Essay On Freedom And Social Equality

Individual freedom and social equality are equally important.

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. Although these forces seem incompatible, 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 flexibility of this system, which allows changes.

Liberal democracies were born mainly for two reasons: limiting the arbitrary power of a state and protecting 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 the absolute sense of doing whatever we want, but in the sense of doing whatever we want, as long as it does not harm other people. In fact, according to John Stuart Mill, “The only end for which people are entitled, individually or collectively, to interfere with

The only way to overcome the initial contradiction of liberalism is not to completely change the society, but rather to improve it. Individual freedom, which is the basis of liberalism, does not necessarily generate inequality. The harm principle of Mill does not give us a specific definition of freedom; it simply states that men are free to do whatever they want, as long as their actions do not harm others. The advantage of this definition is that it is not fixed and it can change; so it allows liberal democratic governments to decide, based on the society which they rule, what is harming their