What does it mean for people to be equal?

(A John Locke Essay, 2022)

Equality. It seems that almost everyone wants it, but few have any idea how to achieve it. I don’t pretend to have the absolute answer that will bring equality to society, but I do believe that many are getting ahead of themselves and disregarding the equally important, if not exponentially more important, question: “what is equality?”, and to this, I at least have some clue of where to start.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “equality” as “the quality or state of being equal”, which doesn’t help us very much; however, its definition of “equal”, which is “of the same measure, quantity, amount, or number as another”, may be of more use. However, is complete and absolute “equality” as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary what most people define as equality? Is absolute “equality” what they truly want? 

Thankfully, we have multiple real-life examples of what could and did go wrong when absolute “equality” was attempted. The entirety of Marxism and the Communist manifesto was built off the idea that the new world at the time had “established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of old ones”. Karl Marx and many after him saw this wheel of man, control, and power, whose spokes and head changed over time, to roll over the poor working-class all the same — as Daenerys Targaryen of “Game of Thrones” put it. 

Marxism was created to end this cycle and treat all of humanity the same.

So did it?

The most prominent real-world example of communism that is brought to the minds of most when communism is mentioned, is the USSR which fell apart in the 90s, so let’s use that as our case study of why communism doesn’t work.

For the latter half of the twentieth century, the USSR was a massive superpower that seemed to many Americans, at many points in the Cold War, to set to overtake America sometime in the not-so-distant future. It was the largest country in the world, the fastest growing for a time, and had one of the highest GDPs in the world at 2.7 trillion dollars in 1989; however, it disintegrated and America was left as the victor of the Cold War.

We all know of the oppression, propaganda, murder, and extreme authoritarianism that came with communism, but, in Lenin and Stalin’s eyes, there really was no other way. 

The USSR sat uncomfortably close to countries, especially in Western Europe, that were bastions of capitalism. These countries had a better quality of life for the average individual citizen. USSR had to find a way to stop their citizens from fleeing to the West and what better way to do that than to create propaganda, painting the West in a demonic light. It was for their own good; communism would work. Right? 

Of course, in a communist economy, everyone had to be equal, so after people were reassigned jobs and put in positions that were deemed more suitable for the greater good of the state, their wages had to be the same. It was quickly realized by the workers that it did not matter how much they tried at their jobs because their wages would be kept equal despite performance differences. Eventually, people worked to only work the bare minimum while saving their real efforts for the black markets that fed on the desperation of the people caused by the state like a parasite. Bare minimum work led to bare minimum production which led partially to the USSR’s fall. As the Soviet workers often said, “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay”.

All these changes inevitably engendered despondency and rage in the people. The Soviet Union state believed that the citizens didn’t know what was good for them and that they had to be guided. What better way to guide than to make an example of those who had dangerous rebellious capitalist thoughts? And so the USSR cracked down on itself, hauling any who dared question the state to the Gulags, and “disappearing” any political figures who stood against the greater good of the state.

The measures taken by the Soviet government to suppress these problems only delayed the eventual downfall, and they only served to be a crutch for a system doomed to fail from the beginning, and by the end of 1991, the USSR was no more.

This poses the question then: what does true and appropriate equality mean?

I think that it’s important to first stare reality right in the face: racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism are all very abject problems that run rampant in our society today. There is no denying that. Absolute equality is a disaster as we have seen from the USSR example, but that is not to say we are not in a disaster right now despite the fact that we live in a capitalist society. We must desperately rid ourselves of this disaster if we are to survive as a species. 

Two of the greatest things that make humans human are our free will and our individuality. We all have the right to make choices and a critical one is what the possessions that we earn are used for. This inevitably means that some will be given more of an advantage when they’re born because it’s a natural instinct to want to leave something for your children. Yes, this means that these individuals will have an unequal advantage when they’re born, but I don’t think that it is something that we can change without taking away one of the most fundamental rights that we as humans have.

However, the natural reason for these unequal advantages by no means implies that the government should be excused from making sure that the playing field is as fair as possible. Increasing the quality of orphanages and public education can help raise the quality of life for the average citizen, and similar changes could ensure that those unequal advantages are more of a boost rather than a make-or-break factor.

Obviously, no two people are the same and there are going to be those who are smarter, more athletic, or harder-working. I believe that everyone has a great deal of potential in some respect. The fact that everyone is good at different things is the principle that society is built upon - the theory of competitive advantage maximizing the output of a society. We all have the potential to change the world for the better one way or the other.

This is why it is truly tragic that so many fall short of their true potential because of factors that are outside of their control. It shouldn’t matter what color your skin is, who you love, or what gender you identify as; however, sadly in our society it does matter, and this hurts us all. Just think of all the potential geniuses across history who were never able to contribute to society as much as they could have because society decided that they weren’t the type of people who should contribute to it. Putting people in these pigeon holes not only traps them, but also locks their true potential away from society. It’s self-sabotage on an extremely grand scale. 

Equality doesn’t mean that everyone is equal in the exact same way. If we were to define equality as identicality, it isn’t so much equality as it is a uniform blanket of ordinary. Equality means recognizing that everyone has the potential to change the world, albeit in different ways. The USSR failed because those in charge of it could not differentiate between the concepts of equality and identicality. Not everyone has the same potential as everyone else to perform certain functions in society; however, they do all have equal potential to change the world in one way or another. Of course, they need to be freed from the arbitrary boxes and chains that society keeps them in, for it keeps them from being able to live out their full potential. However, one might argue that society needs individuals to be freed from such biases more than they do, for society is unknowingly in chains itself by limiting the potential of these hundreds of millions if not billions of people. Equality isn’t meant to further the state’s agenda; equality is meant to free individuals and unlock everyone’s full potential, thereby unlocking society’s full potential. Therefore, equality should not mean identicality, which is a fallacy that communism fell into, but it should mean giving everyone the opportunity to fully realize their potential which in turn would assist society to fully reach its potential.