September 15, 2023
An eminent cultural historian examines equality, a thorny but crucial issue that requires deep consideration. Given the importance that the notion of equality plays in political discourse, it is odd that there is no universally accepted definition of it. This is not for want of trying: Communists, democrats, conservatives, fascists, and any number of would-be revolutionaries have all laid claim to the idea. McMahon, a professor of cultural history and the author of several well-regarded books, takes an intellectual tour from classical Athens to modern times, looking at the ways in which the term has been used and abused. In fact, he goes back even further, examining primate and primitive societies. All societies have hierarchical structures, and there is an inevitable tension between hierarchy and equality. But when those at the bottom rise up to topple the elite by "leveling down," as in the French Revolution or Mao's Cultural Revolution, the eventual result is simply a new elite, with a lot of blood spilled along the way. Nevertheless, after 1945, the idea of equality, while vague, seemed to have won the ideological debate, with the "arc of history" seeming to bend in that direction and eventually including women, people of color, and other marginalized groups. Perhaps, but some of the people who currently scream loudest for equality do not seem inclined to share it outside their own circle. McMahon does not provide his own definition of equality, but he believes there is an obligation to do more than pay lip service to the idea. Hierarchies are unavoidable, he notes, but "we hold it in our power to make them less severe and more fair." It is not an easy conclusion, but, given the depth and complexity of the ideas that McMahon tackles, probably the most appropriate one. An important examination of the past, present, and future of a key concept of political thinking.
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September 25, 2023
Historian McMahon (Divine Fury) tracks the concept of equality across time in this meticulous account. Surveying the concept from early hunter-gatherer societies through today, McMahon contends that the idea of equality is often utilized to buttress “hierarchy and exclusion,” since the notion of equality is often formed through the identification of an out-group. In ancient Greece, the out-groups were the lower classes and foreign enemies of the city-states; during the rise of Christianity, sinners or nonbelievers; and in colonial America, enslaved Africans and women. McMahon notes the paradox that in these societies, one’s “independence” was partially measured by “the ability to exercise authority” over others. In the 20th century, Marxism “generated and thrived on exclusions,” according to McMahon, while fascist regimes used “new languages of equality to bind their peoples together on the basis of shared history, identity, and blood.” After WWII, the notion of equality was extended to encompass relationships between nations through the U.N. Charter’s call for “sovereign equality.” McMahon concludes with a consideration of questions of equality generated by today’s identity politics, noting the emergence of “an extraordinary, even utopian, departure from previous understandings” that embraces acknowledgment of difference as the foundation of equality. While this thoughtful account provides no easy answers about where society is headed, it ably shows how opposing viewpoints can draw on the same ideal while advocating for starkly different futures.
November 1, 2023
McMahon (history, Dartmouth; Happiness: A History) has produced an authoritative intellectual history of Western concepts of equality. Much ink has been spilled about inequality by Thomas Piketty, Walter Scheidel, Branko Milanovic, and other scholars of economics, history, and philosophy, but McMahon's book is a rare general study of the topic; it examines the ways in which humans across millennia have formed and reformed notions of equality that buttress exclusion and hierarchy. McMahon traces egalitarianism across prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies, ancient Greek democracies, Christian theologies, Enlightenment philosophies, the American and French revolutions, socialism, fascism, the United Nations, and the U.S. civil rights movement. He shows how equality typically went hand in hand with exploitation of outgroups, yet he also believes that equal rights are elusive but not illusory, despite mounting global disparities of income and wealth. He writes prosily and reprises timeworn theories, such as the existence of a universal Axial Age. The book concludes that equality depends upon assumptions of inequality, which can generate more disparities. VERDICT Sweeping and discerning. This book about equality rewards readers comfortable with a dense academic style.--Michael Rodriguez
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