Freedom and Equaity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Freedom and Equaity - Essay Example That means everyone must have the right to live their life employing their capital and labor as per their liking. Locke is considered one of the proponents of classical liberalism. In the Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke argues that ruler derives power from the people. All individuals have a birth right to possess property and if government or ruler deprives them from this natural right, the people have all right to force ruler to leave. Locke also speaks about equality for everyone. He states liberty does not mean that anyone is given liberty of destroying oneself or for that matter anyone else's property, health, life or freedom. No one can encroach on other's rights or inflict destruction. Simply the law of nature must prevail that speaks about peace and preservation for fellow citizens. Locke lends a special emphasis on having a freedom to possess earned property. Whatever has been acquired through one's labor and hard work will, in all case, belong to that person and n o one else will have right on that possession. Locke is categorical in stating that human being is born with a perfect freedom and full rights of enjoyment with what has been provided by nature. And to this extent everyone is equal. Thus, for Locke, freedom is compatible with equality as far as it is derived from the nature and its gifts to mankind – no discrimination of any kind can be allowed. ... Social contract deals with people's freedom and rights albeit in a political sense. Everyone is free in this social contract and laws that are essentially to safeguard and regulate each individual. He also asserts that freedom of each person is the chief element to be preserved; however, they still need to follow social contract for their own survival. As per Rousseau, equality and freedom are two political ends and they are correlated such that the equality is a necessary condition to restore freedom. With the advent of industrial revolution in Europe, a new kind of thought process emerged, especially from Marx and Angles as they believed that a great dividing line existed between haves and have-nots. According to them, there is no true equality among the people and the root cause behind inequality is the capitalist nature of the society. According to them, a true freedom is acquired when everyone is free from oppression and exploitation by any section of the society. They strongly believe that a large section of the labor class in the society does not enjoy true freedom or equality. That was the time when Europe had already ushered into a great industrial revolution in the nineteenth century and large scale labor transition to the industries took place. For them, economic equality is of a great importance for the society and since that due to its absence labor class does not enjoy the true freedom. In other sense, they emphasize that freedom and equality are not compatible and individual freedom to generate wealth must be taken away to restore equality among the people. In their Manifesto, they depict, "Masses of laborers, crowded into the factor, are organized like soldiers. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and the bourgeois state,