A BELIEF IN INEQUALITY

Do you feel the “Bern?”  Think of it; we have a serious candidacy for the president of the United States, a self-professed socialist.  Some time ago in this blog, I reviewed the various views – I called them orientations – Americans have expressed about equality; some of this posting replicates part of that previous entry.  I did so at the time to set the context for what I was about to present; that is, an explanation of the critical theory construct.  That construct is what many educators offer as an alternative to the prevailing construct, natural rights.  It is a view that relies, to varying degrees, on Marxist ideas (read, socialist ideas).  If you want to see what socialists favor in the current context, look up the website:  Truth Out.  Or check out what one of its most famous spokespersons has to say; that being Noam Chomsky.  Now, not all of those who consider themselves espousing critical theory are full-fledged socialists.  Heck, if you favor Social Security or Medicare or even the Affordable Health Care Act, you are to some degree a socialist.  But when you claim to be a socialist, one can assume that your attachment to socialist ideas and ideals goes beyond supporting Social Security.  For example, Bernie Sanders wants to adopt a Medicare for all approach to health care (something I admit to supporting, but understand or believe our country is not ready to accept).  Anyway, I believed back then – when I wrote about it initially – that it would be helpful to take a somewhat historical stroll and look at the different views about equality Americans have supported during our past.  Why?  Because for critical theorists, the trump value is equality.  To understand critical theorists or Bernie Sanders, it is helpful to see where they fall when compared to this varied past.  In general, such a review today will be helpful as we embark on our current presidential cycle.  Therefore, I will provide a renewed accounting of those views.

Starting with the nation's beginnings, I can guarantee you that what the founding fathers believed equality to be is not what most of us consider it to be today.  Our view of this societal attribute has changed and as a result, certain views of equality have sprung up, flourished for a while, and then faded into obscurity.  There have been five general orientations regarding equality and not all of them are supportive of what anyone would consider equality to be.  In fact, each can be viewed as a different way of defining what the relevant worth of individual human beings is.  These orientations have been reflected in the political culture prevalent during the different eras of our history.  The orientations are genetic elitism, earned elitism, equal condition, regulated condition, and equal result.  In general, I list these orientations in this order for a reason:  the first, genetic elitism, is the furthest from socialist thought.  The last reflects socialist thought.  Most of us today have adopted one of the orientations that lies between these two extremes.

This posting will look at genetic elitism.  To begin with, this view was most explicitly expressed during the early years of our nation.  By “expressed” I don’t mean speeches and published accounts.  What we know about this view is from personal records (diaries and letters) and interestingly, from those who spoke against the view.  This includes Thomas Jefferson.  Generally, the position held that anyone who enjoys superior human assets (e. g., intelligence, physical dexterity, humor, etc.) does so due to some condition of birth or genetic makeup.  The logical extension of such a belief is the role family plays in determining who is so gifted.  If influenced by this thinking, one easily concludes that certain families are the source of our elites and that members of such families should enjoy above normal considerations in society in the form of status, wealth, material possessions, etc.  This might and usually does include political privileges.  The belief might include support for an aristocratic class – a class that is usually based on family and any privileges the advantaged hold can be passed on to descendants.  The resulting power distribution system or class system is called a caste system – a system in which class designations are inherited.

My identification of these orientations is derived from my reading of American history and, in the case of genetic elitism, I believe the general assumptions of the Federalist Party in the early 1800s, to a great degree, illustrate “genetic elitism.”   One can conclude that the apparent attachment to this view led to the demise of the Federalist Party, but that is not to say that forms of genetic elitism disappeared from our political landscape.

To the sensitivities of most people, we can view this orientation as the most removed from equality; it is a view in favor of inequality.  As such, genetic elitism (along with earned elitism, the topic of my next posting) might sound foreign to most of us today; it, you might say, is the most egregious form of elitism.  We, it can be said, have “advanced” beyond such ideas.  Or have we?  Listen to arguments that spring up periodically and we can hear the remnants of this elitist view. 

Early in our history, as I just pointed out, there were prominent Americans who wished to establish an aristocratic society.  As I also pointed out, while there is little in the literature that demonstrates this support directly, one can deduce it from what many prominent Americans wrote in opposition to it.  Let me point out a quick distinction made during our early history.  Thomas Jefferson,[1] among others, pointed out the difference between an artificial aristocracy – genetic elitism – and a natural aristocracy.  The type of aristocracy I am presently delineating is, in Jefferson’s lexicon, the artificial type.  This promotes the interest of the wealthy, especially as it is concentrated in the hands of the very few, the rich elites, whose families had been able to accumulate great wealth.  In a land that we now know was attempting to establish a republic, how one justifies such accumulation becomes a strident issue.  There needed to be, in an otherwise hostile natural environment of a frontier, a rationalization for it; that is, a belief or set of assumptions that would justify both the existence of such wealth among so few and the maintenance of such an arrangement.  For some among the upper classes, genetic elitism provided such a rationalization.

More specifically, in terms of politics, the question was always:  on what basis should leaders be chosen?  There seemed to be two observations that plagued our ancestors in their attempts to establish a more democratic society.  One was the observation that common people had a difficult time identifying truly talented and principled men to be appointed or elected to administer power (note the sexism and perhaps the timeless quality of this concern).  The other observation was that wealth did not guarantee a person would be talented and principled in holding that power.  While this challenged the establishment of an aristocracy, the one thing generally believed among the wealthy was that the likelihood of a person having such leadership qualities was being a member of the upper class and that that, in turn, was primarily due to natural forces in one way or another.  With such thinking, genetic factors seemed reasonable to some.

