Everybody loves freedom. Both capitalists and socialists love freedom. The only difference is how much they love it, and whether they'd be willing to give up their freedom to create a world in which everyone is equal. It's not always easy to distinguish between socialism and capitalism. ![]() Some of the connections between socialism and freedom are explored in Inequality in Britain, depicting equality as a means to achieve greater freedom.
Field's argument is that equality matters a great deal; but it is not an end in itself and it should not be promoted at the expense of freedom. Nor should it be assumed that promoting equality always requires more and more government intervention, because sometimes government intervention has unintended consequences that hurt not just the rich (let's face it, nobody cares if the rich are hurt) but also the poor. In that situation, even though equality has been advanced, it may still be that in the final analysis nobody is better off and everyone is worse off:
The socialist picture changes greatly when freedom is seen as the goal. For example, the socialist ideal of cash redistribution can be seen as a way of promoting a net gain in freedom.
It is interesting to see freedom promoted as the goal of equality, rather than promoting equality of income as some kind of inherent moral good. I would definitely feel more free if the state would take other people's money from them and redistribute it to me. But there is no society which has became more free by redistributing cash: probably because there is no way to redistribute other people's cash without resorting to the use of force (you go to jail if you don't pay your taxes).
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