The dung fly and the fairy godmother
This is the start of a new series, on equality and redistribution. The facts and fiction on equivalence, equal opportunity, humans as egalitarians, and fair sharing.
We are going to talk about equality, a concept with all kinds of different meanings. In what sense are all people equal? Does everyone deserve the same treatment? What does fair sharing actually mean? These types of questions are addressed in this article.
First the basics, so that you know approximately what to expect in this series.
Sameness, equality or equivalence
To begin with, equality can mean several things: equal things can mean that they are exactly the same, or that they are equally important or have the same value. Philosophically, things that are identical are rare. Almost nothing is the same as anything else. Two yellow Lego blocks may look very similar, but you probably can't tell them apart by sight. Yet they are two different blocks. If you look at them with a magnifying glass, you will see the differences. A scratch maybe. They are the same in many respects, but not in all.
To keep things simple, by equality we mean that the relevant features are similar. When building a Lego castle, it doesn't matter whether you use one block or the other.
You have no good reason to use one block or the other. This brings us to the first meaning of equality: equality before the law or before government. To the government we are all the same Lego blocks. The government may not make distinctions based on characteristics that do not matter.
But how about you, are you allowed to make distinctions? Let's say it's crazy to make a distinction based on features that don't matter. If the waiter has two identical glasses of water on a tray and hands me the left glass, it is crazy for me to insist that I only want the right glass. Why, the waiter asks. Because the right glass is further away from me, I say. If I make that distinction, I'm crazy.
But I can decide for myself which characteristics matter. I am allowed to make crazy choices, act irrationally, apply criteria that don't matter. I don't have to be consistent. When I build my own Lego castle, I make my own rules, no matter how crazy they are, and no matter if my castle becomes a total failure, can’t I?
The government can’t do that, or at least it must not make a distinction based on characteristics that one cannot do anything about, such as one’s gender. I’ll explain later why it must not do that.
Equal worth
The second dimension of equality is that people are of equal worth, or have the same dignity. Your life is worth nothing less than mine and you are as morally autonomous as I am. It raises the question of what we mean by worth. We will also go into that later.
Equal opportunities
In addition, many people believe that everyone deserves equal opportunities in life. Not only is the government not allowed to make irrelevant distinctions between people, we are also obliged to give our fellow human beings a fair chance in life. It is not fair if some people are disadvantaged in life by chance, for example if they are born into a poor family, or have some other characteristic that they cannot do anything about and that should not matter, their skin colour for example, or their sex.
The origins of inequality
This brings us to the complicated issue of redistribution. When we let people do their thing, as in pre-modern agricultural communities for example, differences will naturally arise. Differences in prosperity initially. One person has more talent, another works harder, another is just very lucky. And anyone who is not lucky, has little talent and has other priorities than accumulating prosperity, will not become rich. This effect is further enhanced as the generations accumulate. A child of a poor slob receives less education, her parents cannot teach her how to make something from nothing, the chance that her social network also belongs to the underclass is greater and she may also be at a genetic disadvantage. In this way, the differences multiply as the generations succeed each other. Differences arise in education, lifestyle, opportunities on the labour market, and so on. A class society may emerge, where a minority has control over almost everything, and those without property live a marginal existence. This creates unequal opportunities.
Collectivism
We can partly prevent these differences from arising by making everything collectively owned. The land initially, and companies, and the proceeds to be distributed among everyone. But that has enormous disadvantages: productivity decreases, and the people who lead those collectives gain a lot of power, which they often abuse. Instead of differences in prosperity, everyone gets less prosperity, less freedom, power differences and we get a lot of scheming. Moreover, we cannot eliminate all differences. People have innate differences in capabilities and personality and in what they receive from their parents during their upbringing. Unless you also want to collectivise that education.
In a collective system, people become dissatisfied with their lack of freedom and their low standard of living. Apart from a few corners of the world, Cuba for instance, collectivism has vanished. Also because large companies and capitalist countries, led by the United States, have done everything they can to sabotage the system. Because there is nothing to be earned in collectivist countries.
