A GRAMMAR OF EQUALITY
Spitz, David
With this essay, and those that appear elsewhere in this issue by Dennis Wrong and Bernard Rosenberg and Irving Howe, we complete the series of articles we have been printing in regard to the new...
...Nor is government, through law, the only source of interference with liberty...
...To raise this question is to challenge the most venerable and established commonplace in writings on equality...
...We do not seek to treat everyone as if they were the same...
...To contend for equality does not exclude our contending at the same time for other ends too, which is merely to say that this is what it means to be human, that we want many things but cannot simultaneously obtain all of them, so we must choose...
...But this proveth rather that men are in that point equall, than unequall...
...not all are equally relevant to or applicable in a given situation...
...It cannot be said that everyone understands precisely the same things by "the right" and "the good...
...2, p. 207...
...I am asked only to recognize and respect him as a human being like myself...
...We come, finally, to John Stuart Mill and the liberal conception of man...
...These considerations are alone sufficient to render the principle suspect...
...If intelligence and virtue adhere to the normal distribution curve—if, that is to say, in a random group of ten one or two are "brighter" or "better" than the others—it follows •that there are few wise and many unwise, or at least less wise...
...as that though there bee found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another...
...between the liberty of a man to live among "his own kind" and the egalitarian requirement that residential areas be open to all...
...It is rather to say that behind all these differences there is some common substance of humanity that marks them as men, and in terms of which they are truly equal...
...And he counts, not because he is different, bu't because he is the same...
...Nor is it always the case that liberty will, or should, prevail over equality—witness our antidiscrimination laws...
...he remains a child...
...And if, to return once more to Rousseau, we are told that such equality is an unpractical ideal that cannot actually exist, that its abuse is inevitable, it does not follow that we should not at least make regulations concerning it...
...What concerns Aristotle is the state of mind which leads to sedition...
...5 5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans...
...Inequalities are specific, not general...
...By surrendering his mind, he surrenders himself...
...But just as obviously, all people need the same, or the same sorts of things...
...In the same way we must choose between conflicting liberties and equalities: between the liberty of parents to raise their children as they see fit, giving them what advantages they can, and equality of opportunity, which requires that all children be treated alike, that no child receive less (or more) than 74 DAVID SPITZ another, and hence that all children be raised in common...
...It is fashionable in certain quarters today to disparage the value of tolerance...
...Law in that case enters not simply as a restraint but as a restraint on a restraint...
...For if deficiencies in existing arrangements and practices militate against the proper functioning of the equal opportunity principle, it follows that those who stand at various levels in the pyramids of position and power do not necessarily belong there...
...It requires that the range of differences be contained: that inequality of power shall never enable one man to dominate another, to force him to act against his will...
...The appeal must be to the general interest, the common good...
...What is entailed here is the notion of need...
...To allow inequality of wealth or power is to allow some men to live well but others meagerly...
...for when there are conflicts among or between them, it is only with reference to another and presumably higher principle that they can be handled...
...Far more, they ask us to cease judging men as fragmented beings, in terms of their functional roles, and to look at who they are rather than at what they do...
...To the extent that this is true, it only reinforces the justice of equality...
...Given these equalities—of ability and of rank—it follows, to invoke Hobbes again, that men may properly have equality of hope in attaining their ends...
...And what of the venerable adage, Let the punishment fit the crime...
...IN TURNING TO EQUALITY as a positive ideal, we must make a final point about differences, or inequalities...
...This last, in turn, must be grasped both as a general concept and as a system (however disharmonious and changing) of specific equalities and corresponding inequalities...
...In what sense, then, is any man's superiority "natural...
...It was not without reason that Shakespeare had the Prince of Ithaca say: Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows...
...Yet who can deny that the passion for equality played a stirring and vital role...
...Yet, when all this has been said, can we really abandon the equal opportunity principle...
...We insist in both cases that those who enter the contest do so on the same terms...
...F. A. Olafson (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1961), p. 150...
...Shall the figure of justice really be blindfolded, or should she (or he) look at each case with clear and searching eyes...
...The right course is (not to pursue either conception excluA GRAMMAR OF EQUALITY 71 sively, but) to use in some cases the principle of numerical equality, and in others that of equality proportionate to desert...
...I do not seek to deny that there are some natural inequalities...
...and whether equality within a single realm of social life (say the political), or within an aspect of that realm (say the suffrage), can meaningfully coexist with inequalities in other realms (the family, the school, the church, the army, the corporation...
...Both liberty and equality, while in one sense ultimate values, are also derivative values...
...Two people may differ from each other in sex or race or religious affiliation or physical strength, but these connote nothing concerning intellectual or moral capacity...
...If we forgo mutual slaughter or the authoritarian imposition of a particular creed, and turn instead to a democratic resolution of this disagreement, we build once again on the principle of equality...
...For there is not ordinarily a greater signe of the equall distribution of any thing, than that every man is contented with his share...
...They all want to live, and all societies--despite wars and other forms of senseless killings—respect this as, a fundamental right...
...Equality, while essential to justice, is not identical with justice...
...and -none, it seems hardly necessary to add, is universally accepted...
...For in the absence of strict controls over spending, providing for equality of wages or income may soon lead to inequalities of wealth —given the fairly evident fact that some men are frugal and save while others quickly rid themselves of all that they receive...
...In this obvious sense every law or custom that imposes a uniform requirement is an interference with liberty...
...But liberty, like equality, is not a simple entity, like an apple pie, out of which each law cuts an irretrievable piece...
...Thus, it is at least doubtful that Western educators will accept the justification of cheating on an examination recently put forward by a group of students in China: that since knowledge is to be shared, it matters not how this is done...
...4 It is important not to slight Hobbes's teaching here...
...cit., chap...
...Shall we diminish his (or her) earnings proportionately, or insist that she (or he) work without pay...
...they have tended to confuse the specific equality they condemn with the whole of equality...
...76 DAVID SPITZ advantage of one party: e.g., where one pugilist is considerably taller and heavier than the other, or where parental wealth is distributed so unevenly that the rich child but not the poor can satisfy his desires or alone have the power to qualify himself so that he may earn them...
