64 SOCIAL SCIENTIST conclusion on their precise nature. Is the defence of political rights liberal or Marxist? Is privacy always a liberal value? Is a rebellion against existing institutions liberal or Marxist? With these remarks of caution on the question of the relationship between liberalism and Marxism, I come to the issue itself. In Marx's writings there are three distinct views on the relationship which any further consideration would do well to keep in mind. On the first view, there is no dispute between liberals and Marxists either over key political and social concepts or over the various conceptions to which they give rise. The difference between the two lies in their respective diagnoses of society and on the corresponding prescription each offers. Liberals, being sociologically naive and unable to see the historical nature of things, cannot fully implement their own principles. Marxists armed with the more scientific principles of historical materialism can more effectively put the same principles into practice. On this view then Marxism is only a fuller realisation of at least one version of liberalism. The second view claims that the difference goes somewhat deeper to the middle layer of alternative conceptions. Each of the two traditions works with the same core of concepts of rights, justice, freedom and equality but there exists a perpetual contest over their rival conceptions. For every element in the liberal universe there exists then a Marxist counterpart; a liberal conception is opposed by a socialist conception of rights, liberal justice is similarly challenged by socialist justice and so on. Finally, a third view states that differences go all the way down to the deepest recesses, to such an extent that Marxists and liberals inhabit different conceptual universes. Marxists, then, do not offer a different conception of rights and justice but reject these concepts themselves. Against one set of concepts, they propose a fundamentally different one. For example, the entire morality of recht is opposed by an alternative morality of emancipation. For such Marxists then, the term liberal is a term of abuse; one can dismiss just about anything merely by calling it liberal. I have gone over each of these positions not to propose another position or take sides on the available ones, but to highlight the complexity of the issues involved on this question. Frankly, I do not know where I stand at present, perhaps only because I have not thought the issue through but I would like to know who has. There is however one issue on which I believe I have a more weighty opinion. I believe on this point the difference between liberals and socialists is fundamental. At the centre of liberalism stands a principle for which the self, conceived in the barest possible way, has priority over her purposes, its capacity of choice supersedes any particular way of good life that is chosen. This self is conceived not only in abstraction from any substantive considerations about life-plans but also in complete isolation from all other selves. This is the self as pure subjectivity, and subjectivity conceived as pure negativity. Any positive community of selves that emerges does so contingently, by a