FREEDOM IN DEMOCRACY

Abstract

SCIENCE, like British democracy, as Mr. Alderton Pink emphasizes in his stimulating little book, “The Challenge to Democracy”*, has grown up in association with religious freedom, from which sprang freedom of thought, of the Press, of teaching, of assembly-of all that we understand as cultural freedom-as well as economic freedom, though he might well have added that neither the implications nor the responsibilities of even comparative economic freedom appear to be appreciated. The issue between science or democracy itself and any kind of authoritarianism turns on the principle that the spiritual life of the individual is a region in which the State is not competent to interfere ; to that extent the control of science by any outside body would eventually strangle science. In maintaining its autonomy science can play a decisive part in preserving such freedom as man has gained hitherto, and even help to enlarge it. But to do this, science must enlarge its conceptions of truth and clarify its conceptions as to the area of liberty. Such books as Prof. F. A. Hayek's “The Road to Serfdom” may conceivably have hindered rather than helped the fundamental thinking on this point that is a primary need, and Mr. Alderton Pink's chapters are by contrast a welcome stimulus. Provided cultural freedom is preserved, the democratic State is not undermining its own principles by undertaking the control of economic affairs. We must, it is true, recognize that the traditional liberty of the individual will be affected to a considerable extent, but the present alternative to serfdom is surely a system of public control under which lesser liberties are sacrificed in order to secure the greater.