Equality between people: Ideal or pernicious delusion?

Author: Stefan Kichev

For as long as there have been political debates, representatives of the left and the right have been constantly claiming that they are the true advocates of freedom and justice, while at the same time fervently insisting that the other side preaches the opposite. This is, of course, possible, since these are two different worldviews that rest on different assumptions about reality. From these assumptions is derived the need for an ethical system that can navigate life in a social structure, justifying or not an action as just and right. At least, this is how it should be in a society that offers political pluralism and freedom of speech. If it is not happening, then there is clearly a problem that needs to be addressed, but we will return to this in a moment.

An example of what we are describing is that according to the left, all people are inherently equal and their main motive that involves them in political action is their desire for a society that embodies equality and therefore (according to them) justice. Based on this premise, they argue in favor of state redistribution of wealth, seeing it as a vital action that leads to more equality between people in the present.

A quote from economist Henry C. Simons sums this up eloquently:

"The case for drastically increasing taxes must rest on the equality case—on the ethical or aesthetic postulate that the current distribution of wealth and income reveals a degree of inequality that is distinctively evil or unpleasant."

Proceeding from this, it would follow that the right must view people as implicitly unequal and different, and one would expect the intelligentsia of the right to justify precisely such a view of human nature as the only one consistent with justice. For if state intervention in the economy is justified by the ethical system of the left, according to which equality is the highest ideal, then reducing state intervention and reducing/terminating the redistribution of wealth should be justified from a right-wing perspective, because it will lead to more inequality. This, of course, if we assume that inequality and human difference is a prerequisite of the right, according to which it acts and views the world.

And if the left can claim that their ideal of equality is crowned with the laurel wreath of justice, then the right should claim the same about its opposite - human inequality.

It is clear that one of the two sides is correct and one of the two premises corresponds to human nature, while the other is inherently wrong. However, the problem is different and it arises even in the debate between the two sides.

We see nothing of the sort on the right today, for the most part, least of all in the politicians who claim to represent it. Instead, a defeatist mindset has long since taken hold, allowing the left to take the morally superior position of “just but idealistic,” while its opponents are content with the justification of practicality they use to support their actions.

Such a strategy is doomed to failure, because the moment you cede the claim to justice to your opponent, you de facto untie his hands to impose his thinking step by step, while hoping that right-wing policies will be allowed to be implemented from time to time, purely for practical reasons. That is, you have lost the battle for truth from the very beginning and have recognized the ideal of the left as the highest moral fulcrum to which we should supposedly strive.

It is not surprising that over the last hundred years we have observed a movement ever further to the left with increasingly egalitarian measures worldwide in politics.

There is also a common, almost contagious phrase that the ideas of the left are " good in theory, but incapable of being enforced " - how we all, if we were not of corrupt nature and prejudice, would embrace with open arms the egalitarian ideal that sees us all equal in a common brotherhood. The validity of a theory is understood by how successful it is in its enforcement in practice, and if a theory does not work in practice and leads to negative consequences, it will be because it is wrong and does not correspond to the specifics of human nature and reality.

But another, much more worrying aspect is the abstention, with few exceptions, from criticizing this egalitarian ideal, which nowadays is universally accepted as moral and right. We hear it everywhere in the media, political manifestos, rallies, as well as in the constitutions of most Western countries. Even when we hear “inequality” it instinctively acquires a negative connotation in our heads and if something leads to inequality, then that thing must be wrong and unjust.

By few exceptions, we mean that in our recent history there have been thinkers who have fervently criticized and denounced the very idea of human equality. Among them is the genius Murray Rothbard, who, with his surgically precise manner of expression and unreserved logical consistency of argumentation, gradually stripped all supposed garments of truth and veracity from this egalitarian ideal.

In this essay, he presents most of the arguments against the left's thesis, and here we will go through some of them.

First of all, what is equality anyway?
If object A and object B share the same height, then we can conclude that they are both equal in that attribute. It follows that equality means when two or more objects are identical in some attribute. Thus, the only way we can be completely equal in relation to each other is if we do not differ in every single attribute we possess. The result, taken to its logical conclusion, would be a world of faceless, characterless, identical human-like beings who are devoid of any diversity in their talents, tastes, preferences, and physical attributes.

And of course, the method for achieving such a world cannot fail to include the only possible action that would lead to such results - a massive violent equalization through the state apparatus, in which the diversity of people must be sacrificed in the name of the egalitarian cause, ultimately leading us to an end that is just for all.

We don't need to imagine exactly what such a fabulous experiment would look like, as writers have already described such a dystopia quite well - Kurt Vonnegut in his Harrison Bergeron recounts:

“The year was 2081, and at last everyone was equal. They were equal not only before God and the law. They were equal in every way. No one was smarter than anyone else. No one looked better than anyone else. No one was stronger or faster than anyone else. All of this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution and the tireless vigilance of the agents of the Comptroller General of the United States.”

