Brad DeLong — Must-Read: Quentin Skinner: Liberty Before Liberalism and All That

The Roman conception of the free state, assumed later by Marx, is contrasted with the liberal conception of freedom based on Hobbes's adoption of the scientific/engineering meaning of freedom as freedom of motion (action).

WCEG — The Equitablog
Must-Read: Quentin Skinner: Liberty Before Liberalism and All That
Brad DeLong

John Locke is considered to be the "father" of English liberalism. His view of freedom is freedom of action rather than legal status.

T]he Idea of Liberty, is the Idea of a Power in any Agent to do or forbear any Action, according to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is preferr’d to the other. (E1-4 II.xxi.8: 237) — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

David Graeber — Two notions of liberty revisited - or how to disentangle Liberty and Slavery

The modern liberal concept of liberty has roots in Roman law and the Roman understanding of the master and the slave. We need to unpick that heritage to imagine a better basis for our political aspirations.

Our idea of human freedom, with its origins in Roman law, is permeated through and through with the institution of slavery. But its links to slavery twisted the meaning of "freedom" from an empowering notion of what it is to live with dignity in a society of equals to one of mastery and control. Understanding the history of the concept should help us to regain the first and fight the second of those notions....

To understand the history and, ultimately, incoherence of the notions of liberty grounded in Roman notions of dominion is to potentially free ourselves to re-imagine liberty. For example, to recognise the forgotten "obligations owed everyone in the entire world" inherent in our freedoms; but also to resurrect the older notion of liberty as the state achieved by citizens acting together in determination of a common good.

Open Economy

Two notions of liberty revisited - or how to disentangle Liberty and Slavery
David Graeber
(h/t Charles Hayden)

David Graeber — Two notions of liberty revisited - or how to disentangle Liberty and Slavery

Some background on the development of the concept of liberty in the West. We need to examine the concept of liberty-freedom closely in light of the current conflict in economics over the market state based on the right to unlimited acquisition of property and the welfare state based on the distribution of property between private use as "utility" advocated by neoliberalism and public use for public purpose advocated by social democracy. These are based on two different notions of freedom, the first being the master of oneself and the second that of the citizen of a polis.

Resilience

Two notions of liberty revisited - or how to disentangle Liberty and Slavery
David Graeber