Egalitarianism and Empire
January 1, 1975
by William Marina
"Can the historical drift toward egalitarianism and empire, which has plagued other
civilizations, be reversed in the West?"
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature
by Murray N. Rothbard
"An egalitarian society can only hope to achieve its goals by totalitarian methods of
coercion; and, even here, we all believe and hope the human spirit of individual man
will rise up and thwart any such attempts to achieve an ant-heap world. In short, the
portrayal of an egalitarian society is horror fiction because, when the implications
of such a world are fully spelled out, we recognize that such a world and such attempts
are profoundly antihuman; being antihuman in the deepest sense, the egalitarian goal is,
therefore, evil and any attempts in the direction of such a goal must be considered evil
as well."
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays by Murray Rothbard,
edited by David Gordon
Reviewed by George C. Leef
July 2001
"The book shows two things about Rothbard. First, the remarkable scope of his mind: the
16 essays presented here range from a devastating assault on the “women’s
liberation” movement to an analysis of the nineteenth-century anarchist Lysander
Spooner; a dissection of the essence of the state to an argument for the rights of
children. The reader cannot but marvel at the encyclopedic display of knowledge they
contain.
The second characteristic is his logical consistency. Rothbard argued that the proper
approach to economics was logical deduction from the fundamental principle that human
beings act purposefully to achieve their objectives. His writings on economic questions
hew to that idea, but so do his writings on contemporary issues. He starts from
libertarian axioms and deduces the correct policy, much as one would prove a point in
geometry. Rothbard is useful, then, not just for arriving at right conclusions, but also
for demonstrating the process of thinking matters through. At a time when sloppy,
emotion-laden argumentation is found almost everywhere, Rothbard is a beacon of
intellectual rigor."
Egalitarianism: The Holy Grail of Socialism
by weebies
"Egalitarianism, and its equality of results, is not something to be desired or
worked for. Its main benefactor is the state, which uses it to rob people of their
freedom, property, and self-determination. The only equality that we need is the
freedom for each individual to live his life as he chooses."
The Futility of Egalitarianism: Some Reflections Inspired by Julian LeGrand's 'Strategy
of Equality'
by Danny Frederick
The Idea of Equality
by Jarret B. Wollstein
"The natural order of human society is diversity, variety and inequality. The fruits of
that natural order are progress, productivity and invention. In the final analysis,
virtue and compassion can only flourish in a world of men and women free and unequal."
Jefferson Was All Wet
by Bill Bonner
"All the evidence we've seen tells us just the opposite – men are not born equal. One
is rich; one is poor. One is fat; one is skinny. One has Viking blue eyes and pale
skin; the other is a Blackamoor with eyes like burning coals and skin the color of
soot. Maybe twins are born equal, but the rest of us are as variable as snowflakes.
No two are alike. No two are equal."
Wealth, Poverty, and the Egalitarian Ideal
January 3, 2007
by John Pugsley
"The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom measures 161
countries against a list of 50 independent variables divided into 10 broad factors of
economic freedom. It demonstrates incontrovertibly that the freer individuals are to
direct their efforts to where they are most productive, the higher the production and
accumulation of wealth. The correlation between freedom and affluence is well documented.
That means wealth comes from the efforts of individuals, not the actions of government.
As I see it, the world doesn't need more government programs to address inequities
between the rich and poor. The world needs sovereign governments to step out of the way,
and allow sovereign individuals the freedom to produce, exchange, and invest."
Equality and Capitalism
by Donald Boudreaux
"And while we modern Americans focus on how much more money Bill Gates has than the
rest of us, our time-traveler would likely find the differences separating Gates from
average Americans to be much smaller than the gargantuan differences between his own
pre-industrial life and that of today's ordinary Americans."
Equality: The Unknown Ideal
by Roderick Long
"Inequality in authority is far more offensive, from a moral point of
view, than mere socioeconomic inequality; hence, whenever the demands of
socioeconomic equality conflict with the demands of libertarian equality, which
they generally do, preference must be given to the latter."
