Table Of ContentIsaac Kramnick
Equal Opportunity
and "The Race of Life"
A
fair race was what Lyndon Johnson Central and enduring in liberalism is its
pleaded for in his 1965 commencement unique conception of liberty and equality,
address at Howard University that ushered in rooted principally in attitudes toward work
the era of affirmation action. and the marketplace, toward achievement
You do not take a person, who for years has and talent. The revolutionary bourgeois atti-
been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring tude is best expressed in two famous cultural
him up the starting line of a race and then say documents. The first is Beaumarchais' Mar-
"you are free to compete with all the others," riage of Figaro, written in 1783 just before the
and still justly believe that you have been com- French Revolution. The play, of course, was
pletely fair. the basis of Mozart's opera. The plot, though
Fifteen years later, Bakke, Weber, and the complicated, is for our purposes, quite sim-
politics of affirmative action have stirred up a ple. It is built around the conflict between the
great public debate. The reasons are obvious. great aristocrat Count Almaviva and the
They raise sensitive questions of public policy commoner, the hardworking, industrious
and have grave implications for how we deal barber, Figaro. The count seems almost to
with one another, blacks and whites, men and have outwitted Figaro in Act Five, which
women, workers and professionals, young prompts Figaro to his famous denunciation:
and old. The focus of this debate has justifia- Just because you're a great Lord, you think
bly been on the here and now. But the doc- you're a genius. Nobility, fortune, rank, posi-
trine of equal opportunity has occupied a tion—you're so proud of those things. What
central place in liberal ideology from the 17th have you done to deserve so many rewards?
century to the present, and the metaphor of You went to the trouble of being born, and no
more.
life as a race was used centuries before John-
son's speech at Howard University. So subversive were these sentiments that the
Bakke, Weber, and the debate over affir- play was banned and only surfaced again in
mative action touch upon the deepest aspects France after the Revolution had dealt even
of bourgeois liberalism. They are concerned more definitively with the Almavivas.
with the marketplace, open or closed; with The second document is from Thomas
access to jobs and high status; with rewards to Mann, part of whose genius consisted in his
merit and talent; with privilege and the state. ability to describe with meticulous accuracy
They involve the realization of self through European bourgeois civilization. In the Bud-
work. They raise to public awareness the denbrooks Mann gives a much more vivid
insecurity and anxiety inherent in a market summary of these basic liberal beliefs than
society. As these issues are brought into pub- did Beaumarchais: his 19th-century liberal
lic dialogue today, centuries-old beliefs lurk revolutionary Morten Schwartzkopf is speak-
between every line of the briefs, learned arti- ing, criticizing a friend who has just spoken
cles, and position papers. well of an aristocratic acquaintance:
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They need only to be born to be the pick of their own voluntary actions in this life and in
everything, and look down on all the rest of us.
this world.
While we, however hard we strive, cannot
Now, and this is the truly critical step, what
climb to their level. We, the bourgeoisie—the
one did in this world came soon to be under-
Third Estate as we have been called—we rec-
stood primarily as what one did economi-
ognize only that nobility which consists of
cally, what one did in terms of work. In the
merit; we refuse to admit any longer the rights
of the indolent aristocracy, we repudiate the world of work one was the author of self.
class distinctions of the present day, we desire Individuality became an internal subjective
that all men should be free and equal.... So quality; work became a concrete test and
that all men, without distinction, shall be able property a material extension of self. Inher-
to strive together and receive their reward ent in this is the birth of the market society,
according to their merit. where the allocation and distribution of such
Writing at the turn of the 20th century valuable things as power, wealth, and fame
when these values would be assaulted on the came to be seen as the result of countless
left and right (as he so beautifully depicted in individual decisions, not of some authorita-
his Magic Mountain), Mann's sense of liber- tive norms set by custom, God, or ruling-class
alism is the same as Beaumarchais's. Basic to decree. Who has more, who has less, whether
both the dreams of Figaro and of Schwartz- some get any, is decided less by a social or
kopf is a vision of society where the rule of moral consensus than by the free action of
privilege is replaced by equal opportunity and individual actors seeking their own gain in a
where individuals, now masters of their des- context of continuous competition. What
tiny, are no longer the slaves of history, tradi- one has or gets, and therefore who one is, is
tion, or birth. no longer the appropriate reward fit to one's
Figaro's and Schwartzkopf's liberal vision prescribed place; it is the product of what one
of an ideal society is still with us, especially in can get and what one does in the competitive
America. But it is not some timeless, eternal market.
