Capitalism and Caste: Artificial vs. Natural

Part I

Capitalism & Caste: Melting Untouchability in India

In what has become known as India, the caste system of Hinduism has for millennia served as the template for the socio-economic ordering of people into family-based groups. By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the economic liberalization policy put in place in 1991 to replace the stagnant “import-substitution” domestic-favoring model of economic development had enabled some people in the lower castes to vault into social acceptability by virtue of what The New York Times calls “the newest god in the Indian pantheon: money.” Given the advent of the prosperity gospel in Christianity and the associated eclipse of the “camel getting through the eye of a needle” much-earlier-hegemonic association of wealth with greed, a similar statement could be made with regard to the Trinity (see “Godliness and Greed” and "God's Gold," both available at Amazon).
Gandhi is said to have remarked, “I used to think that truth was God. I have realized that God is truth.” This is a very profound statement, which must be unpacked to be understood and appreciated. “God” refers here to what in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is called revelation (God revealing itself through scripture). In Hinduism, the basic scriptures are known as the Vedas—the commentary thereof is known as the Upanisads (which are quite rich in terms of religious philosophy). The Vedas contain directions for social practices, such as concern widows (e.g., Sati (throwing oneself on the burning funeral pire of one’s husband) or going into a widows home, which often involved prostitution) and Dalits, or “untouchables” (e.g., not permitted to worship in the temple, or use public drinking fountains—sound familiar?).
Gandhi was saying that he used to accept all that was in revelation—including social practices concerning widows and untouchables—as truth (i.e., as unquestionably valid, or sacred). Observing the suffering of widows and untouchables, he came to realize that to be valid, revelation must itself “pass the truth test.” Suffering of the innocent (Christians may recall the suffering servant motif) as a direct and sole result of a directive in scripture could not be of truth, Gandhi concluded. Truth, in other words, has a higher calling than does revelation. In other words, what humans record as their revelations of the divine should be subject to truth itself, rather than defining (i.e., limiting) it. Even if what the religions record as revelation is informed by a divine source or field, the “informing” must pass through the imperfect (i.e., distortive) atmosphere of the human instruments that do the writing and copying. Therefore, “God is truth” means that truth is rightfully a criterion to be applied to revelation.  That which doesn’t pass the “smell test” can rightfully be ignored (I would include a conflict-of-interest criterion to the “smell test”).
The constitution of modern India forbids the old, rather sordid institutional prejudice against widows and the Dalit (which as of this writing number about 200 million). For example, the practice of physical untouchability, which confined Dalits to low-status jobs and social exclusion, is outlawed. Except in some remote areas, Dalits can walk on the same streets as upper-caste Indians, look them in the eye, and drink from the same wells and water fountains.
Even so, as anyone who has stayed in a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn Express owned or operated by a Patel knows, vocational groupings continue to reflect family groupings, or castes. According to the New York Times, “(s)ocial and economic mobility are limited, a product of India’s layers of cultural legacies: the Hindu caste system, the feudal and sometimes racial hierarchies . . ., and the imperial bureaucracy imposed by Britain.” For many Indians still, you do what your father did. The Times reports that “(k)nowledge-based businesses like information technology have attracted large numbers of Brahmins, the traditional learned caste. The business castes tended to focus more on retail and wholesale trade than manufacturing. Messy industries like construction are closer to the traditional occupations of the lowest castes.” That the historical caste of scholars and priests (i.e., the Brahmins) has turned to information technology reflects the new “high priests” in terms of modern Indian values, yet I doubt that contemporary Brahmin scholars and priests view a computer programmer as being at all equivalent. The caste system itself has been truncated by a certain reductionism to business (i.e., oriented to business), given the societal hegemony of business in modern India.
As a brief digression, I want to translate the Hindu caste system into Western society. A learned caste exists in the West, even if that caste has been eclipsed in popular culture by the “professional” sub-caste in the business caste. Even so, scholars and priests in the West correspond to the Indian Brahmin caste. The political caste contains (in decreasing order) imperial, kingdom/state, province/region/county, and local offices. This is so in both India and the West. The business caste in the West contains its own hierarchy, from professionals (physicians, CPA’s and lawyers) to the people who work in the financial services and information technology, and on down to retail managers and finally manufacturers. The worker caste (foreign farm workers being at its bottom) is below the “managerial” sub-caste of the business caste, and the “welfare” or “homeless” caste is perhaps the Western equivalent of the untouchables in India. As in India, the business caste—in particular the professional and managerial sub-castes—has in practice vaulted to being the de facto highest caste in terms of contemporary values. That the Brahmin caste, in having scriptures or treatises as referents that contradict or relativize whatever happens to be the flavor of the month (e.g., “being a professional”), self-consciously transcends or repudiates “professional” values suggests that a basic learned—politics—business order of status (and even class) exists in spite of the apparent societal hegemony of the professionals (in which, not coincidentally, the next-lower business sub-caste, that of the business executive/manager, has claimed membership). Indeed, practically every working adult American who is not a student claims to be a professional (just look at the housing postings on Craigslist). In the U.S., everyone gets to classify oneself as being in the highest sub-caste of business, which in turn is presumed to be the highest caste in the entire system. It is not simply because physicians, public accountants and lawyers can be wealthy; “professional” now conveys a high-class sort of status. So, it would appear there are two new gods in the American pantheon.
