‘ The existence of Liberty depends upon our willingness to build the foundations of society upon the basis of rational justice and to adjust them to changing conditions in terms of reasoned discussion and not violence.’ (Harold J. Laski). Discuss. (1991)
The statement sums up the argument of Harold J. Laski‘s writings on liberty in the 1920s and 1930s. It makes two claims. Liberty rests on a foundation, a just social order, and is not a natural endowment. It also depends on a method: the order must be revised by reasoned discussion, because violence destroys what it seeks to secure.
Liberty needs a just foundation
- Definition: in A Grammar of Politics (1925) liberty is “the eager maintenance of that atmosphere in which men have the opportunity to be their best selves.” It is positive liberty, in the line of T. H. Green.
- Rights as conditions: rights are the conditions of social life without which no one can be at his best, and “every state is known by the rights that it maintains.”
- Liberty and equality: under gross inequality formal freedom becomes the freedom of the few, so economic security and limits on inheritance are demands of liberty, not rivals to it.
- Pluralism: Laski’s early attack on state sovereignty held that obedience must be earned, and that power dispersed among churches, unions and associations safeguards freedom.
Why reason, not violence
Violence destroys the tolerance and argument by which a free society learns, and its victors rule by the force they overthrew. Laski himself wavered. After 1930 his Marxist turn (Democracy in Crisis, 1933; The State in Theory and Practice, 1935) doubted that a propertied class would accept its own peaceful abolition. Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (1943) pleaded for a “revolution by consent” while wartime unity lasted. A 1946 libel jury accepted a newspaper’s report that he had spoken of violence if consent failed. The statement holds to the liberal method against that doubt.
The Indian illustration
The Directive Principles bear Laski’s influence, carried by Jawaharlal Nehru among others. Article 368 lets the foundations be adjusted to changing conditions. The basic structure doctrine (Kesavananda Bharati, 1973) makes sure adjustment does not destroy them. B. R. Ambedkar (25 November 1949) asked Indians to abandon “the bloody methods of revolution” and even civil disobedience once constitutional remedies existed, calling them “the Grammar of Anarchy”.
Critiques
- Marxist: V. I. Lenin (The State and Revolution, 1917) held that the bourgeois state must be smashed, not argued away: reason cannot outvote class power.
- Apologists of violence: Georges Sorel (Reflections on Violence, 1908) and Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961) saw violence as the way the oppressed make themselves agents.
- Liberal right: Friedrich A. Hayek called “social justice” a mirage. Designing society on “rational justice” is constructivist rationalism, and planning for it leads down The Road to Serfdom (1944).
- Civil disobedience: M. K. Gandhi‘s satyagraha was neither violence nor mere discussion. John Rawls (A Theory of Justice, 1971) accepts civil disobedience within fidelity to law, so Laski’s either/or is too narrow.
Conclusion
Laski’s own doubts, and Lenin’s certainty, show that reasoned change assumes the powerful will listen. Yet India’s record of constitutional change under a basic structure supports his wager: the rule-bound, non-violent revision of a just order is the condition of liberty that lasts. Non-violent pressure widens discussion but cannot replace it.