WHAT
EQUALITY IS NOT by
Ted Honderich This
is a survey, replacing an earlier one
under the same title, of almost all the traditional ideas of equality.
It takes
into account fierce critics of these ideas, critics in the political
tradition
of conservatism. The survey is in fact much of a chapter of my 2005
book Conservatism:
Burke to Nozick to Blair?, which is an
enlargement and
revision
of Conservatism. The book seeks
to find the distinctions of the
tradition of
conservatism and also its underlying rationale. Hence the survey
contains a
reference or two to this project. It also fails to contain some
back-references
to explanatory pages earlier in the book. In a world of perfect
websites, it
would be more revised. It might also do more anticipating of what it
leads in
the direction of, the Principle of Humanity, which earlier had the name
of
being the Principle of Equality. Turn to that in due course if you
wish: What
Equality Comes To -- The Principle of Humanity. There is
also another piece on the principle. 1.
A Mixed Bag of Equalities John
Adams reported in one of his letters in 1814 that he had seen fifty infants in one room of the Hospital of
Foundlings in Paris and that
they were all different. He went on to declare that what other Americans had to say about equality was as
gross
a fraud as ever was practised by such un-American
persons as monks, Druids, Brahmins, priests of the immortal Lama, and, worse than
all of them, the
self-styled philosophers of the French Revolution.1 To
Edmund Burke,
what was put about by those
philosophers on the subject of equality, and by their English sympathizers, was no better. It
was 'that monstrous fiction, which, by inspiring
false ideas and
vain expectations into
men
destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real
inequality, which it never can
remove...'2
Burke
had been inoculated against the monstrous fiction of our common equality, of course, by his formative
experience of encountering the true and wonderful superiority of some
of us, in
the person of Marie Antoinette before
she came to the throne of France, and before the Revolution overturned it. It is
now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles;
and surely never lighted on this orb, which she
hardly seemed to
touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her
just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just
began to move in -- glittering like the
morning-star, full of life,
and splendour, and joy. Oh! What a revolution!
and what an heart must I have, to contemplate
without emotion that elevation and that fall!3 There
has not been much change nor much lull in conservative denunciations of egalitarianism in a wide
sense, or, what comes to the
same thing, the politics of the Left. Egalitarianism in this sense consists in a number of political traditions
opposed to conservatism and
having to do with equality, notably democratic socialism and what in the United States was called
liberalism
before the name was claimed by the new right. Peregrine
Worsthorne in one of his pieces lets us know, in the words of its heading, How Egalitarianism
Breeds Robbery and Yobbery, the latter being a form of loutishness
peculiar
to the British Isles in the
time of Thatcher governments.4 David Cooper begins his book by recalling that just as Tom Wolfe, on whom
we
are to depend for a judgement of abstract
painting, was given the revelation at a particular moment that there is nothing to
it, so Cooper himself, while ploughing through yet another egalitarian
tract,
experienced a similar moment of perception
about doctrines of equality. There is nothing in them. They lack, among other
things, any real unity.5 William
Letwin, bringing the resources of the dismal science to bear on his endeavour, finds that
egalitarians of all shades are
pursuing a fetish and will-o'-the-wisp, are deluded by loose thinking and utopian fantasies, and that their
convictions suffer from internal contradictions
and rest on no coherent intellectual foundation. There is no determinate ideal of equality.6
Keith Joseph and his
collaborator Jonathan Sumption discover in
their contribution to restrained political philosophy that
egalitarianism
consists in muddled thinking, logical
incoherence, semantic chicanery, screens of verbiage, emotional arguments, confusions that a few
moments of honest reflection can save us from, and
misconceptions
of facts. The last- mentioned misconceptions
prevent egalitarians from seeing, for example, that the entrepreneurial
manufacturer of electric cocktail shakers may have spent many penniless years
seeking a market for
his goods
before being
rewarded by prosperity.7 To
revert, as Burke would have us, to our betters, there is also His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, whose
book
of speeches Mr Worsthorne had in mind when
he wrote in another column that the idea of equality had become so broadly
comical a notion as now to be open even to royal jocularity, jocularity
by
a royal house that takes care not to offend. In
his Men, Machines and Sacred Cows, in between thoughts on fuel technology and on
being a vice-chancellor in Wales, and not far from the truth that
horses
are horses, the Duke
provides a
reflection on
helicopters. Are they socially unjust because only a few people own one? Since there is not
an equality of
helicopters, are they all to be put down? His Royal Highness evidently
feels he
has not come to the end of his flying time.8 This
tutorial refrain on the part of conservatives will come as no surprise, given what we have learned already
of
their politics: its opposition to social and
civil freedoms, its commitment to private property and to incentives and a
property-preserving government, its
coolness about democracy and resistance to more of it, its awareness of
a
natural aristocracy, and its inclination, at least in the past, to
racism and
the like. Those facts about
conservatism far outweigh what we also noticed, that it has sometimes prided itself
on a fact of legal equality having to do with property-freedom. Still,
the
tutorial refrain against equality
is distinct from all of that. To see what use it is to us in characterizing conservatism, and what
justice there is
in it, we need to do one thing at a time. We
need to look at each of a rather large number of propositions about equality, or
families of propositions. Most of them are assigned by conservatives to
their various opponents within the left.
They themselves take different views of them. The
first has to do with what can be called natural equality, and is much belaboured by conservatives. It, unlike
most of the other propositions in question, is
a factual proposition, something true or false in the plain sense, and hence not
recommendatory or evaluative. What
John Adams declared to be so false after seeing the fifty infants was
'that all
men are born with equal powers and
faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through
life'.9 His
countryman, James Fenimore Cooper,
carried forward the same cause of enlightenment some years later. 'Men
are not
born equals, physically, since one
has a good constitution, another a bad; one is handsome, another ugly; one white, another black.'10 Anthony
Flew reminds us, similarly, that Abraham Lincoln was right in his comment on the Declaration of
Independence. 'The authors of that notable
instrument,' said
Lincoln, 'did not intend to declare
all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say that all men were equal in colour, size,
intellect,
moral development, or
social
capacity.' Anthony Flew also feels called upon to remind us that Thomas Jefferson had the suspicion that
the
blacks are inferior to the whites in the
endowments both of body and mind. Indeed he voiced other opinions about them, which our
author in his delicacy
is reluctant
to repeat, but to which he can
bring himself to allude.11 William Letwin seeks to instruct us by
denying that we are all genetically equal, and by letting us know
that
genetic differences give rise to this or that eye
colour, more acute hearing, and such oddities as vestigial fingers.12
Keith Joseph points out that in fact we have different wants, and that 'it should not
be necessary to devote
much space to
making the point that mankind is
not, in fact, as homogenous as the egalitarian
must perforce assume'.13 It is
plain indeed that it is not just one proposition of natural equality that conservatives assign to the
left
but many, an awful bundle. One that is implied,
and may have had some small effect on innocent readers, would require for its truth
that we have been living a dream. It is that each of us really is the
same, down to the colour of
our identical non-vestigial fingers. Another is that we are equal in all large respects, including what can be called
powers and faculties. A third is that we have the same wants, not
generally
speaking but down near the level of
wants as specific as those for electric cocktail shakers. A fourth is to the effect that there
are no significant racial differences between us. Four
questions arise about this collection. The first is whether the assigned propositions are true. The
answer, at any rate
if we take a little care in
their formulation, particularly that of the last, is that they are
false. The second question is whether they
are in fact
asserted by the opponents of
conservatives. The short answer is that they are not. A longer answer would take into account another of
Anthony Flow's useful
reminders,
that the US Department of Labor said in 1965 that blacks are potentially as intelligent as
whites.14 Jefferson,
we are to understand, knew better.) The
third question, more interesting, is whether other propositions about equality,
recommendatory ones, do in fact depend on or presuppose any of the
various absurdities. Are egalitarians
in fact committed to some of this nonsense? We shall keep that question in mind in what follows.
The fourth question, in fact separable from the third, is why
conservatives have been so persistent
in assigning propositions of natural equality to their opponents. We shall come to an answer to that. A
second sort of proposition about equality has to do with what can be called, for want of a better name, spiritual
equality or equality of persons. Here again we have a factual claim, something true or
false in the ordinary
sense -- or
anyway an approximation to such a thing.
In one form, perhaps the oldest, it is to
the effect that we are equal in the sight of God. In Russell Kirk's brief summation, we
will be equal when we
turn up for
the Last Judgement.15 Is
it this fact, perhaps, that is implied
in the Declaration of Independence when it is asserted that we are all 'created equal'? In another form,
owed to the philosophy
of
Immanuel Kant, the proposition is to the effect that each of us is an end-in-itself, something that has value
for
itself and not as a means to
anything else. In yet another form the proposition is plainer, and to the effect that each of us is alike in
having
autonomy, which is to
say a
unique capability of deciding things for ourselves, including right and wrong. This is not far from the
assertion of free will. Conservatives
allow such a conviction of equality of persons to their opponents, but
are quick to point out that it does
not distinguish
them. Conservatives themselves, they declare, do
not disdain the conviction, but share it. (Burke, by the way, avows something related,
which is 'the true moral equality' of mankind,
consisting in the
fact that we can all be happy
in following virtue in whatever condition of life we find ourselves, however disagreeable.16)
Conservatives are not much less quick
to point out, and with good reason, that what follows from such a conviction is not too troublesome to
them. One
thing that follows from it, and indeed is not wholly distinguishable
from it,
is the recommendation of equal respect: each of us is to be accorded an equal respect. In
Kant's version, which is fundamental to his moral philosophy, and has
the
name of the categorical imperative, it is
this: 'Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or
the person of any other, never simply as a means,
but always at
the same time as an end.' Not a great deal of
sense has ever been made of that, except perhaps by transforming it into something
mundane, perhaps that
no one's
interests should be left out of
consideration in deciding on a
course of action. No one should be forgotten about, whether or not one concludes that anything should actually
be
done to their benefit. It
may be supposed, differently, that what follows from our spiritual
equality or
equality of persons is a principle of equal political rights.