In modern India, the “Dalit problem” may reduce in a practical sense to the task of reducing a rather extreme economic inequality, which in itself is dangerous to a representative democracy. Thanks in part to an affirmative action program by the government, Dalits and tribal people have gained in getting an education and procuring government jobs. This is only part of the story, however. Although widening “the gulf between rich and poor,” the economic expansion brought about by the post-1991 liberalization policy allowing foreign direct investment and expanding trade has enabled some Dalits to become wealthy as business practitioners. As a result of both the affirmative action and liberalization policies, the wage gap between other castes and Dalits decreased from 36 percent in 1983 to 21 percent in 2011 (and the education gap has been halved). Twenty-one percent is less than the gap between Caucasian and Black men in the United States in 2011. The social status of Dalits has risen as well. “With their new wealth they have also won a measure of social acceptance,” according to the Times.
According to Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit activist and proponent of capitalism for untouchables, “(b)ecause of the new market economy, material markers are replacing social markers.” This can be generalized to include the self-vaunting of the business caste to the head of the line from third in terms of popular understanding both in India and the West. Prasad implicitly likens India to the West, in fact, by making the following observation: “India is moving from a caste-based to a class-based society, where if you have all the goodies in life and your bank account is booming, you are acceptable.” What of the Brahmin priest or scholar of philosophy who sees through all the vanities in life and appreciates timeless gems that don’t necessary pay a monetary dividend? Is the modern professional society in actuality without class, yet still very hierarchical and unequal? It is indeed part of the role of the scholar and priest to hold this mirror up to the “professionals,” whose niggardly caste does not permit donations to such “lost” causes as that of truth. Am I understood?
As Nietzsche theorizes, the strong can be hoodwinked by the weak who seek to dominate beyond their native pith and ken (e.g., those with an undergraduate degree in Law or Medicine claiming nonetheless a false entitlement to the doctorate—the J.S.D. or D.Sci.M. rather than the LLB/JD or MD prerequisite degrees). Pith, or strength, and ken, or knowledge, may come down in the end to character, out of which real castes naturally form in human relations. What physician is going to party with a scholar who reminds him that his MD is actually an undergraduate degree in a Medical school?—the doctorate being a terminal (highest possible, so not a prerequisite for another degree in the same school/discipline) degree that includes comprehensive (not board) exams and a dissertation-length defended body of original research. What scholar is going to respect a lawyer who cannot be wrong about the LLB (the JD is just another name for that degree) being a doctorate because he or she also has a BA in English? It was student dissatisfaction at around 1900 with the “two B’s” (LLB and BA) that prompted the three lawyers who started new University of Chicago Law School to re-label the LLB program as “JD” (this “D” does not stand for doctorate). In typically American fashion, the marketing gimmick was inexorably taken for substance (because of the convenience) and the misnomer quite understandably became the default rather than recognized as a stubborn category mistake. Substantively, a year or two of basic survey courses and the same time in senior seminars (without even a major!) in the discipline of law does not a doctorate make. Yet this misnomer, and the related one in American medical schools, helped fuel the ascendancy of the “professional” sub-caste of business to the top of the heap, aided by the perennial non-virgin goddess of money.
I contend that the self-vaunting of the “professional” sub-caste in the West is just as squalid (and without foundation) as the historical discrimination against the Dalit in what is now India. Both trajectories violate the ethical principle of desert (i.e., what is deserved) which is related to the principle of fairness. Both “mis-casteings” involve the presumption of knowing more than is actually known in the assigning (and enforcement) of roles. In other words, both are dogmatic, or arbitrary, relative to nature. Rather than looking to capitalism or democracy here, the real lesson is in terms of nature relative to human contrivance. The ancient Greek marble pillars might have been majestic in service to Athena or Poseidon, but green vines would have the last say, as per the painting of the Romantics in the nineteenth century.
Whereas governmental preference and capitalism have enabled an increasing number of Dalits to “join the club” of social acceptance, business and government in the West reinforce the hegemony of the “doctored” professionals who in actuality typically have one (Europe) or two (America) undergraduate degrees. Indeed, kings (raj) and businessmen (as well as Brahmin priests!) in historical India played salient roles in keeping the Dalit in their place as (literally) outcastes. So the value of capitalism and a preferential policy of government should not be over-esteemed in themselves simply because they contributed the upward mobility of some (or many) in the Dalit caste. In the end, above particular economic and political systems as well as historical and even modern societal caste or class systems in which some benefit unduly at the expense of others, lies human character, out of which a rather different, distinctly invisible order of castes naturally unfolds without relying on human intention.