Redistribution of outcomes
Collective systems lose out to the profit motive of the free market. But the free market drives inequality. Democratic socialists are looking for a way out of the problem of the two evils: they want to combine economic and political freedom with solidarity for the less fortunate. The market can then take its course, but differences in outcomes must be compensated. The rich must transfer part of their prosperity to the poor and must contribute to collective facilities to the best of their ability.
Redistribution on the basis of equal opportunities
Another approach is to view redistribution of prosperity as a part of a larger project: redistribution of opportunities. The view is that people should have equal opportunities for social success, regardless of how or where they were born. If you give everyone a fair chance at success, there will remain competition. Through competition people get the best out of themselves. But that competition must be on fair terms.
Pick ten random people off the street and organise a running race. There is a good chance that the athletically built twenty-something will win the match. Anyone who has just had hip surgery, has a BMI of forty, or is very elderly, doesn't stand a chance. But what if you give those three a big head start and let the fit twenty-something walk with a backpack weighing forty kilos? With the necessary tweaks you can still turn it into an exciting match.
But redistribution of opportunities is complicated. What criteria do you apply to make it a fair race? Do you also have to compensate for perseverance, for example? Redistribution also requires an extremely active race committee that is constantly tweaking. People will complain that they are not being treated fairly: there is always something to criticise about the redistribution criteria. Should that backpack weigh forty or fifty kilos? And what do you do with the people who aren’t interested in running? And how do you keep those fit twenty-somethings motivated?
Redistribution based on equal outcomes
In the 18th century, plantation owners in North and Latin America purchased millions of African slaves. Slavery was abolished during the 19th century. Only in the course of the 20th century did their descendants receive the same civil rights. Particularly in the United States, this population group still has a huge problem: on average, there are large differences in prosperity with the rest of the population that refuse to disappear. As the problem refuses to go away, activists and some social scientists are becoming increasingly radical in their analysis. The stewards themselves are athletes and have implicit prejudices, they say, and the worst part is that the race committee itself does not recognise this. As long as disadvantaged groups do not win the match proportionately, the game is no good.
This indictment spread around the world like an oil slick. It is not just African Americans who win too few competitions, this applies to all kinds of population groups worldwide. For migrant communities in Europe, for example, but also for women, sexual minorities and so on. In fact, if you look at people with a combination of disadvantages, for example at black women, the outcome is even more shocking. They rarely win the match.
In short, the redistribution of opportunities is a minefield. With regard to redistribution, we can also fundamentally ask ourselves what we owe each other. Should we only compensate for the outcomes, or do we also owe each other equal opportunities, or should we build a system that leads to equal outcomes?
I have my reservations. Free competition is the most efficient system: it rewards the dynamics of initiatives that offer something that people value most at a good price. Alternatives tend to fail. Influencing opportunities or outcomes is an incredibly complicated operation that deeply affects people's autonomy. It shifts the responsibility for a good life to external circumstances. The individual can always claim victimhood if things don't work out.
We owe each other a certain amount of wealth sharing, and we were born with compassion. But everyone struggles with their own circumstances. Everyone has their own cross to bear. It is quite something to shift the responsibility for this to society. Society cannot cope with that at all, and it encourages fatalism and complaining.
Enough redistribution
That brings me to a philosophical movement that I have an affinity with: sufficientarianism. Sufficient means enough. So enoughism. Everyone is free to live their lives the way they want and can. Intervention is only necessary when people get stuck. We have a moral obligation to help people who are at a loss. And that is not limited to money or food. We must guarantee each other the conditions under which a person can function at least humanly, both materially and immaterially. The rest is our own responsibility. I will discuss that in a separate article soon.
But what does this have to do with toleration?
Like freedom, the ideal of equality has a lot to do with toleration. Remember, first of all, the principle of equal liberty. If one religion has the freedom to worship its supreme being, so does the other. If one firm has the freedom to produce sewing machines, so can another. If one political movement is allowed to pursue its goals, so is the other. Even if they are very different religions, political movements or corporations, they should be treated equally.