That is,
each of us ought to have certain
political rights. These may be summed up as the right to have a government to which one
consents, the right to
minimally
democratic government. Perhaps Captain
Rainborough asserted no more than this in
the Putney Debates after the English Civil War. Really
I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore
truly,
Sir, I think it is clear, that every man that is
to live under a government ought first
by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do believe that the poorest man in
England
is not at all bound to that government that
he hath not had a voice to put himself
under.17 If
conservatives do not have the splendid Captain Rainborough among their favourite people, they are, as
remarked, willing at least to
tolerate the recommendation of equal political rights as conceived and also the recommendation of equal respect
--
at any rate equal respect when also minimally
conceived. More to the point, they can insist with some reason that in Britain,
America and like places, we have at least for the most part acted on
these
recommendations. Here, they say, is no cause
for dispute. Egalitarianism is in this respect morally truistic. They add, further, that in
none of this is there a principle that could justify anything
remotely
like the depradations of the
socialist state. Here there is no fundamental principle of equality, with such a thing taken to be a principle
that
would sanction robbing the rich to give to
the poor. Various
questions arise, including the question of to what extent egalitarians of the several kinds do depend
on
spiritual equality or equality of persons and whether they assert, about respect and
democracy, only what is said to follow from it. But let us press on, and
look
to a proposition that
is in
one respect similar. It is the principle of formal equality. It
is owed to the ancient philosopher
Aristotle, and is
that we are to treat like cases alike, and different cases differently. Or, as comes to much the
same thing, we are to
treat cases
differently only if we are able to
cite a relevant difference between
them. The principle might, at first sight, seem to be something useful
to
various adversaries of conservatism. This is so since it might be thought to have the upshot, say,
that equally hungry people are to have equal amounts
of food, and
unequally hungry people to have unequal
amounts. As
others than conservatives have also pointed out, however, the principle by itself has no such unique
outcome.18
We can abide by it as readily by treating alike
those who are hungry to whatever extent and can pay for food, and treating
differently those who are hungry and cannot pay. Indeed, white South Africans
could abide by it by treating blacks
one way, the way they do, and whites in another way, the way they do. So with neo-Zionist Israelis and
Palestinians. All depends on how cases or people are compared, or what is taken to be relevant in considering
them. The principle says nothing
at all about that. As
has often been remarked, the principle reduces to no more than an injunction to be
consistent, to follow
some rule or
other, however dismal. Here there
is no foundation for
any politics
in particular.
Nor, by the way, has anything different been supposed by any egalitarian who has come
to my notice.
Conservatives are inclined to pay a little attention to R. H. Tawney's book Equality, indeed to accord it a
kind
of respect. So far as I can recall,
formal equality does not get into it. Aristotle appears only with respect to his well-known views on the
fittingness of the institution of slavery. Is
there hope for the left in equality before the law? This is not
a matter of the Last Judgement
but, so to speak,
the lower courts. If
any
egalitarian thought so,
he is disabused of the idea by a line of
conservatives from
Burke onwards. He is rightly disabused
unless he or she is under the
misapprehension that the equality in question consists in an equal freedom to use and be
defended by the law, a
freedom in the
sense settled earlier in this book.
Equality before the law, as
conservatives and indeed the usual run of lawyers have it, consists only in every citizen being subject to law,
none
having special privileges or disabilities in terms of what the law
says, all
being able to have a fair trial -- where
none of that involves a reassurance for someone who cannot raise the legal fees or,
say, has been engaged
in a miners'
strike that a government has
enthused its judges to
punish. It is
the conservatives, rather, who can be most enthusiastic about their support of equality before the law, as
traditionally understood, and
fit it effectively into their politics. You may wonder, of course, if equality before the law might be construed
differently, so as to be something
that might enter uniquely into a politics different from conservatism. Indeed it might -- as equal
respect might
-- but let us leave that aside for a time.
Our present concern is the outlook of conservatives with respect to equality, and it behoves
us for a while to stick to their terms. What
of equality of opportunity? What has been said here, first, is
that
there is a plain kind of it that is
defensible. This kind of equality of opportunity arose out of the French
Revolution, and is the only mitigation of that disaster. What is in
question
was conveyed by the demand for la carriere
ouverte aux talents, which is to say open competition for certain careers, with the
results of the competition being determined not by rank, money or family
connections but by talent or ability shown in a
common entrance examination. This, say conservatives, with whatever degree of good faith is
consistent with their traditional commitment to
an old boy
network, and a true natural aristocracy, is all
right by us. This is not something owned by our opponents. In this instance too
egalitarianism as something both sane and distinctive evaporates.
However,
say conservatives, our opponents now go further, for two reasons. First, they have discovered a
flat contradiction in their doctrines -- one of which you have heard
before
now in this book. Plain equality of opportunity does not contribute to a larger and vaguer thing they also want, so
far
unmentioned. It does
not contribute
to what can be
called an equal society, but to its opposite. For a start, it contributes to greatly
unequal material rewards, attached to the higher careers. As Keith
Joseph
reminds us, all Englishmen in the early years
of this century had an equal opportunity of founding Morris Motors, but
only
one of them did, and he became
very rich. Second,
there is the question of who gets the greater material rewards, the members of what social or
economic class. Our opponents explain this, say
conservatives, by
the proposition that
some of the
persons taking
the common examinations can still be said to have unequal and better opportunities.
They are better prepared for the exams, by having come from better
schools or from homes
with
books in them. What we now need, they say, is equal opportunity where that is not only the common exams but
equal preparation for
taking
them, equally good backgrounds. This fair equality of opportunity,
they
suppose, is right in itself and also will issue in or contribute to an equal society. Conservatives
have much to say against fair equality of opportunity. One thing is
that a good
background isn't really needed for success. After all, as Keith Joseph informs
us, the founder of Morris Motors was of humble origins, little
education,
no inherited wealth,
and began life
as a bicycle
repairer. It is no surprise to our informant, we may assume, that he didn't do quite as
well as John D. Rockefeller, since, as we are also informed, he
was
brought up by a quack medicine salesman
and a mother who used regularly to tie him to a post and beat him.19 That
is not all. If we were really to secure equal backgrounds for all those entering the common examinations,
we
should have to follow Plato's mad dream and
abolish the family. We should have to have, as William Letwin sees, infant-farms.
That is not all either. There is a yet madder dream to which thinking
about equal backgrounds leads. Is it
not the case that some of the candidates from the local infant-farm
would do
better than others in the exams? Some would have greater powers of concentration. They,
surely, could thereby be said to have a greater opportunity of success.
Something would have to be
done about this, to secure equal powers of concentration. We would need
to secure real equality of opportunity. The least that
conservatives
have to say
against this proposal is that egalitarians have now collapsed the distinction with which they
began, and on which all this reflection depends if
it is to be
sensible. That is the distinction between
opportunity on the one hand and talent or ability on the other. What we have is a mess, says David
Cooper, and a perversion of
that original good thought about opportunity at the time of the French Revolution.20 Nor
are we near to finished with the disgraces of the left. Another of them, according to conservatives, is that
which involves the injunction to treat everyone alike -- equality of
treatment. But that, as Lincoln Allison is not alone in supposing, would
issue in our dimwittedly providing the same amount and kind of food
for
all, irrespective of
age, size,
nature of work,
appetite, vegetarianism and so on. He might have added, with the Duke of Edinburgh in
mind, that equality of
treatment
commits us to helicopters for
everybody, or at any rate equal
flight-time. Further, if we try to find something more sensible for the egalitarian to say about treatment,
we
come up with too many
possibilities:
allocating food according to work, and so on. There is no particular policy that can be called the
egalitarian approach.
conservatives have
in fact spent too much time arguing
against egalitarianism, and not quite
enough to see what is true, that there is nothing much to argue against.21 William
Letwin sees what he takes to be yet more fundamental difficulties with equality of treatment, and
in particular the utopian recommendation of equal pay. Is the latter
the
recommendation of the
same
rate of pay per hour of work? If so, and if workers happen to work different numbers of hours per week,
some
will be paid more than others per week. Is the
idea, maybe, that everyone should get the same annual pay? If so, and if they work
different numbers of
weeks per
year, as may happen for one reason or
another, they will again be getting unequal
weekly pay. We have it, in short, that any equality of pay for a particular period of
time involves inequality of pay for another period of time. To set out to
produce equality is necessarily to produce
inequality as well. Egalitarianism is no less than internally incoherent.22 We
have so far looked at natural equality, spiritual equality, equal respect of a kind, equal political rights of
a
kind, formal equality,
equality
before the law, equal opportunity, fair equality of opportunity, real equality of
opportunity, equal treatment -- of which more will be said -- and equal pay. In none of
these,
it seems, whatever else is to be said of them, have we found a.
fundamental
principle or set of principles of equality, a
foundation for the politics of the Left. That would be something that is distinctive and
defensible, and takes first importance -- it underlies all other
egalitarian
principles, rules and
maxims,
which are brought into conformity with it. It may well entail the rejection of one or more of them.
Is such a thing to be
found in a
large and impressive book that has a
very great deal to say of equality, in a
number of ways, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice? It
advocates some principles of justice, ranked in a certain way, and also an argument for those principles of
justice as ranked. The
argument
has to do with an imaginary social contract, one that is made by contractors who are ignorant of their
personal advantages,
and we may
excuse ourselves
from considering it.23 It has been belaboured by some conservatives, and
something will be said of the belabouring later. The principles,
by
one method of counting
them,
are three in number. They can be considered independently of the argument for them. The
first is the principle of liberty, that in our societies each of us is to have as much liberty as is consistent
with
each other member having as much. There is to
be an equality of liberty at the highest possible level. The second principle is that
there is to be a kind of equality of opportunity to get into any
positions of favourable socio-economic inequality in our societies. The
third
is the principle of socio-economic differences.
It is to the effect that we can have, and indeed we must have, only exactly as much
socio-economic inequality as has a certain recommendation. It must, on
one
reading of the principle, make the worst-off
members of the society better-off than they would be without that degree of
inequality. As
for the ranking, the first principle takes
precedence over the second, and the second takes precedence over the third. A society
should aim first at realizing the first principle, and preserve it rather
than
the others in any case
of
conflict -- it cannot be that any departure from greatest equal liberty is justified by a gain either in
opportunity
or in connection with socio-economic
advantages. So with the second principle in relation to the third. Do we
here have a unifying set of principles for egalitarianism? Do we here have the means of bringing order into
the egalitarian muddle? Conservatives have not been much alarmed at the
threat, for what seems to me good reason, better
reason than they
themselves have supplied in any clear way. What
are the liberties or rights of which the first principle speaks? It is curious, and can be a source of
reassurance in itself, that Rawls did
not use many of the 607 pages of A Theory of Justice in
specifying them.