Part II

Nature’s Caste System: Character-Based Clusters

Pushing good characters down for no good reason in a sort of “collective judgment” that applies to an entire group of people—as in the case of the untouchables in the caste system in India—and accepting the false entitlement of “professionals” to membership in the highest caste simply because they tend to be wealthy—as in the case of lawyers and physicians in America—violates the clusters that naturally cohere—like gases that form distinct planets having their own separated orbits—on the basis of character. Being “on one planet,” it is immediately obvious that someone else is on another. In this essay, I attempt to sketch some of the basic mechanisms by which nature’s caste system is sustained and articulate the nature of the differences that occasion there being appreciable distance between the clusters.
When a stranger is so rude or presumptuous that all you can do is turn and walk away in utter disbelief, for example, you have run into an alien from one of the outer planets. There are many such creatures communicating with us through Craigslist.
A quick read through the housing section (e.g., room shares, apartments for rent) and many “drama-free” private individuals—self-described “professionals”—can be found making demands right off the bat as they seek to attract (?) a future tenant. In actuality, such people are neither “drama-free” nor “professionals.” Both claims are immediately belied by the manner and content of the writing itself. Such people inhabit a sort of low-class society in which they presume themselves as the elite, or rulers. Astonishingly, the presumption is quite without any hint of second-guessing or shame. “YOU MUST . . . ” written in just this way as an advertisement points to the lack of control they have over their urge to dominate from weakness. Furthermore, they are convinced that they cannot be wrong. Some ask for age and others even bring up religion even though doing so is illegal. “No it’s not!” they would undoubtedly reply. They cannot be wrong. As if by sheer reflex, they must surely take any resistance to their presumption as an insult, even an attack, while they continue to hold themselves as blameless. How could they be otherwise? This rock-hard mentality naturally exists in its own “low class” caste in part because it is immune from being corrected or healed. The only thing a healthy person can do is keep reading—avoiding contact at any cost. This reaction is natural; it is thus one of the principal means by which nature enforces the clusters based on character.
Although I have met some really very nice people on twitter, that “universe” sometimes resembles a low-caste society of sorts that is populated, unfortunately, by creatures who seem dominated by an innate urge or proclivity to grant themselves the entitlement of being a self-certified expert. This seems particularly the case in religious or political topics. Opinions are routinely declared as if facts. “X is Y.” Seldom is it asked, “Perhaps X can be Y?” Although certainly not everyone who tweets on leadership does so, some of the so-called leadership “coaches” like to declare their opinions as if knowledge. It is like watching a little populist democracy of self-invented theory that presumes itself to be fully valid upon being tweeted!
I have in mind the “coaches” who declare as experts  that “Leadership is X” without even having bothered to read the academic (i.e. not “how to”) literature on the topic. In fact, these “coaches,” or cockroaches as they are otherwise known, even dismiss that literature, confusing their own self-informed (grade-wise?) declaration, “Leadership can’t be taught in a classroom!” (whereas leadership can be taught in a daylong “seminar” or “workshop” held in a hotel ballroom for a nice fee) with the fact that leadership can be understood. That was an actual tweet, by the way—by an “expert.” It does not matter that such “experts” are not scholars; they presume they know better what is possible in a classroom. Their presumption is thus of an encroaching nature, without any limit of restraint. Such creatures tend to presume on a regular basis that they 1) know what they actually do not know, and 2) cannot be wrong about it. They must be from a small, very rocky planet somewhere out past Neptune (a similar species populates my “small” hometown, including its little “professional” elite—an elite that is viewed as such only because a mere 21% of the adult population holds a college degree). Low caste, or class, it turns out, is not necessarily of a low socio-economic (or racial) demographic. This is where the historical Hindu caste system really got it wrong.
Worlds away from “low class” know-it-all attitude—which instantly (and naturally!) relegates a person to a low caste much more than does even the ignorance itself—are the more humble and genuine, flying at a much higher altitude. Such people are open to what they might not know and perhaps they are kind to strangers as a kind of natural default of politeness. If you have been fortunate to have been touched by such a person, you have been touched by a being from a planet closer to the sun. The rest of us do not deserve to be so touched, and we know this. Accordingly, as Nietzsche posits, there is a natural distance that arises between people who differ in terms of character-strength—what he calls noble strength. This is the power of a will that willingly takes on resistance, even and especially within—in self-overcoming.
In Nietzsche’s terms, having the will (and will-power!) to self-overcome one’s own most intransigent internal obstacle—a powerful instinct—proffers the most intense (or powerful) pleasure of power. Having the will and strength to perform such a task on a regular basis (i.e., self-overcoming) naturally builds character (noble strength). In so doing, it naturally separates one from people who take an easier path through life, whether through lack of will, or weakness. In other words, strength of character, an innate quality that I believe a person can strengthen or choose to compromise by will, differs among human beings (no doubt at least in part from upbringing). Such differences constitute the vacuums that inevitably exist between the natural castes that naturally form in the human condition. All other castes, or classes, are dogmatic in the sense that they are arbitrary to that condition.
In expunging the artificial sort such as the Hindu caste system, we should not ignore or dismiss the natural array of castes that we know on a daily basis by means of our natural sentiments of approbation and disapprobation. In fact, David Hume held that such sentiments constitute our recognition of “moral” and “immoral.” Perhaps these terms are but part of a more general sense we naturally have of the subjective distance that exists between natural, character-driven, castes or levels of being human, all too human. We moderns hate to think of humanity in such terms, yet I wager we know it on an all-too-daily basis, as we inexorably interact with others—realizing that some people are naturally closer while insisting that others acknowledge the distance that is—and must be—there.
Even a mere essay reflects and reinforces the natural affinities and distances that account for there being distinct clusters, or castes, in any given human social context. Nietzsche wrote in his Genealogy of Morals that it is not meant to be understood by everyone. Breaching the natural distance as if it were somehow “immoral” could sicken, or infect, the innately stronger. Many of the self-certified “coaches” (i.e., “experts” on leadership), for example, have already dismissed this essay in its entirety, mistaking disdain for disagreement (and ultimately weakness for strength). Sustaining that distance is not only the odious smell of arrogant ignorance; the cockroaches themselves fear being “outed” as phonies by a pest-control guy whom they sense can spray them with the disinfectant of (other-certified) knowledge. The arrogance of cockroaches does not permit them to scatter in the transparency of knowledge, so they tend to naturally keep their distance in the first place.
Far more interesting than the presumption of false entitlement by supercilious “professionals” and the ignorant opinion certifying itself as knowledge by the “coaches” is the notion that differences in the duration and timing of genes that trigger other genes can (along with environmental factors) eventuate in human interaction manifesting as distinct clusters based on something as intangible as character—and much of it without intention! We naturally cohere with some people as though in invisible stickiness were involved, and we just as naturally keep our distance from others as if doing so were simply by instinct. I must admit I have tended not to pay sufficient attention to natural distance and have wound up having to enforce what should have been natural. As imperfect as nature’s caste system is, the historical Hindu attempt to systematize it by group and presumably for all ages to come shows just how far ahead nature is to human intention. Try as we might, we cannot bottle it! For unlike the Hindu variety, natural law does not depend on religious, political and economic institutions for enforcement.