Equal Liberty Versus Equal Value
by Antony Flew
Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism and the Division of Labor
by Murray N. Rothbard
"There are virtually an infinite number of groups or "classes" in society: the class
of people named Smith, the class of men over 6 feet tall, the class of bald people,
and so on. Which of these groups may find themselves among the "oppressed"? Who knows?
It is easy to invent a new oppressed group. I might come up with a study, for example,
demonstrating that the class of people named "Doe" have an average income or wealth
or status lower than that of other names. I could then coin a hypothesis that people
named Doe have been discriminated against because their names "John Doe" and
"Jane Doe" have been "stereotyped" as associated with faceless anonymity, and Presto,
we have one more group who is able to leave the burdened ranks of the oppressors and
join the happy ranks of the oppressed."
Inequality
by Ludwig von Mises
"The liberal champions of equality under the law were fully aware of the fact that
men are born unequal and that it is precisely their inequality that generates social
cooperation and civilization. Equality under the law was in their opinion not designed
to correct the inexorable facts of the universe and to make natural inequality
disappear. It was, on the contrary, the device to secure for the whole of mankind the
maximum of benefits it can derive from it. Henceforth no man-made institutions should
prevent a man from attaining that station in which he can best serve his fellow citizens."
Liberty and Equality—A Question of Balance?
by Jan Narveson
Liberty: The Other Equality
by Roderick T. Long
"Liberty is the truest form of equality."
On Equality and Inequality
by Ludwig von Mises
"Only the deadly foes of individual liberty and self-determination, the champions of
totalitarianism, interpreted the principle of equality before the law as derived from
an alleged psychical and physiological equality of all men."
Gender Issues / Masculinism
June 30, 2003
by Wendy McElroy
"Judging by the backlash, masculinists are having an impact. I know
this personally because my web site Ifeminists.com, which advances equal
rights for men, has experienced a dramatic increase in harassment and hate
mail from gender feminists in recent months. Every blast centers on men's
rights."
Individualist Feminism: The Lost Tradition
August 1, 1998
by Wendy McElroy
"Individualist feminists cared deeply about social problems, but they did not believe
in governmental solutions. Although many were firmly puritanical in their views and
personal conduct, they were even firmer in their commitment to the right of peaceful
individuals to choose. If they could not persuade people to be moral, they would not
use force to impose a code of morality. Thus, when individualist feminists joined purity
campaigns, such as temperance, they advocated voluntary, not legislated, abstinence."
Liberty and Feminism
by Richard A. Epstein
"A few decades ago, the women’s movement typically sought support for legal and
political inclusion by appealing to individualist sensibilities. Ironically, those
arguments often militate against the agenda of many of today’s feminists."
Ludwig von Mises’ Legacy for Feminists
September 1, 1997
by Wendy McElroy
"With the death of the ERA and the consequent disillusionment of liberal feminists,
the ideology of gender feminism came to the forefront and began to exert a defining
influence on many issues. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to state that much of
current mainstream feminism is based upon gender feminism’s version of class analysis.
It is on this point of theory that Mises provides penetrating insights on modern
feminism."
Wage Gap Reflects Women’s Priorities
September 22, 2004
by Wendy McElroy
"The inequality of outcomes is not an indication of injustice, because justice resides
in every individual receiving what he or she deserves. Employees who compete with
equality of opportunity deserve whatever they can negotiate from an employer based on
their merits and his needs. That’s justice."
Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams
Autumn 2001
John Kekes
"The most celebrated public philosophers of our time—our Rousseau and Voltaire, so to
speak—are John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Prophets of a non-Marxist socialism, they
provide the rationale for the domestic agenda of the left wing of the Democratic party,
and they are in large measure responsible for the Left's remarkable success in occupying
the moral high ground. They have convinced the nation's elites that it is a matter of
simple justice for our society systematically to deprive the large majority of citizens
of a sizable portion of their legally owned property to benefit a much smaller
minority—an Orwellian redefinition that mocks as well as violates justice. In their
egalitarian philosophical system, there's no need to debate the merits of progressive
taxation, anti-poverty programs, socialized medicine, affirmative action, and welfare
legislation: a society that lacks them is, by definition, not a just society."