ideal of humanity found, like so much else of The new theory of individuality had pro-
our culture, in the antique world of Greece or found political implications. To be free, truly
Rome or the Judeo-Christian tradition. It has self-defining, master of the self, the individual
a distinct history. It emerged at a specific had to eliminate all barriers to that individu-
historic moment, for specific reasons, and ality. So war was declared against religious
with specific intellectual justifications. That restraint on free thought and against eco-
moment was, of course, the grand transfor- nomic restraint on a free market. What I am
mation wrought in the Europe of the 16th, describing is, of course, the gradual liquida-
17th, and 18th centuries by the rise of Prot- tion of the aristocratic world and its replace-
estantism and capitalism. The traditional ment by the liberal capitalist order. It is the
hierarchical world was replaced in Western crusade of Figaro and Schwartzkopf.
Europe by the modern liberal world as we In the history of this crusade, we can dis-
know it. Central to this transformation were cern familiar philosophic benchmarks. There
new conceptions of self and work. is Thomas Hobbes's brilliant model of indi-
Ascription, the assignment to some preor- vidualistic society, offered in the 1650s, with
dained rank in life, came more and more to be its vision of human beings as self-moving,
replaced by achievement as the major definer self-directing independent machines, constant-
of personal identity. Individuals increasingly ly competing with one another for power,
came to define themselves as active subjects. wealth, and glory. A person's value or worth
They no longer tended to see their place in life (a fascinating word if one thinks of it) is
as part of some natural, inevitable, and eter- determined by the market; people are as the
nal plan. Their own enterprise and ability market values them. They are whatever their
mattered; they possessed the opportunity (a hard work can get. But competitive individu-
key word) to determine their place through als, constantly seeking power and wealth, are
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constantly frightened lest the fruits of their diverse strands of emerging liberal-bourgeois
work, their property, be stolen by other com- thought and produced the first complete
peting individuals. Enter then the liberal state statement of liberal social theory. Life, he
with the principal task of protecting the fruits wrote, was a "race for wealth and honours
of industry and providing safety and a more and preferements." What a revolution is in
commodious living for competitive indi- this metaphor! Life is no longer a hierarchical
viduals. ladder or chain of being. It is a race. And this
John Locke, in turn, introduces a moral race should be fair; each and every runner in
revolution, one absolutely essential for the it should have an equal opportunity to win.
liberal world of individuality and equal Each competitor will "run as hard as he can,
opportunity. The unlimited acquisition of and strain every move and every muscle, in
money and wealth, he argues, is neither order to outstrip all his competitors." Inter-
unjust nor morally wrong. God (a very Pro- fering with other runners or seizing special
testant God) commanded men to work the advantages is "a violation of fair play." But
earth, and those that were hardworking and merit, talent, virtue, and ability are, alas, no
industrious had the right to what they worked. sure indicators of success, because govern-
While there were limits initially to what one ment is too involved in the race, according to
could own in terms of what one could use, Smith. By reserving offices, power, and author-
and what would not spoil, the invention of ity for the privileged it tilts the competition in
money put an end to these restraints. One favor of an idle aristocracy devoid of talent
does not eat money; there are no limits to its and virtue.
