EGALITARIANISM - COMMON TO LEADER OF OPPOSITION AND PRIME MINISTERS ASPIRATION FOR BELIZE.....BUT WHAT IS IT? Economic Egalitarianism in economics is a controversial phrase with conflicting potential meanings. It may refer either to equality of opportunity, the view that the government ought not to discriminate against citizens or hinder opportunities for them to prosper, or the quite different notion of equality of outcome, a state of economic affairs in which the government promotes equal prosperity for all citizens. The free-market economist Milton Friedman supported equality-of-opportunity economic egalitarianism. Economist John Maynard Keynes supported more equal outcomes. An early example of equality-of-outcome economic egalitarianism is Xu Xing, a scholar of the Chinese philosophy of Agriculturalism, who supported the fixing of prices, in which all similar goods and services, regardless of differences in quality and demand, are set at exactly the same, unchanging price.[10] Social ownership of means of production is sometimes considered to be a form of economic egalitarianism because in an economy characterized by social ownership, the surplus product generated by industry would accrue to the population as a whole as opposed to private owners, thereby granting each individual increased autonomy and greater equality in their relationships with one another (see: Social dividend and Social ownership). Although the economist Karl Marx is sometimes mistaken to be an egalitarian, Marx eschewed normative theorizing on moral principles. Marx did, however, have a theory of the evolution of moral principles in relation to specific economic systems.[11] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels rejected egalitarianism in the sense of greater equality between classes, clearly distinguishing it from the socialist notion of the abolition of classes based on the division between owners and workers (which is on their relation to productive property). Marxs view of classlessness was not the subordination of society to a universal interest (such as a universal notion of equality), but rather, was about the creation of the conditions that would enable individuals to pursue their true interests and desires. Thus, Marxs notion of communist society is radically individualistic.[12] The American economist John Roemer has put forth a new perspective of equality and its relationship to socialism. Roemer attempts to reformulate Marxist analysis to accommodate normative principles of distributive justice, shifting the argument for socialism away from purely technical and materialist reasons to one of distributive justice. Roemer argues that, according to the principle of distributive justice, the traditional definition of socialism based on the principle that individual compensation be proportional to the value of the labour one expands in production is inadequate. Roemer concludes that egalitarians must reject socialism as it is classically defined.[13] ~ WIKIPEDIA
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 14:16:09 +0000
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