Five Types of Freedom

or Liberty Beyond Liberalism

I. Inner Freedom

Inner freedom is the oldest of all freedoms — and the least free.

In a broad, general sense, it’s the freedom from conventions and traditions, often associated with creative individuals — like the Chinese Taoist philosopher and poet Liu Ling, who enjoyed receiving guests naked and always traveled with a servant carrying a jug of wine and a shovel: the wine was self-explanatory, and the shovel was to bury him if he suddenly dropped dead.

In a narrower, political sense, inner freedom refers to the ability to live with dignity in the total absence of external freedom.

Inner freedom is what allows people living under a totalitarian regime to carve out a small personal space where they can think their own thoughts instead of blindly repeating propaganda and do what they themselves want, rather than what the authorities demand of them.

This political interpretation is commonly attributed to former inmates of Nazi concentration camps and Eastern European dissidents. But in fact, the idea existed much earlier. Seneca, Confucius and Spinoza all wrote about the importance of not betraying one’s beliefs, even when one cannot express them aloud.

Not everyone considers this kind of freedom worthy. At the end of the 20th century, with the arrival of external freedom, “inner freedom” became briefly unnecessary in Russia and shifted from being a symbol of resistance to a target of mockery.

The sharpest critique of the idea of carving out a tiny hidden space and calling it “freedom” came from Viktor Pelevin in his breakthrough novel “Chapayev and Emptiness“ set during the Russian Civil War:

“About a year ago, I think, there was a curious case in St. Petersburg. Some social democrats from England came to visit — of course they were horrified by what they saw — and we had a meeting with them on Basseynaya Street, through the Poets’ Union. Alexander Blok was there, and he spent the whole evening talking about this very secret freedom that, as he put it, we all sing after Pushkin. That was the last time I saw him — he was dressed all in black and looked unspeakably gloomy.

After he left, the English guests, who obviously didn’t understand anything, began asking what this 'secret freedom' was. Nobody could really explain it, until some Romanian who was somehow with them said he understood what it meant.

He said that Romanian has a similar idiom — something like 'haz baragaz' (I don’t remember exactly how it sounds), which literally means ‘underground laughter.’

In the Middle Ages, Romania was often attacked by nomads, so peasants built huge dugouts — whole underground homes — where they would herd their livestock as soon as a cloud of dust appeared on the horizon. They hid there too, and because the dugouts were well camouflaged, the nomads couldn’t find them. The peasants behaved very quietly underground, but sometimes, overwhelmed by joy at having fooled everyone, they would cover their mouths and laugh very, very softly.

So, this Romanian said, secret freedom is when you sit among smelly goats and sheep, point upward with your finger, and giggle quietly.”

In reality, inner freedom is not a comic concept — it’s a tragic one. Traditional freedom means no struggle and no threat — it’s granted freely, and no matter how you use it, you won’t be punished. Inner freedom, on the other hand, is always a fight, always a danger.

Even in the most limited case — using your freedom only inside your own mind — you have to do inner work to cleanse your brain of the poison constantly poured into it through propaganda.

But inner freedom isn’t just about thoughts — it’s about actions too. In Live Not by Lies, Solzhenitsyn, and in The Power of the Powerless, Václav Havel, urged their fellow citizens — if they were too afraid to actively resist — at least to refuse to participate in state-sponsored vileness: don’t hang the red flag in your window, don’t go to May Day parades, don’t sign public letters condemning dissidents.

This is not some harmless advice, like brushing your teeth every morning. In any dictatorship, what you get away with today may cost you dearly tomorrow.

And this quiet rebellion is never free of cost.

Ordinary freedom, among other things, allows you to improve your life by choosing from the many ways to make a living the one that best suits your talents and interests: the very “pursuit of happiness” mentioned in the U.S. Declaration of Independence as one of the three fundamental rights.

Earlier revolutionary documents — like the Boston Pamphlet and the Declaration of the First Continental Congress — put it more bluntly: “Life, liberty, and property.”

In this sense, inner freedom is the opposite of real freedom.

