[Image Credit R. Christie. A google search yielded no graphic image that reflected more or less inequality in a society, so I drew one. Notice where the widest parts are. More inequality exists where the bottom of the figure is wide (the very poor) and the top (mega-billionaires) is narrow. Less inequality is shown by the greatest volume number of people) near the middle of the hierarchy.]
It seems to me that most people, at least those who write about it, treat inequality as if it were a noun, not a verb. Well, technically, the word is a noun; it describes a condition. Inequality is a word that describes a human condition, as if it were a fixed feature of nature. Of course, technically, we can talk about it as a condition: some folks have vastly more wealth and income than others. As such, it becomes a snapshot in time, which is not to say that it never changes.
Envisioning inequality as a noun fails to capture the dynamics that make inequality a major force in destabilizing societies. “Globally between 2000 and 2024, the richest 1% captured 41% of all new wealth, in contrast to just 1% being captured by the bottom half of humanity.” That is a process, not just a condition. Inequality continues, but it is becoming much more extreme; that is the dynamic that makes a difference.
A new report quoted above, the “G20 EXTRAORDINARY COMMITTEE OF INDEPENDENT EXPERTS ON GLOBAL INEQUALITY, by a special committee of the G-7, which is the organization of the most economically developed nations, mostly European and North American. The committee is composed of some of the world’s most distinguished economists, led by Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz. Its report points to the dangerous risks to global climate and economic stability posed by the continuing growth of inequality.
Class, Stratification, or Inequality?
When American sociology emerged as a genuine acknowledged academic discipline in the early twentieth century, it conceptualized all matters of social hierarchy, economic power, and social status as “stratification.” It was a static structural concept, and emphasized status and social standing (a person’s social significance in the eyes of others) as the essence of hierarchy. The hierarchic stratification of society was treated as fixed, with the concept of social mobility used to describe the movement of individuals up and down the social ladder.
American sociology deemphasized economic power—what European economists and sociologists referred to as class. Why? Because of the ideology of Marxism, which was so closely associated with socialism and communism, distinctly un-American ideologies.
The downside of that framing of hierarchy in American sociology, and the other social sciences as well, including economics, was that differential economic power was treated as a given, a constant rather than a variable factor in society—even to the extent of assuming that “might makes right.”
That meant that little attention was paid to the dynamics of hierarchy, although “social mobility” was studied, but primarily in terms of how an individual might move up or down in the (conceptually static) social hierarchy. The hierarchy itself was seen primarily as a matter of differential status or social standing of individuals or families in established groups, institutions, and society itself.
This blind spot in American sociology reflected a bigger blind spot in American culture. Margaret Thatcher, at the time Prime Minister of England, is famous for saying, “There is no such thing as society,” back when Ronald Reagan was U.S. president. That perfectly reflected the American cultural constraint on understanding hierarchy, which took the form of extreme individualism, amply framed in Reagan’s presidency and beyond.
Remarkably, today’s MAGA white nationalists view Reagan as a flaming liberal. That is an indicator of the complete excision of traditional conservatism from today’s label, “conservative.” Now, ‘conservative’ seems to mean ‘extreme authoritarian racist,’ although most adherents to the new ‘conservativism’ would deny being involved with the extreme cruelty in its political practices, even when they are. Cruelty denied is not cruelty vanquished.
Today, the concept of inequality is used in a technical way by social, political, and economic scientists to refer to the extent or degree of economic hierarchy—income and wealth disparity—in a society, but it is dismissed by all but the most liberal politicians in Washington DC. The rest hold on to the existentially dead concept of American Individualism and ‘The American Dream,’ as the current autocratic attempt seeks to create a totally authoritarian regime, in spite of the Constitution.
Inequality: the Verb
Inequality is talked about by the more advanced economists and politicians today, but nothing much is done about its extreme forms outside academic seminars and the occasional Ted Talk. Amid the elites of the Democratic Party, it is all talk and no walk. However, the economic—especially financial—hierarchy is rapidly changing and those changes deeply affect the extent and conditions of inequality among the American people. Inequality is actually a ubiquitous characteristic of all human societies, but it is reaching extreme and consequently dysfunctional levels in the most economically developed nations, especially in the U.S.
However, inequality is not simply a condition of a system; it is the consequence of a particular dynamic in the configuration and execution of power, also expressed in interpersonal relations, culture, and individual belief systems. Some people actually believe that Elon Musk should be awarded a trillion dollar ‘compensation package,’ as if any human being could generate that much economic value in this world. That belief is the product of a complex of interactions of all these factors as they play into the dynamic of hierarchy and financial flow, which have fully infiltrated American culture.
The New Conservatism’s Empathy Disorder
Those who seek or hold political and/or economic power tend to discount the importance of the configuration and extent of inequality in the societies in which they operate. The new oligarchs operate globally. The new political-economic power of the emerging billionaire class of oligarchs and their MAGA type white-racist followers, is approaching the scale of a global social movement. Cruelty to those Others is their watchword.
The new conservatism incorporates nostalgic illusions of a ‘great’ American past to which they yearn to return. From the perspective of freedom as a goal for all people the nostalgia for a time of much more institutionalized racism and collective violence, their new ‘conservatism’ seeks an increased level of inequality in which they, the white racists, occupy the top positions in the hierarchy, and all brown or black people and foreigners in general are either exported or under strict racist control.
While it is typically unacknowledged, most of the founding fathers who established the American principles of democracy and political equality, did exclude most non-white groups from the framing of their new nation. Remember, the new ‘settlers’ of North America, Africa, India, etc., were convinced of the superiority of European ‘stock’ to the peoples who resided in the rest of the world, who they believed to be not just inferior, but often sub-human as well.
Black Americans whose ancestors were slaves still labor under the burden of institutionalized racist inequality. And Native Americans—called ‘Indians’ because early Europeans who ‘discovered’ the North American continent, thought that they had arrived in India via a new route. America’s Indian Nations—still struggle to obtain a tiny fraction of their birthright as the original Americans.
Nevertheless, traditional American political conservatives who once walked the halls of Congress, as well as conservative intellectuals such as Bill Buckley, held to a certain code of honor, which is why they could “work across the aisle,” and compromise with liberals to achieve goals in the nation’s interest. Steve Schmidt is a highly articulate shining contemporary spokesman for that perspective, which honors the Constitution and human rights above any party power. Whoever is left among traditional Republican conservatives in the Congress, is subject to being “primaried” with the big-money donor assistance to eliminate them from politics entirely.
Meanwhile, most of the liberals in Congress cower in confusion, as they take (less) money from the same mega-donors who facilitate the MAGA autocratic attempt in order to enrich themselves further. Is it naïve nostalgia to wish for the old political spectrum of left-right moderation that was once semi-functional?
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 