Why we need a new vocabulary to talk honestly about politics
Among students at U of G who have taken a course in politics, it will certainly resonate that describing the difference between the political left and right is a central question considered in many classes. Often, I have heard that the difference is that the left values equality while the right values freedom. Leftists want to redistribute resources and wealth whereas rightists want to protect the rights of property owners from the tyranny of government taxation. Such a concept is more or less accurate. The distinction between the left and right might be even further simplified as to whether a society should change or conserve its way of life.
However, in recent years, I have heard time and time again that the real divide in politics is that the right wants to achieve “equality of opportunity” and the left wants to achieve “equality of outcome.” Or, in other words, one side (the right) believes that everyone should have the right to work their way towards a higher standard of living and the other side (the left) wants to ensure that everyone earns precisely the same amount of income. Not only is this inaccurate, but such a portrayal of politics is inherently conservative.
What exactly is meant by “outcome,” anyhow? As I said earlier, the most direct interpretation is that this term refers to income. It implies leftists want everyone to earn the same thing, regardless of how much work they do. But the mere suggestion that one’s income is an “outcome” of their hard work is nonsense. Take the extreme example of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, who makes around $78.5 billion per year (which is about $8.9 million per hour). The median Amazon employee makes $28 000 per year. Also, despite earning differences ratio, Bezos obviously does not struggle with the day-to-day burdens and labour equivalent to those of six hundred thousand of his employees. Any psychologist would tell you he’d simply burn out if that were ever the case. Personally speaking, I can barely manage the affairs of just one person. Therefore, one’s income level is not a strong indicator of their hardworkingness.
The reality of the situation is that Bezos occupies a societal role which allows him to accumulate a vast amount of wealth just by the sheer fact of his ownership of Amazon. As such, Bezos is able to accrue much of his massive wealth through dividend payments. Perhaps the achievement of ownership is the “outcome” to which right-wingers are referring. But again, to equate the difficulty of attaining ownership with actual wage-based labour is ridiculous. The path to acquiring assets, especially among the top few percent of people in society, is dependent upon what one can purchase with the wealth one already has. And in most cases, “the wealth one already has” is not a reward based on merit, or for serving the common good. Instead, billions of dollars are simply inherited between generations of some of the wealthiest families in Canada.
We must also consider not just the inheritance of wealth, but also its historical cause. For instance, the ownership of land in Canada was made possible only through the violent displacement of Indigenous peoples, not through business savvy or innovation. Many colonized peoples in the world would object that establishing the “equality of opportunity” has never been a priority among their oppressors. As such, the positioning of different people within different classes is a consequence of the exercise of coercive power, not cleverness.Therefore, I propose an alternative to the “equality of opportunity” versus “equality of outcome” dichotomy: the distinction between the left and the right is control.
Firstly, should a very small minority of the super-wealthy (or, as former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz calls them, “people of means”) be allowed to control the vast majority of resources? Or, instead, should such resources be redistributed through a democratically-controlled government to serve the needs of everyday people, rather than just the profit margin?
Secondly, who ought to control how work itself is performed? Today, we have regulations aiming to ensure workplace safety, which are designed to control employers and stop them from overworking their employees. But what if the fundamental question of how a workplace carries out its production was controlled by a broad swath of interest groups within the company, particularly the workers themselves? Such workplace democracy could remedy some crucial political issues. For example, workers have a fairly large interest in reducing a company’s environmentally-damaging activities since (compared to the owners) they experience much more of the cost than the direct profits of such activities. Giving workers more power over their daily lives could also improve their self-esteem and reduce their sense of alienation.
By talking about who has control over which resources, we can reach a clearer understanding of how society should be structured, as compared to the abstract and misleading concept of “opportunity” versus “outcome.”
Photo obtained via Wikimedia Commons
Editor’s note: please note that paragraphs three and four of the online version of this article have been updated to better reflect the author’s views.