[PEN-L:28027] Re: In defenser of egalitarianism

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Gar Lipow wrote:
>
> I hit send prematurely on my last post - but actually it is not a bad
> place to break (other than ending a post with a sentence fragment). The
> question of egalitarianism is of much broader interest than that of
> market socialism.
>
> Marx in the Gotha program, and a great many Marxists since have sneered
> at egalitarianism. I think a fair representation of this attitude is:
> People differ in strength, ability, needs etc.. and thus equality is
> nonsense,

This is roughly true, as explained below.

 an attack by the jealous peasant leveler mentality that wishes
> to destroy anything that cannot be evenly shared...

This is simply nonsense, a profound misinterpretation of what Marx was
arguing about. His _central_ point here has nothing to do with
"egalitarianISM" or "anti-egalitarianISM" in the sense you seem to be
giving the concept.

Consider just  one actual example -- me and my migraine headaches. Three
years ago I got hit with what was eventually diagnosed as "atypical"
migraine -- atypical in that instead of centering around one eye they
occurred on the top of my head, and they were several orders of
magnitude worse than the "ordinary" migraine I had been plagued with for
decades but was (mostly) controlled by my anti-depressants. They put me
in emergency room about every five days (with my ordinary 'upper'
bloodpressure number of 110 going up to well over 200). Finally they
were brought under control by a medication called Zanaflex (originally
developed for another purpose. It makes it possible for me to live.

If I didn't have insurance, Zanaflex would cost me over $300 a month.

In a hypothetical "egalitarian" society I would receive _exactly_ the
same salary as anyone else -- but treating me equally would in fact be
treating me _unequally_. To be equally treated I must receive $X a month
more than someone who does not need Zanaflex.

Now Marx's argument in the Critique is that _in the initial stages_ of
socialism I must be treated equally -- i.e. unequally, but in the
_later_ stages I must be treated _UNEQUALLY_, i.e. equally.

We are _all_ different. To treat us _equally_ is to treat us like ball
bearings instead of like human beings.

I won't try to speak to the rest of your post, which goes off in too
many different directions to be responded to as a whole.

(I know that in most socialist societies medical care would be
guaranteed -- precisely, which would mean those who are ill or disabled
would be working much less and receiving much more!)

Carrol