use; it never spoils. Since God has given "dif- Smith has no illusions, however. Even if
ferent degrees of industry" to men, some have the unproductive aristocratic social order
more talent, and work harder than others. It were eliminated and the race could be run
is just and ethical, then, for them to have as with equal opportunity for all, only some
many possessions as they want (as Locke would win. There would remain obvious dif-
says, to "heap as much of these durable things ferences in how each was able to "better his
as he pleased"). The liberal state, then, as own condition." An unexpected note of pes-
Locke never tires of telling us, is really con- simism sneaks in with Smith's acknowledg-
structed by property-owning individuals to ment that the race seldom provides "real
protect their property. satisfaction," and that it is often really "con-
This, indeed, is the critical point. If indi- temptible and trifling." Equal seldom, how-
viduals are to define their individuality in ever, Smith admits, does anyone look at the
terms of what they achieve, and if this sense of race in such an "abstract and philosophical
achievement is seen in terms of work in a light"—and a good thing, too. The race, the
market society where God-given talent and competition, the illusion that everyone can
industry can have their play, then the barriers win, and the alleged pleasures of victory are
to unlimited accumulation have to fall. How all necessary and worthwhile deceptions. "It
else can achievement and sense of self be is this deception which rouses and keeps in
known if not by economic success? continual motion the industry of mankind."
Adam Smith's great contribution to the
liberal theory of equality of opportunity was II
his conviction that at bottom all men were Life as a race becomes the central metaphor
ambitious. Smith saw in bourgeois man a in liberal ideology. One group of writers and
constant striving. Every individual, Smith activists, relatively unknown today, popular-
wrote, "seeks to better his own condition." ized the metaphor and its corollary of equal
This ambition, he wrote in his Wealth of opportunity more than any other and deserves
Nations, is "a desire which comes with us special mention. In England in the last two
from the womb and never leaves us till we go decades of the 18th century, an amazing
into the grave." Smith pulled together the group of radical Protestant dissenters (non-
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Anglicans, that is, Baptists, Presbyterians, solstice. These are arbitrary and whimsical dis-
Independents, Unitarians, and Quakers) articu- tinctions.... We want civil offices. And why
lated the principles of revolutionary bour- should citizens not aspire to civil offices? Why
should not the fair field of generous competi-
geois ideology in a devastating attack on the
tion be freely opened to every one...
aristocracy and the aristocratic world view.
The group included the Reverend Joseph
Barbauld articulates the very core of
Priestley, the eminent scientist, the Reverend
liberal-bourgeois social theory. In the com-
Richard Price, Tom Paine, Mary Wollstone-
petitive scramble of the marketplace, all citi-
craft, William Godwin, James Burgh, Anna
zens are equal in their opportunity to win: no
Barbauld, and others. They spoke for a dis-
one has built-in advantages of birth or status.
senter community very much involved in the
Freedom involves unrestrained individual
creation of a new England. Incredible achiev-
competition and equality, an absence of built-
ers, the Protestant dissenters, while only 7
in handicaps. No cooperation, no collective
percent of the population, were found as
good is sought.
leaders in every new and successful enterprise
These early bourgeois ideologues were
that marked the industrial revolution.
extremely sensitive lest their assault on hier-
The dissenters operated at the margins of
archy and aristocratic privilege be construed
English life in the 18th century. For most of
as a mere leveling to an absolute equality of
the century, it was technically illegal, for
conditions. Nothing could be further from
example, to carry on a Unitarian service. But
their intentions; bourgeois society, they as-
much more onerous than this were the
sumed, would still have inequalities. Thomas
dreaded Test and Corporation Acts, which
Walker, a Manchester cotton manufacturer,
required all holders of offices under the Brit-
dissenting layman and political activist,
ish Crown to receive the sacrament according
summed up the essence of this new radical
to the rites of the Anglican Church. The Acts
creed in 1794:
also excluded nonsubscribers to the Anglican
creed from any office in an incorporated We do not seek an equality of wealth and
municipality. Exclusion from public jobs possessions, but an equality of rights. What we
meant that legions of these talented dissenters seek is that all may be equally entitled to the
protection and benefit of society, may equally
were denied one of the most important
have a voice in elections and may have a
rewards of the successful, prestigious posi- ...
fair opportunity of exerting to advantage any
tions in the military or civil establishment.