...Equality is incompatible with the necessary arrangements for organizational efficiency, which demand that some sit at the top of the pyramids of power, others at the bottom, and still others at various levels between...
...LET US TURN NOW to certain difficulties inherent in a seemingly simple and widely accepted principle: equality of opportunity...
...Hobbes, with his usual felicity, answered the question this way: Nature bath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind...
...I would argue that there are at least four such grounds: (1) Equality is not what its detractors generally take it to be...
...To this they can all agree...
...Nor have those who have come to power through these means remained the best—if initially they were the best—very long...
...for to will the end is also to will the means...
...There are some [he says] who stir up sedition because their minds are filled by a passion for equality, which arises from their thinking that they have the worst of the bargain in spite of being the equals of those who have got the advantage...
...Here it is enough to note that equality does not imply or entail identity in all things...
...Inequalities of body or mind are thus (in Hobbes's view) trivial, not politically relevant, because not relevant to their survival as men...
...hence the reverse of the first set of practices would apply...
...For at one level the answer to the question is surely affirmative...
...When Kristol worries about the nature and implications of a greater measure of equality in income, and of the costs entailed by a redistributive policy, he neglects the costs entailed by the maintenance of existing, unjust practices and confuses this particular equality with the whole of equality...
...Thus democracy, whether as end or as means, vindicates the egalitarian claim...
...In a world of unequal talents (or diligence, or commitment), equality of opportunity is but a device, though more meritorious than some others, for achieving inequality of results—in power, position, prestige, wealth...
...According to the first sort of equality, all shall be treated alike...
...This tells us a great deal about those who hold such beliefs...
...From all of which it follows that not mathematics or formal logic but experience, circumstance, and the shared 'values of a particular people at a particular time will variously determine the outcome...
...and it accords with the nature of things, which require hierarchy and degree...
...hence the poorest and the richest should share equally in determining the conditions under which they are to live...
...In Plato's Republic, Socrates indicts democracy for "dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike," fathers descending to the level of their sons, and sons standing on a level with their fathers...
...259, 261, 268...
...Equality requires us to count heads as if each were made out of wood, when in fact some are made of precious metals and others of lesser or even base materials...
...In our complex world, administration, whether of men or of things, requires organization (or, as Engels put it in 1874, in an essay attempting to discredit the anarchists, "the principle of authority") ; which entails ranking...
...In the same vein, I0 This may explain why certain "socialist" and allegedly egalitarian countries, such as Czechoslovakia, seek to rationalize their differences and systems of hierarchy as constitutive of "socialist stratification," as distinct from capitalist, bureaucratic, technocratic, and other "debased" forms of stratification...
...Blood and race, wealth and power, education and intelligence, strength (especially as demonstrated in military conquest) and athletic prowess, even piety and the mysticism of charisma, even (it must now be said) attainment of celebrity status, whether of the jet set or the Hollywood screen—all these have been put forward as attributes making for political virtue and wisdom...
...To these objections we must add a crucial fact: wherever equality has been proclaimed as an operating principle, it has been subverted by the very people who avowedly espoused it...
...In the real world, however, we are confronted not by "equality" but by many diverse and not always compatible equalities...
...To this problem too I shall return...
...And without these there can be no just society...
...But to let that other choose for him makes it unnecessary for him to have, as 6 Aristotle, Politics, trans...
...Does this mean giving each player his favorite instrument, in which case one may get a pair of cymbals and another a grand piano, or does it entail giving each player the same instrument (say a violin) or a ten-dollar bill...
...New tyrants rather than "the people" often ascended to the momentarily vacated throne...
...In this at least all must be equal...
...Nor do we consider fair an arrangement that stacks the conditions behind these procedures to the 13I am especially indebted here to Rees, op...
...The newer conception of merit is not talent but personality, creativity, which includes talent but sets it in its rightful place...
...for the case against equality, though it runs counter to the spirit of the democratic age, remains a formidable one...
...In Yugoslavia some years ago, workers in a factory were bitterly divided over the question whether the same wage was to be given to each worker, on the principle that all stomachs are equal, or apportioned according to each person's contribution, on the principle that some did more, or better, or more important work than others...
...And shall we not esteem the better rather than the poorer teacher...
...We do not recognize as fair a trial where only one party is represented by adequate counsel, safeguarded by the rules of evidence, and given an opportunity to testify in his behalf...
...11 11 I forgo for reasons of space a range of further problems that should at least be indicated here: whether equality entails a right to equal property or an equal right to property...
...Consequently it respects and cares for him as an end...
...whether, as the transformation of Eliza Doolittle from a flower girl into a duchess suggests, it is in fact true that persons who are treated alike tend to become alike...
...The difficulty of course is 'that such a formulation does not tell us which cases properly fall under the one, and which under the other category...
...No serious liberal or socialist thinker has ever held to a notion of absolute equality...
...To permit racial or religious or sexual discrimination is to provide a favored group the liberty to deny equivalent rights to the disadvantaged...
...It is true that he may choose wrongly, i.e., contrary to what another thinks...
...If we were true egalitarians, we would have to remove the distinctions among people by imposing equality of condition, or at least recognition...
...Equality does not demand that I love my neighbor as myself...
...and given equal (identical...
...Similarly, if men strive for inequality (i.e., superiority), this too will make for disorder...
...Cole (Everyman's ed., 1913), Book II, chap...
...Barker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), Book V, chap...
...whether equality before the law requires a public defender no less adequately staffed and funded than a public prosecutor...
...it does not value an individual only as a means, as an instrument to the fulfillment of the association's purpose...
...The one place where this principle is almost universally found is, paradoxically, in the family, perhaps the least egalitarian of human associations...
...Equality thus builds on what is common to men, on what is necessary, perhaps even on what is good, for all men...
...for in making those choices all men must equally share...
...To answer this question adequately it is necessary to consider equality both in its negative significance as a protest-ideal and in its positive content as an ultimate value...
...To impose equality of results—which is possible in some things, e.g., wealth or income, but not in all things, e.g., status and power—is to limit equality of opportunity...
...68 DAVID SPITZ erably both...
...Hence the principle: the right man in the right place...
