At a dinner recently, my flatmate asked me what I find more important: equality or freedom. I stopped for a second and found myself unable to answer. Later while I was lying in bed, I was still thinking about the question. My roommate meant it as a semi-serious query, one that would open up a nice conversation. However, I slowly realized that the question is a lot more complicated than my friend meant it to be. What your priority is, freedom or equality, can be loosely translated into your political beliefs: liberalism or socialism. Rather than a fun question to discuss over some pizza and beer, I was suddenly grappled with a question about my core values. Consequently, the answer would determine my entire political belief, right?

So, equality or freedom? I have just finished reading Strangers in their own land by Arlie Hochschild, and one of her conclusions is that we are dependent on each other. Red states need blue states as much as the other way around. Conservatives need socialists and socialists need conservatives. If we take freedom as the core value of the right and equality as the core value on the left and we believe Hochschild’s conclusion, the two cannot be mutually exclusive. So, is it at all fair to frame the two as a trade-off?

The scholars are divided (which is not really surprising, everything is a contested concept in political science). The obvious logic is that, following a more socialist/communist structure of society, people will be more equal, but less free. Whereas, in a society where humans are completely free, inequality is part of the deal, the natural state of humanity is inequality. And in most societies we can find some sort of balance between this trade-off. However, if you dive a little deeper than this simple framework of the two concepts, the two terms are not as mutually exclusive as they may seem. Classical liberalism does not advocate for inequalities within societies. Rather, they believe in equal opportunities and they see them as one of the things that will lead to the freedom they treasure so much. As long as the inequalities have a valid explanation, e.g. people are simply less talented or they don’t work as hard as others, the inequalities seem acceptable. And perhaps one cannot speak of inequalities anymore, because everyone started out from an equal point. If anything, are we truly free if we do not have these equal opportunities? There is of course an argument that creating equal opportunities is diminishing our freedom. For example, in order to create equal opportunities we are not allowed to discriminate people. Strictly speaking, the freedom to be racist is taken from you, but are these really freedoms we want to protect?

So how does this fit into the socialism vs. liberalism debate? Perhaps Arlie Hochschild was right, they need each other in order to survive. Recently, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who said that socialism is always looking for someone to blame, which begs the question: does socialism need inequality to be of substance? Of course this sounds quite extreme, and does not do socialism justice, but it is an interesting thought to follow. As long as inequalities exist within our society, there will be political parties that will want to diminish these inequalities. What happens when these inequalities are completely gone? Perhaps it is a thought too utopian to be worth to follow. However, that my friend asked what socialisms end-game is, is not entirely unjustified.

Maybe the only answer I can give my roommate the next time she asks me if I prefer equality or freedom is that she is asking the wrong question. A more equal society is one that is also more free. Socialism and liberalism are not polar opposites, they feed into each other. They have to do so, because they both exist within our society. And maybe framing the political spectrum into two words at all (left/right, freedom/equality, liberalism/socialism) does not do us humans justice. If anything, it is only useful to polarize and to give me a little (political) identity crisis while I was trying to enjoy some pizza and beer.