Musings on Equality

1

One of the core insights Marx offers in Capital—that the engine of value creation shifts from labor to capital—still says a lot about our society. Many dismiss Capital as nonsense because communism collapsed, yet the concentration of the means of production undeniably dilutes each individual’s economic worth and demolishes the rungs of the class ladder.

2

Debates on equality have drifted with the times. They began with ‘all are equal before the law.’ Later, the focus moved to equality of opportunity—think of the special admissions quotas for rural students meant to offset unequal access to quality schooling. Ironically, the very moment everyone is granted the same opportunities can be the most unequal, because if the playing-field is declared level, unequal outcomes are blamed on the individual. (Not all of us can be Usain Bolt.) More recently, via the language of ‘equity’, the discussion has shifted again—from legal equality, through opportunity, toward equality of outcomes. Progressives call this justice; conservatives call reverse discrimination. (That split is natural, since left and right diverge most sharply over how resources should be distributed.)

3

On the productivity front, Marx’s prediction came true: capital now breeds more capital, and huge pools of it dominate the world. Humanity’s total output has risen, but each person’s slice of the pie has shrunk; real wages have drifted downward. Higher productivity masked that decline in some areas, yet with finite assets like real estate the shrinkage is obvious. Sure, large-scale capital brings technological leaps and efficiency gains. But humanity doesn’t reap those gains fully, because capital has piled up in ever-larger lumps, its circulation slowing. Capital attracts more capital; money created by quantitative easing flows easily into financial assets, fueling polarization. Consumption growth lags behind productivity growth, extra capacity fails to spawn enough new jobs, and unemployment becomes structural.

4

Amid all this, a productive singularity is coming when human labor will scarcely be needed at all. The capital generated by labor will dwindle next to the capital generated by capital. Labor and capital will decouple—or be tied by only the thinnest thread—and only then will we taste equality. This is not absolute equality of outcomes, but a kind that arises because labor’s share of the pie has become vanishingly small. Achieving even that demands strong regulation to channel capital’s returns downward, so paradoxically it strays from universal outcome equality. This ‘equality through extreme polarization’ will be the only form of equality humanity can ever attain.