...Despite 64 DAVID SPITZ the Christian commitment to the brotherhood of man, most Christians leave fraternal and egalitarian practices to heaven and pursue other practices on earth...
...From a moral point of view, this means that they wish to live, if not nobly, at least justly...
...What can be said is that they are generally agreed on at least one principle appropriate to the determination of what is right and good...
...According to the second, each shall be treated according to his merit...
...But then, no general principle can decide each concrete case...
...To send each person to the doctor once a year, but no more than once a year, is to care for the healthy but not for those who are ill...
...and success means getting ahead of the other, who remains of course—in rhetoric—his brother, his equal...
...To the extent that this 70 DAVID SPITZ choice between two kinds of equality is derived from other considerations, equality becomes a derivative value...
...We are constantly jarred and tormented by incompatible, yet mutually commanding, ideals: honesty and kindness, love and obligation, equality and liberty, or excellence, or heroic achievement...
...It may be just to require that all children be sent to school...
...That which may perhaps make such equality incredible, is but a vain conceipt of ones owne wisdome, which almost all men think they have in a greater degree, than the Vulgar...
...Nevertheless, it remains the case that they have not come adequately to grips with 15 Cf...
...It is not always the case that equality will, or should, prevail over liberty...
...it does not alter the objective reality...
...Equality is thus a protest-ideal, a symbol of man's revolt against chance, fortuitous disparity, unjust power, crystallized privilege.2 If the rich and well-born were also the able, if the powerful were also the virtuous and wise, if, that is to say, actual aristocracies were truly natural aristocracies, based solely on merit...
...For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himselfe...
...If equality is not what its detractors take it to be, their criticisms are misdirected...
...Hence, whatever the rhetoric, the principle is at best approximated but nowhere fully observed...
...We do not live in a tidy world...
...But why impose so timeconsuming and needless a distraction on the wise...
...Those who, for whatever reason, opt for democracy must opt too for at least those equalities essential to democracy...
...For men fight for what they want or think they want, and they frequently want what they think they are entitled to have...
...always secondary principles and special circumstances enter into consideration...
...Consider the following: 1 Sometimes, oddly enough, as in France and England, strong and ambitious kings granted some political power to the common people in order to limit the power of the aristocracy...
...To say that all persons shall behave, or not behave, in a certain way—pay taxes, observe the traffic laws, send children to school, abstain from polygamy or trespass —is to deprive them of corresponding liberties...
...Equality drives us into an insoluble moral dilemma, and therefore into practices that contradict what we preach...
...For example: • Equality does not mean sameness or identity...
...But whether that determination is the "right" outcome remains an open question...
...And what is common to them all is their equal integrity as human beings...
...it is a principle indispensable to almost every realm of social life, e.g., an army, a university, a hospital, a political system...
...What is crucial to this process is the question: Who shall participate...
...At best, we speak of a limited equality, e.g., equality of reward in proportion to one's work or (in some ideal versions) need...
...To alter unjustifiable inequalities in the face of this "natural" aggrandizement of inequalities is most difficult, and in some measure impossible...
...From this standpoint, equality is not, as Isaiah Berlin would have it, simply an ultimate principle that "cannot itself be defended or justified, for it is itself that which justifies other acts—means taken towards its realization...
...As such, he is equal—equal in his humanity, and in the rights and freedoms appropriate to that humanity...
...Equality and liberty thus again come together in a common cause...
...Or take the idea that each member of an orchestra shall be rewarded equally for a fine performance...
...I TURN BRIEFLY NOW to the familiar yet still vexing question: Does a commitment to equality endanger other ultimate and equally prized ends, in particular liberty...
...Irving Kristol, "About Equality," Commentary, November 1972, pp...
...For however different people may be, in some respects they are the same...
...while to treat different people differently (unequally) may be precisely what is required (as in the given example) to produce an equal result...
...Nor, by the same token, is difference to be identified with inequality...
...It insists that, whatever the differences among men, what is common to them all is the desire to lead the kind of life each wants to lead...
...But there is, in the view of some critics (oddly enough, critics of the Left rather than the Right), an even more fatal objection to the equal opportunity principle: namely, that it converts life from a cooperative adventure of equal human beings into a competitive struggle of unequal talents, in the course of which not individuals bu't aspects of individuals are prized, and as a consequence of which losers, who are the bulk of the human race, are denigrated and demeaned...
...Liberties, like equalities, must be ranked hierarchically...
...John P. Plamenatz, "Equality of Opportunity," in Aspects of Human Equality, op...
...To fine all men the same amount for the same offense is to treat the wealthy man lightly and the poor man heavily...
...But to establish and maintain a government, the strong must persuade the others that it is also good for them...
...Most decisively, these conflicting notions of equality entail a perennial, because irresolvable, paradox: namely, that to treat different (unequal) people equally (the same way) is often to achieve unequal resultse...
...And what did Ortega y Gasset mean by the revolt of the masses if not primarily the domination in our time by men of wealth and power but without taste or standards...
...To these and similar questions Aristotle, though he understood the problem, offered no satisfactory answer...
...In these terms the equal opportunity principle, because it leads to and emphasizes differences, inequalities, is destructive of what is most essential to the human enterprise— respect for that which is common to all men, their humanity...
...What now needs to be remarked is that what have been called inequalities by nature are often revealed, on examination and by experience, to be inequalities by convention...
...To say that men are equal is not to say they are identical—in these or other respects, like cleverness or temperament or wit or character...
...471-82...
...What saves communities from this appalling consequence— if indeed they are saved—is that the wise, precisely because they possess superior intelligence and wisdom, are able to outwit the unwise and persuade them to do the bidding of their betters...
...for in these terms to give to the superior no more than is given to the inferior, or to extract from the poor man with a family of four the same rent or tax or price as the unmarried rich but not more meritorious man, is manifestly wrong...
...CENTRAL as these considerations are, it is not enough to rest with them...
...People are [to be] valued for what they are...
...Then, paradoxically, equalization of results provides the conditions that make possible a greater measure of equality of opportunity...
...Yet we do not really intend to denigrate wisdom, virtue and beauty, achievement and success, by withholding appropriate recognition and applause...
