Why equality is unhelpful as a political goal

I'd like to repeat that I'm not against using "equality" in political slogans, but this works for the most part only among people who already have similar political goals and therefore know on some intuitive level what specific types of equality the other person is talking about.

Thanks to my friend Finn for reading out the Engels quote.

Recommended reading:
"Philosophy and Real Politics" by Raymond Geuss - Part II Failures of Realism, Equality

And Angela Davis from "Are Prisons Obsolete?", page 75

Here is the full Jordan Peterson interview:

I used clips from "The Young Karl Marx" (2017), as well as:

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[yhwh]

"to be equal you have to be the same person" *third impact intesifies*

[moonlogic]

On equality and the draft: We now conscript women to the military in Norway. I served my first year before this happened, so all the women I served with were volunteers while the men were all conscripts (willing or not), which created an interesting gender dynamic, because the women were all strongly pro-military, while many of us men were not.

[anarchozoe]

Am glad you liked my video. Been a fan of yours since your video on K-pop.

[michaelsieger]

“Marxists will make everybody listen to the same amount of Cardi B and Bach.”
—Jordan Peterson

[marshallsweatherhiking]

Most of what the right criticizes really has it's foundation in French liberalism, not Marxism.

[mymom]

I’m a right-leaning dude. Your channel has really helped me understand postmodernism and marxism better. Not that I agree with a lot of it still but it’s refreshing to see someone who states the facts about what marx said instead of trying to deeply analyze what he meant. I didn’t know how marx and engels were anti-egalitarian. Makes me want to read parts of Das Kapital to understand more. I just recently realized how much I agree with marx as a person compared to marxism in general.

[edwardbackman]

“Communism is literally everything spread equally everywhere”
-Karl Marx
No seriously I’ve really been enjoying your content. I love the clips from Young Karl Marx.

[petersmythe]

"Equality of outcome would mean everyone becoming the same person."

How to be correct while sounding like Sargon of Akkad.

[snoot_mcgoot]

Equality will always be an unreachable, impossible horizon, and that's okay. Life always will have inequality, because we are all unique in our life circumstances, goals, and personal experiences. What we can do is seek the lessen inequity insofar as it negatively impacts the quality of life, and create a more equal and fair playing field for everyone that celebrates justice and the unique individual needs of each person.

Great video man - love your work!

[adambomb]

Emma Goldman said it best when, in regards to the women Suffrage movement of the early 20th century, Said "I don't want to be equal to unfree men"

[connorgray]

Watching these sort of videos has made me realise how much I need to educate myself on Marx before I speak on such matters again.

[cap]

The full development of the individual. Thank you, that's an excellent way of articulating it.

[petersmythe]

"Everyone becoming the same person"
*Borg-ism intensifies*

[somedudeok]

A very interesting take on the meaning of equality. Admittedly, I have not heard this yet, despite identifying as a marxist. It provides a smooth answer a question I have often been asked in debates: What if not everybody wants to be equal even in communism? At that point I always chose to wave it away by saying "People wouldn't necesserily have to be entirely equal." and focus more on marxisms critique of the current system, instead of what communism would ideally look like. Thank you for introducing me to this approach.

[ANDDIRECTLLC]

Equality of outcomes has literally never been the goal of Das Kapital. Das Kapital criticizes capitalism for barring “equality of opportunity” because capital creates a rigid hierarchy that decreases access to capital for working class. When there is equality of opportunity aka equal access to capital, then equality of outcome is achievable in aggregate because the decisions that affect standards of living would be more democratized. So equality of opportunity should be a goal, but it can only come at the expense of the incumbents of capital...which is why it is a class struggle that requires political/legislative reform. Capital has a monopolizing effect IN PRACTICE, that decreases opportunity for non incumbents. The cost of that lack of capital opportunity (access) is expressed in the explosion of personal debt because monopolized incumbent interests have the unilateral prerogative to lower or stagnate wages & raise prices & because of tax codes, do not have to pay into the social, monetary or fiscal security of any nation, but can continue to control these aspects with the money power to buy political influence, so that the capital incumbents never have to give up their opportunity advantage. This cycle of increasing opportunity disparity destroys societies & the very competition that capitalists say is the sine qua non.

[SturFriedBrains]

My father is a Law professor who usually uses Marxist & Hegelian lenses in the crim classes he teaches. I think the best way I ever heard Marxism explained was as a means of returning to tribalism, like real tribalism, not the modern useage that refers to radical partisanship.

For the majority of human evolution we lived in small tribes. These were almost as tightly packed groups as families, everyone knew everyone & there was enough space & resources for splits to take place, new tribes to form & one to move away from the other. In these tribes there were hunters who were better, gatherers who were better, builders who were better, leaders who were better, but all your better qualities were provided to the group. A hunter who brought home a great kill didn't demand money or resources for his kill, he fed his people. One day if he fell ill the tribe would retrieve medicine to try and nurse him back to health. Not only is he valuable to the tribe in his productive capacity, he has also formed an emotional bond with his tribesmen, an early death of this hunter would be a loss for everyone involved, & this hunter placing an economic barrier between his kill & the mouths of his tribesmen would be a loss for both as they would starve & likely not save him if he fell I'll. Resources are begotten of by and for a collective, not the individual, though the individual differences of people are respected & taken advantage of.

Once man began to till the land he began to create surplus. With surplus people are no longer bound to each other as in a tribe, and populations boom. Dunbar's number is the limit on the number of people your brain can actually process as people, as agents & actors as opposed to objects. Eventually this lead to a total loss of tribal familial bonds & lead people to demand a quid pro quo system for their labor, an exchange which was previously expected through tribal love & norms. This was also the beginning of history & what we know as modern theology. All social institutions were designed to protect "haves" with surplus from violent reactions of "have nots". From there the rest is the more broadly know part of Marxist theory. It's a more narrative heavy, low resolution picture than the actual texts, but I think this version is actually a digestible, understandable version. People don't get the more complexified, jargonistic perhaps more accurate retellings of the Marxist narrative.

[creepyisnotbad]

The problem I have with this video is that it misses what I believe to be a pivotal point : values are not goals. Values are merely the answer to questions like "how can we create a better society?". They are tools that politicians can use as a guide for policy making. Of course equality is not always the answer, as you showed in the video, but I don't believe the existence of a political value that's always helpful in any situation.

Believing in equality as a political value means to believe that, given equal conditions, people should receive the same treatment.
Of course this concept gets a bit confusing when we do not have equal circumstances.
Imagine two people, one with one arm broken and one with two : to treat them equally means that they receive an amount of treatment that is proportioned to the circumstances. If both them received the same amount of treatment, it would be unfair and unequal, because the second guy has clearly more problems than the first one and therefore should receive more treatment.

I believe in equality as a political value.
I do not believe in equality as a goal, something to achieve at all costs.
But then, who does really believe in a political value so much?

[rugbyguy]

Just want to say I’ve returned to this video (like many of your videos) repeatedly. It’s incredibly well constructed and informative. Thank you for your work.

Comment 1000 too

[homebrewfutures]

Jonas, your channel got me into reading Marx and this video specifically was what convinced me to read Gothakritik. Thank you for that!

[newcenturynarratives]

Honestly you've done a much better job in explaining Marxist thought than Zero Books. I watch his videos and come away thinking about Contra's criticism of "quoting unnecessarily convoluted philosophies of long dead eastern Europeans" (or something to that extent).

Anyway. Thanks for your video