So when I think about equalitarianism as a political doctrine, I typically immediately think about three things.
This video:
Explanation of who is killing who: https://blog.ninapaley.com/2012/10/01/this-land-is-mine/
Second, I think about colonialism. And that topic boggles my head because it’s so big, and did so much damage. *Specifically*, I think about Dole in Hawaii, and how he went against both the US Government and the Kingdom of Hawaii and just basically made Hawaii his corporate nation state, where he ended up president until annexation. It’s unreal that he just *did* that.
Objectively, you can’t get away with that type of stuff anymore in functioning democracies (Hello Crimea). But colonialism, and American slavery (there is still slavery around the world, but less than historic long run averages) are right behind us, around the corner, and we still feel the breath on our necks. With 2020 having less global slavery in all modern human history as the inflection point, it’s important to note that the last 35,000 years have been a march to right the wrongs of inequality, a slow and somber march towards some abstract human notion of utopia. I have a theory, however, that equalitarianism isn’t some profound political philosophy, but rather a neutral net-positive normal human behavior. Inequality has existed since the rise of the agrarian society, which defaulted into some humans owning property, having agricultural stockpiles, which all proceeded to power and wealth, etc. I believe our overall cognitive abilities basically evolved to handle the day to day and stresses of our Hunter & Gatherer period of human evolution. Yes, we’re still evolving, but I posit that we’re not mentally prepared for the cognitive, technological, or social complexity in this modern age. Regardless, atavistic, tribal, pre-agrarian clans were forced to be reliant on one another and communal, and studies have shown that early Sapien were quite maternal and egalitarian.
Of course, it’s fair to point out that nomadic Siberian Indigenous Hunter & Gatherers were burying certain tribal leaders with symbolic riches like beads, and art. So, there’s an argument that certain inequalities or traditions are innately unequal, whether by design or human nature. Were those tribal leaders like Trump, who ruled cruelly and demanded tributes and an unearned burial of riches, or was it an empathetic leader that people chose to lift up, and admire with appreciations of a modicum of value? Are we inherently unequal, or did we accidentally create inequality?
The last thing I think about when I think about when I think about the profound movement that is equalitarianism is Yuval Noah Harari. In Sapiens he noted that societies have always been uneven, a domineering class having slaves, the proletariat, the working class, to build infrastructure and churches or temples or corporations or empires. An Yuval rightfully points out that, right now, we’re at the most equal point of human history. Whether it feels like that in your moment of time and existence, it is a truth over epochs and centuries. Although new technologies have given us the microscope to root out missed or unseen injustices, we seem to be moving globally forward towards equalitarianist societies. But no one drew us a map, and we are likely to see great unrest, especially in America, as the forces of equalitarianism battle with a deeply ingrained nationalism. We see where -isms like fascism and nationalism end, and we’ve known where those road maps will lead, for centuries. Not having directions or a route, knowing we are off road in not knowing where equalitarianism ends, however, doesn’t mean we should give up. It’s a marathon, not a race, and nationalism fell way behind around the 1940’s, but it’s still out there and ostensibly could catch up. Democracy has just had a profound stress test, and although decayed, it seems to be stable for the time being. It obviously has some structural wood rot in the judicial core, which is another long-term project for us to strategize about. But nationalism still anchors, or fetters, a society desperate to move forward with equalitarianist modernization.
It’s not Trump. It’s Nationalism.
In fact, the allure of Trump is that he is a flawed human, which any human, especially his supporters, can identify with, while still being a viable, but completely broken, candidate for a nationalist agenda. Sam Harris had an 8 minute revelation, that Trump is “fat Jesus”, aka an enabler for people’s worst tendencies. Instead of abiding the Democrat finger waggling of “Try harder to be good. Eat healthier. You’re probably racist. Check your privilege. Watch for biases”, Trump says “screw their feelings, eat junk food, whatever”. In fact, Trump’s GOP is the fast food, fart jokes & cheap laughs, junk food diet of politics, and the Dems are “eat well and workout” long ballers, that seem constantly derailed by the short term interests of the right. It’s no wonder Democratic messaging is objectionable to part of our nation who doesn’t want to be told what to do or how to live their lives.