In fact he does not use one. What we are
told is not much more than this: The
basic liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to vote and be eligible
for
public office) together with
freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person
along
with the right to hold (personal) property;
and freedom from arbitrary arrest and
seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law.24 Perhaps
it can be assumed, from the rest of A Theory of Justice, that Rawls is not himself inclined to that
particular right to hold personal
property that enters into conservative property-freedom. Still, what he says leaves it open to others
to
interpret 'the right to hold
(personal) property' as they like, and he does not declare himself against conservative property-freedom
or
argue against it. Something the same is true,
to mention something else of importance, of the mentioned political liberty. It is
left open to interpretation. It must also be reassuring to conservatives that
what we are to have in
each
case is only maximum equal liberties or rights, which
is not to say freedoms in the sense
settled earlier in our
inquiry. Conservatives
have long allowed that we ought to be equal in those, which does not come near to committing them
to the proposition that we ought to be equally
able, say, to
acquire private property. That
is not the only ground of reassurance for conservatives. A second one
is that if the kind of equality of
opportunity favoured
by them is a more minimal one than is
favoured by Rawls, his is not out of sight. The
third and main ground has to do with the principle of socio-economic
differences. What it says, to repeat, is that we are permitted and
obliged to
have any inequalities of wealth, power and standing that improve the lot of the
worst-off: the worst-off are made better-off than they would be without them.
The
fact of the matter is that until more is said we
have no idea of what society we get from the operation of this principle. Imagine
a society where socio-economic goods are shared in perfect equality, and of which it is also true that
allowing some members to become rich,
powerful and respected, relatively speaking, would result (a) in others being worse-off in absolute terms than
they were before, or
(b) would
leave them exactly
as they were before in absolute terms. The Difference Principle
certainly has
it that the society is to persist in
its perfect egalitarianism if (a) is true. Depending on a common reading of the principle, it has the same
consequence if (b) is true -- we
are not to allow some members to become better-off even if no members become worse-off. On
the other hand, imagine a society where there are such socio-economic
differences as have not so far been dreamed of in the philosophy of the new right. The distance
between rich and poor
is greater
than the distance between the estate of
a prince or the ranch of an oil billionaire
and the cardboard box of someone whom inheritance and the market have not favoured.
Imagine that it is also true of this society that any reduction of
the
well-being of those on
the
top of the pile would in some degree worsen or would not improve the lot of those on the bottom. The
Difference
Principle certainly has it
that the society is to persist in its perfect inegalitarianism on the first assumption and perhaps on the second. A
Theory of Justice
does not give attention to
the essential and battered question of whether
our actual societies are like the first or the second of these two imagined ones, or
like others in between. It does not open the question of whether
incentives
in terms of income and wealth are necessary, or
to what extent they are necessary, if the worst-off are to be better-off than they
would be without them. As a consequence, to come to the conclusion of
these
reflections, it is entirely open to
conservatives to embrace this fundamental part of the given theory of justice, then to argue
that great incentives are necessary, and thus emerge with a
justification
of society as it is. It is
open to conservatives to conclude, yet again, that egalitarianism in so far as it advocates something sensible,
advocates no more than
they
do. What the egalitarianism of Rawls comes to, when the argument about incentives is added to it, is
something about which
we can all
fall into contented agreement. 2.
Equality of Results There
is something more distinctive, another idea or sort of idea on which the left is said to attempt to rely.
It
was in view earlier
in this book when
'the equal society' was
mentioned. It was in view too when we earlier touched on social and civil
freedoms. It also
turned up in connection with the politics of The Third Way. It
calls for more attention than anything
considered so
far, as do the many objections made to it. It is
sometimes called equality of results or outcome, sometimes equality of condition or
circumstances. Let us
settle on
equality of results. Keith
Joseph uses the term and speaks of 'what the great Victorian jurisprudent Dicey pithily describes as
"the equalization of advantages among individuals possessed of unequal
means for their attainment"'. It is what is sought, we are told, by
those
who wish to organize societies so as to
make all men equal, and perhaps part of what was in the mind of the alarming priest
John Ball in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. 'Things never shall go well
in
England,' he said, 'until all things are in
common and all of us are of one condition.' It is the principle, I take it, that brings to
the mind of several of our conservatives a recollection of Procrustes -- 'a
celebrated Greek highwayman who used to tie
travellers to a bed, lopping off their legs if they were too long for the bed and
stretching their spines if they were too short for it'.25
Procrustes now, of course, is the welfare state, also known as the ever-expanding state
machine, the central
enforcer of
equality of outcome, and so on. For
Milton Friedman, apparently not too mindful of the history of the twentieth century, let alone the
Peasants' Revolt, equality of results
is something that has emerged in the United States in recent decades. In
some intellectual circles the desirability of equality of outcome has become an article of religious faith:
everyone should finish
the
race at the same time. As the Dodo said in Alice in Wonderland, 'Everybody has won, and all must have
prizes.'
... 'Fair shares for
all' is the
modern slogan
that has replaced Karl Marx's 'To each according to his needs, from each according
to his ability.'26 William
Letwin is distracted by his obligation to deal with the confusions of egalitarians, and so cannot
spend much time on bringing equality of results into clear view. He has
it
in mind, perhaps, when
he
concerns himself with the bare injunction 'All persons should be equal', and speaks of the idea that people
should be equal in respect of
certain general and vital goods. These include income, wealth, esteem, political power, legal rights and
education.27 Conservatives,
in attending to equality of results, generally have Tawney's Equality in mind. He speaks
of 'equality...of
circumstances, institutions and manner of life', and equality of
'social and economic environment'. To seek
this equality is
to allow that individuals may differ profoundly in capacity and
character, but
to maintain that 'they are
equally entitled as human beings to consideration and respect, and that
the
well-being of a society is likely to
be increased if it so plans its organization
that, whether their powers are great or small,
all its members may be equally enabled to make the best of such powers
as they
possess'. The idea is that it is
regrettable 'that different sections of a community should be distinguished from each other by sharp
differences of economic status, environment,
education, culture and habit of life'. The idea, again, is that it is the mark of a civilized
society to aim at eliminating such inequalities as have their source not in
individual differences, but in its own organization, and that
individual
differences, which are a source of social
energy, are more likely to ripen and find expression if social inequalities are,
as far as practicable,
diminished.28 It is noticeable that
what is called equality of results is not wholly distinct from equality of treatment, noticed
earlier, at any rate if we think of equality of treatment in something other
than
the idiotically specific way proposed by some
conservatives. We can take it, that is, as having to do with treatment or provision
more generally conceived --
education rather than this or that specific sort of education, travel rather than rides in helicopters, and so on.
The
close relation between
equality
of results and equality of treatment is reflected in what conservatives say of it. Procrustes, if
he can be thought
about in terms of results, certainly
goes in for treatment.
What
can be argued to distinguish equality of results and equality of treatment is that the aim of treatment
does
indeed concern only activity with respect to
people, what is done to or for them: giving them food, giving them pay, providing the
means to travel. This
treatment or
provision is itself to be equal,
whatever is the case with the
upshot of the treatment or provision. The aim of equality of results can rather be taken to be about,
fundamentally, the upshot of
treatment or provision, which treatment or provision may be other than equal. What we are to be equal in is
satisfaction of hunger, or what
comes of our weekly pay, or comes of such aids as old-age pensions. One thing that brings equality of
results and equality of treatment
into connection, despite what has just been said, is that it is very often an ideal policy, and yet more
often the only practicable or
realistic policy, to pursue the end of equality of results by the means of equalities of treatment. It is
to be allowed, perhaps, that Tawney did not succeed in giving fully effective and economical expression to
his
recommendation of equality of results. Let us
take it to be this: A
society should seek to secure, as far as is practicable, lives of equal satisfaction for all its members. It
should do this by in
general
seeking to secure, as
far as practicable, equality of income and wealth, equality of respect (where that
is other than what was noticed earlier, the mere
recognition of the
relevance of all persons), equal political and
legal freedoms, the full development of the different potentials of individuals by
means of education and in work, equality in housing
and
environment, equal medical care and provision
for old age. That is not so clear
and determinate a recommendation as we might like, but it will do for our present
purpose -- which is to look at conservative objections to equality of
results, of which there is no shortage.
Almost all conservatives, certainly, take what we have as sufficiently clear and determinate so as to
be
open to conclusive refutation. They do not put
it aside as unclear, but as wrong. Let us
look at no fewer than ten objections -- first a mixed collection, then
objections having to do with liberty, then with the great good of
inequalities,
and then with what can be called mere relativities or irrationality.
Here it
will be worthwhile being thorough,
partly in anticipation of a different principle to come. Almost all of
the
objections are as relevant to that different principle. 3.
Assorted Objections to Equality of Results The
first objection has to do with actual facts of inequality in our
societies and hence the appositeness or
urgency of the
recommendation. George Saintsbury, who is
introduced to us by Russell Kirk as, among other things, a genial essayist, could
bluffly inform Englishmen of the lower orders, about 1922, that they had no
great
need to think about inequality. 'The goods
you have are real, and the ills, in all probability and experience, to a large extent
imaginary -- certainly
bearable in
that they have been borne.'29 Keith
Joseph, on a page where he accepts the need for
a welfare floor or minimum standard of living, so that the poor do not sink into
a condition in which they would prefer well-fed slavery to indigent
freedom, also has something to
say about what his predecessor evidently has in mind, which is being
well-off or
badly-off according to an absolute scale rather than relatively to
somebody
else, well-off or badly-off in absolute terms rather than relative or
comparative ones. A
family is poor if it cannot afford to eat. It is not poor if it cannot afford endless smokes and it does not
become poor by the mere fact that other
people can afford them. A person who enjoys a standard of living equal to that of
a mediaeval baron cannot be described as poor for
the sole reason
that he has chanced to be born into a
society where the great majority can live like mediaeval kings.
By any absolute standard
there is very little poverty in Britain today.30 Those words were written for a
book that was
published in 1979, the first year of Thatcher
governments. They
would not have been written a decade later, I fancy, after the
immiseration of
a part of the British people by those
governments, with the writer of the words to the fore in them. But that is not the main
point, which has as much to do with the genial
essayist as Mr Joseph.
Nor is the
main point one that might be
attempted by the miserably impoverished
if they came upon the opinions, the point that the tradition of
conservatism
has liars in it. The lie, to put it one clear
way, would be
this proposition: those at
the bottom of the pile, those who are relatively speaking badly-off,
are always
or generally well-off in absolute terms, or at any rate have decent
lives. If
you would prefer to have an entirely literally false proposition to
consider,
rather than a partly evaluative judgement, there is also one of these.
