The Future Of Democratic Equality

Rebuilding Social Solidarity in a Fragmented America

Joseph M. Schwartz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780415944656
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135944520
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

2011 David Easton Award, presented for the best book by the Foundations of Political Theory section of APSA:

"The Future of Democratic Equality, by Joseph Schwartz, takes on three tasks, and accomplishes all brilliantly. Any one of these tasks well fulfilled would have been a laudable achievement. First, Schwartz argues for the centrality of the question of equality to democratic politics. Second, he critically analyzes and explains the shocking rise in inequality in the United States over the last three decades. This he does with conceptual clarity, rich interdisciplinary analysis, and a thorough examination of hard socioeconomic data. Third, he assails the near absence of concern for this soaring inequality among contemporary political theorists, and offers a cogent, and stinging, explanation that takes to task the discipline's preoccupation with difference and identity severed from the pragmatics of democratic equality. The Future of Democratic Equality is a courageous and disciplined effort to tackle a hugely important political problem and intellectual puzzle. It well embodies the spirit of the Easton Book Award by providing well-grounded normative theory targeted to an urgent matter of contemporary concern. It is a must read for anyone who cares about democracy." - Respectfully submitted by Leslie Paul Thiele, University of Florida (chair) and Cary J. Nederman, Texas A&M University

Why has contemporary radical political theory remained virtually silent about the stunning rise in inequality in the United States over the past thirty years? Schwartz contends that since the 1980s, most radical theorists shifted their focus away from interrogating social inequality to criticizing the liberal and radical tradition for being inattentive to the role of difference and identity within social life. This critique brought more awareness of the relative autonomy of gender, racial, and sexual oppression. But, as Schwartz argues, it also led many theorists to forget that if difference is institutionalized on a terrain of radical economic inequality, unjust inequalities in social and political power will inevitably persist.

Schwartz cautions against a new radical theoretical orthodoxy: that "universal" norms such as equality and solidarity are inherently repressive and homogenizing, whereas particular norms and identities are truly emancipatory. Reducing inequality among Americans, as well as globally, will take a high level of social solidarity--a level far from today's fragmented politics. In focusing the left's attention on the need to reconstruct a governing model that speaks to the aspirations of the majority, Schwartz provocatively applies this vision to such real world political issues as welfare reform, race relations, childcare, and the democratic regulation of the global economy.

1
Introduction

Bringing “Difference” and “Identity” Back into Concern for Democratic Equality

Political Theory Slumbers While Inequality Grows

In 1995, political theorist Jeffrey Isaac, in an article entitled “The Strange Silence of Political Theory,” posed the following question: “Given the historical, political, and seemingly theoretical significance of the Eastern European revolution against Soviet communism, why have American political theorists failed to hardly address the topic?”¹ In 2008, one might pose a similar question: Given the historical, political, and seemingly theoretical significance of the radical increase in inequality over the past thirty years in the United States, why have American political theorists failed to hardly address the topic? This work explores how and why mainstream political theory over the past twenty-five years has failed to adequately examine and critique the striking increase in inequalities of economic and political power. In this period, the “hottest” work in theory has focused on issues of “difference” and “personal identity.”² Theorists of “difference” contend that the differential needs of members of particular groups means that one-size-fits-all social policies cannot achieve true equality of life chances for each citizen. I concur with this analysis; but what theorists of difference have somewhat neglected to note is that a political majority no longer exists in favor of social equality, whether a pluralist conception of equality or not. While worrying about the “homogenizing” nature of social welfare liberalism, radical political theory failed to notice that a new “universal” had triumphed within the popular imaginary: the fair treatment of each and all through competition in the unregulated market.

The post-structuralist turn in political theory in part arose as a reaction to fears that “difference politics” “essentialized” and homogenized the status of the self within groups. Post-structuralism rejected both Rawlsian liberalism’s belief in a coherent, rational chooser and “identity politics” granting of primacy to the group as the prime shaper of individual identity. Instead, post-structuralism emphasized the labile, incoherent, shifting nature of a “self” constituted by “performative discursive iteration” of social norms. Post-structuralist theorists emphasized the agonal nature of politics and the ever-present possibilities that the “discursive self” could “performatively resist” hegemonic norms.³ Ironically, just as allegedly radical theorists discerned the “radical Nietzschean” possibilities of individual “resistance,” the social and political options of working class and people of color in the United States were being further constrained by rapidly growing social, economic, and political inequality.

