In an article published on the last day of 2016, The Independent wrote that 2016 would be remembered as “the year that the volcano of inequality exploded.” There were many who felt that “the left-behinds” had struck back, causing the outcome of the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump ’s victory in the US presidential election. The newspaper pointed to other reasons as well, noting that an interpretation of democratic backlash against widening income inequality was “too simplistic.” The Independent’s conclusion was that “the political eruptions of 2016 were not solely a consequence of economic grievances. Yet it would surely be naïve to imagine those grievances did not help to prepare the ground for these shocks.” 1
Grave concern about the possible social consequences of increasing income inequality in the United States was already voiced at a conference of major international investors in New York in the autumn of 2013. Wealth is increasingly concentrating in the hands of the financial elite, the richest 1%, whereas the younger generation of the American middle class cannot expect to attain the living standard of their parents, which implies, without mentioning, the further impoverishment of the poor. This could eventually result in an “Arab Spring ” in the United States . The message of the experts was unmistakable: “Unless the decision-makers of economic and financial policy soon stop the growth of income and wealth inequality , it will be broken by the rebellion of the middle class – either at the polls or in the street.” 2
Increasing inequality undermines the legitimacy of the political system in the developed Western countries. Does the global financial elite wish to contribute to the preservation of social services, such as universal healthcare, education and social protection, which became established in the post-WW2 era, benefiting economic growth, or will the investments be outsourced overseas, and taxes avoided in the developed countries through tax havens? Will those in power allow this to happen? In the light of recent developments, it is not far-fetched to ask whether the welfare state has a future or will be dismantled, and what the repercussions of that could be.
In this book, we address the system of mutual obligations and expectations between the common people and the elites in earlier societies and present-day welfare states. Our aim is to show how deeply the notion of reciprocity is embedded as an organizing principle for society and the relations between its different strata, and the various ways in which reciprocity is present in societal relations of influence.
The book’s core concept of reciprocity can be defined as a system of rights and obligations that its parties (social groups and their members) generally regard to be fair, or at least feel it is in their interest to describe as fair (the perception of “fair” varies in different periods and among cultures), and which maintains the stability of social relations. At the interpersonal level, reciprocity promotes mutual trust and positive feelings. In many traditional societies, reciprocity is part of human reproduction and relations of kinship. We maintain that the logic of reciprocity functions between members of society as well as between the ruling elites and the common people. The latter relationship is the focus of this book. We also consider, however, reciprocity between the more equal members of society, as it helps in understanding the relations between ruling elites and the people. Furthermore, we address the tension between “genuine” reciprocity and its abuse. The notion of reciprocal social relations is innate for people and its roots can be traced back to the prehistory of the human race.
Evolutionary Roots of Reciprocity
Various interpretations of the violent nature of human prehistory have been suggested (see e.g. Pinker 2011; Hart and Sussman 2011). With reference to finds of the crushed skeletons of Australopithecine hominids , which lived millions of years ago, and Neanderthals, the parallel species of modern man dating back 30,000–250,000 years, researchers previously concluded that these species were highly violent both among themselves and to other species and practiced extensive cannibalism. This, however, has subsequently proven to be partly mistaken. Researchers observed that crushed and dismembered bones are explained more likely as the remains of hunting by other carnivorous beasts than the results of inter-human violence. Humans and hominids were without doubt violent to each other, but there is no consensus about the extent of that violence. The oldest indisputable evidence of large-scale warfare between human groups is from the period of modern humans, approximately 10,000 years ago (Fry 2006, pp. 91, 100–135, 239; Hart and Sussman 2011, pp. 28–30).
Archeologists have also found indications that the early predecessors of modern man already took care of their old and injured. Around 2000, a toothless skull of Homo erectus , an early hominid, dating back 1.77 million years was discovered in Georgia . The researchers claimed that this old man, who had died at age of ca. 40, had lost almost all his teeth years before his death. The lack of teeth meant high age, disease or both, and the need for assistance in order to survive. Without teeth, he could not have eaten meat or fibrous plants, which were the main source of nutrition for people in his area and would probably been offered the softer parts of game animals and crushed plants. The community appears to have fed its aged member. He may have been kept alive also because of the knowledge that he possessed. This finding appears to be the oldest known example of assisting the old and the infirm. Other researchers, however, have criticized this suggestion, since the skull cannot be unequivocally considered to be evidence of compassion (Lordkipanidze et al. 2005). Previously, only the fossils of younger Neanderthal humans were known with similar signs of nursing and care. It is also known that Neanderthals most likely buried their dead with ritual ceremonies (Valste 2012, pp. 225–240).
The prehistory of modern man ( Homo sapiens ), on the other hand, includes numerous archeological examples of demanding care and nursing. The oldest and possibly most extreme case is that of a 20–30-year-old male who lived around 4000 years ago in the present area of North Vietnam and who survived in a seriously disabled condition (possibly with quadriplegia) for at least ten years before his death. He had needed assistance and care from others in almost all things. Researchers suggest that his carers felt compassion, respect and attachment, for otherwise there would be no explanation for the care of an individual with such serious disabilities (Tilley and Oxenham 2011).
Empathy , the ability to place oneself in the position of others and to understand their emotional states, has been observed not only in humans but also in other animals. Among others, mice, dogs and elephants behave with empathy and assistance towards members of their own and other species. Chimpanzees and other primates also behave with empathy and in a helping manner towards both members of their own species and other species. Primatologist Frans de Waal (2008, pp. 279–300) believes that the ability for empathy is an evolutionary adaptation in humans and some social mammals that permits so-called direct altruism . Direct altruism is an immediate response to the pain, needs or anxiety felt by others. The ability for empathy may lead to an emotional “compulsion” to care for the well-being of others (see also Ricard 2013, especially pp. 48–66, 171–198).
The ability for empathy does not necessarily lead helping others, for the recognition of another person’s emotional state can also be used maliciously. Empathy permits the feeling of benign sympathy for another person. Sympathy differs from empathy in that only it will lead to explicitly helping others. Other animals display empathy and direct altruism , but the overwhelming social abilities of humans in the animal kingdom make empathy and the sympathy that it facilitates particularly important for people. In fact, we cannot manage without our fellow humans, as seen in concrete terms in the long childhood of humans in which they are dependent on care. In the animal kingdom, human children need an exceptionally long period of close care, which means that mothers have never been able to both care for their children and acquire nutrition on their own. They have always needed others alongside them, and therefore humans are described as cooperative breeders . In earlier human societies, the mother was usually helped by the child’s older siblings, her own siblings, her mother, the father of the child and other relatives (Hamilton 1964; Hrdy 1999, pp. 79, 101–109, 121, 141–143; Sear and Mace 2008). Sympathy and assistance for one’s own relatives can easily be understood and argued for in the light of evolution ( kin selection theo...