Ideas Of Equality And Liberty example essay topic

The socialist tradition is one of opposition to the capitalist idea of competition amongst individuals in the name of personal gain. Babeuf also went on to say, "Society must be made to operate in such a way that it eradicates once and for all the desire of man to become richer, wiser and more powerful than others". This has led commentators to claim that equality is the key socialist view of society because it seeks to replace the inequality of the capitalist society with an equal social structure. According to Crosland, equality would remove social antagonism because the divide due to the envy and resentment causes the class war. On the other hand, socialism also has many libertarian thinkers and ideas. Liberal socialists believe socialism to be the key to maximizing liberty through the self-direction of small communities.

They want the removal of oppressive state and class structures in order to free the individual. Perhaps the most notable was Fourier who demanded complete freedom from crippling conventions and was quite prepared to have both the rich and the poor in his Utopia. He even went so far as to envisage the investment of capital for profit. However, libertarianism is often seen as too radical.

Libertarianism is the demand for freedom in the sense of the total absence of restraints, external and internal. There are some prominent socialists, who have made equality their primary aim. Syndicalism is non-libertarian because it emphasizes group loyalty and working class solidarity and sees their future society organized along trade union lines. Lenin also disassociates himself from the idea of liberalism. He saw the future of society being based on the idea of equality and said that after the revolution there would be a move "form formal equality to actual equality". However, Lenin does go on to modify his stance and his "New Economic Policy signaled a compromise with private enterprise and an acceptance of the importance of liberty".

A closer look at the writings of Marx, Engels, Tawney, and Crosland will go to further show how the ideas of equality and liberty are actually linked within socialist thought. Marx, especially in his later works, adopts a strong egalitarian tone. He talks of a vast association of people, the establishment of industrial armies, and the need for a directing authority for production in the future. Of the Gotha program he writes "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" This quote outlines how goods would be allocated along egalitarian lines under communism. In addition, it shows that he is putting equality over liberty. According to Marx, there is no liberal right for the individual to pursue greater personal wealth, but that this is not infringing on his freedom because under communism, men will find true freedom as social individuals.

Marx does not believe there to be any conflict between his specific ideas of equality and liberty. However, Marx's own specific type of equality is the equality of distribution according to needs and not the bourgeois concept of equality of treatment. Engels goes on to argue that equality means different things to different people at different times. "Thus the idea of equality, whether in its bourgeois or in its proletarian form, is itself a historical product, the creation of which required definite historical conditions that in turn themselves presuppose a long previous history. It is consequently, anything but an eternal truth". He makes a further point that goes on to link equality and liberty by saying that an individual cannot be free if he is at the economic mercy of another.

"Equality must not be merely apparent, must not apply merely to the sphere of the state, but must also be real, must also be extended to the social and economic spheres". Crosland and Tawney also believe that equality and liberty are interdependent. Tawney states that "liberty is rightly preferred to equality when the two of them are in conflict, but then goes on to qualify this by saying that if liberty is properly interpreted in an economic, social and political sense then it is in fact, equality in action.