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Justified redistributive taxation does not infringe the freedom of those who are taxed
because their claims to the property in question cannot be established in the first place.
• Ronald Dworkin (b.1931): leading egalitarian liberal alongside Rawls
◦ when we take property from those whose claim to it is not justified, we should
not think of ourselves as restricting their freedom at all
▪ what counts as restriction of freedom depends upon judgements about what
property rights are justified in the first place
▪ action - restriction on freedom = justified is same question
• G. A. Cohen (b.1941): Canadian philosopher
◦ freedom is restricted whenever someone interferes with my actions, where right
or not
▪ action – freedom and justification are different.
• Overlap between these approaches to freedom and the variant of positive freedom
that identifies it with autonomy
• distinction between moralised and non-moralised conceptions of freedom
◦ redistribution = justified on non-freedom grounds
Even if justified redistribution does not restrict the freedom of those who are taxed, and
whether or not it increases the freedom of those who benefit, it makes them better off in
other ways and can be justified on these non-freedom grounds
redistribution of property justified in the name of other values
legislation is justified because it makes people better off than they would otherwise be,
even though it does this by restricting their freedom?
Redistribution reduces the effective freedom of those who are taxed, but is justified
because it makes for more effective freedom overall.
Private property rights and market relations encourage people to misconceive their real interests
and hence render them heteronomous and unfree
CONCLUSION
1. Concepts of liberty is used in many different ways
2. MacCallum's model of 'x is free from y to do (become) z' provides clarity
3. There is a clear difference between the two liberal responses:
• Mainstream left argued that the right seemed part. Concerned with the freedom
of those who had property and not interested in the freedom of those who did
not have it
• The marxist and radical left questioned the very idea that property and freedom
were connected, arguing that treu freedom required transcendence of the
capitalist framework that relied on and fostered a 'bourgeois' conception of
freedom
4. Tony Blair was arguing a variant of the first strategy
5. Freedom as autonomy need not be dangerous
6. Berlin showed how the conception of positive freedom into something that could be
invoked to legitimate oppressive regimes in the name of freedom