It is
that the inequality that exists in Britain or America is generally such that if people at
large had a real awareness
of its reality, they would not be
bothered by it and could not be got to
be bothered. They would not take it to be a reality sufficient to make
the
recommendation of equality of results at all arguable or worth
consideration. It is not of much importance
whether either
our genial essayist or
our politician
is a liar by this test, or whether
such general propositions are their
main concern. The main point is that their words, when taken to suggest the given propositions, as they
certainly can be when they are about mediaeval barons, are not worthy of consideration. Nor, perhaps, would we do
justice
to the large tradition of conservatism by assigning an offensive falsehood to it. That is not all that is to be
said against
the idea that inequality
itself does not matter, that all that matters is such absolute
deprivation as
not having food to eat. Consider for a moment some other people, those
among us
who are well-off in terms of what we all want. These already well-off
persons
want and go in for more of these desired things than their well-off
neighbours,
do they not? Do they not want to be better off in comparison to them?
This is
always said, and seems true enough, and leads to a question. Why it
that it is
only the poor who are to be told they
are being unreasonable when they are on the lookout for a bit more than
somebody else or, rather, and very importantly, not so much less? There is something else to think
about in
connection with the unsimple
subject of relative and absolute value. Plainly there are some goods,
very
important ones indeed, that just by their nature are relative rather
than
absolute goods. Power of various kinds, at various levels, is plainly
one of
these. What my power comes to, the worth of it, is exactly a matter of
how much
you have. My power as against yours doesn't change at all if each of us
goes up
the same extent on an absolute scale. My purchasing power or other
financial
power as against yours doesn't change if our incomes are both doubled.
Power
just is relative. So with personal standing in the community
and some
other things. Another point. Your having more
than me of
some things, of which power
is indeed an example, is connected with and affects your absolute
amounts of
something else. If you've got more money than me, whether we
are both
paupers or millionaires in terms of cash, you are likely to get what
keeps the
rain out or the faster car -- those absolute goods. That is not the end
of the
story of the two kinds of value. We will be coming back to this
neighbourhood,
and a harder objection. But now consider a
second kind of objection, if that is what it
is, to the principle of equality of results. This consists in ad
hominem retorts
of two kinds, the first kind directed
to proponents of this equality who are
themselves decently well-off. We shall believe them to be honest enthusiasts, says Burke,
and not as we now think them, cheats and deceivers, when we see them
throwing their own goods into common.31
Burke is not alone. Paul Elmer More, he who wished Rockefeller not to be mealy-mouthed about shooting
strikers,
knows that if you hear a man talking overmuch
of egalitarianism, you can be pretty sure he will be slippery or dishonourable in
his personal transactions; Anthony Flew reminds us that Bernard Shaw,
although in favour of
equal
incomes, remained representative of his prosperous co-believers in not surrendering the part of his own
income
that was above average; Milton Friedman
points out that while equality of outcome has become almost an article of religious
faith among intellectuals, from whom he evidently distinguishes himself,
they do not go off to
live
in a commune or a kibbutz.32 The ad
hominem objections of the second kind are directed to those who would themselves benefit from a society's
securing something like equality of results.
They, in their present unfortunate state, are charged with the sin of envy. The support for
equality of results by
these possible
beneficiaries is the product of
their resentment of those who
are better-off. Keith Joseph, it is true, has a word to say for envy, or for the possibility that it can be
aroused or increased in people.
'Envy is capable of serving the valuable function of making the rich moderate their habits for fear of
arousing it. It is because of the
existence of envy that one does not drive Rolls-Royces through the slums of Naples ....'33 Most
of
his fellow-Conservatives, while no doubt as prudent, are more given to pointing
to envy as a means of
discrediting
the idea of equality under
consideration. Elsewhere in his
reflections, our politician perhaps moves towards joining them, announcing as he does that equality of
results
has something to do with naked class interests.34 We
shall eventually come round to the general subject of naked class interests. For the moment, not greatly
more is required with
respect
to the ad hominem retorts than the reminder that it is widely accepted that the worth of a recommendation
or
principle is not a function of the personal
morality, whatever that may be, of its proponents or its beneficiaries. Also, there
is the consideration that a well-heeled proponent of equality of
results,
while advocating that unachieved state of
things, can in the meantime properly be restrained in disposing of his income by
certain comparisons --
between
himself and his family on the one hand,
and, on the other hand, others than the
worst-off. His sons and daughters and their aspirations can be regarded in terms of more
comparisons than one.
Proponents of
equality of results need not be
saints, and certainly
cannot
be called to that condition by Burke and his epigoni. To
reflect for a moment on the envy of the poor, the extent and gravity of their sin is unclear. I take it
that
the lawful owner of a Rolls-Royce is not to be much
abused for envying the now advantaged state of the Neapolitan who stole it from him. What
he mainly feels, he will
say, is something different from envy, which is not merely righteous
but
rightful indignation. And, if he also owns up to envy, he is unlikely to be so paralysed with guilt as to
come back from his holiday a
broken man. He will in fact not take his envy as greatly culpable. So --
not all resentment having to do with the advantages of another person is to be much condemned. In
particular,
if it is the case that
we
ought to achieve equality of results, and hence that our present unequal distributions are wrong, and,
furthermore, that the wealth of
some enters into the explanation of the poverty of others, then the feelings to which the poor are subject are
partly in the category of rightful
indignation, and, for the rest, the envy is human enough. Even if it is supposed there is a connection
between principles and
certain
feelings of those who hold them, conservatives cannot effectively
proceed from
the charge of envy to the refutation of the principle of equality of results. They must rather
proceed in a way which is not easy, and not of the greatest use to
them,
from a refutation of the principle
to the slight addendum of a charge of culpable envy. A
third sort of response to equality of results is that a society that achieved it would not be natural, as
egalitarians
are supposed to believe, but unnatural. Alas
there have been egalitarians given to such stuff, in some cases conjoining it with
a certain optimism. Matthew Arnold of the Victorian
Age was one of
these: 'A system founded on inequality is
against nature, and, in the long run, breaks down.'35 Perhaps he still has some
20th Century successors
who also have recourse to the
ineffective notion of the natural. Let us leave them to contend in some safe place with those
of their conservative
opponents who
are also attracted to the notion. There
are a good many of the latter, as we already know. They are, differently described, advocates of the
organic society, or certain of the societies named as organic. They
advocate
certain of the societies that have grown rather
than been constructed, certain of the
societies which are tree-like and which alteration will destroy, and also the society of inheritance).
Advocacy of any of them
is what might be called naturalistic opposition to the principle of equality of results. Let us not go back to
all that. To recall the essential
fact about attempts to defend a thing as natural, it appears that the defence reduces to claiming that the
thing exists or will
persist if not
interfered
with, from which nothing follows as to whether it ought to exist or persist, or the defence
is already the judgement that the thing ought to exist or persist,
which
is the conclusion for
which
support is supposed to be being provided. Resort to the natural is the resort of a true believer who finds
himself short of an actual argument. A
fourth objection to equality of results is the regular one that a society will in fact never achieve it. We
earlier noticed in another connection
Burke's dictum about what egalitarians, when they get into power, do with it. Believe
me, Sir, those who attempt to level, never equalize. In all societies, consisting of various
descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levellers
therefore only change and pervert the
natural order of things; they load the edifice of a society, by setting up in the
air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground.36 To
take a later example, from 1948, there was
Bernard Braine's prescience in Tory Democracy. 'Within a very
short space
of time this new equality will have vanished
into the mist. Some men will be rich, some will be poor. Some will be masters, some
will be servants. A few will lead, the rest will
follow.'37
A
part of a reply to this sort of thing is that to achieve equality of results would not in fact be to achieve
anarchism, where that is an absence
of government. Nor would that be the aim. As conservatives are all too ready to insist, as we shall see
soon, equality of results could
only be achieved by government, and hence through the inequality of power that all government
involves, including fully democratic government. That particular
inequality, however, is consistent with various fundamental equalities on the part of
the governed and to some great extent the governors.
The fact of
government, too, whatever bureaucracy it involves, is consistent with
an
absence of such ascendant classes as now
exist in our societies. As for Bernard Braine's certainty that there will always be the rich,
it must come to mind
that there do
now exist societies, whatever else
is to be said for or
against them,
which plainly
are without a class of the rich as we know them. I trust that he can be brought to
tolerate what has hitherto been thought to be a
pretty firm
proposition, that what is actual
is possible. To
bring together two more small but persistent objections to the recommendation of equality of results, a
fifth
and sixth, conservatives manage
to suppose that the recommendation rests on the factual premise that we are all equal, and that
acting on the recommendation would produce a terrible uniformity. The
first
idea, that the recommendation rests on one of the bundle of
propositions about
natural equality, should not survive
reading Tawney's sentences about
our differences in capacity and character, our greater and smaller powers. Whatever the
recommendation rests on -- and
there is more to be said of this -- it does not rest on some kind of blindness as to the actual differences
between
us. Nor,
in any fatal sense, would equality of results issue in uniformity. It is not, if English retains its sense, the
proposal that everyone should be made the same. It is better described as
the proposal that we should be
equal in the worth of things rather than the things themselves, that we should have lives of equal value
rather
than the same lives.
Having said
that, it remains
true that the proposal of equality of results is indeed the proposal of equality of
income and wealth and so on, as far as is practicable. In another
sense,
then, it is the proposal that
we have certain uniformities. To object to it as such, evidently, is to be engaged in this ungripping line of
argument: the proposal of certain
equalities or uniformities is mistaken because it proposes certain equalities or uniformities. Is there
something else in the
objection
of uniformity? Is there something, incidentally, that takes into account the very real uniformities in
our
existing societies of
inequality?
Perhaps there is, but not enough to detain us. 4.
Liberty-Objections to Equality of Results We
come now to what is a seventh and the most used set of
conservative
objections to equality of results or the
equal society. They will need little
illustration. They are to the effect that equality of results is inconsistent with freedom or
liberty, that we cannot have both, that such equality reduces, threatens
or
destroys freedom or liberty. We need to pay them
somewhat less attention because we have in fact encountered them already, in
other settings, differently expressed. (A)
One liberty-objection is that equality of results carries the risk or danger of or actually issues in
totalitarianism. We in
fact encountered and took a view
of something close to this objection in considering the argument, in our inquiry into conservatism and freedom,
that to abandon
conservative
property-freedom and market-freedom is to run the risk of totalitarianism or be fated to succumb to
it. This latter claim as to the risk or result
of not having
conservative economic
freedoms
is close to the objection that equality of results runs the risk of totalitarianism. This becomes clear as
soon
as it is supposed that
giving
up the conservative economic freedoms is on the way to embracing the principle of equality of
results. If that supposition is not quite true, it is certainly true that
many
of the serious adversaries of
conservatism, in opposing conservative economic freedoms, do indeed propose and attempt to replace them
with
an equal society or something like it. We
concluded that giving up conservative economic freedoms very definitely has not been shown to issue
in totalitarianism. We
can conclude
now, by the same or similar
arguments, that embracing equality
of results would not necessarily issue in totalitarianism. The latter conclusion might be modified by
our
making further distinctions, but not upset.
