The Declaration of Independence versus Egalitarianism

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is likely that we will hear a common, but mistaken, interpretation of the Declaration by both establishment conservatives and progressive egalitarians. After repeating Jefferson’s words “that all men are created equal,” they will make a simple, true observation—at the time of writing, not everyone was treated as “equal” (e.g., slavery).

Following that observation comes the supposition: since the historical period of colonial America did not match the ideal of modern, progressive egalitarianism, therefore, the centralized nation-state was required to increasingly achieve that ideal. In fact, every time period, including the present, that does not match modern, progressive egalitarianism justifies the power of the state to make people “equal” and finally achieve the goal of the Declaration. Thus, the Declaration—the radical secessionist document, based on natural rights and equality of liberty—is transformed into a justification for limitless state power.

Ironically, by taking this interpretation of the Declaration of Independence, proponents of this view not only empower the centralized state but promote a view of “equality” that shares a common ethical error with slavery itself—that legal castes of humans may be created and enforced against the liberty of others. Put another way, slavery and modern egalitarianism share a common juridical principle: both permit the state to treat individuals differently under the law in pursuit of a collective social objective. This is not to say that there is an exact moral equivalence between the two, but that the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence critiques both.

Jeffersonian Equality: Equality of Liberty

Obviously, to any knowledgeable reader, the Declaration is soundly based on Lockean natural rights theory, that is, that all human individuals possess pre-political, natural/God-given rights, and these rights define legitimate and illegitimate human interaction, including government.

In what is probably the most famous statement of the Declaration of Independence, it reads,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

When it comes to equality, the Declaration argued that humans do not owe their existence or being to other humans or governments. Jeffersonian “equality” means equality of liberty or equality before the law, not egalitarianism—specific unequal legal treatment of individuals by which legal castes are created in an attempt to achieve equal opportunities and/or results.

On the distinction between egalitarianism and Jeffersonian equality, Murray Rothbard wrote,

. . .the concept of equality achieved its widespread popularity during the classical-liberal movements of the eighteenth century, when it meant, not uniformity of status or income, but freedom for each and every man, without exception. In short, equality in those days meant the libertarian and individualist concept of full liberty for all persons.

Likewise, according to Roger Williams in Free and Unequal: The Biological Basis of Individual Liberty (also quoted by Rothbard),

. . .[the] “free and equal” phrase in the Declaration of Independence was an unfortunate paraphrase of a better statement contained in the Virginia Bill of Rights . . . “all men are by nature equally free and independent.” In other words, men can be equally free without being uniform.

In fact, to be consistent, to accept egalitarianism as a goal is to reject the equality of the Declaration of Independence; likewise, to accept the equality of the Declaration of Independence is to reject egalitarianism.

Contrary to egalitarianism, classical liberal equality recognized that individuals were so unique and diverse that, rather than creating a custom-made standard for each person according to their needs (i.e., modern “equity”), each person should be equally free and treated alike before the law. (Of course, there were inconsistencies, especially regarding slavery, however, it was the classical liberal paradigm and free market economics that began to erode slavery in the West).

Progressives, Conservatives, and the Declaration

Some shallow critiques are often made against the Declaration of Independence, namely, that it either did not end slavery or was hypocritical because many Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves. Due to the existence of slavery, the Declaration is portrayed as either morally problematic or incomplete.

What is missed or ignored in such arguments is that the Continental Congress was not a national government in the modern sense, but a temporary assembly of delegates appointed by the individual colonies (and later states) to coordinate a common response to British policies and, eventually, the Revolutionary War. Its authority was limited, derived from the consent of the colonies and state governments it represented, and it possessed no general sovereign power over them. The Congress could debate, recommend, petition, negotiate, and ultimately declare independence, but it lacked the authority to legislate for the states on most internal matters.

Consequently, the Declaration did not “create” an American nation, nor did it possess the power to abolish slavery, restructure state governments, or impose domestic policies on the states. The Declaration of Independence itself reflected the decision of the colonies—acting through their representatives—to dissolve their political ties with Great Britain and assume the status of “free and independent states.”

Progressive egalitarians will bring up slavery to disavow and delegitimize the Declaration and the American political tradition as irrelevant or morally problematic in favor of a modern, powerful nation-state equipped with extraordinary power to achieve “equality.” Similarly, mainstream conservatives—wanting to rescue the Declaration and the American tradition for their political ends—will draw a direct line from the Declaration to the Constitution, then to the Civil War’s ending of slavery, then to the Civil Rights era. According to the conservatives, the Declaration proclaimed an unmet ideal—egalitarian equality—which could only be achieved by a centralized American state, complete with a bloody war of unification and modern civil rights legislation.

Both interpretations conceal a core statist assumption that is against the very spirit of the Declaration: that human equality (i.e., egalitarianism)—as described in the Declaration of Independence—cannot be achieved except through an all-powerful, central state. Thus, the ideal in the Declaration, that “all men are created equal,” becomes a justification for limitless state power.

