What do we mean by equality?

One concept often used by the left is equality. After all, who could argue against equality? But, what do we mean by equality?  I assume that if you have found this page you are not looking for cooking tips. More than likely you found your way here via my Twitter page. So, I am assuming you are on the left, probably a Corbyn-supporting Labour Party member or voter. If so, like me, you will almost certainly have said that the problem we face is massive inequality. And, to counter that, you will have said, what is needed is equality. But, if you are like me, you will probably not have spent much time clarifying exactly what that might mean in practice. It is enough, generally speaking, to be against inequality.

But, critics of the notion of equality, such as the philosopher William Letwin (yes, Oliver’s Dad), point out equality can only be achieved by mass conformity. Everything and everybody is equal only when everybody is exactly the same. We cannot argue, it seems, both for equality and individuality.

Harry Kane has exceptional talent

Except that is exactly what we should do. My idea of equality is that every person should have an equal chance to achieve all that they are capable of achieving. We are often told that certain people have unique skills and talents and that this justifies giving them much higher wages than others. Very often those arguing this use exceptionally talented people as their example: Harry Kane, Serena Williams, Mo Farah, Stephen Hawking or Einstein. As a result of their unique talents these individuals are highly paid and, so the argument goes, any attempt to impose equality would prevent them from exercising their unique talents as we are all forced to conform to the lowest common denominator. Equality it seems can only be achieved by preventing talented people from using their natural talents. It’s a powerful argument. After all, I can kick a ball but I can’t do so as well as Harry Kane and I can run but I’ll never be as fast as Mo Farah. Why shouldn’t they earn a lot more than me when they have talents I can only dream of?

This needs some unpicking. We currently live in a World where the top 1% have as much wealth as the bottom 50%. Most people in that top 1% do not possess any unique talent, unless being born to rich parents is considered a talent. But, more importantly the bottom 50% don’t lack talent what they lack is an opportunity to express their talent. It remains the case, that your class of origin is still the best indicator of your eventual class. That indicates that there exists in the UK, the USA, Europe and elsewhere deep-seated structural inequality.

As a socialist I am not motivated by envy as is often asserted, but rather by compassion. I am not so much concerned to remove the wealth of the 1%, but rather to increase the wealth of the 99% and particularly the poorest. And, by wealth I do not just mean money, but what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu  called ‘cultural capital’ by which I understand the opportunity to play sports, to learn musical instruments, and to explore what the Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen calls ‘capabilities’.

Murdoch's sons where they are because of their talent?

The reason this concerns the 1% so much, and below them the 10%, who are parasitical on the top 1%, is two-fold. First, they like to believe that they are where they are because of their talent and hard work, rather than their family connections and luck. For an example of this kind of reasoning see this article from  the Harvard Business Review. Second, they convince us that we are playing a zero-sum game. For the poor to have more they would have to have less and they do not much want to give up their wealth or their privileges. A version of this argument appeared in The Independent in 2017 as a critique of Labour’s economic policies.

Some socialists take the view that the 1% are simply greedy, that they are motivated by avarice and hatred of the poor. That may be true for some of them, but it is not their greed or hatred that is the real issue. The issue is that in order to provide opportunities for the 50% we need to make structural changes to the social system which go beyond electing a Labour Government (or whatever socialist alternatives exist elsewhere in the world).

Says who?

Comrade Corbyn??

For some reason even those who count themselves as anti-capitalist can be reticent in arguing against the idea of human nature as the cause of so much of the misery in society. Many people in the Labour Party were very quick to distance themselves from allegations that they were Marxist revolutionaries (to be fair many others embraced it).

The appeal to human nature is routinely used by those in the ascendancy to deny the privileges they enjoy to the majority. As the brilliant socialist R.H.Tawney noted in his book Equality in 1929:

“Every generation regards as natural the institutions to which it is accustomed. Mankind, it seems, is more easily shocked by the unusual than by the shocking.”

It might be worth reminding ourselves that creating a more equal society is not just about economics but, according to Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett more equal societies generate more happiness, more trust, and improves the well-being of citizens more generally. I am not aware that either of them are flag-waving members of the Communist Party so we might assume that as experienced epidemiologists their conclusions were supported by the mass of evidence they examined.

