Social cohesion: freedom and equality
Fredosor.com
Freedom.
Freedom is the absence of restrictions.
There is, of course, a big difference between freedom as a right and freedom as a possibility. The UN’s Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 establishes freedom as a right. We know how this is practiced throughout the world today, as is amply illustrated by Amnesty International on a daily basis. It is like other rights, it is worthless if those in power do not support and protect it. Freedom as a possibility is also about other things than oppression. A person’s possibility to obtain freedom is determined by the different kinds of limitation this person encounters in daily life.
Economic limitations are met when the private income of this person, combined with revenue from other sources, is insufficient to cover the expenses this person wishes to make. A person who can afford nothing else than housing and minimal food requirements has in practice no freedom of action in a society where most activities entail expenses. Rules and regulations are another kind of limitations encountered by the individual. They can be laws enacted by the Government, or social rules of conduct established informally in different social “arenas”.
Freedom is the absence of restrictions.
There is, of course, a big difference between freedom as a right and freedom as a possibility. The UN’s Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 establishes freedom as a right. We know how this is practiced throughout the world today, as is amply illustrated by Amnesty International on a daily basis. It is like other rights, it is worthless if those in power do not support and protect it. Freedom as a possibility is also about other things than oppression. A person’s possibility to obtain freedom is determined by the different kinds of limitation this person encounters in daily life.
Economic limitations are met when the private income of this person, combined with revenue from other sources, is insufficient to cover the expenses this person wishes to make. A person who can afford nothing else than housing and minimal food requirements has in practice no freedom of action in a society where most activities entail expenses. Rules and regulations are another kind of limitations encountered by the individual. They can be laws enacted by the Government, or social rules of conduct established informally in different social “arenas”.
When we talk in an economic context about free competition in the market place, we talk about a freedom which is regulated by laws and rules about how competition can take place and how it cannot take place. These laws and rules are made partly to protect consumers against dubious products or misleading marketing, partly to protect employees against harmful or dangerous working conditions, partly to protect investors against misleading information about investment projects, and partly to protect producers against dubious methods from competitors. These laws and rules are monitored by institutions created for that purpose. If one or more of these institutions don’t do their job properly, the markets may fail in one way or another – as we have seen from the last financial crisis. The degree of protection offered to these interests varies from country to country, in spite of the efforts of international organizations like the WTO and the EU to harmonize rules and practices.
In developed societies where the interdependence between both organizations and persons is strong, freedom for one has to be seen in relation to the effects of this freedom on others. The anarchist society only works in very small units, units that are so small that the flow of information and the level of conflict can be handled through regular, eye-to-eye dialogue between the parties concerned. And even in anarchist communities one ends up with needing a minimum of rules to play by. In a democracy, the “right” amount of individual freedom can only be determined through the normal decision making process.
Equality
In the political debate on equality, the tension will normally come in the choice between equality as a right and equality as an opportunity.
In its extreme interpretation, equality as a right will amount to achieving equality in people’s material living conditions. It is very complicated to achieve such a result, since all public measures aimed at this will be met by counter-strategies on the part of individuals and organizations. In addition, material differences accumulated over time will not be easily observable. Legal equality as a right is a more straightforward aim in a democratic state, and this will legally speaking be in place in many countries. Equality as an opportunity involves giving all persons the same opportunities, but without any specific ambition regarding the material outcome that the individual actually obtains. This is, in spite of its apparent simplicity, just as complicated to achieve as equality as a right.
After the Second World War, the Soviet and the Chinese communism aimed ideologically at achieving material equality as a right. Symbolically, this could be observed through the use of clothes that were alike in appearance (even if the quality of the fabric would vary substantially between the low-ranking and the high-ranking persons in the political hierarchy!). History has shown how complicated it proved to achieve the desired result. Technically it was impossible to handle the amount of information that such a system needed to process, if it were to take all interests into account in a way similar to that which is being done in the market place. Furthermore, at the human level, it was seen that the persons who had some power (small or large amounts, no matter) were not strong enough ethically to abstain from exploiting the privileges power positions gave. We saw in full how power corrupted. As a result, the system could only function as a dictatorship.