He also describes, in a witty manner, adorned with artistic imagination, the "violent equalization" required for such an experiment:

“Hazel had a normal average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, whose intelligence was well above average, had a little mental disorder radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to the government transmitter, which sent out a sharp sound every twenty seconds to prevent people like George from using their minds.”

All of us, Rothbard writes, “are instinctively horrified by such stories,” precisely because we are deeply aware that people differ in their essence, and that this is a fact of both history and biology. We are aware that people are not uniform, uniform beings with aspirations that do not differ in degree from one another—but that it is precisely the peculiar distribution of talents, skills, abilities, and physical endowments that marks our human race that distinguishes us from the ordered, equal ants that live egalitarianly, without differences among themselves, in their anthills, each performing its own action, each devoid of uniqueness and easily interchangeable with another.

It cannot be otherwise, and the freedom that allows each individual to objectify their differences is the inexorably necessary prerequisite for unfolding the potential inherent in each of us. And if only through freedom can we manifest our differences, it follows that only through deprivation of freedom can we blunt and destroy them.

Totalitarian measures and complete control over people's lives would be needed to eradicate all naturally occurring distinguishing marks and qualities specific to each person in order to ensure the total equality of the human race. But even then, Rothbard writes again, we would hope that the individual spirit of man and his desire for freedom would prevail over any tyranny designed for such purposes.

It is clear from everything that the egalitarian ideal runs counter to human nature and even aims to thwart and destroy the potential of each individual to surpass their peers – it deeply despises the possibility of geniuses who, with their brilliant minds, could add to all the achievements of our civilization.

Such thinking, taken to its logical conclusion, conceals a fundamental error, the consequences of which we are still reaping today. Because if the possibility of some people surpassing their "brothers" through their abilities is denied, there remains one category of person who, as expected, egalitarians elevate into a cult and consider him the bearer of all cures.

This is the average man, the mass man a la José Ortega y Gasset, or as the French Catholic thinker Ernest Hello describes him, homo mediocre. The one who is not distinguished by anything, does not stand out in anything, nor does he have similar aspirations. He has no contact with the past or plans for the future, he lives his life, carried away mostly by the trends of mass appetite and the momentary, fleeting pleasure that leaves nothing behind.

The left praises him, believing him to be sincere in his essence, devoid of the prejudices of higher education and culture, devoid of the “corrupt” economic interest of successful business or the duplicity of political experience. As HL Mencken wittily noted, who defined him as “the democratic man” –

"Democratic man began as the perfect being, full of ineffable virtues and charming defects, like Rousseau's noble savage, dressed in a frock coat and overalls, brought out of the tropical jungles to shame the rulers and masters of civilized lands."

Such an understanding of man necessarily brings with it an anti-intellectualism necessary to justify it. An anti-intellectualism whose culmination was reached in Bulgaria, when our Prime Minister frankly told the voters – “I am simple, you are simple, we will understand each other.”

But politics is something extremely complex and intricate, in which numerous problems are intertwined, as the monumental Eric Von Ledin notes -

“The serious problems troubling the world today require at least a superficial understanding of history, geography, economics, physics, international and constitutional law, foreign languages, military and naval science, agriculture, biology, racial psychology, diplomatic relations, and many other subjects besides these.”

Relying solely on our romantic notion of this middle-aged man who is capable of understanding all the nuances of the world political situation, solely through his “well-intentioned” ignorance and straightforward purity of his demands, is, to put it mildly, doomed to failure. In this way, state affairs are deprived of seriousness, education, intelligence and are transformed into a parade of whims, airy ideas and accommodation to the irrational demands of the crowd. This leads to serious consequences, marked by a counterproductive and dangerous unpredictability of state policy, especially as regards the economic agents who produce all the goods and services used by the citizenry.

HL Mencken's wit can serve again –

"This idea, as I suggest, has its roots in the poetic imagination of gentlemen of the upper classes, who, overcome by sentimentality and embarrassed by the fact that the donkey was overloaded and exhausted, proposed to reform transportation by putting him in the seat."

The right represents the complete opposite of this worldview, which is unfortunately the dominant one at the moment, and it is time to loudly assert its true nature.

There has been a long-standing trend of the center of the political space moving ever further to the left. This is a direct consequence of the political-philosophical capitulation of the mainstream right-wing status quo to its opponents over the past decades. And this trend will continue to grow until we fundamentally challenge the cornerstone of leftist thought that marks and justifies their every policy and action.

We will conclude with a statement inspired by the grand work Liberty or Equality by the respected Austrian scholar Eric Von Ledin –

Either we will be equal, or we will be free.

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