Professor Philip Alston, also far from being a card carrying communist, was equally blunt in his recent assessment of poverty in the UK for the United Nations. He wrote

“In the area of poverty-related policy the evidence points to the conclusion  that the driving force has not been economic but rather a commitment to achieving a radical social re-engineering.”

Of course, instead of hanging their heads in shame the Government questioned the motivations of Professor Alston claiming that he was politically motivated, as if driving people into poverty was not political. I am the first to applaud the rigour inherent in these studies, but their flaw is that in addressing those who tend to do very well out of inequality they perpetuate the myth that structural inequality is a policy issue rather than a systems issue. Naturally, if we can solve poverty by policy alone that preserves the social system that produced it in the first place. But, if it were that easy, if it were really only a case of enacting some progressive legislation then why does poverty persist?

The architects of austerity

Policies which are antagonistic to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society clearly exacerbate poverty, as we have seen since 2010 when the Tories and Lib-Dems enacted their joint programme of austerity. But, is it equally true that policies that are intended to reduce poverty have the same effects.

Undoubtedly, some of the policies enacted by the last Labour Government took some people, particularly children, out of poverty. I am certainly in favour of such measures. But, how quickly those people (or at least people from similar backgrounds) were plunged back into poverty. Some 14 million people in the UK now live in poverty. That is not an accident, nor is it just a case of the Tories lack of compassion. It is systemic.

In order to change systemic problems requires system change. We have tried, and failed, to tinker with the system. From a socialist perspective a realisation that the entire basis of our social system is the root of the problem does give us a headache. Not least because systems are incredibly difficult to change. We therefore become absorbed with doing what we can to alleviate the worst excesses of a system we barely believe in, rather than doing nothing at all.

Supporting Labour, even a left-leaning Labour Party, can become an end in itself. Our energies can become absorbed into internal (and internecine) party disputes, in canvassing for one election after another and, worst of all, seeing the election of a Labour Government as our overall goal.

A Labour Government which fails to reform the welfare system (I believe the DWP in its present form should be scrapped) and fails to reform taxation to make the wealthy (particularly tax-avoiding multi-nationals) pay their fair share would not really be worth electing. And, to be clear, I am happy to support those policies as a reformist vision. But, here is the rub, making the wealthy pay more tax and ensuring that workers are paid a living wage is not the same as transforming the social system. Furthermore, it risks the very real danger that the reforms will simply be unravelled either by the next Tory Government or even by a Labour Government under pressure from the IMF following a run on the pound.

The greater the inequality the worse the well-being of citizens

So, if we are serious about equality (let alone socialism) we need to begin a slightly different conversation. What mechanisms are there for the overall transformation of naked, free-market capitalism into a socialist society where the needs of each are balanced against the rights of the many. That might well involve upsetting most of the 1% (although if Wilkinson and Pickett are correct greater equality will improve their well-being as much as the bottom 1%), many of the middle layers who are reliant on the largesse of the 1% and in the UK the majority of the current PLP who cannot see beyond reforming an unreformable system. Importantly, it means re-thinking the role of markets to turn them into what the philosopher Diane Elson describes as ‘social markets’. These are markets whose function is not to bring buyers and sellers together so that sellers can make profits, but markets which ensure that goods (and services) are provided to those who need them and in a way that does not allow some individuals to accumulate vast amounts of the social good, whilst others are denied even the basic goods required to keep body and soul together.

Tony Benn made the point in his series of essays published as Arguments for Socialism in 1979:

“A degree of intelligent and democratic planning could supersede the concept of market forces as a magical way of distributing wealth." he wrote, continuing "We have got to make the leap from the world of market forces towards more democratic decisions about resources and a greater respect for human values."

It is because there is still a chance that such markets could be created that I remain committed to socialist values. How we might find ourselves in such a place I will talk about in a future blog, but for those who came here looking for cooking tips can I just end with this advice. If you have a cake keeping the largest slice for yourself whilst allowing others only crumbs is neither fair nor equal, and it does not take too much imagination to change that distribution.