Liberalism and the Art of Separation Author(s): Michael Walzer Reviewed work(s): Source: Political Theory, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Aug., 1984), pp. 315-330 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191512 . Accessed: 24/08/2012 12:12

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http://www.jstor.org THE RESOURCES OF AMERICAN LIBERALISM

I. LIBERALISM AND THE ART OF SEPARATION

MICHAEL WALZER The Institutefor AdvancedStudy

I suggestthat we thinkof liberalismas a certainway ofdrawing the map ofthe social and politicalworld. The old, preliberalmap showeda largelyundifferentiated land mass,with rivers and mountains,cities and towns,but no borders."Every man is a piece ofthe continent," as John Donne wrote-and the continentwas all of a piece. Society was conceivedas an organicand integratedwhole. It mightbe viewedunder the aspect of religion,or politics,or economy,or family,but all these interpenetratedone anotherand constituteda singlereality. Church and state,church-state and university,civil society and politicalcommunity, dynastyand government,office and property,public lifeand private life,home and shop: each pair was, mysteriouslyor unmysteriously, two-in-one,inseparable. Confrontingthis world, liberal theorists preachedand practicedan art of separation.They drew lines, marked offdifferent realms, and createdthe sociopolitical map withwhich we are stillfamiliar. The mostfamous line is the"wall" betweenchurch and state,but there are manyothers. Liberalism is a worldof walls, and each one createsa newliberty. This is theway the art of separation works. The wall betweenchurch and state createsa sphereof religiousactivity, of public and private worship,congregations and consciences,into which politiciansand bureaucratsmay not intrude.Queen Elizabeth was speakinglike a liberal,though a minimalistone, when she said that she would not "make a windowinto men's souls, to pinchthem there."' Believers are setfree from every sort of officialor legal coercion.They can findtheir own way to salvation,privately or collectively;or theycan failto find theirway; or theycan refuseto look fora way.The decisionis entirely theirown; this is whatwe call freedomof conscience or religiousliberty. Similarly,the line thatliberals drew between the old church-state(or state-church)and the universitiescreates academic freedom,leaving

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 12 No. 3, August1984 315-330 ? 1984 Sage Publications,Inc. 315 316 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984

professorsas freeto professas believersare to believe.The university takes shape as a kind of walled city.In the hierarchicalworld of the middle ages, universitieswere legally walled, that is, studentsand professorswere a privilegedgroup, protectedfrom penalties and punishmentsmeted out to ordinarymen. But thiswas a functionof the integrationof theuniversities and thechurch (students and professors had clerical status) and then of the churchand the state. Precisely because of this integration,scholars did not enjoy the privilegeof hereticalthought. Today the universitiesare intellectuallythough not legallywalled; students and professorshave no legalprivileges, but they are, in principleat least, absolutelyfree in the sphereof knowledge.2 Privatelyor collectively,they can criticize,question, doubt, or rejectthe establishedcreeds of theirsociety. Or, what is more likelyin any relativelystable society, they can elaboratethe established creeds, most oftenin conventional,but sometimesin novel and experimentalways. Similarly,again, the separationof civil societyand politicalcom- munitycreates the sphere of economic competition and freeenterprise, the marketin commodities,labor, and capital. I willfocus for now on thefirst of these three and adoptthe largest view of market freedom. On thisview, the buyers and sellersof commodities are entirelyat libertyto strikeany bargainthey wish, buying anything, selling anything, at any price theycan agree upon, withoutthe interferenceof state officials. Thereis no suchthing as a just price,or at leastthere is no enforcement of a just price; and, similarly,there are not sumptuarylaws, no restrictionson usury,no qualityor safetystandards, no minimumwage, and so on. The maximcaveat emptor, let the buyer beware, suggests that market freedomentails certain risks for consumers. But so does religiousfreedom. Some people buy unsafeproducts and some people are convertedto falsedoctrines. Free men and womenmust bear such risks.I have mydoubts about the analogy,since unsafe products pose actual,and falsedoctrines only speculative, risks, but I won'tpursue this argumenthere. My immediatepurpose is not to criticizebut onlyto describethe map theliberals drew, and on thatmap thecommodity was givenat least as muchroom as thecreed. Anotherexample: the abolition of dynasticgovernment separates familyand stateand makespossible the political version of the "career open to talents,"the highestform, we mightsay, of the labor market. Onlythe eldest male in a certainline can be a king,but anyonecan be a presidentor primeminister. More generally,the line that marksoff politicaland social positionfrom familial property creates the sphere of Walzer / LIBERALISM AND SEPARATION 317 officeand thenthe freedomto competefor bureaucratic and profes- sional place, to lay claim to a vocation, apply for an appointment, develop a specialty,and so on. The notionof one's lifeas one's project probablyhas its originhere. It is to be contrastedwith the notionof one'slife as one'sinheritance-on the one hand,the predetermination of birthand blood; on the other,the self-determinationof struggleand achievement. Finally,the separation of public and privatelife creates the sphere of individualand familialfreedom, privacy and domesticity.Most recently, thishas beendescribed as a sphereof sexual freedom;so itis, but it isn't originallyor primarilythat; it is designedto encompassa verywide rangeof interestsand activities-whateverwe choose to do, shortof incest,rape, and murder,in our own homesor amongour friendsand relatives:reading books, talkingpolitics, keeping a journal, teaching what we know to our children,cultivating (or, for that matter, neglecting)our gardens. Our homesare ourcastles, and therewe arefree fromofficial surveillance. This is, perhaps,the freedomthat we most take forgranted-the two-way television screens of Orwell's1984 are a particularlyfrightening piece of sciencefiction-so it is worthstressing how rarea freedomit is in humanhistory. "Our homesare our castles" was firstof all theclaim of people whose castles were their homes, and it was fora verylong time an effectiveclaim only for them. Now itsdenial is an occasion for indignationand outrage even among ordinary citizens.We greatlyvalue our privacy,whether or not we do odd and excitingthings in private.3