For me, the 2016 election shattered some naive illusions I had blinded myself to because of white privilege. Realizing the racism, xenophobia, hate, and fear that I “hadn’t” been privy to was rough (rough for me? how do you think it was for them?). To “wake up” from the disquiet shadows of American life was a tragic coming-of-age moment that was as hurtful as it was important. Of course, just because bigoted nationalism was hidden or quiet (but very real to the marginalized communities that dealt with it *every* *single* *day*) didn’t mean it wasn’t happening, the whole time. Seeing it in the open will help us change, fix it, repair ourselves, and move into a new golden age of equalitarianism. But the battles will be prolonged, as we only need to look to the show All in the Family to understand the profoundly subtle but long-lurking underbelly of American progressive equalitarianism vs nationalism in the form of “Meathead” and Archie Bunker.
But for me, the 2020 election was a sober revelation (2020 was not sober, however) that the core underpinnings of American political society is the clash of nationalism vs equalitarianism, and the candidate rarely matters. Trump was a limo liberal that became the spokesperson for all American nationalist principles, almost overnight, and then proceeded to act like a manic bull in the Tate gallery. Where 2016 Trump votes were assumed to be economic anxiety (cough racism cough), 2020 appears to be an outright affirmation that a core of American voters are truly xenophobic and nationalist, regardless of Trump’s exhausting and unyielding insanity. This strips away any weak literary excuses or any pretense of the GOP base being opaque or unknowable like the former election.
Were the 1920’s German Nationalists different than the 1940’s German Nationalists? Donald Trump had more votes in 2020 than 2016, such that it’s obvious he had zero disqualifying behavior for “his” base… those loyal to the fervor of nationalism, and the cult-like base of Christian Nationalists. The Religious Right have simply waived off every one of Trump’s character weaknesses and failings by saying he’s is just a vessel, the “representative” for the Lord’s work. Apparently that representative is a very terrible Christian human, but no matter because nationalism is a profoundly intoxicating philosophy to the adherents. Psychologically, it is far easier to motivate and indoctrinate people into a philosophy with the tools of fear, xenophobia, and selfishness vs selling them on honest, long-term, hard work. You could, quite literally, run a bucket and mop, an empty chair, or an onion as the nationalist candidate, and it wouldn’t lose the GOP a single vote. Along with the potential of an immediate, near-term growing inequality the likes we have never experienced in human history, educating people away from the allure of nationalism will be our greatest challenge. Trump was never the dynamite. He was just one of the matches. And identifying nationalism isn’t simple, as it takes different forms. I’ve even recognized my own version in being somewhat of a sectionalist who is often baffled by the notion we’re a “united” country, when I see 7 smaller nations. I do believe the majority of this country are into sectionalism, if they knew what it was.
Organizing the Unknowable
It is quite difficult to successfully organize the abstract and esoteric notion of where equalitarianism ends, and how it functions in practice. The idea has never been implemented successfully in world history, however the idea seems to have captivated the majority of the planet, and it has slowly moved lockstep towards it for centuries. It is important to isolate the time span, that we’re not speaking of decades, but hundreds or thousands of years. Some might ask if it is a pandora’s box, of sorts. Is the genie out of the bottle? Since the Magna Carta in 1215, some form of equalitarianism has been pushing forward somewhere on the globe, and globalisation has further sped up this shared vision. The only -ism that might challenge equalitarianism in the 21st century is China, but it would have to be a global political transition that seems profoundly unlikely. At the height of Britain’s colonialism, they only dominated a fraction of the globe, which was also the largest empire in human history at its peak, covering 22% of landmass. The world will likely never see empires the size of the British, Mongol, or Romans ever again.
Historically, repressed people won’t revolt, largely because they are repressed and don’t have the tools, ability to organize, or time. Revolutions have only started when society sees a light at the end of the tunnel, and citizens rise up. If they are in the dark, they stay there. France saw the final revolt against the monarchy and elites in the Late 1770’s. Fed up with economic instability, xenophobia, unfair taxes, and the kings lavish spending (coupled with involvement in the Revolutionary War as an ally to the USA), the citizens of France did nothing. But as royal power broke down, it excited people, and gave them hope. Couple that with a rumor of a coup that was floating around Paris, all this energy led to the storming of the Bastille. That action spread to the rural poor, who caught a wave of revolutionary spirit, and the people took back their country. nb: I am no historian, but the parallels of that moment to the USA are just unreal.
