Two Towards a free society

The idea of liberty is a guide to action, rather than a specific prescription, and there is no single policy which is demanded by it. In a seminal essay, Charles Taylor makes the important point that all freedoms are not equal. He gives the example of two countries, one of which limits freedom of religion but does not have many traffic controls (his example was Albania), while the other, like the UK, has freedom of religion but a lot of traffic lights.⁹⁶ These are not equivalent. Freedom matters because it protects the things we value, like religion, education or the ability to discuss issues. A free society is not the same as a society where people are free to do whatever they want, or a society where the private sphere is not regulated. It is a society where certain key activities are protected, and capacities are developed, so that people can do the things they value.

A persuasive argument can certainly be made that a nation with a market economy or a free press is more likely to be ‘free’ than another, but it does not follow that more freedom is fostered effectively by the most libertarian position (unregulated trade, or the freedom claimed by pornographers). The reason for this is that the freedoms of each person have to be viewed in context: freedom in one sense has to be set against freedom in others, the freedom of one person may infringe on the freedom of other people, and the value of freedom depends on the value of the actions it is protecting. Which policies are necessary, and in what combination, is difficult to establish. In the following sections, I want to focus not on specific policies which might enhance freedom (such as rights for people in institutions or rules governing consent to medical treatment) but on the general conditions which are needed for freedom in the wider society. This is, of course, only part of a much broader set of issues.

If freedom is generally encouraged and respected, it has implications for the way in which society is organised, and the way in which politics is run. In social terms, the expression of freedom implies diversity and difference. A free society has to be pluralistic, in the sense of fostering and protecting a plurality of interests. In political terms, freedom implies empowerment and the protection of individual rights. These issues, taken together, are closely identified with the principles of liberal democracy.

There are three core arguments for diversity. First, diversity should be tolerated. Tolerance, like respect for persons, depends on our willingness to accept the validity of patterns of life and behaviour that are different from our own. This is a difficult injunction to accept, because at root most of us think the moral choices we make are better than the alternatives – that is why we make them. The idea that moral codes and norms apply only to ourselves and no one else is incoherent. The argument for tolerance is partly that we should do as we wish to be done by, and partly that tolerance is itself a virtue, but also that we all need to understand that we just might be mistaken.

Some people would argue that, beyond tolerance, diversity should be valued in itself. If people are valued, what they are, the way of life and what is different about them should be valued. Valuing diversity sounds good at first, like motherhood and apple pie, but there are objections to it. If the idea of ‘value’ has any meaning, it has to be differentiated. Some patterns of behaviour, and some forms of diversity, will be more valued than others. Tolerance is a more modest aim, and a more achievable one.

This leads on to the second argument: that diversity benefits a society. Diversity develops options. It makes new ideas and patterns of life available to people. From diversity there comes the capacity to change. Here, again, it seems important to attach several riders. There are patterns of life which need to be the subject of restrictions, either because they are damaging to people (traditional medicine is an example) or because they deny freedom (like some forms of religious indoctrination). It makes no sense to justify slavery in the name of freedom, or intolerance in the name of tolerance. The central argument, however, is hard to dispute: a vibrant society, an active economy and a strong culture depend on change and the ability to absorb new influences.

Third, diversity is the product of freedom. It is difficult to see how one can have one without the other. This is vulnerable to the objection that freedom is not necessarily something which should be valued in itself – what matters about freedom is the things it lets us do. Unless people all wish to do exactly the same, and it is difficult to see how in conditions of freedom this could happen, diversity is the inevitable consequence.

Wherever people live differently, and societies are diverse, there will be conflicting interests. Robert Dahl argues that any mechanism for decision making which reflects that plurality will come to bear the characteristics of a democracy.⁹⁷ Madison’s argument for majority voting is not based in the view that majorities know better than minorities: it is that voting represents different factions, and that those factions will coalesce differently on different issues, and the nature of majority changes as coalitions of interest change. He wrote:

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority – that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority on the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.⁹⁸

The problems with this approach arise when there is a consistent majority interest on an issue. Pluralism, in the political sense, relies on a sufficient degree of movement or instability to prevent that happening. Pluralism is sometimes caricatured in academic writing as representing a belief that power is distributed equally.⁹⁹ Pluralists do not say that. They say only that, for pluralism to work, interest groups and factions have to be sufficiently diverse to prevent any faction exercising consistent domination over others. Whether or not that obtains in practice is a matter of empirical fact.