talents he may possess. The rule is not "let all
Priestley warned that if preferment would
mankind be perpetually equal." God and nature
not come to talented, dissenters, then as "citi- have forbidden it. But "let all mankind start fair
zens of the world" they would get up and go in the race of life." The inequality derived from
to where their virtuous achievements were labour and successful enterprise, the result of
rewarded. This was shorthand for America superior industry and good fortune, is an
and there, indeed, Priestley went, emigrating inequality essential to the very existence of
to Pennsylvania in 1794. The fiery Anna Bar- society.
bauld, another dissenter, did not leave, how-
What distressed Mary Wollstonecraft, par-
ever, and in making her case for the repeal of
ticularly, was not only that in this race the
the Test and Corporation Acts in 1790 she
winners were always men, but that women
addressed the social issue straight on. It was
did not even bother to run. She lamented
no favor she asked, but "a natural and inalien-
their socially conditioned lack of ambition.
able right," which she claimed. The issue was
"Woman," she wrote in her Vindication, was
"power, place and influence."
just like the useless aristocrat "in her self
To exclude us from jobs is no more reasonable complete" possessed of "all those frivolous
than to exclude all those above five feet high or accomplishments." Unlike bourgeois man
those whose birthdays are before the summer she lacked any desire to improve herself.
181
Women were socialized to avoid the race, to erful weapon in its battle, ultimately suc-
avoid the ambitious individual scramble for cessful, to end the rule of aristocratic privilege.
rewards to talent and merit. Wollstonecraft's
message was that women should become I III
more like the assertive men of the middle n the 19th century, two important social
class. Instead, "women were always on the groups called upon this doctrine of equal
watch to please." Instead of "laudable ambi- opportunity: women, again, and the working
tions," they were ruled by "romantic waver- class. John Stuart Mill in his essay The Sub-
ing feelings." Only education and political jugation of Women (1860) offers the classic
rights could fit them for the race. plea that equality of opportunity be extended
These 18th-century dissenting radicals re- to women. All the themes discussed here are
veal a crucial contradiction at the heart of repeated. Women are ambitious, he writes;
liberal social theory. The ideal of equality of they are not totally socialized to be different
opportunity at its origins was both an effort from men. The problem is that they are
to reduce inequality and to perpetuate it. It barred from market society. They are not
was egalitarian at its birth because it lashed allowed to achieve, to compete freely, to have
out at the exclusiveness of aristocratic privi- the status they want. They are treated by the
lege, but it sought to replace an aristocratic modern liberal as if they were living in the
elite with a new elite, albeit one more broadly feudal, precapitalist world. They were per-
based on talent and merit. Equality of oppor- ceived as creatures of status and told to accept
tunity is not really a theory of equality, but of their dependent place. They have no oppor-
justified and morally acceptable inequality. tunity to be or do anything else, no internal
What can legitimate some having more than subjective mastery and direction of self. In
others? Only that all have had an equal opor- short, the liberal revolution has passed them
tunity to have more. Equality for liberals by. Mill's essay is one long plea for the exten-
really means fairness. Let the race be fair, let sion of liberal emancipation to women. He
all have an equal chance to win. even invokes Figaro. Men rule like aristo-
Equality of opportunity presumes a non- crats, regardless of their merit, simply because
cooperative vision of society. There is no they have taken the trouble to be born.
ideal of community or quest for the common The place of the laboring poor in liberal
good. Individuals compete on an equal foot- social theory is ambivalent at best. On the one
ing and as in any race, some win, others lose. hand, 17th- and 18th-century theorists saw
According to the theory, those that win do so the competitive society, the race of life,
because they are more talented and work peopled only by middle-class men. Equal
harder than the losers. Equality of opportun- opportunity was their subversive weapon
ity presumes that people have different abili- against the world of privilege. Workers, like
ties and talents. This basic human inequality women, lived outside market society. They
in talents will, in a free society, legitimize were expected to accept their place as de-
status differentials. The society is free if the pendent subordinates barred from the race.
