Is there a compatibility between Liberalism and Equality?
Thesis: Is there a compatibility between the ideological form of Liberalism and the state of equality; in reference to key Liberal thinkers?
Hypothesis: Yes, there is a clear compatibility between Liberalism and Equality which can be explained through the examination of Early Classical Liberals, Late Classic Liberals and Modern Liberals in reference to Neoliberals from 1930 and onwards.
There are many distinctive links between Equality and the philosophical and political ideology of Liberalism; concentrated into 4 individual sections that I will compact into this essay to prove my above hypothesis to the thesis; “Is there a compatibility between the ideological form of liberalism and the state of equality; in reference to key Liberal thinkers?”
In this essay, I will be addressing Early Classical Liberalism interlinked with Equality ideals from Neoliberalism with authority and references from John Locke, the founding father of Liberalism and liberal thought, as was as Thomas Hobbes. Then, Later Classical Liberalism interlinked with Modern Liberalism with Samuel Smiles, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill and John Rawls.
However, we must first start by addressing the thesis; and considering what the implemented core ideas are… Equality. What is Equality? Perceived in the Socio-Political Context; Equality is referenced to be ensuring that every individual has an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents; No one should have poorer life chances because of the way they were born, where they were born, what they believe or any disability or religion that they may have. Simplified; equality is the ideal of similarity and tolerance; for what may be different doesn’t have to be aggravating or unnatural, it is merely individual differences as I’m sure you can agree, we are all different and unique, holding our own talents. This principle can be founded in the first stages of Liberalism, (For the purposes of this essay I will assume you read my previous Essay on the examination of Liberalism and what it is in its ideological form) which we can date back to the founding father, John Locke in Early Classical Liberalism. Liberalism arose in the medieval era of the Enlightenment; which after the ‘divine right’ and quasireligious obligations of the church’s gave rise to individual philosophy which can be addressed by Locke through his philosophy in denying the state and the ‘divine right’ to govern; residents of the social contracted state are not “Ordinary Subjects” that are forced to be ruled by those placed by ‘God’ in the ‘divine right.’ As John Locke observed and philosophised, a true state would be created by mankind and not a God, as to serve in the best interests of those who would be governed by it; a natural society. Using Locke’s theory of a manmade ‘rational’ state, we can interlink this into the theory of equality via the equality of opportunity. Under the reign of the ‘divine right,’ “subjects” were governed not out of choice, but out of right by God and the church. This is the opposite to the Equality of Opportunity that a Lockean state would create, where rulership is dictated by the individual people who consented to the rule of government out of the natural state; ensuring that every individual would have an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents.
The ‘state of nature’ was configured around 40 years earlier in ‘Leviathan’ by Thomas Hobbes where it was given that the ‘state of nature’ was negative — or a negative state, where life was “Nasty and Brutish.” John Locke, developing off of Hobbes original theory of the state of nature gave an opposing viewpoint, developing the positive state which was depicted via Human Rationalism, underpinned by Natural Laws, Natural Liberties and Natural Rights; such as the right to property — Which is where the Equality of Opportunity can be founded. Under Locke’s state of law, the principles of protected characteristics of the individual developed, creating a more equal and justifiable state where freedoms and individual rational interests could be founded upon self-reliance and self-awareness. Fortunately, in both cases of Hobbes and Locke and the other early classical liberals a minimal state was the ideal state, where interference was kept at bay as much as possible; with the belief that a minimal state will remove the chance of the states “from Cradle to Grave” initiative — an intervening state will always have the ability to remove the individual freedoms of its people, therefore, breaking their rights of Equality that John Locke introduced into Liberalism. The natural condition of mankind and every individual that is born onto the planet is that we are all self-aware individuals, living in peace, harmony and a mutual understanding and tolerance of each other.