...With this essay, and those that appear elsewhere in this issue by Dennis Wrong and Bernard Rosenberg and Irving Howe, we complete the series of articles we have been printing in regard to the new conservative trends in American intellectual life...
...but in certain relevant ways he remains a person no less than myself...
...We must go back, if briefly, to Aristotle and forward to John Stuart Mill...
...Fathers and sons do not stand on the same level, not at least while they relate to each other as fathers and sons, though they might well stand on the same level as citizens in a polling booth or in a court of law...
...to be a rational, free, and relatively autonomous human being...
...for as Hobbes said: If all things are equal in all men, nothing would be prized...
...They ask us to set aside the vexing problem of determining the value of a man's talents— often by arbitrary if socially approved standards— and thereby to avoid the consequential division of men into higher and lower orders, into various strata of inequalities...
...for in a differentiated and hierarchical society equality of opportunity is but another mode— even if the "best" mode—of arriving at inequalities of condition, notably of power, status, and (commonly) wealth...
...This of course is the problem that agitated Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill and that concerns not merely conservatives but traditional liberals today...
...it values him as an end...
...Consider the socialist principle of equality: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need...
...None, to my knowledge, has ever maintained that equality precludes our distinguishing old from young men, or young men from children, when drafting soldiers into •the army...
...If he is to realize (or retain) his stature as a man, he must be equal in his right to decide for himself...
...nor do they necessarily share the same opinions...
...An apple and an orange are different, but they are equally pieces of fruit...
...In that case all must still be treated equally in those respects in which they are equal...
...Apart from the not inconsiderable difficulty in defining each man's "desert," or determining the right proportion, which of the two notions of equality is correct...
...Equality thus entails a commitment to impossible, certainly wrong values...
...and that, in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself...
...People want it that way...
...Hobbes advances as an empirical fact—against classical and Christian thought—what I take to be a first principle of politics: that men must sleep, and when a strong man sleeps his life is in danger...
...Whether it should have played that role is the contested and more intriguing question...
...No society can allow him to decide that he will drive on the left side of the road when others are required to drive on the right, or to kill or steal or otherwise injure his fellowmen at his pleasure...
...Nor do we have 2 Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), paperback ed., p. 327...
...Moreover, by making equality the ultimate end, when it can never be more than but one among many ends, we make it impossible to come seriously to terms with the problem of conflicting ends, of the need at times to subordinate equality to another value, such as liberty or merit, which in a specific context may impose a higher claim on our loyalty...
...chances...
...Now a community embraces partial associations, like a university or a corporation, but it transcends them...
...72 DAVID SPITZ Now in one sense—a very profound sense —these contentions are surely unassailable, for they ask no more than that we recognize and respect the reality (and the rights) of each individual as a living presence...
...It is then necessary either to correct those deficiencies or, if that is not possible, to shift our attention away from the principle of equality of opportunity to the alternative, perhaps complementary, principle of equality of result...
...Indeed, Rousseau argues, "it is precisely because the force of circumstances tends continually to destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend to its maintenance...
...To assure a particular liberty, such as freedom of expression, it is then necessary to restrain those nonpolitical powers who might otherwise limit it—on the alleged ground that the speech in question is (say) obscene or subversive or otherwise harmful...
...In the name of individuality, we deny the right of egalitarians to compel hippies to dress and behave as others do...
...With his customary prudence he observed: Some take the line that if men are equal in one respect, they may consider themselves eaual in all: others take the line that if they are superior in one respect, they may claim superiority all round...
...This higher principle is sometimes -stability, but since stability is itself justified only when the system is worth preserving, it is generally some conception of justice or the common good...
...Equality, wrote Alexandre Dumas the younger, brought kings to the guillotine and the people to the throne...
...So when we confront the diverse issues that bedevil us today, whether it be equality versus inequality of result, or conformity versus diversity, we must understand that there is no simple and final resolution...
...to do good rather than evil, to act rightly rather than wrongly...
...A GRAMMAR OF EQUALITY 75 against misgovernment, not by entrusting another with his guardianship but by himself standing up for his rights and interests, by himself exercising his power—of opinion and of political participation, not merely through the suffrage but also by taking an actual part in the government—and thereby sharing, as far as any one individual can, in the making of decisions that govern his life...
...But what are the things that count...
...To protect himself 12 "Equality as an Ideal," in Justice and Social Policy, ed...
...that each should be equally free, and reasonably able, to be himself, to live as he wishes to live, and not as another wants him to live.'' Not merely equality in this kind of freedom, but also respect...
...they seek it for themselves...
...But history gives an emphatic denial to any such shabby claim...
...It is true that survival without regard to the purposes for which men survive—e.g., to live "virtuously"—is not an acceptable end for a classical or idealist philosopher...
...But democracy, it may fairly be contended, is itself not an end but a means, a political principle or set of arrangements that must be defended or justified in terms of what democracy does for man...
...But being in society need not deprive him of the right to share equally in making such decisions...
...9 Dorothy D. Lee, "Equality of Opportunity as a Cultural Value," in ibid., pp...
...If so, what shall we say to the women's liberation movement when a wife demands "appropriate" payment for her labor even though her husband may already earn a sum sufficient to provide for both their material needs...
...It seeks to contain the range of that distribution and to base it on agreement (and perhaps merit) rather than on ascription...
...Consider the following statements: When you think of equality of opportunity as the career open to talents, you cease to think of the man who is untalented...
...The bitch goddess is sometimes money, but always success...
...To the egalitarian love is not eros but agape, not carnal or sensual love, not even filial love, but rather charity and respect...
...as being not a native faculty, born with us...
...Can we really ignore talent and dispense not simply with differences but with the esteem we attach to differences...
...3) It is a mistake to identify the problems of equality with fatal deficiencies of the principle...
...Without individuality, in all its rich diversity, what is society but a drab, uniform, and static collection of robot-like beings...
...Justice con• sists not in seeing that all start from the same line, permitting all to race, and awarding prizes to the winners, but rather, abandoning the whole idea of a race with prizes, in seeing that each is as far as possible given space, scope, room, and encouragement to employ his free powers in the building of a human life...