But this still concerns things that we do. The ideal of equality applies even more strongly to things that we do not so much as that we are. There are differences between men and women, between Creoles and Maroons, between adolescents and the elderly, between gays and straights, between stupid and smart people, between introverts and extroverts, between beggars and billionaires, between Maoris and new New Zealanders, and so on. These are all differences that we cannot do much about.
As far as toleration is concerned, these differences are only important if there are negative feelings. That doesn't mean that everyone from one group has to hate the other group. Certainly not all Hutus hate all Tutsis. And not the other way around. Yet in 1994, hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were put to the sword in Rwanda by a Hutu-dominated movement. That does not indicate widely shared indifference or friendliness. On the other hand, there are also differences between people that no one cares about. Whether you have loose or attached earlobes: no one cares: there is no negative opinion. In fact, I just had to look in the mirror to know. (They are attached.) There is no such thing as earlobe toleration.
So we only speak of toleration of groups of people if they are somewhat controversial; not everyone likes them; usually because they form an out-group.
What are we going to do in this series?
In the remainder of this article I will discuss a number of topics that we can consider relatively briefly in this context:
Equal treatment
Are we egalitarians by nature?
What is fairness?
Are we equal?
In the next articles in this series, I will then deal with the topics that require more extensive discussion:
Identity and equality
Redistribution
Sufficientarianism
In the last article we will take stock of the subject of equality and toleration.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander
So, let’s start with equal treatment. Identical cases must be treated equally. Aristotle already said it in his Nikomachean Ethics (4th century BCE). I haven't met anyone who disagrees with that. Except in lotteries maybe.
In addition, we believe that we must act consistently: like cases should be treated equally. This applies even more to public administration, where rules, almost by definition, do not apply to individuals, but to groups that have something in common: residents, for example, or cyclists, or underage asylum seekers. And we are also formally equal in democracy: everyone's vote counts equally in elections.
Our idea of equality is not innate, but it does have very deep roots. Democratic equality was already practised in classical Athens. In theory, every free citizen had an equal say. It was a system of one man one vote: in theory, every citizen was expected to have an equal say. Persuasion should be through the strength of the arguments, and decision making through the principle of one man one vote.
According to the book Inventing the individual (2014) by historian Larry Siedentop, the origins of Western individualism lie around 1140 under Pope Gregory IX. Instead of calling himself the vicar of Peter, as his predecessors did, he started to identify and behave as the vicar of Christ. The church had smelled power and it liked the smell. The hierarchical ecclesiastical organisation turned out to be more stable than the principalities, appeared to be able to assert itself as a secular ruler and also had a direct line with the creator himself. Secular administration of one's own territory also generated a lot of money. But governance by a proto-bureaucratic and hierarchical body such as the church also required a systematic approach to the law: arbitrariness in a hierarchical organisation caused too much hassle internally. Rules were needed.
The monk Gratian set to work and around 1140 came up with a lengthy ecclesiastical code, the Decretum Gratiani. Many elements of his code came from Roman law. Papal sovereignty was bound by the principle of equal rights, the hallmark par excellence of systematic government. The papal task of caring for souls became linked to the governance of individuals, whose moral status as children of God gave them an equal claim to care and respect.
In this way canon law developed around a new theory of justice, a theory resting on the assumption of moral equality. To find it, we have only to look at the opening words of Gratian’s famous Decretum: ‘Natural law [jus] is what is contained in the Law and the Gospel by which each is to do to another what he wants done to himself and forbidden to do to another what he does not want done to himself.’ Here the biblical ‘golden rule’ has been imposed on the ancient theory of natural law, so that equality and reciprocity are made the mainsprings of justice. Without, perhaps, fully realizing the novelty of his move, Gratian fused Christian moral intuitions with a concept inherited from Greek philosophy and Roman law. Relations of equality and reciprocity are now understood as antecedent to both positive and customary law. They provide ultimate standards for judging the contents of each. By identifying natural law with biblical revelation and Christian morality, Gratian gave it an egalitarian bias – and a subversive potential – utterly foreign to the ancient world’s understanding of natural law as ‘everything it its place.'
