You need both. Positive liberty is “power”, and negative liberty is “lack of resistance”.

You can’t have freedom without responsibility. Freedom isn’t something that you can *take*, it’s something that you need to be *given*. So… if you want freedom yourself (in either form) then you should agree to give it away to others. This treaty is called “tolerance”.

> If so, how can it be implemented without falling into totalitarianism?

Empower poor people by the redistribution of liquid resources through tax. Maintain public facilities and spaces for equal civilian access.

“The Free Market Robs us of our Humanity”, “No Meaning”- I disagree. In the free market, we do what we want. If you want to be kind, you can be. If you want your humanity, you can keep it.

I could go on and elaborate, but I won’t (people have been arguing about this for centuries and this is not the point of your post!).

To your question: Is “positive liberty” the only true freedom (or even possible)? I would say no. By my understanding, for everyone to have the opportunity to “realize their potential”, they must have access to resources. Is there enough resources for everyone? no. That is the basic economic problem- not enough stuff for everyone’s wants. So, how are the scarce resources divided? Well, the free market is a solution; but this is not popular with you, lol. How else? There is no other “fair” way to do it that would satisfy everyone. A government could decide arbitrarily, but then the question “why are your needs more important than mine (or vise versa)?” comes up. Bottom line: there is no system that satisfies everyone’s needs completely, but the free market comes closest because it allows people create so much resources (debatable, I know).

There are different flavors of anarchy–something like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism

perhaps comes close to providing something like positive liberty in the form of trade unionism. It is based (I think) on the ideas that smaller, focused, groups can decide for themselves what is best. All well and good were one to start from scratch…but getting there from here is a question that can’t be ignored. Just because a solution exists does not mean it will be implemented.

I love that film BTW, along with Curtis’ others, such as “The Power of Nightmares”, “The Century of Self”, “Pandora’s Box”, and the “Mayfair Set”…all available on either Google Video or Youtube. There all in the same style…I can’t imagine how much time that guy spends in the archive room.