race is fair. The race is not fair; there is no This is clearly how Locke and Smith per-
equality of opportunity when freedom to ceived the working class, and why many writ-
realize oneself through success and achieve- ers opposed education for the poor lest they
ment is impaired, and this occurs whenever become discontented and seek ambitiously to
ethical, religious, or social limitations are join or even replace their middle-class betters.
placed on economic activity, whenever gov- One of the serious crimes in the ante-bellum
ernments interfere in the race by favoring South was teaching a slave to read and write;
some privileged class, whose members could one of the great themes of feminism from
not win on their own. Equality of opportun- Wollstonecraft to this day is equal access to
ity, then, is historically the ideal of the revolu- education.
tionary middle class, perhaps the most pow- Alongside a conviction that the laboring
182
poor are excluded from the race, that they are assumes that life is a scramble for self-
naturally dependent, there is in liberal theory realization through achievement and success,
another strain insisting that they be treated as and that this is a moral vision of society and
if they were free contracting individuals, of life.
equal members of market society. This may We can readily recognize T. H. Green's
take the form of ideological myth, rags to vision as the ideology of the American New
riches, Horatio Alger, and so on, or a more Deal in the 20th century. T. H. Green is, in
commonplace defense of laissez-faire. Work- fact, an intellectual ancestor of all those
ers are surely free individuals, and if they defenders of state action from the New Deal
contract for low or subsistence wages or for to the present whom Americans describe in
long hours, it's their own voluntary act. The their own peculiar way as liberals. But they
state ought not to intervene in their behalf. are liberals! They are committed ultimately to
They are free individuals who can raise them- individualism, equal opportunity, and a com-
selves by talent and hard work, just as their petitive society.
employers have done. And here we return to the LBJ com-
By the latter part of the 19th century, more mencement speech at Howard University.
and more European liberals began to have Racial issues were brought to political
second thoughts and to call upon the state to saliency in this century by these very same
protect workers with factory legislation, liberal descendants of T. H. Green. Their
health and education acts, and so on. This commitment is to that same liberal vision of
came much later (not, indeed, until deep into the race of life. Positive state action is needed,
this century) in America. A principal theorist it is argued, to enable blacks to compete on
of this shift in liberal attitudes was T. H. equal terms—which brings us full-circle back
Green, the Oxford philosopher. What Green to Lyndon Johnson, Bakke, and Weber.
did in the 1870s was, in fact, to call upon the
doctrine of equal opportunity to assist the O III
working-class cause. Workers, he wrote, were ne often-noted feature of the contempo-
not in fact free to act voluntarily in the rary crisis is the pervasive anxiety among
market. Poorly paid, uneducated, starving, whites (and men in general) about the possi-
or sick, they could not make the best of them- ble loss of status, wealth, and privilege in the
selves; they could not compete on equal wake of an aggressive affirmative action pol-
terms. He called upon the state, therefore, to icy. This, too, is nothing new. It has always
establish the conditions that would enable been a part of the historical legacy of liberal
workers to join the race. This meant public ideology. For all its optimism, assertiveness,
schools, factory laws, prohibition, and public and self-confidence, liberalism has another
health. face, a frightened and fearful view of market
But the continuous liberal commitment to society and the race of life as fraught with
individuality and equal opportunity persists dangers, the most horrible of which, in fact, is
in Green's writings. Once that ideal had the possibility of losing.
