” (or, if you prefer, having the wherewithal to make your paper freedoms valuable and usable) will inevitably entail having money. To be someone who values the “freedom to transact” as part of a narrow definition of freedom will, I think, mean being someone who is at least receptive to the idea that living a free life in a modern society requires a certain amount of money. It will mean being someone who is at least willing to entertain the notion of the redistribution of wealth or income, and therefore willing to entertain the entire freedom-infringing state paraphernalia that comes with such redistribution. 

That’s quite a shift in standard right-wing thought. But you’ve probably seen a lot of that kind of thing recently. You’ll have noticed that the thinking Right (and Right-adjacent thought) has become much less sympathetic to untrammelled capitalism over the last few years. I think it’s fair to say that these kinds of consideration, namely an awareness that the operation of private entities in a market economy can have a profound impact on the exercise or value of freedom, are part of the reason why.

But I wouldn’t want to leave this discussion without reminding you of the kinds of argument that caused the thinking Right to try to separate questions of how much money (or other assets) individuals should have from questions about what the State should be doing with its time and powers. To do that, I am going to take you to Scott Alexander’s recent post about “Justice creep”, i.e. the way that apparently everything is about justice nowadays: “Helping the poor becomes economic justice. If they’re minorities, then it’s racial justice, itself a subspecies of social justice. Saving the environment becomes environmental justice, except when it’s about climate change in which case it’s climate justice. Caring about young people is actually about fighting for intergenerational justice”, and so on.

Alexander followed up his post expressing some concerns with this rhetorical development with a compilation of comments he had received. Inspired by one comment in particular, Alexander says this:

“The argument for why poverty is a justice issue goes something like this:

- Some people are suffering terribly

- It’s not their fault, and they’ve done nothing to “deserve to suffer”

- Other people have much more than they need

- This has been brought about through the choices of individuals and governments. Maybe nobody specifically says “I choose for Jeff Bezos to be a billionaire and Somali orphans to starve to death.” But a lot of people keep giving more money to Jeff Bezos and not helping Somali orphans. And governments generally enforce (or at least refuse to intervene against) the economic system that makes this keep happening. And voters keep re-electing the politicians who allow this.

- Therefore, there is injustice.”

He then takes the case of incels. “Not necessarily actually-existing incels”, he hastens to add, “but some hypothetical best-case scenario for the philosophy. Let’s say a guy with a birth defect that makes him horribly deformed, nobody will date him, and this makes him depressed and suicidal.” Think about that disfigured man, replace “poverty” in the argument above with “being highly off-putting to the opposite sex” and, well, you can see how the argument goes.

And that takes us back to our starting point. You will recall that I said above that the traditional right-wing view was that money was just one of many assets that a person might have that can be used to get what he or she wants. As I said, instead of using money, “you could try using your charm or good looks or family connections or ...”: you may find one or more of those stand you in better stead in your search for a mate than money does. 

Or you could think about it this way. Here are some good things in life: a happy lifelong romantic relationship; a full panoply of old-fashioned freedoms/human rights to associate and speak freely; and enough food to live on. What is your rationale for saying that the State has to work hard to give you some of those good things but can leave to it chance as to whether you get others? 

You will recall famous quotations of the likes of “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread” and “In England, justice is open to all—like the Ritz Hotel”. These are the kinds of jibe which, as we saw above, the modern Right is perhaps now willing to concede might have some force: perhaps a certain freedom and wherewithal to contract are a necessary part of freedom. But what about this: “In England, marriage is open to all—like the Ritz Hotel”? Or “The law, in its majestic equality, permits socially able and losers alike to ...”. You get the picture.

I’m sure you agree that this is all crazy and that the distribution of sexual favours is nothing to do with politics. But of course, Amia Srinivasan and many others would disagree: they’d say that it’s a central concern of modern politics.

I think the fear of this kind of craziness was a motivation behind the Right’s desire to draw a firm line in the sand around a narrow definition of “freedom” and to object to the expansion of the sphere of “human rights”. Let’s go back to the UN’s list of expanded rights. This right to “take part in cultural life”: does that mean going to concerts? Going to concerts on dates? And if we can always “take part in cultural life” why we shouldn’t we also be entitled to “take part in non-cultural social life”, in much the same way that freedom to practise a religion means freedom to practise no religion?

All of which, I am afraid, is to take us back to a conclusion rather similar to that I reached in when discussing freedom of speech, namely that it is probably not possible to resolve these kinds of issue solely by reference to principle. Judgment and sound instincts are required instead. Sadly, however, many of the sound instincts that were built up over time, buttressed by perhaps insufficiently thought-through justifications based on liberalism, and deployed without much thought only a few years ago now seem outmoded. It does not seem like a positive development to me, but it is at least very interesting to watch.