The present-day ‘radicals’’ who demand the fullest extension of the equal-opportunity principle to all groups within the society, and especially to Negroes and the lower classes, are really more conservative than the ‘conservatives’ who oppose them. No policy formula is better designed to fortify the dominant institutions, values, and ends of the American social order than the formula of equality of opportunity, for it offers everyone a fair and equal chance to find a place within that order. In principle, it excludes no man from the system if his abilities can be put to use within the system. We have here another example of the repeated tendency of American radicals to buttress the existing framework of an order even while they think they are undermining it … Before one subscribes to the equality-of-opportunity then, he should be certain that the dominant values, institutions and content of much of our recent serious literature and social thought---thought that escapes the confines of the conservative-radical framework—warn that we are well on the way toward building a culture our best men will not honor. The facile formula of equal opportunity quickens that trend. It opens more and more opportunities for more and more people to contribute more and more energies toward the realization of a mass, bureaucratic, technological, privatized, materialistic, bored, and thrill-seeking, consumption-oriented society—a society of well-fed, congenial, and sybaritic monkeys surrounded by gadgets and pleasure-toys (230-231).Schaar draws on Michael Young’s influential critique of “meritocracy,” which remains a favorite punching bag for contemporary left-liberal political theorists. The core point is that it is irrelevant to insist on an equal opportunity to achieve success in a society if the core structure of that society remains hierarchical and corrupt.
I’m interested in a related (though distinct) left critique of equal opportunity developed by the greatest theorist of American progressivism, Herbert Croly. In both The Promise of American Life (1909) and Progressive Democracy (1914), Croly attacks American liberalism for its fixation with equal opportunity, a feature of America’s more general commitment to moral individualism.
Croly acknowledges that in a certain sense democracy must be committed to equal rights. A society “ceases to be a democracy, just as soon as any permanent privileges are conferred by its institutions or its laws; and this equality of right and absence of permanent privilege is the expression of a fundamental social interest” (Promise 222). At the same time, the obsession with individual equality leads to a tangle of unproductive contradictions. The most stark of those contradictions concerns the apparent belief in “equal opportunity” and repudiation of “equal outcome:”
The democratic principle requires an equal start in the race, while expecting at the same time an unequal finish. But Americans who talk in this way seem wholly blind to the fact that under a legal system which holds private property there may be equal rights, but there cannot possibly be any equal opportunities for exercising such rights. The chance which the individual has to compete with his fellows and take a prize in the race is vitally affected by material conditions over which he has no control (Promise 222).That metaphor—the race—is of course ubiquitous in American debates over equal opportunity. It is given its most famous statement in LBJ’s 1965 Commencement Address at Howard University:
But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough to just open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.That’s the same conclusion Rawls famously reaches by distinguishing between two forms of equal opportunity: “careers open to talent” and “fair equality of opportunity.” The race metaphor seems to imply that no strong line can be drawn between equal opportunity and equal outcomes. Every outcome is another opportunity, and so a true commitment to equal opportunity requires some form of equalizing conditions.