involved emancipating the individual from A convincing case can be made (as it was 20
feudal restrictions, opening up the market. years ago by Sheldon Wolin) that liberal
Now, in the writings of Green, it involved social theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries
restricting market freedoms to provide condi- presumed fear and anxiety to be the basic
tions that would allow the proletariat to motive in human nature that first sets men
acquire the skills necessary to compete. The and women running—or, in Smith's words,
state had to augment workers' power and "rouses and keeps in continual motion the
resources, even at the expense of cherished industry of mankind." We are, of course,
contractual rights. The aim, however, is the familiar with the religious interpretation of
same as it was earlier: a fair race. The liberal this linkage from the more recent writings of
model endures in T. H. Green. He still Max Weber and R. H. Tawney, but less
183
familiar with the explicit claims of the early failure 132 years later in his Discourses on
liberals themselves. Locke, for example, held Davila. The pain of being a loser consisted
in his Essay on Human Understanding that not so much in being hated as in being invisi-
"the chief, if not the only spur to human ble. What motivated men to public and eco-
industry and action is uneasiness." This feel- nomic activity was a passion for distinction,
ing of uneasiness, a desire for "some absent "the desire to be observed, considered, es-
good," drives men to enterprise. But men are teemed, praised, beloved and admired by his
ever fearful; once driven to the race they never fellows." Of those who failed in this quest he
lose their uneasiness. They are permanently wrote:
cursed, wrote Locke, with "an itch after
Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles
honour, power, and riches," which in turn
and wanders unheeded. In the midst of a
unleashes more "fantastical uneasiness."
crowd, at church, in the market, at a play, at an
Anxiety forever haunts bourgeois man.
execution, or coronation, he is in such obscur-
"Fear and anxiety," Smith wrote, are the ity as he would be in a garret or a cellar. He is
"two great tormentors of the human breast." not disapproved, censured, or reproached, he is
They persist because the race of life has only not seen.
winners and losers and, above all else, bour-
geois man fears failure. For Bentham all life Anxiety over failure in the race of life, over
was "a universal scramble" for "money, power becoming invisible, haunts today's market-
and prestige," and the "suffering from loss," place as it did the world of Smith and Adams.
he wrote, was infinitely greater than "the And here is the heart of the matter, the grand
enjoyment from gain." For Smith the possi- historical reversal produced by today's crisis
bility of losing ground was "worse than of liberal ideology. What whites and men fear
death." in the loss of wealth and status is what the
Runners in the race of life fear losing what poor, women, and blacks have experienced
they have, or losing simply, because to lose is throughout liberal hegemony. But the age-
to become a nonperson. Only success in the old invisibility of these latter groups and the
marketplace brings the notice and valuation fear of invisibility among today's privileged
of others. To understand the fear and anxiety groups follow alike from the inner logic of
of whites and males in the face of affirmative liberal ideology, where self-esteem and a
action today one need only reread these early sense of personality are inextricably tied to
liberal theorists who knew very well what degrees of accumulation and success in the
insecurity lurks in the heart of bourgeois race of life.
man. To be a loser is to be invisible, according
to Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiment: W V
e can now better appreciate the pro-
What are the advantages which we propose by
found impact of Bakke, Weber, and affirma-
that great purpose of human life which we call
tive action on our lives. They are much more
bettering our condition? To be observed, to be
than political bombshells. They involve an
attended to, to be taken notice of. . . the poor
intellectual crisis that goes to the very heart of
man, on the contrary, is ashamed of his pov-
liberalism. Two important forms of liberal
erty. He feels that it places him out of the
...
sight of mankind.... To feel that we are taken doctrine are being played off against one
no notice of, necessarily damps the most agree- another. There is the traditional 18th-century
able hope, and disappoints the most ardent middle-class meritocratic ideal, and there is
desire, of human nature. The poor man goes the latter-day liberal vision of intervention in
out and comes in unheeded, and when in the the race of life to aid and perhaps award
midst of a crowd is in the same obscurity as if victory to handicapped competitors. A doc-
shut up in his own house.... They turn away
trine originally designed to serve the class
their eyes from him.
interests of the talented "have-nots" against
John Adams repeated this judgment on the untalented "haves" now pits the talented
184
"haves" against the allegedly untalented "have- basic liberal assumptions about the condi-
nots." Here is the real source of contempo- tioning role of environment, education, and
rary tension. In historical terms, the talented nurturing are wrong? Is it not then possible
class has remained the same. What has hap- that the distribution of valuable things to the
pened, however, is that it has changed from a talented is inherently unjust to those born less
revolutionary class to the status quo defender privileged?
