I have just read through the lengthy series of comments provoked by my report of a virtual family gathering and to be honest, I am depressed. Judging from the nature of the dispute that arose, Karl Marx might just as well never have lived and worked. Does anybody really think that the structure of modern capitalism can in any way be explained by reference to the talent and hard work of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates? Seriously, people?
Oh well, my wife and I have just purchased a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of Paris to occupy ourselves while we dream of returning to the real thing. I will go back to putting together the part of the puzzle that represents Notre Dame, at least in its glory days before it burned.
135 comments:
Trolls tend to depress people, its a sad phenomena of blogging. Not to point fingers, but as a reader who is attuned to the ebb and flow of the blog and the newcomers, and the writings of the newcomers, its easy to point out the troll. I'll let others decide for themselves though.
Not sure if you're familiar with bloggingheads or Mickey Kaus, but he cited your book The Poverty of Liberalism as "the most important book in my college years, the one that you got 20 term papers out of" starting at 22:44 in this video:
https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/60494?in=00:01
It is depressing. Not only because, as you say, it’s as if one of the most significant analysts of socio-economic life had never written anything, but also because it’s as if it was a given that anecdotal evidence allowed insight into complex societal interactions. And the anecdotes seem to be endless.
I think you should impose a word limit on each comment and a frequency of commenting limit on your commentators.
Good luck
Á propos of glorious transit in Paris, I cannot resist alerting you (if you're not already familiar with it) to the film of Claude Lelouch strapping a camera to his car at 5:30 am in August 1976 and driving as fast as possible (up to 125 mph) through the streets of Paris to a rendezvous with his girlfriend. This gives an otherwise unavailable dimension of the magic of Paris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJYOMFayruw&ab_channel=DanielThompson
Anonymous @1:53
It's absurd to suggest that so-called anecdotal evidence affords no insight at all into social reality. Your comment suggests a lack of familiarity with whole swaths of sociological and anthropological work.
The line between anecdotal and systematic evidence is, moreover, not always a bright line. Are the parliamentary Blue Books that Marx drew on in Capital much more than collections of anecdotal evidence? Look at the footnotes to Marx's chapter on the working day, for instance, and I'd be surprised if you didn't find that they are full of anecdotal evidence.
I don't intend to get involved in a lengthy argument about it, LFC. But I would say that the anecdotes you refer to were, surely, grounded in a more comprehensive perspective to which they gave additional weight?
Everybody disagrees with everybody on this blog.
And LFC, be careful not to show contempt for Anonymous by disagreeing with him/her.
Anonymous @4:17
I take your point, but this would indeed be a longer discussion that I think neither of us wants to have right now.
Is this the narcissism of small differences raising its ugly head again?
Lillian Hellman and Mary McCarthy were once very close friends and were both active in the American Communist Party. They then had a falling out about the Stalin purges, Hellman continuing to support Stalin despite the purges, and McCarthy, a Trotskyite, condemning Stalin, and then condemning Hellman. It got so bad that on a TV talk show (I think it was the Dick Cavett show) McCarthy said of Hellman, “Everything she writes is a lie, including the words ‘the’ and ‘it’.” Hellman sued McCarthy for defamation, but the lawsuit was dismissed when Hellman passed away.
MS, since presumably I'm the particular Anonymous you refer to at 4:31, I don't get the point you're making about disagreement. I think LFC and I were disagreeing quite politely and given time we might actually come to a meeting of the minds.
It has been reported today that one of the attorneys on Trump’s legal team trying to overturn the election results, Joe DiGenova, stated on a radio show regarding Chris Krebs, the cybersecurity official at the Dept. of Homeland Security who asserted that there had been no fraud in the election, and was thereafter summarily fired by Trump, said the following: “That guy is a class A moron. He should be drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/30/politics/joe-digenova-attorney-trumpcampaign-chris-krebs-violence/index.html
Such a statement by a licensed attorney is obviously despicable and beyond the pale. For an attorney to publicly threaten the life of anyone, let alone a public official who had dutifully performed his job, is unacceptable.
Mr. DiGenova practices law in Washington D.C., where he is licensed. He should be severely disciplined for what he said, and arguably disbarred. I have checked the Washington D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct. Mr. DiGenova has violated three of the ethical rules which bind all attorneys licensed in Washington D.C.: RPC 4.1 (“Truthfulness in Statements to Others”); RPC 4.4 (“Respect for Rights of Third Persons”); RPC 8.4 (“Misconduct”). As a licensed attorney in Michigan, I have an obligation under RPC 8.3 (“Reporting Professional Misconduct”), which applies to all lawyers, wherever licensed, to report Mr. DiGenova’s violations of the RPC to the Washington D.C. bar, and I intend to file a request for investigation of Mr. Genova with the Washington D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel. I urge other attorneys who read this blog to do the same. The request for investigation can be filed electronically using the form at the link below:
https://www.dcbar.org/attorney-discipline/office-of-disciplinary-counsel/filing-a-complaint/how-to-file-a-complaint
Moreover, while under the Rules of Professional Conduct, I, as an attorney, have an affirmative duty to report Mr. DiGenova’s unethical conduct, anyone who is outraged by his conduct can also file a bar grievance using the form at the link above.
I do not feel outraged at all, I feel he is protecting us by saying that. Its all about placating the man who could do a lot of damage in the next few months. Everyone is on pins and needles and things need to be said to keep the theatre going. "Drawn and quartered" and "shot at dawn" are colloquialisms similar to "sleepy Joe" and the other Trump uses, so Trump still feels comfortable as the lame duck in office. Lets keep it that way. Once he feels cornered, anything could happen. No pretentious indignation needed, don't play his game, just lets back away slowly.
Anonymous,
I anticipated a range of responses to my comment above, but yours takes the cake. I am dumbfounded.
Given Anonymous’s comment it appears that my call for bar grievances to be filed against Mr. DiGenova requires some explication. (I would have thought this unnecessary, but in this brave new world which has normalized incivility and death threats, I guess I am wrong.) Some may believe that Mr. DiGenova’s comments, as deplorable as they are, are protected by the 1st Amendment. They are not, and I will explain why.
In Rankin v. McPherson, 483 U.S. 378 (1987), a deputy constable employed by the Texas’ Harris County Constable’s office, after having heard on the radio of the unsuccessful assassination attempt on President Reagan, said while at lunch with a colleague, “Shoot, after they go for him again, I hope they get him.” The comment was overheard by another deputy constable and was reported to their supervisor and the speaker was immediately terminated. The case went to the S. Ct. and the Court, surprisingly, in a decision written by Justice Marshall, joined by Justices Brennan, Blackmun, Powell and Stevens, reversed the speaker’s dismissal on the grounds that what she said was protected by the free speech clause of the 1st Amendment - she had made a remark regarding a matter of public concern and she had made it in private.
Mr. DiGenova’s statements are distinctly different: (1) As an attorney, he is an officer of the court, whose free speech rights as such are more circumscribed; (2) unlike Ms. McPherson, he did not speak in private, but announced his wishes over the radio to an audience of untold thousands, among whom may be a Trump supporter who might very well think, if this attorney thinks its OK to kill Chris Krebbs, then it must be OK; (3) had Mr. DiGenova made the same remarks at a Trump rally, he could have been arrested for inciting murder, a felony, for which he would definitely lose his license to practice law; the fact that he said it over the radio is no different, and arguably worse.
He should be disbarred, regardless the potential psychological effects such action would have on Trump or his maniacal followers (and, by the way, the disbarment would only happen after an extensive period of time consuming hearings, and Trump by that point will be long gone).
MS - nobody cares. This isn't a law school blog. Hence why your massive posts are largely met with crickets or dismissive short retorts. Do you behave the same way in person too, just continuing on a never-ending monologue regardless of whether anyone cares to listen or respond? Just wondering.
Anonymous,
You know, you’re right. Here I am out in the freezing cold in Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit, reading Supreme Court decisions to passersby, shouting epithets about the world’s injustices and Trump’s aberrational conduct, and no one is paying any attention to me. Diogenes got more attention than I. Thank you for your invaluable advice. I’m just going to pack my bags, put my law books in my haversack, and head home.
Zipfs law is set in stone and now that the word Trump has made the top 100 words frequency use, we can be assured he isn't leaving office. Zipfs law applies to social sciences as well as language in addition to biology, science etc. Trump is a lock for a second term not because of anything else than a mathematical principle. You heard it here first, boys.
MS,
Please don't tell me you are the one publicly defecating in downtown Detroit. How about Cassandra? You remind me more of a Cassandra anyways.
Anonymous at 1:20 PM (they’re popping up out of nowhere),
You should re-read your Greek mythology. It turns out Cassandra was right.
MS is the visitor who never leaves and who starts treating your home as if it was his own. He's tone deaf and incapable of seeing that he bores and annoys almost everyone.
I'm not going to get into the legal issues (I'll leave that for now to MS), but just to note that the Joe DiGenova in question may (?) be the son of the Joseph DiGenova who was on the Watergate prosecution/investigation team and later, I believe, became a right-winger.
A number of legal experts agree with me:
https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/trump-campaign-lawyer-joe-digenova-could-be-disciplined-for-stunning-statement-that-chris-krebs-should-be-shot/
LFC,
Mr. DiGenova was licensed to practice law in D.C. in 1970. It was he, not his father, who served as an attorney adviser on the Watergate investigation team.
I best get out of here before “another anonymous” calls the landlord and has me evicted.
MS
Thanks for the clarification.
If I can go back to where RPW began this thread, and which hardly anyone has seen fit to respond to (perhaps because it raises difficult issues?) here’s an interesting and, I think, relevant interview with Wendy Brown. This passage seems to connect directly with RPW’s complaint about some comments in a prior thread:
“When I tried to specify it in the passage that you just read, my aim was to remind readers that if we go to the kind of extreme individualism rooted in families and understand those individuals as simply economic and moral actors, in an order where they pursue their own good and pursue their own values and their own beliefs, and get rid of this domain we call “society,” we have eliminated two important things.
