The Limits of Leveling
OSHINSKY, DAVID M.
The Limits of Leveling Equality in America: The View from the Top By Sidney Verba and Gary R. Orren Harvard. 334 pp. $25.00. Reviewed by David M. Oshinsky Professor of History, Rutgers;...
...From the Founding Fathers forward, our leaders have worked to broaden the political process, despite their strong reservations about the competence and rationality of the masses...
...The authors add, however, that the views of American leaders "are more likely to stem from the process of their selection and their institutional affiliations than from their social background...
...In other words, they are white, male, well-educated, and middle-class...
...It is about as unequal in 1985 as it was in 17 8 5. And the reason, according to Sidney Verba and Gary Orren of Harvard University, is abundantly clear...
...It is refreshing to see that the media—and the media alone—acknowledge their political clout and even "suggest that it be curbed...
...Verba and Orren suspect that the newness of the gender issue may partly explain the phenomenon...
...These are hardly random examples...
...But they submit that feminists tend to deal in political symbols, while black leaders are more conscious of the relationship between inequality and economic issues such as unemployment and inflation...
...The rest is redundant and crammed with irrelevant data...
...Their dilemma," write the authors, "is that they cannot move closer to one group...
...Feminists," the authors conclude, "are less apt to evaluate equality from an economic perspective than is the other challenging group...
...Academics and journalists have been saying these things for years...
...Understandably, then, there is little public sympathy for affirmative action, radical income distribution, or other leveling devices...
...author, "A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy" Americans have always been ambivalent about equality...
...This thesis is provocative and well worth pursuing...
...This is an important point, suggesting that attitudes toward equality may be based on factors more significant than class or income or naked self-interest...
...We are told, again and again, that America's leaders come largely from the "advantaged social categories...
...Americans respect the legitimacy of wealth...
...They do not want to see a ceiling placed on income...
...This is hardly big news...
...They believe that the capitalist system rewards merit—that individuals, not institutions, are responsible for one's standing in society...
...We are told that "all groups find the professional athlete the most overpaid," while "all groups but business find the executive the next most overpaid...
...Verba and Orren provide an excellent synthesis of America's egalitarian dilemma...
...The authors provide endless charts (with terms like " Beta" and "F ratio") to inform us that "those who favor racial equality are more likely to become civil rights leaders," and that feminists are "the most liberal group...
...Our political history has been marked by the abolition of property restrictions for voting and office-holding...
...America today is one of the most democratic nations in the world...
...Thus groups are apt to favor reducing the influence of those who disagree with them...
...When discussing the political ramifications of equality, the authors conclude that the Democratic coalition is less cohesive than its Republican counterpart...
...Indeed, the notion of equal opportunity is used to justify unequal results...
...The distribution of income in America has remained remarkably stable...
...They understand the factors that have made our nation distinctive, and they provide valuable comparisons between the United States and other industrial democracies...
...Equality in America bogs down after two or three promising chapters...
...Democratic leaders are more divided because the party is more diverse...
...If you are rich, they think, you deserve to be...
...There are occasional nuggets...
...The problem here is that we learn little about the other factors, even less about the process of selection, and nothing truly original about the relationship between these leaders and the people they supposedly represent...
...on the gender issue...
...Yet political reform has produced little economic change...
...Democratic voters have been expressing their frustration over equality issues in one election after another...
...the introduction of reforms like the open convention, the recall of public officials, and the direct election of United States Senators...
...While Democrats agree on New Deal economic issues, their leaders must walk a tightrope between organized labor, on the one hand, and blacks and feminists, on the other...
...Unfortunately, the bulk of the book, a survey of the beliefs of American leaders, and the impact of these beliefs upon public policy, is disappointing...
...if you are poor, you ought to work harder...
...Regrettably, the authors have turned a vital subject into a mostly numbing academic exercise...
...Although our leaders often disagree about the extent of equal opportunity in America, they strongly oppose egalitarian solutions that would tamper with a system based on effort and skill...
...On balance, though, the survey findings are so annoyingly obvious that one tends to lose sight of the central thesis: The ideology of individual achievement, accepted by virtually all groups in America, has produced and perpetuated a relatively unequal society...
...We also learn (my personal favorite) that "most groups think they have less influence than other groups think they have, and they want more...
...And it is depressing to learn that feminists are ranked at the bottom of the influence ladder, where everyone wants them to stay...
...More disturbing is the relentless display of statistical wizardry...
...the extension of suffrage to blacks and women...
...Americans and their leaders are overwhelmingly devoted to liberty, individualism and a free market economy...
...In public, of course, the media admit to nothing of the sort...
...With few exceptions, Americans support equality of opportunity, not equality of result...
...They are keenly aware of the difference between real and ideal equality...
...without moving away from the others...
...Republican leaders are quite conservative on the three major issues of equality—economic, racial and gender...
...Generally speaking, Democratic leaders are more liberal than organized labor on social issues, but not liberal enough to support the newer—and more volatile—demands of black and feminist leaders for racial and gender equality...
...The result has been the fragmentation of the New Deal coalition...
...We discover that intellectuals are more likely than farmers to raise the salaries of college professors...
Vol. 68 • May 1985 • No. 7