A well-known ideal of Equality within Liberalism would be founded under the liberal thinkers of Mary Wollstonecraft in the idea of Feminism and equality for genders, male or female alike; later taken into account in Modern Liberalism by Betty Friedan. Mary Wollstonecraft in A vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) still to this day is founded to have developed the ideas of Equality within Liberalism. Her primary claim was that the Enlightenments optimistic view of human natures “Rationalism” should apply to all human beings, male and female, where in the context of the Enlightenment, women were treated as inferior beings to the male dominated society of the period. The Equality of Opportunity as well as lives and talents were not being met, which can be clearly seen in England as women were not deemed rational beings and were thus denied individual freedom and all formal types of equality. Unlike the Lockean state provided by John Locke and the “Natural Law”, this did not apply to women, and thus did not protect their vulnerability in society; which breaks the rules of equality formed by a liberal state that must govern by consent of the individual, and where there was no protection of the female species, the government by consent was not following liberal rule; moreover, limiting their stock of intelligence, wisdom and morality that many women of the period would have been able to give to the state if they were found to be credible to the Feudal Medieval times. For Wollstonecraft, the ideals of only marriage and motherhood was rational and acceptable, however, the equality of interest and the equality of opportunity in the developing educational system was more important, which is established later in Later Classical Liberalism and Modern Liberalism; where education dictated a more rational and therefore, more superior mind. Without education and the system of learning right from wrong; individuals were being denied their rational faculties, and would never realise their individual potential and never recognise the irrationality of illiberal principles such as the Divine right of kings, producing a cycle of uneducated and poorly developed individuals that would not be able to tell equality from illiberal control by the state without personal choice.
From the 1930s and onwards, the final strand of Liberalism was developed, Neoliberalism; which followed closely in the ways of Early Classical Liberalism, deviating from Later Classical Liberalism and Modern Liberalism. The founding father of Neoliberalism, Friedrich von Hayek opposed the views of Conservativism, though in itself can be found to have more Conservative values than Liberal values, drawn upon its critique of Modern Liberalism; accusing of its betrayal of individualism and therefore equality of chance, ‘selling out’ to socialist and conservative views; which is where the idea of “from cradle to grave” out of the Beveridge Report was disdained for being a form of “State Paternalism”, in that following Early Classical Liberal views generated with Locke where individuals should be rational and given the chance at rational initiative upon their own lives, whereas “State Paternalism” would dictate power away from the individual, quashing Equality of opportunity and equality of chances.
Similar to that of the Early Classical Liberals of Locke and Hobbes, Hayek re-advertised that of the merits of Negative Liberty instead of that of Late and Modern liberals Positive Liberty; calling for a minimal state where it would be required for politicians to “roll back the state” and “set the people free” from the grip of paternalism. In simplified terms, Hayek similar to that of Locke, wished for the state to set the individual free to give the people their equality of talent, freedom and total charge over their lives. To refer this to times that recently broke from 2020 to the present day, under the government of the Conservatives and the Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the state intervention has never been seen in the way that it had been produced as a result of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Equality of Opportunity, talent and individual freedom which a liberal following state follows was not credibly given, breaking the consenting rule to government under the social contract theory produced by Locke. Neoliberals are in support of Authoritarian Regimes and play a vital role in the development of the New Right under Margaret Thatcher in the UK — straying profoundly from the original equality of opportunity investments John Locke set out in his few of a state created by the people for the individual interests of the people.
On the other hand, Later Classical Liberals as well as Modern Liberals strayed away from the interests in a minimal state, providing the viewpoint that residents of a state cannot be free if in the analogy “A starving man is not free,” and therefore, with a minimal state, there is not equality. These viewpoints are of course up to the individual to decide whether they are right or wrong, but Later Classical Liberals such as Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) produced a Self-Help (1859) book that addressed self-reliance on the individuals equality; suggesting that it was still perfectly reasonable and feasible on a developing industrialising country for individuals and the new working class to produce and follow self-reliance with help from an enlarged state, where it was a necessary evil to gain help from the state in order to gain the equality that the natural society governed to human beings upon birth. The unfortunate truth is that in an industrialising country, self-reliance fades, becoming more reliant upon the state to feed the individual person’s needs. In a quote from smiles, he stated “Human beings would remain stunted; their talents unknown; and their liberty squandered” by the growing dependencies on state — the opposite to Locke and Hayek in a more individualistic and minimal contributory state. Further developed by Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) who built upon the ideals created in the book “on the origin of species” by Charles Darwin (1859) where the view of “Survival of the fittest” was fit into the ideals of “Social Darwinism,” which restored the classical liberal belief in a minimal state and negative freedom, that would lead to a ‘survival of the fittest’ scenario; where it would be found in the ideas of Spencer that Rational self-reliance and the individual freedom would thrive more positively over the latter. Finally, we can build upon both Smiles