There are close conceptual connections between liberty and democracy. There are more varieties of democracy than I can hope to refer to here, but even allowing for a certain vagueness of terms, democracy is seen as a protector of freedom and difference. Democracy is sometimes represented in terms of the rule of the majority. The pluralist understanding of democracy is very different: it is not about the rule of the majority, but the rights of minorities. Majority rule does not give the majority the authority to suppress the rights of minorities. A majority is nothing but a combination of different minorities.

Liberal democracy is based partly on the principles of liberal individualism; it is also strongly influenced by the American republican tradition, represented in The Federalist Papers.¹⁰² The key elements are individual liberty, pluralism, and the rule of law, and its primacy over government. Individual liberty, and to some extent the rights of minorities, is fundamental; a country which oppresses its minorities is generally considered not to be democratic on that account, even if it has the form of a democratic government in other respects.

Liberal democracy is identified less in terms of the specific mechanism of government than through observance of civil rights – equality before the law, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly – and political rights, including the right to free speech, the right to vote, and participation in politics. Political rights are often seen as fundamental to liberty, although some of the material I have reviewed up to now raises questions about that relative priority. Discussion of the full range of civil rights goes rather beyond the scope of this book, but there are three elements I think are particularly relevant, and which need to be acknowledged, even if I do not propose to discuss them at length. These concern freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and protection of the rights of individuals.

Freedom of assembly means that people are able to form groups without hindrance. The right of assembly has been restricted at many times in many countries, largely because of the (justifiable) fear that when people get together in groups, they may be able to discuss things that rulers may not wish them to discuss. Freedom of assembly is necessary, first, for social interaction: restrictions on assembly for some purposes, like restrictions on demonstrations and political meetings, are difficult to enforce without rules that apply to other purposes, like larger social events or religious congregations. One of the reasons that the guilds of the 17th and 18th centuries formed secret societies, including arrangements for mutual aid and social protection, was that such meetings had to be arranged in defiance of the laws. Social interaction in these terms is necessary, in turn, for cultural activity and religious worship. Second, freedom of assembly is necessary for economic development. The link is more debatable, because some economies have succeeded in promoting growth despite important restrictions on political and social development, but economic exchange depends on markets – interaction, the flow of information and the development of networks – which presume assembly. Third, freedom of assembly is essential for the genesis of political activity. Political organisation and development in democratic countries depends on pluralism – not only on structures but on the formation of groups, interests and factions. This is, of course, precisely why freedom of assembly has so often been suppressed.

Freedom of speech means that diverse views and opinions can be expressed. The importance of free speech is so well established that it seems beyond question. Without it, there can be no movement in science, in art, or government. The central arguments for free speech, stated by Mill in On liberty, are that the dissenting opinion may be true, or have a portion of truth, and that the received opinion, even if it is right, should not be closed to examination, and held only through prejudice. Mill writes:

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.¹⁰³

This does not mean, however, that speech is subject to no rules. Free speech (like free action) is necessarily restricted by the effect that it has on other people. Speech can restrict the freedoms of other people, and there are forms of speech – like hate speech – which people have a right to be protected from. Some spoken actions can be criminal offences. This includes incitement and conspiracy to commit criminal offences, incitement to racial hatred and ‘public libels’, including in the UK obscenity and blasphemy. In Schenck v United States (249 US 47, 1919), Justice Holmes argued: ‘The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic’. (Theatre staff, by the way, are usually instructed not even to use the word ‘fire’; the front of house staff are alerted with a coded message.)

There are two possible rationales for these restrictions. One is that, like any other freedom, freedom of speech has to respect the freedoms of others; liberty is not license. The second rationale is that freedom of speech is a misnomer – it is not what we should mean at all. Freedom of speech may have less to do with free speech, or free expression, than it has to do with the rights of the audience – the rights that people have to obtain information and differing points of view, and the rights they have to be protected from hateful and damaging material. On that account, both freedom of speech and the restrictions on it are based in the same kinds of rights.

