JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, VI
In sharing the various elements of liberated federalism, the proposed view by which to develop a civics curriculum, this blog is offering equality as a central concern. In the last posting, using the ideas of Philip Selznick,[1] it described and explained the implications of what Selznick calls baseline equality. This posting will now review his other form of equality, equal treatment.
This next aspect, equal treatment, as with the case of baseline equality, is based on the belief in the dignity and integrity of each member of a union. Such a belief leads to the aspiration for creating a commonwealth in which all its members can enjoy equal treatment or condition.[2]
As baseline equality was a fundamental right, equal treatment is a derivative right and is based on an equal evaluation of everyone’s welfare. In pursuing this right, to the extent it exists, dissimilar treatment for people in different categories can be considered and deemed rightful under what is judged to be the appropriate conditions.
Dissimilar treatment must be justified on some grounds in which circumstances show that a level of disrespect to the dignity and welfare of certain groups exists. “The objective is fairness based on moral equality, not consistency for its own sake.”[3] In other words, government should treat people differently if to do so would be to respect and advance the ideal that everyone has intrinsic worth. This can meaningfully give substance to a moral equality standard, i.e., to afford treatment to individuals as equals but realistic as to their situations.
This dissimilar treatment is not meant to down-level people, but to raise them to create a community in which all are ideally – and to a great extent actually – well-born. So, therefore, a study of government should include inquiry and debate over the connection between the social equality that exists in fact and the equality which is advocated by this element of the liberated federalist model. In addition, inquiry should be extended to ask what this element of moral equality would prohibit or set limits on public or private sector policy within a commonwealth.
This blogger in other venues has made a distinction among how advocates of natural rights, critical theory, and liberated federalism define equality. Natural rights view sees it as being the establishment of equal conditions, as in equality before the law. This blog identifies that condition as an attribute of baseline equality.
Critical theory defines it as equal results – that there should be minimal variance in the distribution of assets – such as wealth. And liberated federalism sees equality as regulated equality in which government and other authorities see to it that where factors, such as historical ones, place disadvantages in the path of certain groups, authoritative regulations should be put in place to alleviate or rectify the resulting disadvantages.[4] A minimum wage would be such a regulation.
A commonwealth is then faced with a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the inevitable ranking of individuals leads to an uneven distribution of material values. Such a reality, though, threatens the level of moral equality in the commonwealth. But this sort of ranking is not only pervasive among societies of all kinds but is readily justified within those societies. Calls to end uneven distributions are unrealistic and attempts will (and have) caused unacceptable costs to other values.
For example, would attempts to even out distributions act to squelch the motivation of those who would otherwise work creatively and assiduously to advance technological and other business-oriented activities which result in higher production and productivity? The experience of collectivist societies, such as in purely socialistic societies where such attempts have been made, seems to indicate that such motivation would be squelched.
The key to resolving the dichotomy of values is the classical liberal call for equal opportunity. Selznick describes these values as follows:
No one should be hampered, no door should be closed to anyone, because of a prejudice against that person’s social origin. Whatever opportunities exist should be open to all without regard to social class or (as later extended) to race, creed, ethnicity, or gender. Thus equality of opportunity has the limited objective of overcoming prejudice while maintaining the legitimacy of differential rewards.[5]
In short, the focus is on ending any caste elements within the commonwealth.[6] Affirmative action, under such a value, is limited to the following activities:
· identifying and providing appropriate training to those victimized by discrimination,
· helping members of a discriminated group, or to demand evidence that public or private agencies have dealt with discriminated groups in good faith, and
· exert meaningful effort to rectify past incidences of discrimination by actual accomplishments.
Helping efforts might be extended to those who have not even been discriminated against, in order to upgrade the group as a whole. In addition, public agencies, such as schools, should provide resources to poorer members of the commonwealth to encourage recipients to compete economically for limited material values. At its base, the commonwealth would rely on a meritocratic standard that allows those who produce or have good fortune to benefit from their effort or luck, but it dismisses as illegitimate the ideal that holds that “winners” are inherently superior.
Inequalities in such a value system are tolerated on the grounds that to eliminate them would be costly, impractical, and too disruptive and counterproductive to the general creation of wealth of material and other assets. This would ultimately work to the disinterests of all, including the disadvantaged and the discriminated. Therefore, the moral equality that is sought is based on a reciprocal advantage, not on sympathy, pity, or benevolence.
Under such a system, all should support an arrangement as if anyone making up the commonwealth could be at the bottom – “there but for the grace of God go I.” This reciprocal nature calls on a meaningful reality that (1) allows an opportunity to improve one’s position significantly, and (2) sets up a cooperative mode of social interaction.
It allows for rational decision-making, maximizing one’s benefits and minimizing one’s costs, but is more encompassing than the marginal analysis of the systems approach (reviewed earlier in this blog). It considers the potential and often real distribution of assets. Where significant imbalances exist – when basic humanity is threatened for an individual or group – leading to a lack of respect and dignity where anyone or anyone’s loved ones can find themselves in desperate and deprived conditions, appropriate welfare should be allotted.
The reciprocal nature of this proposed arrangement has strong support within its logic for a fraternal ethos upon which community can be built and a meaningful commonwealth can be maintained. But there exists under this logic the temptation to see all inequalities as counter to moral equality. One needs to be clear about the functions of inequality. Selznick comments:
Historically there have been four main justifications for inequalities as contributing to the common good. It has been claimed that inequalities are essential for: (1) effective organization for prosperity, education, public safety, and similar social goals; (2) achievement of excellence and high standards, especially in the realm of “high culture”; (3) protection of freedom, including the freedom to become unequal in possessions and personal attainment; and (4) commitment to ascriptive unities, especially family membership, which depend on recognition of special benefits and privileges. None of these objectives can justify unlimited or unrestrained inequality.[7]
The argument can be made that some level of inequality is both practical and moral, i.e., that a moral commonwealth should support an elitist element within its midst. The elites, who are committed to democratic and republican ideals, are those the commonwealth depends upon to lead in the pursuit of a moral society under those ideals.
Included in this ideal is the goal of establishing a community in which the elites and non-elites can live in an overall cooperative venture. In summary, that cooperative effort is to seek equality that restrains arbitrary power, encourages democratic participation, and promotes effective economic opportunity. These qualities serve as the bedrock of a liberated federalist guided polity and should be at the core of a civics curriculum.
[1] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).
[2] The term, “equal treatment,” as it is often used by those who ascribe to the ideas of natural rights, is limited to the notion that all should be treated in similar fashion by those in governmental authority. Here, Selznick expands on this ideation of what “equal” or “equality” means.
[4] See for example, Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation: Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL: Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020).
[5] Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth, 492.
[6] Is “caste” too strong a term when considering the US? To address that question readers are directed to Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents (New York, NY: Random House, 2020/2023). She makes a convincing argument that this nation has sufficient conditions to classify it as harboring a caste system.
[7] Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth, 499, emphasis in the original.
