|
CAPITALISM AND EQUALITY
Everywhere in the world there are gross inequities
of income and wealth. They offend most of us. Few
can fail to be moved by the contrast between the
luxury enjoyed by some and the grinding poverty
suffered by others.
CREATED EQUAL
In the past century a myth has grown up that free
market capitalism?�equality of opportunity as we have
interpreted that term?�increases such inequalities,
that it is a system under which the rich exploit the
poor.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Wherever
the free market has been permitted to operate,
wherever anything approaching equality of
opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been
able to attain levels of living never dreamed of
before. Nowhere is the gap between rich and poor
wider, nowhere are the rich richer and the poor
poorer, than in those societies that do not permit
the free market to operate. That is true of feudal
societies like medieval Europe, India before
independence, and much of modern South America,
where inherited status determines position. It is
equally true of centrally planned societies, like
Russia or China or India since independence, where
access to government determines position. It is true
even where central planning was introduced, as in
all three of these countries, in the name of
equality.
Russia is a country of two nations: a small
privileged upper class of bureaucrats, Communist
party officials, technicians; and a great mass of
people little better than their great-grandparents
did. The upper class has access to special shops,
schools, and luxuries of all kind; the masses are
condemned to enjoy little more than the basic
necessities. We remember asking a tourist guide in
Moscow the cost of a large automobile that we saw
and being told, "Oh, those aren?? for sale; they're
only for the Politburo." Several recent books by
American journalists document in great detail the
contrast between the privileged life of the upper
classes and the poverty of the masses. Even on a
simpler level, it is noteworthy that the average
wage of a foreman is a larger multiple of the
average wage of an ordinary worker in a Russian
factory than in a factory in the United States?�and
no doubt he deserves it. After all, an American
foreman only has to worry about being fired; a
Russian foreman also has to worry about being shot.
China, too, is a nation with wide differences in
income?between the politically powerful and the
rest; between city and countryside; between some
workers in the cities and other workers. A
perceptive student of China writes that "the
inequality between rich and poor regions in China
was more acute in 1957 than in any of the larger
nations of the world except perhaps Brazil." He
quotes another scholar as saying, "These examples
suggest that the Chinese industrial wage structure
is not significantly more egalitarian than that of
other countries." And he concludes his examination
of equality in China, "How evenly distributed would
China's income be today? Certainly, it would not be
as even as Taiwan's or South Korea's. . . . On the
other hand, income distribution in China is
obviously more even than in Brazil or South America.
. . . We must conclude that China is far from being
a society of complete equality. In fact, income
differences in China may be quite a bit greater than
in a number of countries commonly associated with
??ascist?elites and exploited masses."
Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of
the great wonders of the modern era have meant
relatively little to the wealthy. The rich in
Ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all
from modern plumbing: running servants replaced
running water. Television and radio?�the patricians
of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors
in their home, could have the leading artists as
domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing,
supermarkets?�all these and many other modern
developments would have added little to their life.
They would have welcomed the improvements in
transportation and in medicine, but for the rest,
the great achievements of Western capitalism have
redounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary
person. These achievements have made available to
the masses conveniences and amenities that were
previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and
powerful.
In 1848 John Stuart Mill wrote: "Hitherto it is
questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet
made have lightened the day's toil of any human
being. They have enabled a greater population to
live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and
an increased number of manufacturers and others to
make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of
the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to
effect those great changes in human destiny, which
it is in their nature and in their futurity to
accomplish."
No
one could say that today. You can travel from one
end of the industrialized world to the other and
almost the only people you will find engaging in
backbreaking toil are people who are doing it for
sport. To find people whose day's toil has not been
lightened by mechanical invention, you must go to
the noncapitalist world: to Russia, China, India or
Bangladesh, parts of Yugoslavia; or to the more
backward capitalist countries?�in Africa, the
Mideast, South America; and until recently, Spain or
Italy.
CONCLUSION
A
society that puts equality?�in the sense of equality
of outcome?�ahead of freedom will end up with neither
equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve
equality will destroy freedom, and the force,
introduced for good purposes, will end up in the
hands of people who use it to promote their own
interests.
On
the other hand, a society that puts freedom first
will, as a happy by-product, end up with both
greater freedom and greater equality. Though a
by-product of freedom, greater equality is not an
accident. A free society releases the energies and
abilities of people to pursue their own objectives.
It prevents some people from arbitrarily suppressing
others. It does not prevent some people from
achieving positions of privilege, but so long as
freedom is maintained, it prevents those positions
of privilege from becoming institutionalized; they
are subject to continued attack by other able,
ambitious people. Freedom means diversity but also
mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today's
disadvantaged to become tomorrow's privileged and,
in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to
bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life.
From
Free To Choose by Milton Friedman
|