— Larry Siedentop, Inventing the individual (2014)
The state is supposed to have no personal preferences. Because the state should know people less well, and because individual civil servants should leave their personal considerations aside. Equal treatment is a characteristic of systematic governance: the principle of equality is opposed to inconsistency in governance, or in other words: arbitrariness. Arbitrariness promotes jealousy and conflicts arise from this. Moreover, arbitrariness is not compatible with a hierarchical form of government. If there was only one all-powerful potentate in power, she might still be able to act according to her views, but for a powerful public administration you need an entire administrative apparatus that applies general instructions from the boss. A civil servant cannot consult the overlord for every decision.
The ideal of equal treatment does not accept certain differences in treatment. A biassed football referee is not accepted by anyone. It is her job not to show a preference for one team over the other. We think parents who spoil one child and not the other are bad parents.
Anyone who treats identical cases differently in the private sphere is not consistent. Whether that is always a bad thing is an open question. Sometimes I'm not having my day and I don't feel like chatting. The other day I'm in a pleasant mood and I go looking for a chat. Is that morally reprehensible inconsistency? Those are big words. Sure, I'm fickle, but who isn't? Not only am I capricious, but I also have my personal preferences. I get along better with people with certain personality traits than others. And we're not even talking about physical attraction. Statistically, tall, handsome people have a greater chance of getting hired for jobs. That is often not a conscious choice, but recruiters are only human.
If we know people well, we will treat them differently. We have personal preferences, and some people deserve more favourable treatment than others. We visit one family member more often than another, because we find them more pleasant or because they live closer or because they cook better. The same with friendship and relationships: we can't force someone to be friends with you or fall in love with us. In that sense we all discriminate. Everyone makes a distinction in certain preferences.
By definition, the rule that like cases should be treated alike is therefore a simplification. Cases are almost never alike. Therein lies one of the major complications of the principle of equality: it uses a modelling that at best partially does justice to the complexity of reality. And it wrongly assumes that humans are consistent beings and it neglects our personal preferences.
Are we egalitarians by nature?
The second question is whether we are born egalitarians. Humans are naturally equipped with moral modules for distribution and compassion, I explained earlier. To see how this works out in practice, we must first consult anthropologists who study premodern societies. Do we naturally engage in redistribution? That is the question.
Hunter-gatherers
Our hereditary morality is much like that of hunter-gatherers. They are still walking around here and there on Earth, and active scientific research has been conducted into them, especially since the 20th century. Moreover, archaeological finds can also inform us about how these societies worked.
Characteristic of hunter-gatherers is that they move around and have no fixed place of residence. They are usually groups of a few dozen people who are usually related. If you want to become rich, you shouldn't become a hunter-gatherer. But you should if you want to lose weight.
Pure hunter-gatherers are an exception; they often have a more or less fixed territory, the group has a number of huts spread across the territory, they have a herd of cattle roaming around, or they create a 'food forest'. The distinction with agriculture is often not clear-cut.
When you travel, you can't take much with you. So hunter-gatherers don't have much personal property. Maybe a weapon for hunting, or some cooking utensils, but these are often things that are easy to recreate; status cannot really be derived from that kind of property. It is customary for most hunter-gatherers to share the yield, especially the food, with the group. Because they often need each other: one is a good climber, the other a good cook. And hunting big game is not something one does alone. What does happen is that individual group members keep small catches, a honeycomb or something, for themselves. There are hardly any differences between rich and poor because there is so close cooperation and because wealth usually does not fit in your pocket. The only thing you can take with you is your own body. To the extent that there are differences in prosperity and status, this is due to special qualities and can be measured in body weight and chances of survival of the offspring.
So do hunter-gatherers engage in redistribution? Actually not, because almost everything is done collectively. There is nothing to redistribute, because almost everything is already shared.
