Interacción con otras localidades, los viajes a Puno y Juliaca

T he pursuit of liberty, like th e pursuit o f happiness, is a h u n t in w h ich th e ostensibly sought-after q u arry is alm ost never captured by those hunters w ho give chase to it. T his is generally because the h u n t usually dissolves into squabbles about w h at species of q u arry is actually th e m ost desirable, and ho w the prizes shall be shared out. In essence, although there w as in m any polities of th e early nineteenth century a stated desire to be ’free’ and to enjoy ’lib e rty ’ ra th e r th a n ’oppression’, th e differing ways in w hich these w ords w ere used m akes one w o n d er if taxonom ically one w ould not be better-off discussing separate species of ’freedom s’ and ’oppressions’ rath er th a n addressing them as if th e y w ere unified concepts. T he sim ilarity of th e dictio n of th e w idespread effusions of support for ’lib erty ’ from 1801 to 1830 am ong th e various

factions in th e U n ited K ingdom concealed a vast difference betw een strategies o f ho w to obtain

th a t liberty, visions of w h at th a t lib erty w ould lo o k like, and timetables of w h en th a t liberty m ig h t be perfectly achieved, if it had n o t already been achieved. As Jo h n Selden p o in ted o u t in

th e m id-seventeenth century, the language of ’lib erty ’ was so pervasive and ill-defined even in his

tim e th a t w ould-be absolute m onarchs used its lexicon to m ake th eir points o n occasion. In C oleridge’s ow n tim e, w h en the ’T ories’ w ere in tru th the last fundam entalist believers in ’W hig’ ’Principles of 1688’, this language of liberty w hich em ployed the same w ords for different ideas was even m ore baffling. In th e tim e of the A m erican R ebellion, L ord N o rth had used the same so rt of flow ing phrases in th e defence of ’L iberty’ as had his enem y Jo h n A dam s. In th e years of th e F ren ch R evolution, th e Y ounger P itt had spoken as eloquently in favour of ’L ib erty ’ as had his critic T hom as Paine. Indeed, even th e crustiest and m ost senile Tories of C oleridge’s era could n o t have been coaxed into offering up huzzahs fo r ’O ppression’, o r roused in to dam ning ’L ib e rty ’. T hey, to o , believed th a t th ey w ere th e ’defenders of lib e rty ’. O n e cannot dismiss this sim ilarity as the result of ’m ere can t’. W hat m ade late G eorgian B ritain nearly unique am ong states existing from 1800 to 1850 is th at discussion did n o t focus on w h eth er it was a good th in g

to have ’lib e rty ’ o r not, but instead focused on ho w best to attain th e lib erty w hich all professed to desire.

T he study of a culture such as later G eorgian B ritain in w hich real differences in goals and m ethods of seekers after ’lib erty ’ are m asked by th e sim ilarities in th e political values and vocabularies w hich define th em as different social and political groups, makes fo r a

fu n dam entally m ore difficult problem th a n the study o f a culture in w h ich there is a tru e

bifurcation betw een au th o ritarian and pro-liberty lexica. H o w can one m ake sense of a term

w h ich was used by so m an y for so m any divergent and incom patible purposes?

T h e object of this chapter is to delim it and describe the ways in w hich Coleridge th o u g h t about this fog-shrouded and com plex issue of ’lib erty ’. T he m ost distinctive and independent aspects of C oleridge’s political tho u g h t w ere to be found in his conception of

liberty. H is innovative views of lib erty in the 1820s set him apart from th e p u rp o rted ’T o ry ism ’ '] of his late career, just as his views of liberty in th e 1790s separated him from th e Painite

radicalism w ith w hich his earliest political w ritings have been associated^ I suggest th a t in his analysis of liberty, C oleridge once again em ployed his characteristic dynam ic vision of th e ’Idea’ (in th is case the ’Idea’ of liberty). I also w ish to suggest th at Coleridge offered a language of lib e rty w h ich presented a chance to resolve the longstanding apparent conflict betw een liberty-as- p rivate-property and liberty-as-com m unity-equality.

In o rd er to com prehend th e m agnitude o f C oleridge’s achievem ent in transcending the trad itio n al antim onies of in d iv id u alism /p ro p erty and com m unitarianism /equality, it w ill be necessary to do tw o things. First, it will be necessary to see w hat a pow erful chokehold this d ic h o to m y had on th e A tlan tic political trad itio n in th e early n in eteen th century discursive w o rld w h ich C oleridge inhabited. Second, it w ill be necessary to und erstan d th a t th e po w er of those dichotom ies has continued to be so great th a t th e y still shape, and even distort, m odern th o u g h t o n th e subject.

