What Equality Means in a Free Society

Freedom rests on equal treatment, but equality should not be conflated with managed uniformity or economic levelling.

In this article, Fighting for a Free Future Associate Luke Lucas continues to explore Dr Nigel Ashford’s Principles for a Free Society, focusing on the third principle for a free society: equality.

---

If democracy is the self-governance of equals, then the next principle of a free society is logically equality. Yet the existence of equality does not guarantee freedom. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, the democratic age is defined not primarily by liberty but by the social condition of equality. Citizens must recognise one another as fundamentally equal if they are to govern themselves without tyranny. This disappearance of permanent hierarchies allows citizens to regard one another as equals rather than subjects. Yet equality also carries a danger: without the freedom to associate with one another, individuals will become isolated rather than associated and rely on the security of administration rather than the burdens of self-governance.

To prevent the acquiescence of tyranny, Friedrich Hayek argued that equality was not a matter of equal outcomes but of equal treatment under general rules. Drawing on Edmund Burke, who wrote that “all men have equal rights, but not to equal things”, Hayek maintained that freedom requires that the law applies to individuals equally to individuals rather than serving the interests of particular groups. When the state attempts to enforce substantive or corrective equality, it will increasingly intervene in social and economic life, eroding the very existence of freedom it wishes to protect.

Principles for a Free Society, © 2003 Dr Nigel Ashford and the Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation - get the PDF

John Rawls developed this idea further by rooting equality in the moral status of citizens themselves. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argued that citizens are moral equals whose political institutions must be arranged so that inequalities can be justified to those subject to them. In this sense, equality is not uniform fairness: social and economic differences are acceptable only when they arise within institutions that all citizens could reasonably accept.

A similar intuition appears in the political language of Margaret Thatcher; she defended what she described as the “right to be unequal”. A free society must allow unequal outcomes because individuals are different in talent, ambition and effort. Respecting freedom therefore requires allowing these differences to produce different results. Therefore, equality does not concern uniformity but rather status; citizens must be equals before the law and political life, even if their lives diverge in countless ways.

Equality in a free society therefore takes several forms. Social equality prevents the emergence of permanent hierarchies; legal equality ensures the power operates through general rules rather than privilege; and moral equality requires that institutions justify the inequalities they permit. Together these principles ensure that democratic authority remains the shared possession of citizens rather than instruments of the state.

Therefore, equality is not a mere democratic aspiration; it is the very condition that makes democratic freedom possible. Citizens can only govern themselves when they recognise one another as equals; where this recognition weakens, power begins to accumulate in institutions. A free society must preserve equality in a form that sustains independence, not dependency: equality before the law, in political standing and the capacity to associate freely with one another. Only under these conditions can democracy remain an expression of self-rule and not a mechanism of administration

Equality in a free society does not eliminate difference; it ensures that difference does not become domination.

Luke Lucas is a Fighting for a Free Future Associate and runs Voices for a Free Future’s monthly column, What is Happening in Argentina!