If the argument for the earlier conclusion was sound, as certainly it seemed to be,
something like it is as
effective here. (B)
We also considered, some way back, the closely related matter of whether conservative economic freedoms can
be
recommended as securing or preserving what
earlier was called 'a liberal-democratic political order'. We drew two conclusions. The
first was that
conservative
economic freedoms do indeed serve as more
effective means to the end of such a
political order when it is defined as consisting in just those limited political
and civil freedoms proposed by conservatives, but that restricting such
freedoms to those particular ones needs justifying. The second
conclusion was
that conservative economic freedoms do not serve the end of 'a
liberal-democratic political order' when that is taken to be a matter of greater and more widely supported political
and
civil freedoms. We can as readily draw
certain conclusions about a second liberty-objection to equality of
results,
that it conflicts with what can be called, 'a liberal-democratic political
order'. We
can readily allow, first, that the equal society
or equality of results is not an effective means to, or does not contribute to, just the
limited political and
civil freedoms allowed or proposed
by conservatives. We can as readily argue, second, that the equal society or
equality of results can be the effective means to or can contribute to
greater
political and civil freedoms. The short story,
then, is that equality of results does not issue in what very many people do not want,
and it may issue in what they do want. Equality of
results does not
lack but rather may have precisely the
recommendation that conservatives imply that it lacks. (C)
There is a third thing that equality of results may be said to have as a consequence, something that perhaps
can be regarded as in between totalitarianism
and just the sort of infringement we have had in mind of political and civil freedoms.
This too is at least close
to something noticed earlier. We
noticed that conservatives are
in fact not wholly opposed to revolution, but only to a kind of it. They are well capable of contemplating
revolution to overthrow governments
to which they are radically opposed, including governments of their own
nations, notably governments that are excessively democratic or have no
reverence for private property. Burke could contemplate a different sort of
Cromwell, and Macaulay a despotism that would save civilization. We
may
add Lord Salisbury, who in 1883 had a fear, in
particular, of the growing strength of the trade unions. If England were to succumb to
them, he wrote, 'we would welcome the military
despotism that should
relieve us'.38 As
will be clear enough, this third thing to be said of seeking equality of results is that it will issue not
in
the totalitarianism of the left or any totalitarianism, but in an
undemocratic regime of the right, most probably a military regime.
Conservatives, partly because of
their determination to present themselves as good constitutionalists, are unlikely actually to specify as a third
liberty-objection to equality of
results that they themselves, or those who share their commitments, and in fact are distinguished from them only
by
their uniforms, would
resist
its achievement by resort to force and military government. What they are reluctant to announce, however,
is
something that they are capable of leaving
in the air, indeed putting into the air. It is
evidently more of a threat than an objection of principle. It is not, at least in the ordinary sense, a
moral objection to equality of
results, but a grim prediction that the thing will be resisted by force. The prediction, no doubt, has for good
reason done more to restrain ambitious socialist
governments than any argument they have had to meet. Our present concern is
argument of principle.
What is to be
said, then, is that no argument of
principle against equality of results is
provided by saying that if a democratic argument is lost, the loser will in the end reply with
tanks. (D)
To turn instead to what can be regarded as an argument of principle, it is provided for us by Robert
Nozick, and beloved by
those
who swore by him.39 It stands in some relation, which we need not look into, to the second
liberty-objection to
equality of
results. The
argument is directed against more things than equality of results, but certainly
against that. Contemplate
the equal society, a society that has in fact achieved equality of results. The distribution of
goods, and the upshot of that distribution, is just what is called for by
the
idea of equal results. The pattern
is in accord with that idea. For one thing, there is the required distribution of income and wealth. In the
society
there exists a basketball player, one Wilt
Chamberlain. He is, as Professor Nozick explains, a great gate attraction, and makes
a certain contract with his team. The result is that people
cheerfully
buy their ordinary tickets to games and also
drop a separate twenty-five cents into a special box with his name on it. Wilt
Chamberlain winds up, in one season, with $250,000, far greater than the
average income. It gives him,
too, far greater wealth than is had by others in what was the equal society. We are not to forget, and
Professor Nozick is in no danger
of letting us forget, about the fans, that 'Each of these persons chose to give twenty-five cents of their
money
to Chamberlain. They
could have
spent it on going
to the movies, or on candy bars, or on copies of Dissent magazine, or of Monthly
Review. But they
all ... converged on giving it to
Wilt Chamberlain in exchange for watching him play basketball.' Nozick
implies a good deal about all of this, and introduces some talk of justice that is likely to confuse
matters. But his main purpose is
clear enough. It is to assert that if the equal society or any like society is to be maintained, this must be
done
by infringing freedom
or
liberty. The fans must be stopped from making Wilt rich. To preserve the pattern of distribution in the
equal society the liberty of both
the fans and Wilt must be violated. 'Liberty', we are to see, 'upsets patterns'. No such principle as that
of
equal results 'can be
continuously
realized without continuous interference in people's lives'. Shall
we join the thinkers of the new right and successors to them and some
other suggestible persons in their awe
of this
argument? We need not
rush. We
have a tolerable idea of what, in general, a freedom is. It is, in one manner of speaking, perhaps the most
ordinary, being able to act on a desire. To have a freedom with
respect to something is to have a
certain power to do it or to get it, as noticed earlier. There are, as
we saw, and will see again, other
ideas of
freedom,
but none that could alter our present line of
reflection. It could be pursued exactly as well, although perhaps not as neatly, in
terms of those other ideas and various supplements. To come to a first
point, then, are all
freedoms in
the given sense
powers that ought to be possessed, abilities that persons rightly possess? Very evidently
not. I should not have, and my society does what it can to prevent my
having, the power to
harm others in
certain ways.
It thrives to limit or indeed to destroy the freedom of the rapist, the car thief and,
perhaps, the fraudulent broker.
Would
the equal society, if by law it stopped the fans making Wilt rich, because of apprehensions about
further developments, be affecting their freedom and his? Indeed it
would. There is not the slightest
doubt about that. But would it be wrong to do so? Would it be wrong to take steps, such as the one in
question, to preserve
itself as an
equal society, one where private
wealth does not result in closed
wards in public hospitals? Would a democratic majority who voted for preserving what are of course the
freedoms of that society be acting
wrongfully? That is the only question of interest, of any interest whatever. In the political folk-tale we have
before us, it is of course assumed
that it would be wrong to infringe a freedom that would issue in the destruction of an equality or of
certain freedoms, but no reason at all is given for that assumption.
What
we have is not an argument of any significance
against equality of results, but rather a certain amount of persiflage. There
is the same conclusion if we turn our attention to the idea of liberty. What is a liberty? Well, it is at
least natural to say that the
fraudulent broker may unfortunately have been free to defraud the widows, but that he had no liberty to do
so.
A liberty, in this common way of speaking, is a
freedom to which one is entitled, or better, a defensible or justified freedom.
Would the equal society, if it ruled against Wilt's box for the
twenty-five-cent pieces, be infringing his liberties and those of his
admirers?
Nozick says yes. Others say
no. The trouble is that our professor, who is conducting this seminar, only says so, and does not explain
in
his folk-tale what entitles him to his usage. Elsewhere
in his book he is attracted to reflections on the subject of rights, which subject we have already
noticed). Such reflections lead to the idea that what the equal society
must
do, in order to maintain itself, is to
violate the non-legal rights of the persons in question. But to say someone's non-legal
rights to do something have been violated, if we leave out a certain
amount
of ancient or sacred
obscurity, is
to say
something of this sort: as follows from some moral principle of worth, he ought to be able to do
the thing. There is no
avoiding the
question of what the principle is,
and of what is to be
said for it.
There is no
argument on hand in the absence of answers. What
we have so far with respect to equality of results in connection with liberty, putting aside the military
threat,
is that this equality
cannot
be said to issue in totalitarianism, does contribute to our having political and civil freedoms that have a wide
appeal, and is not to
be
put aside by way of the folk-tale. It is possible, on the basis of these and others of our reflections, to come
to
several summaries. Both of them demonstrate the
inanity of supposing that there is a simple opposition between equality and
freedom, and, perhaps more important, that either side in the dispute
has
the possibility of simply claiming
that it is more virtuous with respect to freedom. On
the one hand, it
would be absurd to say that equality of
results would not conflict with or
destroy certain freedoms. It is inescapable that any such programme or policy, like any
legislation, will not only give powers to people but also reduce or take
away powers from people, sometimes the same
people. A society that
secured
equality of income and wealth would in so doing go against conservative property-freedom and very
likely
conservative market-freedom. Similar concessions, if that is what they
are,
need to be made with respect to every
element in the conception of equality of results -- with respect to education, for
example. Further, in
so far as the
point is a separate one, and as
was granted in what was said
of the 'liberal-democratic political order', equality of results would have an adverse effect on precisely
those
constrained political
and
civil freedoms that conservatives allow. It would replace them or tend to replace them. On
the other hand,
to come to have an equal society would patently be to come to have
certain freedoms. Nothing is
clearer. It would be to come to have a property-freedom of a certain kind. Similar and more important propositions
are indubitably true
with respect
to every element
in the conception of equality of results. The equal society would give us freedom from
kinds of disdain, freedom to work, and so on.
Further, to revert
to 'the liberal-democratic political order', in so far as the point is
a
separate one, equality
of
results would secure or contribute to political and civil freedoms greater than those supported by conservatives. So
much for one summary. A second one makes use of our earlier categories of freedoms.
NON-POLITICAL FREEDOMS
POLITICAL FREEDOMS
|
|
| ECONOMIC SOCIAL
CIVIL Equality
of results, as we have conceived it, is itself nothing other than a matter of certain freedoms of all
these
kinds. It would secure
certain
freedoms in each category. With respect to economic freedoms, to give
an
example, it would no doubt allow for certain goods to be distributed by a market, not so
many as conservatives
would like.
With respect to social freedoms, it
would secure freedom to have
a job, and, with respect to civil freedoms, perhaps a considerable freedom of information. With respect to
political freedoms it would secure
greater democracy. It is
exactly as true, if we are charitable in connection with what is sufficient to count as a social freedom,
that
conservatism can be said to secure freedoms of
all the kinds. It provides for an extended market. A welfare-floor can be regarded,
charitably, as a beginning on or a form of social freedom. conservatism
obviously secures lesser civil
and political freedoms than would exist in a society of equality of results. The
fundamental questions, of course, are what in fact unites each of these two arrays of freedoms, the left or
egalitarian array and the conservative array, and what can be said for and
against each. An effective answer to the first or
analytical
question in each pair is essential
to an effective answer to the second or evaluative question. An effective summation of what unites the
conservative array would be
what we have been pursuing for some time, a rationale of conservatism.
