A principle of sufficiency

(Extracted from notes for new book)

From Rousseau to Rawls people who think seriously about what politics ought to be doing have focused on equality. It has been a talisman or icon of progressive politics. Over time the idea has perhaps changed from flat-out equality (always a hard sell, even Marx shied away from it) into something more like “fairness” or “social justice” but the underlying idea is still the same, that differences have to be justified or there is something wrong about them. This leads us into straight into one of the (many) paradoxes of our economic system, particularly as it applies in the UK. We praise and applaud the free market and its operation but are suspicious or just plain envious of anyone who succeeds to a level we might think of as excess. It’s OK to strive to be rich, but not actually to be rich.

The scope of differences which need either justification or eradication to avoid being offences against equality has widened through time. Such widening is inevitable when the claim of inequality becomes, as it has become, sufficient to establish a political right to remedial action. “It’s not fair!” has become the battle cry of special interest politics of all shades and from all sides. Of course there are many things which genuinely are not fair but the boundaries are always difficult to draw if equality is the model of fairness we use. Where do we stop? It’s a question which is difficult to answer in terms both of quality and quantity. What kinds of difference call for collective action and social change? And what degree of inequality, if any, is tolerable?

There is so much inequality in the world and so much suffering caused by it that this emphasis on equality is more than understandable. If we just focus on material inequality we cannot turn away from the searing poverty which affects so many millions in the world. Most people would agree that such suffering is an affront to civilization although we seem unable to devise practical means of eradicating it. A call for equality, or even “more equality”, may nevertheless be a mistake and point us in the wrong direction. Suffering associated with inequality does not necessarily need equality for its eradication. In fact, this is increasingly accepted in political practice and even in political rhetoric. In domestic matters politicians on all sides tend to talk about their vision of a fairer society where once they might have talked of a fair society. It’s a quiet but sensible shift for many reasons. Aiming for incremental improvement is more realistic, in terms both of achievability and of managing expectations, than aiming for perfection. In any case, the point has repeatedly and bloodily been made by history that enforcing absolute equality requires some form of tyranny because complete equality is simply not an equilibrium state and will not maintain itself.

But if we abandon the idea of equality what principle can we stand on which can both explain our sense of outrage at gross poverty and provide an argument to move others? We can go back to first principles about happiness and the inner life. The desire to live happily can be taken as a common human aspiration, beyond differences of time and culture. Of course there are vast cultural differences in what a person may perceive as the happy life in different times and places but understanding the importance of the subjective, of the inner life, is a fundamental step away from total dependence on external conditions. Happiness can be based on taking personal responsibility for the development of one’s own inner life. From this basis we can build back up into external ethical and indeed political principles which can be applied (not as a matter of perfect deduction but) because they encapsulate sensible practice towards reinforcing positive aspects of the inner life.

One consequence of this approach is that external, material well-being takes a much more subsidiary place. Provided basic material needs are satisfied (and accepting that what counts as a basic need may be subject to some cultural variation) happiness is within everyone’s reach because it depends on their own inner life. From this point of view the idea that material equality is a necessary condition of fairness or justice seems very strange.

Instead we might suggest a principle of sufficiency. On the level of material resources what is needed for anyone’s practice, and what anyone who is serious about developing their own inner life would like to see available to all as a matter of sympathy and compassion, is not equality but sufficiency. It would be a huge improvement if everyone had sufficient to meet their basic needs, from which point the possibility of living a happy life would be as open to them as to the richest in the world. We are of course left with all the practical issues of how to achieve this but the idea frees us from a particularly vicious dilemma. If equality is our model it can seem that for any person and indeed any nation to be richer than another is somehow wrong, but then it can seem that more planet-damaging growth is the only answer. Sufficiency is a more practical target.

But sufficiency is a subtle knife which cuts both ways, because the richest might also accept that there is a point at which enough really is enough, even though there might be disagreement over where that point was located. Indeed, the charitable trusts which have long been created by those who have won the race to maximise capital are an example of this principle in action, perhaps best exemplified today by the Gates’ trust. If compassion is an important practice then there are without doubt obligations on the rich to help the poor, on the national as on the personal level. But those obligations end at sufficiency, not equality.

There is much more to this argument than can be set out [in a blog]. But try it out, not as a doctrine but as a way of looking at the world. It accommodates that sense of outrage we feel at gross inequality, without courting the whole raft of new injustices which enforced equality would produce. It accommodates, if you like, the view that everyone has an equal right to develop their own happiness but that consumption is not the point of our existence. It is one of those simple shifts in point of view which makes everything look different.