Third, there is the protection of the rights of individuals. In the previous section I argued that the rights of minorities were fundamental to democracy. Most liberals, even if they agree with the sentiment, would describe this in different terms. The core of liberal democracy is represented in terms of the rights of each individual, and so of each and every person. The rights of minorities are protected in so far as they represent the rights of the individuals who compose them. They are not protected in circumstances where (for example, in forced marriages or religious indoctrination) they threaten the liberties of individuals.

The rights of individuals are protected in three main ways. First is the rule of law: this means that the circumstances of each person are determined in accordance with commonly applied rules. The second principle is equality before the law and the related assertion of equal rights, which I shall come on to in Part Two of the book. The third is the liberty of the person, including physical protection from violation of the body, protection from coercion, and rights against deprivation of liberty.

Some of the examples I considered in the previous chapter also point to further special considerations. The ‘individual’ of On liberty is, more or less, a well-bodied adult of intermediate age, informed by a basic education and sufficiently secure in the necessities of life to be able to be concerned about other issues. That is not Mill’s intention, of course, but once these implicit norms are relaxed, many of the arguments are challenged. If the rights which are instituted are genuinely to be the rights of each and every person, they need to apply to everyone – children, older people, people with disabilities, people with dependencies, people in minority groups, and so forth. People who are vulnerable do not need fewer rights or less protection than others; they need more.

Liberty depends not only on the absence of coercion, but also on the capacity to act and the promotion of autonomy. Freedom is closely associated with command over resources, both because resources endow people with choices, and because people’s command over resources – their income and wealth – are indicators of entitlement and integration in society. Commerce, including trade and economic exchange, is fundamental to many capacities, and so to freedoms. The division of labour in society means that people specialise in the tasks they perform, and their work is subsequently traded. Everyone gains power as a result of the process: basic essentials, like food, clothing and heating, would be laborious and often unattainable without it. In right-wing thought, liberty is often linked with economic activity and production. Viewed historically, this is quite true. In mediaeval times, feudal societies limited people’s capacity to trade and exchange – people could not sell labour, land or housing. The development of negative freedom, in terms of the reduction of restraints, helped to foster commerce. The argument that commerce in turn fosters freedom, however, is based in a positive idea of liberty. If it fosters freedom, it is because it increases positive freedom – the power to act.

Economic development is also related to the process of inclusion. One of the most basic means of addressing poverty is by integrating people into economic processes. The process of social inclusion is concerned with the parallel process of integration into networks of social responsibility. Some of these networks are linked to economic processes, through patterns of employment, exchange and economic entitlement. Others depend on social processes, including the relationships of family, neighbourhood and community. The term ‘social capital’ is used to refer to the development of capacity through social networks – Putnam argues that it is important, not just for social relationships, but also for economic prosperity.¹⁰⁴ The use of the term helps to draw attention to factors which, although intangible, and difficult to quantify in any meaningful sense, nevertheless play a major role in determining people’s capacity. The power to act depends not only on the actions of individuals, but also on people acting in concert in a social context.

Collaborative action is also important for the development of capacity. For much of the past century, mutual action and aid has provided people with social protection (such as sickness insurance and unemployment benefits).¹⁰⁵ In several countries, this kind of provision has developed further: trades unions have provided housing (in Scandinavia) or health services (in Israel). The actions of governments in the provision of welfare services should be seen in the same light.¹⁰⁶ Governments have been engaged in similar kinds of activity to such mutual organisations, often for the same kinds of reason: this is what citizens expect their governments to do. Historically, the development of free societies has depended on a long process of development; a range of social, economic and political conditions need to be satisfied. In Development as freedom, Amartya Sen identifies five key areas of freedom. He refers to them as ‘instrumental’, partly because they create the conditions for development, and partly because they act to increase people’s capabilities. The five areas are political freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective security.¹⁰⁷ Political freedoms were considered in the previous section. Transparency guarantees – issues which include trust, disclosure and the exchange of information – can largely be understood in terms of the same kind of civil and political rights. The other issues, however, are not always considered in discussion of freedom. In this section, I want to move on to consider the economic and social conditions for freedom.