Agricultural communities
Between the hunter-gatherers and us are the pre-modern agricultural communities. There are a lot of them all over the world. It is easy to investigate to what extent they redistribute. In general, pre-modern farmers are somewhat more well-fed than hunter-gatherers, and they can store their belongings because they have a house. Moreover, land is often privately owned. Differences in prosperity can therefore easily arise, especially through inheritance. We are still talking about relatively small rural communities, at most a few hundred people, often with mutual family ties.
Collectivism in such communities does exist, but is exceptional. Each (extended) family usually has its own accommodation and its own piece of land. In addition, there are sometimes also collective facilities, shrines for example, or a shared meadow. Prosperity is left to the children, which can increase wealth differences within the community.
Within the village community there is generally no trading, but giving or exchanging. A gift does of course create obligations: a certain reciprocity is expected. Not immediately, but if you receive a gift, you should remember it for next time. Trade for money has a bad reputation, it is usually only done with outsiders.
If you are in trouble, due to a crop failure for example, you can call on your fellow villagers – your relatives first and foremost, and the people who owe you a favour. But there is usually no question of a major redistribution. Everyone is expected to stand on their own feet. You are helped if you run out of food, but the help does not go beyond that, except within the family. Egalitarianism is not ingrained, but compassion is. Except for the outcasts: those who have seriously misbehaved in their community, cannot count on compassion when they are hungry.
Those who are rich in such a community, are screwed, in a sense. All and sundry are constantly turning to them for help and support. They don't have to say yes to everything, but are morally obliged to help villagers in need. If they don't do that, that will earn them a bad reputation, they will be gossiped about, and if they are not careful, they will get socially isolated. Conversely, if they help your villagers out, it gives them extra status, and the beneficiary has committed himself to them, which they can enable at will.
Social and economic motives for egalitarianism
Why are we all egalitarians to some degree? This has many different causes. The tendency to show compassion to a certain extent for people who are in dire straits is ingrained in us, as we have just seen. But there are more reasons:
Anyone who gives out alms can expect gratitude in return and can appeal for services in return.
In closer groups, solidarity and reciprocity play a greater role. You give to someone who needs it. This creates trust with the recipient. And you can call on him if you ever get stuck yourself. The recipient feels obliged to you. Redistribution within a society is therefore an indication of social capital. Countries with higher social capital have, on average, more socio-economic equality. The rich care about the poor. This is less the case in countries where people live more along each other, along socio-economic dividing lines.
The elites gradually realised that the underclass also consumes. The money that the rich pay to the poor is spent by the poor on products of the rich. What you give out with one hand, you get back with the other.
And there is more:
Game theory
It is rational behaviour to work together within communities: this not only provides collective benefits, but also individual benefits in the case of sustainable cooperation. Property is generally respected within communities. Communities cannot afford arguments over ownership and distribution.
This is reflected in game theoretical outcomes, especially in the Nash distribution game, which I wrote about earlier. If there is no consensus on the distribution, conflicts arise within the community. If you treat people differently, you are more likely to experience conflict due to envy. Then that community loses out culturally to rival communities that have their affairs in better order.
But this should not be confused with a principle of equal distribution. Game theoretically, any division is good, as long as there is a sustainable consensus about it.
With redistribution you buy off unrest and crime
If there are large groups of people in a community who lead a marginal existence, this is risky for those who have the most to lose, the wealthy elite. There is a risk of crime, and rebellion is lurking. Those who are poor have less to lose. This can lead to anger and loss of standards. People with a hopeless existence can rebel or go rogue.
When inequality is too great, crime among the underclass often increases and the middle class revolts. This is how revolutions happen. For that reason, the upper layer would be wise not to let the differences rise too far. Cynically speaking, moderate redistribution is also a tool in the hands of the elite to ensure their own security.
Due to technology, division of labour and urbanisation, wealth differences increased considerably from the industrial revolution onwards. An urban proletariat emerged. Of the means of production, land, capital and technology were scarce, but the supply of unskilled labour was plentiful. Inspired by Marx and others, the proletariat began to stir. Revolution was in the air. The elite realised that there were limits to exploitation.
