An interesting post

I read an interesting post over at Robert Paul Wolff's blog, The Philosopher's Stone (check it out here).  In it, Wolff writes:

"Marx told us about three related but different things:  First, the fundamental exploitative structure of capitalism; Second, the probable direction in which capitalism would develop as its institutions matured; and Third, how men and women would respond to that underlying exploitation and that development."

According to Wolff, Marx was right on the first point; mostly right on the second, in that he predicted the continual boom-bust cycle, monopolization, automation, and so on.  He failed to predict, argues Wolff, the stratification of the working class into well paid managerial positions and lower paid laborious positions, which hampers worker solidarity even if they are all, technically exploited.

Wolff wonders, however, why Marx was so wrong on the third point: "But Marx was convinced that over time... workers would be led to unite ... and take collective ownership of their own collective product:  Capital." This, of course, hasn't happened, and Wolff wonders why people haven't revolted.

In reading this, I was reminded of Harry Frankfurt's argument that people are more bothered by unfairness than inequality (see here).  In some cases, making things more equal would make things worse (if somebody's car breaks down, it would make no sense to break everybody's car just to equal things out).  Moreover, many people seem not to be bothered by inequality if it the result of what is deemed a fair process: two athletes try out for the team but only one makes the cut and goes on to earn millions more than the other; so long as there was no bias or other unfairness in the tryout process, one may think that the resultant inequality is ok.

I wonder whether something like this helps to explain the failure that worries Wolff: maybe many people realize that capitalism is based on an exploitation that produces inequality, but consider it to be fair.  I recall, for example, arguments in my university days in which some of my fellow students felt that the "risk" incurred by those who start a business fully justifies their greater compensation than their employees.  They granted that this was an inequitable result, but it struck them as just fine.

  

In other words, perhaps an inegalitarian system is tolerated so long as it is viewed as fair.

Of course, we need to be careful here.  It is possible that a system in which each individual interaction is fair adds up to one that is unfair: we need to avoid the fallacy of composition.  Indeed, it may be argued that too much inequality of outcome eventually serves as evidence that the system as a whole is unfair after all, and that we need to reevaluate our assessment of fairness at the micro level.

All the same, I wonder whether a sense that society is largely fair explains the tolerance of inequality.  Further, perhaps it is when the sense that fairness has been lost that social structures are questioned.  Something like that may be happening at the moment.