[Editor’s note: With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence comes many attempts to use the text of the Declaration to support modern political ideologies. Perhaps the most common misuse of the Declaration’s text is to warp the meaning of the phrase “all men are created equal.” Modern egalitarian agendas are thus applied to the text of the Declaration in ways that depart thoroughly from the actual meaning as applied by Jefferson in the eighteenth century. Below, Murray Rothbard, in his essay “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor” explains what Jefferson and the American Revolutionaries really meant when they spoke of “equality.” (This selections appears on pages 277-279 in the Mises Institute edition of Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays.)]
But what, philosophically, is “equality”? The term must not be left unanalyzed and accepted at face value. Let us take three entities: A, B, and C. A, B, and C are said to be “equal” to each other (that is, A = B = C) if a particular characteristic is found in which the three entities are uniform or identical. In short, here are three individual men: A, B, and C. Each may be similar in some respects but different in others. If each of them is precisely 5 feet 10 inches in height, they are then equal to each other in height. It follows from our discussion of the concept of equality that A, B, and C can be completely “equal” to each other only if they are identical or uniform in all characteristics—in short, if all of them are, like the same size of nut or bolt, completely interchangeable. We see, then, that the ideal of human equality can only imply total uniformity and the utter stamping out of individuality.
It is high time, then, for those who cherish freedom, individuality, the division of labor, and economic prosperity and survival, to stop conceding the supposed nobility of the ideal of equality. Too often have “conservatives” conceded the ideal of equality only to cavil at its “impracticality.” Philosophically, there can be no divorce between theory and practice. Egalitarian measures do not “work” because they violate the basic nature of man, of what it means for the individual man to be truly human. The call of “equality” is a siren song that can only mean the destruction of all that we cherish as being human.
It is ironic that the term, “equality,” brings its favorable connotation to us from a past usage that was radically different. For the concept of equality achieved its widespread popularity during the classical-liberal movements of the eighteenth century, when it meant, not uniformity of status or income, but freedom for each and every man, without exception. In short, equality in those days meant the libertarian and individualist concept of full liberty for all persons. Thus, the biochemist Roger Williams correctly points out that the
“free and equal” phrase in the Declaration of Independence was an unfortunate paraphrase of a better statement contained in the Virginia Bill of Rights . . . “all men are by nature equally free and independent.” In other words, men can be equally free without being uniform.1
This libertarian credo was formulated with particular cogency by Herbert Spencer in his “Law of Equal Liberty” as the suggested fundamental core of his social philosophy: man’s happiness can be obtained only by the exercise of his faculties. . . . But the fulfillment of this duty necessarily presupposes freedom of action. Man cannot exercise his faculties without certain scope. He must have liberty to go and to come, to see, to feel, to speak, to work; to get food, raiment, shelter, and to provide for each and all the needs of his nature. . . . To exercise his faculties he must have liberty
to do all that his faculties actually impel him to do. . . . Therefore, he has a right to that liberty. This, however, is not the right of one but all. All are endowed with faculties. All are bound to . . . [exercise] them. All, therefore, must be free to do those things in which the exercise of them con sists. That is, all must have rights to liberty of action.
And hence there necessarily arises a limitation. For if men have like claims to that freedom which is needful for the exercise of their faculties, then must the freedom of each be bounded by the similar freedom of all. . . . Where fore we arrive at the general proposition, that every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty by every other man.2
Thus, only the specific case of equality of liberty—the older view of human equality—is compatible with the basic nature of man. Equality of condition would reduce humanity to an anthill existence. Fortunately, the individuated nature of man, allied to the geographical diversity on the earth, makes the ideal of total equality unattainable. But an enormous amount of damage—the crippling of individuality, as well as economic and social destruction—could be generated in the attempt.
- 1
Roger J. Williams, Free and Unequal: The Biological Basis of Individual Liberty (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1953), pp. 4–5. Williams adds:
“Does not our love of liberty, which seems to be inherent in all of us, rest squarely upon our inequalities? If at birth we all possessed the same potential tastes . . . would we care about being free to pursue them as we individually desire? . . . It seems to be clear that the idea of freedom arose directly out of this human variability. If we were all alike there would seem to be no reason for wanting freedom; “living my own life” would be an empty, meaningless expression.” (pp. 5, 12)
- 2
Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (London: John Chapman, 1851), pp. 76–78. In the remainder of the book, Spencer spins out the concrete implications of his basic principle. For a critique of the Law of Equal Liberty, see Murray N. Rothbard, Power and Market (Menlo Park, Calif.: Institute for Humane Studies, 1970), pp. 159–60
