On Equality
[block quote]“Even if it were still necessary for human beings to do different kinds of work, it was no longer necessary for them to live at different social or economic levels.” Immanuel Goldstein (George Orwell), The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.(1984)[/block quote
There is much confusion around what leftists, particularly Marxists, mean about the term of equality. The aim of this paper is to clear up some of these confusions. Unfortunately, the discussion is often replete with straw men and misunderstandings. The most common misunderstanding is that leftists want everyone to be paid the same amount not matter how many hours they work, their productivity or the skill of their work. This is also often considered to be equality of outcome. Despite this being so common, aside from a very small, insignificant minority, this is not at all the meaning of the term equality, or economic equality. I can’t lie and say it is completely inapplicable to all socialists or communists, as Herr Dühring explicitly argues this in his form of “German Socialism.” However, it is also, famously, rejected by Friedrich Engels, who defines equality differently. I will go over Engel’s response shortly. However, it is easy to see that the most common forms of leftist thought categorically disagree. Collectivist anarchists advocate for compensation based on the principle “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their contribution.” This formula pays people differently based on their contribution to the production process. That is inherently going to be different and so unequal. Communist Anarchists believe in being paid by the formulae “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.” As the biologist JBS Haldane pointed out, this formula doesn’t make any sense if people were equal. Marx interestingly combined the two formulae. In lower stage communism or “socialism”, the collectivist slogan is used. The Soviet Union used this, phrased as “from each according to their ability, to each according to their work” in their constitution as the principle the USSR would operate. In higher stage communism, the communist slogan is used. The reason the leftists do not accept equal pay for all is that it is impractical, and also violates basic socialist principles. In this system, a bachelor is paid the same as a widower with five children. One will live a lavish lifestyle, the other, will struggle to survive. Engel’s final response, brings up a feature mostly applicable to all leftism, that the equality sought is the equality of classlessness. The abolition of classes, and the equal access to the means of production and subsistence is the economic equality desired.
As he writes:
[block quote]By political equality Social-Democrats mean equal rights. And by economic equality as we have already said, they mean the abolition of classes. As for establishing human equality in the sense of equality of strength and abilities (Physical and mental), socialists do not even think of such things.
Political equality is a demand for equal political rights for all citizens of a country who have reached, a certain age and who do not suffer from ordinary..feeble-mindedness. This demand was first advanced not by the proletariat, but by the bourgeoisie …
In both cases the real content of the proletarian demand for equality is the demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for equality which goes beyond that of necessity fades into absurdity.[/block quote
Indeed, the reason why the left is caricatured and presented as seeking to make men equal, even in physical and mental ability, is that it makes it appear absurd. This is intentional, if the left can be portrayed as being absurd, and so unable to be taken seriously. And the pubic will see it as absurd to be leftist and avoid even looking into the matter. However, actually looking in to things, and reading what the left actually has to say on this will show they understand it’s an absurd position, and not what they are advocating for. The attempt to make it appear to be absurd though, will deter many from reading the actual works and beliefs of those on the left. That is the point, to ensure people do not understand and apply the principles and preserve the status quo or limit the Overton window.
There is also the idea that equality means confiscating everyone’s goods, even personal items such as the oft referenced “toothbrush.” They’ll take away everyone’s stuff and either give it to the “poor” and make everyone live in the same grey barracks and wearing the same grey overalls. The use of or obtaining of any personal product, such as an iPhone (also proverbially) is seen as being contradictory or hypocritical. Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto that:
[block quote]We by no means intend to abolish the personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with, is the miserable character of this appropriation under which the laborer lives merely to increase the capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class require it.
So the problem isn’t getting paid or owning personal possessions in socialism, so much as it is owning private property, properly, the means of production. What is banned from consumption or personal ownership is the property that allows the conversion into capital, that is then used to dominate the others, who have to work for the capitalist to survive, in order to make more capital, to continue the process, excelsior. Marx had actually restated the position for emphasis.
[block quote]Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society, all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation. Equality of classes, or the abolition of classes, leaves none with the ability to force others work for them.[/block quote]
It places everyone on the same social and economic level. Marx also explained that in the Critique of the Gotha Program, “Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption.” (Critique of the Gotha Program, Section 1).
Power is thus inherently flattened, placing everyone on an equal position to start with, and leaves no one subject to the arbitrary commands of another, or the needs submit to survive. People can make different amounts of money, or own more or less consumer goods, or possess status goods. Though if accumulation doesn’t matter much, the psychological need to keep up with the Joneses, and express status through material wealth. If someone wants luxuries they can own them. People focused too much on personal possessions would be puzzling to people in this society. But owning a fancy car doesn’t give one power over others, or the ability to command the labor power of others.
