Customer Reviews

Equality and Democracy: A New Press Back-To-Basics Book

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The author acknowledges and then seems to immediately forget that a society-wide ethos of equality is not even remotely attainable. Clearly a class state exists that enforces the subordination of the working class to capitalist owners as well as other inequalities. Also, the extant rhetoric of equal opportunity merely reinforces the inequality of starting points.

The author discusses a hypothetical meritorious equality that is based on the common humanity of all and a recognition of the equality of most contributions to society that then should result in near equality of reward. A democratic state would have to be a major player in maintaining this equality by, for example, being the employer of last resort for any who desired to work.

The author is unconvincing in attempting to describe the New Deal order with the rise of industrial unions as the forerunner to his strong equal opportunity society. That era of accommodation proved to be short-lived. Now capital has reasserted itself and the rhetoric of the free market is ascendent. Consideration of equality and social justice is not part of the politics of resentment and greed.

The book is somewhat dissatisfying because its difficult to get a handle on the propspects for equality and what it would entail using present day reality as a starting point. Are we talking remade men here? The author seems to lurch back and forth across the line of feasibility or even the current existence of equality. As a mostly theoretical book on equality no effort is made to compare an equality society with, say, an existing social democratic society. Its just hard to get a good feel for the substance and significance of this book.