Equality vs. Liberty?

Abstract

If we were asked to generalise on the various ideas and movements we have just discussed under the rubric of ‘equality’, we would have to say that they represent a concerted and persistent thrust, violent or gradual, towards the dissolution of whatever are considered to be the more egregious class distinctions, and a concomitant and apparently inseparable effort to socially orchestrate a broader distribution of material possessions. The simultaneous (and sometimes coterminous or collocated) movements toward liberty, on the other hand, march to the sound of a different drummer. Like Hobbes they may define liberty as the right to preserve one’s own nature and do what they want without unnecessary obstacles, or like Locke they may add the stipulation that what they want to do should be in accord with the laws of nature or morality, or like Mill they may stipulate that others not be harmed. But the emphasis is generally on a lack of restriction in doing what one wants or considers to be right.

Today, when only the herd animal is honoured and dispenses honor … — is greatness possible?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

In Britain, the Labour party finds itself in danger of being torn asunder by the demands of some to equalize and of others to give greater liberty to enterprisers. In the United States your liberty to contribute without limit to the campaign of your favorite candidate and his liberty to spend must contend with the ideal of equality of opportunity in the electoral race. The liberty of free association, for example, in schools, clubs, and the like, confronts the egalitarian ideal of integration. And again the ideal of equal access to medical treatment finds itself in tension with the liberty of the individual to select his or her own doctor.

J. Roland Pennock, Democratic Political Theory

[After the Second World War] the Russian and American peoples were ill equipped for understanding each other. The Americans saw their summum bonum in a personal liberty which they rather oddly identified with equality, whereas the Russian Communist dominant minority saw their summum bonum in a theoretical equality which they still more oddly identified with liberty.

Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History