Liberty-in-Private-Property and Liberty-in-Community-Equality: Two Rival Theories of the Comm onwealth’s Role in Advancing Freedom

C oleridge’s conception of ’political justice’ rested on his sim ultaneous co m m itm en t to w h at som e have considered tw o contradictory visions of liberty: ’lib erty ’ in h eren t in the goals of unfettered private p roperty, and ’lib erty ’ inherent in th e goals of enhanced equality and

co m m unity. M uch of nineteenth and tw entieth cen tu ry political th e o ry has been tak en up w ith

th e issue o f w h eth er a society w hich maximizes th e individual rights of private p ro p erty h o ld ers can also m axim ize th e social equality and rights of the co m m u n ity as a w hole. T he solutions presented b y Liberalism and laissez-faire placed the balance of p o w er in th e hands o f lib e rty in th e shape o f property, presum ing th a t the freedom to use one’s ow n p ro p erty (w hether land, labour, o r m oney) as one pleased was m ost likely to ensure general social freedom . T he solutions o f Socialism and redistributionism placed th e balance of po w er in the hands of lib erty in th e form of equality, suggesting th at true freedom was im possible unless it was recognized th at th e ’freedom to do as one likes’ was meaningless to have-nots u n til th e y w ere given p ro p e rty o r th e means to obtain it. These tw o m ajor lines of argum ent w ere already relatively w ell-draw n by th e early n in eteen th cen tu ry in the English-speaking A tlantic w orld. Philosophers such as Locke, Sm ith, and Jefferson had stated the case for private p ro p erty as th e agent of liberty; philosophers such as Paine, Spence, and Godwin^ had suggested th a t equality and redistribution^ of p ro p e rty im balances w o u ld have to take place before ’true lib erty ’ could emerge.

’L ib erty ’ is typically defined in m odern political th eo ry as eith er ’positive’ o r ’negative’. Isaiah Berlin was the m ost famous exponent of this theoretical division betw een ’negative’ lib erty and ’positive’ liberty'*. These term s describe the relative relationship betw een the h o ld er o f th e

^M»rk P h ilp points out th a t G odw in changed his views on forced redistribution, violence, revolution etc., in th e 1796 edition of Political Justice. D efending p ro p erty rights as a m eans o f p reserving th e lib erty of private judgem ents required Godw in to reconstruct the redistributive significance of PJ Bk. TV ch. viii. See Philp, Godwin's Political Justice, pp. 82 8c 137.

’N o t all advocates o f equality argued for state intervention and a political redistribution of land o r w ealth. But those m ore ’Jacobin’ reform ers associated (erroniously) w ith G racchus Babeuf, d id argue for th e need for redistrubution th ro u g h state reform rather th an m ark et forces. F o r a discussion of Thom as Paine's use o f a redistributive taxation o r "ground ren t" to th e com m unity, in Agrarian Justice see G regory Claeys Thomas Paine's Social a n d Political Thought (London: U nw in H y m an, 1989) p p 197-203. T hom as Spence m ay be considered th e m ost ’aggressive’ redistributionist of th e British Jacobins. See "Pig’s M eat", "The Real Rights o f M an" and "The End of O ppression" in H .T .D ick in so n (ed.). The Political Works o f Thomas Spence (Newcastle up o n Tyne: Avero, 1982).

" Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, (N ew Y ork: O xford U niversity Press, 1970) ppjcliv-1. Berlin identifies Coleridge, in particular, as an exem plar o f th e "positive" theorists w h o associate freedom w ith th e "positive" activities of institutional form s of life, grow th, etc.

lib e rty in question, w h eth er an individual o r a group, and th e com m onw ealth, state, and society w h ich is th a t lib e rty ’s guarantor. ’Freedom fro m ’ governm ental o r o th er social restrictions on

o n e ’s actions is traditionally described as ’N egative L iberty’. ’F reedom to ’ perform certain

actions o r receive certain benefits bears the traditional nam e of ’Positive L ib erty ’. In general, the ideology o f ’N egative L iberty’, w ith its stress on non-interference by th e governors in the p ro p e rty of th e subject, has been associated w ith ’Individualism ’, and w ith th e advocates o f a lim ited sovereign pow er in the co m m unity and the state (the school of Locke, Sm ith, and Jefferson). As a rule, the ideology of ’Positive L iberty’, w ith its stress on th e superior claim s of

social well-being of all over th e freedom s of the few, has been associated w ith

’C o m m u n itarian ism ’, and w ith advocates of an expanded sovereign po w er in th e active in stitu tio n s of co m m u n ity and the state (the school of Paine, Spence, and G odw in).