Economic Growth and True Equality
January 28, 2002
by John V. C. Nye
"Thus, whatever the measured gap between the rich and the poor in today's world,
the real, (utility-adjusted) gap in incomes and wealth is liable to be substantially
smaller than that of a century or so earlier, even when monetary measures tell us
otherwise. While the losses, or at any rate, the relative losses are liable to be felt
more keenly by the rich."
Equal: But Not the Same
by Edmund A. Opitz
"The alternative to the free economy is a servile state, where a ruling class
enforces an equality of poverty on the masses, and lives at the expense of the
producers. To embark on a program of economic leveling, then, is like trying to repeal
the law of gravity; it’ll never work, and the energy we waste trying to make it work
defeats our efforts to attain the reasonable goals which are within our capacity to
achieve."
The Hidden Inequality in Socialism
by David R. Henderson, Robert M. McNab, and Tamás Rózsás
"In recent years, researchers on transition economies have concluded that income
inequality increased in the former socialist countries of eastern Europe and central
Asia despite the liberalization of political and economic life. This judgment, however,
places too much credence in the data reported by socialist planners and underestimates
the cumulative effect of the myriad inequalities present under socialism."
The Inequality of Wealth and Income
by Ludwig von Mises
"Only because inequality of wealth is possible in our social order, only because it
stimulates everyone to produce as much as he can and at the lowest cost, does mankind
today have at its disposal the total annual wealth now available for consumption. Were
this incentive to be destroyed, productivity would be so greatly reduced that the
portion that an equal distribution would allot to each individual would be far less
than what even the poorest receives today."
Inequality of Wealth and Income
by Ludwig von Mises
"The inequality of individuals with regard to wealth and income is an essential feature
of the market economy."
Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?
by Walter Block
Irreducible Inequality
April 1, 2002
by John V. C. Nye
"Even today, we routinely exaggerate the extent of material inequality and make foolish
comparisons between different time periods and between countries at different levels of
development. This does not mean that inequality has disappeared, or that it is
unimportant. But in many cases (such as the plight of children in the poorest countries)
the real problem is not unequal distribution, but lack of the most basic goods that
have long become commonplace in the developed world."
Liberty &/vs. Equality
October 1977
by James Bovard
"The achievement of economic equality would destroy almost all economic liberty. Anyone
above a certain low level would have most of his income and property confiscated."
On Appeasing Envy
November 11, 2005
by Henry Hazlitt
"Any attempt to equalize wealth or income by forced redistribution must only tend to
destroy wealth and income. Historically the best the would-be equalizers have ever
succeeded in doing is to equalize downward."
On Being Equal
December 1977
by John Hospers
"The moral of this little tale is very simple: if everyone received the same income no
matter what each did, soon there would be nothing left to distribute. There would be
equality, but equality of zero. If people are to achieve anything, they must be able to
keep at least a good part of what they have earned; otherwise there will be no point in
trying to improve themselves by earning more . . ."
The Quackery of Equality
by Lawrence W. Reed
"This economic equality thing is not compassion. When it's just an idea, it's bunk.
When it's public policy, it's quackery writ large."
Two Concepts of Equality
September 1969
by Edmund A. Opitz
"Every alternative to the market economy—call it socialism or communism or fascism or
whatever—concentrates power over the lives and livelihood of the many in the hands of
a few. The principle of equality before the law is discarded—the Rule of Law is
incompatible with any form of the planned economy—and, as in the George Orwell satire,
some men become more equal than others. We head back toward the Old Regime—the system of
privilege."
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This page was last updated on August 28, 2007.