Liberté and égalité of outcome…
…are of course completely incompatible.
That would seem to be quite obvious, wouldn’t it? And yet so many people cannot see it.
Or perhaps they see it, and make their choice between the two.
Not to mention the fact that equality of outcome is impossible to implement, no matter how hard you try. But the trying goes on (see The Quest for Cosmic Justice
Who came up with that “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” slogan for the French Revolution? Why, Robespierre, naturally. It was not the only slogan, nor the invariable slogan—the “fraternité” part was often left out and some other word (such as “amitié” or “charité”) was substituted. But the first two—liberté and égalité—seem to have always been part of it.
And the following should sound very, very familiar:
Equality…was defined by the 1789 Declaration in terms of judicial equality and merit-based entry to government…
The compatibility of liberté and égalité was not doubted in the first days of the Revolution, and the problem of the antecedence of one term on the other not lifted. Thus, the Abbé Sieyé¨s considered that only liberty ensured equality, unless the latter was to be the equality of all dominated by a despot; while liberty followed equality ensured by the rule of law. The abstract generality of law…thus ensured the identification of liberty to equality, liberty being negatively defined as an independence from arbitrary rule, and equality considered abstractly in its judicial form.
This identification of liberty and equality became problematic during the Jacobin period, when equality was redefined (for instance by Frané§ois-Noé«l Babeuf) as equality of results, and not only judicial equality of rights. Thus, Marc Antoine Baudot considered that French temperament inclined rather to equality than liberty, a theme which would be re-used by Pierre Louis Roederer and Alexis de Tocqueville, while Jacques Necker considered that an equal society could only be found on coercion.
If you’ll excuse my French: plus é§a change, plus c’est la méªme chose.
It’s clear that the Russian Revolution finished what the French began.
It also seems that the American temperament used to be “inclined rather to liberty than to equality,” but that the Gramscian march of the last 100 years or so has changed that.
Liberty; to be free to achieve all that we are individually capable of and for the rewards to be proportional to the merit. Egalite; defined by the left as equality of results.
Liberty leads to abundance. Optimally, with justice under the rule of law but when corrupted, to the tyranny of the oligarchy.
Equality leads to dissolution. To extreme poverty and an even worse tyranny of a few that justify it, as for the “collective good”.
Humanity, in the aggregate, oscilates between the two, refusing to learn or perhaps incapable of learning from experience.
There are two places in our society where humans should be/are equal.
1. Equal justice for all. A goal that is seldom realized but worthy of the effort to obtain it.
2.In the eyes of God. If you don’t believe in God, that means you want some human (maybe you) to play God.
In a competitive society we would like to have an equal opportunity to achieve all that we are capable of. Also a worthy goal, but very difficult to attain because of human nature, geography, bias, etc.
We are all born with differing talents and abilities. One of the goals of everyone’s life should be to discover and develop our talents and abilities to the fullest extent possible, particularly those that are useful for earning a living. Do you ever hear anyone saying that to young people?
In a free market society most of the citizens will be worker bees. There is a small percentage of the population who are inventors, risk takers, creators, and the like who will invent/produce/ build/start products and services that people will need and want. These are the people who create jobs for most of the rest of society. If they get rich, that is a good thing, because that will make others want to emulate them. The left protests about the workers who are at the mercy of the creators/entrepreneurs/builders. What they don’t realize is that without them there would be fewer jobs and less wealth. It is a law of economics that the left doesn’t want to accept.
Also, a capitalist economy has a way for workers to better their lot in life. I’ve been a worker bee all my life. While I was earning a salary, I was looking for a way to better my lot in life. Saving some of my salary and investing it in other companies became my way forward. Over 48 years those investments grew into something meaningful. My old age is financially secure in spite of the fact that my company’s pension plan was dropped in bankruptcy. Had I not planned ahead for the future and made some sacrifices to save the money that was invested, I would be on short rations in my dotage.
Equality of outcome can only be achieved through coercion by the state. And we know where that leads – to equality of misery.
“Equality leads to dissolution. To extreme poverty and an even worse tyranny of a few that justify it, as for the “collective good”.”
Exactly . It leads to the world of Vonnegut’s
HARRISON BERGERON
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
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The central classic on equality for decades. If you don’t know it you should, as they say, read it all at
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
“Fraternity” is likewise incompatible with liberty.
vanderleun,
That is a Vonnegut classic short story.
A friend of mine commented that, if everything were equally distributed and there were no more poor and rich, etc, etc, that within ten years the rich would be rich again and the poor, poor. I think that’s right.
I mostly agree. I would caution, however to not judge the pond purely by the surface of the water.
IMO Much of this egalitarianism is spouted by a national dialogue supported by the governing “elite,” the university “illuminati,” and the mainstream media (the surface of the pond). This is what most people usually look to to determine the pulse of the nation, but it is not necessarily what exists in the depth of the pond.
These people used to be called “the silent majority.” These are the people looked down upon and condescended to in the national dialogue; you know those flyover people who cling to their guns and religion. These are the people who are just going about their lives, ignoring all of this national claptrap.
The problem has always been how to get this silent majority off of their collective ass to make themselves and their wishes known. If nothing else, this is what the popularity of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have catalyzed in this election cycle, and this is why so many of the pundit-class have recently been so wrong about so many things.