Prometheus 6

The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in America by Michael J. Thompson is an American history. It reaches all the way back to the philosophers of Greece, all the way through Europe to explain the economic ideas current when the United States of America declared its independence. Then it follows the way these ideas were expressed as the economy (and hence the politics) of the nation changed beneath their feet. The overall result was the exchange of our intellectual forbears' sure knowledge that excessive inequality undermines the democracy itself, for the government supported libertarian market economy we now enjoy.

The Politics of Inequality, A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality is also a challenging book for a layman. It is clearly written, but the picture it want to lay out before you is big enough to be difficult to hold in mind at once. The tyro...okay, me...I encountered a lot of unfamiliar players, and Prof. Thompson explained them all, gave them enough space to explain themselves. That made the data deeper...and therefore a little more difficult to hold in mind at once. I think you need some familiarity with the material to get the best out of it.

It doesn't have a lot of chapters because American history is already chunked. If you start from the founding of the colonies, the first chunk breaks off around the Revolutionary War. The next chunk goes out to the Civil War...actually to the end of Reconstruction (the Yankees won the War of Northern Aggression but lost the Southern Insurrection). The New Deal, Brown vs. Board of Education thru the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and whatever time it is as you read this border the other chunks. Professor Thompson keeps it simpler, though broader, than that. In his history there are four chapters, from Hellenic times to the founding of the nation (chapter 1), thence to the Civil War (chapter 2), then the age of industrial capitalism (chapter 3) which blurs into a now that's about ten years wide (chapter 4).

This book interested me because it would explain, not how economic inequality came about, but how it became acceptable. I don't recall that being tried before. The idea reminded me of The Universe, by Isaac Asimov, which traced ideas about cosmology from the flat earth to black holes and quasars, using only the ideas that were current at each stage. It was an extraordinarily useful recap, and I was hoping to get something parallel to that from The Politics of Inequality.

I didn't get that...to be honest, I'm still not quite done with it. So far I got a book that, for me, was surprisingly difficult to read. The world view is not terribly compatible with mine. My view of history is tied irrevocably to specific physical events. There are none here, not really. Prof. Thompson doesn't ignore the real world; in fact, he makes the point that the ideas are shaped by events as much as they shape them several times. But when the events are things like "the establishment of industrial capitalism," I find it difficult to line them up with my own understanding of things.

Another thing I found jarring was reading about how the United States was founded with the intent of doing away with the feudal aristocracies of Europe, yet created an agrarian economy that precisely mirrored the feudal aristocracies of Europe, with slaves playing the part of hereditary serfs.

What I initially found most troubling was the absolute lack of any discussion of slavery until roughly half way through the book. I actually felt a sense of exclusion...yet Prof. Thompson probably made the correct decision. This is not a history of events, it's a history of ideas. Whatever else can be said, it is certain the Founding Fathers did not think of Africans and freedom at the same time. The coverage of race is three brief (but dense) pages long.

For all that, I will finish the book, and read it again...this time mining for rhetoric.

There are three orders in society—those who live by rent, by labour and by profit. Employers constitute the third order...The proposal of any new law by or regulation which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with the greatest precaution and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and thoroughly examined, not only with the most scrupulous but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.”

That's Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations...the capitalist bible, which they read with the same frequency and accuracy your average Mammonite reads his bible. Page 310.

Then there's the fact that watching the United States of America's economic system assemble itself reminds on that it wasn't actually what you'd call a capitalist nation at its inception.

Rhetoric may not be the best use for the knowledge. But the fact is, you have to build your argument for change on the moral grounds on which you stand. Sounds like starting from a disadvantaged position, and to some degree that is true. But if you can express your position in those terms you will at least have the possibility of being heard. That was one of Prof. Thompson's goals in writing the book. All I can say so far is that I'm looking forward to testing that out.