Does the welfare state contribute to the development of human freedom? This central problem of political evaluation has been answered in various ways. Some have seen the mechanisms of a redistributive tax-transfer scheme and the state supply of education and health services as steps down the road to serfdom. Others have seen the welfare state as providing a set of institutions through which individuals could realize the positive freedom that came with identifying individual interest and social interest. Yet others have seen the economic security provided by the welfare state as a necessary condition for the enjoying of the traditional social and political liberties. And again others have seen the principle of satisfying needs as prefiguring a form of social organization in which persons are freed from the constraints of private property.

This essay critically assesses nine claims concerning freedom and the welfare state, the latter defined narrowly and the former broadly. On balance, the findings favour the welfare state. Allegations concerning its negative impact on freedom, where true, are contingently rather than inherently so. The positive impacts are more clearcut, and work to the benefit of citizens as a whole in addition to welfare recipients themselves.

This article is concerned with the extent to which systems of public welfare can be said to have reduced or enlarged personal freedom. It looks, first of all, at the kind of arguments which have been advanced both in support of, and against, the notion of ‘the Welfare State’ as a defender or promoter of individual liberty. Secondly, it examines some of the freedoms which are said to have been threatened or enhanced, including ‘freedom of choice’, ‘freedom of disposition’ and ‘freedom of action’. Finally, it argues that many of these are ‘secondary’ freedoms, contingent upon the primary condition of freedom from economic need. Following Roosevelt we conclude that ‘true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence’ and that, although public welfare may have been partly responsible for an overall ‘levelling-up’ of freedoms, the distribution of such freedoms still reflects inequalities of income, status and power.

Liberal economists argue that in general the market system promotes social welfare; but they usually accept that governments should relieve extreme poverty, even where this arises out of individuals' failure to insure themselves. A particularly common argument is that income maintenance is justified because more fortunate people feel compassion or obligation towards the poor. But this position is inconsistent. Given the assumptions necessary to support the claim that markets promote social welfare, there is no reason for anyone to suppose that the uninsured, however poor, are in special need; and so neither compassion nor obligation can arise.

Much of social policy involves a redistribution of resources. Such redistributive interferences with the market are often said to sacrifice freedom for the sake of competing goods such as humanity or social justice. The thesis of this paper is that this simple opposition of freedom and redistribution is mistaken. If freedom is defined empirically, redistributive transfers cannot simply remove freedom but must either transfer freedom from some to others or leave it unaffected. If freedom is defined normatively, it may be opposed to redistribution but that opposition then rests upon the value that gives freedom its meaning and not upon freedom as an autonomous value.