and Spencer in the ideas of John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) who developed the type of Liberalism were refer to today as Developmental Liberalism; interested purely in what individuals could become rather than what they had become — which values the form of education spoken about previously in the essay. Mill introduced to the world of liberalism this idea of education being the basis of rational thought and superiority, where that of education was involved, there was a more educated and freer individual than that of an uneducated resident of the state; projecting the equality of opportunity as a higher level of educated individuals will develop the skill sets and therefore, talents that an individual will hold or give back to the community in the form of a residing job. In Mill’s ‘On Liberty’ (1859) he pronounced that negative freedom was the absence of restraint and the following of Mill’s own developed “Harm Principle” and Tolerance Principle. Under toleration, the individual is expected to follow two main points in order to practice equality and freedom of the individual, these are Self-Regarding: which involves everyone’s right to religious worship and expressions of personal views without impingement on any other freedoms of others; and Other-Regarding: which deals with the violent or riotous behaviour deemed ‘harming’ to the individual freedoms of those that live within a civilised liberal society. Mill, in the little book of philosophy pronounces the individual sovereignty through the quote: “Decisions should be made on the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number; individuals should be free to do whatever gives them pleasure, even if it could harm them; but they are not entitled to do things that could harm others; individuals can choose to do things that affect their own body, but not that of someone else; over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”
Everything written above dictates a pure image into the equality links of Liberalism, how Equality can be compatible with the political ideology of Liberalism, and how it in itself has changed through the hundreds of years since its formation in the enlightenment to overtake the divine right of kings and focus on egotistical individuality and freedom of everyone in society, such as the rights to women in an equal society as proven under Wollstonecraft and later by Betty Friedan. Equality and Liberalism follow closely within each other’s footsteps; and John Stuart Mill’s creation of Developmental Liberalism also known as Social Liberalism via Modern Liberals specifically can see the impacts of Equality and the Equality system mixed with Human Rights in a modern society. The Modern Western World can be proven to have prejudices and racial underlings to the innate factors of Ethnicity, Gender (Including Transgender), Sexual Orientation, and Physical Disabilities even without knowing it. Prejudices are underlying and subconscious, and the way that the modern liberal world is dealing with this in order to tackle the point of equality and opportunity equal to that of everyone is by using a developed version of discrimination, positive discrimination or affirmative action if you’re from the US which discriminates in favour of ethnic minorities so that opportunities usually passed up because of an innate prejudice is avoided entirely; creating equal opportunity in society and the working world. There is only one drawback with Positive Discrimination; an enlarged state is needed; which strays from a Lockean world of a minimal state for the opportunity of the individual to prosper, but this is up to you as the individual to decide which is better; a minimal state or enlarged state; as they both have their drawbacks.
Not only has Modern Liberalism developed the equality systems of Positive Discrimination, but has also contributed in to societal law, which John Locke favoured in his Natural state; being that Natural Laws were developed to keep the natural individual free but within the social contract of the state; these can be viewed in the UK under the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 which looked to achieve criminalisation of all its forms of negative discrimination against ethnic minorities and women.
Finally, and personally the most important thinker to contribute to the ideals of Liberalism in the context of Equality is John Rawls (1921–2002) founded in his work in his book “A Theory of Justice (1971)” where he developed “Foundational Equality” which meant that there was not just formal equality under the law; but also, greater social and economic equality too; perhaps best summed up by The Little Book of Philosophy by DK “We all want to further our own interests; to do this we need to work together; this requires rules and regulations from the state; rules that are fair and just must apply equally to all, ignoring social status; the principles of justice should always be chosen behind a ‘veil of ignorance.’” Rawls famously presented that the poor will be improved by the enlarged state; creating the equality of opportunity for those who are less fortunate at birth than others; but did not explain that the divide between the rich and poor wouldn’t necessarily be narrowed either.
The thesis posed to you at the start of this essay read: “is there a compatibility between the ideological form of liberalism and the state of equality; in reference to key Liberal thinkers” in which I returned a hypothesis before completing this study; where I believed that there would be a clear compatibility between Liberalism and Equality which can be explained through the examination of Early Classical Liberalism, Late Classical Liberalism and Modern Liberalism in reference to Neoliberals form 1930 and onwards. During this essay, I could not be happier for the hypothesis I posed to be more correct; furthermore, I would believe that the distinction between Equality and the core ideological points of liberalism are too interconnected to be called any different; they are a part of the same view point that generated everything else, for which Liberalism was the base ideological point in creating Conservativism, Anarchism, Socialism and many more ideologies presented in modern day society; and equality as an ideal fits into Liberalism as it liberalism had created Equality; and in some circumstances, it most definitely would be the founder to which created the levels of equality that we see today.
In short, Liberalism and equality have a distinct compatibility with each other, in that both created what we know it to be today