IH

The art of separationhas neverbeen highlyregarded on the left, especiallythe Marxist left, where it is commonlyseen as an ideological ratherthan a practicalenterprise. Leftists have generallystressed both theradical interdependence of the different social spheresand thedirect and indirectcausal linksthat radiate outwards from the economy. The liberalmap is a pretense,on the Marxistview, an elaborateexercise in hypocrisy,for in factthe prevailingreligious creeds are adaptedto the ideologicalrequirements of a capitalistsociety; and theuniversities are organizedto reproducethe higher echelons of the capitalist work force; and the marketposition of the largestcompanies and corporationsis subsidizedand guaranteedby the capitaliststate; and offices,though 318 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984

notlegally inheritable, are neverthelesspassed on and exchangedwithin a capitalistpower elite; and we arefree in ourhomes only so longas what we do thereis harmlessand withoutprejudice to the capitalistorder. Liberalsdraw lines and call themwalls, as ifthey had thematerial force of brickor stone,but theyare onlylines, one-dimensional, doctrinal, insubstantial.The contemporarysocial worldis stillan organicwhole, less differentfrom feudalism than we mightthink. Land has been replaced by moveable wealth as the dominantgood, and while that replacementreverberates through all thespheres of social life,it doesn't altertheir deep connectedness. And yetMarx also believedthat the liberal art of separation had been all too successful,creating, as he wrote in his essay on the Jewish question,"an individualseparated from the community, withdrawn into himself,wholly pre-occupied with his privateinterest and actingin accordancewith his privatecaprice.'" I shallwant to come back to this argumentlater on forit makes an importantpoint about thetheoretical foundationsof the liberal enterprise. For now,however, it is enoughto saythat in Marx'seyes even the egotism of the separated individual was a social product-required,indeed, by the relations of production and thenreproduced in all thespheres of social activity.Society remained an organizedwhole even if its members had losttheir sense of connection. It was the goal of Marxistpolitics to restorethat sense, or, better,to bringmen and womento a new understandingof theirconnectedness and so enable themto take controlof theircommon life. For Marx, separation,insofar as it was real,was somethingto be overcome.Sepa- ratedinstitutions-churches, universities, even families-have no part in hisprogram; their distinctive problems will be solvedonly by a social revolution.Society, for Marx, is alwaysruled as a whole,now by a single class, ultimatelyby all of its membersworking together. The leftistcritique of liberal separationmight, however, take a differentform, holding that liberalism served particular social interests and limitedand adapted its art to thatservice. What is necessaryis to makethe art impartial-or, if that is a utopianproject, at leastto makeit servea widerrange of interests. As theinstitutions of civil society were protectedfrom state power, so nowthey must be protected,and thestate too, fromthe new power that arises within civil society itself, the power of wealth.The point is not to rejectseparation as Marx did but to endorse and extend it, to enlist liberal artfulnessin the service of socialism.The mostimportant example of the extended art of separation has to do withprivate government and industrialdemocracy, and I Walzer / LIBERALISM AND SEPARATION 319 mean to defendthat extension at some length.But it is importantto insistfirst that the separationsalready achieved,in principleif not alwaysin fact,have theirvalue too. Even thecareer open to talentsis a leftistas well as a liberal requirement.For socialismwill neverbe a successso long as socialistparties and movementsare led,as in Robert Michel'saccount, by a gerontocraticoligarchy whose members, drawn fromthe educated and professionalmiddle class, coopt theirown successors.5One wants energetic,politically skillful workers and intellectualsto riseto positionsof leadership, and so theremust be room for such people to develop theirtalents and plan theircareers. More generally,Marx'svision of individualand collectiveself-determination requires(though he himselfdid not understandthe requirement)the existenceof a protectedspace withinwhich