“We’ve eliminated the domain where we actually live together, not just as individuals in households, but live together in a world. But we’ve also eliminated the space where thinkers like Marx and like other social theorists of equality and inequality identify the powers that subject some groups, elevate others, exclude or marginalize. We’ve eliminated the space where racism and sexism and, of course, class operate.
“That’s exactly what the neoliberals wanted eliminated. They wanted to eliminate this idea that there is a web of connections among us that subordinate some and elevate others.”
accessed at https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/neoliberalism-wendy-brown-interview-nihilism-political-theory
Enam et Brux,
Thank you for the link.
(I am still trying to figure out who you are and why you self-censor so many of your comments.)
During the month of November, Professor Wolff posted 34 times on this blog.
There were 869 comments.
During the month of November, MS commented 182 times on Professor Wolff's blog.
MS's comments were 21% of all comments on this blog. MS commented 5 x more often that Professor Wolff posted (not including Professor Wolff's occasional comments).
MS did not comment on just 5 of the 34 total posts in November.
The most heavily commented post by MS was the November 4th election post-mortem. MS commented 26 times on that particular post.
On November 14th, MS made a comment which he said "will be my final comment, not just for this thread."
Since then, MS has commented 70 times on this blog.
Finally, something I found humorous in my quick collection of this data.
On November 3rd, Professor Wolff posted an in depth and thought provoking discussion beginning with Rawls and mostly talking about Kant. There was a lot of in depth discussion in the comments, back and forth, of a philosophical nature. These kind of posts do not make up the majority of the blog (at least not in November, after all, there was an election), but they are certainly my favourite posts to read!
MS did not get involved in that discussion. It was one of the 5 November posts he did not comment on.
The same day, just after the Kant discussion, Prof. Wolff posted to thank everyone for the in depth and thought provoking discussion:
"I would just like to say that the breadth and depth of knowledge exhibited by the folks who read this blog and comment on it is extraordinary, and it is a pleasure to spend time with you."
MS was the second person to reply to that post. He very graciously told Prof. Wolff that he was welcome!
Apologies- my analysis did not include the comment MS made 1 minute before mine. I'm sure people can do the maths themselves if they are so inclined.
AJH,
I seem to recall in a prior comment you indicated that you are older than I, and I assume, therefore retired. Were you, perhaps, an accountant or statistician before you retired?
MS,
You've got the wrong man I'm afraid. Very much not retired, nor older than you, and neither an accountant nor a statistician.
Nancy DiTomaso, a professor of business management at Rutgers, studies links between inequality and hiring practices. She interviewed Americans about their job histories:
In interviews with hundreds of people on this topic, I found that all but a handful used the help of family and friends to find 70 percent of the jobs they held over their lifetimes; they all used personal networks and insider information if it was available to them.
In this context of widespread networking, the idea that there is a job “market” based solely on skills, qualifications and merit is false. Whenever possible, Americans seeking jobs try to avoid market competition: they look for unequal rather than equal opportunity. In fact, the last thing job seekers want to face is equal opportunity; they want an advantage. They want to find ways to cut in line and get ahead.
You don’t usually need a strong social network to land a low-wage job at a fast-food restaurant or retail store. But trying to land a coveted position that offers a good salary and benefits is a different story. To gain an edge, job seekers actively work connections with friends and family members in pursuit of these opportunities.
Help is not given to just anyone, nor is it available from everyone. Inequality reproduces itself because help is typically reserved for people who are “like me”: the people who live in my neighborhood, those who attend my church or school or those with whom I have worked in the past....
When I asked my interviewees what most contributed to their level of career success, they usually discussed how hard they had worked and how uncertain were the outcomes — not the help they had received throughout their lives to gain most of their jobs. In fact, only 14 percent mentioned that they had received help of any kind from others. (my emphasis)
R McD
“That’s exactly what the neoliberals wanted eliminated. They wanted to eliminate this idea that there is a web of connections among us that subordinate some and elevate others.”
Can you help me parse this? “Neoliberal” is a term that to me means Bill Clinton or Tony Blair and their policies—a move from the left toward the center, a greater reliance on free markets. I confess that “neoliberal” is a term that came into use after my formative years, and consequently I don’t use it much, if at all, myself.
At first I thought Brown was being critical of neoliberalism. But then, it occurred to me that she might mean the opposite—that it is a good thing to eliminate the web of connections that subordinate some of us and elevate others. Or did they just want to eliminate the idea (our awareness) of this web of connections while leaving it in place?
Thanks for your response, David. Re your question, I thought Wendy Brown laid it out pretty well in the earlier part of her interview: that neoliberalism, as she is using it, refers to an entire mode of living; it's not just the economy, it's how a certain system of governance intimately linked to the economic arrangements has taken over (this would link to the notions discussed elsewhere of the "hollowing out of the state," of the "hollowing out of democracy," etc.). It's also how, as she says, we have been brought to think of ourselves as asocial creatures who owe nothing to anyone but ourselves and maybe our close family members.
Re your second point, I think your first perception was right: she is a critic of neoliberalism. I think , if you'll forgive me terming it so, you're misreading her if you see her saying that there are no connections among the inhabitants of the neoliberalised world, but they're the sort of connections which, perhaps paradoxically, isolate us from each other leaving us hungry for recognition, for our voices to be heard. I think she's further arguing that humane connections require that we somehow escape collectively from this neoliberal world, due emphasis being given to "world". That last makes our predicament more awful, more difficult to escape from. It's little use looking to the nation-state frameworks you and I, given our generation, tend to look to within which our predicaments used to be somewhat solvable. (I may have a small advantage over you here since, having grown up in Britain, I've lived through several large-scale breakdowns of systems and expectations, and am currently looking to more of the same. My sense is this is a relatively new sort of predicament for Americans.)
I hope I'm making some sort of sense. If not, please try me again, so long as we don't weary others. Cheers, r
David Palmeter,
One quick take on neoliberalism is Margaret Thatcher's dictum that society does not exist. There are only individuals and their families.
The idea is that "in reality" there are only individual economic agents seeking their advantage (and that of people whom they have voluntary relations with, for example, their families) and that social bonds are a myth or a mystification.
In the practice that seems to contain a descriptive and a normative aspect. The descriptive aspect claims that that is how the world really is, that society is only a myth and the prescriptive aspect claims that that is a good thing, because it stimulates economic growth or because it shields us from the tyranny of the majority or because it enables us to "realize" ourselves as autonomous creative individuals in competition with other autonomous creative individuals.
That does not rule out charity of course, but charity is voluntary generosity towards others, not stemming from a real social bond which we have with others, that bond being seen as a mystification by neoliberals.
Too many greedy people and shysters ruining it for the rest of us. We participate in a genuine, honest, socially responsible way and then the greedy people and the dishonest take advantage and ruin it for everyone. It similar to the mask issue. Some are responsible, stay inside and wear a mask when out and others irresponsibly don't and the contamination and infection get worse. Same with the economy. The problem lies in human nature. Life eats people up, and others just don't care.
R McD and s. wallerstein,
Thanks for your comments. I don’t have an intelligent thing to say about this right now, but will digest what you’ve said for a while.
In “The Meritocracy Trap,” Prof. Markovits offers a different perspective on the social forces dominating American life today. He states (xix-xx):
“Middle-class resentment against the elite appears misguided. Today, in principle, anyone can succeed. Education has never been as extravagantly funded or widely available as it is today, and even the most exclusive schools and colleges – which once admitted only white, Christian men and even within this group selected students for breeding – today base admissions on academic achievement. Jobs and careers have similarly dismantled outmoded chauvinisms and are now overwhelmingly open to effort and talent. Institutions that once confronted large classes of citizens with a wall of categorical exclusions now expressly admit anyone who can make it.
“The anxiety felt within the elite astounds especially. The training that goes into an elite degree has never before been as excellent, and graduates have never been as accomplished. The social and economic advantages conferred by education have also never been greater. Elite graduates should be proud of their past and confident about their future status and income.
“Nevertheless, the complaints persist, multiply, and grow even louder. As meritocratic inequality increases and meritocracy loses its charisma, rising elite anxieties join an older, more mature dissatisfaction, already well known to the American middle class. The grievances build because they connect lived experience to an important truth., fashioning a master key for diagnosing the troubles that dominate economic and social life today, both existentially in the individual person and politically in in public life. Meritocratic inequality makes an otherwise bizarre picture of America credible and politically potent.
“Meritocracy’s discontents invite a structural attack on the incumbent regime, grounded in a criticism of meritocracy itself. Although they appear independent and even opposed, the oppression of the middle class and the exploitation of the elite share a common root. Through diverse means and following divergent pathways, the American elite, the American middle-class, and American itself are all caught in the meritocracy trap.
“Like all really big things, meritocracy is difficult to comprehend from up close. After five decades of rising economic inequality, the elite and the middle class appear – unreflectively, at first blush – to inhabit separate worlds. According to the common view, there are not two Americas, one for the rich and the other for the rest. The loudest voices, on the left as well as the right, insist that the country – in economics, in politics, and even in social life – is coming apart.
“A step back opens a wider perspective and reveals that the common view is mistaken. The elite and the middle class are not coming apart at all. Instead, the rich and the rest are entangled in a single, shared, and mutually destructive economic and social logic. Their seemingly opposite burdens are in fact two symptoms of a shared meritocratic disease. Meritocratic elites acquire their caste through processes that ruthlessly exclude most Americans and, at the same time, mercilessly assault those who do go through them. The powerfully felt but unexplained frustrations that mar both classes – unprecedented resentment among the middle class and inscrutable anxiety among the elite – are eddies in a shared stream, drawing their energies from a single current.”
MS,
More bullshit that leaves out a whole class, can you guess which one? I would say the resentment is from the lower classes, the anxiety is from the middle classes, and the prejudice and callousness is the higher class. This article gives yet another free pass to the elites. So much anxiety with their 400 million dollars....poor people!
Anonymous,
A valid point. I noticed that he left out an entire class as well. This may be a sign of the author’s own elitism, or it may be (and I am speculating here) that given his view of the greater availability of a college education. that he believes those in the lowest class can move up into the middle class more readily than in the past. I would question whether this is the case, however, given the burden of student debt.
