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FROM EGALITARIAN SYNDROME TO DISTINCTION: ON WAYS OF LEGITIMIZING SOCIAL INEQUALITIES
Vjeran Katunarić
orcid.org/0000-0002-7979-9577
; Vjeran Katunarić, Ivana Lučića 3, 10000 Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
This article firstly focuses on the initial recognition, in the final period of the second
Yugoslavia, of the existence of social inequalities, as the first serious symptoms
of abandoning the ideology of social equality and socialism as a whole.
Moreover, the nationalist mobilization was used as a lever for restoration of capitalism
as a typical class society. After that it briefly outlines two post-war periods
of structuring social opportunities in societies in the West, and partly also
in the East. The first period is designated primarily by egalitarian tendencies,
which is manifest in increased popularity of critical and radical trends in social
sciences. The second period, which still lasts, is quite opposite in orientation,
and this is, in turn, manifest in ever greater relevance of social Darwinism as a
discursive foundation of a series of sciences. The next, and largest, part of the
article is dedicated to an attempt at explaining the permanence of social inequalities,
and the author stresses the inexhaustible character of Rousseau’s question regarding
the origin of social inequalities. In the present-day quest for an answer to
that question, certain similarities are noticeable between (neo)evolutionism and
(neo)Marxism. Although Marx himself stressed the correspondence of his conception
of class struggles in history with Darwin’s conception of struggles for
survival in nature, but also took into account the differences (between natural
evolution and human history), the conclusion on the identity of their conceptions
imposes itself through observations about the constant defeat of the proletariat
in age-long struggles against the oppressors, which continue to this very day in
the epoch of neo-liberal global capitalism. Reflecting on possibilities of a generally
different outcome in the struggles for a more just society, the author finds
that there are two interrelated prerequisites to their existence. The first has to
do with connecting the theory and practice of liberalism and socialism with the
aim of establishing a balance between the mechanisms of individual freedom and
competition on the one hand, and social sensitivity or solidarity on the other. The
second prerequisite is the construction of a world democratic state. Its political
interest and scope of governing would neutralize the key concept (and self-reproduction
mechanism) of social Darwinism – inclusive fitness. Quite simply, the latter
means to favour “one’s own” group while humiliating or excluding the other.
In a society with a globally ruling government, the division between “one’s own”
and “somebody else’s” parts of the world – the boundaries of which are nowadays
all too often shifted to and fro as a consequence of the erratic character of
expansion and contraction of the market and the breaking out of conflagrations of
war, producing a permanent Hobbesian “state of nature” – would make way for
wisdom of governing and for work of all for the benefit of all.
Ključne riječi
social (in)equality; socialism; capitalism; re-legitimization of inequality; egalitarian syndrome; distinction; social Darwinism; world democratic state and society
Hrčak ID:
74092
URI
Datum izdavanja:
18.11.2011.
Posjeta: 2.520 *