Arguments from the political right tend to see the existence of the market economy as both an expression of freedom, and a condition for it. Market economies have delivered prosperity, security and personal liberty for large numbers of people. The market is an expression of freedom because wherever large numbers of people are able to interact, express preferences and exchange, an economic market will exist. It is a condition for freedom because it gives people the capacity to act independently and to make their own choices. The ‘freedom to choose’ embraced by Milton Friedman¹⁰⁸ is not just freedom to get on with things without interference: it implies capacities and positive choices.

I agree with the gist of this argument, but I do not think it goes far enough. People need to be able to interact, to exchange, and to choose. The main limitation on such action is poverty. Poverty restricts freedom through material need, which obstructs the capacity to act; through economic limitations, which obstruct the ability to choose; and through exclusion from participation in society. The main policy response from international organisations, notably the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, has been to promote economic development, and to encourage the incorporation of poor people into the networks which formal economies establish. This is often linked to issues of governance, institutional structures as well as economic development. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes which developing countries have been asked to implement mirror the planning processes of governments in developed economies, such as the National Action Plans of countries in the European Union.

Poverty is not confined to developing countries. Significant minorities in the populations of developed economies are also liable to be excluded, usually because they are not part of the active labour force. These populations commonly comprise older people, unemployed people, people with disabilities, and single parents, who are mainly divorced women with principal responsibilities for child care. The proportions coming from each category vary, depending on the structure of the economy and the benefits system. This poses, in different terms from the problems facing developing countries, the same question: how to ensure that people are incorporated into the economy, and able to participate in society. Other aspects of this issue will be returned to later in the book, but for present purposes it should be sufficient to note that inclusion depends on redistribution, so that people in some groups support others. Every developed economy, without exception, has some form of redistributive mechanism, offering support to people in these categories. (The support is differentiated according to ideology, historical tradition and practice, but the very generality of the principle, considering the strength of the opposition, is surprising. I have considered the issue in much greater depth in a previous book.¹⁰⁹) If participation in economic markets is a condition of freedom, then so is social welfare provision.

For many neo-liberals, such as Hayek and Friedman, the operation of the economic market is fundamental to freedom. There are three interconnected threads in their arguments:

There are some reservations to make about these propositions, but broadly speaking they are right. In relation to the first, the development of economic markets has been closely associated with the development of democracy, civil rights and the modern understanding of personal freedom. The second proposition is more debatable, because the choice which markets offer is conditional on resources, and some people have much more restricted choice than others: but the main response to this is to ensure that resources are available to the poorest, not to prevent distribution through the mechanisms of the market. The third proposition is also disputable, because economic licence – like other forms of unrestricted freedom – can limit the freedoms of others; but it does seem clear that the world’s prosperous economies, and those which offer the highest degree of welfare, are all societies in which markets are well established and operate freely, while those which have restricted the market have generally failed to prosper.

What is much more contentious is the argument that in any of these respects, the liberty associated with markets is in some way compromised or threatened by systems of social protection. The first proposition is that the suppression of markets suppresses freedom. Does social protection, however, suppress markets? There is some reason to think that redistribution can alter the terms on which markets operate, but that is not the same thing; and there are circumstances in which social protection can promote markets, by incorporating people into the formal economy who would otherwise be excluded. Social security for unemployed people, for example, acts as an economic regulator, injecting money into the economy at times when production is restricted, and withdrawing it when production is booming.

Second, markets facilitate choice. Does social protection restrict choice? I argued earlier that the concept of freedom is itself redistributive: it implies the restriction of some people in order to make it possible for others to act. Exactly the same principle applies to the redistribution of resources for social protection, which restricts the choices of some people while expanding the choices of others.

