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Subject Area: Political Theory

Liberty and Equality - Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty, January/March 1979, vol. 2, No. 1 [1979]

Edition used:

Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and later by the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio.

Part of: Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, 20 vols. 19781-982

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Liberty and Equality

Tibor R. Machan

  • State University of New York, Fredonia

“Equality's Dependence on Liberty.” In Equality and Freedom. Edited by Gary Dorsey. Dobbs-Ferry, New York: Oceana Publishers, 1977.

Equality and liberty may seem to be political incompatibles; but in reality, human equality comes about only if we fully protect and preserve political liberty.

On the basis of human nature the only possible equality amounts to having full responsibility for one's own life (in adulthood). In all other respects, human beings could be equal only incidentally. Athletic ability, economic achievement, artistic talents—all these and related candidates for equality among human beings are both politically impossible and undesirable. Human equality is politically possible and desirable only when it seeks to maintain everyone's equal moral standing, that is, securing everyone's equal moral self-responsibility.

This equality is threatened in community life by one central possibility, namely, other people's coercion. For others to coerce an individual attacks the individual's status as a self-responsible moral agent. One adult's coercion of another reduces the coerced to a position of childlike dependency, denying this person his or her mature human dignity.

Political liberty exists when everyone refrains from coercing everyone else, in accordance with a theory of natural human rights. This conception of political liberty alone can secure the desirable form of human equality. When everyone refrains from coercing everyone else, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly, young and old—all are equal in having the responsibility to make the most of their own individual lives, i.e., in the task of choosing to become excellent human beings.

Thus, “liberty and equality, in the respect in which these are possible conditions and valuable features of a human community, are not only compatible but mutually dependent on each other for purposes of maintaining political justice.”