meaningful choices can be made. But space of that sort can only exist if wealthand power are walled in and limited. Societyis indeedall of a piece,at least in thissense: that its various partsbear a familyresemblance to one another,the outward reflection of an internalgenetic (sociological, not biological)determination. But thisfamily resemblance leaves a greatdeal ofroom for the sociological versionsof siblingrivalry and maritaldiscord and grown-upchildren withapartments of theirown. So the bishops of the churchcriticize nationaldefense policy, the universitiesharbor radical dissidents,the statesubsidizes but also regulatescorporate activity, and so on. In each case, institutionsare responsiveto theirown internallogic even while theyare also responsiveto systemicdeterminations. The playof internal logic can only be repressedby tyrannicalforce, crossing the lines, breaking throughthe walls established by the art of separation. Liberalismis best understoodas an argumentagainst that sort of repression.It would be a meaninglessargument, and tyrannya superfluouspolitics, unless independent churches and universities,and autonomousstates, really existed or mightreally exist in theworld. But theycan and sometimesdo exist.The artof separation is notan illusory orfantastic enterprise; itis a morallyand politicallynecessary adaptation to thecomplexities of modern life. Liberal theory reflects and reinforces a long-termprocess of social differentiation.I shall wantto arguethat liberal theoristsoften misunderstand this process, but at least they recognizeits significance. Marxistwriters tend to denythe significance of the process. It is, on theirview, a transformationthat doesn't make a substantialdifference, an eventor a seriesof eventsthat takes place largelyin the worldof 320 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984 appearances.Liberal freedomsare, all of them,unreal. As the formal freedomof the workeris only a mask for wage slavery,so religious liberty,academic freedom,free enterprise,self-determination, and privacyare masksfor continued or reiteratedsubjection: the forms are new,but the content is old. The difficultywith this view is thatit doesn't connectin any plausible way with the actual experience of contemporary politics;it has a qualityof abstractionand theoreticalwillfulness. No one who has livedin an illiberalstate is goingto acceptthis devaluation of the rangeof liberalfreedoms. The achievementof liberalismis real even if it is incomplete.But the recognitionof this achievementis difficultwithin a Marxistframework: for the commitmentto organic wholenessand deepstructural transformation doesn't readily accommo- date separated spheres and autonomous institutions.Nor is it my purposehere to tryto workout suchan accommodation.I wantinstead to pursuethe alternativecriticism that liberals have not been serious enoughabout theirown art. And I wantto suggestthat where they have been seriousthey have been guided by an inadequateand misleading theory.As withother forms of social lifeand politicalaction, the liberal enterpriselends itself to morethan one interpretation.

III

The art of separationdoesn't make only for libertybut also for equality.Consider again, one byone, theexamples with which I 6egan. Religiousliberty annuls the coercive power of political and ecclesiastical officials.Hence it creates,in principle,the priesthoodof all believers, thatis, it leaves all believersequally free to seektheir own salvation; and ittends to create,in practice, churches dominated by laymen rather than by priests. Academic freedomprovides theoretical,if not always practical,protection for autonomousuniversities, within which it is difficultto sustainthe privileged position of rich or aristocraticchildren. The freemarket is open to all comers,without regard to race or creed; alienand pariahgroups commonly exploit its opportunities; and though it yields unequal results,these resultsnever simplyreproduce the hierarchyof blood or caste or,for that matter, of "merit." The "career open to talents,"if it is reallyopen, providesequal opportunitiesto equallytalented individuals. The idea ofprivacy presupposes the equal value,at leastso faras theauthorities are concerned,of all privatelives; whatgoes on in an ordinaryhome is as muchentitled to protection,and is entitledto as muchprotection, as whatgoes on in a castle. Walzer / LIBERALISM AND SEPARATION 321

