Can Freedom and Equality coexist? It’s a fundamental point which draws a clear line between capitalism and socialism. Or to some extent, political right and left. To understand this point better, consider any two individuals living on this earth. Are they equal? They might have equal political and legal rights, but are they equal in the truest sense of the word? Will they make the same amount of money throughout their lives? Will they work for the equal number of hours? The answer to these questions can turn out to be yes, only if there are certain impositions in place, thereby curbing the freedom of one or the other.
A lesson from history
In their book The Lessons of History, Will Durant and Ariel Durant discuss this problem. The two suggest that inequalities arise not because of human intervention but the lack of it. In fact, they go a step further and argue that our attempts at bringing equality may do more harm than good. Here’s what they say.
Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilisation. Hereditary inequalities breed social and artificial inequalities; every invention or discovery is made or seized by the exceptional individual, and makes the strong stronger, the weak relatively weaker, than before. Economic development specialises functions, differentiates abilities and makes me unequally valuable to their group. If we knew our fellow men thoroughly we could select thirty percent of them whose combined ability would equal that of all the rest. Life and history do precisely that, with a sublime injustice reminiscent of Calvin's God.
The argument is straightforward. It seems natural that we are born unequal in pretty much every sense: our features, appearances, capabilities, interests, etc, all of which contribute to the kind of life we are going to have. Yet, we know for sure that we cannot let the chaos of nature to take over. That is why we interfere, and we have to. And the moment we interfere, we are suppressing someone’s freedom. That’s the challenge.
So, to come back to our original question, can Freedom and Equality coexist? The short answer is no, but a slightly better answer is (as written by the Durants):
Freedom and Equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically, as in England and America in the nineteenth century under laissez-faire. To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed, as in Russia after 1917.
It seems like an impossible dream to have both freedom and equality at the same time. It’s also not possible to choose one between freedom and equality. What we can hope to achieve is to have a healthy combination of the two to a reasonable degree. This will help create a balance. If we tilt too much on one side, either left or right, the other will be compromised. To avoid such imbalance, we need a constant dialogue between the left and the right. That will benefit all of us in the long term.
Reference books:
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