Reese:
> No, that's not it. I once asked Gordon what his definitions of
> Freedom and Equality were, it spawned a lengthy thread, but he
> never answered.
Now you'll be sorry you asked.
Freedom is the space one's will operates in. It is the ability to do what one wants and to not do or suffer what one doesn't want.
Clearly, since there is more than one willful being in the universe, since the powers of all beings are limited, and since humans, besides being willful, are also social, affectionate, and self-interested, one can't do anything one wants without regard to others, and general freedom can be maximized and secured only through getting along, through a practice of mutual respect and cooperation.
Assuming humans desire freedom, which seems tautological, then, it is not possible for humans in contact with one another to partly free and partly enslaved, because the slaves and masters will be at war with one another. The slaves will not be free by definition and the masters will not be free because they will be compelled to struggle constantly to keep the slaves enslaved. Hence there can be no general freedom in a community without equality, that is, the absence of socially significant inequality, because inequality is created by some having more power than others, whether directly over persons or indirectly through things. Likewise, there can be no equality without freedom, because in order to enforce unfreedom, slavery, it is necessary for some to take power over others and make themselves unequal. All this seems elementary, and it corresponds to what we observe.
Yoshie Furuhashi:
> Have you read Marx's "Critique of the Gotha Program"?
Certainly. But given that leftists disagree about the specifics of freedom and equality, Uncle Karl's views or mine are only part of the picture. It seems to me that to support freedom, some kind of communism (or, as I call it, "convivium") is necessary, and its absence in liberalism is what causes the constant growth of the State in our times. But that's just my opinion.
James Heartfield:
> At a time when the elite stakes its claim to rule on the basis of
> generalised equality, I think it is right to expose the limitations of
> that slogan.
>
> However, in more recent times the ruling class has put ever more stress
> on the virtues of diversity. In the context of social polarisation
> generated through capitalism, the argument for diversity becomes an
> apology for social inequality.
>
> So, in a final reductio ad absurdem, prime minister Tony Blair announced
> his plan to abolish comprehensive education with the demand:
>
> 'diversity must become the norm, not the exception'
My interpretation of the breathtaking cynicism of Tony Blair (and Bill Clinton) is that it is more historical evidence that liberalism, even strongly modified by social democracy, constantly tends to slip back toward inequality, concentration, centralization, in short feudalism and slavery. Fortunately (one might say) internal contradictions, catastrophe, social breakdown, revolution, war, sudden technological and scientific advances, and other forms of chaos seem to impede the tendency, but continued unconscious reliance on these, especially in their more reckless and aggressive forms, may be detrimental to our continued survival.