Frith

Not if it is applied in a Libertarian context of equality before the law that goes together with liberty and freedom of association. These are grand principles that have governed Libertarian views for a few centuries. And they are high ideals that can be incorporated into ideology, not necessary followed to the letter as though they were items in a behavioural rule book. One can't force them to fit some system as they are principles of thought and action and they tend to belong under the heading of ethics.

I think the crude kind of equality that you are rightly concerned about goes together with new age Marxist conceptions of the concept and tend to tyranny, yes, and this is because new age Marxism is basically left leaning fascist. High ideals and adaptation to environments do not seem to enter the contemporary Marxian model. Maybe the basic utilitarianism and univeralism of what we now know as Marxism is to blame. One thing is for certain and that is that Labour, new age liberal democratic extremism and its gaggle of clone ideolgies have parted company with Libertarianism and tradition and are headed out into no man's land.