Category: Roles And Functions Of The State And The Nature Of State Power

Starting from Mill and Green in the nineteenth century, positive liberalism has its advocates in Hobhouse, Tawney, Laski and MacIver in the twentieth century. Some of the other equally significant contributors to positive liberal concept include J. M. Keynes, J. K. Galbraith, C. B. Macpherson, John Rawls, J. W. Chapman, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen.…

R. M. MacIver is a sociologist who looked at the State from the sociological point of view. He differentiates between society and the State as representing two different spheres of human activities. Society is given primacy both in terms of its priority and sphere of human interests that it contains—cultural, economic, emotional, political, religious, social, etc.…

Laski s views on the role of the State are very much influenced by his analysis of capitalist economy and its adverse effects on the poor and working class. He points out that, ‘…a dominant economic class uses the State to make ultimate those legal imperatives which best protect its interests.59 His rejection of the capitalist…

To explain his views on the individual’s position and liberty vis-á-vis the state, we may analyse his views on liberty and the role the State plays in the socio-economic field. Laski’s views on liberty and rights are somewhat linked. They seek to provide individuals the opportunities for securing their best selves. He defines rights as those conditions…

In the twentieth century, Professor Laski can be considered as an important positive liberal, though he shifted his ideas from positive liberalism, to Fabian socialism, to pluralism, to Marxism, to democratic socialism, during the course of his prolific intellectual and political career. At times, he argued for individual liberty and at other end he made…

R. H. Tawney carries this tradition further. Tawney, a positive liberal was also a Fabian socialist. The Acquisitive Society and Equality, he explains his ideas on property and equality respectively and what role the State should play. He rejected the argument of the negative liberals and laissez-faire theorists, which stressed that pursuit of acquisition of private property,…

In Britain, Hobhouse carried the tradition of positive liberalism forward. Like J. S. Mill and T. H. Green before him, freedom for Hobhouse means personal development, self-realization and ability of the individual to gain fulfilment. In this mission of individual moral and s elf-development, the state needs to perform certain functions. Hobhouse too envisaged a…

Green’s idea of moral freedom, ideal rights and rights as recognition of moral consciousness of the community, all imply and conceive an institution that presents conditions for their realization. In line with the idealist position, Green treats the state as the fullest embodiment of the divine spirit and revelations of divine idea, as Hegel did.…

Green did not accept the doctrine of natural rights advocated by the social contractualists. For Green, rights of man are a matter of inherent moral character of man and must arise from the very fact of man as a human being. They do not emanate from some natural condition and state of nature. Green’s idea…

In his Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, Green argued that a human being is not determined by will of their strongest motive (like pain or pleasure, or self-interest); rather they determine their will. For Green, ‘the determination of will by reason … constitutes moral freedom or autonomy’.41 Rational capacity of human beings makes them obey what…