LIBERTY AND EQUALITY LINKED

An often repeated message of these postings has been that our liberty is built upon equality. Given much of our current political punditry, you would think that equality and liberty are antagonistic – to bolster one, it is said, is usually at the expense of the other. For example, if you decide on a policy that promotes equal opportunity through investment in public education, that means higher taxes and higher taxes diminish the liberty of citizens who have to pay those taxes. Of course, libertarian thought, the bedrock view of such movements as the Tea Party movement, has this idealistic vision that we not only should have lower taxes to bolster liberty, but that government and other collectives are counterproductive – that they are oppressive by their very nature and they cause many more problems than they are even able to address, much less solve. Such a view is weary of any approach that diminishes the individual, individual initiative, and self-reliance. Those who share this view look at communal and governmental means to address societal problems as attacking their liberty – their ability to be autonomous. Here is my take: liberty depends on the social, the community, the government. This posting is dedicated to making this point, but to provide context, let me just add at the beginning that, like any good idea, a concern over overbearing or overreaching government, if taken to the extreme, oversimplifies reality.

Let me amplify. Effective community relies on viable government because once communal arrangements are formed, competing interests are inherent. From the most basic to the most complex social settings, there will be those who want X and those who want Y. Conflicts occur in a real world of limited resources so there will be winners and losers in these conflicts. To resolve these unavoidable conflicts, authoritative power will be needed. Short of having that authority vested in the hands of established government, people will take matters into their own hands. While the establishment of government does not guarantee a just resolution of conflict, conflicts that are left to the involved parties will easily deteriorate into “resolution” that favors the party with more coercive power, especially as the stakes of these conflicts reach significance to the parties involved. This, in turn, will result with some combination of force and oppression that will tend to establish itself, permanently transcending the immediate conditions. For social settings beyond those of families or small groups, government is that institution that can provide legitimate authority; that is, authority that handles conflicts objectively. Only then can one be reasonably hopeful that the conflicts one encounters will potentially be settled fairly; only then can one speak of a system of justice being possible. Assuming one sees these social qualities as essential for normal life, to avoid needing government one has the choice of living a hermit's life – an option some take. For most of us, such an option is unthinkable. Therefore, a meaningful conception of liberty has to be within the context of a social, communal existence governed by a government with sufficient power to resolve conflicts.

With that context, what do we have? How do such realities relate to the desire for liberty; how do they relate to our striving to be autonomous? Autonomy is that state in which liberty exists. To be autonomous means to be able to reasonably control our conditions of life, to, as Richard Dagger puts it, be able to “self-govern, self-rule, or self-legislate.”¹ He points out that in order to harbor such capacities, certain social processes and conditions need to be in place and that those processes and conditions depend on a communal arrangement that can be only minimally dependent on one's self-initiative. He emphasizes two such processes and conditions: educating and the availability of opportunities.

I believe that libertarians have a very limited view of autonomy. They see it as this quality of life in which humans are entitled to just do their thing and enjoy unhampered the fruits of their labor. But autonomy presupposes a set of competencies we acquire. After all, we don't just see infants, children, or even teenagers as being autonomous. They lack the skills, physical dexterity, and/or maturity to self- rule. To cast them out into the real world before their time and tell them to take on an autonomous existence would, in most cases, lead to disastrous consequences. We see autonomous people as having at least some minimal level of skills, physical dexterity, and maturity to be considered autonomous. And even then, we can say some are better at being autonomous than others. And how do we get to be skilled and mature enough to take on an autonomous status? We are taught by others. And that teaching presupposes a communal arrangement of some sort. So important is this teaching that all societies develop appropriate institutions to provide that instruction. Prominent in providing this instruction are the institutions of the family and of the schools, but there are others such as the world of employment and its related practices and the media. Through both formal and informal modes of instruction, one learns those capacities that make up what one needs to know in order to be autonomous. We don't learn all of that by our very lonesome.

Now let's think about the implications of such a reality. In order to promote that autonomy, that liberty, for a general population, one needs a fairly strong commitment toward equality. We can't really make the claim that a people are free if the availability of appropriate education is not sufficient among the different strata of a society. Otherwise, liberty will be the province of the few – to those who are advantaged by wealth and/or status. How do I know this? A cursory look at history provides the evidence. From the social conflicts that befell ancient Rome to the long cycle of competing interests of any modern nation, we have the class clashes that characterize the histories of nations and empires. And one of the conflicts that is part and parcel of a class clash is the question of who will receive that education that will provide for a more meaningful and fuller autonomy. As Thomas Jefferson is famously quoted as saying: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Associated with these conflicts has been the developing number of choices societies offer individuals as a result of evolving social structures and advancing technologies. Meaningful autonomy reflects one having choices and the number of choices a people or an individual has determines the quantity and quality of that autonomy. Again, the individual can work toward making more options available, characterized as broadening his or her horizons, but he or she does not determine the number of potential options within a given society. That number is determined by the social conditions of that society – it is a product produced by the collective of a given society. Therefore, the quality and quantity of autonomy is again determined by social conditions in which the more the members of the society can participate and expect viable opportunities, the more there will be diverse options. Look at our own society, as technology – again dependent on education and other infrastructure assets including a viable government – has opened up avenues to success, more chances to attain that success become available. Those changes are equalizers; they pry open demands for more diverse skills and competencies. When differing people take part, they in turn bring into the mix different ways of seeing things and innovations continue to multiply. This reality, along with the need to be educated by others in order to experience meaningful autonomy, is the product not of individual effort, but of a social interdependence that functions more productively and efficiently under a general institutionalization of equality. Our liberty and its meaningful enhancement is born, maintained, and strengthened under a system of equality.

All of this is complicated in practice and, as with extreme individualism, extreme collectivism is simplistic and dangerous. Reality cannot be bottled so easily and attempts to do so have proven tragic, often at the hands of well-intentioned groups. Those who engage in such thinking and action are swayed by an ideology held by a form of traditional thinking – a thinking that is concrete and definite. Under a guise of principled commitment, they deny the existence of those realities that don't disappear so as to accommodate their demands. We are left with and must come to terms with both a need to respect the individual and our social condition. Both are advanced when we understand the relation between equality and liberty. 

 

1Daggar, R. (1997). Civic virtue: Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford. The argument presented in this posting relies on the ideas expressed by Dagger, especially that portion of the argument that relates to the functions of education and societal options.