...We do not call a social order fair that gives only some people the liberty to criticize the government and to pursue their own life-styles...
...And since the weak are also in danger, what is common to them all is the fear of death, hence a love of peace, and a desire for a system of order that will enable them all to live and to pursue a commodious life...
...Surely if a society is to have hierarchies or pyramids of power—and what society can avoid this?—it is proper that movement up and down the ladder accord with competence or merit...
...To be different or unequal in some things is not necessarily to be different or unequal in the important things, least of all in the single most important thing: to be, to live like a man...
...Neither a master nor a slave, neither to demean nor to be demeaned—this (for Rousseau) is the essence of equality...
...N V ow every theory of justice—whether it looks to God or nature or tradition or utility or an initial (actual or hypothetical) social contract—is vulnerable to serious criticism...
...Hence we recognize that in certain important respects people are remarkably unlike each other, except perhaps (but only perhaps) at moments of birth and death...
...This, whatever their differences of mind, they can all grasp...
...If the democratic response is, as it must be, all, then all must be equally free to articulate, assess, and judge among alternative policies...
...See his "Equality of Opportunity, and Beyond," in Equality, ed...
...People are not [to be] valued in terms of achievement...
...Inequality in wealth, for example, leads to inequalities in education, housing, medical care, travel, and the like, and, most important, to inequalities in power...
...For it builds not on those aspects of the individual relevant to the association—his special aptitudes and talents—but on his wholeness as a person...
...It is true also that, because man lives in society, he cannot be free to make all decisions for himself...
...Hence equality as a protest-ideal applies not simply to conventional or unjust inequalities but to inequality as a cumulative and self-reinforcing system of inequalities, both natural and conventional...
...Moderation in men is then essential for social and political stability, and such moderation can only be achieved where the range of differences does not exceed the boundaries of what is tolerable...
...In most societies today, for example, education—though not of course at the same level in all societies—is recognized as such a necessity...
...It may also explain the curious argument of Professor John H. Schaar, who after denouncing hierarchy and the equal opportunity principle concludes by affirming that "of course there must be hierarchy" and that "the equal-opportunity principle is certainly not without value...
...among men...
...For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned...
...it is "unnatural" for them to do otherwise...
...But in another,, and I think greater wisdom, justice consists not in looking at what divides men but at what unites them, what is common to them all...
...It is also true that the esteem we generally attach to differences and inequalities may often exaggerate (or diminish) the worth of the individual as a total being...
...The strongest man may not be the swiftest runner, the gifted violinist may be a poor mathematician, the great scientist a bumbling statesman...
...Hence equality of result— meaning by equality not identity but the tolerable range of which Aristotle and Rousseau spoke—is the necessary and altogether proper mode of redress...
...From all of which it follows that what is common to men is more important than what differentiates or divides them...
...For what counts in democratic states is not the putative truth or falsity of a theory but majority acceptance or belief, and this is the outcome of a process of negotiation, bargaining, compromise, and voting...
...This sort of equality—what may be called equality of consideration—is an ultimate end in that it affirms the intrinsic value of every human being...
...THE CASE FOR THE JUSTICE OF EQUALITY of course does not rest here...
...78 DAVID SPITZ...
...We have already noted that the first rarely leads to or corresponds with the second...
...They admire superiority in others...
...and so on...
...gods to decide these matters...
...7 For Mill's doctrine, see his essays On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1861), and Representative Government (1861...
...It may well be that a full theory of justice must attend not to one or the other of these conceptions but to both...
...between the liberty of an employer to hire whomever he pleases (say only red-haired, white-skinned females) and antidiscrimination laws which in the service of equality require him to employ qualified persons of whatever sex and color...
...If organizational and technological imperatives demand that certain individuals sit at the controls while others do their bidding, it does not follow that (say) accident of birth rather than equality of opportunity should be the governing principle to determine who should sit at those controls...
...For they are not merely fathers and sons...
...Then it matters not whether a man is a butcher or a doctor, a garbage collector or an engineer...
...Equality is not liberty, though certain kinds of inequality may well deprive men of important liberties...
...They both think, but not necessarily in the same way...
...it is not to abandon organization and hierarchy, which is in any case impossible...
...Possibly there are good reasons for denying these rights, or some of them, to particular persons or groups under special circumstances...
...It does not deny that there are differences (inequalities...
...If the end is man, then equality—even if by equality we mean treating different people in the same way—is essential to the very life of man...
...2) Equality has an important negative function as a protest-ideal as well as a positive content that properly enlists the loyalty of men...
...Even Santayana, who argued that it is "a benefit and a joy to a man, being what he is, to know that many are, have been, and will be better than he," felt constrained to attack actual "aristocracies" for their artificial rather than natural eminence...
...Thus, it was not the doyens of the New Left but a moderate liberal, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1932 proclaimed that "equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists," called for "a re-appraisal of values," and set as our task "distributing wealth and products more equitably...
...Whatever the limits of equality, whatever its difficulties, this then remains true: without equality properly understood and constantly held in view as a (but not of course the) first principle, there can be no community, and hence no individuality...
...It may in fact result in treating those very men unequally...
...None, to my knowledge, has ever maintained that equality must apply to all things —to cards in a deck, pictures in an exhibition, ideas in the marketplace...
...Mill put it, "any other faculty than the apelike one of imitation...
...This is why we have traffic regulations and laws against murder, hospitals and safety devices in automobiles and industrial plants, lifeguards on bathing beaches, and the like—all without regard to sex, race, religion, intelligence, and other matters that differentiate persons from one another...
...hence to protect himself from weaker men he needs either their assurance that he will be left to awake or protection against them, and pref3 Cf...
...Much remains to be done beA GRAMMAR OF EQUALITY 67 fore we can assert with confidence that a particular inequality is natural and hence, presumably, unalterable...
...IV I have spoken thus far of equality as a general concept...
...they are also persons, with rights and interests outside the parent-child relationship...
...I do not apologize for the complexity of such treatment...
...123, 136...
...it would be unjust to require that all be given the same grade, yet to do the latter might (in some curious constructions) accord with equal treatment...
