Egalitarianism

The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal." But what happens after these people are created? Are they still provided with equal opportunities to attain the "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? Egalitarians are individuals who are devoted to the proposition of keeping men (and women) equal long after their creation. There are various types of egalitarianism addressing different types of inequalities. It seems to me that there are a number of significant inequalities in our society today. Four types of inequalities which I consider to be apparent in the United States are economic, political, civil, and social inequalities.

In the United States, the economic inequality, or the unequal distribution of wealth, is startling. According to inequality.org and the Economic Policy Institute, "The richest one percent of U.S. households now owns 34.3 percent of the nation's private wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent." The top 10% of the people in the United States own 71% of the wealth. That is a striking inequality and indicates the level of concentrated wealth and power in the United States.

Economic egalitarianism is based on the principle that each and every person in a society has equal standing and equal opportunity in the realm of economic wealth and power. In a more egalitarian society, the strikingly unequal distribution of wealth seen in our society, with an enormous amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a very small minority of the population, would be much lessened. The poor would be helped and made richer, and the rich individuals and entities would still remain very well-off but not to the point of the present ludicrous concentration of opulence. The key, though, here is not to target the rich but to extend a hand to pull up and out those who are currently suffering from poverty, desolation, and despair. In an egalitarian society, no one would be poor to the point of desolation, and no one would be rich to the point of disgusting opulence, monopolizing a huge amount of the resources of society. I think that increasing economic equality will lead to a more generally healthy economy and nation (a greater number of people will be happy and content with money to save and spend); that furthering the cause of economic egalitarianism will help to eliminate both poverty and severe concentration of wealth and power.

Economic inequality leads to political inequality, the second type of inequality that I mentioned. I say this for two reasons: (1) the ones who can afford to donate the most money to political campaigns achieve the most influence in the government; and (2) political and financial elites are often the same people because of the connection between money and politics (and the need for millions of dollars to win an election), so financial elites often get elected to political office. Consequently, the wealthy and the corporations achieve greater influence in our government than the masses of the people. That is an example of political inequality, the disproportionate and unequal distribution of power.

Political egalitarianism is based on the principle that each and every citizen in a society has equal political power and influence. This indicates that, in a more egalitarian society, direct democracy, in which each citizen has just one vote, would be used. The United States is not a direct democracy. First of all, it uses an "electoral college" rather than a national popular vote to determine its President of the United States, and secondly, it is an indirect democracy in the way that the citizens elect representatives who will make policy decisions for them (instead of the citizens directly making policy decisions themselves with such a proposal as the National Initiative for Democracy). I think that furthering the cause of political egalitarianism will do much to further this grand experiment of democracy in human governance that our forefathers embarked upon centuries ago.

But, as for the present, high-minded ideals give way to cold reality. Recollect the statistic that I quoted previously, that a mere 10% of the people in this nation control the vast majority, 71%, of the wealth. The bottom 90% only owns 29% of the wealth. And, as economic inequality breeds political inequality, so this bottom 90% mass of the citizenry has greatly lessened influence in the government and the wealthiest 10% of citizens and corporations have greatly increased, although decidedly undemocratic influence. This disparity in the influences of particular groups upon the government, I believe, makes it so that the priorities in government are skewed and wrongly organized. The civil and social rights of the People are neglected and destroyed, while the rights of corporations are closely guarded. I will provide a recent example of this. Last year, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 2008 was passed by a Democratic Congress. This bill provided immunity for telecommunications companies which helped the National Security Agency and the government spy on telephone conversations. The bill ignored the civil liberties of working people while improving the civil liberties of corporations. One of these telecommunications corporations granted immunity by the FISA bill passed in Congress was AT&T; a couple weeks later, should it have been any surprise when the AT&T logo was emblazoned on the official bag of the Democratic National Convention? AT&T was one of the convention's corporate sponsors. The people within the government, using the system of government itself, have compromised individual liberty in favor of corporate liberty, and that is unacceptable, and all due to the influence of rich corporations upon the government. Corruption ensues. Money is power, and power corrupts, and so therefore money corrupts. Particularly when the money is concentrated in so few hands; and this has proved true in the case of the government.

Economic inequality produced political inequality, and, as I have illustrated above, with the gifting of civil liberties to corporations which removing them from individual citizens, political inequality produces civil inequality (or inequality in the realm of civil liberties). Inequality builds upon itself. Inequality anywhere is a threat to equality everywhere, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr. Look back in history and you will see examples of how this inequality compounds upon itself. People shipped from Africa to America centuries ago (presumably not wealthy people, as it would probably have been troublesome to drag rich princes and such onto a slave ship) were ripped from their native lands and enslaved and made desolate by rich landowners in America. They had no political influence and were not granted freedom from slavery, let alone any other human rights, in the United States until a terrible civil war made it exceedingly necessary, for the survival of the nation, to abolish slavery. These individuals, in the difficult climb up from slavery and desolation, were still fighting for equal civil rights one hundred years after slavery had been abolished, and being equal socially in the eyes of American society would take even longer than that. Until then, African Americans suffered from the prejudices brought by social inequality.

Social inequality, the fourth and final inequality that I mentioned in the beginning of this article, is the inequality of persons or groups in the eyes of a society. This is different from civil inequality, as that is the inequality of persons or groups in the laws of a government. (One modern example is that of GLBT rights; civil unions only provide a measure of civil equality, as in the laws of government, while not providing equality in the eyes of the society itself by allowing GLBT individuals to marry just as heterosexual couples would.) Social inequality is much more fluid and much more difficult to lessen and eradicate than civil inequality. The entire enlightenment level of a society has to improve for social inequality to disappear; it can’t be dealt with by simply writing up a law to change it. Increasing economic equality will increase political equality, which in turn will increase civil equality and social equality over time.

I believe that these egalitarian philosophies of de-concentrating and making more equal economic and political power are good and necessary to advancing the progress of our nation, addressing increasing inequalities in American society, and creating a more equal and democratic society which truly exemplifies the principle that all people are created equal, with equal opportunities for self-betterment and contribution to their country and the world.