An insightful quote from economist Lars Pålsson Syll, who blogs here, on the nature of freedom and its relationship to welfare and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen’s concept of capabilities. The latter, contrary to the beliefs and wishes of many libertarians and neoliberals, can be enabled via state intervention:
“State intervention does not necessarily mean that our freedoms are restricted. They can, on the contrary, enable and increase real freedom. Talking about freedom in abstractu counts for nothing. What really means anything is – as Sen has often stressed – capabilities. What joy does the freedom of movement give the disabled person if no one enables him to use this freedom? What good does it bring us to have freedom of the press if there are no newspapers or journals where we can put forward our views? When estimating welfare more weight should be laid on positive freedom (ability to achieve desired goals) instead of only negative freedom (absence of outer restrictions). Welfare is, as already pointed out in Sen’s Tanner Lecture 1979, best understood in terms of capabilities . Positive freedom is a kind of capability to function that has a direct value of its own, while the resources that can increase this capability only get an instrumental value in so far as they help us to achieve that which we really value – our capability to function under different circumstances. It is not possession of commodities or perceived satisfaction that at first hand give a measure of well-being, but our capability to make use of our possessions. To focus on capability means emphasising what goods enable a person to do, and not the goods in themselves. A metric of goods or utilities does not get hold of the fact that the point of our belongings is to create possibilities of choice. Functioning and capability are what matters. What makes us value our car is not the fact that we perhaps own it, but that we can use it to take us where we want to get. Even if freedom is something important in itself, it is most often not for its own sake that we search for it.
Libertarians are oblivious of the fact that some persons’ entitlements can restrict the freedom of others, and that the want of property not only restricts the self-determination of the property-less but also makes him an instrument of others’ freedom. To this they respond that the more resources there are in society, the more the rich invest their capital to make production effective, and the richer all members of society become. In the libertarian society the egoism of the rich is linked fruitfully with the rest of society.”
Lars Pålsson Syll (2016), ‘Neoliberalism and neoclassical economics’, in On the use and misuse of theories and models in mainstream economics, College Publications on behalf of the World Economics Association, p.142-3.
The Political Economy of Development 
A strong state is the prerequisite of liberty, and to become strong it is necessary for the state to bind itself to rules and institutions capable of controlling and constraining it. This theme, pioneered by the 16th century thinker Bodin, can be found throughout the history of liberty in modern times and at different stages in the development of living liberalism (Hobhouse, Dewey).
In my view, social democracy belongs in this tradition, being a liberalism updated to deliver capabilities that were unthinkable or hardly within reach when the modern state and liberalism were still in their infancy (though liberals were friends and supporters of the enlightened state from the outset).
A mature liberalism inevitably becomes a social democratic enterprise, a development that has taken place in the 19th and 20th century, and we are lucky to partake in it (though nowadays social democratic parties are hard at work destroying classic social democracy).
Indeed, it is the great irony of my research into freedom (initiated from a libertarian point of view) that it would ultimately convince me of the virtues of social democracy at a time when social democrats have given up their core convictions, having become hangers-on (like other traditional parties and the Catholic Church) of a new religion, the culturally dominant green mythology.
Anyone interested in the connection between the strong state and (getting the best from) liberty ought to read the absolutely magnificent book by Stephen Holmes: “Passions and Constraints. On the Theory of Liberal Democracy”.
Thanks for your comment Georg. I defer to you on these kind of ideas as I know you have been exploring them in some depth. I think we part company on green issues, but in general I support a social democratic government for its potential to try and achieve and balance economic performance, social justice and freedom for as wide a share of the population as possible. But I realize that this will not always be achieved as economic and other changes shift the balance of wealth and power in different directions over time and between varying vested interests. Still, for now it is worth making a strong case for.
Essentially the same distinction was made between “negative” and “positive” freedom by philosopher Isaiah Berlin. There are those who might say his intervention was the elaboration of the difference between Mill and Marx. Without a proper welfare state, freedom is negative in that individuals can do what they want if it does not directly impinge on others. Of course, the reality of class society is that this negative freedom is weighted in favour of property owners. On the other hand, positive freedom is where classes that rely on selling their labour benefit from redistribution that enables them to make real choices. So there is a realist tradition which includes Berlin and Sen. However, we now live in an age where valuing the functioning of a car can have detrimental impacts on the economy and the environment. The leasing of cars may help add to unsustainable credit bubbles, while the unsustainable nature of global capitalism in environmental terms seems clearer on each congested road.
Thanks for your comment and for mentioning the ideas of Berlin on positive and negative freedom, which are surely worth clarifying for those who, perhaps unthinkingly, argue for one side or the other in line with their own political biases. Unalloyed negative freedom for some can reduce it for others. Both kinds are vital to debates over the role of the state in promoting or restricting freedom on an individual and a collective level. The whole issue is more nuanced than we realize.