...In short, despite all its admitted difficulties, the equal opportunity principle, whether as a working standard to be approximated or an ideal by which a people shall be judged, remains an essential element of any right ordering of social life...
...Here the meaning of (and case for) equality may be briefly stated, for it turns primarily on but two notions: the rationality of man and the importance of individuality.' If man—each man—has a mind, he must be free to use it...
...To which specific equality shall we give priority in a particular case, and why...
...They may resemble each other physically, yet they are different...
...To exclude any individual or group from these rights—to life and the things essential to life—is to deny their humanity...
...It insists that no man is fully human who must bend his knee to a master, who is cast into secondary importance and subjected as a consequence of that label to unjustifiable inequalities...
...Equality calls upon men and women to do what is psychologically impossible—to 63 love their own children no more than they love the children of a neighbor, to do for their own parents no more than they would for the parents of others, to treat friends no differently than strangers...
...A GRAMMAR OF EQUALITY 77 the nature and complexities of the specific equalities they treat...
...Moreover, every actual society is disfigured by discriminatory practices and unjust arrangements that limit or vitiate equality of opportunity...
...but surely tolerance—of each man's rationality, of his right to be different, to live as he thinks best—is essential to his humanity...
...When they both, along with many others, argue against equality of result, they do not confront the fact that inequalities of result create privileges that vitiate equality of opportunity and thereby render inequitable the results that have in fact emerged and will continue to emerge, and that society must then intervene •to redress or even (perhaps) cancel out those privileges so as to restore—or newly establish— an initial equality of opportunity...
...it is for the enhancement of uniqueness...
...But (and this indeed is a very large but), as already noted: (1) the equal opportunity principle requires conditions that neither our own nor any other society outside the visions of utopian thinkers is willing to provide, e.g., removing children from their parents immediately after birth and raising them in common...
...It ought to be noted, if only parenthetically, that a further inconvenient problem attaches to the numerical conception of equality here...
...In the name of religious freedom, we deny the right of egalitarians to require all children, including the children of atheists and agnostics, to take religious education in the schools, or, in the case of children whose parents are members of Jehovah's Witnesses, to salute the flag...
...We do not call a race fair when one runner is hobbled by a ball and chain and another is mounted on a horse...
...but since, for Hobbes, "there is no such Finus ultimus (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum (greatest Good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers," this is not a fatal objection...
...V1 We can now see where the newer critics of equality—Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, 1 e among others—have gone wrong...
...Moreover, if in the modern world specialization of function is unavoidable, if organization and consequently hierarchy are necessary, then how except through the equal opportunity principle can we assure a just determination of place...
...In the language of Thomas Rainborough, a spokesman for the Levellers, "the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he...
...And (2) even if the principle were to be realized, it would lead, paradoxically, to a nonegalitarian result...
...They are not equal in all respects, only in all relevant respects...
...So the two principles, far from being intrinsically in opposition, come together as alternative or complementary means to the same end—the achievement of justice in determining fitness and place...
...This has generally meant treating unequal men unequally, according to their differences...
...which means inequality (even if not, as Michels argued, oligarchy...
...perhaps it ought not commend itself at all...
...that is, than all men but themselves, and a few others, whom by Fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve...
...11, p. 45...
...If to all this we add, with Edward Bellamy, that what any one man is and does is in large measure the consequence of what society and past generations have bequeathed to him and now, by providing conditions and opportunities, make it possible for him to do, we see that the very notion of merit or achievement is social and not simply personal...
...which equall time, equally bestowes on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto...
...What these relevant respects are, I shall explore in a moment...
...no one is to count for more than one...
...The fundamental and perhaps only legitimate defense of inequality is that it is not conventional but natural: it accords with the nature of men, who differ profoundly in intelligence, talent, and virtue...
...Striving is not for equality nor for superiority...
...We do not really mean to admire stupid or wicked persons, or to esteem failure...
...The group of essays on the new conservatives will be published as a book in 1974 by Quadrangle Books...
...10 The greater difficulty seems to me to lie in another direction...
...In the wisdom of the classical philosophers, justice consists in giving each man his due...
...Beyond this, it is also often the case that there are ambiguities and tensions both within a particular equality (say equality of opportunity) and between equality however conceived and other values...
...12 It is rather an instrumental principle that cannot be other than defended and justified, for it is indispensable to the realization of something other than itself— namely, democracy...
...but without the principle of equality it is difficult to see what sense can be made of "the common" that is at the very heart of what it means to be a man.13 MEN WANT NOT MERELY TO LIVE but to live well...
...Equality does not require more...
...Here he makes principal the passions for equality and inequality...
...or if, to reverse the terms, the able were made rich, the virtuous made powerful, and the naturally best made the actual best, then the demand for equality might lose much of its force and justification...
...They are of course much too sophisticated and insightful not to have dwelt on legitimate concerns or not to have taken account of some of the more obvious objections to their positions...
...for we clearly do not intend to follow Socrates' inescapable prescription that children be removed from their parents immediately after birth so that all may be raised alike (by identical nurses and tutors...
...When it is being itself which is valued, then none can be inferior, or superior...
...All men must share, for all are members of the community...
...Some people still believe women are by nature morally and intellectually inferior to men, blacks to whites (in Uganda, Asians to blacks), a defeated people to a conquering nation...
...4) When all is said and done, equality remains an essential ingredient of justice...
...Every man is to count for one...
...Thus, to give all men the same income is to favor the unmarried man and disadvantage the manwith a family...
...It is no easy matter, moreover, to determine who are the naturally best and to devise a method that will accurately select them and elevate them to power...
...It is true, as Michels argued, that organization and hierarchy carry with them a tendency to oligarchy, but the task then is surely to guard against the conversion of that tendency into a reality...
...Nor can it be said that virtue and wisdom (Rousseau's qualities of mind or soul) owe nothing to society, or, since they conform to certain standards of behavior which are social norms or rules, are natural rather than conventional...
...A community, unlike a corporation but like a family, does not recognize degrees of membership...
...Part I, 1972), paperback ed., chap...
...And since it is obvious that some limits must always be placed on individual action, those limits too must emerge only from an equal consideration of each man's rights and interests...