Under the aegis of the art of separation,liberty and equality go together.Indeed, they invitea single definition:we can say that a (modern,complex, and differentiated)society enjoys both freedom and equalitywhen success in one institutionalsetting isn't convertible into success in another,that is, whenthe separationshold, whenpolitical powerdoesn't shape the churchor religiouszeal the state,and so on. There are, of course,constraints and inequalitieswithin each institu- tionalsetting, but we willhave littlereason to worryabout theseif they reflectthe internallogic of institutionsand practices(or, as I have alreadyargued in Spheresof Justice,if social goods like grace,know- ledge, wealth,and officeare distributedin accordance with shared understandingsof what theyare and what theyare for).6But, all too often,the separationsdon't hold. The liberalachievement has been to protecta numberof importantinstitutions and practicesfrom political power,to limitthe reach of government.Liberals are quick to see the danger to freedomand equality when the police repressa minority religionin thename of theoretical truth, or shutdown petty-bourgeois enterprisesin thename of economicplanning, or invadeprivate homes in the name of moralityor law and order.They are rightin all these cases, but theseare not the only cases, or the only kindsof cases, in whichliberty and equalityare threatened.We needto look closelyat the waysin which wealth, once politicaltyranny is abolished,itself takes on tyrannicalforms. Limited government is thegreat success of theart of separation,but that very success opens the way for what political scientistscall privategovernment, and it is withthe critique of private governmentthat the leftist complaint against liberalism properly begins. The linebetween political community and civilsociety was meantto markoff coercive decision making from free exchange. That's whythe sale of officeswas banned and the old baronialright to do justice and conscriptsoldiers was transferredto stateofficials. And that's why those same officialswere denied the right to interferein markettransactions. Butit is a falseview of civil society, a bad sociology,to claimthat all that goes on inthe marketplace is freeexchange and thatcoercion is neveran issue there.Market success overridesthe limitsof the(free) market in threeclosely related ways. First of all, radical inequalitiesof wealth generatetheir own coerciveness,so that many exchanges are only formallyfree. Second, certain sorts of market power, organized, say, in corporatestructures, generate patterns of commandand obediencein whicheven the formalities of exchange give way to somethingthat looks verymuch like government.And third,vast wealthand ownershipor controlof productive forces convert readily into government in the strict 322 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984 sense:capital regularly and successfullycalls upon thecoercive power of the state.7 The problemhere is less importantlya failure of nerve than a failure of perception.Liberal theorists literally did not"see" individualwealth and corporatepower as social forces,with a politicalweight, as it were, differentfrom their market value. Theyaimed to createa freemarket, and thoughtthat they had done enough when they opposed state interventionand setentrepreneurs free. But a freemarket, in whichthe threekinds of coercion that I listed above are (largely)ineffective, requiresa positivestructure. Free exchangewon't maintainitself; it needs to be maintainedby institutions,rules, mores, and customary practices.Consider for a momentthe religiousanalogy. The art of separationworked against state churches and churchstates not only by disestablishingthe church but also bydivesting it of material wealth and power.Nor did it do thisin thename of privatefaith alone, but also in the name of congregationalself-government. Congregationalism is by no means the naturalor the only possible institutionalarrangement once churchand statehave been separated,but it is thecultural form bestadapted to and mostlikely to reinforcethe separation. Similarly in the economicsphere: The art of separationshould workagainst both statecapitalism and the capitaliststate, but it won'twork successfully unless it is accompanied by disestablishmentand divestment-and unlessappropriate cultural forms develop within the economic sphere. The analogueto privateconscience is individualenterprise; the analogue to congregationalself-government is cooperative ownership. Withoutdivestment and withoutcooperative ownership, the market is bound to take shape in ways that defythe art of separation.New connectionsare quicklyestablished. As I have alreadyindicated, these are mostimportantly connections with the state, originating now from the marketside ratherthan the state side, but deep and powerful nonetheless.In addition,unlimited wealth threatens all theinstitutions and practicesof civil society-academic freedom,the careeropen to talents,the equalityof "homes" and "castles." It is less overt,more insidious than state coercion, but no one can doubt the ready convertabilityof wealth into power, privilege, and position.Where are the walls thatwall in the market?In principle,perhaps, they already exist, but theywill neverbe effectiveuntil privategovernments are socialized,just as establishedchurches were socialized, that is, turned overto theirparticipants. Religious democracy must find its parallel in industrialdemocracy. I won'ttry here to specifyany particularset of Walzer / LIBERALISM AND SEPARATION 323 institutionalarrangements; there are many possible arrangements compatiblewith the two crucial requirements: that there should be room forthe entrepreneur and thenew company, just as thereis roomfor the evangelistand the"gathered" church; and thatthere should not be room for the kind of economic power that shapes and determinespublic policy,any more than for the high ecclesiastical authority that routinely calls upon the"secular arm." Withthis analogy,we can glimpsea consistentliberalism-that is, one that passes over into democraticsocialism. But this is still a democraticsocialism of a liberalsort; it does notrequire the abolition of themarket (nor does it requirethe abolition of religion)but ratherthe confinementof the marketto its proper space. Given an illiberal socialism,where the state takes total control of economic life, the same imperativewould workin theopposite way, not to confinethe market butto reassertits independence from the political realm. In theUnited States,then, the art of separation requires the restraint and transforma- tionof corporate power. In theSoviet Union the same art would require, among otherthings, the liberation of individualenterprise.