Sources:

Lydia Polgreen, “Scaling Caste Walls With Capitalism’s Ladders,” The New York Times, December 22, 2011. 

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann, trans. and ed. (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

Does Opportunity Justify Economic Inequality?

From 1993 to 2010, the incomes of the richest 1 percent of Americans grew 58 percent while the rest had a 6.4 percent increase.  In 2010, the first year of an economic recovery, the top 1 percent of Americans captured 93% of the income gains. Beyond the danger to the American republics in there being an economic elite so far removed from the vast majority of the population is the question of whether the trend is baleful, economically speaking. It is not clear that even such an income gain being snagged by so few registered in the minds of the general populous as a problem. The key to any concern would seem to be whether opportunity for the many is compromised as a result of extreme economic inequality.

In 2011, inequality was not exactly the top priority of American voters: only 17 percent thought it is extremely important for the government to try to reduce income and wealth inequality, according to a Gallup survey. That is about half the percent who said reigniting economic growth was crucial. However, 29 percent said it was extremely important for the government to increase equality of opportunity. More significant, 41 percent said that there was not much opportunity in America, up from 17 percent in 1998. The question is whether the concurrent increase in economic inequality was viewed as causing the decrease in opportunity. According to David Hume’s naturalist fallacy, a correlation does not itself mean a causal relationship exists. The fact that economic inequality was increasing as opportunity was decreasing does not in itself mean that the increasing inequality was reducing opportunity. There might be a causal relationship, but more is needed to support it than a correlation.

According to the New York Times, comparisons across countries “suggest a fairly strong, negative link between the level of inequality and the odds of advancement across the generations. The link makes sense: a big income gap is likely to open up other social breaches that make it tougher for those lower down the rungs to get ahead. And that is exactly what appears to be happening in the United States, where a narrow elite is peeling off from the rest of society by a chasm of wealth, power and experience.” Additionally, that elite can use its wealth as power to reserve the opportunities itself. For instance, donations to universities (and lobbying government officials) could be used to keep financial-aid-based admissions down to a certain level such that there are plenty of spots available for children of the well-off. Appeals seemingly in the interest of the masses can even be utilized, as in wanting to reduce subsidized student loan programs because students are suffering from too much debt.

In my view, the business-government dynamic is crucial to why increasing economic inequality is harmful both politically and economically. Minimizing the harm to reduced opportunity ignores the injustice that comes with the inequality itself. Wealth can easily be made into power, which in turn can be used in political, economic and societal realms in self-serving ways. The primacy of opportunity assumes that anyone can be rich if he or she just works hard enough. Both on account of the way the system is designed and the differences between people, not everyone will succeed even if given the opportunity.