Third, economic freedom enhances welfare. The argument that social protection reduces this effect is based on a particular interpretation of the workings of the economy. There may theoretically be some point or threshold at which social protection undermines the operation of the market, but the argument has no empirical foundation. As a general proposition, richer countries spend more on social welfare than poorer countries – but they have more to spend. If the comparison is confined, more relevantly, to developed economies, then countries with higher taxation or greater public sector expenditure do not have more or less successful economies than others.¹¹⁰ The figures can be confirmed from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) website.¹¹¹ Because of economic fluctuations, it is possible to use the evidence selectively to suggest that some countries with greater or lesser welfare expenditure are suffering adverse consequences, but the truth is that the figures are too diverse to support any firm conclusions. The level of expenditure on social protection is not visibly relevant to the success or failure of an economy.

The operation of the market should not be seen in isolation from the social circumstances which make it possible. In the first instance, the development of both free economies and democracy has depended on communication and the exchange of information. This is linked to civil and political rights, but it has an impact far beyond that, affecting economic and social interaction. Second, there has been the extension of basic education. Education is important for a range of issues, including the operation of the extended political community, the functioning of the economy, and the maintenance of communication in contemporary society. In theory, it is possible for these factors to be achieved adequately in a society where education is partial or intermittent, but the general experience of most countries is that progressive improvement in education and investment in human capital are requisites for development. Third, the establishment of economic security, including security in housing, health care and social protection, provides a necessary foundation for free action.

The main problem here, as elsewhere, is what happens to the minority who are not included in development. Poverty is once again a principal source of exclusion, although in the terms considered here – including communication and access to education – it is not the only issue: people can also be excluded from participation by disability and difference.

In attempting to establish the conditions of liberty, I have emphasised a cluster of inter-related issues and principles. None of them, taken separately, is sufficient to guarantee liberty. None of them, if denied, is enough to prevent a society from being free. (Even in the liberal democracies of the West, there are occasions when the rule of law is suspended, when people are subject to arbitrary arrest, and when the press is censored or barred from action. I write at a time when the executive of the US, with the complicity of other western governments, has suspended civil rights, the jurisdiction of the courts and international law in respect of people accused of engaging in armed conflict with them.) If these elements are neither necessary nor sufficient for freedom, I cannot be sure that I am right to emphasise their importance. But it does seem to be true that a society which has all these conditions is likely to be free; that a society which is denied them all is not free; and that a society in which some of them are threatened or restricted is at risk of losing its freedoms.

There are several ways to interpret the association of freedom with these principles. The first is that the conditions are indeed necessary, in the same way as certain biological conditions are necessary to life: their necessity only becomes apparent when one of them is denied, at which point the whole system starts to crumble. Some tyrannical governments have begun by denying or eroding rights, like the Nazis in the 1930s; the loss of one liberty is often a precursor to the loss of others. It is tempting to think there is a slippery slope, but it is not borne out by the experience of other countries: there have been many cases – like the suppression of native peoples, the sterilisation of women with learning disabilities in Northern Europe, or the treatment of prisoners – which have been unhappy, contradictory patterns in the gradual development and growth of liberal democracy.

A second interpretation, prompted by the disturbing elements of that history, is that the apparent linkage between the conditions of freedom is illusory: we only see these issues as evidence of ‘freedom’ because we prefer to think we have a free society, and use them as a cover while ignoring abuses of the rights of minorities (like minority ethnic groups, people with disabilities and non-citizens). There is a case to answer here. I have recently been engaged in research on the circumstances of minority ethnic groups in rural Scotland; the people I have been speaking to are routinely abused and threatened as they pass in the street.¹¹² There is much in the current pattern of western society which speaks of complacency and wilful blindness. At the same time, I think the argument goes too far; the experience of such minorities is precisely confined to minorities, and confined only to part of their experience, when there have been many times and regimes where oppression has been the experience of every person.

This prompts a third interpretation: that, despite the contradictions, we have been moving towards a free society. Awareness of the denial of freedom, and the strength of reaction to that denial, is evidence not of deterioration in standards but of gradual improvement. Issues like civil rights and freedom of the press are crucial, not because they guarantee freedoms in themselves, but because they make it possible to challenge practices which are in breach of principles. They are vital channels through which concerns about freedom can be expressed, and claims can be made to protect people who are denied rights and respect available to others.

There is a widespread view, on the political right, that there is a contradiction between freedom and the welfare state.¹¹³ Provision by the state seems to imply, in some sense, a restriction on freedom.