Under an authoritarian regime, you might be able to carve out a tiny free space like the boiler room where the Russian underground rock idols Viktor Tsoi and Boris Grebenshchikov hid from charges of parasitism (modern leftists would be shocked to find out that not having an official job was a criminal offence in the Soviet Union), but that space inevitably becomes a ghetto. Authoritarian, and especially totalitarian, regimes allow comfortable living only to those who not only follow the written rules, but also try to anticipate the rulers’ desires and run ahead of the system.

A soft dictatorship won’t throw you in jail for unapproved songs — but you’ll only be able to perform them at concerts in private appartments, maybe at a small community center. Forget about going to an international festival, owning a dacha, or having a car.

Inner freedom means unfreedom, poverty, and a constant struggle with the state and yourself.

V. Law of the Strongest

Also known as the “law of the jungle” or the “state of nature” that Thomas Hobbes used to spook his readers in Leviathan: freedom without any limits, leading to a war of all against all.

According to Hobbes, this “natural condition” is worse than any government, even the most despotic one. Still, some defend it. They call themselves “realists” and dismiss everyone else as cowards unwilling to face the “inevitable”: that all rights and laws are just a facade, behind which the strong devour the weak.

But in truth, most defenders of this “state of nature” are hypocrites. They don’t support it because they think it’s inevitable — they support it because they imagine themselves at the top of the food chain. Übermenschen, calmly choosing their next victim from the herd of trembling creatures. They despise all laws but the law of the jungle, and all rights but the right of the strong. They believe that by shedding laws and moral restraints, they can achieve much more.

Yet this apparent total freedom isn’t so different from the most restricted, inner one.

No no-rules struggle lasts forever. More often than not, it doesn’t even last long. After the strong defeat the weak, they turn on each other. Eventually, the strongest wins. And that’s where everyone else’s freedom ends. The victor, bound by neither law nor morality, can do whatever they like with the rest. The losers — even those who made it to the final round — can no longer rob the weaker at will. Now they need the victor’s permission.

Even among animals, the law of the jungle isn’t constant fighting — it’s social hierarchy. And even there, you find despotism: in some primates like gorillas and Japanese macaques, among canids, geckos, even fish — not to mention ants — there is an alpha, but no beta. Everyone else just obeys the alpha and does what it says. The second-strongest doesn’t eat or mate second; it does so only when the alpha allows it — if it survives at all.

Among people who worship strength, it ends up in the same way. In no-rules society, only the one at the top is truly free. Everyone else's freedom depends not on their strength, but on their ability to win the boss’s favor.

II. Liberalism

The history of liberalism is usually traced back to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. In it, Locke—like Hobbes—writes about how the state arises from a “state of nature.” But Locke’s state of nature is the exact opposite of Hobbes’s. For Hobbes, it’s a war of all against all; for Locke, it’s freedom and mutual respect for your neighbour’s life and property.

Still, even in this originally harmonious state, not everything is perfect. There are always people trying to live at others’ expense. So in the absence of a government, everyone has to constantly stay alert and defend their rights on their own. To make this easier, people band together to form a state and choose a government whose sole job is to protect citizens’ natural rights and freedoms.

This idea immediately creates a paradox: according to Locke, people created the state to protect their rights and freedoms—but the main threat to those rights and freedoms is the state itself. It’s not your neighbor who threatens your freedom of speech or your right to a fair trial but the authorities. The rights listed in liberal constitutions are there to shield you not from private abuse, but from government overreach.

Possibly for this reason—or maybe just because the theory is obviously ahistorical—liberal political scientists tend to avoid talking about the idea of the state as a mechanism invented to defend human rights.

Modern liberalism doesn’t bother speculating on when or why the state came to be. What it takes from Locke is the main thing: whatever its origins, the state’s job today is to safeguard the rights and freedoms of its citizens.

Where inner freedom forces us to carve out a tiny corner of the world where we can do as we please and defend it from state intrusion, liberalism hands us a pre-built, much larger space of freedom and casts the state not as a threat, but as a watchman guarding that space.

In both original Locke’s theory and its modern extentions, the form of government can, in theory, be anything. Liberals today love to repeat that democracy isn’t the goal—it’s the tool. Its value lies solely in the fact that it protects our rights better than all the alternatives.

In the late 1600s, when Locke wrote his treatise, there was no such thing as democracy. Even constitutional monarchy in Britain was still in its early stages. So Locke had no issue accepting a sovereign monarch—as long as that monarch honored the social contract.