IV

Distributivejustice is (largely)a matterof getting the lines right. But how do we do that?How do we drawthe map ofthe social worldso that churchesand schools,states and markets,bureaucracies and families each findtheir proper place? How do we protectthe participantsin thesedifferent institutional settings from the tyrannical intrusions of the powerful,the wealthy,the well born,and so on? Historically,liberals have taken as theirfoundation a theoryof individualismand natural rights.They mark out thelines so as to guaranteethe secureexistence and freeactivity of the individual.Conceived in thisway, the art of separationlooks like a veryradical project:It givesrise to a worldin whichevery person, every single man and woman,is separatedfrom everyother. Thus Marx: "theso-called rights of man ... are simplythe rights. . . of egoisticman, separatedfrom other men and fromthe community.'"Institutional autonomy is an intermediate,not an end pointin theprocess of separation.The end is theindividual, free within his or her circle of rights,protected from every sort of external interference.Liberal society,ideally, is simplya collectionof these 324 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984 circles, held togetherby all the tangentialconnections and actual overlappingsthat their solitary inhabitantsvoluntarily establish.9 Churches,schools, markets, and familiesare all theproducts of willful agreementsamong individuals, valuable because ofthe agreement they embodybut at the same timesubject to schism,withdrawal, cancella- tion, and divorce.Religious freedom is the rightof the individualto worshiphis God (thepronoun is important,not because itis masculine, it can as easilybe feminine,but because it is singularand possessive) publiclyor privately,however and withwhomever else he chooses;it has nothingto do, nothingin particularto do, with the doctrinaland institutionalcharacter of Judeo-Christian religiosity. Academic freedom has nothingin particularto do withthe university as a social setting;it is simplythe right of the individual to study,to speak,to listenas he or she pleases. All otherfreedoms are accountedfor in similarways. Individualagreement is indeed an importantsource of our institu- tions,and individualrights of our freedoms.But takentogether, with nothingmore said, theymake again fora bad sociology.They do not provideeither a richor a realisticunderstanding of social cohesion;nor do theymake senseof the lives individuals actually live, and therights theyactually enjoy, within the framework of on-goinginstitutions. The goal thatliberalism sets for the art of separation-everyperson within his or her own circle-is literallyunattainable. The individualwho stands whollyoutside institutionsand relationshipsand entersinto them only when he or she chooses and as he or she chooses: This individualdoes not exist and cannot exist in any conceivablesocial world.I once wrotethat we could understanda person'sobligations by studyinghis or herbiography, the history of his or heragreements and relationships.'0That is right,but only so longas one acknowledgesthat personalhistory is partof social history;biographies have contexts. The individualdoes notcreate the institutions that he or shejoins;nor can he or she whollyshape the obligationshe or she assumes.The individual liveswithin a worldhe or she did not make. The liberal hero, author of self and of social roles, is a mythic invention:It is Shakespeare'sCoriolanus, that aristocratic warrior and anti-citizen,who claims(and fails)to live "as if he werethe authorof himselfand knewno otherkin. "" Turnedinto a philosophicalideal and a social policy,this claim has frighteningimplications, for it is endlessly disintegrative,reaching a kind of culmination,perhaps, in recent discussionsabout the rightsof childrento divorcetheir parents and parentstheir children. But this is individualismin extremisand not Walzer / LIBERALISM AND SEPARATION 325