Furthermore, conditioning one’s objection to economic inequality in society on whether one’s opportunity is affected can be viewed as self-centered as well as rather narrow because one is indifferent to the negative effects of the inequality on others apart from any decreased opportunity as long as one believes that one’s own opportunity is not adversely affected. Put another way, too many Americans are willing to look the other way on how the elite can unfairly use their advantage aside from restricting opportunity. The right of the elite to so much wealth is tacitly acknowledged as long as opportunity is still thought to exist.  As long as it does, society has no right to take from the rich even if they compromise the republics themselves. This is a very minimalist notion of social contract—one that the 1% benefit from. This is hardly an accident—political ideology established in society being in the interest of the relatively few beneficiaries of the vast majority of income gain.

Therefore, whether increasing economic inequality causes less opportunity for the masses is a question that can be relegated to the more important question of whether the inequality itself is inherently unfair and/or a threat to the republics, the economy, and even society. How the wealth has been and is gained as well as used are relevant to the ethical question of fairness, and thus to whether the concentration of wealth is legitimate. Crucially, a focus on opportunity misses this point. Besides its ethical dimension, absolute or relative economic inequality could be harmful in building up pressure of resentment and even revolution, as evinced in the Occupy Wall Street Movement (which has been safely marginalized—with its own complicity). As the interests of the elite and the masses diverge and the elite (e.g., Goldman Sachs) gains more and more power, the strangling of the lower and lower-middle classes may ensue—a development that could not be good for a society’s stability. A focus on opportunity recalibrated in terms of being promoted to manage a McDonalds’ restaurant misses this point. In short, we are missing the iceberg coming up in front of our ship because we are satisfied if we can still get a deck chair.

Source:

Eduardo Porter, “Inequality Undermines Democracy,” The New York Times, March 21, 2012. 

Rousseau on Inequalities in Society: An Instance of Kantian Enlightenment?

Kant defines enlightenment as “man's emergence from his inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another.”[1] By making public use, Kant means “that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public.”[2] By sufficient freedom, Kant means that ideas that threaten the power of the guardians of institutional or societal rules are not excluded.

Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century philosopher famous for his duty-based ethics.

For example, an enlightened Roman Catholic priest would publish ideas questioning and even criticizing Church dogma when he is acting as a scholar, even though he would fulfill his duty in his conduct as a priest by defending those very teachings. A priest could thus go public as a heretic as long as he does so on his own time as a scholar and member of society, and an enlightened bishop would tolerate the scholar’s freedom to think and publish outside the box.

Rousseau would object to Kant’s prescription for how to become enlightened and Kant would object in turn to Rousseau's preference for the state of nature over society and the associated expansion of reasoning. Does Rousseau fit Kant's concept of enlightenment even though Kant would object to some of Rousseau's ideas?

Rousseau was a “heretic” of sorts. Writing to people living in societies, he was critical of the very existence of society itself, and thus of the power of its guardians. In his essay on inequality, he contends that the unnecessary, or artificial, sources of inequality stem from humans living in society rather than in the state of nature. “Every inequality of institution must increase the natural inequalities of the human species.”[3] Accordingly, “the origin of society and of the laws, which increased the fetters of the weak, and the strength of the rich; irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, fixed for ever [sic] the laws of property and inequality; changed an artful usurpation into an irrevocable title; and for the benefit of a few ambitious individuals subjected the rest of mankind to perpetual labour, servitude, and misery.”[4] By thinking freely and publishing the results, the citizen of Geneva aimed a lethal arrow at not only human society, but also its guardians. Rather than coming from the guidance of guardians, his ideas on the impact of them, as well as the defended institutions, properties, and laws arose from his own reasoning. He was free thinker, enlightened in Kant’s sense of the word.

This is not to say that the content of Rousseau’s essay on inequality conforms to Kant’s prescriptions for how more people or a people can become enlightened. For example, Kant laments that the constrained use of reason that had become second nature to the vast majority of people in his day who astonishingly were “virtually incapable for the time being of freeing their use of reason.”[5] According to Rousseau, however, the increased use of reason stimulated by living in a society instead of in the state of nature engenders self-love, and therefore pride, jealousy, and increased as well as technologically more severe warfare. Antipodal to society itself, “it is reason that makes man shrink into himself; it is reason that makes him keep aloof from everything that can trouble or afflict him; it is philosophy that destroys his connections with other men.”[6] Living in society is self-contradictory with respect to the impacts of the expanding and more complex reasoning.[7]

In short, the Prussian professor claims in his essay that a greater use of reason is part of becoming enlightened, whereas the citizen of Geneva advocates in his essay a reduction in the use of reason to that level and simplicity that is natural for human beings (i.e., in the state of nature). That Rousseau's published ideas on reason conflict with the significance of reasoning in becoming enlightened does not mean, however, that Rousseau's reasoning about reason in the state of nature versus in society is not an instance of enlightenment. That is, Rousseau's own use of reason can fit Kant's definition of enlightenment rather than the lesser reasoning that Rousseau prescribes. Put another way, Rousseau was a philosopher who claims in his essay that philosophy destroys a philosopher's social connections.