Today, the system Locke invented—a state that exists to protect our rights—is seen as the peak of political development. There’s nowhere higher to go. The only movement possible is downward.

And the risk of falling is always there.

According to Max Weber’s widely accepted definition, any state—even the most democratic one—is a monopoly on legitimate violence. And this monopoly isn’t exercised by some impartial, faceless force, like gravity, but by people—people in power, who are always tempted to keep that power and grow it.

In Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the former USSR, rulers who came to power through free elections often use that monopoly on violence to crush their rivals and stay in power forever. And even in Europe and North America, where such things don’t happen, the ruling class still uses its power to serve its own interests. The simplest—but hardly the only—way to do that is through the so-called “revolving door”: politicians pass laws benefiting firms and institutions that fund their campaigns, and then, once they leave office, land cushy board seats at those same firms as a thank-you.

Modern politics has little in common with Locke’s ideals.

Locke wrote that you can easily tell legitimate government from tyranny: in a legitimate state, the same laws that apply to everyone apply to its rulers too.

Today’s rulers enjoy parliamentary or presidential immunity. Even low-ranking, unelected police officers are often harder to prosecute than the average citizen. Those in power also enjoy other privileges—like the right to carry weapons in countries where everyone else is banned from doing so.

As for the social contract… Locke considered the protection of property a government’s central duty. Today, through income and consumption taxes, the state takes roughly half of people’s earnings—far more than the tyrannical monarchs Locke fought against did.

The situation with rights is odd too. Liberalism claims to be built on the concept of natural rights—rights that follow directly from the nature of human relationships. But governments interpret those rights however they like. One day, same-sex love is a crime; the next, refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex couple is. One day, abortion is legal in the seventh month; the next, it’s banned from the moment of conception.

You might argue these zigzags simply reflect changing social moods—but public opinion shouldn’t affect natural rights. And even that argument doesn’t hold up: parliamentary and judicial interpretations of rights often clash with what voters actually want. Take abortion in the U.S.: many states are banning it, even though most voters oppose the bans. Or Europe, where laws allow people to change their gender by filing a form, despite most of the population being against it.

Locke wrote that if a government repeatedly violates people’s rights and robs them of their freedoms, then it’s tyrannical and should be overthrown. But he immediately added a disclaimer: this applies only when the rights of the majority are violated, and only when it happens so regularly and for so long that there’s no longer any doubt about the regime’s tyrannical nature.

But when the rights of the majority have been violated for a long time, it’s usually too late to overthrow the government: stripping away those rights was precisely how it secured its grip on power. In Locke’s day, talk of revolution was easier: in 17th-century England, the government and the opposition were more or less equally armed. Today, in most countries, citizens don’t have the right to bear arms—and even in countries like the U.S., where they do, civilian firepower is no match for the state’s arsenal.

In short, liberalism contains an unsolvable contradiction: it entrusts the protection of our rights and freedoms to those who are most interested in taking them away—or at the very least, limiting them. Because the less freedom we have, the more they do.

At first glance, liberalism seems like the opposite of “inner freedom.” But if you look closer, it’s not so different. Under liberalism, people still have to fight constantly to defend their space of freedom. The big difference is that this space is much larger—and the fight, unlike in authoritarian regimes, is a team effort rather than a solo game.

IV. Anarchy

There are two theories of anarchy: left and right

Leftist anarchism comes in many flavors: mutualism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, libertarian socialism, etc.. Uniting them all is the rejection of private property and a vision of the ideal society as a confederation of spontaneous communes, cooperatives, and other voluntary associations of workers. The founding fathers of left-wing anarchism left almost no instructions on how these communes were supposed to function—perhaps precisely because of their spontaneous nature—but in any case, they cared far more about the freedom of communities than the freedom of individuals.

Right-wing anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism, is far more unified and far more thoroughly thought out. Not only does it accept private property, it treats it as the foundation of all freedoms through the concept of self-ownership: everyone’s body and fruits of their labor being their unalienable and untouchable private property. Anarcho-capitalism isn’t interested in the freedom of the commune from the state, it’s only concerned with the freedom of the individual.