The social legislation of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was exemplary. Especially to take the wind out of the sails of the emerging socialism, various laws were passed to protect the underclass. In the 1880s, collective health insurance, an occupational health and safety law and a pension provision were introduced. Bismarck's pragmatism was evident:
Those who receive a pension for old age are much easier to handle than those who do not have that prospect.
— Otto von Bismarck
Forced redistribution against the free riders
Imagine a village with a lot of poverty and two rich families. One family gives generously to the poor, the other never does. The miserly family now also benefits from the generosity of the other: there is no unrest, no crime, there is more mutual trust. The generous family is annoyed: why doesn't the other family help out?
Anyone who is generous has an interest in others also contributing, if necessary under duress. Initially the church played a role in this, later the state claimed a role. It was not only the underclass that had an interest in having redistribution imposed from above. The elite also had an interest in imposed solidarity: all the rich were then obliged to contribute; free-rider behaviour was combated. The state as a major redistributor therefore came more into focus from the middle of the 19th century.
What is fair sharing?
The next question is: what is fairness? Fair sharing is a rhetorical cry of the social movement. Share fairly, you say to your children who are arguing about a new toy or a bag of candy. But what does fair sharing actually mean? Everyone the same? You get what you deserve? First come, first served? Karl Marx had the answer:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
— Karl Marx, Kritik des Gothaer Programms (1875)
Not everyone gets the same amount, but an amount proportional to their need. That's a nice idea, but what do you need? At least six weeks of holiday in a sunny country every year? A comfortable office chair for an optimal working position? Pure, unpolluted mountain or sea air? Enough calories every day, regardless of composition and preparation? Powders can go a long way these days. Or a healthy, tasty and varied diet of organic origin? Is it enough to survive, or do you need an optimal, healthy life? It is also difficult to determine your needs as an outsider. You would definitely object if I did that for you. You take away people's autonomy.
And then: what do you do when there is not enough to meet everyone's needs? Because that is usually the case. The problem of distribution is especially felt when there is scarcity, notes the Israeli philosopher Joseph Raz. Suppose you are hiking in the mountains with a group of friends and there is only one bottle of water. How do you distribute the water when one person has bought the water, another has carried it, another has helped someone with a sprained foot up the mountain, another is pregnant, there is also someone who takes the bottle shouting that she is extremely thirsty, and the last one in the group says nothing because she is close to dehydration without anyone noticing.
Fair sharing is a good principle when you spend a week in the mountains with a group of friends. It would not be accepted if you drank all the beers by yourself at the campfire, even if you had bought them yourself. And you won't make any friends if you let everyone carry a heavy backpack except you. But in a complex society the principle becomes difficult to apply. Fair sharing sounds rhetorically attractive, Raz concluded, but turns out to be quite difficult to work out in practice.
There is still a lot to be said about redistribution. We will discuss this in detail in another article in this series.
Are we equal?
The final question in this article concerns the the ideal of equality, which assumes that every person has an equal right to respect. No one is inferior to the other.
We already saw with the Lego bricks that no one is the same. If no one is the same as another, if by definition we distinguish between people, if cases are rarely equal anyway, are we not at least equivalent?
Egalitarianism is also found in the Christian tradition. Our thinking about equality probably partly stems from Christianity. The Christian tradition assumes that all people are equal before God, or at least of equal value. We are all at an equal distance from God. We have been left with a deeply ingrained feeling that unequal treatment is unfair.
That is an underlying motive for redistribution. We all have our own destiny, but no one is inferior to each other.
But are we equal? And what do you mean by that? That will come below. But first a quick excursion to our moral duty.
Our moral duty
What do we owe each other? I wrote about that question before, and I admitted that I don't have a ready answer. Yet I think there are at least two obligations that we have. Duties we have towards everyone, including towards an unknown plodder on the other side of the world.
The first is motivated by our ingrained compassion. When there are people in need, we must help. What kind of need, and how far our duty extends, is open to discussion. But it is certain that if someone is drowning and you are the only one who can help: then you have that moral obligation.
