Different Rationalizations for Hierarchies - Shaira
In “Private Government,” Anderson writes that “to be an egalitarian is to command and promote a society in which its members interact as equals” and that forms of social hierarchies are the object of their critique (2). Anderson begins by presenting Smith’s and Marx’s contrasting views of an egalitarian market society. Smith’s image of the market society paints everyone to exchange on the terms of equal authority, esteem, and standing. Marx directly challenges this, stating that Smith’s conception of an egalitarian market exchange creates hierarchies of authority, esteem, and standing. Marx states that in Smith’s market society, employers enjoy an air of superiority over their employees and that employees are obligated to follow their employers and disregard their own interests in regard to capitalist profit.
Anderson writes that the reason behind the shift in the egalitarian assessment of the market society was the industrial revolution. She explains that while Smith wrote his conception of the market society at the beginning of the industrial revolution, Marx wrote it during the midst. This is a significant distinction to make because the Industrial Revolution marked a turning point for egalitarians since it changed the way they thought about how free society of equals may be built through market society.
Before the industrial revolution, the Levellers led one of the first egalitarian social movements, She explains that the Levellers were looking to dismantle the social hierarchies of domination and subordination prevalent in Early modern England. She writes that the government was a part of everything, including the church and inside the household. The church had its own system of courts, censorship, and taxation, and that the husband was legally entitled to his wife’s movements, including her wages (8). These types of social hierarchies were rationalized by a number of ideologies. For example, the great chain of being asserted that social ranks were determined and fixed by birth. Another ideology that rationalized these hierarchies was patriarchalism, which maintained that fathers “enjoyed absolute dominion over the subordinate members of his household, and owned all its property, so the king enjoyed absolute authority over all his subjects” (10). Obviously, these rationalizations did not hold given that the rise of Levellers undermined these arguments.
However, a question that I had when reading this section was if any social hierarchies can be rationalized within the context of a market society without it inevitably leading to exploitation and inequality. For example, individuals who possess specialized knowledge or expertise in a particular field are often highly valued and sought after by employers which can create a hierarchy where individuals with greater skill and expertise are able to enjoy higher salaries and greater job security than those without these attributes. However, this hierarchy based on skill and expertise may not necessarily lead to exploitation or inequality if it is based on merit and fair competition. In this scenario, individuals are able to achieve success and be rewarded for their own hard work, dedication, and expertise in the workplace without it leading to negative forms of inequality. Would love to hear people’s thoughts on this.
P.S my page numbers may be off since I bought the book off of Kindle :)
Hi Shaira! I was just wondering if you could clarify your distinction between "individuals who possess specialized knowledge or expertise in a particular field" and the scenario that is "based on merit and fair competition." As I understand it, the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. Individuals who with specialized knowledge or expertise more often than not have worked hard to obtain that knowledge or expertise. Take the example of doctors, who have to go through six years of medical school alongside placed residency in hospitals, not even mentioning how much harder their undergraduate years are than most other professions. They can obtain their specialized expertise, and consequently higher paying jobs, fairly and based on their merit.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if you import the Rawlsian definition of fair competition, wherein those people are allowed to make use of their talents provided their gain benefits those who did not have the same natural advantages, then I can understand your point better. Have I misunderstood your post?
Hi Umer! Just wanted to respond and provide more clarity -- In the workplace, hierarchies of esteem, authority, or standing can be created- the example that I presented is one in which some sort of social hierarchy is created in the workplace -- one that doesn't necessarily fit in to the groupings of esteem, authority, or standing -- based off one's merit and fair competition. In the example you provided with doctors, I would assume that the more experience doctors have, the higher up they are in these social hierarchies. My question then is, would these types of social hierarchies be justified in the workplace since they aren't necessarily exploitative?
ReplyDeleteHi Shaira, thanks for clarifying. I would argue that these types of social hierachies are unregulatable, since they involve people's personal decisions to elevate others in their considerations. Social hierachies form all the time, on varying degrees of scale, and as students, we encounter them all the time, whether that be in classrooms, frienship groups, clubs/organizations or sports teams. It is difficult to regulate these types of social hierachies, especially once they form, because they tend to form through some level of consent. Not only do people elevate others in their view (and the more people elevate an individual, the higher up that individual tends to be in the social hierarchy), but they tend to designate a specific place for themselves within the hierarchy too, based on some inner (and to some degree, unconscious) calculus with respect to where they deserve to be relative to their peers. I would argue that this is a kind of natural process, and doesn't necessarily have negative effects at all.
ReplyDelete(Please correct me if I have misunderstood your point)
Hi Shaira! Great blog post. I just wanted to push back a little on your last paragraph and challenge to your argument. I do agree with Umer that this is more of a natural process. An employer would definitely pick a medically trained surgeon to perform surgery on a patient over even another professional, such as a lawyer. It is natural, and quite justified for safety and logical reasons, to rely on the expertise of certain individuals to execute certain tasks.
ReplyDeleteHowever, negative forms of unequal hierarchies can be nestled within this. As Rawls's points out, careers open to talents may not be entirely fair. Greater skills and expertise in the professional field are supported by quite a lot of monetary funds. It is incredibly expensive to become a doctor, lawyer, etc. Lots of high paying jobs that require the necessary skills are not really open to everyone and there are entire groups and their budding talents being pushed away due to expense. I'm not talking about individuals who received job offers due to nepotism, etc. as you make the stipulation of fair competition and merit. However, who is the competition fair for? Individuals can be hired in a fair process, but is it really fair if people are barred from entering that competition due to social and economic classes? This may not lead to exploitation and inequality but exploitation and inequality can support these hierarchies.
Hi Shaira, this is a good point, and gets to an important question in Anderson's work and in egalitarian thought more generally, which is how we should weigh equality against other social goods. I don't think it's possible to envision a hierarchy that doesn't fit in some way into one of Anderson's three categories, or that doesn't lead to inequality. The one that you describe as "based on merit and fair competition" would be a hierarchy of standing. The people with more talent would earn more money, and therefore their interests would be considered above others in society. Just as in society today, they would be able to afford a more pleasant lifestyle than their lower-earning counterparts, and would have priority access to goods and services because of their wealth. Likely, this would also translate to some form of esteem hierarchy. For the reasons that Smith discusses in the chapter on rank, people tend to sympathize with and look up to the wealthy. I think it's possible to prevent those hierarchies from translating into a hierarchy of authority in most arenas by regulation of the campaign finance system and such, but in the workplace, the same market forces that you describe as giving skilled workers better wages and job security would certainly result in a hierarchy of authority. People with more skills in their field become managers, holding significant authority over their other employees, just as Anderson describes.
ReplyDeleteThat some amount of hierarchy is the unavoidable result of market forces, which encompass the system of competition for labor that you describe, is an important part of Anderson's point. The key question is whether and to what extent this hierarchy is acceptable. Certainly some degree is, since it is such an essential part of free market economies, the best known system for generating capabilities. I think I hew pretty close to the Rawlsian view on this question: we can allow hierarchy/inequality as long as it helps the people at the bottom. That would certainly include the kind of competition and hierarchy you describe, since it would allow for the efficient allocation of labor towards producing the goods that people want. I don't necessarily think that Anderson would reject this either, or at least something close to it. The solutions she advocates for around labor policy are not total abolition of hierarchy, but ways to bring up those at the bottom. I think they are totally consistent with the system you describe. In short, some hierarchies can be just, not because they don't lead to inequality, but because they are important for social goods other than equality.