The growth in racial and class inequality, in part, arose during this period because the broad political consensus in favor of the welfare state that governed European and United States politics from 1947–1973 weakened before the dominance of a global neo-liberal ideology. Known only in the United States as economic “conservatism,” this radical “neo-liberal” free-market ideology (“neo” in that it represented a rebirth of nineteenth-century “classical liberal” belief in the minimal state) believes that prosperity and equality of opportunity can only be sustained by a society characterized by a deregulated economy, eviscerated unions, and an anemic public sector. The concentration of income and wealth in the United States has reached inegalitarian extremes last witnessed prior to the Great Depression. With educational attainment heavily determining economic opportunity—and strongly correlated with parental educational and economic capital—social mobility in the United States threatens to drop to pre-World War II levels. The Economist magazine reports that social mobility rates in the United States are now the lowest among Western European states, including the supposedly class-ridden United Kingdom:

Several new studies show parental income to be a better predictor of whether someone will be rich or poor in America than in Canada or much of Europe. In America about half of the income disparities in one generation are reflected in the next. In Canada and the Nordic countries that proportion is about a fifth.⁴

Spurred by this paradox of self-proclaimed radical theory largely ignoring this stark increase in social inequality, I explore the ways contemporary political philosophy’s primary concern with epistemological and ontological questions about the nature of “the self” and “difference” hindered political theory’s ability to speak forthrightly in favor of social solidarity and democratic equality. This work, however, is not one of political nostalgia; there will be no romantic longing here for a solidaristic, working-class-based “left” that unequivocally embraced a “universal” politics of social justice. We have had enough of these rather unsophisticated paeans to the “old” majoritarian left.⁵ Unlike some who write in that vein, I am well aware that forms of racial, national, and gender exclusion helped construct past forms of working-class solidarity. Moreover, the “working class” has never been a truly homogenous and “universal class.” Not only is class identity socially constructed and contested in complex ways, but large numbers of religious and socially conservative workers never embraced parties of the left. And while the weight within the left of middle-class public sector workers and those in the “helping professions” has increased in recent times, the import of this strata within the left has always been considerable. Indeed, absent the allegiance of many civil servants, teachers, journalists, and care professionals, both the European and American left would have been far weaker, both historically and in the present day.

Yet, absent a revival of a pluralist, majoritarian left it is hard to imagine how “difference” (or in old school terms, “pluralism”) can be institutionalized in an egalitarian manner. In some ways, the blindness of some theorists of “difference” (and post-structuralists) to the reality that “difference” (or “diversity”) can (and is) being institutionalized on a radically inegalitarian social terrain (in which some “different” groups have much more power and opportunity than others) mimics the past weakness of the liberal pluralist theory that dominated political theory in the 1950s and 1960s. Then, radical theorists pointed out that liberal pluralist society failed to be fully democratic because some groups had inordinate economic and political power as compared to their small numbers.⁶ Today, the same critique of “difference” can be made. “Different” groups certainly do not have power proportionate to their democratic numbers. And the “performative” options of working-class individuals, persons of color, women, and gays and lesbians are constrained by the structural distribution of racial, economic, and gendered forms of power. Such inegalitarian distribution of power, voice, and life opportunity cannot be politically overturned absent a politics of solidarity that promotes alliances across groups in favor of democratic equality.

