George Orwell at the BBC |
It is Halloween tonight and was going to write about how it is taking over from the communality of Guy Fawkes night soon after on the 5th November. Then again, I was going to write about what is happening in the Middle East but Howard Jacobson has done that much better in UnHerd, which is worth considering, even if it does give voice to a lot of conservatives I disagree with. Also I have already explained why I am (still) a Zionist. (Go here to see why.)
Instead I am going to talk about different types of equality. The essay title comes George Orwell’s book Animal Farm and I have never been quite sure if ‘more equal’ means superior or inferior. In any case, it refers to how true equality is easy to wish for but extremely hard to obtain. The book ends with the animals in charge of the farm talking on equal terms with the neighbouring human farmers and the onlookers being unable to tell the difference.
This occurred to me when I remembered a female film director saying that as women made up half the population of the world, they should be directing half the films, instead of a tiny fraction of them. Female film directors are actually more common these days but men still outnumber them when it comes to directing, particularly the big blockbusters which make Hollywood its money. There is nothing like the bottom line to overcome feminism in films.
My reaction to the statement that women should make half the films as they make up half the population is, do you think that half the people sent to prison should be female. No? So it is only the good stuff you want half of and the bad stuff can be left to men to dominate. There is actually quite a strong lobby saying that women should be kept out of prison altogether. That means giving them carte blanche to commit crimes so I don’t support it.
That is a little unfair but it does raise the question of what sort of equality you want to promote – equality of reward or equality of opportunity. They are basically incompatible. The best analogy is probably with a race. With equality of reward, everyone finishes at the same time or, in practical terms, we all get paid the same whatever we do. With equality of opportunity, everyone starts at the same time but passes finishes at different times.
In practical terms, this means that we all get paid different amounts, depending on our talents, determination, hard work and ability to persuade people to pay us different amounts for what we do or make. Entrepreneurs prosper and also-rans get by, often with a little help from those same entrepreneurs willing to share their wealth with others. Put simply, capitalists like equality of opportunity while socialists like equality of reward.
I know that it does not work that way in practice, of course. Successful people naturally want to pass on some of their good fortune to their offspring and give them things like private education which give them an arguably unfair advantage over those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. To create true equality of opportunity you should have 100% inheritance task so that everyone does start from the same place. Good luck with that.
However, the argument has been effectively won by capitalism, which gives everyone the freedom to create wealth for themselves and for their families. In a society in which a teenager can become a millionaire by creating an app, there is not much hope for state-organised socialism, which simply did not work. Privilege, instead of wealth, was passed down to succeeding generations and those who disagreed with this were silenced - or shot.
Apart from fascism, particularly if you were Jewish, the worst sort of society to live in during the twentieth century was a top down communist one in which dissent was forbidden and all were expected to toe the party line. Because there was what turned out to be a purely theoretical equality of reward in such societies they increased the absurdity by claiming to be ‘democratic’ while genuine democratic states were labelled as capitalist and corrupt.
Socialism, I believe, can work but only as an opt-in system such as existed on a kibbutz where wealth if genuinely shared. This is not an opt-out society which few people had the chance to leave unless they, ironically, were particularly talented and had a skill in sport or performing that was in demand in the capitalist west, in which case they could defect while ordinary people had to stay at home and endure the privations of opt-out socialism.
In western democracies, the main debate is not whether socialism should be imposed but how much it can be tolerated in a society that allows people to amass wealth but then taxes them on how much they earn. Politicians of all parties have learned that people do not have much tolerance of high levels of income tax and, no matter what lip service is paid to ear-marking taxes for the NHS, people simply will not vote for parties they think will raise taxes.
This is why the Labour party in Britain has devised ever more ingenious ways to raise taxes without increasing personal tax rates. This was demonstrated in yesterday’s budget, in which the country’s first female Chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves raised tax without apparently taking more from the wage-packets of ordinary workers. Britain, by the way, has had to wait much longer for a woman chancellor than for a female film director.
Tax rates are now pretty much the same whatever party is in power and certain things are taken for granted, like free healthcare. The main debate is now how much socialism is to be combined with a capitalism economy. Capitalism works better for at increasing prosperity, socialism at distributing it and we are just discussing how much of the latter should be combined with the former. We do this every five years or so in what are called elections.
This is the chance for the ordinary citizen to put a mark against what he or she believes in – and they should take it even if they think all politicians are grasping opportunists. The main job of the politician is to decide how much money can be taken from the average worker to help those who are less well-off. The answer is not much. We may celebrate equality of reward but, when it comes down to it, we seem to prefer equality of opportunity.
Edwin Lerner
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com