According to anarcho-capitalism, the only limitation on this freedom should be the NAP, the Non-Aggression Principle: don’t infringe on anyone else’s life, health, liberty, or property. This is totally not pacifism—the NAP doesn’t suggest you turn the other cheek. On the contrary, it considers any response, even the harshest armed retaliation, completely legitimate—as long as physical aggression happened first. Everything else, short of violence, is fair game: a person can live however they want, eat, drink, and smoke whatever they like, sleep with whomever they please, say whatever they want, and do what they like with their property—as long as they’re not physically attacking others or stealing from them. Not with words but with actions. One person’s freedom ends only where someone else’s body or property begins, and that boundary is a brick wall. No appeal to a higher morality or the “common good” can ever justify physical aggression.

One of the most popular slogans among right-wing anarchists is: Taxation is theft. You can’t take someone’s money, even to feed a starving child, because taking money at gunpoint is robbery, no matter how noble the goal sounds.

But what happens when conflict arises? What if one person accuses another of theft?

The anarcho-capitalist classics say this is where arbitration comes in. Both sides of the dispute choose a respected third party and ask them to settle the conflict, agreeing in advance to accept the decision.

The flaw is obvious: why would an aggressor agree to arbitration? If I’ve already taken your wallet or your house, and I’m clearly stronger than you, the conflict from my perspective is already resolved to my complete satisfaction. Why go to a judge?

Anarcho-capitalists respond: that’s what private security firms are for. You’ll pay for their services like people pay for health insurance. If the dispute is between two of their clients, the firm investigates, decides who’s in the right, and issues a binding verdict. And if an outsider attacks a client, the firm defends them.

But what if the outsider also has their own security firm?

In that case, say the ancap philosophers, the two firms will try to negotiate—or take the matter to arbitration.

Why would they prefer arbitration to war? Because wars are expensive, and any rational actor will choose a peaceful resolution while that option is still available.

It’s right here that the ancap argument falls apart. You can see it in real life: if rational people always avoid war because it’s too expensive, then why has human history been almost nothing but war? Why have the United States been at peace for a grand total of just 17 years in their entire history? Why, right now, are there six major and 37 smaller armed conflicts happening around the world?

Because cost isn’t the only factor in decision-making. What matters isn’t the price—it’s the cost-benefit ratio. If the gain outweighs the cost, then cost won’t stop anyone.

A security firm won’t go to war over one stolen wallet—that’s obviously not worth it. But it won’t think twice if victory could mean hundreds or thousands of new clients to extort protection money from.

We all know what those kinds of security firms are called: the mafia.

When the state weakens or pulls out of a region, anarchist communities don’t spring up. Organized crime takes over—essentially a mini-state, just one not recognized by the UN. Gangs and cartels divide up territory. It’s happening in rural Mexico, in the favelas of Rio, in Haiti. It happened in Russia in the 1990s until the biggest gang, the state, got back on its feet. Even in the Wild West, often romanticized as an anarchist paradise, every town turned itself into a mini-state by electing a sheriff to avoid being devoured by bandits.

Why does this happen? Why can’t the “client” freely choose between different protection agencies offering competing services at market rates, instead of being forced to pay a monopoly—or end up in a cement bucket?

Because for a business built on violence, scattered clients aren’t profitable. Protecting them costs more than they bring in. Serving 100 clients in a region where 4,900 others belong to a rival firm—especially at market prices—is a losing proposition. It’s much more profitable to force 100 clients of your rival living in your zone of control to switch allegiance and pay your monopoly rate.

The mafia, as countless examples show, still ends up being cheaper than the state—because it’s always competing with neighboring mafias. If it taxes too heavily, “clients” will ask a rival gang for protection. But none of this has anything to do with freedom.

Even if we imagine a miracle scenario where mafia rule is somehow avoided, and honest competition between security firms is preserved, the result would still be a society that is free only in the aggregate, not for the individual.

Because the whole premise of ancap is that on your private property, you set your own rules. In such society, the overwhelming majority of people will own a house and its backyard at best. The moment you step outside your gate, you’re subject to someone else’s rules. And those rules will not be democratic.

If you live on land owned by a Saudi sheikh, you’ll follow sharia law. Want to move into a district that is run by a racist? Better be ready to submit a DNA test. Trying to rent in an area owned by a progressive billionaire? Get ready for weekly workshops on transphobia and Islamophobia.

