Introduction to the Left and Right

CHAPTER 1 • Introduction to the Left and Right EQUALITY AS A MORAL BASIS FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICS DUSTIN CRUMMETT 1. Introduction The left contains great diversity of opinion, but a view known associal egalitarianism is central to much leftist thought. My goal here is to explain and draw out some of the implications of social egalitarianism, in order to help you get a better sense of what unifies the left in the United States, and why that leads to leftists supporting the policies they do. Most people recognize equality as an important political value. But there are many ways in which people could be “equal,” and egalitarianism is significant only if we grasp what kind of equality is important. For instance, sometimes people think “equality” is supposed to mean that people should be made equally well-off, in some all-encompassing sense. This is satirized in Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron.” The people in Harrison Bergeron’s dystopian society regard natural differences in ability as unjust, so they weigh strong people down with weights so they can’t use their strength, make smart people listen to static so they can’t concentrate, and so on. That kind of equality sounds dismal. On the other hand, people sometimes treat equality as requiring only that people be treated “the same” in some cheap sense. A few years ago, the Republican con- gresswoman Michele Bachmann responded to questions about gay marriage from two high school students, Jane Schmidt and Ella Newell. At this point, gay marriage was illegal in most of the United States, and Schmidt and Newell claimed this was an instance of discrimination against gay people. Bachmann responded that everyone actually had “the same civil rights,” since gay couples were expected to “abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man.”1 The crowd was enthusiastic about Bachmann’s response, but clearly, more or less anything could pass this test, no matter how obviously discriminatory. (Suppose someone 85 fis82785_Ch01_085_122.indd 85 09/13/19 07:30 AM 86 ETHICS, LEFT AND RIGHT claimed a law banning Christianity didn’t discriminate against Christians, since it allowed both Christians and non-Christians equally to practice non-Christian religions, and forbade both equally from practicing Christianity.) That kind of equality sounds useless. Social egalitarians understand equality differently. They say that what egalitarians should primarily care about is that people enjoy equal relationships with each other.2 The modern incarnation of social egalitarianism traces back to the social movements of the 1960s (the civil rights movement, early contemporary feminism, etc.),3 but social egalitarianism itself can be traced back, through the labor and abolition movements, to the early modern period, where it served as a critique of aristocratic societies.4 Many of the leaders of the relevant movements then were, in turn, inspired by the ancient religious idea that we are all equal before God.5 It’s hard to know in detail what a full realization of this ideal—a true world of equals—might look like. (Similarly, it would be hard for someone living under the pharaohs to imagine what our more equal society might look like.) But we can identify the main obstacles to making things better—namely, the various oppressive hierarchies that sustain unjustly unequal social relations between people. The point is not that hierarchies are never justifiable; an army without command- ers might not last long. The point is instead that, if they are to be justifiable, those on top owe us an explanation of why the hierarchy needs to exist and why they should be at the top of it, and it must be an explanation that should be acceptable to everyone involved in light of their fundamentally equal dignity and worth.6 (It can’t, say, rest on the idea that certain types of people somehow inherently deserve to lord over others.) As Noam Chomsky notes, in practice, it turns out that real hierarchies tend to “have no justification in the interests of the person lower in the hierarchy, or in the interests of other people, or the environment, or the future, or the society, or anything else—they’re just there in order to preserve certain structures of power and domination, and the people at the top.”7 Social egalitarians generally combine this ethical ideal about the value of equality with an account of what sorts of unjust hierarchies actually exist in our society. They also suggest concrete steps that are meant to help combat oppressive hierarchies. These steps may be legal measures, or they may be, say, social movements aimed at changing individuals’ attitudes. (The LGBT rights movement, for instance, has employed both of these to great effect.) Which strategies are appropriate will depend on practical considerations, but also ethical ones. For instance, when individuals’ religious beliefs conflict with social equality, difficult questions arise about how best to pursue equality while also respecting religious liberty. I don’t have space to fill in every detail, so my aim here is only tosketch an outline of how things look to social egalitarians. I also don’t have space to defend this picture at length, though I will try to explain it in a way that makes its appeal obvious. In the next section, in order to make social egalitarianism more concrete, I discuss some particular types of hierarchical oppression that it opposes.8 In the third section, I explain how social egalitarians see such fis82785_Ch01_085_122.indd 86 09/13/19 07:30 AM CHAPTER 1 • Introduction to the Left and Right 87 hierarchies functioning in our society today. In the fourth section, I explain how opposition to these oppressive hierarchies helps justify left-wing positions on a range of political issues. 2. Some Types of Oppression It’s easy to think of clear examples of unjust hierarchies from other times or places: Consider the division between the ruling class of North Korea and its citi- zens, between whites and blacks during slavery and the Jim Crow era, between industrialists and the workers who toiled in their factories during the Industrial Revolution, or between European imperialists and their colonial subjects. Reflecting on why these social arrangements are unjust might make us more sen- sitive to injustices around us here and now, which we often take for granted. I’ll name four types of unequal relations between groups that help explain the obvious injustice of these situations. These may not be the only types of oppressive relations, but they are four major ones. And the four don’t always go together— sometimes we find just some of them. However, for reasons that should become clear, they tend to be mutually reinforcing.9 An obvious type of unequal relation occurs in cases of what I’ll call domination, where some have arbitrary, far-reaching, and unaccountable power over the actions of others. An obvious example is slavery, but there are many other ways this can happen. For instance, when whites prevented people of color from voting, or when men did the same for women, members of one group indirectly exercised power over another: The state exercises power over everyone, and one group controlled the state without input from the other. (Dictatorship, where one person controls the state and thereby dominates everyone else, is the limit case of this.)10 Notice something important here: Freedom and equality are sometimes por- trayed as being in conflict, since protecting equality might require restricting free actions that work against it. Domination shows that the picture is more com- plicated. A certain kind of freedom (that involved in being a free person, rather than a servant) actually requires a certain kind of equality (the social equality that prevents some from exercising unaccountable power over others). Views that ignore this provide great freedom to the powerful, but no one else. A second type of unequal relation involves what I’ll call disregard. Here, society treats the needs and interests of some as inherently less significant those of others, and so is less responsive to their needs. This can take the form of active hostility to the interests of some—think of genocides or hate crimes—but can also take the form of mere apathy.11 British misrule in India led to periodic, devastat- ing famines (famines that ceased when India gained independence).12 During one that began in 1876, the British colonial authorities refused to provide anything but minimal famine relief, citing concerns both about the direct costs of provid- ing food and about, essentially, making poor Indians dependent on government handouts.13 Lord Lytton, the British viceroy of India, made clear that the colonial authorities did not regard the lives of Indians as equal to those of Britons, and were concerned only with maintaining the profitability of their colony: He fis82785_Ch01_085_122.indd 87 09/13/19 07:30 AM 88 ETHICS, LEFT AND RIGHT derided those who would “save life at a cost that would bankrupt India” as the victims of “cheap sentiment” and “humanitarian hysterics.”14 Estimates suggest that, as a result, over six million people died.15 Presumably, the British didn’t want this to happen, exactly; they just didn’t care enough to stop it. A third type involves what I’ll call disrespect. Paradigm cases occur when members of certain groups are widely subjected to demeaning stereotypes and attitudes, expressed either openly or more subtly in the form of what are called “microaggressions.”16 Alternatively, rather than receiving negative attention, members of certain groups may have themselves and their positive contributions simply ignored or overlooked.

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