Power is the control that can be exerted over people. By contrast defining freedom is a notoriously difficult problem although it is understood to be a core value whose attainment is among the highest human aspirations. Freedom is also understood to possess the crucial property of infinite divisibility (giving freedom to you takes none away from me; the same is obviously not true of power).

But despite the substantial differences between freedom and power an equivalence exists between the two in our society, which links the pursuit of one with the attainment of the other. The equivalence I refer to is itself very simple: the more power I have, the more freedom; and the less power I have, the less freedom. But the consequences pervade every aspect of human life. Global properties of society, such as its social, economic and political structures, reflect down to the perceptions, beliefs and relationships of individuals. So, as we consider political philosophy, we should always be mindful of the consequences to the individual as a human, and reflect on our own experiences. For example, I have observed in me and in people I meet a highly pyramidal model of human relationships where 'I' am at the apex, surrounded by family. At some distance is a circle of friends who come and go. The strangers that pass me in the street are on the horizon and the rest of the world in some parallel universe, who perhaps pose a vague threat, but are otherwise safe to be forgotten. Any breech to this model is deeply distressing, but I wonder how deep within human nature this model truly is, and how much it is induced by the nature of these social structures, and in particular the existence of a power freedom equivalence that seems to lie at their hearts.

Money, although fundamentally nothing more than an abstract measure of labour, functions as a mechanism to establish a power freedom equivalence, as long as its distribution is unequal or undemocratic, as it necessarily is in a capitalist system. Indeed, capitalism is a social system where capital (the power to purchase and speculate on commodities) is primary. Money is a necessary abstraction since markets depend on the comparative valuation of different commodities, possibly grouped together. But because capital is the primary thing, it is people with capital and not people themselves who have a voice. And since people who have capital have different concerns than those without (by a simple evolutionary argument), then invariably social and human well being is far less important than the efficient operation of the capital markets, which is sadly observed in practise all the time. Thus people, and not just labour, is abstracted away, while the utopia of an equal distribution of wealth is at best an unstable equilibrium (for the simple reason that the more capital I have, the more power I have to protect and enlarge it, and there is an evolutionary incentive to do so). In summary, by the unequal and undemocratic distribution of capital within the capitalist system, money functions as an equivalence between freedom and power.

It is important to observe that we don't live in a purely capitalist society (the wealthy enjoy socialism, and the poor enjoy worker protections) but capitalism is quite pervasive, often imposed from above for political reasons, and this induces a power-freedom equivalence as argued. The poor are vulnerable to market fluctuations, so many are trapped in (or born into) a debt cycle. The consequence is that they need to work more, having no time or energy to devote to creative pursuits, like art, philosophy and science (which protects the elitist nature of these activities). The job dependency that follows has psychological consequences; for example, a willingness to subordinate to authority out of fear, which leads quickly to political apathy and whence to effective disenfranchisement. The intellectual vacuum that is left is often filled with a deep engagement in the conveniently provided diversions of the propaganda system, like spectator sport.

The power-freedom equivalence is also exhibited in totalitarian political structures that pervade society; the prototypical contemporary example is the corporation, which is perhaps the dominant institutional model.

While freedom is a core human value that should be enjoyed by everyone to a maximum extent, power is dangerous and corrupting, and confers a solemn moral responsibility on those who take its reins. So there is something quite perverse in making the equivalence between freedom and power, and we should be very disturbed by it if such an equivalence exists.

One of the many negative consequences of this equivalence is to the distorted concept of freedom that it induces. Surely the freedom of speech is legitimate, and there are many others known and yet to be discovered. But there are many things that are often confused with freedoms that are not freedoms, nor very important, but have more to do with elitism and power. For example, consumer buying power (the 'freedom' to purchase and consume whatever we want as long as we have the money, regardless of the environmental or social impact). Another example is the freedom to climb up various ladders like the housing ladder or the job ladder (which reflect the pyramidal (power-based) nature of structures in our society). I think that even apparently unrelated problems like the confusion of academic credentials with academic merit can be traced back to the power freedom equivalence. Indeed, the need to rank students by some artificial measure of performance is to prepare them for entry into a hierarchical meritocracy, where exam success determines their entry point into this system. But perhaps the ultimate expression of this confusion between power and freedom is the freedom to accumulate limitless wealth. This brings us to charity, which is a form of dependence and the effective institutionalisation of the poor and downtrodden. Of course charity is better than nothing but the distribution of wealth alone should eliminate the need for it in a working system.

This distortion of the meaning of freedom has moral and ethical consequences. For example, it allows us to accept wage slavery as ethical, as long as the worker is sufficiently able to accumulate creature comforts. It does not matter whether the worker is able to participate in the democratic process, even though this is the only way in which she can hope to protect her freedoms in the future and participate in the crucial issues of the day. An example at the other extreme is the legitimisation of imperialism, which is often justified by the need to protect our freedoms, where we can interpret 'freedom' as our right to practise imperial hegemony. Another example, related to the last one, is the explanation that is often given in the mainstream for domestic terrorism in the West where it is explained to us that 'they' are 'jealous of our freedom', which, apart from being a particularly grotesque perversion of the concept of freedom (recall that freedom is infinitely divisible), diverts our attention away from more sensible explanations.

There are also philosophical implications to making the power freedom equivalence. Indeed, the goal of an egalitarian society is to minimise the use and need for power, but under this equivalence, which is implicit in arguments against socialism, an egalitarian social order would lower everyone to a common denominator, rather than elevate everyone to new heights.