Liberalism and Equality
BY J. W. N. WATKINS iiELIEF in equality is clearly an integral part of socialism. And I think it is fair to say that belief in a certain inequality is implicit in conservatism. A conservative Prefers what has been given a historic authenticity by time to what has been given a rational shape by politicians; but history, left to itself, tends to proliferate inequalities, whereas equalities usually have to be instituted. The conservative also wants an efficient economy; but incentives work against equality : a really fierce system of incentives would include a tapering income tax, taxes on necessities, and subsidies on luxuries.
But what role, if any, does a principle of equality play Within a liberal system of idpas? Liberals, like everyone else, believe in certain specific equalities, just as they believe in certain specific inequalities. They believe, for instance, that a married woman should have the same rights over her property as her husband has over his; and many liberals believe that a woman who fulfils the functions of a wife without being married to her man should not have the same rights as a Married woman. But they usually defend the former equality, not by appealing to some general principle of equality, but by arguing that to give a husband control over his wife's property would deprive her of all independence. The question is whether any general principle of equality, applicable in all situations, is an essential part of liberalism.
The answer is emphatically 'Yes,' according to Mr. Isaiah Berlin and Mr. Richard Wollheim,* two philosophers who are very sympathetic to liberalism and well versed in its history. ty 'The principle of Equality,' writes Mr. Wollheim, 'is an essential ingredient of the most enduring and articulate Political tradition to come out of European culture : that of Liberalism.' Equality,' writes Mr. Berlin, 'is one of the oldest and deepest elements in liberal thought.' Yet it seems to me that their joint examination of the idea of equality shows that it cannot be an essential element of liberalism.
If we set aside specific equalities, like equality of property rights between husband and wife, we can, following an analogous distinction drawn by Mr. Wollheim, distinguish two general principles of equality : a strong principle of uncon- ditional equality, and a weak principle of conditional equality. The strong principle says that people are to be treated equally whatever their condition. The weak principle says that people are to be treated equally unless some feature of their con- dition justifies unequal treatment.
Mr. Wollheim says that both the principles he has distin- guished 'can make a good claim to be regarded as the principle of Equality'; but if I have caught the import of his distinction, the best that can be said for the strong principle Is that it was once sponsored by Bernard Shaw. It is true that in a besieged garrison food and ammunition might be rationed out equally; but probably no socialist, and certainly no liberal, would dream of holding that under non-siege con- ditions everybody should be treated exactly alike, irrespective of whether they are competent, married, old lags, youths. being or whatever. The principle of unconditional equality l'eing palpably absurd, our question becomes: Is the principle of conditional equality an essential feature of liberalism?
In Aristotelian logic, a feature is not an essential feature * EQUALITY. By Richard Wollheim and Isaiah Berlin. (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1956, pp. 281-326.) of a thing if it is also a feature of other very different things. The principle of conditional equality is not an essential feature of liberalism, not because it is no part of liberalism but, on the contrary, because it is common to liberalism and to systems abhorrent to liberals. The principle leaves open which con- ditions justify differential treatment. In Plato's Republic the possession of special intelligence is a condition which entitles its possessor to the high political privilege of ruling without laws, telling other classes what to believe, and moulding the minds of trainee-rulers—all anathema to the liberal. It also justifies stripping its possessor of all economic privileges, whereas the liberal holds that a man who brings special intelligence to his business should be allowed to keep some of its return.
Mr. Berlin says that the principle of conditional equality creates a prima facie case for, an initial presumption in favour of, uniform treatment : 'equality needs no reasons, only inequality does so.' But I do not think that even this much can be squeezed out of the principle. In a world like ours where variations in people's conditions are large and serious the principle actually creates a presumption against uniform treatment. In such a world it may very well be equal treatment which seems unfair and calls for justification. During the war it soon became apparent that to give equal rations to vege- tarians and coalminers and invalids was arbitrary and unfair. The weak principle of equality requires discrimination where there is a justifying difference in conditions just as much as it prohibits discrimination where there is no justifying difference. It boils down to the formal principle of all moralities which are not actually anti-rational : 'Don't act capriciously.' Because Plato was a rationalist his political system, which is profoundly illiberal and inequalitarian, fully conforms to the principal of conditional equality.
Although Mr. Wollheim admits that this principle can be put to illiberal and to inequalitarian uses, he nevertheless concludes that 'the principle of Equality can be regarded as the fundamental principle of Liberalism.' He even says that `the principle of Liberty'—something which to my mind is much nearer the heart of liberalism—'is made superfluous by it. For the substance of every claim that men should be free in a certain matter could be rendered by claiming that in this matter they have equal rights.' But all that the principle of conditional equality says about liberty is that men whose conditions are similar in all relevant respects should all have the same amount—it may be a large, small or zero amount —of liberty. And Mr. Berlin rightly says that an attempt to impose the principle of unconditional equality 'cannot be carried out without a highly centralised and despotic authority—itself the cause of the maximum of inequality.' This is, in fact, a special case of the paradox of planning, described by Professor Popper, where an attempt to impose a complete, rational order on society involves such a con- centration of power that society is actually subordinated to the personal whims of its rulers.
I conclude that liberalism cannot justify the specific equali- ties it endorses by appealing to a general principle either of unconditional equality (which it rejects) or of conditional equality (which it shares with illiberal systems). Is there some other principle, genuinely essential to liberalism, in terms of which these specific equalities and the rest of the liberal inventory could be justified?
What seems to meet these requirements and to lie at the heart of liberalism is the principle that men should work out their own convictions, make their own mistakes, and try to shape their own lives. This principle of. personal autonomy does entail a crude but fundamental kind of equality : no one is permitted spiritual predominance over another person. The liberal is far legs shocked by the sight of a man whd. having accidentally inherited a fortune, enjoys a big economic advantage, than he is by the sight of a man who, by his own ability, has raised himself to a position where. as a priest or commissar, he can get his fingers into other people's souls. The liberal idea of education and of colonial administration also follows from this principle : the idea is not to make young persons, or backward peoples, merely the recipients of correct information, or of correct administration, but to help them to become adult.
The liberal has to renounce all dreams of a perfect society, because the character of a society is a product of the lives of its members and they are to work out their own lives for themselves. In renouncing such dreams the liberal has to renounce the particular dream of an equalitarian society. True. the State has to intervene importantly to preserve that basic equality whereby no one's life becomes exaggeratedly dependent on another person's behaviour. Since Locke. liberals have regarded the business of the State (apart, to some extent, from its foreign policy) as the judicial implementation of rules of fair play rather than the realisation of some positive ideal; and in this judicial notion of government the idea of impartiality or equality is clearly implicit. But in requiring people to proceed under their own steam, to be responsible for their own success or failure, the liberal sponsors the result- ing inequality of their varying' achievements. Indeed, the liberal may be accused of deliberate harshness. Liberalism also has its victims, though their calibre is lower, and their plight less tragic, than that of the victims of totalitirianism (who are usually among the most, rather than the least, able and ambitious). Liberals should recognise that there are people whose luckless attempts to run their own lives prove bewilder- ing and unnerving, people who cannot keep a job and get pushed on from one housing authority to the next, people who feel bitterly what we all feel occasionally—nostalgic regret for the days when we were under the kindly and firm super- vision of large, capable people. I think that liberals ought to compensate people for whom the ideal of personal indepen- dence is too exacting by providing kindly but authoritarian institutions with a fixed routine in which they could take shelter for as long as they wished. As for the rest of us, the chief sacrifice which liberalism demands is an austere sup- pression of our half-longing for authority, rather than the relinquishing of accidental advantages in the risky and often unfair hurly-burly of life.
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