of a new elite, the meritocracy. Its ideology There are other questions Bakke and Web-
remains the same: that is why certain social er do not confront: Is life truly a race? Is life a
policies of recent years, for instance, head- marketplace? Is it basic to our humanity to
start programs, were not challenged by the compete with one another? Are winners real
meritocrats. Unlike affirmative action, giving people and losers deservedly unnoticed and
children intensive and special preschooling is invisible? Is a race with winners and losers
quite compatible with simply making the race ever fair or moral, no matter how equal the
fair. It doesn't definitely give the victory, that conditions at the starting line? The time has
is, jobs or medical degrees, to anyone, espe- come to go beyond the framework of the
cially not to anyone seen as untalented and current debate and question the very meta-
therefore undeserving. phors and assumptions that inform both it
Each of the issues raised in the current and the problems it has created. Difficult as it
debate speaks to a part of the liberal ideologi- may be, the time has come to abandon our
cal heritage. Are individuals being treated old and dear friends, Figaro and Schwartz-
unfairly in the effort to deal equally with kopf.
groups? Are fundamental beliefs about indi- What might a new world view look like? It
vidual responsibility for achievement and would involve a fundamental abandonment
success being violated? Can groups or indi- of our sense of life as a competitive race. This
viduals ever be in a truly competitive position means that some appealing suggestions for
leading to equal opportunity? Can past priva- changing public policy premised on this view
tions be countered by eliminating present would have to be called inadequate. Expand-
competitive disadvantages? Are governments ing the number of places in medical schools
once again interfering with the race of life and or the number of medical schools themselves,
saying who will win? Is this being done not in providing more jobs in the building trades,
terms of talent but to meet political consider- more jobs for faculty in an expanded system
ations? Is past injustice a more solid moral of higher education—all these are no doubt
basis of desert than talent? As we grapple desirable, but in the end they serve merely to
with these issues we must realize how the very enlarge the field of runners. Just as quotas
language of our dilemmas presumes a frame- and affirmative action often set blacks to run
work of beliefs centering on individuality, only with other blacks, whites only with other
equality of opportunity, and a market society. whites, so a larger pie means simply a larger
These are values at the very core of liberal race. Even more far-reaching alternatives
society, and since Bakke, Weber, and affir- preserve the competitive race. Proposals to
mative action involve contradictions and broaden the notion of deserving talent and
strains within that set of values, the current merit beyond successful market skills and to
crisis is bound to be far-reaching and painful. reward the generous, the loving, the kind, the
But we ought also to be clear that certain good, the cooperative would again simply
questions are not confronted by the ideologi- provide new races. The same can be said for
cal tradition traced here. What if our talents instituting nonpecuniary rewards for work,
are in fact ascriptive, given to us by dint not of effort, and achievement. A society of Sta-
our worth and intrinsic achievements or khanovites is no more congenial, for by defi-
merit, but simply, as Figaro and Schwartz- nition it assumes the continuation of the race,
kopf noted, by our being born? What if the albeit for lower stakes. Similarly, the lower-
185
ing of stakes inherent in proposals that would what they in fact repudiated. Much of the
narrow the range of prizes is mere tinkering. ambience of affirmative action already points
It ends the ability of winners to set their own to a renaissance of a world where extrinsic
prizes, to be sure, but it keeps the race intact. affiliation not individual achievement is criti-
Like affirmative action itself, all these pro- cal, where ascriptive identity with a geogra-
posals would promote greater justice and phic place, a race, a sex, or ethnic group helps
equality. They are but temporary expedients, define one's sense of self, rather than simply
however, for they assume the context of a the unique talent or merit of that self. This
competitive race. utopian ideal need not revive the entire world
One possible way to transcend the world of that was lost to liberal hegemony. Nor is
Figaro and Schwartzkopf is a retreat from romantic nostalgia for the stable, ordered,
meritocracy itself, a tabooed subject for intel- and noncompetitive Middle Ages what I
lectuals whose very place in society may well would offer. It is a moral economy, as E. P.