"Prof. Markovits offers a different perspective on the social forces dominating American life today"
A different perspective on what? Surely it complements what Wendy Brown was getting at in reference I gave above?
"A neoliberal meritocracy would have us believe that success depends on individual effort and talents, meaning responsibility lies entirely with the individual and authorities should give people as much freedom as possible to achieve this goal. For those who believe in the fairytale of unrestricted choice, self-government and self-management are the pre-eminent political messages, especially if they appear to promise freedom. Along with the idea of the perfectible individual, the freedom we perceive ourselves as having in the west is the greatest untruth of this day and age."
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/29/neoliberalism-economic-system-ethics-personality-psychopathicsthic ]
R McD,
The excerpt which you have quoted at 7:14 PM was not included in any of your comments discussing the Wendy Brown interview at 2:28 PM, so my assertion that Prof. Markovits was offering a different perspective was appropriate. In any case, Prof. Markovits’ point is that the meritocracy milieu has resulted in a rat race which neither the middle class nor the elites find fulfilling. Whether this constitutes a different perspective from that expressed in your quote immediately above, or complements the perspective expressed in your quote above, is splitting hairs, don’t you think?
I was just curious why you termed it "a different perspective." that's all.
Because I thought it was different from the perspective of Wendy Brown which you had offered in your previous quotation at 2:28 P.M. – which was the only quotation attributed to her which you had included up to that point. Not that complicated.
I want to go back to the original post here for a moment, before leaving the internet for the night.
Prof Wolff complains that the discussion in the previous thread took place w/o reference to Marx, and wonders whether "anybody really think[s] that the structure of modern capitalism can in any way be explained by reference to the talent and hard work of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates?"
Comment threads don't often proceed systematically like seminars, however, and I think Prof Wolff may be overreacting to, and/or perhaps mistaking, the previous discussion.
It wasn't really about the structure of modern capitalism, and few if any commenters were suggesting that the careers of successful entrepreneurs, or successful people in general, explain anything deep about the structure of capitalism. (They may or may not, but that wasn't the topic and no one was, as far as I can tell, suggesting that that was the case.)
Rather, the discussion, at least the part I was involved in, had to do with the degree to which people can be said to "deserve" their accomplishments and successes, such that that "desert" can be advanced to justify inequalities or greatly differential rewards. That's, as far as I can see, a legitimate debate to have with reference not directly to the structure of capitalism or to neoliberalism, but with reference to the justice or injustice of particular distributions of wealth and income and other goods within a capitalist system. It's possible to hold that all such systems are unjust or flawed or exploitative, but that some versions of capitalism are more unjust or flawed or exploitative than others. Indeed, many (though not all) criticisms of neoliberalism pretty much presuppose these kinds of judgments, I would suggest.
In short, to criticize the previous discussion because it ignored Marx and other radical critiques of capitalism seems to me to mistake what the discussion was mostly about. It's like, say, criticizing a composition for string quartet because it isn't a piano concerto or a symphony. You don't leave a concert by a quartet complaining that they didn't play Beethoven's Fifth. Ok, I'm out of here for a while.
P.s. Wendy Brown's critique of neoliberalism, as summarized by R McD above, is, admittedly, more total or holistic, referring not just to the economy but to a whole "mode of living," to quote R McD.
That said, there are other critiques of neoliberalism that focus more sharply or restrictedly on neoliberal economics, i.e., deregulation, privatization, indifference to inequality, etc. It's those sorts of criticisms of neoliberalism that often presuppose, it seems to me, that one can differentiate between more objectionable and less objectionable versions of capitalism.
LFC,
I would not say that the entire discussion took place without reference to Marx.
The whole point I was making was very much informed by a Marxist view of the way that vast fortunes are amassed in modern America, and how the wealthy & bourgeoisie then justify their exploitation of the rest of humanity by claiming themselves to be more deserving of wealth by virtue of being harder workers and being more intelligent and more talented. It did not seem necessary to say all of that directly; I thought it was obvious.
I also declined to get into debates about different degrees of capitalist exploitation.
There is to my mind a huge difference between an artist (Beyonce, Stephen King, etc) who becomes wealthy from others voluntarily and willingly paying some of their dispensable money to enjoy the artist's work, on the one hand, and a finance capitalist/landlord/corporate director whose wealth derives from exploiting others (workers, competitors, debtors, etc), on the other.
*disposable money
Actually, it strengthens the basic argument of most of us that the rich don't "deserve" their wealth that except Eric no one based their arguments on Marx, that LFC based his arguments on Rawls (who on the left is generally seen as an apologist for welfare capitalism) and that I pointed out that even the Old Testament states that success in life is not due to merit or dessert.
Here we go again, round and round in circles, in the circle game.
Which has merit, the chicken or the egg. Neither? Both? Indeterminable?
s. wallerstein,
Those who see Rawls as an apologist for welfare capitalism are incorrect, although he does find it superior to laissez faire. This is clear from his last work, “Justice as Fairness”:
“In welfare-state capitalism the aim is that none should fall below a decent minimum standard of life….Yet given the lack of background justice and inequalities in income and wealth, there may develop a discouraged and depressed underclass….This underclass feels left out and does not participate in the public political culture.”
He therefore rejects welfare capitalism and accepts two alternatives: property-owning democracy and liberal or democratic socialism (as opposed to state socialism) as compatible with the principle of justice. § 42
'Judging from the nature of the dispute that arose, Karl Marx might just as well never have lived and worked. Does anybody really think that the structure of modern capitalism can in any way be explained by reference to the talent and hard work of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates? Seriously, people?'
I don't think I understand the question, but I was distracted by the notion that Marx 'worked'. You mean, like for Horace Greeley?
I had in mind writing Capital. But perhaps you do not consider that work.
There's a reason they're generally called "works of philosophy".
No that is not work, because Work = Fs, that is the force applied over a given distance. So, if you are writing Capital using a pencil, then the amount of work is a function of the force applied to the pencil over the distance from the writer’s hand to the paper. If you are using a computer to write Capital, then the amount of work is far less, because the force applied to the computer keys is far less.
In any case, Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition distinguishes between work, labor and activity.
Work involves making or creating something. It could be a work of philosophy or a table constructed by a carpenter.
Labor is that effort expended in filling our survival needs (however they are defined). It is often repetitive as in the case of housework (which is labor, not work, according to Arendt) or laboring on an assembly line in a factory.
Activity is public participation in the polis, either directly political participation or
some kind of non-political community participation.
Obviously, the categories overlap at times. For example, when Professor Wolff blogs, he is often participating in politics and is creating a text, a work.
The worst thing about working in my experience is not that you have to be submissive to the boss and to his or her whims, but that you have to do it with a smile, that you have to pretend to love and admire him or her, that you have to sing "Happy Birthday" to him or her with enthusiasm. If you don't, you could be fired even if you're working efficiently.
And bosses, like all tyrants, don't seem to have the capacity to notice that not all submissive smiles are sincere. As Dylan says, "you never saw the frowns/ on the jugglers and the clowns/ when they all did tricks for you". That applies to almost all bosses.
Enam El Brux,
Sorry. I haven't paid much attention to your comments about the ambiguity of accounting practices. My father was an accountant and whenever a conversation turns toward accounts or anything numerical, my mind changes the channel automatically.
Enam el Brux,
It’s a left-handed compliment – comparing my comment/legal briefs to an insurance policy and medicare billingl – but I’ll take it, and thank you. I’ve been running a little bit short on compliments in Wolff blog territory of late.
I know how demanding taking care of an elderly parent can be, so I wish you well and hope that your stepfather successfully recovers from his Covid 19 infection. The Pfizer vaccine is soon on its way.
Enam el Brux,
Let me join MS in hoping that your stepfather successfully recovers from Covid.
I just read the article recommended by Enam el Brux, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.” The article asserts that the distribution of wealth in the world follows the 80:20 rule – 80% of the wealth is owned by 20% of the people. Researchers at the University of Catania in Italy have developed a computer program which simulates how people accumulate wealth. According to the article, the program demonstrates that, “The wealthiest individuals are typically not the most talented or anywhere near it. ‘The maximum success never coincides with the maximum talent, and vice versa.’… So if not talent, what other factor causes this skewed wealth distribution? ‘Our simulation clearly shows that such a factor is just pure luck[.] … It is evident that the most successful invidibuals are also the luckiest ones. … And the less successful individuals are also the unluckiest ones’”
These conclusions coincide with the comments on this blog questioning the meaning of merit, and denying that the accumulation of wealth can be attributed to talent and regarded as deserved. While I question how a computer program can develop a code which is able to define talent and luck and measure the degree of their interactions, putting this skepticism aside, I have some questions, and I will use the much maligned Jeff Bezos as an example. Jeff Bezos saw a way to use the internet to sell a particular product – books – at a lower price and on a larger scale than could be accomplished in brick and mortar book stores. Now, a lot of people, including a lot of the people who read this blog, were using the internet at the same time that Bezos was. Most, if not all, did not see the same opportunity that the internet could be used to create a business selling books on a massive scale. And even if others saw the same potential, they also saw the obstacles and decided it was not worth the huge amount of effort and planning it would take to make such a business venture succeed. I was more interested in arguing in court and writing briefs. Prof. Wolff was more interested in explaining complicated philosophical doctrines, teaching about them and writing books about them. Eric was more interested in other things, and making a lot of money was not one of them. And on and on. Everyone of us arguably had the same opportunity Jeff Bezos did, but we did not do what Jeff Bezos did. Jeff Bezos did. Some may say that was just because of his genetic makeup that he had that insight, and it was just because of his genetic makeup that he had that Type A personality to have the drive to make it happen, but the point is, he did it. Some one might say if he hadn’t done it, someone else would have. But we don’t know that. And what would that matter – Jeff Bezos did it before someone else did it. So now Bezos is the wealthiest person on Earth – he expanded that initial insight to sell books on line to selling large categories of merchandise on line. Was that just luck? I don’t think so. Does the fact that he had the insight and true grit to make it happen make him immoral, deserving of condemnation for doing so, make him an exploitive capitalist? How many of the readers who believe that Jeff Bezos is a corrupt capitalist buy products on Amazon? Why do you do it? Would you prefer that Bezos had never had the idea and that Amazon was never created?
