The Organisation of Society I: Liberty—A Social Good

Chapters 5 and 6 of the book are dealing with the implications of all we have said thus far for the question of social organisation. It is all about squaring the persistent circle where individual liberty itself is dependent on collective actions which, in turn, may have coercive implications. Chapter 5 is centred around the first part of this cycle where we explore how we can reach the position where all individuals possess sufficient levels of understanding about the world to qualify as genuinely autonomous individuals who may form reasonable expectations from the social project into which they would ostensibly wish to enter once they become autonomous. As the ability to be autonomous is predicated on our understanding of the physical and social world, we claim that autonomy is conditioned on the command individuals have over what we call the stock of society’s intellectual heritage. This stock reflects the accumulated methods, disputes and consequences of society’s interactions with the world around it. It is, broadly speaking, the sum of knowledge acquired in a society that indicates the way in which a particular society developed into whatever it is that it has become. The idea of the command over the stock of society’s intellectual heritage is merely an understanding that for people to formulate their own expectations from society as well as find the path to fulfil them cannot be done if people have no understanding of the society within which they live. Inevitably, this leads to the conclusion that has been recurring in human thought all the way from Plato, Aristotle through Rousseau, and J S Mill that the provision of universal liberty relies on an education system that is aimed at preparing people for life—perhaps even, the good life—rather than for market and material self-reliance. In other words, while some may say that to claim a central role for education is obvious, one must recognise that there are very different purposes one can ascribe to an education system which will have implications not only for the nature of the system but also for the willingness of society to pay the economic price which it would inevitably exert. If the purpose of the system is merely to make individuals useful in the sense that they would not rely on society for the purpose of the fulfilment of their expectations, then arguments for such a system to be provided as part of natural liberty and market provisions may be strong. But if the purpose of the system is, as we said, to provide individuals with the means to be genuinely autonomous, the remit of the education provided is quite wide. Consequently, such provisions are likely to be considerably expensive which also means that the application of market principles to them will be self-defeating. Therefore, inevitably the provision of the means for everyone to become autonomous requires a value-based hierarchy that gives status and influence to those who already possess a command over the stock of society’s intellectual heritage in determining that which others need. Naturally, we will also have to provide the means that will ensure that the hierarchy remains a value-hierarchy rather than a power-hierarchy. So, it seems that design and hierarchy are necessary for equality and horizontality. The problem is that these two contradictory principles must somehow reside together within the same society.