The collapse of "equality of opportunity"

[Mr. Piccolo]

The Atlantic has an article by Derek Thompson about how the wealthy spend their wealth to make sure that their children stay rich. This is in stark contrast with poorer people who must spend most of their time and money on immediate concerns. As Thompson writes:

Rich couples live in richer districts, read more to their kids, send them to better schools, hook them up with better internships, slide them into better entry-level jobs (or, better yet, into the family business), and finally pass down their insured and well invested wealth. Even education, the great American equalizer, makes for a poor equalizer. And it's not only because wealthy teenagers are more likely to go to school. Young people born to rich families who don't go to college are 2.5 times more likely to end up in the richest quartile than young people born to poor families who do go college. Wealth sticks, and nothing enriches like richness.

Now, for most Leftists this is old news, and perhaps does not even warrant an article. However, this information appears to be pretty disastrous for liberals/progressives. Conservatives will likely just write the advantages of the rich off as being the product of their superior morality and/or genetics. To the conservative mind, this superiority makes any advantages of the wealthy natural and just.

However, for liberals things look pretty bad for their efforts to reduce inequality through "equality of opportunity" and education-based meritocracy. As the article points out, even the less-educated children of the rich do better than their non-rich, educated counterparts. Obviously nepotism and connections are a big part of the story. I am sure many people can tell stories about the dull son of the boss who ends up in a top-level position at their company because of who his father is.

Since the rich can easily evade or rollback more radical measures such as high progressive taxes, and the current favorite liberal policy measure (education, education, education!) is completely ineffectual at reducing inequality, it looks like the "equality of opportunity" mantra should be discarded.

Do comrades here think these developments can create an opening for the Left, at least when it comes to convincing people about the impossibility of reforming capitalism? Most of the old theoretical and policy supports of liberalism/progressivism seem to be collapsing.

You can read the full article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...richer/389871/

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Equality of opportunity (in other words, 'social mobility') has to be viewed as a function of the 'legitimisation' task of capital's political wing. In other words, when economic circumstances allow, legal and political measures are enacted by politicians to encourage workers to enrich themselves, thereby putting the idea into our heads that anybody can make it rich and happy under capitalism - the American Dream in action.

So, should we hark back to this idea of restoring 'equality of opportunity'? Probably not, for two reasons.

Firstly, despite the pleading of some progressives, history has not progressed in a linear way, incrementally improving living standards and happiness for workers. Every epoch in history is characterised by continuing change, to greater and lesser extents, and of different natures, and most importantly with different results. The re-establishment of Church authority in England after the Romans left, for example, had a cataclysmic effect on England, both in terms of the output of intellectual and philosophical ideas, and in terms of the lives of ordinary people, their access to proper medical care and so on.

Secondly, and more important for an ideologically committed socialist, is that equality of opportunity - both because of the non-linear nature of history's progression, and because of the nature of 'social mobility' itself under capitalism - is a facade. It is common sense that, for social mobility to exist, there must always exist rich and poor. If everyone was rich, there would be no social mobility, for there would be no need for it. The very idea of 'social mobility' encourages ravenous, debilitating, de-humanising competition between workers looking for ways to begin accumulating that ever more snitch-like (yes, Harry Potter referenced!) man-made resource - capital. I think that, as socialists, it is our job to not encourage the idea that greater equality of opportunity, or social mobility or whatever you want to call it, offers any sort of stable, long-term solution to the many political, social, and economic problems that capitalism creates.

Rather, I think that we must argue for a society in which social mobility and equality of opportunity are not necessary to fight for, since we should be fighting for a society that guarantees a fair enough distribution of the wealth we create, and a democratic enough control over the wealth/resource creation process, that we do not have to rely on crumbs from the table for a tiny portion of 'socially mobile' workers, but that actually in rich countries especially, we produce and distribute and own in a way that means nobody - as should be the case - goes without a reasonable standard of living and the means with which to live an enjoyable and dignified life.

[Mr. Piccolo]

Secondly, and more important for an ideologically committed socialist, is that equality of opportunity - both because of the non-linear nature of history's progression, and because of the nature of 'social mobility' itself under capitalism - is a facade. It is common sense that, for social mobility to exist, there must always exist rich and poor. If everyone was rich, there would be no social mobility, for there would be no need for it. The very idea of 'social mobility' encourages ravenous, debilitating, de-humanising competition between workers looking for ways to begin accumulating that ever more snitch-like (yes, Harry Potter referenced!) man-made resource - capital. I think that, as socialists, it is our job to not encourage the idea that greater equality of opportunity, or social mobility or whatever you want to call it, offers any sort of stable, long-term solution to the many political, social, and economic problems that capitalism creates.

Yes, a major part of the problem with "equality of opportunity" or social mobility is that it needs "losers" to exist. It encourages arrogance among those workers that "make it" and arrive at some form of relative affluence, while looking down on poorer workers that did not become affluent. The social mobility mantra really divides workers and sets them against each other.

Personally, I find many affluent progressives to be even more dismissive and "classist" than many conservatives, so their emphasis on creating a socially mobile, educated meritocracy to lord it over other workers is not surprising.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Real "equality of opportunity" is synonymous with maximum inheritance taxation (and compliance) and the absence of child poverty.

[tuwix]

However, for liberals things look pretty bad for their efforts to reduce inequality through "equality of opportunity" and education-based meritocracy.

It was useless effort from the very beginning. It's just impossible as free market or justice in capitalism. P.-J. Proudhon two centuries ago has noted that when there is property, there is no equality. Now, as we know more, we could precise that when there is private property, there is no equality, but "equality of opportunity" is just poor attempt to deny that undeniable fact. Bourgeois societies can guarantee a right for free lawyer, but richer ones will always have advantage because they can afford better lawyers. Equality of opportunity is just fiction, always was and always will.