(Continued)
The same is true of every innovative captain of industry who saw an opportunity and made it happen. Henry Ford figured out a way to build cars faster and cheaper on an assembly line. He did not come from a wealthy family; he was not given any breaks by wealthy relatives. He hired a lot of people to work on those assembly lines and in fact paid them a higher hourly wage than they were able to earn elsewhere. He made cars cheaper, that middle class people could afford, which allowed those middle class people to drive out into the countryside with their families, to get to work further from their homes, etc. Yes, his genetic makeup made it possible – but he did something with his genetic makeup that others with their genetic makeup did not do. One may condemn him, perhaps, for making work boring -but that boring work got people off the farms doing arduous work to doing boring work with a steady paycheck, manufacturing a product that a lot of Americans wanted to buy. Does that make him a filthy capitalist, and not deserving of the wealth he accumulated? Does he not deserve credit for having had that insight and the dedication to bring it to fruition?
We can go through one millionaire/billionaire after another – Edison, Goodyear, Carnegie, Rockefeller – they saw opportunities that other either did not see, or if they saw them, did not have the drive or ambition to make it happen. Why does this make them worthy of condemnation? And was it purely luck that they succeeded? I don’t think so.
If Bezos does not merit his wealth, then he is not morally condemnable for having accumulated it either. The theory works both ways.
No one in this thread has claimed that billionaires are evil people or wicked or evil. They are products of their genes, their upbringing, gender and racial ideology, the capitalist system and luck, just as the rest of us are.
Marx, as I've pointed out previously, does not morally condemn capitalists. Please don't search through your copy of the Communist Manifesto to find one line which could be interpreted as moralistic. The Manifesto is a pamphlet, not one of Marx's works of philosophy and I've talked to serious Marx scholars (I don't know what Professor Wolff's take on that is) who simply don't use the Manifesto when they're trying to outline Marxism:
rather, they use works like the 3 volumes of Capital and the German Ideology.
Now we're been through this same discussion previously and I don't want to repeat it, especially since the last time we discussed this, several weeks ago, the conversation got so heated that Professor Wolff erased our comments. So this is my last comment in this conversation and in fact, after posting this, I'm going to unsubscribe to emails in this thread.
s. wallerstein, my above comment was not directed to you, but to those, in addition to you, who have made comments regarding the lack of merit in Beznos’ achievement in becoming the wealthiest person on Earth. You are, of course, free to unscubscribe from this thread (and therefore will not see this comment), but leaving the field of play does not detract from whatever validity my observations have. My comments in this thread, moreover, have not contained any ad hominems and have not given Prof. Wolff any reason to react to this comment thread in the manner in which he felt compelled to react to our vitriolic exchange on Nov. 16.
Wittgenstein would have had a field day with this discussion. He would, I submit, observe that a faux philosophical paradox is being created out of whole cloth based on the use of a word for its being used in the very manner in which it is intended to be used. A number of commenters on this blog have taken the position that no human being is entitled to claim merit by virtue of their success, when that success is attributable to their fortuitous genetic make-up and/or the fortuitous circumstances of the social status into which they were born. Wittgenstein would, I submit, say this is nonsense. Rocks do not have merit. The trees in my yard do not have merit. The actions and thoughts of human beings – and only human beings - under certain circumstances, can be regarded as having merit. An argument, for example, can be said to have merit. But every argument, every thought, every action that is attributable to a human being is necessarily ultimately derived from that individual’s genetic make-up and/or circumstances of birth. If by virtue of this genesis it is said that an individual’s success cannot be said – ever - to have merit, that praise and acknowledgement of an individual’s achievements – whether in the arts, in sports, in science, and yes, even in business – cannot be said to have merit and are undeserved, then the word has been totally stripped of its meaning. But the word still thrives in the English language. If it had no meaning, it would become extinct and disappear. To say of the word “merit” that it can never apply when it is being used in the very manner – the only manner - in which it is intended to be used, is self-contradictory and is creating a philosophical issue when there is none. To say that Henry Ford’s or Jeff Bezos’ wealth had nothing to do with merit, because it was simply the result of the good fortune of their genetic makeup and/or circumstances of birth, and was therefore “undeserved,” is to engage in semantical/hermeneutic double talk. (This is distinguishable, by the way, from saying, for example, that Trump’s purported wealth is undeserved and not entitled to be regarded as having merit, because there is good reason to believe that he did not acquire his wealth honestly. Merit, or lack of merit, has nothing to do with the individual’s genetic make-up or birth status. It has to do with whether the individual used those circumstances to achieve success in an honorable and honest manner.)
Regarding the role of the Communist Manifesto in Marx’s economic philosophy and his legacy, it was that pamphlet which inspired Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks to overturn the Czarist rule in Russia and which inspired the other Communist revolutions in the 20th century, not Capital. (See, e.g., Kuromiya, Hiroaki (2017),”Communism, Violence and Terror", in Pons, Silvio; Smith, Stephen (eds.), The Cambridge History of Communism, Cambridge University Press, pp. 279–303) In terms of the effect on world history, the Manifesto has had a far greater impact than Capital. So, to ignore its role in world history is unrealistic. And the Manifesto is a moral screed, telling workers that by uniting against their capitalistic overseers they have nothing to lose but their chains. As I said in a prior comment, this is a moral judgment accusing employers of exploiting employees as if they were slaves.
Post-script:
Leonard Mlodinow is a mathematical physicist and teaches at the California Institute of Technology. He is the author of many books about physics and mathematics. One of his best books, and which I highly recommend to the readers of this blog, is “The Drunkard’s Walk – How Randomness Rules Our Lives.” The book discusses the role of chance in our lives, its randomness and its effects, both positive and negative, on an individual’s success or failure. On pp. 161-62, he writes:
“[B]ecause of the myriad of foreseeable and chance obstacles that must be overcome to complete a task of any complexity, the connection between ability and accomplishment is fare lass direct than anything that can possibly be explained by Galton’s ideas [regression to the mean.] In fact, in recent years psychologists have found that the ability to persist in the face of obstacles is at least as important a factor in success as talent. That’s why experts often speak of the ‘ten-year rule,’ meaning that it takes at least a decade of hard work, practice, and striving to become highly successful in most endeavors. It might seem daunting to think that effort and chance, as much as innate talent, are what counts. But I find it encouraging because, while our genetic makeup is out of our control, our degree of effort is up to us. And the effects of chance, too, can be controlled to the extent that by committing ourselves to repeated attempts, we can increase our odds of success.” (Footnote omitted.)
Now, the naysayers among this blog’s readers may claim that this contention is circular, or begs the question, because isn’t the degree to which one is willing to persist in the face of repeated failure itself a product of one’s genetic makeup and/or childhood environment? This question brings us into the realm of the issue of free will, a topic too complex to address in the limited space I have available. I would just say that much of our social framework, the very basis for our legal system, is predicated on the presumption – absent certain defenses like, for example, diminished capacity – of the existence of free will. And with that presumption, we reward persistence, which in turn increases the likelihood of success, and cast aspersion on indolence and lack of commitment. Persistence in the face of adversity and failure is one of the traits most people believe has merit, and the success which it yields is deserved, even if the success is contaminated by wealth.
Enam el Brux,
First, I want to thank you for addressing my comments in an objectively critical manner, rather than invoking dismissive resorts to ideology.
I am not sure I understand what you mean when you say, “There is something of a gap between persistence in the face of adversity and the kinds of wealth distributions that might hold under different economic systems, whether these are empirically necessary, let alone ‘desirable.’” Regardless in what economic system and social order one is born into, each system presents hurdles and adversities which people living in that society have to face. Mlodinow’s point is that persistence in the face of those hurdles and adversities is going to increase the likelihood of your success in that society. The hurdles and adversities in a capitalist society will be different from those in a socialist or communist society, but regardless the society you are born in, due to the role of chance and randomness, those who persist the most are going to be the ones who succeed the most. So that while the “gap” may vary from society to society, the role of persistence in succeeding in any society is the same. If I am misconstruing the point you are making, please let me know.
I would be curious to know who the historical figure in mathematical logic is you are referring to. The only prominent mathematical logicians of the 20th and 21st centuries I am aware of are Russell, Whitehead, Godel, Quine, Tarski, Carnap, and Ripke. Is his identity a secret?
TL;DR:
MS, quoting Hillary Clinton fans: "Nevertheless, she persisted!"
Everyone else: "Okay Boomer."
Enam el Brux,
Are you pulling my leg? Is the prominent mathematical logician the personage behind the pseudonym “Enam el Brux”?
Ridiculousiculus,
The battle cry, “Nevertheless she persisted,” did not refer to Hillary Clinton. It referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s continued criticisms of the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General. If you are going to be make an effort at sarcasm, it is best to get your facts straight. Otherwise it sort of falls flat.
Enam el Brux,
You mean the Native Americans who had no concept of land ownership, but believed that the Great Father gave Nature to all humankind to share, were not wrong when confronted with the sophisticated English laws of land ownership in fee, fee tail, and the rule against perpetuities?
It is curious that the discussion turned from a claim that the super-wealthy in our society 'achieved their wealth not by birth but, for the most part, by hard work and talent' to launching an all-out assault on a proposition that hard work and talent play absolutely no role under any circumstances in wealth acquisition. I am not quite sure what to make of this.
Enam el Brux, none of the commenters actually argued that hard work and talent play absolutely no role in wealth acquisition.
Enam el Brux,
I hope you're not suggesting that the distribution of wealth (or income, two diff. things) in the U.S. today is "Pareto optimal" (i.e., no one could increase his/her wealth without someone's else wealth being decreased), because I see no particular reason to think that is the case. (Probably or possibly I've misread your reference to "scale-invariant Pareto distribution".)
