Individual Freedom And Social Equality, And Liberalism

In modern history, individual freedom and social equality are seen as two forces in continuous tension. If a government wants to guarantee one of them, it has to suppress the other. These two forces have been represented in politics by two big ideologies: liberalism and communism. Individual freedom is the core of liberalism, while social equality is the core of communism; and these forces seem incompatible. However, in my opinion, individual freedom and social equality are equally important, and a government should not promote one of them and suppress the other. In fact, they can be balanced in a liberal democratic system, due to the fact that this system is very flexible and allows changes.

Liberal democracies were born mainly for two reasons: limiting the arbitrary power of a state and protect the individual freedoms of every citizen with a judicial system. Thus, the main aim of a liberal democratic regime is to promote freedom. Freedom not in

A citizen in a liberal democracy can always appeal to his or her liberty rights in order to stop the government from promoting social equality. From a theoretical point of view, a liberal state cannot impose an income tax on the individuals, because the simple fact that some citizens are earning more money is not a direct cause of harm to the others. According to Karl Marx, this is the main problem of liberalism: it legalized inequality, and to some extends also competition. Marx criticizes Mill’s harm principle, by saying that, defining freedom as the right to do whatever we want, as long as we do not harm the others means that people need a state to regulate their actions, or they will eventually do something harmful to the others; this definition presupposes that people are selfish and evil. For Marx, this definition of liberty is too individualistic, and thus it generates a society where people are egoistic and do not trust each