likely,I think,to be sustainedfor long. The liberal hero is more importantas a sociologicalpretense than as a philosophicalideal. He or she opensthe way for sham descriptions of churches,schools, markets, and families,as ifinstitutions of this sort were in fact created, and wholly created,through the voluntaryacts of individuals.The sham servesa practicalpurpose: It rulesout state interference ininstitutional life, since the state is in its nature coercive; and it makes it verydifficult to recognize other, more subtle sorts of interference(including that imitationof the state that I have already referredto as private government).More concretely,it limitsthe uses of politicalpower and sets money free, for what power takes by force, money merely purchases, and the purchase has the appearance of a voluntary agreementbetween individuals. In fact,it is oftensomething different than that,as we can see if we place the purchasein its contextand examineits motives and effects.And then we arelikely to concludethat, just as thereare thingsthe state cannot do, so theremust be thingsthat moneycannot buy: votes, offices,jury decisions,uiniversity places- theseare relatively easy-and also thevarious sorts of national influence and local dominationthat go alongwith the control of capital. But to get the limitsright requires an understandingof institutionallife more complexthan the one thatliberal individualism provides. Churches,schools, markets, and familiesare social institutionswith particularhistories. They take differentforms in differentsocieties, formsthat reflect different understandings of faith,knowledge, com- modities,and kinshipobligations. In no case are theyshaped wholly by individualagreements, for these agreements always take place within, and are alwaysconstrained by, particular patterns of rules, customs, and cooperativearrangements. It followsfrom this that the art of separation is not rooted in or warrantedby individualseparateness (which is a biological,not a social, phenomenon);it is rootedin and warrantedby social complexity.We do not separateindividuals; we separateinstitu- tions, practices,relationships of differentsorts. The lines we draw encirclechurches and schoolsand marketsand families,not you and me. We aim,or we shouldaim, not at thefreedom of the solitary individual but at whatcan bestbe called institutionalintegrity. Individuals should be free,indeed, in all sorts of ways, but we don't set themfree by separatingthem from their fellows. And yet the separated individuallooks more fundamentalthan institutionsand relationships,a firmerfoundation for politicaland social philosophy.When we build fromthe individualwe build,so it 326 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984

seemsto the liberaleye, from the ground up. But in factthe ground is always social: persons-in-societies,not persons-by-themselves.We neverencounter persons-by-themselves, and theeffort to inventthem, a strenuousexercise, has no agreed-uponoutcome. We do not know ourselvesas strangersto one another,absolute aliens, or isolates,and thereis no way to specifyor understandwhat it would mean forsuch "individuals"to be free.Men and womenare freewhen they live within autonomousinstitutions. We mighttake as our modelthe idea ofa free state,one thatis not a colony or a conqueredland, a state ruled by internalrather than external forces. The inhabitantsof such a stateare freeonly in a specialand limitedsense, but that sense, as anyonewho has endureda militaryconquest knows, is real and important.And ifthose sameindividuals live within a statethat is internallyfree (I willtry to say whatthat means in a moment)and ifthey participate in freechurches, freeuniversities, free firms and enterprises,and so on, we willat some pointwant to say thatthey are freegenerally. Freedom is additive;it consistsof rightswithin settings, and we mustunderstand the settings, one by one, if we are to guaranteethe rights.Similarly, each freedom entailsa specificform of equalityor, better,the absence of a speciflc inequality-of conquerorsand subjects,believers and infidels,trustees and teachers,owners and workers-and thesum of the absences makes an egalitariansociety.