Eric, Enam al Brux and LFC,
I am going to interject my 2 cents into this discussion (which no doubt will stimulate among a number of Anonymous commenters a call for my head for my outrageous prolixity, but what the heck). I believe that Hume’s ought-is distinction in this discussion is being misapplied. “All” that Hume meant by the distinction is that one cannot deduce from the fact that a set of circumstances exists that they ought to exist, a notion that God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world. This observation is sometimes given more credit than perhaps Hume intended for it. It is of course true, for example, that the fact that the Aztecs engaged in human sacrifice does not mean that human sacrifice is morally acceptable. In this regard, Hume’s observation is hardly astounding. It does not follow from this observation, however, that from the fact that a set of circumstances exists no moral judgments can be validly made about that set of circumstances, a doctrine in moral philosophy called “non-cognitivism.” For an excellent exposition of this distinction, I recommend the article “Hume on Is and Ought,” https://philosophynow.org/issues/83/Hume_on_Is_and_Ought (the author is Prof. Charles Pigden, who has commented from time to time on this blog). As Prof. Pigden states:
“Is Hume claiming that you can’t get moral conclusions from non-moral premises by logic alone, that is, that there are no logically valid arguments from the non-moral? Or is he claiming that you can’t get moral conclusions form non-moral premises by logic plus analytic bridge principles, that is, that there are no analytically valid arguments from the non-moral to the moral? The first could be true and the second false. If you can’t get moral conclusions from non-moral premises by logic alone, it does not follow that you can’t get moral conclusions from non-moral premises by logic plus analytic bridge principles. For there might be analytic bridge principles, truths of meaning analogous to the claim that a bachelor is a man who has no wife (and has never had a wife), enabling us to move from non-moral premises to a moral conclusion via an analytically valid argument. For the second claim to be true there would have to be no analytic bridge principles linking the moral and the non-moral. The moral words would have to be indefinable or at least not definable in terms of natural properties or concepts. Tis was a thesis made famous by the Cambridge philosopher G.E. Moore (1874-1958) who thought it a fallacy, the ‘Naturalistic Fallacy’, to define the word ‘good’ in terms of anything else. [I invoked G.E. Moore in an earlier comment to rebut the assertion by some commenters, e.g., s. wallerstein, that there are no valid moral judgments, and that Marx never engaged in moralizing. G.E. Moore believed that there were valid moral judgments which could not, and need not, be logically justified, that we had an innate sense of morality which informed of us of what is “good,” which is as indefinable as the word “yellow.”]
* * *
“Why then is No-Ought-From-Is important? The answer is that it isn’t as important as many philosophers take it to be. Like many truisms it acquires its importance by being denied. If someone proclaims that the sun won’t rose every day unless we rip out the hearts of sacrificial victims it is worth insisting on the truism the sun rises every day whatever we do. Similarly, if someone proclaims that they can logically deduce moral conclusions from non-moral premises, it is worth insisting on the truism that you can’t get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. Otherwise perhaps not.”
(Continued)
In sum, the fact that from reality, what “is,” one cannot deduce a moral judgment relating to that reality simply based on its reality, it does not follow that there is no sub-set of circumstances within that reality about which one can make a moral judgment. I began commenting in this thread because I interpreted some comments as saying exactly that regarding wealth acquisition – that because all people who are wealthy achieved their wealth by virtue of their fortuitous genetic make-up and/or their privileges of birth, over which they had no control, then one could not say of any wealthy person that they earned their wealth via merit, or that their wealth was deserved. This was an over-extension of the No-Ought-From-Is principle, which I maintained, strips the word “merit” of all meaning, since it could not apply to any human being, which fails to explain why the word exists at all and is frequently used in discourse.
What needs to be done is to determine within that sub-set of reality which includes wealthy people. what characteristics can be identified by which we can say that that individual acquired his/her wealth through merit and is deserved. To say none of them exhibited such qualities because all of them acquired their wealth by virtue of their genetic make-up and/or accidents of birth I maintained was nonsense. If their genetically acquired talent and social skills were not sufficient to make a value judgment that their wealth was due to merit and was deserved, what other factors could explain how they acquired that wealth? I then referred to the article cited by Enam al, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance,” which using a computer program concluded that the distribution of wealth, which follows the 80%-20% Pietro distribution, the fact that the 20% wealthiest are not the most talented, and therefore the explanation for their having acquired their great wealth must be attributed to pure luck.
I am not a computer programmer, but I intuitively question how computer code could make quantitative measurements of talent – who decides that, e.g., Vladimir Horowitz is a more talented pianist than, let’s say, Ray Charles, and by how much; or that Warren Buffett’s business acumen is not really a talent, or if it is, it is no greater than my neighbor’s, who is not earning nearly as much money on his investments as Warren Buffett is, and how would you reflect this talent equivalence in code? In any case, even assuming the conclusion is correct that the differential in success cannot be explained by differentials in talent, why is the only explanation for the wealth differential pure luck? How would you code for “pure luck,” versus some other variable? In this regard, I cited to Prof. Mlodinow, who attributes the greater success of some individuals to their greater persistence in the face of bad luck, and the preparedness by virtue of their persistence to take advantage of good luck. Is it not reasonable to maintain that good and bad luck in a population follows a normal distribution, so that people with equal talents are likely to confront equivalent amounts of good luck and bad luck, and therefore the explanation for the disparity in their wealth is due to the greater persistence of the wealthy in the face of their good and bad luck? Moreover, is not persistence in the face of adversity (again, putting aside the question of free will) a characteristic to which we can ascribe merit and say of its fruits that they are deserved? Could not Jeff Bezos’ and Henry Ford’s extraordinary wealth be explained not by unusual good luck, but by persistence in the face of circumstances which deterred others from making the sacrifices in time and effort that they made, and thereby their wealth is deserved? As Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
(Continued)
The issue may in fact not be whether their wealth is deserved, but rather whether the degree of their wealth is deserved. That is, one can concede that their initial wealth was deserved by virtue of a combination of their talent and persistence, but at some point they used their initial accumulation of wealth to exponentially increase it by using unfair competition methods which their initial wealth made available to them to create a monopoly and stifle competition. I would agree that any wealth accumulated at this point is not due to merit and not deserved. But that is precisely why we have anti-monopoly laws in this country, e.g., the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, to counteract those practices which allow for the increase in wealth using methods which render the increased wealth undeserved. So, the Justice Department is supposed to be looking into whether Amazon has engaged in unlawful anti-competitive measures and what to do about it. But this does not mean that the initial wealth that Jeff Bezos acquired was not due to merit and was not deserved.
Enam al (may I address you by your first name?),
You’re going to have to unpack your last statement for me. I am not sure what you mean.
For clarification, do you believe that persistence at accomplishing a goal is meritorious, and if successful, achieving t the objective of the persistence is deserved?
Does it depend on the goal, so that if the goal is simply to become rich, it is not meritorious?
What if the primary goal is not to become rich, but to achieve something else, but having done so, wealth comes with it, e.g., Henry Ford’s goal was to manufacture an automobile which the middle class could afford, and having done so, he became very rich? Was his persistence at seeking a means to manufacture an affordable automobile not meritorious? And, if it was, did he not deserve the wealth that came with it?
Would you say that he did not deserve the wealth, because the method he used to reduce the cost of the automobile – the assembly line – made the work boring?
Which would you rather have, a world where only the already rich could afford automobiles, or a world where a large segment of the population could afford automobiles, but the price for that reduction in price required the use of assembly lines?
Enam al,
So I checked on the anti-realism principle in ethics – that there are no valid moral principles and that moral judgments have no objective meaning.
Would you say, then, that no valid moral judgment can be made regarding the practice of human sacrifice?
Enam el (my apologies for having misspelled your first name in prior comments),
I have read Prof. Rosenberg’s article “Free Markets and the Myth of Earned Inequalities,” which you recommended and I agree with some of it and disagree with some of it.
I agree with Prof. Rosenberg’s observation that a good part of the wealth of the super-wealthy is attributable to their ability to manipulate the system and the law to increase their wealth to a point that it is not deserved and they have not “earned” it. I in fact made that point in my comment above regarding any wealth which Bezos or Henry Ford acquired by using their wealth to advance anti-competitive mechanisms which stifle competition and was therefore not earned. This still does not invalidate my position that the initial wealth they earned by introducing innovative marketing techniques or products, advances attributable in no insignificant degree to their persistence in facing obstacles which deterred others from duplicating their success, was deserved. Where that cut-off point is will vary from case to case. Wherever the cut-off is, taxing that excess wealth is a legitimate manner of addressing the fact that it was not earned. (However, as I commented on a prior post, forced redistribution of that wealth is not going to happen in this country, and will only result in a lot of violence and dead rebels.)
I differ with Prof. Rosenberg when he states, “Of course if we could earn our abilities and our ambitions by freely choosing to work hard enough to earn them, then they would be deserved, and what we gain by using them would itself also be deserved. But we didn’t freely choose our work ethic either. We came into the world having ‘earned’ nothing more or less than a prize in nature’s and culture’s lottery. … If most inequalities are unearned and not deserved, then they don’t have the moral standing that prevents at least some redistribution.” With all due respect to Prof. Rosenberg, who has a Ph.D., while I do not, this is unmitigated nonsense, the kind of nonsense that Wittgenstein would have readily debunked. If nothing is “earned” because it is simply the product of human attributes which we did not choose, but simply inherited by virtue of the genetic make-up of our parents, then the words “earned,” “deserved,” “merit,” have no meaning, because there are no instances in reality to which they can legitimately apply. But millions of English speakers use these words every day, without confusion. And to say, well, they may use those words but they fail to appreciate the philosophical implications of that usage is rather, I submit, condescending. Moreover, to suggest that the only way an inventor, for example, can say that by creating his/her invention s/he was engaged in a moral exercise is if it was done with no expectation of monetary reward and only if they donate their invention to mankind for free, then the number of inventions which could be regarded as the product of a moral action would be few and far between, and humankind would be the worse off for it.
