There are different types of communism, I was asking what yours is. Do you want all men equal? Or just their finances? How would you distribute wealth so that wealthy people need not feel guilty for having a big house?
Saw this post yesterday but have not had a chance to respond until now.
These are excellent questions. The philosopher John Rawls came up with an influential response to them in his book
A Theory of Justice.
In particular, he is renowned for an influential thought experiment that he described in this publication. He asks us to imagine that we are to become a member of a new society but presently know nothing about what role we will play in it. For example, we don’t know if we will be rich, poor, able-bodied, good looking, male, female, intelligent, unintelligent, talented or unskilled, and we won’t know which ethnic group we will belong to or what our sexual proclivities might be. Rawls thought that in our currently prior state (which he called the Original Position), where we have to collectively decide in advance from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ on the rules that will govern our new world, that we would be rationally attracted to choosing ones that could improve our situation if we ended up disadvantaged in some way. Specifically, he thought that it would be rational to accept two fundamental principles: those of Freedom and Equality.
The first principle is one that would maximise a range of freedoms for all citizens, such as being able to vote for who governs you and extensive freedom of expression, while the second, which is also called the Difference Principle, would ensure more equal levels of wealth and opportunity. For example, although some people might be paid very high salaries, this would only be permitted if lower paid workers somehow received more money because of this arrangement, more than they would if the highest paid citizens were paid less. Rawls also thought that those who are endowed with natural talents, such as intelligence or sporting ability were not necessarily entitled to more money, as being blessed in this way is mainly due to luck and good genes.
Interestingly, although Rawls's discussion is theoretical, there is some empirical evidence to support his view.
In their recent books,
The Spirit Level and
The Inner Level, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett show that the more unequal a society is, the more people suffer from a variety of physical and mental health problems, such as obesity and depression. Additionally, drug abuse tends to be rife, rates of imprisonment and teenage pregnancies are higher, social mobility is less possible, trust between citizens is lower, and violence is more endemic. In other words, outcomes are significantly worse in more unequal rich countries like the US and UK.
Am just coming to the end of
False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism by John Gray. He takes a similar line.
All this suggests that we should aim, not for a
fully egalitarian society (as we know, the attempts to do away with markets altogether proved disastrous in Russia and China under Communism) but for a
more egalitarian society here.
www.theguardian.com