...41-47...
...Moreover, to choose among equalities—to treat men equally in some things (say voting) but unequally in others (say income)—requires a principle or principles of justification other then equality itself...
...3 What is fatal to any justification of inequality, whether natural or conventional, however, is the fact that inequalities are cumulative and self-reinforcing...
...And what if passion so overwhelms the crowd as to render it incorrigible...
...J. R. Pennock and J. W. Chapman (New York: Atherton, 1967), chap...
...There are others who do it because their minds are A GRAMMAR OF EQUALITY 69 filled with a passion for inequality (i.e...
...This is the principle of fairness...
...New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), pp...
...Or, conversely, it stipulates that no person shall be treated differently from another without just cause...
...Given this equal right to life, it follows that all men are equally entitled to whatever is necessary to sustain and protect life...
...Let us consider these in turn...
...and he does so in normative rather than descriptive terms...
...Like most felicitous phrases, this is no more than a partial truth...
...Lyman Bryson et al...
...To require all persons to work one day each week at menial labor, or to attend religious services on the Sabbath, or to serve in the armed forces is to .treat them equally but to deprive them of corresponding liberties...
...I think of Aristotle here not for his distinction between numerical equality and equality proportionate to desert (of this, more later), but for his discussion of the general causes of revolution...
...And that he may choose differently from other men is not a risk but a virtue, the indispensable condition for the pursuit of self-development, identity, individuality...
...Beyond that minimum, decent and rational men may disagree as to what is required...
...Whatever the justification or lack of justification for particular views, a polity that ignores what men think or believe runs the risk of disruption...
...In so far as a man is a teacher, or an artist, or a statesman, do we not wish him to be a good teacher or artist or statesman...
...It rather insists that such differences do not justify—except for good and sufficient reasons—the withdrawal from some men of those conditions which are required for the development of their varying individualities...
...All of which is to say that liberty, properly understood, is a complex of particular liberties—of speech, religion, travel, and the like—and of concomitant restraints...
...Which returns us, inescapably, to equality...
...I only argue that many inequalities that have been called natural in the past are not in fact so...
...On these questions political writers have been eloquent but also at odds with one another...
...Ordinary experience attests to the stubborn truth that men and women give preferential treatment to those with whom they have had closest personal ties...
...Hence I am not asked to love or admire him...
...Nor does equality require the abolition of hierarchy...
...The claim for equality is a protest against unjust, undeserved, and unjustified inequalities...
...To deny them that voice is to assure conflict and perhaps revolution...
...Should it not rather be, Let the punishment fit the criminal, thereby taking into account such factors as age, motive, circumstance, and frequency (or infrequency) of offense...
...For Prudence, is but Experience...
...which very few have, and but in few things...
...hence a sales tax or uniform wage or price or rent or bus fare is just, and a graduated income tax or differential wage or price or rent is not...
...but the problem then is not that men are functionally different, and behave toward each other as superiors or inferiors in certain roles, but that we (or society) impute a certain value to such differences, and that plainly is a matter of reeducation...
...To determine whether the law should restrain or tolerate a social restraint, and thereby secure a particular liberty for some (perhaps only under certain circumstances) but not an apposite liberty for others, is merely to recognize that not all liberties are equally important, or equally desirable...
...And exceptions they must remain...
...and, most important, because they have sought to build on what divides rather than on what unites men, they have not understood the necessity of equality for the maintenance of community...
...there are disharmonies and contradictions, diverse needs and strivings that come into collision, tensions between specific equalities (such as equality of opportunity versus equality of result) and between equality and other values (such as liberty) . To press for equality in some things is not to press for equality in all things...
...Not all of course simultaneously press for our attention...
...Of course, if any of the writers criticized in these articles choose to answer, now or in the reasonable future, we shall be glad to print their reply...
...Hierarchy is not merely a concomitant of modern technology...
...and not simply equality but the stupidity and malevolence of kings,' the ambitions of lesser but avaricious mortals, and the effects of changing economic and social systems brought tyrannical rulers to their deserved end...
...g., to give a sickly person no more medical care than is required by a robust person is not to produce equally healthy individuals...
...Nor has any serious liberal or socialist thinker failed to recognize the tensions and conflicts among equalities, or between equality and other values, such that choices must be made and some equalities set aside...
...It is possible to treat everyone equally yet unfairly, e.g., to give all students an unfair examination, to pay all workers an inadequate wage, to compel all persons to worship in the same faith...
...yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he...
...Thus, despite the American commitment to equality before the law, the rich continue to enjoy marked advantages over the poor, the whites over the blacks...
...What it does require is moderation— "on the part of the great, moderation in goods and position, and, on the side of the common sort, moderation in avarice and covetousness...
...These are the problems—to some the deficiencies— of equality, to which I now turn...
...John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), and Brian Barry, Political Argument (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), especially chaps...
...For hierarchies 66 DAVID SPITZ of worth and ability never satisfactorily correspond to effective hierarchies of power...
...For these and other reasons, equality (it is still argued) cannot command our exclusive or highest allegiance...
...hence government, which involves (rests upon) both force and consent...
...Shall we now apply it in the realm of work...
...And as to the faculties of the mind, (setting aside the arts grounded upon words, and especially that skill of proceeding upon generall, and infallible rules, called Science...
...and that, from this standpoint, it does not matter that one is wealthier or more powerful or more prestigious than another...
...he may be better or less worthy than I in many ways...
...Finally, equality, while an ultimate value, is not the only ultimate and therefore not always the overriding value...
...and that inequality of wealth shall similarly be limited to prevent any man from becoming master or slave...
...John Rees, Equality (London: Macmillan, 4 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651 ed...
...to seek one's self-development...
...Individuals vary, but why they do so—whether this is the result of an unalterable heredity or a changeable environment, for example—is not altogether clear...
...He is with us, of us, in us...
...Still others seem to be no more than empty carcasses held together by tissue and bone...
...Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance...
...Since in democratic states the quantity rather than quality of minds is politically decisive, it follows too that the less wise will govern the wise...
...but that power shall never be great enough for violence, and shall always be exercised by virtue of rank and law...
