Equality, an elusive idea?

George Orwell's satire on communism, Animal Farm, found all animals were equal, however, the pigs decided they were more equal than the other animals and dominated the farm for their own purposes.

If humans are unique then how can we all be equal?

During the first millennium, when, all the world's religions were formulated, equality emerged as an idea. Equality is mostly a human contrivance. In ancient Greece, both Athens, through preventing conspicuous displays of wealth and Sparta, through promoting its citizen-soldier elite to aspire to equality, yet, equality at home meant domination abroad.

In ancient Rome equality before the law was the crucial element of its legal system. Equality was an abstraction independent of ones own real life situation namely slaves. The renaissance promoted equality as a social and political goal. Jean Jacques Rousseau introduced the idea that society could be remade to ensure liberty and equality for all. The French Revolution attempted this great idea but classified citizens based on gender and wealth thereby generating inequalities and domination in the process. From Napoleon to Marx equality is the key moral idea of all forms of socialism. Communists and fascists rejected liberal democracy and social equality yet equality was central to mobilising their followers.

Nietzsche, in On the Genealogy of Morality presents the case for the oppressor, fairness and equality swept the world with the rise of Christianity, he maintains. Nietzsche wants to know why the worthless majority do not shut up and recognise their own inferiority. The strong must impose their will on the masses. Napoleon, Stalin, Trump and Putin, the emergence of far-right fascism, the prevalence of global kleptocracy are very pertinent, with the Nietzsche's version of morality underpinning our so called civilisation. That horrifying reality is starkly visible today.

Fascists in Germany 1933-45 rejected non-equals and so led to the vernichtungslaager. Excluded groups sought equality on the basis of similarity, because, all men are created equal. Slavery, segregation and the campaign for civil rights in the US was linked to the fight for equality and identity which emerged with the feminism of the 1960s. Today's equality is sought on the basis of difference, a utopian departure from previous understanding of the term. Today, equality is an insistence on the right to diversity which is paradoxical.

In the unequal societies of our unequal world the hypocrisy, the hopes and dreams that lie behind an idea of great importance are revealed. There is much more conflict about equality than we might think.

Source:- Irish Times August 2024