Then the English Revolution, & American Revolution all pushed equalitarianism forward, and are movements that never really went away, equal to the Magna Carta. In fact, the most American adoring and rosy notion of Manifest Destiny could be seen as having the intent to spread the notion of equality and opportunity to other nations, but we’ll quickly leave that bad take behind. To be very fair, equalitarianism internationally is also as important as the communist revolution in their creation of a functioning blueprint of society. Equalitarianism has yet to achieve that, but it also hasn’t collapsed. In fact, you might say the history of nationalism is the demonstrable and repeated failure of imperial regimes that always end in revolts. The age of nationalism pre-dated the 2nd English Civil War in 1648, but since then it has been the dominant theme of society until very recently, at the end of World War II. Equalitarianism was ushered in, with the help of capitalism (don’t say it never did anything for everyone), and became an intellectual and philosophical world view for politicians and business-people alike:
In the late modern era, however, equality rapidly became the dominant value in human societies almost everywhere. This was partly due to the rise of new ideologies like humanism, liberalism and socialism. But it was also due to the industrial revolution, which made the masses more important than ever before.
Industrial economies relied on masses of common workers, while industrial armies relied on masses of common soldiers. Governments in both democracies and dictatorships invested heavily in the health, education and welfare of the masses, because they needed millions of healthy labourers to work in the factories, and millions of loyal soldiers to serve in the armies.
Consequently, the history of the 20th century revolved to a large extent around the reduction of inequality between classes, races and genders. The world of the year 2000 was a far more equal place than the world of 1900. With the end of the cold war, people became ever-more optimistic, and expected that the process would continue and accelerate in the 21st century.
*The process did not continue into the 21st Century*.
And of course, inequality comes with the changing partisan tides, nationalism lapping at the shores with changing views and times, doomed to an eternal rubber band effect. It comes in political, infrastructural, economic, and social waves over contracted periods vs our geological-seeming timeframe of equality. In the near term, we’re going to see inequality growth, and acknowledge that equalitarianist utopia is a nebulous concept that is a long ways off. What’s more, there are unprecedented aspects that exponentially increase the complexity of inequality versus what has been experienced in the past.
In fact, that fluctuation towards inequality may drastically change soon, with an exponential shift in biotechnological advancements accelerating the ability to split humans from biological normative versus a class of “superhumans”. The variables are well placed to see a massive inequality chasm due to the end of of a series of historic periods. The challenge of a swollen underclass of “useless” (pejorative, not my take) people is extremely concerning. We are possibly on the brink of an inequality chasm where marginalized (read “not billionaires” and all the way down) groups lose further political access coupled with increased economic instability. Now consider a new class of humans with technological bio-engineering advancements which can supercharge a new type of inequality in an exponential way. These challenges are not to be dismissed. Nor are climate refugee issues of new classes of haves and have nots in the changing geographic landscape due to global warming. We’ve many challenges ahead.
However, these facts do not mean we’re not at our most egalitarian moment of the human race. And it also doesn’t negate that a near unanimous amount of nations or their people have adopted equalitarianism as their mission. In asking if we are “predestined” for equalitarianism as an overriding global political philosophy for human kind, I’m left feeling that it is something innate to human civilization. Overriding ideological motivations and passions are ineffable opinions that are generally culturally learned. But the human experience of day to day life is universal and shared. Whether someone voted for Biden or Trump, that person wants to be able to send their child to school safely, drink safe water, rely on local government to fix potholes. The equalitarianist ideal isn’t a political motivation but a neutral attitude of the human condition. It’s where we evolved to, and we’re fighting to get back to that, not because of some humanistic notion, but because it’s just a simpler existence. I truly believe equality to be an evolved neutral human default. Evolutionary biologists would agree that acting in collective interest is acting in your self-interest. But that logic underpins that equalitarianism might be easier to apply to smaller nodes or populations, and distribution of a real road map or real blueprint might be impossibly complex in large populations. However, we have seen examples approaching equalitarianism, from Japan, Scandinavia, and Canada.
Nationalist / Conservative dismissal of Utopic Visions
Certain idealogues, political thinkers, and other philosophers negatively react to equalitarianism because they misunderstand the concept with a practical theory, and cannot wrap their heads around how to champion something that you don’t know or understand in practice. This is the appeal of “Hope” to the progressives. “How does it work” is a fair question, but it seems many have started using it as a nationalist taunt, thinking a lack of blueprint is a reason not to build something. Everything is a process, things take time, and it’s odd to have such a “can’t do” attitude, especially from the party of personal responsibility, entrepreneurialism, and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality. As someone who is a centrist progressive (yeah whatever that means), I was surprised I had the peace and love part of the concept, but the idea of what “fair and equal” means is a massively complex and challenging thing to define.