...Let us begin with Aristotle's distinction between numerical equality and equality proportionate to desert, for in one form or another this remains perhaps the central problem of equality...
...Life is not a monolithic or unified whole...
...nor do they touch the fact that both people, despite these differences, are still human beings...
...H Qn what grounds, then, can the principle of equality be reasonably warranted...
...for equality, like most political concepts, defies simplistic understanding...
...Equality is opposed not to hierarchy but to the unjust distribution of place and power within hierarchy...
...We do not call a fight fair when one pugilist's hands are encased in armor and the other in foampadded gloves...
...But it is still a choice between two equalities in their own right, and in this respect equality remains an ultimate value...
...what matters is 14 Cf...
...Political and social theorists from Plato through Hume and Rousseau to a host of contemporary thinkers have drawn a distinction between two sorts of inequality: natural (consisting, for example, in differences of age, sex, strength, and what Rousseau called "qualities of mind or soul") and conventional (consisting of differences in wealth, power, and honor, all of which emerge from the consent of men...
...but in such cases the burden of proof is surely on those who would argue for those exceptions...
...No principle is absolute, automatically binding in all cases without regard to circumstances...
...Here we come to the heart of the principle of equality: in the things that count men are not, and ought not to be, so much diffeerreenntt from each other as to matter...
...14 Fairness does not prescribe the "right" result...
...He is unlike me in many ways...
...Such kings, Tocqueville sardonically observed, "assisted democracy by their talents, others by their vices...
...But surely not all these define the best...
...And if among the diverse forms of state democracy is a just regime, perhaps —though I cannot argue this here—the best regime, it follows that those equalities (and liberties) appropriate or necessary to democracy are warranted...
...9 R Albert Hofstadter, "The Career Open to Personality: The Meaning of Equality of Opportunity for an Ethics for Our Time," in Aspects of Human Equality, ed...
...This entails the right to choose, to decide between alternatives, to determine one's own way of life...
...From this perspective, fairness as a principle of justice dictates equality...
...It is enough that men should be protected against an untimely death and be given an equal chance to attain their ends...
...Here is the relevant passage: By equality, we should understand, not that the degrees of power and riches are to be absolutely identical for everybody...
...other men and groups, through force or economic sanctions or other forms of pressure, also interfere with human freedom...
...All too often these newer critics contest not equality but a caricature of equality...
...they dream of it for their children...
...What is of interest here is the notion that a man's success or failure is not simply the consequence of his innate ability but, in some measure, of the system—its practices, arrangements, and (let it be said) its derangements...
...Thus inferiors become revolutionaries in order to be equals, and equals in order to be superiors.6 If, then, we are to assure stability in a society, we must take account of the attitudes and opinions of men...
...29-68...
...But it is sometimes the case that two or more equalities collide...
...it requires us to treat people equally in order to arrive at the right result...
...We must ask: Which differences or inequalities are relevant, and relevant to what...
...However, this, as Giovanni Sartori properly notes, is an ideal that is never realized, since in its stead what we find only too often is the privileged man in a privileged place...
...But this is •a caricature as well as a confusion...
...At a minimum, this means that no man can legitimately be denied adequate food, clothing, housing, medical care, etc...
...nor attained, (as Prudence,) while we look after somewhat els,) I find yet a greater equality amongst men, than that of strength...
...Thus, when Bell pleads the cause of meritocracy, he does not fully face up to the deficiencies of the equal opportunity principle in actual societies, and the implications of such deficiencies for the notion of personal achievement...
...cit., pp...
...they are launched against an erroneous conception or conceptions of equality...
...Obviously, different people need different things...
...4. 16 Daniel Bell, "On Meritocracy and Equality," Public Interest, Fall 1972, pp...
...For what democracy does, as John Stuart Mill so ably argued, is to enable each man both to protect himself and to elevate himself...
...then in choosing one we necessarily limit or curtail another...
...Clearly, equality does not entail identity, at least not (for Rousseau) in power and wealth...
...See Ernest Gellner, "The Pluralist Antilevelers of Prague," DISSENT, Summer 1972, pp...
...Thus, to say that there shall be no cruelty without just cause is not to preclude (say) punishment for heinous crimes, but to prohibit the arbitrary imprisonment or debasement of "inferior" by "superior" peoples...
...So too with Rousseau, who in pressing the case for equality differs from Hobbes in but two respects: he looks to other, conventional rather than natural, attributes of men...
...And this is where the demand for equality actually and rightly starts...
...A GRAMMAR OF EQUALITY 73 in his address on the State of the Union in January 1944 he articulated what he called "a second Bill of Rights," including the right to a useful job, an adequate income, a decent home, adequate medical care, a good education, and other components of what we now associate with the welfare state...
...To elevate himself morally and intellectually, by that very participation, acquiring through discussion and ensuing enlightenment a concern not only for his own selfish interests but for the general good...
...and when we give primacy to one we may well have to surrender another...
...To treat all men equally is not always the A GRAMMAR OF EQUALITY 65 same as to treat all cases equally...
...If ordinary men regard themselves as politically competent (as equal), as they do, they will fight, as they have fought, to obtain an equal voice and an equal position...
...We cannot have both equalities simultaneously, and to opt for equality of opportunity, as in democratic states we purportedly do, is to indulge in open hypocrisy...
...superiority), which arises from their conceiving that they get no advantage over others (but only an equal amount, or even a smaller amount) although they are really more than equal to others...
...III W hat, then, is equality...
...Such subversion is deliberate, not accidental...
...1. chap...
...They both need food, but if one is a mountain-climber and the other a scientist they do not require the same kinds or amounts of food...
...134-38...
...and by just cause I mean not simply reasons —there are always "reasons"—but arguments and justifications that make sense and carry conviction on logical, empirical, and moral grounds...
...What matters is that he is a man, who happens to perform a certain task for some portion of his time, but who is also a husband and a father, a friend and a neighbor, perhaps a churchgoer and a participant in certain communal activities, but always a total person and a full-time member of the same human race...
...This is precisely why, for liberals and socialists, equality is so important...
Vol. 21 • January 1974 • No. 1