One final note. I submit that you are not, in fact, a anti-realist with respect to values, for when I indicated in a prior comment that I intend to file a bar grievance against Mr. DiGenova because of his call for the execution of Mr. Krebs, your commented “Good for you.” This was making a value judgment. If you were truly an anti-realist, you would not believe that what DiGenova did was wrong, and deserving of condemnation, or that what I proposed to do was right, and deserving of commendation. (By the way, I am going to file that bar grievance today.)
Post-script:
I need to clarify my comment which suggests that words only have meaning if they refer actual entities which exist. This is of course not true. Atheists use the word “God,” without conceding that such an entity exists. And most people do not believe that unicorns exist, but understand what the word “unicorn” means. However, they understand what the concept be referred to means. I understand what “The present king of France is bald” means, even though it is my understanding that no such human currently exists. The difference between these terms and words like “earned,” “deserved,” and “merit” is that the people who use these words purport to be using them in reference to actual circumstances – and Prof. Rosenberg is maintaining not only that they are not correct, but that they cannot be correct. Prof. Rosenberg is saying that unlike the word “unicorn,” which I can understand even in the absence of actual unicorns existing, that the concepts to which the terms “earned,’ “deserved,” and “merit,” with regard to wealth have no possible actual reference in any conceivable universe. This, I submit, is nonsense.
(I just checked my library, and it has a copy of Prof. Rosenberg’s “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality,” and I am going to pick it up today, just to find out if I am perhaps misinterpreting him.)
Enam el,
On my screen it says your comment was “removed by author.” In fact a lot of your comments say this. Were you unaware the they were being removed? The only person who would have the right to remove one of your comments besides you is Prof. Wolff. But when this is done (I know from personal experience) it says, “Comment removed by a blog Administrator,” or words to that effect, so I do not believe that Prof. Wolff removed your next-to-last comment, and I cannot imagine why he would, since you have not been engaging in any ad hominem attacks on me (give it time).
Anyway, I don’t quite understand how you can claim that commending me for filing a bar grievance against Mr. DiGenoa does not contradict your assertion that you are an anti-realist on values. Your commendation is making a value judgment. Regarding my being a moral realist, if I ascribed to G.E. Moor’s philosophy on ethics, would not require any justification or proof of its validity. It just is, just as I cannot defend saying that the color of my jersey is yellow.
"I need to clarify my comment which suggests that words only have meaning if they refer actual entities which exist. This is of course not true. Atheists use the word 'God,' without conceding that such an entity exists. And most people do not believe that unicorns exist, but understand what the word 'unicorn' means. However, they understand what the concept be referred to means. I understand what 'The present king of France is bald' means, even though it is my understanding that no such human currently exists. The difference between these terms and words like 'earned,' 'deserved,' and 'merit' is that the people who use these words purport to be using them in reference to actual circumstances."
But as you know, many people who use the word "God" purport to use it "in reference to actual circumstances."
Wittgenstein was keen to point out, correctly, that our moral, psychological, etc. concepts are held in place by a ramifying network of conceptual connections (to appropriate some terminology from P.M.S Hacker), but he didn’t claim that that network of conceptual connections was static or couldn’t be upset by discoveries in the various sciences, social or otherwise.
GJ,
Of course there are a lot of people who believe that the word “God” refers to an actual entity, which is sentient, created the universe, and is simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. And they, at the present time, outnumber the atheists who deny that such an entity exists. But this observation does nothing to debunk what I am saying about those who claim that because our actions are determined by our genetic make-up and circumstances of birth which are not chosen by us, but are fortuitously acquired, that no one who accumulates wealth can be said to deserve it, to have earned it, or that their having it is due to merit. If this were the case, since no one on our planet exists whose genetic make-up and circumstances of birth were chosen by themselves, then no one could accurately use those words to describe how they acquired their wealth. While Wittgenstein would acknowledge that the meanings of words can change over time, he would still insist that at any given time when particular words are repeatedly used by the speakers of a language, that they must have some meaning which those speakers understand. There is no such thing as a private language. But those, like Prof. Rosenberg, who maintain that the words “deserved,” “earned,” and “merit,” do not properly apply in the contexts in which millions of people use those words, then Wittgenstein would say, I submit, that they are speaking incoherent nonsense. And this has nothing to do with, and does not deny, that there are innovations and discoveries in the social sciences which affect how words are used.
Post-script
Those who speak the English language make a distinction between wealthy people who can be said to have earned their wealth and deserve their wealth, and those who don’t. The distinction turns on whether they can be said to have honestly come by their wealth, or dishonestly, e.g., Donald Trump. The fact that the language speakers can make a distinction between earned and deserved wealth, and unearned and undeserved wealth, makes clear that the terms have meaning regardless of the fact that those who have earned their wealth and those who have not, both did so notwithstanding that they did not choose their genetic make-up or circumstances of birth.
"While Wittgenstein would acknowledge that the meanings of words can change over time, he would still insist that at any given time when particular words are repeatedly used by the speakers of a language, that they must have some meaning which those speakers understand."
This isn't being denied, of course. What's being denied is that you can go, without more, from the premise that those words having meaning in a vernacular to the conclusion that they refer to something real. You've admitted as much.
"If this were the case, since no one on our planet exists whose genetic make-up and circumstances of birth were chosen by themselves, then no one could accurately use those words to describe how they acquired their wealth."
And that's precisely what Rosenberg would claim, wouldn't he? That people aren't using those words correctly? Or, better, that they're using them in the same way that a theist uses "God" when the theist attributes their success to God.
Incidentally, ordinary language philosophy is a dead letter in contemporary philosophy. I admire the outliers (Hacker, Hanfling), but they're wrong.
GJ,
Thank you for your response. You are really forcing me to think, and I respect that and enjoy the challenge. What I am about to write is intended as a legitimate attempt to address the flaw you indicate is present in my reasoning, and not intended as an exercise in philosophical sleight of hand. I am going to try to articulate why I disagree with you as best I can.
Part of why I believe your counter-argument is incorrect is because the words “unicorn” and “God” are nouns, and as such can be used intelligibly without actually designating entities which actually exits. They are concepts which describe entities by attributing to them characteristics that we would recognize if they did exist. The actual existence of these entities is not a sine qua non for these words to be used in an intelligible manner.
The words “earn,” “deserve,” “merit,” by contrast, are intransitive verbs, and they are used by the speakers of the language to apply to human beings, all of whom share the unavoidable characteristic that they were born with a given genetic make-up and circumstances of birth over which they had no control. The language speakers who apply these intransitive verbs to human beings are aware that those to whom they apply them have these same characteristics over which they have no control. The human beings exist; and the objects which the language speakers assert the human beings “earned,” or “deserved,” or “merited,” also exist. Given these linguistic axioms, so to speak, how can it be coherently maintained that just as unicorns do not exist, and God may not exist, the speakers of the language are using the intransitive verbs incorrectly to describe something – a relationship between humans and certain objects - which likewise does not exist, or may not exist, when the intransitive verbs are always used in connection with human beings, all of whom had no control over their genetic make-up or the circumstances of their birth. The relationship necessarily exists because that is what the words mean.
Let me see if I can explicate this with an example. Those who opposed the argument that people of the same gender have a right to marry argued that, by definition, marriage is the state sanctioned union between a man and a woman, and to allow any other form of marriage would distort the very meaning of the word. Two people of the same gender could not “marry” – an intransitive verb (it is not transitive because when x marries y, x is not doing anything to y) – because the word “marry” just does not apply to two people of the same gender. End of argument. This changed when the Supreme Court ruled that to deny people of the same gender to marry violated their right to substantive due process under the 14th Amendment. Once the S. Ct. issued this decision, it changed the meaning of the word “marry” to encompass a relationship which before the ruling did not exist, and after the ruling did exist. But note the difference between the use of the word “marry” and the use of the words “earn,” “deserve,” and “merit” with respect to the acquisition of wealth. Before the S. Ct. ruled that the denial of the right to marry denied people of the same gender to marry a constitutional right, those who argued that “marriage” was a union between a man and a woman, and only between a man and a woman, were correct, because the word “marriage” was a legal relationship, and under the state laws at the time, the laws precluded marriage between people of the same gender. By holding that those laws were unconstitutional, the S. Ct. changed the meaning of the word “marry.”
(Continued)
Could the same thing happen regarding the use of the words “earn,” “deserve,” or “merit,” with regard to an individual’s wealth? As the words are currently used, they apply to the wealth which people whose genetic make-up and circumstances of birth is not within their control. Those who oppose this application say that the words should not apply to these circumstances because one cannot be said to earn that which they have acquired by virtue of characteristics over which they had no control, I maintain that this is nonsense, because the words are used in this very context, with full knowledge that the people to whom the words are applied by the speakers of the language are fully aware that the people in question have characteristics which contributed to their earning their wealth over which they have no control. They know that these individuals did not “earn,” or “deserve,” or “merit” their genetic make-up or the circumstances of their birth, yet they still use these words to describe how some of them acquired their wealth. And when they believe that a person was born rich and only used that wealth to get richer, or they cheated and lied to acquire their wealth, they do not say that they earned, or deserve, or merited their wealth.
Now, could a government change the meanings of these words the way the S. Ct. changed the meaning of the word “marry.” Yes, but in the U.S. not without a having a substantial – and bloody – fight on its hands. A government could, conceivably, enact legislation which held that all wealth acquired by anyone which exceeds x amount was not earned, and belongs to the state; or will be equally distributed among all citizens whose wealth is below x amount. Which would change the meaning of the words “earned,” or “deserved,” or “merited.” But to counter this change, those owning over x amount of assets – and probably a lot of people who own less than x amount of assets – would insist that it was earned, and to say otherwise would distort the meaning of the word “earned.” And, until the government passed the proposed legislation, they would be correct, just as those who insisted that the word “marry” applied only to the union between a man and a woman. And if the S. Ct. had not decided as it did, their definition would still stand. Therefore, those who argue that – as our language is currently used – no one in our country, or in the world, for that matter, has earned their wealth because they did not earn their genetic make-up or the circumstances of their birth, are, I maintain. making a logically incoherent and linguistically fallacious argument.
I hope that my argument is clearer than mud.