V

On theliberal view, men and womenare notfree in thestate so much as fromit; and theyare equal underthe law. So theyare protectedfrom politicalpower, conceived as a monopolyof physical force, immensely threateningto thesolitary individual. It is immenselythreatening, and I want to say again thatthe limitationof poweris liberalism'shistoric achievement.But ifwe turnfrom individuals to institutions,it is clear thatpolitical power itself requires protection-not only against foreign conquest but also againstdomestic seizure. The stateis unfreewhen poweris seized and held by a set of familymembers, or clergymen,or office-holders,or wealthycitizens. Dynastic, theocratic, bureaucratic, and plutocraticcontrol all makefor unfreedom-and for inequality too. Meritocraticcontrol would have thesame effect,though I don'tbelieve it has ever been realized. Compared to family,church, office, and Walzer / LIBERALISM AND SEPARATION 327 corporation,universities and professionalschools are relativelyweak, though the men and women theylicense are not withoutpolitical pretensions.A freestate, in a complexsociety, is one thatis separated fromall otherinstitutions, that is to say,a statethat is inthe hands of its citizensgenerally-just as a freechurch is inthe hands of believers, a free universityin thehands of scholars,a freefirm in thehands of workers and managers.And thencitizens are free in the state as wellas fromit (in fact,it is notas citizensthat they are freefrom the state but as believers, scholars,entrepreneurs, workers, parents, and so on); and theyare equal in the makingof thelaw and not onlyunder the law. The artof separation works to isolatesocial settings.But it obviously doesn'tachieve, and can'tachieve, anything like total isolation, for then there would be no society at all. Writingin defense of religious toleration,John Locke claimedthat "the church ... is a thingabsolutely separateand distinctfrom the commonwealth. The boundaries... are fixedand immovable."'2But this is too radicala claim,deriving, I think, more from a theory of the individual conscience than from an understandingof churches and religiouspractices. What goes on in one institutionalsetting influences all theothers; the same people,after all, inhabitthe different settings, and theyshare a historyand a culture-in whichreligion plays a greateror lesserrole. The state,moreover, always has a specialinfluence, for it is theagent of separation and thedefender, as it were, of the social map. It is not so much a nightwatchman protectingindividuals from coercion and physicalassault as it is the builderand guardian of the walls, protectingchurches, universities, families,and so on fromtyrannical interference. The membersof these institutionsalso, ofcource, protect themselves as bestthey can, but their ultimateresort when they are threatenedis an appeal to thestate. This is so even whenthe threatcomes fromthe stateitelf: Then theyappeal fromone groupof officialsor one branchof government to another,or theyappeal againstthe government as a wholeto thebody of citizens. One way of judgingthe actionsof the stateis to ask whetherthey upholdinstitutional integrity-including the integrity of the state itself. Consider the relativelyminor example of safetyregulation. Caveat emptor,let the buyer beware, is, as I said earlier,a ruleof the market, but it coversonly a certainrange of wariness.It has to do withdisappoint- ment("I don't look as handsomeas I thoughtI would look in mynew clothes"),frustration ("The blurb says this book is 'accessibleto the intelligentlayman,' so I boughtit, but now I can't seemto understand it"), and even known and foreseeablerisks ("These cigarettesare 328 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984 dangerous to my health'). Clothes and books and cigarettesare properlymarket commodities. But the range of wariness doesn't extend to unknownand unforeseeablerisks or to collectiverisks-as in the case, say,of unsafe cars or ofcars that contaminate the air. The degreeof riskthat we livewith on ourhighways and in our commonenvironment is a matterfor political decision; it belongs, so to speak,to thestate and itscitizens, not to themarket and itsbuyers and sellers.At leastthat is so on ourcurrent understanding, as I understandit, of states and markets. The artof separationis properlyartful when it drawsa linethat leaves the riskof disappointmenton one side and the riskof disasteron the other. But this artfulness,when it comes to concretecases, is always controversial.There are problemsof informationand problemsof interpretation.What goes on in thisor thatinstitutional setting? And whatis the internallogic of whatgoes on? These questionshave to be debated,first in particularinstitutional settings and thenin thegeneral settingof the state.The art of separationis a popular,not an esoteric, art. Liberals,however, have not alwaysrecognized its popularcharac- ter,for if individual rights are at stakethen philosophers and judges can claim some special understandingof its requirements.It is the courts thatdefine and patrolthe circleof rights.'3To focus on institutions, practices,and relationshipsis to shiftthe location of agency, to socialize theart of separation. Believers, scholars, workers, and parentsestablish and guardthe lines-and thenthe citizens as a bodydo so, throughthe politicalprocess. Liberalism passes definitivelyinto democratic social- ism whenthe map of societyis sociallydetermined. But whatif some politicalmajority misunderstands or overridesthe autonomyof thisor thatinstitutional setting? That is theunavoidable riskof democracy.Since the lines do not have the clear and distinct characterthat Locke thoughtthem to have,they will be drawnhere and there,experimentally and sometimeswrongly. The linebetween politics and exchangehas, as I have suggested,been wronglydrawn for a long timenow: And we sufferfrom the abuse of marketpower. We have to argue,then, about thelocation of the line and fight(democratically) to draw it differently.Probably we willnever get it exactlyright, and the changingcharacter of states and marketrequires, in any case, its continualrevisions, so thearguing and thefighting have no visibleend. And whatif tyrants seize controlof this or thatchurch or university or companyor family?Michel Foucault has recentlycontended that a darkand rigiddiscipline has beenclamped down upon a wholeseries of Walzer / LIBERALISM AND SEPARATION 329 institutions-andthat this is the work of internalelites, professional men and womenwith claims to scientificknowledge, not of political officials.14 But I thinkthat he exaggeratesthe success of these elites and theirability to sustaintheir discipline without calling upon statepower. It is only in authoritarianstates, which systematically violate institu- tional integrity,that Foucault's "disciplinarysociety" is likelyto be realizedin anythinglike the formthat he describes.Among ourselves, the risksare of a differentsort; theyinclude but are not limitedto professionalpretension and aggrandizement;we also have to worry about internalcorruption, bureaucratic privilege, popular fearfulness, and passivity. All of theserisks will be reduced,perhaps, insofar as the different institutionalsettings have themselvesbeen socialized, so that their participantsenjoy a roughequality and no groupof believers, knowers, -orowners is capable of reachingfor political power. If menand women enjoy theirdifferent social roles, theyare more likelyto respectthe settingswithin which the roles are played. This is thesocialist form of the old liberalhope thatindividuals secure in their own circles won't invade the circlesof others.It is still a problematicbut also I thinka more realistichope, forit is lonelyin thosecircles; the lifeof institutionsis morelively and moresatisfying.

