PRESENTATION FOR

INTRODUCTION TO
POLITICS
TOPIC:RELATION BETWEEN EQUALITY AND LIBERTY
INTRODUCTION:
• Liberty and Equality are closely related to each other. There is no value of
liberty in the absence of equality. They are the same conditions viewed
from different angles. They are the two sides of the same coin. Though
there is a close relationship between liberty and equality, yet there are
some political thinkers who do not find any relationship between liberty
and equality. For example, Lord Acton and De Tocqueville who were the
ardent advocates of liberty, found no relationship between the two
conditions. To them liberty and equality were antagonistic and antithetical
to each other. Lord Acton maintains that “The passion for equality made
vain the hope for liberty”. Such political thinkers maintain that where
there is liberty, there is no equality and vice versa. 
Equal emphasis on equality and liberty:

• Utopian social like Thomas More, Campanella, Winstanly, Munster, Leveler,

Digars, Simon, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and others gave an emphasis
on removing inequalities. Some of them, for example, Simon, advocated
proper coordination between liberty and equality. He considered any type
of domination of man over man to be detrimental to liberty.
• Actually in the Declaration of Rights in Virginia of America (1776) and in the
Declaration of French Human Rights (1789), the importance was given first
to make a balanced coordination between liberty and equality. The
declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) issued by the National Assembly of
France said, “Men are born, and continue, free and equal in respect of
their rights.”
Close relation between equality and liberty:
• John Stuart Mill thought that liberty and equality are complementary to each
other. He analyzed liberty from the perspective of social welfare. For this
reason, Mill opined that economic equality is necessary for establishing
liberty.
• In the 20th century, Hobouse, Laski, Barker, Tawney, Pollard and others
considered that equality and freedom are complementary to each other.
• Even Rousseau argued in the 18th century that freedom is impossible without
equality.
• Analyzing the correlation between liberty and equality, Barker observes that
equality is not a detached principle. It stands in favour of the principles like
liberty and fraternity. So, what is needed is the proper coordination between
equality, liberty and fraternity. So, it may be said that equality and liberty are
not antithetic to each other; they rather supplement each other.
OPINIONS OF LASKI AND KARL MARX:
• Equality and liberty are both a legal concept. For, the state implements the concept
of liberty and equality with the help of law. Both the concepts are closely
associated with the idea of development of the capacities of the individuals.
• Laski in his Grammar of Politics, thus, commented that liberty without economic
equality is meaningless. Economic equality demands abolition of private property.
• The Marxists also believe that in an unequal society, the so-called liberties become
meaningless in the absence of economic equality. In this class-divided society the
state and its legal imperatives act as an instrument of the possessing class. As a
result, it cannot ensure economic liberty of the ordinary citizens.
• So, the Marxists consider establishment of economic equality to be the
precondition of liberty According to them, only in the socialist society liberty and
equality can really supplement each other.