Of course, this is done through a subtle and anachronistic equivocation regarding the word “equal.” Jeffersonian equality is the equality of liberty or equality before the law, but it is taken to mean egalitarian equality. In this way, the Declaration’s use of “equal” becomes a rhetorical password for the unlimited state. This is similar to the old commercial in which a man is asked, “Hey, how about a nice Hawaiian punch?” When he answers yes, he gets punched in the face. Jefferson’s equality promoted liberty and decentralization; the egalitarian definition promotes centralization and legal castes at the expense of individual liberty.

The Declaration’s Implicit Critique of Slavery

Slavery was indeed an injustice, and there was an element of hypocrisy in proclaiming liberty, independence, and equality while human bondage was practiced. We can acknowledge that the just ideal of equality of liberty and equality before the law were not consistently met in much of history, however, it was the classical liberal worldview-paradigm and free market economics—among other factors—that began to put an end to slavery in the West.

It should be noted that slavery was historically normal (not just) and free labor was the true “peculiar institution.” We should expect inconsistencies in a period in which unique and unusual changes of thought and practice began to take place. Further, as this author has argued on numerous occasions, slavery can exist wherever one person can overpower another and forcibly expropriate production from him, but—being economically costly to maintain—slavery often required the legal protection of state power to privatize gains to a slave oligarchy and socialize costs onto others.

Contrary to the popular assumption that centralized political power was necessary to destroy slavery, federal power spent most of its history protecting and enforcing the institution. The Constitution accommodated slavery, Congress protected it, federal courts upheld it, and federal officers enforced fugitive slave laws. Only after the slaveholding states attempted to leave the Union—explicitly citing slavery as a principal cause of secession—did the federal government cease acting as slavery’s protector and begin acting as its destroyer. The American nation-state was willing to abandon its decades-long legal protections of chattel slavery in exchange for keeping the Union together by force. In the sharp assessment of Lysander Spooner, the Civil War was,

. . .a war carried on, upon one side, for chattel slavery, and on the other for political slavery; upon neither for liberty, justice, or truth. And these crimes have been committed, and this war waged, by men, and the descendants of men, who, less than a hundred years ago, said that all men were equal, and could owe neither service to individuals, nor allegiance to governments, except with their own consent.

This was done ostensibly in the name of finally achieving the values of the Declaration of Independence: “Four score and seven years ago [1776] our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” (emphasis added).

As Spooner recognized, the logic of the Declaration of Independence does fundamentally critique slavery, but from the framework of natural rights, not egalitarianism. The Declaration argued that humans, by their nature, have rights that exist prior to and independent of the state and other people. These rights cannot be surrendered, transferred, sold, or legitimately taken away because they are inherent to human beings by nature. These rights are negative in that they restrict aggression against them. These rights include life, liberty, and the limited, non-aggressive “pursuit of happiness,” as well as the right of self-ownership and property rights, which are inferred from the previous rights.

Jefferson may not have precisely followed John Locke’s triad—life, liberty, and property—because of the issue of slavery. If what Jefferson said about rights is the case, then slavery would be an evident denial of self-ownership. If one does not own himself, he certainly cannot own others; if one does own himself, then his ownership of others is illegitimate; if one is owned by others, the right to self-ownership is violated. In this context, to affirm “property” might risk entailing the right of legal protection of slave property, which would undermine his overall point.

Egalitarianism and Centralization

Exploitation takes place when an individual or group—by coercion or threat—unjustly expropriates the production of another person or group for the expropriator’s benefit, especially when achieved through the legal apparatus (instead of being justly illegal). Exploitation can take place between individuals and groups, but a caste is created through state legal power. A caste is created when a class-group is “privileged or burdened by the state.”

Slavery obviously does this, but so does egalitarianism. Possibly with benevolent intentions, modern egalitarianism begins with a concern about unequal outcomes or unequal opportunities. It is presupposed that inequalities are the result of injustices and that, given the benign intentions, a similar mechanism—state-enforced caste distinctions—can be utilized to achieve equity. To correct those inequalities, the state must treat citizens differently. Some individuals are taxed differently, regulated differently, admitted differently, hired differently, subsidized differently, or burdened differently according to group membership or statistical disparities. Individuals cease to be treated simply as equal bearers of rights and instead become members of legally-relevant categories. The common error is the abandonment of equal liberty in favor of differential legal treatment. The rationale may be different but the mechanism is the same. Slavery is a crime against human nature, and egalitarianism is a revolt against nature.

If “equality” means equalized conditions, opportunities, or outcomes, government power can never remain limited. Any remaining inequality becomes evidence that further intervention is needed, which is why interventionist politicians love it. This creates an inherently expansionary logic: Inequality exists, is presumed unjust, government must correct it, correction requires additional power, new inequalities emerge, and the cycle repeats endlessly. To argue that the Declaration of Independence means legal egalitarianism when it says “that all men are created equal” is to betray the meaning and spirit of the document, as well as to reject the principles that lead to greater freedom.