Most likely, the ancap world—if it somehow manages to avoid falling into outright mafia rule—will look like the worlds imagined in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and The Diamond Age: a patchwork of quasi-governmental franchises dividing up territory. It will be colorful, diverse, probably quite technologically advanced and wealthy—but for 99% of its population, it will offer less freedom than what we have now, aside from the freedom to choose among various flavors of unfreedom.

III. Eleutheria

In Greek, freedom is eleutheria — but what the ancient Greeks meant by that word is very different from what we mean by freedom today. Our modern idea of freedom comes from the Roman libertas and primarily means freedom from interference — especially from the state. But to the Greeks, mere lack of interference wasn’t enough. Freedom, in their view, meant the complete absence of anyone in a position to interfere at all. They explained it to foreigners in a simple phrase:

“We have no masters.”

This no masters was literal: no one ruled over the citizens of a Greek polis. All decisions were made collectively, in the popular assembly, where every citizen had a vote.

We’re used to condemning the idea of decisions being made “about us without us” in international politics — like in Munich, when the fate of Czechoslovakia was decided without the Czechs in the room. Today politicians insist that Russia, the US, and the EU must not decide Ukraine’s future without Ukrainians at the table.

But in modern democracy, “about me without me” is the norm — and almost no one questions it. The fundamental questions that shape our lives are decided by others. We merely choose who gets to decide them. For the Greeks, that was unacceptable: every decision affecting their lives had to involve themselves.

Isaiah Berlin, in his essay Two Concepts of Liberty, called this idea of freedom positive liberty. But even before Berlin coined that term — from Benjamin Constant and the American Founding Fathers in the late 18th century to John Stuart Mill in the 19th — political philosophers were already drawing a contrast between this “positive” freedom to participate in rule, and the “negative” liberal freedom from interference. Many argued that the former leads to the “tyranny of the majority.” They claimed that the Greeks had neither freedom in our sense, nor any concept of human rights. Some even say the Greeks didn’t have a word for “rights” at all.

Modern historians argue the opposite: not only did the Greeks invent the very idea of natural rights, they had a range of concrete ones — the right to property, to the inviolability of the home, to free speech, to protection from torture or execution without trial, and, as Pericles once said, “the right to live as you please” without interference.

To claim the Greeks had no word for “rights” is like claiming the Inuit have no concept of snow just because they don’t use the word snow — even though they famously have seven different words for its different forms (a topic of linguistic debate, to be fair). The Greeks may not have had a single abstract word for “rights” as we do, but they had at least four distinct terms for different types of rights: one for rights grounded in law or contract (like the right to a fair trial or repayment of debt); another for the right to act freely; a third for the right not to be forced do what you don’t want to; and a fourth for specific privilege granted by public office (such as a customs officer’s right to inspect goods).

So yes — Greek thinking on rights and freedoms wasn’t identical to ours, but they were by no means strangers to the concepts.

You can’t talk about this without mentioning the trial of Socrates, sentenced to death for “corrupting the youth.”

But the reality wasn’t quite how we learned it in school.

That phrase — “corrupting the youth” — didn’t mean “teaching them critical thinking.” Shortly before Socrates’ trial, Athens had lost the Peloponnesian War. With Spartan backing, a coup brought a new regime to power: the Thirty Tyrants. In just eight months, they unleashed brutal repression, killing 5% of the city’s population. Thousands fled to save their lives.

The leaders of this aristocratic coup were Socrates’ students — young men who, in the eyes of Athenians, had learned from him a deep contempt for democracy, which Socrates never tried to hide. That’s what the trial was really about.

Socrates wasn’t prosecuted right after the tyrants were overthrown. Most were granted amnesty, and Athens didn’t pursue revenge. After a few years, though, Socrates was again seen teaching the same anti-democratic views to a new generation. His accusers claimed he had learned nothing — and if left unchecked, the bloody history would repeat itself.

Socrates could easily have avoided the death penalty — exile was on the table. Greek courts weren’t like modern ones: after a guilty verdict, the prosecution and defendant each proposed a punishment, and the jury picked one of the two. Asked what punishment he deserved, Socrates responded that he should be rewarded — a response Athenians saw as sheer hubris, the gravest of moral failings. In the end, more jurors voted for the death penalty than had voted to convict him in the first place.