Yet few prominent figures in contemporary political theory have analyzed the causes of the growth in economic and social inequality or its implications for the health of political democracy. This silence is particularly ironic because the theorists of the 1960s—who rescued political theory from a marginalized study of intellectual history—focused much of their critical work on the (problematic) relationship between socio-economic inequality and political democracy. To engage in a flight of intellectual fancy: What if the post-structuralist turn in literary and political theory had occurred in the 1960s rather than the 1980s? Would post-structuralist theorists and advocates of “difference” have judged the egalitarian and democratic commitments of Carole Pateman, C.B. MacPherson, Michael Walzer, Peter Bachrach, John Rawls, Sheldon Wolin, and (a pre-post-structuralist) William Connolly to be reflective of a “repressive,” “Enlightenment” commitment to “homogenizing universality”?⁷

Or would this new breed of feminist and post-structuralist theorists have embraced the democratic majoritarian spirit of the 1960s, while also expressing concerns about the somewhat “economistic” nature of these theorists’ critique of inequality? Constructive critics might have pointed out that the democratic theorists did not always adequately address the role that race, gender, nationality, and sexuality play in constructing inequalities of power (a role that Carole Pateman would shortly take on, without abandoning her democratic egalitarian commitments).⁸ The new generation might also have argued that “difference” necessitates that groups with particular needs must be treated “differently,” if equality of consideration is to be achieved. Those influenced by “post-structuralism” might have warned against essentializing “group identity” and urged theorists to attend to the ways in which institutions such as the mental health and medical profession “norm” racial and sexual behavior in ways that constrain freedom. But would the new generation have abjured the “founders’” concern with social equality? If the post-structuralist and “difference” turn had occurred in a vibrant, hopeful period for left politics would they have joined an earlier generation of radical theorists in taking on America’s dominant faith in the liberal democratic capitalist order? Would they have forthrightly argued that economic and social inequality eviscerates the alleged equal value of political citizenship?

If one can envision articles of reconciliation among democratic theorists and advocates of “difference” in the hopeful 1960s, is not such a coalition of democratic theorists even more imperative in the more inegalitarian and undemocratic early twenty-first century? Would members of such a coalition concur that the social rights that underpin the equal ability of each individual to fulfill their capabilities cannot be achieved absent a majoritarian belief in social solidarity—a belief that all of us are in this social endeavor together and must be treated with equal respect.

Today’s students have not been widely exposed to such a standard radical or social democratic view. They have, however, been inundated by an ideology that informs them that all regulation of the “free market” is counter-productive. Self-defined contemporary “radical” theorists (both political and literary) have done a good job transmitting to their students a concern for “diversity” and “sexual emancipation.” But, contrary to the rants of a David Horowitz, we have not done a very good job of educating students to the part social equality must play in a democratic society.

Political theory, if it is to be political, must situate itself within the contemporary historical and political context. It cannot theorize in the abstract—as a normative critique can only have bite if it speaks to people’s experience and if it discerns the possibilities for democratic transformation within the social conflicts of contemporary society. The statistics in regard to growing inequality are wellknown, but rarely have they appeared in a monograph authored by a political theorist. I would ask my fellow political theorists how a “politics of difference” or of “agonal performative resistance”—on its own—can transform the stark realities outlined below. Can such realities be transformed absent the rebirth of a politics of social solidarity in which a majority of citizens (who believe themselves capable of agency) embrace social and political movements that seek political power behind a coherent program to redress inequality?

Perhaps we ought to begin every class in democratic theory by reciting statistics that demonstrate that the United States ranks as the most inegalitarian nation among the advanced capitalist democracies. The top 1 percent of United States households received 21.8 percent of all pre-tax income (including capital gains) in 2005, more than double the figure in the 1970s.⁹ Between 1979 and 2005, the top 5 percent of American families saw their real incomes increase 81 percent. Over the same period, the lowest-income quintile of families saw their real incomes decline 1 percent.¹⁰ And these real living standards would have declined even further if the average worker did not see a three-hundred-and-fifty-hour increase in the number of hours worked per year (roughly six hours per week or a 20 percent increase, as many Americans depend on overtime or a second job or have been forced to take jobs with very little vacation and personal leave time).¹¹ While Robert Putnam surmises that increased television watching may be the residual factor that explains the decline in adult participation in associational life, one might suspect that the elongated working year and the burdens of many families having two full-time adult income earners must be part of the causal picture.¹²