Part of the problem here lies in the idea of the ‘state’. The state is closely identified with the organs of government. It reflects deliberate action by formal institutions to intervene in society. The liberal prejudice against intervention is a valuable safeguard, but it is a prejudice, and as such it is defensible; state intervention is sometimes justified. Social welfare provision, however, is not necessarily the product of state action, and the formal institutions may depend substantially on the voluntary actions of people in society. Social welfare provision in the UK developed in large part from the influence of the Poor Law and the growth of the mechanisms of government. Eventually these came to supplant the role of other bodies in areas like health (where voluntary hospitals were taken over by the National Health Service) and social security (where the role of the friendly societies withered after the introduction of National Insurance). The literature on social welfare has been distorted by the experience of England and the countries most directly influenced by it – although the US did not have the English Poor Law, it was still understood in those terms.¹¹⁴ The English experience is not, however, typical of all countries. In much of continental Europe, social welfare provision developed through a combination of mutual, voluntary and charitable effort. Governments built on or complemented the process of development. In The welfare state, I argued that the development of social welfare follows certain general patterns of social development, and that intervention by the state usually features only as a later part of the process.¹¹⁵ If that is right, the welfare state is largely doing what people in other circumstances would try to do for themselves.

The economic literature on welfare provision tends to assume that preferences are formed and expressed individually. In those circumstances, the collective imposition of choices is nearly always inferior to the aggregation of differentiated individual choice – ‘inferior’ in the sense that it implies lower utilities for participants in aggregate.¹¹⁶ This begs important assumptions, however, about the nature of the activity which is being undertaken. In the first place, the actions which people take are not necessarily a reflection of individual preference. The terms of employment are commonly set either by employers or by conventional agreements between employers, unions and government. There may be no alternatives. Second, the terms on which social protection operates are often conventional. Money is not necessarily saved in funds: many arrangements work on a ‘pay as you go’ basis, where current contributions pay for current benefits. Third, money that is being used for the purchase of social protection is not necessarily going to be available for use by individuals if it is not spent that way. Salaries and wages are set by social convention, not by the intrinsic value of labour. Those conventions include social insurance contributions, which are part of the cost of employment. In effect, neither ‘voluntary’ nor ‘compulsory’ schemes for social protection may be what they seem.

There are certainly elements of compulsion, but one has to ask what the purpose of such compulsion is. In countries which developed voluntary systems,¹¹⁷ the people who were included in such systems were those who could afford it. Inclusion in mutualist schemes mainly begins, not with working-class movements, but with people in secure, stable, often middle-class occupations. The effect of compulsion is to push for inclusion at the margins, extending provision to people in lower-paid occupations. The element of compulsion is primarily experienced, in that context, by employers rather than employees: the effect is to require such employers to incorporate employees who otherwise would not be party to systems of social protection.

If social welfare provision is designed to protect the liberty of each person, it has to do three things. First, systems of welfare have to ensure that the liberty of the person is not endangered by lack of welfare. Poverty, illness, disability and homelessness threaten freedom as well as well-being. The institution of social protection is essential to protect people from coercion, to make it possible for them to act, and to preserve their autonomy.

Second, social welfare has to avoid restricting liberty. The potential that provision has to restrict liberty is not so much to do with taxation or state coercion, which have been the focus of much of the criticism of welfare by liberal opponents, as in the restriction of action in everyday life. Because the provision of welfare is often concerned with the intimate details of personal action, including such issues as physical dependency, personal care and household management, it has the potential to dominate choices and patterns of life. The argument for empowerment – an alteration of the balance – is central to the liberty of the people affected.

Third, beyond this, welfare provision has to promote and develop the capacity of each person to act. It is not good enough to avoid interfering: that is not an option in many of the cases I have considered. Non-intervention is an acceptance of unfreedom. Welfare systems have, rather, to have a developmental function, intended to ensure that each person has the capacity and power to act, which is essential to freedom.

Overall, however, social welfare is enabling rather than limiting. The general tenor of the arguments up to this point suggests that there is no conflict between freedom and social protection. On the contrary, they are directly complementary. Social welfare is necessary to enjoy freedom, and freedom is necessary to enjoy well-being.