be owed to that principle. One need not be Thompson has called it, which flourished
one of Michael Young's fanciful "prols" to before the advent of the free economy of
propose a less slavish preoccupation with market society, that I want to revive. Drawn
merit and talent in our society. Imagine the from diverse sources, the moral economy
transformation of American life that would assumes that buying and selling is subordi-
come from implementing Robert Woolf's nate to the moral purposes of community and
suggestion of two decades ago that students social life. It need not be a completely socialist
be assigned to universities at random by economy with collectivization of the means
computers. What would America look like if of production. A moral and natural econ-
random chance distributed as many valuable omy, according to Aristotle, could well blend
things as test scores did? How essential is the private ownership of property with public
expert medical education sought by Bakke to and common use. "Moral goodness," he
the health needs of inner cities or rural Amer- wrote, "will ensure that the property of each is
ica? What are the trade-offs between pushing made to serve the use of all." Public interests
the advance of America's highly technologi- and social needs, not individual free choices
cal medicine for the few or seeking an in the pursuit of private gain, would be the
improved health system for the many pro- organizing principle of a moral economic life.
vided by a less than expert corps of lay practi- In a moral economy individual freedom in
tioners emphasizing prevention and lacking the market is subordinate to the constraints
the talents of an expertly trained medical of a moral and social consensus insisting that
elite? Might this calculation not be made in there are natural levels of profit, of income,
other areas of society as well, with greater and of wealth; that the poor have rights to a
justice and equality flowing from less obses- decent life; that there are moral limits to
sion with meritocracy? accumulation. The sense of self in a moral
Abandoning the worship of talent and economy comes not from success or failure in
merit might also introduce new attitudes to the competitive market but from the identifi-
work. Capitalists (and even Marxists) are cation with and the quest to realize the collec-
convinced that individuals find fulfillment tive moral purpose to which individual eco-
primarily through productive work. But why nomic activity is ultimately subject. A moral
should work alone or even principally define economy in the 1980s requires restricting the
one's sense of self? This is not to advocate an freedom of economic actors. Just as affirma-
updated Consciousness III, but to offer the tive action temporarily introduces mor-
heretical suggestion that a sense of identity al purpose and public good into the market
can come just as meaningfully from play, economy while restricting the play of free
love, spirituality, place or affiliation, as from choice, so the solution to most of our con-
work. To transcend Figaro and Schwartz- temporary ills requires public restraint of
kopf may well require a return to some of market freedom. Only in a moral economy
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can the inevitable bourgeois linkage of work utilitarianism, its efficiency, its preoccupation
and success with personal identity be broken. with serious work, has killed off what he
And only then can the preoccupation with called the "play-factor" in social life and
equal opportunity be transcended, and affirm- ended the imaginative and fanciful sense of
ative action redefined to encompass real self. Another victim has surely been the moral
equality. sense of self. Whatever just and progressive
Since metaphors have hovered closely over purposes the ideal of equal opportunity has
these reflections, let me end by offering served at various historical moments, it still
another. Life should be neither a race nor a envisages life as a war of all against all with
chain of being; it should be understood as a persons of worth as victor. The first great
kind of play. Races begin and end; they must utopian thinker knew already that such an
have winners and losers. One runs not only ideal was morally unsatisfactory. Plato
against the others in adjoining lanes, but wrote:
against the records and achievements of those
running in other races or of all those who Every man and every woman should live life
have ever run. Play need never end, nor need accordingly, and play the noblest games, and
be of another mind from what they are at
it have winners and losers. In play fulfillment
present. For they deem war a serious thing,
and joy is a product of the common purpose,
though in war there is neither play nor culture
the shared experience. A market economy is
worthy the name, which are the things we deem
inevitably a race; a moral economy can be
most serious. Hence all must live in peace as
play.
well as they possibly can. What, then, is the
There was a time in the West when play not right way of living? Life must be lived as play,
races preoccupied us. Huizinga noted in his playing certain games, making sacrifices, sing-
Homo Ludens that the bourgeois era with its ing and dancing. q
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