Something will be said below of the rationale of the freedoms involved in equality of results --
or, at least, something will be said of what conservatives claim it to be. Before
leaving what we have been calling liberty-objections to the equal society, there is need for a little
more
repetition, of another
sort.
Believe me, there is need. Equality of results, it was said a moment ago, would involve freedom to work.
Conservatives, whom we know pride themselves on
not being quick to learn, will be prone to a certain reply. It is a denial that what
is in question is properly called a freedom. So too with other elements
of
equality of results.
What
indubitably is in question, as all must agree, since it is part of the definition of equality of results, is
the
securing of a state a/affairs where
everyone, with some obvious exceptions, is in fact able to act on a
desire, the desire to have a job.
Conservatives, as I
say, will persist in the view that
this is not properly spoken of as a freedom, and that to speak of it in this way is to seek to gain an improper
advantage in argument.
Indeed
it is to be dishonest, to go in for the sort of thing to be expected of persons who are slippery or dishonourable
in
their personal transactions. That it is dishonest is said by Keith
Joseph, in
his role as moralist and linguist, at the
end of the section in his book called 'Property is not Unfreedom'.40 In
a proper and honest way of
speaking, we are to understand, freedom to work is no more than
something like this: a state of affairs
consisting in the
absence of legal barriers to getting a job, or the absence of coercion in this
regard, or the absence of
coercion by other specifiable
individuals. Hence, what our egalitarians are demanding, with respect
to jobs,
and what we are contemplating, is more than a freedom. How
tedious it all is. Suppose we take up the preferred usage. What we now say is that equality of results
would secure (a) freedom to
work, and (b) whatever else is needed in order to get a job. We call the latter thing something or other
--
power, means, real opportunity or whatever. We
follow the same sort of distinction with every other item of equality of results --
say in connection with
housing and medical care. We then do
the same with each item in the array of conservative recommendations. Nothing
whatever is affected with respect to the answers to the fundamental
questions except their
expression.
They become: What unites the egalitarian array of freedoms and also
powers or
whatever, and what can be said for and against it? and What unites the conservative
array of freedoms and
also powers or
whatever, and what can be said
against it? We will proceed in the simpler way in
due course, but not just now. 5. The General Good of Inequalities Again We
now leave behind liberty-objections to equality of results, or what can be called equal freedoms, and not
too
soon. We turn to an eighth kind of objection that
often seems to be offered to all of the recommendation of equality of results, but,
at least in the first
instance,
pertains only to part of it. The whole
of the recommendation, to recall, is that so far as is practicable all
members
of a society should have equally
satisfactory lives secured for the most part through equalities in income, wealth,
respect, political and legal freedoms, housing, environment, medical care
and
provision for old age, and the full development
of the different potentials of individuals by means of education and work. The
objections to which we turn, at least in the first instance, are that to enforce equalities of income and
wealth
will somehow do more harm than good with
respect to income and wealth. This has to do with the claim that such equalities
deprive us of incentive. Not enforcing such equalities, and therefore
allowing incentive, will somehow
improve matters in terms of income and wealth. The objections, further, since typically they are
offered as objections to the entire recommendation of equality of
results, are presumably also to
the effect that not enforcing equalities of income and wealth will somehow improve matters in terms of the other
elements of the recommendation. There will be benefit, for example, in
terms of respect and self-development. We
have already spent time with this kind of argument, having to do with incentive. We first considered
whether
it could be other than
a
piece of theory, as conservatives wish it to be, and concluded it could not. That left open the possibility
that
it is a true piece of
theory.
Subsequently we looked at conservative incentive arguments as based on a premise about human
nature, and in particular our low or
self-concerned natures. Here we did not find what end-result it is that a
system of incentives is supposed to have, whether described as
'economic
well-being' or in some related way. A
description of the end-result in terms of such economic totals as gross national product, it
was remarked, is
consistent with various distributions of goods. So too the description
of it as a situation where
everybody is better off.
Finally we looked at
incentive
arguments as
defences of conservative property-freedom and market-freedom. Our
difficulty about the proposed end-result persisted, and was not resolved by
considering the hidden-hand vindication of conservative economic
freedoms,
itself a form of incentive argument. Shall
we do better now? Keith
Joseph declares on one page that the opulence of one's own way of life, in contrast to the drabness and
squalor of others' lives, arouses
one's feelings of guilt, but that to think that the opulence of the rich has anything to do with poverty is
in
fact to be emotional
and subjective
rather than
logical and objective. On the next page, however, it comes over him that there is, on
the contrary, a very
good
connection, one which is certainly to his
taste. The
relief of poverty has not in the past been thought to require an equal society and it is difficult to find
any
necessary connection between them today. On the contrary, everything in
the experience of this country since
the last war
has combined to demonstrate that you cannot
make the poor richer by making the
rich poorer. You can only make the poor richer by making everyone richer including the rich.41 Harold
Macmillan, for a time leader of the conservative Party in Britain, was not of the New Right, and is to
his
credit not so definite. '...
it is only by giving their heads to the strong and to the able that we shall ever have the means to provide real
protection for the weak and
for the old.'42 Friedrich Hayek strikes a related if less
concerned note. If
today in the United States or Western Europe the relatively poor can have a car or a refrigerator, an
airplane trip or a radio, at
the cost of a reasonable part of their income, this was made possible because in the past others with
larger
incomes were able to spend on what was then a
luxury. The path of advance is greatly
eased by the fact that it has been trodden before. It is because scouts have found the goal that the
road
can be built for the less lucky or less
energetic ... Even the poorest today owe their relative material well-being to the
results of past inequality.43 William
Letwin is keen to prove there is but a grain of truth in the argument of diminishing marginal utility.
That
is the argument for the view that the goal of
the Utilitarians, sometimes called the greatest happiness of the greatest number,
and less misleadingly
called the
greatest total satisfaction, is
served by an equal distribution of goods. According to the argument, if
we have
three similar persons on hand, and
three English breakfasts, each of the persons will get less satisfaction from a
second breakfast than a first, and still less from a third than a second --
therefore, to secure the greatest
total satisfaction, we must see that each person gets one breakfast. For various reasons, according to
Letwin, it doesn't work that
way with incomes. In fact, to secure a more equal distribution of incomes would depress the absolute level
of
everyone's income, including the incomes of the
badly-off.44 Milton
Friedman, his fellow economist, is a little more cautious in his conclusion. The conservative alternative
to
equality of results 'enables almost everyone,
from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life'.45 Not everyone, but
almost everyone. He also
informs us why attempting to implement
equality of results will not work, as it did not in Britain after the Second World War. The
drive for equality failed for a...fundamental reason. It went against one of the most basic instincts
of
all human beings. In the words of Adam Smith,
'the uniform, constant and uninterrupted effort of every man to better
his
conditions' -- and, one may add, the condition of
his children and his children's children.
When the law interferes with people's pursuit of their own values, they will try to find a way
round. They will evade the law,
they will break the law, or they will leave the country.... When the law contradicts what most people
regard as moral and proper, they will break the
law -- whether
the law is enacted in the name of a noble ideal
such as equality or in the naked interest
of one group at the expense of another.46 Anthony
Flew does not try to tell us why equality of results has not been achieved, but does have feelings
that
it should not. There
is, he says, a
strong case
for concluding that if
what you want is indeed to improve the absolute rather than the relative condition of the less and the
least
advantaged, then you should go for
overall growth, rather than for those confiscatory taxes on the more advantaged
which give so much satisfaction to procrusteans.
Even if it is not
strictly true -- to borrow words used by
President Kennedy in recommending across-the-board
cuts in income taxes -- that 'a rising tide lifts all boats', still it does make larger
resources available for a possible transfer, whether voluntary or
compulsory.47 Various
related questions are raised by all of this, and they must have brief answers. The answers taken
together
give an evaluation of the given sort of
conservative objection to the equal society. They also provide a response to the idea that we
have come upon the rationale of conservatism in
what is offered as
an alternative to the
equal
society, which is said to be one in which everyone is better-off. (1)
Are incentives of greater income and wealth the only incentives, as conservatives in general seem to suppose?
Clearly they
are not. As against these extrinsic
incentives, there are intrinsic incentives, which are of at least as great importance to
very many people in many occupations and professions
in our societies
as they are. They would
be of greater effect in an equal society. They would compensate greatly for the lack of greater economic
incentives, whatever is said in
advance by those who are wedded to the results of extrinsic incentives. (2)
Would the equal society involve no incentives of greater income and wealth? That is not written into the
recommendation, which specifies that
we are, so far as is practicable, to have equal income and
wealth. As for the question of how much
greater a
possible income must be in
order to serve as an incentive, we have no argument at all for what is assumed by conservatives, that it must be
large. It is worth adding that
they commonly say that it is not the money that matters, but what it signifies, which is recognition
or
achievement. But it is
wonderfully
plain that a society might be of such a nature or such attitudes as to effectively confer
recognition by only slightly greater incomes. If I alone among my peers was known
to
have a higher salary, or for that matter
some significant speckled beads, that would do nicely for my morale. (3)
Would those of us who have refrigerators and cars lack them, as Hayek declares, if our societies had in the past
achieved equality of results? To say the least, that is unproved, as are like
propositions about the future. That our societies were not in the given way
equal, and that we have the
refrigerators and cars, is one thing. That if our societies had been different in the given way, we would not have
them -- that is another thing.
But suppose, even, that it is true that avoiding equality of results has given us the items in question.
The
proposition is consistent with
something else, that avoiding equality of results has also given us ongoing extreme poverty and of course
ongoing
immense inequality of fundamental
kinds. The historical proposition is also consistent, by the way, with a car now
being of nothing like
the value of
the car in which Hayek's scout made
his forward progress.48 (4)
As the rich got richer, in the Britain of the new right, did the poor
get less poor? No tolerable
definitions of either
group have the slightest chance
of making the answer yes. As
the rich
got richer after 1979,
the
poor got poorer. Indeed, living in the time in question, with the facts impossible to overlook or manipulate,
no
conservative said otherwise when in danger of
hearing replies. Nor was this historical episode unique. (5)
Is if established as a general truth that making the rich more rich
makes the poor less poor? Given only
the history of
Britain during the period of
the new right, no such generalization is conceivable. It is no surprise, and no doubt to their credit, that
Milton Friedman cannot
bring
himself to say that further enriching the rich makes all groups better off, and that Anthony Flew falls
notably
short of saying the thing. Harold Macmillan too
was honest. (6)
Relatedly, does making the rich less rich make the poor poorer? Given only another recent period of history, the
history
of Britain after World War Two up to 1979 and
the rise of conservative governments of the New Right, no such generalization is
conceivable. This period was one of which it was true that wealth was
somewhat affected, and
poverty
was greatly and honourably reduced.