Post-script
Sorry, one more clarification. Those who say that the using words “earned,” “deserved,” “merited” to apply to the acquisition of wealth are not doing so legitimately because the wealth was acquired via circumstances over which the individuals had no control, and were not themselves earned, are making a normative argument – that the way the words are currently used is incorrect, and the words should not be used that way because the use is erroneous. They are going from what “is” to “should not be,” which is a logically incoherent twist on the Is-Ought fallacy. Arguing that Is-Should Not Be is no more valid than arguing Is-Ought.
MS,
I barely have patience to plow through all your comments here, but to blunt, you are not persuasive -- at least, you are not persuading me.
You are trying to settle what is fundamentally a moral or normative argument by referring to the way in which certain words are actually used by many people, and while I'm aware that there is a tradition that tries to use inductive methods to get at questions of morality, I just don't think it works here.
Let's say the way those words are used reflects the users' moral views or intuitions. So what? Those intuitions can be wrong.
But what it really comes down to, in my opinion, is that this is not a matter of language and how it is used. It is a matter of substantive moral (and maybe empirical also) disagreement. And you can't settle that question by noting that people use words in a certain way. Words are often used loosely, their meanings are often if not always somewhat ambiguous, people often use them unreflectively. Appealing to language-in-use is not going to settle this argument, I don't think. Nor will appeal to legal uses. The phrase "earned income" has a specific meaning in the tax code, but that is not at all what we're talking about here. And I know you will have a response, but I doubt I'm going to reply.
P.s. It is not a logical fallacy to argue that particular words are used incorrectly in particular contexts by particular people (or by everyone, for that matter). I never took a logic course, but I'm reasonably confident about that.
LFC,
I will be brief and blunt as well. If the word “earned” cannot properly apply to any entity that has a genetic make=up or circumstances of birth which they did not control – which was the contention to which I war replying - then to whom or what can the word properly apply?
I will decline for now to get into the semantic issues further, but will note that I happened to run across on my shelves the Summer 2016 issue of The Hedgehog Review, which contains several essays on the theme of "meritocracy and its discontents" that are probably relevant to some of the discussion here.
Does this syllogism make sense:
1. Mr. Smith was born with a certain genetic make-up and under certain circumstances of birth which pretty much determine every action he will take during his life.
2. Mr. Smith works at a job which pays him x dollars per year.
3. X dollars per year exceeds the poverty level by y dollars.
4. Since every action Mr. Smith takes is attributable to his genetic make-up and the circumstances of his birth, neither of which he can say he earned, since he did not choose them, then whatever occurs in Mr. Smith’s life which is due to his actions, which are in turn due to his genetic make-up and his circumstances of birth, neither of which he chose, and therefore neither of which he can say he earned, then he did not earn any of what has resulted in his life by virtue of the pre-determined actions he has taken in his life, which includes the income he is paid by his employer, and in turn the clothes he buys with that income, as well as the food, the shelter, the furniture in that shelter, etc., etc
5. Since Mr. Smith did not earn the x dollars he is paid per year by his employer, then he likewise did not earn that portion, y, which exceeds the poverty level.
6. Since he did not earn y, then he is no more entitled to keep y than someone who is living at the poverty level with an income of only x-y dollars per year.
7. Since Mr. Smith did not earn y dollars per year, and therefore cannot claim that he is entitled to keep y dollars per year, he should donate those y dollars to Mr. Jones, who is living at the poverty level and is just as entitled as Mr. Smith to have the y dollars, since Mr. Smith is not entitled to have the y dollars to begin with, since he did not earn them.
8. Alternatively, the government has the right to take the y dollars from Mr. Smith, who did not earn them, and therefore is not entitled to keep them, and give the y dollars to Mr. Jones, who is just as much entitled to have them as Mr. Smith, since Mr. Jones’ actions during his lifetime, actions which were pre-determined by his own genetic make-up and circumstances of birth, have resulted in his living at the poverty level, which he no more earned than Mr. Smith earned the y dollars he is paid per year by his employer in excess of the poverty level.
If you do not agree with this syllogism, the only explanation for your not agreeing with the syllogism is that you do not believe that Mr. Smith did not earn the y dollars he is paid every year by his employer, because you do not believe that just because all of the actions Mr. Smith has taken in his life are pre-determined by the genetic make-up and circumstances of his birth means that he did not earn the y dollars per year that his employer pays him over the poverty line. Why don’t you believe this?
LFC, do you believe that you have not earned the income you are being paid because that income is attributable to actions you have taken in your life which were already determined by your genetic make-up and the circumstances of your birth, and if you believe that you have not earned that income, are you willing to donate all, or a substantial part of it, to charity?
Post-script:
The exhortation, “There but for fortune” does not mean that you have not earned any of what your good fortune due to your genetic make-up and the circumstances of your birth has brought you, and therefore you are not entitled to it, and should feel guilty for having it. It means, rather, that you should be cognizant of, and empathetic for, the less fortunate circumstances of those whose genetic make-up and circumstances of birth made them less successful in life than you, and you should be willing to share your good fortune with them. This does not mean you did not earn it.
Mr. Smith has earned the income his employer pays him under a particular, fairly narrow sense of the word "earned," assuming Smith has actually performed the duties his job entails. The question whether Smith "deserves" all that income in a broad sense of the word "deserves" is a separate question. And to answer that second question one would probably need to know more details about Smith and the overall context. I never advocated for the proposition that, because all actions are determined (which they may or may not be), no one can be said to deserve anything. Rather, my position is that the strong sense of "desert" most people operate with in their daily lives and their political assumptions is a largely unreflective notion that needs to be, if you will excuse the word, interrogated, i.e., subjected to critical examination. I am not prepared to suggest in detail what exact policy consequences would follow. The basic point I was trying to make earlier is that, to the extent you think that luck and other contingent factors play a role in determining where one ends up, you will be inclined to favor more egalitarian and redistributive policies. There is no need or warrant to go to the extreme of "confiscation" or that everyone making over x dollars has to donate 75 percent to charity, though again the details here would probably depend on the individual case.
LFC,
You are changing the context in which this discussion arose. A number of commenters in this thread have maintained that wealthy people cannot claim that their wealth was obtained via merit, that they deserve their wealth, have earned it, because they owe their success to factors over which they had no control, e.g., their genetic make-up, circumstances of birth, talent, and luck. See s. Wallerstein on Nov. 3, at 7:02 AM. I countered that if these factors negate the claim of the wealthy that they are entitled to their wealth, then it also negates the right of anyone – even those who are not wealthy – that they obtained their financial status through merit, that they deserved it and earned it. The article which Enam el cited asserted that a larger part of the wealth of the wealthy is due to luck than talent. First, I questioned how a computer program could measure either of these factors and reduce them to computer code. But, in any case, I contended that the analysis ignored another factor, advanced by Prof. Mlodinow, that persistence also plays a large role in success, and that persistence is the factor which allows one to overcome the vagaries of bad luck, and to be ready to take advantage of good luck. (“Chance favors only the prepared mind.” Pasteur) All of this was intended to counter the tenor of many of the commenters in this thread that the wealthy have done nothing to deserve, to merit, or to claim to have earned their wealth.
You state: “My position is that the strong sense of ‘desert’ most people operate with in their daily lives and their political assumptions is a largely unreflective notion that needs to be, if you will excuse the word, interrogated, i.e., subjected to critical examination.” I submit that the “unreflective notion” that most people have regarding whether a person deserves the wealth they have is a function of their genetic make-up, the circumstances of their birth, honesty and integrity, luck and dedication to their work, i.e., hard work, which is a form of persistence. This is not a silly or fatuous concept of merit. They believe that those who have acquired their wealth via a combination of these factors deserve their wealth, have earned their wealth through merit, and are entitled to keep that wealth. This is contrary to what most of the commenters on this blog believe, judging from their comments. And, by the way, how much of your success would you attribute to luck versus persistence? And if persistence played a significant role in your success, would you not say you earned it and deserve it?
Without going into all the details, I haven't had that much success (a word I might prefer to put in quotation marks, but whatever). But I am very aware of all the things that have both favored me and disadvantaged me over which I have had basically little or no control. In the former category (favorable factors) are the facts that I was born in the U.S. in a middle to upper middle class family, my parents were well educated, I grew up from the age of eight in a place that allowed me to attend what was at the time reputed to be one of the best suburban public high schools in the country. (I worked hard in high school, but so did quite a number of my peers.) For college I attended an Ivy League university (to which I had family ties). Much later in life I was able to quit my job and go back to school, in retrospect probably not the best decision but it seemed like a good one at the time. Without going further than that recital, I would say that I can't claim any personal credit for about two-thirds, at least, of what I just said. Your biography may be different, MS, and that's fine. It is not my intent to diminish any of your accomplishments or to tell you how to think about your life, which would be arrogant and presumptuous of me.
No one is entitled to anything. As I said above, we are all products of our genes, our upbringing, our general cultural background (what Pierre Bourdieu calls "cultural capital"), our gender, our race, our social class and the capitalist system which shapes our mentality consciously and above all, unconsciously.
We might compare the concept of "dessert" to that of "sin". Lots of people believe that there is such a thing as sin, but unless you buy into the whole Christian framework, sin is a myth.
It's fairly clear how the concept of "sin" allows church leaders to manipulate and control believers and it is also fairly clear to me how the concept of "dessert" allows capitalist economic elites to manipulate and control those who do not prosper under capitalism, since the losers of society "deserve" their fate as the winners "deserve" theirs according to this convenient myth.
As for Wittgenstein's belief in ordinary language, Marcuse criticizes that very well in One Dimensional Man, showing how philosophy which does not criticize ordinary discourse and common sense becomes complicit in the capitalist system. Gramsci makes the same point about how common sense is an instrument of capitalist control in his Notebooks.
The fact that lots of ordinary people buy into the concept of "dessert" just shows how efficient mechanism of capitalist control are, a phenomenon well explored by Marcuse in the work cited above.