[block quote]But the principal underlying cause was that as early as the beginning of the Twentieth century, human equality was technically possible. It was still true that men were not equal in their native talents and that functions had to be specialized in ways that favored some individuals against others, but there was no longer any need for class distinctions or for large differences of wealth.” Immanuel Goldstein (George Orwell) [/block quote]
This passage puts emphasis on what is equality to Orwell, an anarchist oriented democratic socialist. It seems fairly clear to me that the other leftists agree on this meaning, and that such equality is possible. Engels, writing in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, the side effects of such equality can also be seen:
[block quote]Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today, and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialized production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day-by-day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to al the free development and exercise their physical and mental faculties - this possibility is now, for the first time, here, but it is here.[/block quote]
Orwell adds in the idea of social equality, which includes some degree of equality of outcome, because of social significance of some forms of personal possessions or conditions, in the form of sanitation and housing. This is part of the fully sufficient material existence of all, but also reflects social status and levels indicated by some having to use outhouses versus indoor plumbing, or not having certain utility appliances, and also the stability of steady work.
[block quote]In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motorcar or even an airplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would have already disappeared.
It cannot be denied that people with economic insecurity, food insecurity, poor housing, no running water or indoor plumbing, are viewed as socially inferior, and casually, even subconsciously, discriminated against. A basic level of clean housing, stable incomes and food, and basic appliances would avoid the worst of that.[/block quote
Indeed, I had to remember that when Orwell was writing, even in the United States, for over a decade afterwards as well, most rural Americans, and even many in the cities, did not have indoor plumbing and used an outhouse still, and did not have running water and even electricity. While refrigerators are included in almost all rental units, so that even the poor in America have these appliances (but which according to conservative commentators, makes them “not poor,” only reinforcing Orwell’s point.
Later the point that, while hierarchy produces poverty, but widespread prosperity undermines hierarchy is made. “But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction - indeed, in some sense was the destruction of a hierarchical society.” This is because, “In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.”
In one of his letters, HP Lovecraft, like Orwell, discusses how scarcity and lack of resources produced class society and that some live in poverty so the leaders can live and lead. This is also discussed by Engels in his discussion of the arrival of the possibility of classlessness. Lovecraft wrote:
[block quote]Well - so much for the past. Now we live in an age of easy abundance which makes possible the fulfillment of all moderate human wants through a slight amount of labour. What shall be the result? Shall we still make resources prohibitively hard to get when there is really a plethora of them? Shall we allow antique notions of allocation - “property”, etc. - to interfere with the rational distribution of this abundant stock of resources among all those who require them? Shall we value hardship and anxiety and uncertainty so fatuously so as to impose those evils artificially on people who do not need to bear them, through the perpetuation of a set of now irrelevant and inapplicable rules of allocation? What reasonable objection is there to an intelligent centralised control of resources whose primary object shall be the elimination of want in every quarter - a thing possible without removing comfortable living from any one now enjoying it?[/block quote]
And there is nothing in any leftist system that would require making anyone already materially comfortable, uncomfortable? Loss of control of the means of production doesn’t mean the currently rich have to lose any of their personal luxuries and even home. And even reducing them to a middle class environment would not be removing them from a decent level of comfort. While there are exceptions, leftism is mostly an ideology of abundance for al, not hair shirt poverty. Deng Xiaping said in 1978 “Poverty is not socialism, socialism means eliminating poverty.” He further said,
[Block quote]It may sound reasonable to reject the goal of becoming rich under capitalism. But how can we advocate becoming poor under socialism and communism… Our first conclusion was that w had to uphold socialism and that to do that we had, above all, to eliminate poverty and backwardness, greatly expand the productive forces and demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism…
So, to build socialism it is necessary to develop the productive forces. Poverty is not socialism. to uphold socialism, a socialism that is to be superior to capitalism, it is imperative first and foremost to eliminate poverty (Deng Xiaoping, “To Uphold Socialism We must Eliminate Poverty” 1987)[/block quote
The idea that leftist equality means the end of classes, and also prosperity, it would mean everyone will be middle class in the common definition of the term. That society would socially no economically speaking, resemble a middle class suburb. People aren’t making the same salary, or doing the same job, but they don’t differ significantly relative to each other. No one has the ability to control each other. This ideal goes as far back as Aristotle, who wrote that a society made up predominantly of the middle class would be most stable and well governed, compared to one with large divisions between rich and poor. Plato, in the Laws (Book V), argued that there should not be large divisions of wealth, everyone being more or less equal, even though the richest can have 4-5 times the minimum wealth of all (1 lot or cleruchy, able to support a family).
China once again has set this as their goal, that of a Moderately Prosperous Society (xiaokang shehui). That the goal is to have society functionally composed of the Middle Class, living prosperous but modest lives. Somehow, I think that if you explained the goal of leftism is to have everyone basically living middle class lives, without the excesses of poverty or wealth subjugating people and limiting their freedom, the public would be less hostile to the concept of “equality.”