(7)
More precisely, is it established that it is only by having the
incentives that go with conservative
economic freedoms — by
having a society as remote as
that from the equal society -- that we can have the possibility of
alleviating the condition of the badly-off?
It is notable
that not even conservatives can
be found who specify or state plainly the extreme inequalities that are or would be involved in the
fully-realized conservative society,
and argue that those equalities are or would be necessary to alleviating the condition of the badly-off. (8)
Do conservatives in fact believe, let alone prove or establish, a view
of human nature from which it
follows that the
incentives that go with conservative economic freedoms are required if
there is
to be economic progress? It is
more than difficult to suppose so. It is one thing to argue, as Milton Friedman does, that conservatives
break the law in order
to
defend what they have, and quite another to take their behaviour as the inevitable result of an unchangeable
human nature. They may
be
resolute, and not so much given to law and order in this instance as in others, but they are no more the
creatures
of a curious biological fate
here than elsewhere in their lives. If they took themselves to be so, they would be deprived of other arguments
of
which they are fond, and indeed, as we shall
come to see, of what some of them suggest
is their rationale. (9)
Suppose the argument about diminishing marginal utility fails -- does that show that the equalities of treatment
called for by the principle of equality of results or the equal society will not
achieve their goal? Certainly
not, since the egalitarian goal never
was the Utilitarian one of the largest possible total of satisfaction. It has long
been clear to all but a
sorry rump of Utilitarians, and one or two others, perhaps including William Letwin, that the greatest total
satisfaction is not identical with
justice, and more particularly with equality of results. Many of those who support the latter ideal do so
precisely because it does not
have the traditional fatal weakness of Utilitarianism, which is unfairness. There is no reason to confuse
egalitarianism or the left with Utilitarianism. (10)
If we accepted, as our conservative spokesmen imply, that the goal of their own politics may be the one that
equality
of results is supposed not to achieve
-- everybody being better-off-- would that give us a rationale
underlying conservatism? It would not. One reason is
that there are
many conceivable moves from our present distribution of incomes and
wealth that would make everybody better
off. Suppose we
now have five occupational classes of
greatly different incomes, with the top class getting ten times the income of the bottom.
One move that would make
everybody better-off would be to increase the income of the top class very little indeed, and the incomes
of
the other classes more, and
differently in each case, with the income of the bottom class lifted dramatically -- the upshot being an
approximation to equal
incomes
among the classes. It does not need saying that no conservative, living
or
dead, would support that. It is inescapable, then, that the rationale of conservatism is not
given by talk of making everybody better-off. To put much
the same point differently, any conservative who does want everyone
better-off
also wants, consistently with
that, to have us very unequally better-off. What is it that justifies that? It is
of interest in itself that when conservatives are not faced with talk of equality, not on guard, they tend to
specify their own end-result as other than everybody better off. When
they are
not concerned with an egalitarian challenge, their end-result is spoken
of, mainly, in terms of individuals
having the
rewards of their labour or of
the risks they take with their money. Things are only different when the moral challenge of egalitarianism
needs
to be met. Here is a related question of
interest. If God, weary of our confusions about human nature, opened the heavens and
dispensed the truth that greater income and wealth do not serve as
incentives, would conservatives be a whit less resolute in
justification and
defence of what they have? We have no need of
another divine dispensation for the answer. (11)
Do conservatives, in their commitment to incentives taken by itself, somehow reveal a rationale? Well, for a
start,
are conservatives devoted to
the same sort of incentives for the badly-off as for the well-off? Consistency requires of them some movement in
this direction, and such movement sometimes suits
them. But, as the excellently egalitarian John Baker points out, there
is a
large division in their feelings.49
If a production manager would get only £10,000 more per annum if promoted to managing director, and
someone has the idea that that is not an
incentive for him, the
conservative conclusion is
likely to be that managing directors should be paid more. If an unemployed labourer would get only ^\Q more a
week if he gave up living on the dole or welfare
and got a job, and that is not an incentive to him, then what is given to the unemployed
should be lowered. In
short, one
sort of incentive is created by
raising the higher of two incomes,
and another by lowering the lower. What principle gives the answer that the first sort is right for
production managers and the second for unemployed labourers? Answer
comes there none. (12)
Would a commitment to having everyone somehow better-off accord with commitments we know conservatives actually to
have? Some of the latter commitments
are to a true natural aristocracy, less democracy, an extreme institution of property, economic
freedoms as against social and civil freedoms, authoritarianism, a
lesser
standing for minorities, an
amount of racial condescension, the rewarding of those superior persons who can respond to incentives. None
of
these could be said to issue from a communal
impulse. None could be said to reflect a concern with the brotherhood of man, leave
alone the sisterhood of women. It would be bizarre if, in the middle
of
this collection of sentiments, there was to be
found a generalized beneficence of any great significance. We
leave behind the objection having to do with everyone's being better-off under a conservative dispensation,
and turn to the ninth
and
tenth objections to equality of results. The ninth has to do with justice, in two ways. Conservatives protest,
first, that egalitarians and in
particular those of them who propose equality of results are guilty of something or other in speaking of equality
as
justice. ...to
those who are in any way in the business of enforcing equality of outcome, it is extremely
important to be able to see themselves, and be seen by others, as engaged
in
the hot pursuit of justice. For it is only
and precisely in this perspective that their activities are legitimated, both in
their own eyes, and in
those of the
rest of the world.50 Thus Anthony Flew, who goes on
to argue that
the activities of the
persons in
question are not legitimated. If we
take him to be insisting merely
that any egalitarian who claims that 'justice' means 'equality', or that equality is the only thing that can
be
called justice, he is on to a
good thing. No doubt there have been such misguided persons, as indeed there are very many conservatives
who
have identified justice with the
property-freedom they favour. The
other conservative line of thought having to do with justice may be thought to be more consequential. It
is
to the effect that something called justice is what
conservatives propose or defend, and
it is the ground of their opposition to equality of results. What is this justice, and also, to ask the
inevitable
question, do we find in it
the rationale of conservatism? David
Cooper, like some others, depends for his answer on Robert Nozick. The
justice or otherwise of a distribution has to do with how the distribution came about... Suppose a number
of
pioneers hack out equally valuable chunks
of property from previously unowned,
virgin territory; and suppose that two of them die, leaving their property to another of the
pioneers, under no duress and without violating any
claim anyone
else might have had to their land. The lucky
pioneer will now have three times as
much property as any other; but there can be no injustice in this.51 What
that comes to, in the way it must be understood, is that justice consists in something close to
conservative property-freedom. The
just society is the one that has been and is governed by that particular ideal. Whether or not the society
governed by the ideal is called
the just society is of little importance. One of two important things is whether we here have an objection
to
equality of results, the equal
society. Do we? It must seem not. We are already too aware that what conservatives oppose to the equal
society is, at bottom,
one
of conservative property-freedom. What we are supposed to be getting is a reason why the latter society is
preferable to the former. There
is no reason given at all, certainly, by declaring that the latter society is one of freedom or dubbing it the
just
society. Nor, to remember, were we
successful in our attempt to find a justifying basis in conservatism for the kind of society
in question. In the objection from justice to the equal society, the
objection as just understood, we evidently
do not come
to
have a justifying basis or rationale of
conservatism. Other
conservatives have something else in mind in maintaining that they are for the just as against the
equal
society. Milton Friedman, in place of equality, would have equity,
which thing
he does not trouble to explain.52
Since he could not usefully have in mind just one of the legal notions of equity, he leaves
us in the dark. If we turn to the dictionary, and find that equity in an
ordinary sense consists in
fairness, or resource to principles of justice, we shall get no more light from his reflections. Anthony
Flew for his part is inclined to take justice to consist in what is suggested by a fine old legal maxim.
He
writes: 'Honeste vivere, neminem laedere, suum cuique tribuere,
that is, To live honourably, to harm no one, to allow to each other their due. ...
this lawyers' tag contains as good a definition as we are likely to get.'53
The
resolute John Lucas, to remember the titles of his articles, was Against Equality in 1965 and Against
Equality Again in 1977. Furthermore,
there is his book, On Justice. Still, he is not the greatest help either. If Friedman says too little,
Lucas
says rather too much.
Justice,
in accordance with the ancient idea, is everyone's having his due. But that is a matter, as it turns out,
of
quite a lot: at least rights, desert,
guilt, retribution, agreements made, entitlement, status, rank, need and reasonableness. Justice is not doing
people down. Justice is somehow
being concerned with the underdog but not forgetting what is named the plight of the overdog. We must
not
avoid the truth that justice is complex.
'Instead of seeing justice as a simple static assignment of benefits, responsibilities and
burdens, we should see it as a dynamic equilibrium under tension,
wanting
to treat the individual as tenderly as possible, yet being prepared,
for
sufficiently compelling reasons, to take a
tough line.' If we go for tidiness in our conception of justice, indeed, we reveal a
tendency to a totalitarian view of society.54 Both
Lucas and Flew, in one respect, are aimed in the direction of what can be contemplated as the rationale of
conservatism. They do not do anything like
expound it. We shall return to them, but what we can conclude at the moment is
that they do not provide us with a clarified objection to equality of
results, or, what would come
to much the same thing, the rationale for which we have been looking. 6. The Mere Relativities or Irrationality
Objection The
tenth and final objection made by conservatives to the equal society does not have to do with justice --
at
any rate, we need not
drag
it in. As may come as a surprise, it is to my mind a telling objection, in fact fatal to exactly the
principle we are considering. One form of it can be laid out briefly.
The equal
society, to recall once more
our conception of it, seeks as far as is practicable to secure lives of equal satisfaction for all its members,
mostly by securing equalities in
income, wealth and so on. The objection, plainly put, is this: What is good about exactly equality, about
individuals being related in a certain way to one another? No doubt it is a good
thing that I get enough to eat, and a drink before dinner, but what is
the
recommendation of my being equal or roughly
equal to others in that respect -- or in any other respect, however generally described?
