Equality and Inequality

When the contrast between the circumstances of different social strata is so profound as today, the argument -if it deserves to be called an argument -which suggests that the incomes they receive bear a close relation to their personal qualities is obviously illusory. In reality, as has often been pointed out, explanations which are relevant as a clue to differences between the incomes of individuals in the same group lose much of their validity when applied, as they often are, to interpret differences between those of individuals in different groups. It would be as reasonable to hold that the final position of competitors in a race were an accurate indication of their physical endowments, if, while some entered fit and carefully trained, others were half-starved, were exhausted by want of sleep, and were handicapped by the starters. If the weights are unequal, it is not less important, but more important, that the scales should be true. The condition of differences of individual quality finding their appropriate expression is the application of a high degree of social art. It is such a measure of communism as is needed to ensure that inequalities of personal capacity are neither concealed nor exaggerated by inequalities which have their source in social arrangements.

So, while the successful professional or business man may be justified assuming that, if he has outdistanced his rivals, one important cause is his 'application, industry, and honesty', and the other admirable qualities rightly prized by Lord Inchcape, that gratifying conclusion is only half the truth. His talents must be somewhat extraordinary, or his experience of life unusually limited, if he has not on occasion asked himself what his position would have been if his father had been an unemployed miner or a casual labourer; if he had belonged to one of the 9397 families in Bermondsey - over 30 per cent of the total number - living in 1927 at the rate of two or more persons to a room, or had been brought up in one of the one-apartment houses in the central division of Glasgow, 41 per cent of which contained in 1926 three or more persons per room; if he had been one of the million-odd children in the elementary schools of England and Wales who are suffering at any given moment from physical defects; and if, having been pitched into full-time industry at the age of fourteen, he had been - dismissed at the age of the sixteen or eighteen to make room for a cheaper competitor from the elementary school. He may quite rightly be convinced that he gets only what he is worth, and that the forces of the market would pull him up sharply if he stood out for more. What he is worth depends, however, not only upon his own powers, but upon the opportunities which his neighbours have had of developing their powers. Behind the forces of the market, stand forces of another kind, which determine that the members of some social groups shall be in a position to render services which are highly remunerated because they are scarce, and to add to their incomes by the acquisition of property, whilst those belonging to others shall supply services which are cheap because they are over-supplied, but which form, nevertheless, their sole means of livelihood.

Such forces are partly, no doubt, beyond human control; but they are partly the result of institutions and policy. There is, for example, the unequal pressure of mere material surroundings, of rousing, sanitation, and liability to disease, which decides that social groups shall differ in their ability to make the best use of their natural endowments. There is inequality of educational opportunity, which has as its effect that, while a favoured minority can cultivate their powers till manhood, the great majority of children, being compelled to compete for employment in their early adolescence, must enter occupations in which, because they are overcrowded, the remuneration is low, and later, because their remuneration has been low, must complete the vicious circle by sending their children into over-crowded occupations. There is the nepotism which allots jobs in the family business to sons and relations, and the favouritism which fills them with youths belonging to the same social class as its owners. There is inequality of access to financial information, which yields fortunes of surprising dimensions, if occasionally, also, of dubious repute, to the few who possess it. There is the influence of the institution of inheritance in heightening the effects of all other inequalities, by determining the vantage-ground upon which different groups and individuals shall stand, the range of opportunities which shall be open to them, and the degree of economic stress which they shall undergo.

The wage-earner who reflects on the distribution of wealth is apt, as is natural, to look first at the large dividends or watered capital of the firm by which he is employed. The economist looks at the large blocks of property which are owned by individuals and transmitted to their descendants, and which yield large incomes whether profits per cent are high or low. He insists, with Professor Cannan, that 'the inequality in the amounts of property which individuals have received by way of bequest and inheritance is by far the most potent cause of inequality in the actual distribution of property'; and points out, with Mr. Henderson, that the evil is progressive, since it causes 'an initial inequality... to perpetuate itself throughout subsequent generations in a cumulative degree'; and urges, with Mr. Simon, that 'inheritance is responsible, not only for the most excessive, but for the most unjust and indefensible, inequalities'. Such statements are confirmed by the valuable researches of Mr. Widgwood, who has made the economic effect of inheritance, almost for the first time, the subject of inductive investigation. The conclusion which he draws from the examination of a sample of large estates at Somerset House is perturbing. It is that, 'on the whole, the largest fortunes belong to those with the richest parents... In the great majority of cases the large fortunes of one generation belong to the children of those who possessed the large fortunes of the previous generation... There is in our society an hereditary inequality of economic status which has survived the dissolution of the cruder forms of feudalism.'

The advantages and disabilities which these phenomena create are properly described as social, since they are in the result of social institutions, and can by the action of society be maintained or corrected. Experience shows that, when combined, as is normally the case, with extreme disparities of economic power between those who own and direct, and those who execute and are directed, but rarely own, they clog the mechanism of society and corrode its spirit. Except in so far as they are modified, as they partially have been, by deliberate intervention, they produce results surprisingly similar to those foretold by the genius of Marx. They divide what might have been a community into contending classes, of which one is engaged in a struggle to share in advantages which it does not yet enjoy and to limit the exercise of economic authority, while the other is occupied in a nervous effort to defend its position against encroachments.

It is the habit of favoured classes in all ages and all nations to treat such odious truths as the Greeks treated the Furies. They hope to avert the consequences of social divisions by describing them by some other titles than the names of ill-omen that properly belong to them. But the Furies are Furies because, having listened to polite euphemisms for two thousand years, they have acquired the unpopular habit of considering, not words, but facts, and they are not, unfortunately, so easily placated. As the history of the last half-century shows, the resentment which finds its expression in economic tension is not local and evanescent, but widespread and permanent. As a social movement, it is an attempt to abolish the element of privilege in social arrangements, not by imposing an arbitrary uniformity on varying capacities, but by making the material conditions of culture and civilization available to all, instead of to a minority. As an industrial movement, it is an attempt to check the tendency of economic power to slip into economic tyranny, not by destroying authority, but by substituting a system of industrial government based on consent, and conducted in accordance with a settled constitution, for its control by the will of property-owners and their agents. (R. H. Tawney: Equality and Inequality. Pelican)