NOTES

1. J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth (New York: HarcourtBrace Jovanovich,1934) p. 174. 2. Draftexemptions for college students represent perhaps, a modem versionof the medievalliberties. They breach the liberal wall betweenstate and universtiy-notbecause theyviolate academic freedom but rather because they violate political integrity (the equal standingof citizens). 3. The artof separation remains an importantfeature of contemporary liberalism, as in Rawls' Theoryof Justice.His two principles,Rawls writes,"presuppose that the social structurecan be dividedinto two moreor lessdistinct parts,the first principle applying to the one, the second to the other.They distinguishbetween those aspects of the social systemthat define and securethe equal libertiesof citizenship and thosethat specify and establishsocial and economicinequalities," in A Theoryof Justice (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1971), p. 61. Rawls redrawsthe old linebetween the state and themarket, thoughin a ratherdifferent way thanI shall suggestbelow. 4. Marx, Early Writings,trans. T. B. Bottomore(London: C. A. Watts,1963), p. 26. 5. RobertMichels, Political Parties, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Dover, 1959). 330 POLITICAL THEORY / AUGUST 1984

6. Walzer,Spheres of Justice:A Defenseof Pluralismand Equality(New York: Basic Books, 1983). 7. The best recentaccount of the transformation of market power into political power is CharlesE. Lindblom,Politics and Markets(New York: Basic Books, 1977),esp. PartV. 8. Marx, 1963,p.24. 9. I omithere any discussionof the earlytwentieth-century pluralists,some of whom are plausiblycalled liberals,since their arguments never attained the high philosophical respectabilityof thedoctrine of individualrights. 10. Obligations:Essays on Disobedience,War, and Citizenship(Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 1970),p. x. 11. Coriolanus,Act V, sceneiii. 12. Locke, A Letter ConcerningToleration, ed. Patrick Romanell (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,1950), p. 27. 13. For a strongstatement of the role of courtsin defenseof rights,see Ronald Dworkin,Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977). 14. See especiallyFoucault's Disciplineand Punish: The Birthof the Prison,trans. Alan Sheridan(New York: Vintage,1979). The argumentworks best for institutions like prisons,hospitals, and asylums,where the subjects of discipline are civically, physically, or mentallyincapacitated, but Foucault meansit to applyalso to schoolsand factories:pp. 293ff.

Michael Walzeris a Professorof Social Science at the Institutefor Advanced Study in Princeton.He is the author,most recently,of Spheres of Justice:A Defense of Pluralismand Equality (1983) and of theforthcoming Exodus and Revolution.