[A libertarian must read to the end — or skip to it — to appreciate this response.]

To assert that all socialists are Marxists is cheap rhetorical hogwash. Both libertarians and social democrats trace their roots back to John Locke. He effectively made equality the precondition for a just society (in his first Treatise) and made liberty the predicate of justice for civil government (in the second Treatise).

There has always been a certain tension between those two values. Of late, those tensions are threatening to make Liberal societies — in particular, the U.S. — ungovernable. To save Liberal society those two values have to be reconciled. (I define Liberal society as one with democracy and the rule of law with maximizing liberty as its primary concern — which implies having a market-based economy).

I have found a way to do that: mutual respect as the ethic of justice. That ethic does follow from equality, but a society governed by it would maximize liberty while preserving democracy.

Unlike equality per se, mutual respect can be efficaciously applied to the governance of the economy (removing any justification for having government govern it), with astonishing result for society. For one thing, government would be put on a strict annual budget, with no taxes or public debt available to increase spending — at any level of government.

“Equality Is All We Need” (here in Medium)