ABSTRACT
Liberty and equality, Harold Laski notes, often have been taken as at least partly contradictory social goals. The argument put forward by the antiequalitarian conservatives who would exalt liberty over equality resolves inevitably into liberty for the few and both inequality and restriction for the rest. Equality, broadly, is a coherence of ideas each one of which needs special examination. The provision of adequate opportunity is one of the basic conditions of equality, and it is mainly founded upon the training we offer to citizens. Equality involves up to the margin of sufficiency identity of response to primary needs. Political equality is never real unless it is accompanied by virtual economic equality; political power, otherwise, is bound to be the handmaid of economic power. The classic modern discussion in favor of economic liberty and against equality is that of Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom.
