The spectre of 'classism'
..and the chimera of ‘equality of opportunity’
It’s a liberal axiom that will not die: ‘Radicals demand “equality of outcome,” which is utopian and unrealistic and leads to the Gulag. We liberals favour “equality of opportunity,” which is reasonable and fair and pretty much what we have already.’ Nearly everything about this is untrue.
First, the idea that the left – or anyone, really – insists on equality of outcome is a caricature. What typically inspires outrage on the left is not the mere fact that some people are richer than others, but the extreme level of inequality. And that’s precisely because it seems unjust, not a natural outcome of differing inputs. Does anyone really believe Britain’s top bosses work 109 times harder than the average full-time worker? Or that more than half the nation’s natural talent lies with the richest ten percent of the population?
There are some on the fringes of the left who do despise the very idea of opportunity, but (like Gandhi on Western civilisation) most think equality of opportunity ‘would be a good idea’. What they doubt is that we currently have anything like it. And in this they are surely right.
How can someone born to an unemployed single parent on a rough housing estate, with a failing local school and no family connections, be said to enjoy equal opportunities with someone from a wealthy and well-connected family, with a private education and exposure to a wide range of cultural experiences? That they are both permitted to apply for the same job on reaching adulthood, and to compete on their ‘merits’, is of little account if those merits have been shaped by radically unequal circumstances.
Even when the differences are less extreme, the opportunities we realistically enjoy are necessarily curtailed by circumstances beyond our control, and differ enormously from case to case. Opportunities are unequal almost by definition.
That’s why it’s bizarre that ‘equality of opportunity’ is regarded as a moderate, or even conservative goal. Taken seriously, it is an absurdly utopian one. The first thing you would have to do is abolish the family, the source of fantastic amounts of inherited advantage and disadvantage. Then, youngsters from Juvenile Accommodation Block 4 might enjoy similar opportunities to those in Juvenile Accommodation Block 11. (At least we’ll have dodged the Gulag!)
The economic historian Deirdre McCloskey has instead endorsed the idea of ‘equality of permission’ (PDF), a genuinely moderate acknowledgment of what equal rights mean in an unequal world. Let’s not pretend ‘there is nothing stopping’ someone from a disadvantaged background from getting rich. Poverty itself, a lack of connections and inadequate education are all obstacles. In most cases, though, there is no one stopping anyone from overcoming those obstacles. Unlike in feudal societies, there are no laws or powerful social conventions keeping the peasants in their place. So there are no official gatekeepers to keep hoi polloi out of business or the professions.
Much is made in some quarters of un-official gatekeepers, who perhaps look down on people with the wrong accent or tastes. Too much. This spectre of ‘classism’ not only exaggerates the force of snobbery, but obscures the true nature of class inequality.
‘Classism’ versus class inequality
Unless it is extreme, class inequality never seems as morally egregious as racial inequality. It is accepted as a fact of life rather than the result of malice. A millionaire being turned away from a fancy hotel because he happens to be black is an outrage. The fact that most people of all races are excluded from the same hotel simply because they can’t afford it is not. Of course, if someone from a working class background can afford to stay in said hotel, but is denied a room because he says ‘settee’ rather than ‘sofa’, that’s outrageous again (albeit also funny).
Why? Because someone’s cultural background, their identity, is amenable to politicisation in a way economic disadvantage is not. If, as with racism or sexism, something that should be an irrelevant detail is held against someone, we feel the injustice of it. And, crucially, the remedy is obvious. We insist such details must not be allowed to count. Or, conversely, we insist they must, but only as a correction to past injustice. (This is an important point: affirmative action is rarely as simple as ‘reverse racism’; much more often, its advocates uphold the ideal of equality in theory, but – assuming unequal outcomes are the result of prejudice rather than some other discrepancy – seek to bring it about by roundabout means.)
Either way, this politicisation should in theory work as well – or fail as disastrously – for inequalities pertaining to class identity as to race or gender identity. Witness the trend for encouraging people from ‘non-traditional backgrounds’ to apply for jobs, courses and other opportunities. There’s a place on the settee for everyone. Except, of course, when inequality is not simply the result of prejudices that can be ‘cancelled out’.
A care worker who cannot afford to stay in our fancy hotel will not benefit from diversity training for the reception staff (who also cannot afford to stay there) or even from preferential treatment for (rich) people with working class accents. Might that care worker’s daughter benefit from a literary agent’s preferential submissions window for writers from non-traditional backgrounds? Maybe. Especially if she’s got as far as writing a decent manuscript. But does she have the same opportunities to get there as would-be writers from well-off and well-educated backgrounds? Obviously not.
A working class would-be writer or artist is intrinsically at a disadvantage simply because he or she lacks the leisure time of the better off. And the emphasis here is on leisure, which gives time a different quality from that experienced by the merely unemployed. Wealthy families can support their young through extended periods of earning little or nothing. Gap years, internships, postgraduate degrees or simply the opportunity to bum around without serious privation provide a kind of existential oxygen that’s just not available even to the ‘time rich’ poor. At the very least, even moderately well-off families provide a psychological safety net so their kids can slum it without fear of the condition becoming permanent.
More than that, though, middle class youngsters benefit from the accumulated leisure time that accrues in inherited ‘cultural capital’. One aspect of this that should not be underestimated is that their parents expect them to indulge in what looks to others like time-wasting. Another is that they are consequently more likely to ‘waste’ their time on reading, writing and dabbling in other creative endeavours. They are much more likely to have been brought up to value these things, and to benefit from them, than their peers.
Of course, it might be considered ‘classist’ to suggest working class families are less cultured, and there are obviously exceptions, but material advantage and disadvantage do make a difference. Moreover, beyond the home, working class parents are typically not university educated and lack the contacts and influence to help their children advance in the middle class professions, or even to consider them as possibilities. Working class young people are therefore more dependent on their own resources to take advantage of those opportunities that are theoretically open to everyone (or even explicitly meant for people like them).
Class inequality of this kind simply cannot be mitigated ‘politically’ in the same way as race or gender inequality. Because class is not about ‘irrelevant details’ like accent or taste; it is about resources, cultural as well as financial (as if financial inequality were not consequential enough). Class inequality is not the result of prejudice, but a simple matter of material circumstances.
To some extent, the same is true of other forms of inequality. Rather than trying to understand class inequality by analogy with racism, in many cases it would be more helpful to see racial disparities through the prism of class. That immigrants are more likely to work as bus drivers than as high court judges is neither an accident nor the result of racial prejudice. Immigrants are overwhelmingly working class. And class is almost as hereditary as skin colour.
Of course, none of this is to say it’s not worth striving for less un-equal opportunities, just as we might wish for less un-equal outcomes. Realistically, democratic states can certainly help provide much better opportunities to those who lack them, but striving for equality of opportunity is just as quixotic as striving for equal outcomes. Instead of talking about equality of opportunity, then, we should focus on equal rights plus better opportunities.
To the extent that some people still lack equal rights – suffering discrimination on the basis of gender or race, for example – that remains a matter of social justice. To the extent they lack opportunities, that is a matter for the politics of amelioration. That kind of politics might not excite the same kind of moral intoxication as the politics of social justice, but it is far more likely to change people’s lives for the better.