ABSTRACT
So far the argument has been that the idea of freedom involves the emergence of a society that has liberal institutions, civil rights, the possibility of voice, a social state, relatively secure forms of employment, a diverse media of mass communication and an education system less concerned with training and ideological indoctrination than the development of the capacity to be creative, learn and think. This vision fits with a liberal socialist agenda that developed over the course of the twentieth century. Liberal socialism basically sought to promote a society built upon civic freedoms as well as equality, social solidarity and security. A more emancipated future society would not arrive through revolution, but through the progressive reform of public institutions, the idea that a liberal educated culture was for everyone, and the development of common forms of citizenship that included the welfare state. The liberal socialist tradition has inevitably been reinvented over time but probably finds its best early expression in the work of Hobhouse writing at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hobhouse (1964) explicitly seeks to connect the values of liberty and a more communally orientated collectivism that was finding expression in the working-class movement. Like other liberals Hobhouse was keen to point out that freedom could only be safeguarded through equal treatment before the law. Liberty was
not simply doing as you pleased but required civil institutions to regulate behaviour. There is no freedom without constraint. Further, equality and liberty are not always at loggerheads with one another as the workingclass movement’s desire for the regulation of industry, decent housing and education would actually enhance the liberty of the community. For our purposes, however, what remains significant is the link that Hobhouse discovered between liberty and self-development:
The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth. Life is learning, but whether in theory or practice what a man genuinely learns is what he absorbs, and what he absorbs depends upon the energy which he himself puts forth in response to his surroundings.
