ABSTRACT
The connecting link between moral liberties and a system of political liberty is simply an argument to the effect that certain requirements are properly incorporated into a legal system and enforced as legal rights. Any system of political liberty strong enough to provide a general justification of property has the following features. First, it will have to distinguish political liberty from material liberty. Second, to the extent that an account of political liberty seeks to provide a general justification of property, it will have to be talking about material, as well as purely formal, liberty. Third, since the existence of any material liberty at all requires one’s continued existence, any system of political liberties strong enough to justify property rights must at least include the right to survive that long by one’s own efforts. Thus the argument from the notion of material liberty forms the basis for the argument from political liberty.