The second was formulated by Kant and is a negative duty. We should never use people solely as an instrument.
You can of course avoid those two duties. Keep walking if you see a child drowning. Using acquaintances and strangers cynically, purely as an instrument for your own convenience, the same way you throw away a sponge cloth or a toothbrush after it has served its purpose. But in doing so you place yourself outside the moral community; then you live like a dung fly and you deserve to be treated like one. Well, maybe not like a pesky fly, because people who behave like animals also deserve compassion, but you get where I'm going with this.
Equal worth
If we regard those two minimal moral duties as given, what conclusion can we draw from that? What makes people so special that we morally owe them something? Then Kant comes into play again.
People have worth. We do not need to define that moral worth further, unlike what Kant attempted. Their worth lies in the fact that people are objects of compassion, and more than just a utensil.
Then you may wonder whether we are of equal worth in that respect. Can you let one drown and not the other? Can you rape or keep someone as a slave, but not the other? No, you are not allowed to make a distinction in that regard. Certain people are more dear to us than others, of course. Because we love them, they are close to us, or because we like their behaviour. But there is a minimum duty we have to everyone, whether they deserve our respect or not. That is the equal worth that everyone has as human beings.
So are people equal? It just depends on how you look at it. Some people you like, others you dislike. Many people have heroes: people who we find inspiring or who we look up to. The opposite also happens: people we deeply look down on. You probably think child molesters are despicable, or you think they're pathetic, but few would have the same regard or respect for a child murderer as they would for anyone else. In that sense, people are not equal. But they are equal in the sense that everyone represents a minimum moral worth.
Dignity according to Marx
Kant's worth stuck with Marx. The exploitation and alienation of the worker by the capitalist system destroys human dignity. He got the term dignity from Kant, and he interpreted it in terms of virtue ethics: dignity was more or less equivalent to Aristotle's ideal of the good life. Marx did not go much deeper ethically-philosophically. Everyone should be able to live a flourishing life.
I see in Marx compassion for the fate of the proletariat, a fate that was indeed often harrowing. But Marx did not go much deeper than compassion and indignation: if you dig deeper you mainly see intelligently packaged rhetoric. It is a poor basis for an ideology that would hold the world in its grip.
Marxists on our moral duty
But Marx stood at the beginning of a huge intellectual movement that carried his torch, also philosophically. A Marxist formulation of our moral duty is this:
We should support everyone’s autonomous pursuit of a flourishing life by affirming both negative duties not to destroy or block their valuable human capacities and positive duties to protect and enable their development and exercise.
— Pablo Gilabert, Kantian dignity and Marxian socialism, in: Kantian Review (2017)
Put more simply: everyone has talents and capabilities. Everyone strives to develop this into a flourishing life. Our duty is not to hinder that pursuit of development, but rather to protect and enable it. Because everyone has the same dignity.
In concrete terms: in Bangladesh, Sabrina works in a Primark factory for a pitiful wage, but she can sing well and dreams of a career in music. Unfortunately, she lacks the time, money, and the contacts. How far does our duty to Sabrina extend? Are we standing in the way of her dream if we buy a hoodie at Primark? Should we put pressure on Bangladesh to improve working conditions and girls' education? Suppose Sabrina contacts you personally via Facebook, and you know that her story is not bullshit, are you obliged to support her personally?
Another example. Noah, a 22-year-old young man, lives in your street. Noah seems like a nice guy, but you hardly know him. He was educated as a car mechanic, but he is now unemployed; He has already been fired for the third time because he is always smoking marijuana and is constantly stoned. What do you owe Noah now? Should you approach him for advice? Should you commit to a ban on the use of marijuana?
You can of course escape these moral issues by placing the task on the collective: let the government take care of it. Then you contribute to the fulfilment of your moral obligation through your tax liability. But then I remind you of the drowning child. Imagine someone walking by, she sees a child drowning, but she keeps walking. She has no moral obligation to save the child because the government offers free swimming lessons to all children, she says. The same lady has a Filipino au pair at home who she exploits for a pittance. The au pair has no free time and is not allowed to leave the house. If you speak to her about this, she will respond that she complies with all legislation, so mind your own business.