As a professor of philosophy at a university, Kant undoubtedly defended and protected the discipline institutionally; that is, old Kant was a guardian of some things not present in the state of nature—namely, professorships in philosophy, the discipline of philosophy, and philosophizing itself. Rousseau's published ideas critical of the artificial sort, or excess, of reasoning that is the root, trunk, and branches of philosophizing thus evinces freedom of public thought beyond the guidance of institutional guardians such as Kant; the philosophical establishment (e.g.,  tenured professors) would have been inclined to discredit or even ban Rousseau's threatening ideas. In writing published texts in philosophy, Rousseau was doing the very thing that he argues in his essay should not be done; he was doing Kantian enlightened public thinking.

Furthermore, Kant claims that people “will of their own accord gradually work their way out of barbarism so long as artificial measures are not deliberately adopted to keep them in it.”[8] A society’s guardians determine and defend such measures. Although Rousseau too is critical of the artificial measures and their societally rather than naturally powerful enforcers, he advocates a return to the state of nature (including barbarism) rather than moving toward an enlightened society.

Therefore, Rousseau would oppose Kant’s advocacy of an enlightened prince who considers it his duty in religious matters not to prescribe anything to his people as a means of encouraging more people to become enlightened. Under his rule, “ecclesiastical dignitaries, notwithstanding their official duties, may in their capacity as scholars freely and publicly submit to the judgment of the world their verdicts and opinions, even if these deviate from orthodox doctrine.”[9] To Rousseau, who is less concerned in his essay on inequality about the religious domain than is Kant in his essay on enlightenment, the various forms of government, including monarchy, “owe their origin to the various degrees of inequality between the members, at the time they first coalesced into a political body.”[10] The solution to the increased societally-based inequalities is to return to the state of nature, rather than to count on an “enlightened” prince, who is actually compromised by power and position (i.e., inequality). So Rousseau criticizes a governmental means by which a people can become enlightened in a Kantian sense, but in doing so, he demonstrates that his freedom of public thought was not constrained or guided by a prince.

Therefore, Kant would have to obey his own reason in counting Rousseau among the enlightened as per Kant's own definition, even while rejecting and perhaps even attacking Rousseau's ideas that would detract from such enlightenment if put into effect. To the extent that Kant himself was not enlightened, he would hardly have been able, at least for the time being, to tolerate such ideas even as he would have had to admit that Rousseau was enlightened. Put another way, being both an institutional guardian and a philosopher, Kant would have been in a tight corner. Generally speaking, we can conclude that enlightenment exists uneasily with the lack thereof in a society, especially if the lack pertains to the guardians. Accordingly, I suspect that a society is at ease only if the vast majority of people, including most or even all of the guardians, are enlightened.

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[1] Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? (World ebook Library).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Harvard Classics, Charles W. Eliot, ed., Vol. 34 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1910).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Kant, An Answer.

[6] Rousseau, Discourse.

[7] Interestingly, Kant’s first version of his categorical imperative, a criterion useful for assessing whether a given act is ethical, logical contradiction in a maxim being universalized such that it holds for everyone indicates that the act is immoral even if performed by one person rather than everyone. We are rational beings, so a logical contradiction means bad news. Therefore, does the logical contradiction in universalizing an increased use of reason in society to everyone resulting in everyone impeding society itself mean that living in society is unethical? Perhaps Kant would say that society would have to be impossible rather than merely impeded for there to be a logical contraction.

[8] Kant, An Answer.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Rousseau, Discourse.

Rousseau and Marx: Against Excessive Economic Inequality

Both Marx and Rousseau are “anti-history” in the sense that socioeconomic and sociopolitical large, complex organization, well beyond the small groups of prehistoric homo sapiens people living a sustenance existence, has alienated workers from themselves (Marx) and introduced artificial, or “moral,” inequalities and inauthentic fronts (Rousseau). In other words, the human condition in the modern world is not a story of progress; paradoxically, things have gotten worse in spite, and indeed in part due to the extent of technological progress. In other words, under the subterfuge (i.e., camouflage) of “progress,” the species has actually acquiesced to increasing decadence and deterioration as human organization has become larger and more complex.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx: Is there a Common Denominator?  

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Even so, Rousseau was himself a product of the Enlightenment—an expansion of the free use of reason (i.e., beyond tradition) that he claims widens inequalities. As for Marx, his assertion that man is by nature a part of nature flies in the face of the violations of human nature (e.g., ignoring greed) that doomed the oppressive and yet idealistic Communist states in the twentieth century—the bloodiest and perhaps greediest century of them all. In fact, the Communist “experiments” were to human nature as the Christian sin of usury was to the time value of money.

A person could reasonably ask why ideologies, whether economic, political, or religious, produce such mammoth blind-spots. Is it in the nature of ideology as it interacts with the homo sapien mind to produce denial as a defense mechanism overprotective of a cherished arrangement of interrelated beliefs and assumptions that a  person values? Before the cognitive revolution, which occurred between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, homo sapiens did not have fictive minds and languages; nobody could produce and share a priori  (i.e., ideas that are not from experience, hence not from an empirical source in the world) abstractions like “justice” and “democracy,” as well as fictional stories including myths and folktales, any of which can go into an ideology. The first evidence of religion is dated at around 50,000 years ago (a small statue having a lion’s head and the body of a homo sapiens). Interestingly, sapien means knowledge or wisdom in Latin; members of our species have not been shy in naming our own species.