The earnings of semi-skilled workers declined over 12 percent in this period; only the massive rise in two-parent income earning families cushioned the middle and working class from further downward mobility. In 1938, only 30 percent of women aged 18–65 participated in the formal labor market; today female participation rates of close to 70 percent rival those of men.¹³ And it is not only those in the bottom quintile of family income who struggle to make ends meet. As Katherine Newman’s research on the working “near poor” (families in the second quintile of family income) demonstrates, many American families have inadequate health coverage and negative assets—that is, they are one paycheck away from dire poverty.¹⁴

The distribution of wealth is, of course, even more unequal—and wealth correlates far more with (inordinate) political power than does income. The top 1 percent of United States households own 34.3 percent of the nation’s private wealth; more than the 28.7 percent owned by the bottom 90 percent. Given the rise in indebtedness as the major means of maintaining working- and middle-class families, the bottom 40 percent of American families are actually in debt to the tune of over 3 percent of total societal wealth!¹⁵ Thus, the personal savings rates declined from 11.2 percent in 1982 to negative 1.1 percent in 2006.¹⁶ And the share of corporate income going to capital (profits and interest) hit an all-time high of 23 percent in the third quarter of 2006, with only 77 percent going to employee compensation.¹⁷

The Decline of Social Solidarity in Practice and Theory

In 1947, when T.H. Marshall wrote his classic essay in social theory, “Citizenship and Social Class,” he assumed that the democratic labor and social democratic parties of Western democracy would institutionalize “social rights” to equality of opportunity via the generous funding of universal public goods and social insurance.¹⁸ Thus, the “floor of the cottage of citizenship” would provide, via the public sector, high minimal levels of the basic goods central to human flourishing—education, health care, housing, and income support. As a moderate social democrat, Marshall even worried that the decrease of dependency upon income earned in the formal labor market might erode the financial incentives that sustained the high productivity levels of (mixed) capitalist market economy necessary to sustain the advanced welfare state. When I first read this text in graduate school in the late 1970s, comparative politics scholars taught it as an explication of the broad political consensus in favor of the welfare state—a consensus that had achieved the support of American liberals and moderate Republicans and European social and Christian democrats. After all, the ensuing deindustrialization of basic industry in Europe and America had yet to weaken union power and demands for greater workplace democracy and public control over investment still resonated among the European left.

But what T.H. Marshall could not imagine at the height of Labor dominance of British politics in the late 1940s would be the peculiar rebirth of “laissez-faire” anti-welfare state politics that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would utilize to overturn the previous broad post World War II consensus in favor of the moderate regulatory and welfare state. As I will discuss later, neo-liberal, anti-union, and deregulatory conservative politics would take an extreme form in the individualist, Lockeian political cultures of Britain and the United States (as well as New Zealand, and, to a lesser extent, Australia). The Western and Northern European welfare state has been trimmed (as has union power), but the “roll backs” on the continent have not been as extensive as the deregulation of the Anglo-American economies and the curtailment of their means-tested social welfare programs.

Yet there is no doubt that the European left has been in a far weaker, more defensive position over the past twenty years than in its heyday in the late 1960s to early 1980s. Well over two decades ago, the élan of the “universal class” (the class whose interests were shared by the vast majority of society) moved from the working class to the “entrepreneur.” If the politics associated with working-class prosperity had been those of the moderate Keynesian welfare state, the policies of the new “entrepreneurial” society are those of the self-correcting unregulated “market.” For those readers who came of age in high school and college in ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Permissions Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 From Domestic to Global Solidarity
• 3 Post-Structuralist Political Theory
• 4 Can a “Politics of Difference” (or “Identity Politics”) Ground a Radical Democratic Conception of Justice?
• 5 The Rise of Global “Casino Capitalism”
• 6 Does Globalization Necessitate the Demise of Democratic Egalitarian Politics?
• 7 Racism, Difference, and the Problematic Politics of Social Solidarity
• 8 Conclusion—Ending the False Antinomy of “Difference” and “Equality”
• Notes
• Index