Political Thought

Safeguards Of Liberty: Freedom, therefore, will not be achieved for the mass of men save under special guarantees. It can never, firstly, exist in the presence of special privilege. Unless I enjoy the same access to power as others, I live in an atmosphere of contingent frustration. It does not matter that I shall probably … Read more

The Nature Of Liberty: By liberty, I mean the eager maintenance of that atmosphere in which men have the opportunity to be their best selves. Liberty, therefore, is a product of rights. A State built upon the conditions essential to the full development of our faculties will confer freedom upon its citizens. It will release … Read more

Certain limiting factors: Underlying this argument is the assumption that no body which represents the community as a whole whether, as in guild socialism, it represents the producers or, as in a territorial assembly, it seeks to represent the consumers, will ever, by itself, adequately safeguard the right of the individual to realize himself. That … Read more

Government as consultation: There are three clear avenues towards that end. The first great need of the modern State is adequately to organize institutions of consultation. The weakness of the present system, and one of the real roots of its irresponsibility, is that a government is compelled to consult, not an association which represents the … Read more

The State as responsible: If this argument be valid, we must seek the institutions of a responsible State in other directions. It is, in the first place, essential to note that to divide responsibility as a method of limiting power may result in its total destruction. To divide it as, for example, it is divided … Read more

State and association: When we turn from the external to the internal sovereignty of States, we meet a more complex situation. The problem of the power of a State over its own members is, very largely, a problem of representing wills. If social institutions permit me so to express myself that my life acquires a … Read more

Sovereignty in international affairs: In such an aspect the notion of an independent sovereign State is, on the international side, fatal to the well-being of humanity. The way in which a State should live its life in relation to other States is clearly not a matter in which that State is entitled to be the … Read more

Political Sovereignty: We here verge upon the political nature of sovereignty. What, fundamentally, is involved is the question of whether there ought to be, in any State, a power subject to no limits of any kind. But it is first necessary to remember that unlimited power is nowhere existent. Attention has always to be paid … Read more

Legal Sovereignty: The legal aspect of sovereignty is best examined by a statement of the form given to it by John Austin. In every legal analysis of the State, he argued, it is first of all necessary to discover in the given society that definite superior to which habitual obedience is rendered by the mass … Read more

Rights And Power: We reach here a problem perhaps as difficult as any in the realm of political science.  A government, I have argued, is limited by the purposes that it serves. It has no moral authority to act ultra vires those purposes. It has no authority, for instance, to invade the right to freedom … Read more