[lbo-talk] A Note on Equality was RE: (no subject)

Jim Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Wed Apr 25 18:40:55 PDT 2012


On Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:05:16 -0400 indigo at ymail.com writes:
> Yes; the human demand for freedom and human demand for equality are
>
> inherently at odds. The libertarians say the same, then interpret
> freedom
> as strictly the freedom of the individual. Communism focuses on the
>
> freedom of the collective. In this way communists make an
> additional
> demand that libertarians don't: the demand for justice.

I would suggest that Isaiah Berlin's distinction betwee negative liberty - that is the absence of coercion, or freedom from, and positive liberty - freedom as self-mastery or self-realization, or the freedom to, is of some relevance here. Berlin himself by and large rejected positive liberty as a social ideal, instead opting for negative liberty, to be balanced by the competing social ideal of equality. However, I think that the Marxist tradition instead has largely insisted upon embracing both negative libery and positive liberty. Libertarians, of course, opt just for negative liberty, and reject both positive liberty and equality as social ideals.

Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math


>
> On Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:55:00 -0400, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Attacks on inequality are, it seems, a crucial element in
> political
> > agitation. But lets be clear. At least from a Marxist perspective,
> the
> > demand for equality is quite false. And the formula for communist
>
> > society
> > does _not_ imply equality; in fact it is a call for inequality:
> >
> >> From each according to his [her] ability:
> >
> > In other words, humans are unequal in their ability, and it is
> wrong to
> > call
> > for anyone to provide more than his/her abilities provide.
> >
> > To each according to his [her] needs.
> >
> > Humans do not have equal needs; many need much more than others.
> That
> > need
> > should be satisfied. Again, communist society is a fundamentally
> unequal
> > society.
> >
> > The aim of communist society is human freedom, and human freedom
> (however
> > defined) is in contradiction to the demand for equality. We demand
> much
> > more
> > medical care for the ill than for the well. That is only one
> example.
> >
> > And I think that even for agitational purposes it would be well to
> get
> > away
> > as much as possible from attacks on inequality and put more
> emphasis on
> > the
> > constraints on human freedom built into capitalist relations of
> > production.
> >
> > Carrol
> >
> > P.S. And in politics, of course, we demand very unequal effort
> from
> > various
> > sectors of the population or from particular comrades. For
> example, we do
> > not place political demands on children nor on parents. That is why
> the
> > suggestion that students should refuse to take the tests
> associated with
> > No
> > Child Left Behind is such an outrageous suggestion. Individual
> students
> > and
> > individual parents must not be asked to stick their necks out. The
>
> > political
> > burden of attacking NCLB must be born by others.
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
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