Whoever accuses the left of pursuit of equality at all costs will quickly hear the correction: “We accept the differences between people, also in income and property. These differences should simply not be too big“Thus, the left formulates something that can be considered a consensus of modern society: the differences are permissible, but what is too much is unhealthy.
This is expressed in a slogan that there should be no “billionaires”. This postulate was first reported by the American left -wing politician Berni Sanders, and now also became the hallmark of the Die Linke party in Germany.
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Economist Murray N. Rothbard opposed this egalitarianism in his essay “egalitarianism as a rebellion against nature”:
“This means, of course, that the equality of all people – the ideal of equality – can only be achieved if all people are completely uniform in every respect, completely identical. The egalitarian world would have to be a world of horror – a world without a face and identical beings, devoid of any individuality, diversity or exceptional creativity“.
The authors of the utopian novels were possessed by the idea of equality. In almost all utopian projects, the private ownership of the means of production (and sometimes even all private property) is lifted, as was the case in the novel “Utopia” by Englishman Thomas More from 1517 in the novel of the Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanelli from 1643 about the “city of the sun” almost all men and women wore the same clothes. In Christianopolitans, only two types of clothing are provided in the utopian project of the German theologian and writer Johann Valentina Andreae – in all cases in white or gray. Also residential buildings in many utopias look equally.
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Equality as a state action
The mirror reflection of such utopias were dystopian – such as “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. In his story from 1961, all people are completely equal to the state's actions, so that nobody feels better than others. Intelligent people must wear the disturbing brain of the equipment in their ears, attractive people are disfigured with masks, and the strong ones are burdened with weights.
Hardly anyone who complains about “social injustice” today would support radical equalization of people, as it was proclaimed in these utopias or stigmatized in dystopias. Almost everyone accepts that there should be differences in income – but, as many adds, these differences should not be “too big”. Just what exactly is “too big”, and what is still acceptable? Many critics of social inequalities indicate that these differences have increased significantly in recent decades – today the manager has been earning much more than it used to be. But was “once” the right measure? Rather not, because many of those who are complaining about too great unevenness today did it also at that time, which they now refer to with nostalgia.
Instead of promoting total equality, a polemic against “too high” unevenness appeared. Let's take a popular slogan about a country where there should not be billionaires. According to the list of billionaires of the Forbes magazine, such countries actually exist – these are the poorest countries of Africa, North Korea and Kuba.
Meanwhile, the percentage of billionaires in Switzerland or Sweden is particularly high. In Sweden, the participation of billionaires in relation to the population is even higher than in the United States. Are people in Cuba and North Korea happier than those in Switzerland or Sweden?
Anyone who once accepts the argument that social inequality itself is not bad, but it should not be “too big”, this must answer the question of who actually decides what “too much” unevenness means. Often, the border “too much” begins just above what you have: for multimillionaire Berni Sanders, billionaires are salt in the eye. For university professor Christian Neuhäuser, who in his book “Wealth as a moral problem” postulates a ban on wealth, this border begins just above the professor's salary.
Rainer Zelitann is a historian and sociologist. His dystopian novel “2075: When Beauty Becomes a Crime” will be released in May.
