False necessity

False necessity, or anti-necessitarian social theory, is a contemporary social theory that argues for the plasticity of social organizations and their potential to be shaped in new ways. The theory rejects the assumption that laws of change govern the history of human societies and limit human freedom. It is a critique of "necessitarian" thought in conventional social theories (like liberalism or Marxism) which hold that parts of the social order are necessary or the result of the natural flow of history. The theory rejects the idea that human societies must be organized in a certain way (for example, liberal democracy) and that human activity will adhere to certain forms (for example if people were only motivated by rational self-interest).

False necessity uses structural analysis to understand socio-political arrangements, but discards the tendency to assemble indivisible categories and to create law-like explanations. It aims to liberate human activity from necessary arrangements and limitations, and to open up a world without constraints where the possible becomes actual.

Modern social theory contains a tension between the realization of human freedom and the necessity of social rules.Liberal political theorists of the seventeenth century, such as Hobbes and Locke, saw the issue as one of sacrificing some individual freedoms in order to gain others. They understood social rules as enabling constraints—necessary impositions that limited activity in some spheres in order to expand it in others. (For example, traffic laws compel us to drive on one side of the road but allow us to travel more freely than if we were constantly assailed by oncoming traffic.) In the socio-political realm, these early liberal thinkers argued that we agree to surrender our freedom for political authority in order to gain greater freedom from a state of nature. The sovereign authority is a constraint, but it allows freedom from the constraints that other individuals might impose upon us. In this way, rules are always seen as a means of increasing freedom rather than rescinding it.

These early Enlightenment thinkers opposed existing religious, aristocratic, and absolutist institutions and organizations as the natural state of the world. However, they did not argue for the absolute freedom of the individual outside of any constraining rules. For them, human activity was still subject to certain types of social arrangements that followed a historical necessity.

...
Wikipedia