Notably, this is NOT the conclusion Croly draws. He does not take from the race metaphor the conclusion that a true commitment to democracy entails a commitment to REAL equal opportunity. He concludes, by contrast, that the fixation with “equal rights” is too individualistic and altogether unhelpful:
No formula whose effect on public opinion is not binding and healing and unifying has any substantial claim to consideration as the essential and formative democratic idea. Belief in the idea of equal rights does not bind, heal, and unify public opinion. Its effect rather is confusing, distracting, and at worst, integrating … The principle of equal rights encourages mutual suspicion and disloyalty. It tends to attribute individual and social ills, for which general moral, economic, and social causes are usually in large measure responsible, to individual wrong-doing; and in this way it arouses and intensifies that personal and class hatred, which never in any society lies far below the surface. Men who have grievances are inflamed into anger and resentment (Promise 227).Croly rejects any political philosophy that aims at explicating, expounding, and realizing a true vision of equal rights. The problem with all such individualistic liberalisms is that they undermine the possibility of establishing a constructive democratic politics in service of collective purposes. When we are preoccupied with the correct balance and calculus of individual entitlements, we are unable to think coherently about the genuine national interest. Indeed, the entire race metaphor is a kind of fraud that perpetuates an illusion of impersonality and impartiality. Rather than be impartial, the democratic state must be willing to rig the game of society to serve the true social interest:
It is in the position of the bank at Monte Carlo, which does not pretend to play fair, but which frankly promulgates rules advantageous to itself. Considering the percentage in its favor and the length of its purse, it cannot possibly lose. It is not really gambling; and it does not propose to take any unnecessary risks. Neither can a state, democratic or otherwise, which believes in its own purpose. While preserving at times an appearance of impartiality so that its citizens may enjoy for a while a sense of the reality of their private game, it must on the whole make rules in its own interests. It must help those men to win who are most capable of using their winnings for the benefit of society (Promise 236-7).Croly makes the same point in Progressive Democracy. He offers the race metaphor to mock the philosophical contortions of liberal theorists attempting to discover the true meaning or requirements of equal opportunity:
American democrats have usually hugged the illusion that equality of right would automatically bring with it equality in the exercise of rights. When the result of the exercise of presumably equal rights has been gross inequality of benefit, they seek constantly to repair the damage by abolishing or attenuating rights which seem to be fruitful of inequalities. They argued at first that, inasmuch as the whole field started from the same line, the whole field had had an equal chance to win. When it was found that the fleetest runners were always winning, the privilege of starting with them from the same line seemed to be a poor consolation for constant defeat. The natural inference followed. If the great object of the running was the prize of victory, and if all deserved an equal opportunity of winning the race, the only fair race was the handicap. Instead of starting equally and finishing unequally, they should start unequally in order that they might finish equally (PD 114).These are endless, unproductive, stupid debates. They derive from a foolish fetishization of “equal rights." A progressive, constructive democracy will not waste time agonizing about whether a given distribution of opportunities or outcomes is fair or just. It will focus instead on whether the social structure as a whole serves the public interest. The correct emphasis is social contribution not individual entitlement:
Society is undoubtedly interested in affording everybody an opportunity to win prizes in the race; but it is still more interested in arranging for a fast race, a real contest and an inspiring victory. If for the present a large part of the spoils must belong to the victors, it is the more necessary to insist that the victors shall be worthy of the spoils (PD 115).This abstract critique of liberal rights-talk and individualism is meant to articulate Croly’s repudiation of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom agenda, which derives ultimately from a Jeffersonian ideal of individual self-sufficiency. Wilson and his closest advisor, Louis Brandeis, favor trust-busting, for example, as a means of distributing an equal opportunity for individuals to build their own businesses and establish a degree of economic independence. They attack big business in order to give the little guy a fair shot. For Croly, that vision of antitrust policy remains trapped within a conservative ideology of liberal individualism. The goal for progressives should not be “true equality” or “true opportunity.” The goal is the construction of a society that serves the national interest. That might mean some form of antitrust. But it might also mean the embrace of corporate consolidation if the trusts can be induced to serve the common good. As he puts it in The Promise of American Life:
The concentrated leadership, the partial control, the thorough organization thereby effected [by the monopolies] was not necessarily a bad thing. It was in some respects a decidedly good thing, because leadership of any kind has certain intrinsic advantages. The trusts have certainly succeeded in reducing the amount of waste which was necessitated by the earlier condition of wholly unregulated competition. The competitive methods of nature have been, and still are, within limits indispensable; but the whole effort civilization has been to reduce the area within which they are desirably effective; and it is entirely possible that in the end the American system of industrial organization will constitute a genuine advance in industrial economy. Large corporations, which can afford the best machinery, which control abundant capital, and which can plan with scrupulous economy all the details of producing and selling an important product or service, are actually able to reduce the cost of production to a minimum; and in the cases of certain American corporations certain results have actually been achieved. The new organization of American industry has created an economic mechanism which is capable of being wonderfully and indefinitely serviceable to the American people (Promise 142).For Croly, if your commitment to “individual rights” or “equal opportunity” leads you to repudiate the most innovative and efficient institutions in American society, it is time to revise your point of departure.
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