This is the question
raised by what
is unique and fundamental to the
conception of the equal society. The conception,
if we do not confuse it with anything else, and in particular with what might be
called humanity or perhaps
humanitarianism, is precisely about no more
than one possible relationship as against others. David
Cooper says that egalitarians suppose it to be self-evident that we should be equal. It is not
self-evident
to him. Why should it
be
thought that a reason for my having something is the amount that someone else has? Does not the reason have to
do
with me? My being hungry is a reason for having
something, but is there a discernible reason just in my being exactly as hungry as
you? Why should my relative
position with respect to someone else
matter, as distinct from my absolute position -- as distinct, that is, from
whether my needs are satisfied
and so on? Why should I receive
more because others receive more, or less because they receive less? What matters is
what I have got, or have not got. One Mr Astbury, a striking
lorry-driver, seems to have said, 'If
lorry-drivers are unable to afford food to eat, why should anyone else?' He had a right to nourishment, David
Cooper might allow, but that has nothing to do
with the state of the stomachs of others.55 Keith
Joseph, at long last, can also be reported as being in sight of something that does need attention by the
left. 'What is it about the
mathematical process of dividing a thousand apples by a hundred persons which confers a special legitimacy on
the possession by a particular individual of ten
as opposed to some other number of apples?'56 Anthony Flew is of the
same puzzlement. Equality
of results treats 'mere relativities' as
goods in themselves, but why should it be supposed that they are?57 The
objection may having to do with mere relativities be a bit elusive. It
can be
made clearer -- or perhaps turned into something else that is clearer.
It can
be clarified as or turned into the objection of irrationality. Suppose,
with William Letwin, that we have a choice between two states of affairs in a society.58
One involves all members
having equally satisfying lives in
an absolute sense. They are at the same point on a scale. We could say
of them,
if we were able to quantify satisfaction in
terms of new and useful units rightly called Benthams, that in this state of affairs each
of them would get a balance of 5,000 Benthams over
the course of his
or her life. The other
state
of affairs is one in which some members get 5,000 Benthams and some 10,000. Those that get 5,000 may get
that
number partly as a result of being
made a bit or somewhat unhappy by their awareness of the better condition of the others. In fact,
let us suppose this is
true. Their final balance of 5,000 Benthams is partly the result of a
dissatisfaction or frustration relatively speaking -- their having less
good live than the others. Still and none the less, taking everything
into
account, they do get 5,000 Benthams. Equality of results, which has to
do only with securing an equality
of satisfaction,
commits us to the first state
of affairs. In the second, however, some people are better-off and no one is worse-off. Surely it is the
better
state of affairs.
Surely it would be irrational to forego
it. A
second and related consequence of equality of results has to do with waste. Suppose that one class in a
society
of two classes is flourishing for the reason
that it possesses certain goods, certain means to satisfaction. It is not easy to think of
such goods that could not be transferred to members of the other class,
thereby improving their lives,
but suppose that there are some. (There is the unwinning idea that the goods might be books.) Then, in
order
to secure equal satisfaction between the two
classes, the goods in question must be subtracted from the flourishing class and put
to no use at all. As some conservatives will say, the equality-commissars must
destroy the goods for fear that the
once-flourishing class will regain them and destroy the new equality. The
objection is that the principle of
equality of results is intolerable because it recommends or defends mere relativities, whose recommendation is at
least obscure. Better, it is just irrational. Will my non-Conservative
readers
reply that the objection somehow
misconceives the principle of equality of results? Will they say there is more to equality of results than
'mere relativities'? Will they
say they had something else in mind in the course of contemplating all
the
previous conservative objections to equality of results, and in taking those objections to be
weak ones? They will
indeed, but
what reason do they have for saying
so? Is it not the case that the principle is indeed about securing a certain relationship
between people? To
come to a third and more annoying consideration,
what is there in the principle to enable its proponents to avoid a
charge
related to the first one? That is the charge that they are committed to having everyone equally
satisfied -- in possession of the same number of Benthams, maybe very few
--
when there is the happy alternative of having everyone
better-off, if unequally so? Also, fourth, what is there in the principle of equality of
results to stop us from making a worst-off class of persons yet worse-off,
yet
more frustrated or dissatisfied, if this secures that all classes are in equal if terrible circumstances? It is
sad to have to allow that whatever the intentions and feelings of Tawney and those who think and feel like
him,
what they propound is open to the understanding
that faces the objection of irrationality. Indeed it is difficult to
avoid the
feeling that this vulnerable understanding of the principle of equality
of
results has been part of their understanding
and of their inclination. We shall certainly return to the matter of equality, but let us end
this inquiry into it with some conclusions. One
is that we have a further large distinction of conservatism. It is the ideology that is most firmly opposed
to
the principle of equality of results -- and also to certain other
propositions
about equality, including the
related proposition of equal treatment, and those about fair and real equality of
opportunity. Further, it is the ideology most committed to different
propositions of equality, including
a limited kind of equality of opportunity, and limited kinds of equality of respect and equality before
the
law. A
second conclusion is that those attitudes having to do with equality do not reveal to us a rationale of
conservatism. Those who speak
against equality do not state their own fundamental position, and it cannot easily be inferred from what
they
do say. It cannot by
any means be
read off what is
said of justice or against mere relativities. It is no help to be told,
as we
are by some conservatives, that if
they are against equality, this does not mean that they regard inequality as an end-in-itself. A
third conclusion is that we cannot be said to have found a fundamental principle of the left in
politics,
something that is both arguable and
gives unity to it. Such a thing is necessary to any final judgement on conservatism. Conservatives, as we have
seen,
speak much nonsense about equality. They have had right on their side,
however,
in declaring that at least an
arguable understanding of the principle of equality of results, the only real candidate
for a fundamental principle much in evidence in the history of
egalitarianism, appears in the end to be a
disaster. It might be added that if conservatives do allow it to be clear and refutable, it is
not
what you might call an
exemplar
of lucidity. Let us leave the matter for a time. NOTES 1.
John Adams, letter reprinted in Kirk, ed., The Portable Conservative Reader, pp. 69-70. 2.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the
Revolution in France, p. 124. 3. Ibid., p. 169. 4.
Peregrine Worsthorne, 'How Egalitarianism
Breeds Robbery and Yobbery', The Sunday
Telegraph, 19 June
1988. 5.
David Cooper, Illusions of Equality (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), pp.
ix, 2. 6.
William Letwin, Against
Equality
(Macmillan, 1983), pp.
69-70, 3 7.
Keith Joseph and Jonathan Sumption, Equality, pp.
72-5 et passim. 8.
Duke of Edinburgh, Men, Machines and Sacred Cows,
speeches (Hamish Hamilton, 1984). This book brings to mind another, much to be recommended:
Edgar Wilson, The Myth of British Monarchy (Journeyman, 1989). 9.
Adams, loc. cit., p. 69. 10.
James Fenimore Cooper, 'On Equality', partly
reprinted in Kirk, op. cit., p. 187. 11.
Anthony Flew, The Politics of Procrustes (Temple Smith, 1981), pp.32-3. 12.
Letwin, op. cit., p. 13. 13.
Joseph and Sumption, op. cit., p. 66. 14.
Flew, op. cit., p. 32. The best-known modern work on egalitarianism, by the way, R. S. Tawney's Equality (Allen
&
Unwin, 1931), makes clear that it is not
committed to factual equality. 15.
Kirk, op. cit., p. xvii. 16.
Burke, op. cit., p. 124. 17.
Quoted in C. H. Firth, ed., The Clarke Papers
(Clarendon, 1891), Vol. 1, p. 301. 18.
Flew, op. cit., pp. 67 ff; David
Cooper, op. cit., pp. 20 ff. 19.
Joseph and Sumption, op. cit., p. 33. 20.
David Cooper, op. cit., pp. 67 ff. 21.
Lincoln Allison, Right Principles: A Conservative Philosophy of Politics, pp. 78
ff. 22.
Letwin, op. cit., pp. 34 ff. 23.
I do attend to the argument in my Terrorism for Humanity: Inquiries in Political Philosophy
(Pluto Press, 2003). 24.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
(Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 61. Rawls tried to make good the
omission,
in 'The Basic Liberties and Their Priority', included in S. M. McMurrin, ed., Liberty, Equality and Law (Cambridge University
Press, 1987). 25.
Joseph and Sumption, op. cit., pp.
20, 5-6,
63. 26.
Milton Friedman, Free to Choose
(Penguin, 1980), p. 166. 27.
Letwin, op. cit., p. 3. 28.
Tawney, op. cit., pp. 48-9, 45-7, 57. 29.
George Saintsbury, A Scrap Book, excerpt in Kirk, op. cit., p. 382. 30.
Joseph and Sumption, op. cit., pp.
27- 8. 31.
Burke, op. cit., p. 204. 32
Paul Elmer More, 'Property and Law , reprinted in Kirk, op. cit., p. 447;
Flew, op. cit., p. 59; Friedman, op. cit., pp. 173 ff. 33.
Joseph and Sumption, op. cit., pp.
17-18. 34. Ibid., p. 20. 35.
Quoted by Tawney, op. cit., p. 34. 36.
Burke, op. cit., p. 138. 37.
Quoted by Robert Eccleshall, Political Ideologies, p.
90. 38.
Robert Salisbury, 'Disintegration', Quarterly Review,
1883, quoted by Noel
O'Sullivan, Conservatism,
p. 108. 39.
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, pp.
160-4. 40.
Joseph and Sumption, op. cit., p. 52. 41. Ibid., pp. 21, 22. 42.
Quoted by Eccleshall, op. cit., p. 91. 43.
Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty,
(Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960), p. 44. 44.
Letwin, op. cit., pp. 29-34. 45.
Friedman, op. cit., p. 182. 46. Ibid., pp. 177-8. 47.
Anthony Flew, Equality in Liberty and Justice
(Routledge, 1989), pp. 188-9. 48.
Roy Hattersley, in Choose Freedom, pp. 58 ff, is rightly firm about the point. 49.
John Baker, Arguing for Equality
(Verso, 1987), p. 94.
50.
Anthony Flew, The Politics of Procrustes, p. 83. 51.
David Cooper, op. cit., p. 24. 52.
Friedman, op. cit., p. 177. 53.
Anthony Flew, The Politics of Procrustes, p. 81. 54.
John Lucas, On Justice (Oxford
University Press, 1980), pp. 194, 18, 170. 55.
David Cooper, op. cit., pp. 5, 6, 28. 56.
Joseph and Sumption, op. cit., p. 83. 57.
Anthony Flew, Equality in Liberty and Justice, p.
185. 58.
Letwin, op. cit., p. 27. ----------------------------- As
remarked in the introduction, the
culmination of this survey is to be found in a piece to which you may
now turn
-- What Equality Comes To -- The
Principle of Humanity ----------------------------- HOME
to T.H. Website front page HOME
to Det & Free Website front page |