Exile, as many contemporaries believed, was an easy way out that Socrates could’ve taken — if not for his principles. And it wasn’t such a harsh punishment. You weren’t cast into the wilderness. At the height of Greek civilization, there were hundreds of poleis to choose from, and no restrictions on immigration. The only downside: in your new city, you didn’t have political rights.

And you didn’t even have to go alone. Eleutheria — the Greeks’ idea of freedom — was bound up with autonomy, the freedom of the polis itself. If enough citizens had been unhappy with their city’s laws or values, they might be encouraged (sometimes insistently) to found a new one — a colony. Unlike British or Spanish colonies, these Greek colonies were independent from the start. They had their their own political systems and laws. Those who decided to leave weren’t seen as traitors or foes. On the contrary, mother cities kept close ties with their colonies.

Voting with your feet was just as real as voting with your hand — everyone could choose how to live.

So why did the great political thinkers dismiss the idea that Greeks were ever free?

Perhaps because Benjamin Constant, the Founding Fathers, Mill, and even Berlin were part of the ruling class — or close to it. Shareholders rarely welcome stock dilution: the more shares issued, the smaller their slice of control. The same goes for the “shares” of the state — if you're already a stakeholder, why let millions of others in?

Or maybe it’s just that these thinkers mostly read Plato and Aristotle — who, like Socrates, disliked democracy and weren’t much interested in rights. Modern historians, by contrast, have a much richer archive to draw from: court records, assembly speeches, and other texts that have come to light in the last century.

Still, Constant and Mill weren’t entirely wrong: the Greeks saw rights as protections primarily not from the state, but from one another.

Because the state as we understand it — a monopoly on legitimate violence, backed by a powerful repressive apparatus — didn’t exist in the Greek polis.

In the 4th century BCE, most Greek cities were democratic. They had no heads of state, no central government, and no bureaucratic hierarchy. Officials weren’t professionals — they were everyday citizens, randomly chosen for short terms to manage specific areas of city life. Every citizen had a chance to participate. The courts were juries of citizens, also chosen by lot. There was no public prosecutor: cases were brought by private individuals. Even law enforcement was rudimentary — in Athens, a city of 150,000, just 11 officials (also selected by lot) oversaw public order, ran the prisons and carried out executions, assisted by Scythian slaves. Everything else including enforcing most verdicts was up to victims, their families, or volunteers.

That wasn’t as chaotic as it sounds: people who refused to obey court rulings were first stripped of their civic rights and then of legal protection altogether. Anyone could do whatever they wanted to them, including killing them, without consequences. So most people complied.

The flip side of having no police state was… not having a police state. The state wasn’t a formidable coercion machine to be protected from. If a citizen believed their rights were violated, they didn’t sue the state — they sued the responsible magistrate.

You could say eleutheria sat somewhere between liberalism and anarcho-capitalism. Unlike a typical modern state, which monopolizes legitimate force, the Greek polis didn’t monopolize violence — but it did monopolize its legitimacy. Law enforcement was private, but the laws and warrants themselves had to be publicly approved.

Was this a golden mean? The Greeks themselves saw it that way. They weren’t willing to trade eleutheria for any other kind of freedom. When they lost wars and were subjected to foreign systems of rule, they reinstated democracy the moment they regained autonomy.

It’s ended after the lost Achaean War, when Greece became a Roman protectorate. Greeks managed to keep independence in managing their internal affairs, but they had lost eleutheria. Because to a Greek, you couldn’t be free if you had a master in Rome, even one who left you alone. When Greece was formally annexed into the Roman Empire in the 1st century BCE (Rhodes and several other Ionian islands held out another century), little changed in practice. Some cities, like Athens and Sparta, were granted civitas libera — “free city” status — which meant they could govern themselves and were exempt from Roman taxes.

Eleutheria — freedom as having no masters — lasted about six centuries. Or three and a half, if we count only from the advent of Athenian democracy. Not a world record by any means, but not fleeting either. No current political system has been in place for more than two centuries and a half.

Could something like eleutheria exist today?

That’s a separate question — and one that deserves its own reckoning.