Enam el,
I took two years of statistics while obtaining my Masters in Public Health at the University of Michigan, and have to admit I was barely competent in the course and was often confused. I wondered, for example, who this guy student t was, and why won’t they disclose his identity? I finally learned who he was – an actual human – when I read “The Lady Tasting Tea,” by David Salsburg, an excellent book on the history of the development of the discipline. So, I have a high degree of respect for statisticians.
One of the problems I have with what you wrote is your assertion that the presence of persistence follows a normal distribution. Determining this is not like determining that height follows a normal distribution, since you can measure height and identify individuals in the population of different heights. How would you (1) define persistence so as to identify those in the population who display persistence (2) know that you had a random sample which would accurately reflect the distribution of persistence in the population (3) account for different degrees of persistence, which takes into account that those with the most persistence would be the ones most likely to succeed in the face of bad luck? Could it not be that only the outliers have sufficient persistence to succeed, and that is why they succeed?
Anyway, given my deficits in statistics I am going to forward what you have written to a very good friend who has a Ph.D. in statistics and who worked (now retired) as a statistician at NIOSH in Cincinnati for some 40 years and find out what he thinks.
s. wallerstein,
“No one is entitled to anything. As I said above, we are all products of our genes, our upbringing, our general cultural background (what Pierre Bourdieu calls "cultural capital"), our gender, our race, our social class and the capitalist system which shapes our mentality consciously and above all, unconsciously.” Now there’s a compelling argument. So, Stephen, you would have no problem with the Chilean government coming to your residence and saying, “Mr. Wallerstein, nothing you have did you earn, and therefore you are not entitled to own any of it. And therefore, we know a lot of poor people who, like you, through no fault of their own, are poor, so we are going to take every thing you own, which you did not earn and do not deserve to own, to be distributed to the poor, who could use your assets at least as well as you.” I assume, in order to be logically consistent, you would have no objection to this. Moreover, if you really believe what you wrote, why don’t you just donate all of your assets to the poor, since clearly you do not deserve them.
In addition, the concept of “earned” and “deserved” has little to do with capitalism. These concepts existed long before capitalism existed, long before the Industrial Revolution. In virtually every civilization since the dawn of history, the upper classes believed they had earned their status and were entitled to it. In many of these civilizations (Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome, etc., etc.) they believed that they had earned what they owned by virtue of their superior military achievements. The notion of owning property via merit did not first arise under capitalism. Moreover, there are non-capitalistic societies which exist even today in which the populace believe in rightful ownership of assets which they have earned. If you were to go to Papua, New Guinea, for example, rival tribes would insist that what they obtained in combat from their enemies was earned. The fact that you may reject the mantra that might makes right does not refute that the concept of ownership via merit exists in non-capitalistic societies.
And regarding Herbert Marcuse’s critique of Wittgenstein, I believe that Wittgenstein was a far superior philosopher than Marcuse, who so astounded Russell and G.E. Moore by his analytical prowess that they awarded him a Ph.D. based on the Tractatus, which he had written several years earlier while fighting in the trenches of WWI.
Obviously, if I don't believe in dessert, I would not claim to deserve whatever wealth I have. That doesn't mean that I'm going to give away all I have to the poor. I'm not a Christian.
It seems that you need to feel that you "deserve" all that you have. I don't have that need. I don't have the need to feel like I'm an especially "good" person. I just like to converse on a blog on a Sunday afternoon while my wash in the washing machine.
And I never claimed that Marcuse is a greater philosopher than Wittgenstein. Simply that Marcuse criticizes Wittgenstein's acceptance of ordinary discourse without the critical dimension that Marcuse takes from Marx. Philosophy is more than a simple exercise in political awareness.
s. wallerstein,
Aha, there’s the rub. What you just wrote demonstrates the hypocrisy of certain elements on the liberal left (an hypocrisy which I strive to avoid whilst claiming to be a liberal). You acknowledge that nothing you own have you earned or deserve, but maintain that you have no obligation to donate all or a significant part of it to the poor and disadvantaged, whose plight you regret. You plead the misfortune of the poor and disadvantaged, but argue that others who own more things than you who, like you, have not earned and do not deserve what they own, and they, rather than you, should have their undeserved wealth, or some significant percentage of their undeserved wealth, taken from them and given to the poor and disadvantaged, while you look on with smug self-righteousness.
Btw I do think there is a case to be made that more people (not anyone in particular on this thread, but in general) shd probably give away more of their wealth and/or income (as for instance the philosopher Peter Singer, among others, has argued), but that wd be a subject for another occasion.
LFC,
I agree with you on that. But it would not be because they did not earn their excess wealth (assuming they did not earn that excess wealth by employing anti-competitive tactics, as I have written above). It would be because it is the right thing to do. Moreover, it could not be forced by government.
MS,
Apologies if I've gotten you wrong, but here's another kick at the can.
Peter Unger held that knowledge requires certainty, and since we can't be certain of anything, we can't know anything. The obvious reply is that knowledge doesn't require certainty, and least not in any ordinary sense of "knowledge."
Can such a reply be mobilized against those who claim that merit's an illusion? Perhaps, but not obviously. Those who claim that merit's an illusion assume that one can't be meritorious if one's actions are the result of factors beyond one's control. Your reply, if I have you right, is that, in the ordinary sense of "merit," one can be meritorious even if one's actions are the result of factors beyond one's control. And there is no other sense of "merit" in the offing, no sense of the word that transcends how it's used in ordinary parlance. After all, merit isn't a concept newly fashioned by science. Like all our moral concepts, it evolved over the millennia to meet everyday needs.
But now think about how the concept evolved, and about the assumptions our forebears held as it evolved. How much did they know, if anything, about undeserved genetic endowments? Not much, probably. Did their use of "merit" presuppose that the meritorious were never, in large part, simply lucky? Probably. More generally, did the concept, right from the start, have questionable built-in assumptions that are reasonably rejectable? Probably.
That's why appealing to ordinary usage doesn't get us anywhere. That usage is often the very thing that got us into trouble in the first place.
GJ,
Thank you again for your response, which provokes me (in a good way) to think. First, regarding the prerequisites for knowledge, in the epistemology course which I took back in 1970, certainty was not a prerequisite for knowledge. The prerequisites were: (1) x believes y; (2) x has sufficient evidence to believe y; (3) y is true. Now, the fact that y was true could not be proved with certainty, but you knew y if you had sufficient evidence to believe y. But regardless, if certainty were required, and certainty is unachievable, then according to Prof. Unger, no one knows anything; the best we can do is have good guesses. If that is all we have, then that is all we have. If this is the case, so what?. If none of it qualifies as knowledge, then there is no knowledge – all we have is -a progression of bad, better, and best guesses, based on the degree of evidence we have. It seems silly to me to quibble over whether certainty vs. sufficient evidence is one of the prerequisites (the kind of dispute which Wittgenstein would scoff at). Moreover, is there not, as Descartes argued, at least one thing we know, of which we can be certain - the cogito? If the thoughts I have are not mine, then whose are they? And if they do not prove that at least one thing exists – the “I” having the thoughts - then where are they coming from?
Turning to the evolution of the word “merit.” The fact that in 1500 England, people who used the word “merit” when it was applied to people and their achievements, knew nothing about genes or chromosomes has no bearing on the issue of whether the acquisition of this knowledge (or, as Prof. Unger would have it, acquisition of the best guess) has affected the rectitude of how the word is used. Even English speaking people back in 1500 knew how babies were made, and they knew that the baby had nothing to do with its having blue eyes and brown hair, and that it did not choose the degree of intelligence it eventually displayed. I have not read any historical account which suggests that people in past societies believed that fetuses were provided a menu of features in the womb from which they could choose the attributes they would have when they emerged. They also knew that the baby did not choose whether it had rich or poor parents. They therefore knew that, if any of these babies became wealthy later in life, it was due in large part to skills and talents that they had not chosen at birth. Yet, they continued to use the words “merit,” “deserved,” “earned,” in contexts which related to whether the person who possessed certain wealth was entitled to keep it.
Not under all circumstances, however, since the serf did not own the crops s/he planted, tended, and then harvested. They were owned by the lord who owned the land the serf worked on. Is this a counter-example, since the language speakers would still say of the lord that he deserved to keep the crops over which he had performed no labor, but not of the serf who performed the labor? I do not believe so. In that case, the speakers were simply adding another prerequisite to qualify for ownership – that you were of a certain class which owned the land on which the individual who performed the work had not earned the right to keep the fruits of his labor. The lord was. But they still knew that however the lord acquired the land, he did so by virtue of his use of skills, talents (his ability to handle a sword or cross bow) which he did not choose to possess, but by virtue of faculties he possessed from birth.
(Continued)
So, I maintain the way the words “merit,” “deserve,” “earned” are used today is no different from how they were used before the discovery of genes and chromosomes. But here’s an implication of the argument these words should not apply to any human achievement because the achievements are the product of factors which no one has chosen and over which no one has control which the proponents of this contention overlook. The words are associated with rights, the right to keep what you have earned, because you deserve them by virtue of your use of skills, talents, faculties, which even the English back in 1500 knew you had not chosen at birth. As I have argued in prior comments, if you maintain these words do not properly apply to any entity who has not chosen its genetic make-up or circumstances of birth – and, as far as I know, no human on Earth has ever done so – then you have cleaved those words from the right of ownership that comes with them. In that case, all of the commenters on this blog who have maintained you have not earned anything you own because all that you own is a derivative of your genetic make-up and circumstances of birth, then these commenters have made an argument in support of the proposition that they have no right to keep what they claim to own, since they do not deserve to own it. And therefore, they have no argument against the assertion they should donate everything they claim to won to charity, since they have no right to keep it. And they would have no basis to protest if the government came to where they live and confiscated all they own in order to relieve the poverty of those less fortunate. You cannot claim a right to keep what you admit you have not earned, and therefore do not deserve.
Post-script
John Calvin (1509-1562), who spoke French, not English, had his own peculiar idea of merit:
“God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”
So one segment of humanity is predetermined to enjoy eternal salvation, for which they have no merit because it was predetermined, and another segment which committed sin (predetermined or by the exercise of free will?) also have no merit, but instead are condemned to eternal damnation. Go figure.
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