Democratic equality

America divided: the politics of inequality by Godfrey Hodgson (archived at EB)

Since this author and others live in the United States, it is understandable that they would talk and think in terms of "democracy" -- if they were to talk about aristocracy, they would lose readers. (Only paleoconservatives or traditional conservatives would be susceptible to supporting a historical aristocracy.)

From the essay:

The persistence of large-scale unemployment is a standing affront to another of America’s core ideas: that, as the country’s founding document says, all men are created equal. True, the signatories of the Declaration of Independence were here pledging fidelity to a natural-rights principle than thinking of absolute or even relative economic equality.

Classical liberalism works to the advantage of the haves, while modern liberalism is a reaction to that, and can be understood as a attempt, however misguided, to protect the have-nots? Each focuses on equality, but different sorts. Still, the author is reading an incorrect understanding of equality into the Declaration of Independence. I believe that this sort of equality is not discussed by Aristotle or Plato as a claim in support of democracy -- rather it is the fact that one is free that entitles one to participate in ruling. Those are free are equal in this respect, and this equality suffices for their claims to have a share in government.

It seems to me that the author, like other Democrats, presuppose the continuation of a system predicated on infinite economic growth. There is a disparity of wealth, but that number (personal or family wealth) taken in abstraction from living conditions, standards of living, and so on, can be misleading, and it ignores other forms of poverty (spiritual and social poverty).

Sometimes the difference between "conservatives" and "liberals" is stated as an opposition between equality of opportunity and equality of results. But if both violate distributive justice (and maybe even commutative justice), that does not prevent the distributist from advocating that all own the means of production. It does not preclude the distributist from recognizing that some may have more at the beginning of production, or end up with more after sales. But there will be a limit to the difference that is possible?

It may be that not all are able to exercise complete economic freedom, as defined by Belloc. But even those who are employed in the service of social and political superiors can have households that produce much of the goods that they consume. (As I suspect was the case in in the manor system and medieval feudalism in general?)