Paradoxically, the purported ideological sources of the ruddy French Revolution and the seemingly inexorable U.S.S.R., respectively, privilege a human condition (and nature) before ideology, in the state of (prehistoric) nature. This does not mean that the ideal is idealistic in the fictive sense as exemplified by the Golden Age depicted by Hesiod and Ovid, and the “what people would agree to but admittedly never did” social contract  envisioned by Kant. Rather, Aristotle’s tweaking of the idealistic depictions of a Golden Age that never existed into a version reflecting the rural farm life of antiquity, and Hobbes’ intentionally realistic state of nature as nasty, brutish and short come closer how both Rousseau and Marx approach the state of nature as an ideal from which mankind has essentially “screwed up.” 

Both Rousseau and Marx could point to the fictive mind and use of language that resulted from the cognitive revolution in prehistoric times as decisive in the unfolding of the ensuing increased inequalities and self-alienation. The ability to talk about things that do not really exist, such as abstract ideas sourced only in imaginations, and to create fictional stories by imagining a fictive world are requisite to not only  adapting to different natural environments, but also cooperating flexibly with many strangers in artificial or man-made environments. To go beyond the social confines of what gossip can maintain among people who know each other (150 people at most) and create and live in social, economic and political systems that are larger as well as complex and thus can artificially order or regulate even very large numbers of people, the homo sapiens mind had to leap in evolutionary terms to being capable of fictive thought and words. Perhaps a genetic mutation connecting the two halves of the homo sapiens brain took hold in double-click time, evolutionarily speaking, and thus today we have abstractions invisible to the naked eye, such as Microsoft, and even Corporation, Democracy and Nation, Harvard and University, Justice and The Supreme Court enabling very large numbers of people to flexibly cooperate and thus live together rather than in small bands.

 It follows that the very complex, abstract ideas that Marx and Rousseau utilize in the process of ratiocination (try that word, which basically means reasoning, out at a dance party and you will be like honey to the most attractive bees!) is itself a crucial, even perhaps decisive factor in the problems that the philosophers identify and attempt to explain. For example, Rousseau argues that the artificial sources of inequality are found only once people have formed a society and thus is a people rather than merely members of small groups sustained by much fewer interpersonal interactions (and thus less wants, pride and jealousy). A people is itself an abstraction possible only in a fictive mind. Such a mind is also necessary for the abstract ideas and associated legends like Company, General Motors, and The Goldman Sachs Way to exist in people's minds so large numbers of workers can be coordinated in an exploiting way, according to Marx, and alienated from themselves in both the process and product of their work. Simply for a large company to be possible, more than gossip is needed to maintain the coordination that is necessary. As the homo sapiens humans went from prehistoric, subsistence-level hunter-gatherers in small bands to either accumulating great wealth or working in factories and offices as inequalities increased in the process, history went terribly wrong, according to Rousseau and Marx, so both go back to a simpler time, an actual rather than imagined existence before history, from which to make transparent certain problems in their own day, in the unfolding of history as if it were fated to be so and could be no other Way.

Rousseau would doubtless agree with Marx’s warning, “Do not let us go back to a fictitious primordial condition as the political economist does, when he tries to explain. Such a primordial condition explains nothing; it merely pushes the question away into a grey nebulous distance.”[1] In other words, one should not go back to a fictitious primordial condition.  Arguing in favor of the humans who lived in the state of nature (i.e., before living in societies), Rousseau clearly does not mean fiction in arguing that it is “ridiculous to represent savages constantly murdering each other to glut their brutality, as this opinion is diametrically opposite to experience.”[2] That experience, or empirical evidence, that Rousseau points to is that of “the Caribbeans [sic], the people in the world who have as yet deviated least from the state of nature.”[3] In looking at a primitive people of his own day, Rousseau was assuming that they would be sufficiently similar to the human being who actually lived before humans began living in societies. Such an assumption has been challenged by anthropologists studying the history of religion; Rousseau is not in danger, however, of being accused of portraying a dream world that never existed.

Furthermore, even though Rousseau highlights living in society as distinct from the state of nature and Marx focuses on economic production as distinct from satisfying only one’s own sustenance needs, both philosophers privilege the human primordial condition over so-called “progress” in order to make the point that things have gotten worse. Rousseau argues that prehistoric human beings were more compassionate and less contentious and, not by coincidence, less rational, in the state of nature before living in society. It is “society alone, which has added even to love itself as well as to all the other passions, that impetuous ardour, which so often renders it fatal to mankind.”[4] The demands that come with the increased interpersonal contact have brought out the worst in human nature—even transforming it into something too smart and ironically contentious.