W here the com peting claims of ’lib erty ’-in-property and ’lib e rty ’-in c o m m u n ity conflict, a decision m ust be m ade. A society m ust either choose to shift th e balance of society in favour of ’freedom s fro m ’ interference by the com m onw ealth w ith o n e’s individual lib erty and

p ro p erty , o r its m ust elect to pursue a program m e of enhancing ’freedom s to ’ provide a m inim al stan d ard of equality for th e com m onw ealth. In either case, a dense and th o rn y tangle of political questions as to w hich of the tw o alternatives creates m ore tru e ’lib erty ’ m ust be hacked through.

D ebates in political th eo ry in the final decades of the tw en tieth cen tu ry have suggested not-so-novel w ays in w hich the com peting claims of the individual and th e group m ay be w eighed in th e balance m ost effectively ensure th e idea of liberty. A s this is n o t a stu d y of co n tem p o rary political theory, I w ill n o t spend m uch tim e on post-C oleridgean th in k ers o n the issues of p ro p e rty and com m unity. Such com m ents as I m ake on m odern political th o u g h t post- 1830 w ill o n ly be by w ay of noting th at the debate on lib erty versus equality in p ro p e rty rights

is n o closer to solution one hundred and sixty years after C oleridge’s essential w ritings on

th e subject th a n it was in his era. (It is also by w ay of suggesting th a t the claim "(6 social justice and eq u ity in co m m u n ity is not a m odern invention, n o r in h eren tly a ’radical’ one, and was quite strong even during the so-called ’triu m p h of laissez-faire’). T he m ost w idely read m o d ern

authors o n the subject, R obert Nozick® and Jo h n R aw ls^ confront essentially th e same problem as C oleridge confronted in his th in k in g about property.

O bviously, then, this balancing of claims of co m m u n ity versus individual in the m a tte r o f p ro p e rty is a persistently insoluble question, and is n o t an invention of th e late tw en tieth century. These conflictive ideas, of the relationship betw een liberty, p roperty, and equity as d eterm in ed by law and the lim its of governm ent, m ay be usefully em ployed in considering C oleridge's understanding of the idea of liberty.

Coleridge, and the ’Individual Versus Comm unity Rights’ Divide

L iberty, for Coleridge, was a principle of action 'co n stitu ted ' — th a t is to say, created as w ell as delim ited — by civil society and its living institutions. H e insisted th at th e in stitu tio n of private p ro p e rty was the foundation of civil society and all governm ent. H e resem bled th e advocates of strong p ro p erty rights in his advocacy of p ro p erty as a fundam ental basis of good o rd er in th e state. Coleridge did n o t advocate an 'absolute' o r 'n atu ral' right of p ro p erty based

o n G o d o r lex naturis as certain theorists such as Locke fam ously did. But he did recognize

p ro p e rty as a w eight-bearing girder essential to the construction of a free and stable society. Such an essential girder of the state could n o t be 'to rn o u t' and abolished by law w ith o u t sim ilar problem s ensuing as had occurred w hen Samson had toppled pillars in th e Tem ple of D agon. H e regarded lib erty and p ro p erty as com plem entary, rath er th an antagonistic, entities.

C oleridge differed from th e standard libertarian defenders of p ro p erty rights because he \

tran sfo rm ed p ro p e rty into a dynam ic, organic principle. T he typical defenders of Liberty-in-

Individual-P roperty treated p ro p erty as a mindless set of m aterial objects, passive chips to be accum ulated and traded. Coleridge's great innovation was in considering p ro p erty as a living

‘R o b e rt N ozick , Anarchy, State, a n d Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), p.l64. R o b ert N ozick has argued th a t h b erty is secured m ost effectively by th e recognition of individual entitlem ents w ith regard to pro p erty , a possessive individuahst theo ry of justice. N o z ic k ’s theo ry m ay be considered representative o f a late fo rm o f th e argum ent w hich ru n s fro m Locke th ro u g h M ill to N o zick him self. N ozick ’s is largely a ’negative’ vision of liberty, a freedom fro m th e en croachm ent of th e ’n a n n y ’ state in tervening in