Because there can be no equality without freedom

Is there, that is, an abstract perspective and a normative telling us how people should be made free and with respect to what they should be considered equal? And different people - Dworkin tells us - will naturally have different views with respect to this second point. 'Freedom and equality,' he writes, 'are concepts that admit of different interpretations or conceptions' and the conflict between the two ideas depends crucially on precisely how these ideas are interpreted.

Starting with freedom, let us try to ask ourselves, then, what are the essential defining elements that a satisfactory conception of it should possess. It would be important, for example, to start by not confusing freedom with anarchy. Being free cannot mean being able to do whatever we like. Freedom is not licence; on the contrary, it is right to consider restrictions on certain behaviour as necessary to promote freedom and not to hinder it. On the other hand, being free also means being able to enjoy certain rights that no individual and not even the government should in any way be able to restrict. Freedom of conscience, association, religion and freedom of choice in fundamental matters that pertain to one's dignity all fall within this sphere. How many are these rights. Here, this is a matter of interpretation, Dworkin tells us.

And the more rights we consider incompressible, the greater the possibility that that specific vision of freedom will be called into question or come into conflict with other values such as equality. And if these values come into conflict, then choices must be made. Favouring now one now the other. As we mentioned earlier, the characterisation of political parties is often based on their positioning within a spectrum that sees on the right the absolute priority above all other values of freedom and on the left an equal and opposite absolutism with respect to equality. Moderates are placed between these two poles in intermediate positions defined by the relative weight assigned to the two values. 'But this topography,' writes Dworkin, 'as an account of the range of views available in our popular political culture is profoundly misleading [because] any real competition between liberty and equality is one that liberty should lose'.

Freedom must therefore always be sacrificed, says Dworkin. It cannot be idolised as a metaphysical concept. Quite a bold statement for a liberal philosopher like him. The reason lies in the fact that our political communities are all founded on the principle that governments must act to improve the lives of citizens, and they must do so by showing equal concern (equal concern) for each other's lives. Anyone who accepts this principle consequently accepts equality as a political ideal. Therefore, continues Dworkin, 'anyone who thinks that freedom and equality are really in conflict on some occasion must think that protecting freedom means acting in such a way as not to show equal concern for all citizens.

I doubt that many of us, after careful consideration, would want this to happen. It would be like saying that the government should have more consideration and interest in the lives of some citizens and less in the lives of others. The basis of our coexistence, of our political and democratic communities cannot but be the equal interests of every citizen before the government. Anything, even a claim, in principle legitimate, to freedom leads to questioning this assumption can only lose its own legitimacy.  

But let us now turn to the idea of freedom. If we want to avoid making it an idol to be worshipped, a metaphysical idea as fascinating as it is sterile, we should start from the assumption that its value is not original, intrinsic. But that freedom derives its meaning from the benefits it produces in people's lives. Greater spaces of freedom generally, though not always, allow people to live more satisfying and worthy lives. But if this is true, writes Dworkin again - 'If freedom has value because lives led in freedom have more value, then it is the principle of equality itself that requires government to be concerned about protecting freedom, because it is the principle of equality that requires government to be concerned about the lives of those it governs'.

Does this imply, then, that freedom and equality can never conflict with each other? Certainly not. Conflicts do exist, but they can be better understood and perhaps even mitigated if we are able to correctly interpret the terms of the question and the underlying concepts. Such a conflict, in particular, Dworkin tells us, can materialise when two conditions occur simultaneously: 1) despite the fact that freedom is valuable for people's lives, the position of a group within the community would still be improved if a certain freedom were to be eliminated; 2) the principle of equal consideration (equal concern) for that group requires that this be done.

'Suppose, for example,' the philosopher writes, 'that the poor would have better medical care and be better off in general if private healthcare were abolished, and that showing equal consideration to them requires this. If the government refuses to abolish private healthcare, then, hypothetically, the poor would be left worse off than equal consideration would get for them'. But since, as we have seen, freedom has no value in itself, except for the benefits it brings to people's lives, the choice not to improve the conditions of the poor cannot be justified as a form of protection of freedom. "It could only be justified," says Dworkin, "if we accepted a principle that is completely inconsistent with the egalitarian principle: that in these circumstances the lives of poor people are less important than the lives of others.

This explains why, in a democratic society, all potential conflicts between the principle of freedom and the principle of equality are conflicts that, as we said above, it would be right for freedom to lose. Freedom and equality, however, let us repeat once again, must be correctly understood. Freedom must not be regarded as an idol but as a virtue that takes on value only because of the benefits it brings to people's lives. What about equality? The equality that Dworkin has in mind is the 'equality of resources' that we have talked about in last week's Mind the Economy. And if we accept that 'equality of resources' is the more satisfactory, distributive conception of equality, then it is possible to say that freedom becomes an aspect of equality.

Freedom and equality are thus sisters and allies and not enemies opposed by an irreducible conflict. The reason lies in the fact that according to the 'equality of resources', a fair distribution is not assessed on the basis of outcome, the satisfaction of preferences, for example, but on the basis of equal access to resources. The distribution of these resources, we have seen in recent weeks, takes place through coordinated choices in which each person takes responsibility for pursuing his or her own ideal of life in the knowledge that he or she belongs to a community. Part of this responsibility to the community is linked to the realisation that the true costs of our life projects are linked to the resources we take away from others.

Being responsible means, therefore, choosing to design and redesign our life plans so that we use only their fair share of resources, knowing that we leave enough for others. "Whether a real society approaches resource equality," Dworkin writes again, "depends on the adequacy of the process of discussion and choice that we use for that purpose. A substantial degree of freedom is necessary to make that process adequate because the true cost to others of a person having a resource or opportunity can only be discovered when people's ambitions and beliefs are genuine and their choices and decisions are reasonably appropriate to those ambitions and beliefs.' And we cannot hope to have this authenticity and adequacy if we do not have ample room for freedom of decision-making. "So freedom is necessary to equality, according to this conception of equality, not on the dubious and fragile assumption that people really value freedom more than other resources, but because freedom (...) is essential to any process in which equality is defined and guaranteed."

This does not mean that freedom is merely instrumental to equality. Rather, it means that the two ideas must be fused together to provide a more complete account of how the resources at our disposal can be distributed and used justly; in a way, that is, that is consistent with the first principle of equal concern (equal concern) that politics must have for the lives of each of us.