Similarly, in arguing that the physical and spiritual life of humans is linked to nature, man being by nature a part of nature, Marx too privileges the species as it was long ago before work and its output became separated from the worker. “In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his own essential being, or that treats itself as a species-being.”[5] . . . (H)e duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and therefore he sees himself in a world that he has created.”[6] His labor is a “free, conscious activity,” the object of his own will and consciousness.[7] 

Even though Marx differs here from Rousseau in positing that humans were more intelligent before being alienated from one’s own work and the product thereof made the worker stupid, Marx too depicts a historical downward trajectory. “The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general.”[8] The increased value of material things and the increasing commoditization have come about historically, in the Industrial Revolution. Laboring on another’s product alienates the worker from both it and the production process wherein one labors. Alienated from nature and the freedom in one’s own life activity, the worker “does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind.”[9] Additionally, the amount of economic inequality increases, and in this claim Rousseau would also agree, although coming to it from a primarily sociological rather than (though not excluding) economic standpoint. 

In summary, both Marx and Rousseau base their philosophical and ideological ideals on the pre-historic human condition, whether in predominately social or economic terms (there being no religion given the non-fictive minds and languages). That is, the ideals hinge on a condition that really (i.e., empirically) existed, long before the stories that the two philosophers would formulate and publicly tell—stories that ironically would be (mis)appropriated in ways that pushed humanity even further from the simple life that far distant ancestors had enjoyed in relative equality (and empathy), as well as non-alienation from themselves even when hunting and gathering. In their work, those prehistoric ancestors had a deeper awareness of being of a particular species, and they were not so prideful and selfish as to intentionally and unintentionally exacerbate the existing natural inequalities in talent, family, and motivation.

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[1] Karl Marx, “Estranged Labour,” Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. (Marxists.org). Accessed August 18, 2013.

[2] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Harvard Classics, Charles W. Eliot, ed., Vol. 34 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1910).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Marx, “Estranged Labour.”

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

McDonalds and Income Inequality: The Role of Opportunity

In his text, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty claims that economic inequality increases societally when the rate of return on capital exceeds the growth rate in national income or GNP. Rather than being an aberration, this condition tends to be the case, the economist contends. To be sure, expanding opportunity can mitigate the increasing inequality, but the “floorboard” is slanted and thus is bound to favor capital over labor. Whereas Marx thought the tendency is unlimited in extent, Piketty argues that at some point the inequality of wealth will stop worsening. This idea seems like Einstein’s thesis that nothing can go faster than the speed of light.  In the light of Piketty’s theory, we can perhaps read more into Don Thompson’s response as workers were protesting the company’s shareholder meeting on May 22, 2014. In short, the CEO illustrates not only a preference for capital over labor in line with ROI>income-increase, but also the weakness in increased opportunity as a mitigating factor.

Thomas Piketty, a European economist specializing on inequality 

(Image Source: The Guardian)

With 800 protesters outside vocalizing their $15-per-hour proposal (“demand” is too strong, and, frankly, rather presumptuous), Thompson told the shareholders, “We respect the fact that they want to challenge us relative to wages.”[1] This rather odd statement essentially relativizes the pressure as “challenging.” In other words, the language is euphemistic. Similarly, it could be said that the CEO is challenged by the English language. Consider, for example, “relative to wages.” How about: “We respect the fact that our hard-working workers want a raise.” Instead, Thompson tried to make the issue about opportunity, as if that effectively counters the inequality. Again being challenged by English, the native speaker told stockholders, “We pay fair and competitive wages and we provide opportunity, and we provide job opportunities and training for those entering the workforce.”[2] McDonalds provides opportunity and job opportunities. How much is Thompson’s total annual compensation?

Even if opening the labor-force up were a sufficient justification for paying $7.25 an hour, only one-third of the company’s non-supervisory employees were on their first job.[3] As one of the protesting workers put it, “McDonalds can keep on saying that we are teenagers, but saying it over and over again doesn’t make it true.”[4] The patina of rhetoric is a rather pallid recipe for reputational capital, particularly if the words run up against the brick wall of actual circumstance. That worker had been working at a McDonald’s restaurant for 10 years at $7.25 per hour. The matter of opportunity was exogenous to her case. Ironically, expanding opportunity could actually be expected to put downward pressure on her wage, or at least keep it from increasing even with experience. That is, even a real push for greater opportunity in terms of opening up the job-force to new aspirants could increase the economic inequality between the corporate managers at the headquarters and the workers in the restaurants.

Put in terms of Piketty’s theory, might it be that greater opportunity might increase the economic inequality in some unforeseen ways? At the very least, Thompson’s attempted pivot to opportunity suggests that it may actually be in line with the interests of capital over labor. The fact that an employee had been kept at $7.25 for ten years even as the company enabled teenagers to enter the workforce hints of the underlying existence of a slanted relationship between capital and labor wherein the rate of return can be expected to exceed the rate of increase in income generally and especially at the non-supervisory levels. Leveling the playing field may be more difficult than Piketty supposes.

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[1] Bruce Horovitz, “McDonalds Plays Offense on Wages,” USA Today, May 23, 2014.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.