Class reductionism – inequality can’t be reduced to income – social divisions should remain a core concern of the left

Nick Pearce, “What should social democrats believe?” Institute for Public Policy Research, 19 September 2013, https://www.ippr.org/juncture/what-should-social-democrats-believe#note1.

Relational egalitarians argue that movements for greater equality have been most successful when grounded in social struggles and popular movements. This opens out their scope to embrace, alongside class inequality, the demands of a wider range of interests and actors, particularly new social movements concerned with advancing the position of women, ethnic minorities, LGBT groups and others. On each of these grounds and more, major advances have been made. Egalitarians have also learned to extend their strategies out to engage in civil society and wider popular culture, instead of restricting their scope to state action and legislative reform, vital as these remain. In these ways, they have achieved more durable advances than would be apparent from the recent history of changes to income and wealth distribution.

Instead of the equal distribution of a particular good, relational egalitarianism seeks equality in social relations: that is, a society in which people relate to each other as free and equal citizens and in which unjust social hierarchies of power, esteem and standing have been progressively overcome. It accordingly stresses active participation in achieving greater equality, the importance of social integration, a wide dispersion of power in the economy and society, and the necessity of a vibrant, alert and widely engaged democracy.

This is not to say that class inequalities simply disappear from view or that relational egalitarianism cannot embrace distributional concerns. If our starting point is that society is a cooperative endeavour between free and equal citizens, then wide disparities of income and wealth undermine the mutual recognition on which the commonality of citizenship depends. To protect the integrity of social cooperation, a line of sight between citizens is necessary, which gross material inequalities can make untenable. Constraints on the concentration of economic power are also required to stop these bleeding into the colonisation of political power. At the other end of the scale, individuals require a sufficient income to live free of stigma or shame, and should receive public services, such as education, that are distributed in such a way that each can fulfil their potential and enjoy equal standing with their peers.5 Market inequalities are necessary for economic efficiency and freedom of choice, but within ranges constrained by these factors. Relational egalitarianism therefore still furnishes strong grounds for reducing inequalities of income and wealth.

In general, as Anderson puts it, 'a distribution is objectionable from an egalitarian point of view if it causes, embodies, or is a specific consequence of unjust social hierarchy'. Yet she insists that:

'The concern for equality cannot be reduced to concern about the distribution of a single good or expressed in a single simple formula ... for its distribution. Social relations of equality are complex and require a complex response.'6

To rethink equality in these terms therefore offers the prospect of a richer politics conducted on wider sites of power.

The realist critique

In related vein, a broad grouping of thinkers has taken liberal and egalitarian theories to task on realist grounds.7 From a range of perspectives they contend, inter alia, that visions of ideal distributions or patterns in society are utopian and unrealisable, that conflict over values and interests is ineradicable, and that any social order is always a constellation formed from power struggles rather than reasoned consensus. They challenge standard accounts of what animates political engagement and argue that too often democratic and progressive forces privilege procedure and deliberation over passions, argument and the real stuff of politics, denuding themselves of energy and ideas, and cutting themselves off from political discourses that might have greater purchase on popular sentiments.

For obvious reasons, these currents of realist thinking may tip easily towards fatalism or accommodation of the status quo, and even to a 'Machiavellian' machine politics. Many realists seek to temper the rhetoric and policy ambitions of reformers, to wean them off the bold claims that history and social science show will tend not be realised, leading to disappointment and frustration. There are obvious reasons in contemporary economic and social conditions for heeding such caution.

But there is radical potential in these forms of realism too. Like relational egalitarians, realists draw attention to the actual rather than ideal worlds of political and social relations, helping to ground politics in everyday concerns and practices. They argue against the assumption of end states that can be realised to 'order society' and overcome its antagonisms. This helps to broaden the canvas of politics and the potential scope of political action, while challenging the state-centrism of much centre-left thinking. It enables political action to reach into the public arguments that take shape around culture, identity and valued public goods, without seeking either to channel these arguments into privileged forms of political expression or to expunge them from procedural deliberation. As the theorist Bonnie Honig puts it:

'...[I]t is around [public things] that equality and liberty and justice take shape. When they become mere procedural values, or when the form they take has to do with targets or indicators, they become shapeless and unrewarding values. They can only do work that makes us value them if they are situated in the material life of citizens or residents together.'8

Realists are also attentive to systematic concentrations of power. Accordingly, they give substantial weight to how the rules of the game in a democracy are configured and to the ways in which the realm of democratic politics can be expanded, rather than closed down by technocratic or market imperatives. Erring towards the view that powerful interests and forces will always be at work at different sites of power - whether in the state, market or community - draws renewed attention to questions of political inequality, democratic accountability, and whether the norms governing different realms of public life can prevent the domination that results from concentrations of power. Conversely, many realists also argue against attempts to depoliticise public goods through privatisation or new public managerialism, and thereby seek to widen the scope of politics and challenge the subordination of democracy to market imperatives. Paradoxically, therefore, realist politics may offer a richer, more varied and innovative palette of options than more apparently ambitious traditional forms of egalitarianism.9

A non-trivial coda to this section is that a realist sensibility also enables social democrats to engage on the territory of history and tradition, and the more complex and shifting terrain of identity politics. Strong conservative impulses exist in contemporary electorates to cherish and preserve things of value, and these are taking on new and unexpected forms of political expression. Hostility to immigration is their most obvious manifestation; in the UK, the rise in English political identity is another. This is currently given voice in predominantly right-wing and Eurosceptic terms, but it is capable of expression within more self-consciously progressive forms. Although immigration remains troubling for the centre-left, it should not prevent critical engagement with these claims to identity recognition, particularly by politically marginalised sections of the working class. Englishness is culturally and politically diverse and therefore contestable. It could be seen at work in the movement to defend ancient forests and woodlands from being sold off in 2010, and it is visible in many contemporary cultural forms.10 But it is yet to find political expression - beyond isolated speeches by committed politicians - on the mainstream centre-left.