At the other end of the spectrum, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has shown us the limitations of a system that takes equal opportunity as its point of departure. His analysis, based on the notions of social and cultural capital, shows that equal opportunity may be just as utopian as material equality as a right. The different arenas where people’s social and economic future is determined have different criteria for access and different ways of generating success. These differences produce different solutions for people with different cultural, social or financial capital. This means that the real opportunities that people have, will already at birth be extremely varied – even if they legally speaking have the same opportunities. Consequently, the end result for different people will vary enormously – all other things being equal for the persons concerned.
Equality between people, be it as a right or as an opportunity, is given different priority in different countries. Some countries do not aim at such equality, neither in one way or the other. Other countries, like the Nordic countries, have for the last sixty years had high and persistent ambitions to create such equality. These efforts have firstly aimed at equal opportunities and gradually also at reducing inequality in material conditions. This has been a gradual, slow process – on a step by step basis – in light of the changing priorities of subsequent governments put in place by the electorate. As in all democracies, the political attitudes have changed from period to period. However, the basic trend has been towards achieving increased equality in one form or the other.
In developed societies where the interdependence between both organizations and persons is strong, freedom for one has to be seen in relation to the effects of this freedom on others. The anarchist society only works in very small units, units that are so small that the flow of information and the level of conflict can be handled through regular, eye-to-eye dialogue between the parties concerned. And even in anarchist communities one ends up with needing a minimum of rules to play by. In a democracy, the “right” amount of individual freedom can only be determined through the normal decision making process.
Equality
In the political debate on equality, the tension will normally come in the choice between equality as a right and equality as an opportunity.
In its extreme interpretation, equality as a right will amount to achieving equality in people’s material living conditions. It is very complicated to achieve such a result, since all public measures aimed at this will be met by counter-strategies on the part of individuals and organizations. In addition, material differences accumulated over time will not be easily observable. Legal equality as a right is a more straightforward aim in a democratic state, and this will legally speaking be in place in many countries. Equality as an opportunity involves giving all persons the same opportunities, but without any specific ambition regarding the material outcome that the individual actually obtains. This is, in spite of its apparent simplicity, just as complicated to achieve as equality as a right.
After the Second World War, the Soviet and the Chinese communism aimed ideologically at achieving material equality as a right. Symbolically, this could be observed through the use of clothes that were alike in appearance (even if the quality of the fabric would vary substantially between the low-ranking and the high-ranking persons in the political hierarchy!). History has shown how complicated it proved to achieve the desired result. Technically it was impossible to handle the amount of information that such a system needed to process, if it were to take all interests into account in a way similar to that which is being done in the market place. Furthermore, at the human level, it was seen that the persons who had some power (small or large amounts, no matter) were not strong enough ethically to abstain from exploiting the privileges power positions gave. We saw in full how power corrupted. As a result, the system could only function as a dictatorship.
At the other end of the spectrum, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has shown us the limitations of a system that takes equal opportunity as its point of departure. His analysis, based on the notions of social and cultural capital, shows that equal opportunity may be just as utopian as material equality as a right. The different arenas where people’s social and economic future is determined have different criteria for access and different ways of generating success. These differences produce different solutions for people with different cultural, social or financial capital. This means that the real opportunities that people have, will already at birth be extremely varied – even if they legally speaking have the same opportunities. Consequently, the end result for different people will vary enormously – all other things being equal for the persons concerned.
Equality between people, be it as a right or as an opportunity, is given different priority in different countries. Some countries do not aim at such equality, neither in one way or the other. Other countries, like the Nordic countries, have for the last sixty years had high and persistent ambitions to create such equality. These efforts have firstly aimed at equal opportunities and gradually also at reducing inequality in material conditions. This has been a gradual, slow process – on a step by step basis – in light of the changing priorities of subsequent governments put in place by the electorate. As in all democracies, the political attitudes have changed from period to period. However, the basic trend has been towards achieving increased equality in one form or the other.