Aristotle states in Politics that the "state or political community...aims at good in a greater degree than any other [community], and at the highest good" (Aristotle 7). John Locke states in "Of Civil Government" that men are willing "[to put] themselves under government" for the chief end of "mutual preservation of their lives, liberty, and...property" (Locke 325). For a government to achieve the highest good, therefore, it must protect each of its subjects' lives, liberty, and property in a reasonably fair manner. Many would argue that the political ideal that best supports the statements above of Aristotle and Locke would be that of egalitarianism, which is the belief in equal political, economical, social, and civil rights for all people. Isaiah Berlin argues in "Equality," however, that the egalitarian ideal is flawed, and that equality in all aspects of life is certainly not desirable (Berlin 105).

Considering the arguments of Aristotle and Locke as truth, that the mutual preservation of life, liberty, and property of its constituents is the highest good for which the political community should aim, the only remaining argument to consider for the purposes of this discourse is whether that political community should be built upon equality or inequality. Despite that John Locke's Second Treatise of Government forms the foundation of the liberal political theory and that liberals today pine for economic and social equality, Isaiah Berlin makes a powerful argument against economic and social equality as the foundation of the political environment. [The American Heritage Dictionary defines liberalism as "a political theory founded on the natural goodness of human beings and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority." Although liberal is paradoxically a "term of abuse in American political life today" (Wootton 7), "we are all, it would seem, liberals now. Almost all of us can now say that Locke is our political philosopher" (9).]

In this writer's opinion, popular sovereignty should be the method of establishing government, and in the event that such a government no longer satisfies the needs of its people effectively or efficiently, its people should have the power and authority to revise or replace that government. A government's single most important duty is to protect its people. A government must protect its people not only from invasion, tyranny, oppression, and the typical physical dangers, but a government must also protect civil and economic liberties in a manner that best suits its people. On what that manner is, it has never occurred that every subject of a government agreed completely, but again it rests largely on the argument of equality versus inequality as the foundation of political community.

Essentially, Berlin's argument is metaphorically this: that "those who maintain that equality is the paramount good" may be proven wrong "with the explanation that the purpose of orchestral playing will not be served if every player is allowed equal authority with the conductor in deciding what is to be done" (105). Inequality in the organization of an orchestra is both necessary and desirable to achieve certain sounds in certain ways, just as inequality in the organization of society is both necessary and desirable to achieve various political, economic, and social ends. Berlin admits that "in societies where there is a high degree of equality of economic opportunity, the strong and able and ambitious and cunning are likely to acquire more wealth or more power than those who lack these qualities" (106), so there are those who actually strive to balance society by neutralizing the advantages of some over others in the name of fairness. But "differences of natural talent will always tend towards the creation of inequalities" (106), so even to attempt to reduce those differences is to take the work of God into one's own hands; it is blasphemy (should one believe in God).

Berlin goes further to clarify that only in a totalitarian society, such as that of The Party in George Orwell's 1984 or of the One State in Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, in which political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, can the ideal of egalitarianism exist:

Only in a society...where physical characteristics, mental endowment, emotional disposition, and conduct are as uniform as possible - where people differ as little as possible from each other in every respect whatever, will true equality be attainable. (106)

Many egalitarians accept and condone activities that would bring about the above conditions "as a necessary prerequisite for the creation of an ultimate equality" (107). There are then those who believe that "natural human characteristics either cannot or should not be altered and that all is necessary is equality of political and judicial rights" (108). The argument against this is that the advantaged are able to enrich themselves as a result of the lack of social and economic equality. Modern liberals reply that that is simply the price to pay for political or legal equality, and that only by reducing political and legal equality can a higher degree of social and economic equality be acquired.

Liberalism promotes the pure form of laissez-faire society which certainly leads to inequalities, but is justified because it provides equal opportunity for all, "whereas any attempt to secure a greater degree of ultimate equality can only be obtained by interfering with [equal] opportunity for all" (109), or by dastard inequality. In other words, those who strive for ultimate equality would necessarily be hypocrites to achieve such a system.

"In its extreme form, egalitarianism requires the minimization of all differences between men" (115), so perhaps Berlin's essay is a challenge; that the notion of equality needs to be better defined before its advocacy. He shares with this writer the opinion that "most ethical and political views are forms of...uneasy compromise between principles [such as equality] which in their extreme forms cannot coexist" (115). Nature has plainly proven itself to tend towards inequality, as exemplified by the differences among all people in the world - no two people are or can be exactly alike physically, mentally, or otherwise. So there are desirable inequalities, natural and unnatural, on which the ideal political community should be founded, and there should also be little dispute that that ideal political system, whose highest priority is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its subjects, is a liberal system. "To this day, Locke and Liberalism go hand in hand...and the problems that he couldn't solve - the rational foundation of ethics, political participation, economic equality - are ones that bedevil us too" (Wootton 119).

Works Cited

Aristotle. Politics. Introduction to Great Books. 2nd series. Chicago: Great Books, 1990. 7-11.

Berlin, Isaiah. "Equality." Introduction to Great Books. 2nd series. Chicago: Great Books, 1990. 103-115.

Locke, John. "Of the Ends of Political Society and Government." Political Writings of John Locke. Ed. David Wootton. New York: Mentor, 1993. 324-327.

Wootton, David, ed. "Locke's Liberalism." Political Writings of John Locke. New York: Mentor, 1993. 7-15.