Do you agree with me that our moral obligation to save people in need and not treat people merely as instruments is of a different order than a moral obligation to help Sabrina and Noah?
Why are we obliged to enable everyone's pursuit of a flourishing life? We're not fairy godmothers, are we? Can't we leave that to the people themselves, by hindering their autonomy as little as possible? Why is the flourishing life of others our duty, and not simply a moral ideal that everyone can apply to themselves at will? The disadvantage of a duty is that it is quickly accompanied by coercion. You will have to deal with the law if you do not save a drowning person or keep people in slavery. But with coercion we stand in the way of everyone's autonomy. If, instead of helping Sabrina, you choose to spend all your time, money and attention on some expensive training to become a pilot, or, for all I care, on your handbag collection, are you neglecting your duty? Will you also get the police at your door?
By focusing on someone else's flourishing life or not, we also define for others what exactly a flourishing life is. Imagine a society in which women are sovereign in the home, but outside the home they have no say. They must be obedient to their husband in everything. It is not my ideal, and certainly not that of a Marxist. But what if that woman, who has a talent for dealing in cars and is not particularly talented as a housewife, now insists that she firmly believes in that division of roles. Who are we to intervene in her life? We would have a moral obligation to allow her valuable skills as a car salesman to flourish, and you don't do that behind the windowsill with five kids at home.
When you formulate a moral duty, you bind not only yourself to that duty, but impose it on the whole world. To impose the same duty on all people on earth, one must be very certain. One has to be sure that every right-thinking person on earth will come to the same conclusion. If you are not sure of this, you are imposing your moral beliefs on people who think differently without a solid basis. That’s thinking like a tyrant: everyone must agree with you; anyone who doesn't is a bad person. That's what I blame Marxists for.
In summary
Egalitarianism is a combination of various beliefs:
The belief that we should treat people equally. Government have to do that, but we can’t. And even governments are struggling with it, because equal treatment always rests on a simplification of reality.
The belief that people have equal worth and dignity. I have argued that our equal worth consists in certain things that we owe to everyone, regardless of who they are and what they did. In my opinion, this moral obligation is that we don’t treat others as merely tools, and that we owe them the minimum requirements for a humane life. But Marxists argue that we owe every earthling a flourishing, dignified life.
The belief that we owe each other a fair distribution of goods, scarce goods in particular. If we don’t want to collectivise everything, some redistribution will be inevitable. But what kind of redistribution? Redistribution after letting free competition run its course? Tampering with free competition based on quality of opportunities? Or striving for equal outcomes? Redistribution is a thorny subject, so we will have to delve deeper into it in the following episodes.
For further reading
Karl Marx, Kritik des Gothaer Programms (1875)
A.J.P. Taylor, Bismarck, the man and the statesman (1955)
James C. Scott, The moral economy of the peasant: rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia (1977)
Joseph Raz, The morality of freedom (1986)
Jean-Philippe Platteau, Traditional systems of social security and hunger insurance: past achievements and modern challenges, in: Ehtisham Ahmad c.s. (red.), Social security in developing countries (1991)
Elizabeth Anderson, What is the point of equality? Ethics (1999)
Stefan Gosepath, Equality, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2001-2021)
John Kekes, The illusions of egalitarianism (2003)
Larry Siedentop, Inventing the individual (2014)
Lauren Langman, Dan Albanese, Political economy and the normative: Marx on human nature and the quest for dignity, Constructing Marxist Ethics (2015)
Pablo Gilabert, Kantian dignity and Marxian socialism, in: Kantian Review (2017)
Pablo Gilabert, Martin O’Neill, Socialism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019)
Eric Alden Smith, Brian F. Codding, Ecological variation and institutionalized inequality in hunter-gatherer societies, PNAS (2021)
Gideon Elford, Equality of opportunity, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2023)
This was the first article in a new series, about Equality and toleration. The next episode will be about Identity and Equality.
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