The concept of “freedom” is the most disputed signifier of modern politics. Proof of this is that the slogan “Long live freedom, damn it” made an improvised President. In the name of freedom, Washington commits heinous crimes abroad. Under the banner of freedom, the robber barons of the 21st century evade taxes. Under the banner of freedom, the legitimate causes of the global “Generation Z” are imported to Mexico for partisan interests. Freedom carries such mobilizing vigor that its definition and appropriation constitute the heart of the ideological struggle. Hegemony, understood in theoretical terms as the ability to articulate a particular discourse such as universal common sense, is won or lost in this terrain of semantic dispute. The cultural battle, which does not allow any truce, forces even the character Luffy to fight other people’s battles.
The left has lost, for decades, the battle for the signifier “freedom.” They have allowed the pedestrian right of Caminos de la Libertad or La Libertad Avanza to prostitute common sense—a social construct—reducing the concept to non-interference from the State. For the most radical right-wingers, when the Trumps rule, the government nourishes freedom; When the left governs, any state action is reduced to the crudest authoritarian act. By giving away the signifier “freedom,” the left plays on someone else’s court. If in this framework dark interests seek to articulate the reaction to dispute the future of Mexico, progressivism must get ready to press the ideological knife in its mouth.
The philosophical basis of the two conceptions of freedom was formulated by the thinker Isaiah Berlin in his essay “Two Concepts of Freedom.” The liberal philosopher defined “negative freedom” as a space free of coercion and interference where an individual can act without being hindered by others. Berlin distinguished between “coercion”—a lack of freedom—and “incapacity”—which, according to him, is not a lack of freedom. His famous example is illuminating: “If I cannot understand the darkest pages of Hegel, it would be eccentricity to say that I am oppressed or coerced.” In other words, the inability to understand Hegel is not a lack of freedom.
Neoliberals like Friedman and Hayek took this distinction and transplanted it to the economic sphere. For them, poverty or lack of access to health are not forms of coercion, but rather forms of incapacity comparable to not being able to understand Hegel. A homeless, sick and illiterate individual, but living in a State with a free market, is, according to this definition, completely free in the negative sense. This “Hegel’s failure” is the justification that allows the right to defend absolute freedom in a context of extreme inequality.
Indeed, “libertarians” like Milei take negative freedom to its most extreme conclusion. In Anarchy, State and UtopiaRobert Nozick formulated the principle of “self-possession”, according to which each individual is the absolute owner of himself, his body and the fruits of his work. Nozick’s most infamous, though rhetorically appealing, corollary is that the labor tax is analogous to forced labor. When the State claims partial ownership over the individual, it makes him a partial slave. Reduced to absurdity, the freedom of libertarians justifies evading taxes in the face of the oppressive Leviathan. By cataloging their wealth as hard work, and not as income or open fraud, the Salinas Pliegos frame their misdeeds as an epic battle.
Negative freedom is misrepresented by unscrupulous tycoons all the time. For example, they defend the freedom of corporations to use their property as they wish, including resource exploitation and pollution. It is the “freedom of the wolves” to devour the sheep, as Berlin himself cited. But the exit from the labyrinth is in its second conception. On the obverse of the coin, the philosopher defined “positive” freedom as the answer to the question “Who’s in charge?” and as the “desire on the part of the individual to be his own master.” That is, not based on an absence of coercion but on their creative capacity. For the skeptical Berlin, positive freedom, in its most extreme form, engenders totalitarianism. Certainly, a tyrant can claim to represent a higher will and force citizens to be free. But the grays matter. Even with risks, positive freedom is the way to dispute the common sense of the right.
The democratic left has sought to redefine “freedom” based on plurality. European social democracy, now in decline, tried to reconcile freedom with equality. His alternative defends state intervention to promote economic equity and social equality, without abolishing the market. The role of the State is to guarantee equal opportunities through robust public services. In practice, building these institutions almost always requires taming the most voracious economic spirits. For economist Joseph Stiglitz, “moderate coercion” can, in fact, increase everyone’s freedom. His example of traffic lights serves as the rhetorical antidote to Nozick’s “forced labor.” A libertarian might argue that a red light is an intolerable coercion, an infringement of liberty. However, as Stiglitz points out, at a busy intersection, everyone’s negative freedom results in a traffic jam. Moderate traffic light coercion, by regulating non-interference, is the necessary condition for maximizing aggregate freedom.
This analogy gives clues to re-frame the debate. To confront the Salinas Pliego, the left can promote policies and discursive frames where the State is not seen as a thief that imposes “forced labor” (à la Nozick), but as a facilitator of genuine freedom (à la Stiglitz). According to economist Amartya Sen, the State should not impose a specific functioning, but rather expand individual capabilities so that individual freedoms flourish. As an example, progressive governments should not force anyone to be healthy, but rather guarantee universal access to health, nutrition and education to choose a healthy life, if that is valued.
A success story in Mexico is the universal pension for older adults. Its primary function is not charity, but emancipation. It gives each individual leeway to turn down jobs and increase their bargaining power. It frees the worker from the domination of the employer in the last years of life, when capabilities decline. It is one possible path of many to build.
In times where “Generation Z” is activated against global injustices, freedom will be the core of dispute. The use of symbols like the character Luffy to fight for negative freedom is convenient to the wolf who salivates for sheep. However, many young people demand the legitimate provision of tools to face a challenging world. If the left manages to overcome the minimal example of Stiglitz’s traffic light to offer, with greater ambition than social democracy, horizons that create individual capabilities to the Sen, it would develop antibodies against the threat that the extreme right will snatch away common sense and, in the name of freedom, crush the rights of those who refuse to be enslaved to poverty. As “Generation Z” demonstrated in New York by voting four to one for Mamdani, positive freedom seduces when it beats the drums of the fight against the powerful and those free to commit crimes. The cultural battle does not allow truces, but it gives moments to dig trenches.