To explain further:  an important question was asked in trying to determine how best to choose leaders:  were these qualities which led to or enabled one to be a leader and/or wealthy inbred or were they acquired through effort, industry, and relevant experiences – also seen as reflecting natural forces?  While probably antagonistic to republican values, there were those who believed these qualities were inbred.  Such a belief makes it easier to justify existing wealth distribution; it simply reflects the way nature or God created us.  Don't be confused by the language, though; this view of inbred superiority was what Jefferson saw as artificial elitism.  Natural elitism, on the other hand, reflected a belief or assumption that those who are qualified to hold power become evident to their fellow citizens and will emerge when those so talented and virtuous are simply allowed to do their thing – they don't need special laws and designations to secure their leadership.  This Jeffersonian view will be the topic of the next posting.  My present concern is the “artificial” version of elitism, genetic elitism.

Genetic elitists initially tended to cling to traditional ideas of Europe which usually assumed class was that determining factor.  Among these elites, the belief prevailed that it was the quality of the family from which a person came that predominately determined the worth of someone.  If you have the opportunity, see the first season of Downton Abbey – the TV series – in which plot lines demonstrate how such beliefs were accepted.  This was a feudal idea that was supported by inheritance laws in which the oldest son inherited all the accumulated wealth of a family.    This practice is known as primogeniture.  But in a frontier nation, such as that which characterized our early history, the idea had very limited appeal.  There was too much in the struggle for survival which questioned assumptions of family superiority and viewed any concern being squandered over family origins as counterproductive to the challenges before the nation.

Through the years, though, what seems to have had more resonance and lasting power among genetic elitists were factors such as nationality, race, and, oh yes, gender.  The strength of these other designations as bases for elite status has led to the paltry history our nation has had with immigrant groups and African-Americans, especially as demonstrated through the institution of slavery and our record in limiting women's rights.  We see evidence of this perspective through many social movements such as that exemplified by the establishment of the American Breeders' Association.  This group dedicated itself to such discriminatory efforts as to “... investigate and report on heredity in the human race, and emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood.”[2]  Early in the twentieth century, the practice of eugenics was promoted in several states in which sterilization was performed on those who were deemed inferior due to mental disorders or other infirmities.  This included such “infirmities” as promiscuity.  Names of prominent Americans who supported these ideas, at least to some degree, included President Theodore Roosevelt and Alexander Graham Bell (a founding member of the American Breeders' Association).  Of course, one can also add to this form of elitist thinking and practice the entire history of discrimination against African-Americans and other minorities.

This, then, is how our first listed orientation concerning equality manifested itself in American history.  The genetic elitism orientation, while attacked by the likes of Jefferson (who still was able to rationalize the ownership of slaves) and Adams at the beginning of our republic – at least as it was defined by European forms of elitism – was not totally dismissed by generations to follow.  If you want a dramatic rendition of this line of thought during the 1800s, I suggest you watch the movie, Gangs of New York, in which the character played by Daniel Day-Lewis voices antagonism toward immigrants which reflects a belief in the inbred inferiority of the Irish.

What would a person believe if he or she adopted this orientation?  Here is a list of beliefs such an orientation would hold:

1.     Some people are just better than others due to the aptitudes with which they are born.

2.     Those in society who show higher levels of inbred talent should be considered exceptional and given more privileges.

3.     People who are born with higher abilities should be given first opportunities to secure desired employment.

4.     Society should be set up so that those with inborn abilities and intelligence should be given advantages in acquiring desired things.  This includes public policy.

5.     People born into “good families” – or other advantaged groupings – are to be given an assumed advantage due to their genetic superiority.

How these beliefs are held by a people or an individual depends, at least in part, on the historical circumstances in which they lived.  As stated above, these beliefs were initially transferred to our land from the old world, Europe, with its caste social order.  One thing seems to be true:  people who hold such beliefs seem to include themselves in the elite population.

Of course, this orientation seems the most removed from what we generally believe equality to be.  To our credit, most of our history has been marked by the struggle waged against such beliefs.  The historian Gordon S. Wood writes:

That the Americans [of the founding generation] would come to perceive correctly their relation to the state was not simply a matter of faith.  The revolutionary change in the structure of political authority involved in their adoption of republicanism was to be matched and indeed ultimately sustained by a basic transformation of their social structure.  Henceforth their society would be governed, as it had not been in the past, by the principle of equality – a principle central to republican thinking, the very “life and soul” … of republicanism.[3]

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[1] See Thomas Jefferson's letter to John Adams in Cappon, L. J. (ed.). (1959). The Adams-Jefferson letters:  The complete correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams.  Chapel Hill, NC:  The University of North Carolina Press.  Specifically look at letter from Jefferson to Adams, October 28, 1813, pp. 387-392.

[2] See Kimmelman, B. A. The American Breeders' Association: Genetics and eugenics in an agricultural context, 1930-13. Sage Journal Online: http://sss.sagepub.com/content/13/2/163 .

[3]Wood, G. S. (1998). The creation of the American republic 1776-1787. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. Quotation on p. 70.  This seminal work was originally published in 1969.  Emphasis added, indicating that a change from a more elite social perspective needed to be accomplished.  That is an ongoing process.