Postulating that liberty is desirable (which I hold as rather axiomatic), does one’s own freedom require equal freedom of others in a society?
I would have to give a very affirmative response to this as inequality would bring hierarchy and higher positions of some than others position, which would stifle the freedom of those given lower postions
I think it does, yes. Although in a libertaran socety all are free in a negative sense (i.e. no government intervention) only the rich minority will have much positive freedom, the rest being constrained to sign away their freedom to support themselves through wage slavery.
If you mean equality of position (i.e. equal wealth, equal living conditions, etc.) then liberty and equality are mutually exclusive, because this kind of equality can only be attained by either placing undue restrictions on some to prevent them from advancing beyond everyone else or expropriating what rightfully belongs to those people by virtue of them having worked for and earned it and giving it to those who did not earn it.
If you mean equality of opportunity (i.e. equal application of the law), then liberty and equality are inseparable because no man can be free if the law applies differently to him than it does to someone else.
Then how can we be free if some have more freedom than others, due their economic gain? This means that the capitalist has more freedom than the proletarian has less freedom than the capitalist due to the fact that the capitalist owns the means of production while the proletarian is reduced to a wage slave. And even then the capitalist still has to live in a society made bare by the alienation of the majority.
The person with more money may be able to actually do more things, but they are both equally free. Freedom to do something is not a guarantee that you will be able to do it–such a guarantee would actually intrude on the freedoms of others by making them slaves to you if you were not able or willing to obtain what you needed to do something by yourself.
And how are employees “slaves”? No one’s holding a gun to anyone’s head, and employees are not going to have their feet chopped off if they quit their jobs. The consequences may be undesirable, yes, but there’s no one stopping them.
I dont have much time but…
The poor have to deal with debts, bills, rents etc. while the rich get it easy. And as Grave Disorder said rights do bring responsibilities in a society.
Yeah it’s not like they are going to starve to death if they quit the job. I’ve seen the same amount of discipline and maltreatment of some in a corporation that I’ve seen in a prison or monastery. Some major CEO (can’t remember who) admitted that capitalists shouldn’t whine about totalitarianism - if a multi national was a government it would called as such.
[quote=“Metavoid”]
Postulating that liberty is desirable (which I hold as rather axiomatic), does one’s own freedom require equal freedom of others in a society?
There are varying degrees of freedom. one does not need equal freedom of others to have a sense of ones own freedom, although the unequality will affect others.
The main justification for liberalism is the equal moral worth of humans. Nobody is better qualified than you to decide what the best life for you is, or even which beliefs and values you adopt. Similarly, every competent adult human is best qualified to determine her own good. Nobody has the moral authority to say “you should do this”, as noone but you can decide what morality is. It is this sort of moral equality that justifies equal liberties for all. Everyone is equally their own best judge. Considering that, it is easy to extend the argument to everyone has an equal right to the resources required for their capacity to choose to flourish, i.e. public education, health etc. Of course, it is also a small step to go the other way, and say freedom is the absoloute value, and should not be compromised. Even the libertarians base this account of freedom on the moral equality of humans. Their whole argument is that everyone should be free to make up their own minds about how they will collect and dispose of resources.
The liberty question is always interesting because people seem top have different opinions on what liberty is (even a libertarian like me will disagree eith other libertarians on the meaning).
One has to ask what balance of freedom from’s (fear, starvation, injury, etc…), with the appropriate amount of freedom to’s (speech, movement, belief, et al.).
In a way, the question about liberty can be like asking “what flavor chicken do you like?” Especially given the difference in people’s tatse for it and what their desires are.
I would imagine the way to prove or disprove a given idea in this is to try to come up with a socity model where you have hierarchy and liberty. I wouldn’t be surprise if you find that the one thing more important than mere liberty is morale though. Make people feel happy and useful, and they’ll believe they have liberty.
liberty has equality at its basis, this equality is that of the basic, as grave disorder said, the ‘negative liberty’. equality in the sense that no one is less or more free than the other, within ones private sphere, to have the freedom of opinion, thought, beliefs, desires. etc…
‘positive liberty’ is a more complicated topic because it involves what is being acted out. the fundamental equality lies in the concept of negative liberty.
Have you ever read Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut?
Several questions, in an attempt to understand.
Can there be any other basis for a standard of conduct than that which assumes (maybe arbitrarily) the individual as the only a priori unit of consideration? In other words, can we assume social interactions as somehow prior to the individuals whose interrelations comprise said interactions?
Looking at human society - and excepting the necessary non-human environemnt for a moment - where do we begin to establish a first standard, even if only for means of communication?
What then is liberty? Can it only be defined in the negative, as the absence of compulsion, or does liberty obtain in actuals and actual relations? Does the individual need to be the first standard of liberty?
I would posit - even if only temporarily - that yes, the individual is the basic unit of liberty. But how much of our understanding of liberty is determined or influenced by the tools we employ, as individuals in a social network, to define our own personhood? And how much of tool usage, both intellectual and material, is a matter of the socialization of individual efforts?
Is there a single tool that is entirely unsocial?
What then is equality? The very word has its origins in equus, in the horse, at least as far as the Latin of the word goes. And the equality implicit in two persons who approach on horseback is different from the the kind of egalitarianism that underscores our own understanding of interaction.
For the Hellenes, the first revolution was the idea of Isonomy, the independence of person and name. From isonomy, the separation of the individual from others, arbitrarily, in matters of politics and speech, to the beginnings of democracy, only several generations passed. How does the phenomena of self-isolation relate to the development of free association, that the social isolation of individuals seems essential to their cooperation in liberty?
And how does this social isolation of the individual as an individual alter the practices, and therefore the kinds of tools evolved, which provide the framework for political development?
Does the isolation of the individual - idealized as a persona - in the social interactions inform our understanding of liberty and egalite?