However, it’s a bit disingenuous to say “we shouldn’t try and be nice to each other”, which is what you get when you boil down the nationalist arguments against equalitarianism. The academic cynicism is quite tiring, just because it is an idea or concept, and not some fully formed ideology with functional blueprints. The conservatives will lampoon and abandon any sort of abstraction or esoteric argument. But again, this is disingenuous to think you have to abandon progress towards equality for fear of the sausage making. It’s not a duality to be a utopic realist. It reminds me we haven’t even talked about political realism! But as for academic and real world criticisms of equalitarianism, I truly believe it’s the “person building eves to stand in the shadows”. I don’t want to be too harsh on the academic takeover of the word, because I am not sure these are closeted nationalists complaining about perceived censorships and deplatforming, but it also feels belabored to write an entire paper on equalitarianism as a source of liberal bias. It feels more of the diversion of false equivalency of a nationalist not wanting to talk about their racist viewpoint (I might be more racist than you but let’s talk about your racism), and suggests that it’s really the progressive academics that are biased. It would be far more genuine to simply suggest that “some people trying to create equality have implicit bias that they can correct”, vs people purposefully skewing the fact that the conservatives exhibit more bias than progressives, to the point of potentially subverting the will of the voters, *in multiple ways*, during the end of the 2020 election.
And, as Karl Popper notes in “The Open Society & Its Enemies“, arguing against it just feels like a smug reason to justify increasingly bad and brutal behavior:
“The abandonment of the rationalist attitude, of the respect for reason and argument and the other fellow’s point of view, the stress upon the ‘deeper’ layers of human nature, all this must lead to the view that thought is merely a somewhat superficial manifestation of what lies within these irrational depths. It must nearly always, I believe, produce an attitude which considers the person of the thinker instead of his thought. It must produce the belief that ‘we think with our blood’, or ‘with our national heritage’, or with our class’. This view may be presented in a materialist form or in a highly spiritual fashion; the idea that we ‘think with our race’ may perhaps be replaced by the idea of elect or inspired souls who ‘think by God’s grace’. I refuse, on moral grounds, to be impressed by these differences; for the decisive similarity between all these intellectually immodest views is that they do not judge a thought on its own merits. By thus abandoning reason, they split mankind into friends and foes; into the few who share in reason with the gods, and the many who don’t (as Plato says); into the few who stand near and the many who stand far; into those who speak the untranslatable language of our own emotions and passions and those whose tongue is not our tongue. Once we have done this, political equalitarianism becomes practically impossible.
Now the adoption of an anti-equalitarian attitude in political life, i.e. in the field of problems concerned with the power of man over man, is just what I should call criminal. For it offers a justification of the attitude that different categories of people have different rights; that the master has the right to enslave the slave; that some men have the right to use others as their tools. Ultimately, it will be used, as in Plato, to justify murder.”
IN PRACTICE?
Here’s the closing thought about the reality of equalitarianism in practice, versus equalitarianism as a uniting nebulous political concept or end goal notion to bring a global population together for a peaceful and accepting future society. What is equality? Is it more equal, for who? “My equalitarianism is different than your equalitarianism!”, I think to myself. And this is the brutal truth of what we have to actually build, vs just wanting to be a better world.
Think about Animal Farm: The Animal revolution against the people was started as an equalitarian message. The end message of the book is that equalitarianism is better as an idea than in practice, where it falls apart. As mentioned we have seen the end plan and functional blueprint for other -isms… nationalism, fascism, etc. We’ve seen those in practice since before Genghis Khan.
But there’s never been a functioning blueprint for true equalitarianism. We’re more equal than we’ve ever been in human history, and I truly believe it’s ingrained into our biology to seek equality, which is zen-like in its balance and calm. Water seeks its own level, and then it is still. But like when the dog catches what it wants and doesn’t know what to do with it, we might be headed to a new type of partisan equalitarian in-fighting, like we’ve seen between centrists and progressives in the Democrat party in the last 5 years. So even when we get to the end game, and win the prize, we’re not even sure what it will look like, what equality means, and how we’ll work together to create it.
We are all equal, but some are more equal than others.
Having little room for cynical humor, I for one am enthused at whatever that moment in time will look like.
Hopefully the pigs are nice to us.
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