Ecology, equality and class

Abstract

Perhaps it is time, or way past time, that we started thinking about equality and justice as issues of ecological relations rather than strictly as issues of economic relations. Put another way, perhaps we should begin thinking about inequality and injustice as issues of environmental degradation as well as issues of class structure. Our modern social ideas have focused on structural, class inequality, first as feudal class inequalities, and later as capitalist class inequalities. In early modern times, the scientific idea of reason, as applied to rational nature, was also understood as an individualist idea of equality, in the sense that rational individuals were also understood to be naturally equal. Before the modern emergence of reason, the legitimating idea of justice meant a sacred social order, where class inequality was given divine sanction. Feudal justice meant the maintenance of proper, inherited roles, including sacred class duties and privileges. Rational justice, however, meant the rejection of class inequality, in accordance with the idea of rational, equal individuals. The early market theorists used this idea of individual equality to reject feudal class structure in the name of equal economic opportunity. And later Marx and the socialists used the same idea of individual equality to reject capitalist class structure, in the name of equal economic conditions, equal economic wealth. Each of these class critiques became the basis for a modern social vision, that is, for capitalism and socialism, respectively. And these two social visions have essentially defined the entire modern and postmodern discussions of equality, justice, and social order.