What can England’s first anarchist tell us about inequality?
Revisiting William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice 230 years later
Given the frequent references to the word “inequality,” it is easy to assume that this issue is especially peculiar to our times. However, if we dig back into the annals of history, it is anything but: even if the word itself does not appear as frequently. After all, we know too well that “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Nonetheless, as I pored over William Godwin’s Enquiry concerning Political Justice (1793) while writing my new book on Matthew Lewis’ scandalous Gothic novel The Monk, I couldn’t help but be struck by how à propos Political Justice is for our own times.
William who? Fans of the novel Frankenstein may recall that William Godwin was the father of the Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley. Feminists also know him as the husband of the first modern feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. But before Godwin married her in 1797, he was a famous figure in his own right. He was a friend of the radical, Thomas Paine, and also a defender of the French Revolution. In certain respects, he can even be said to have gone further than Paine himself by proposing the gradual eradication of government in Political Justice. It was a lengthy tome which the essayist William Hazlitt praised as one that “made Tom Paine look like Tom Fool.”
The French Revolution debate
Like Paine’s Rights of Man (1791–2), Political Justice was written as a reply–albeit an indirect one–to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Rights of Man (1790). So in order to understand where Godwin was coming from, we need to take a brief look at Reflections, a work which is recognized as the first work to usher in modern conservatism with a stalwart defense of the monarchy, aristocracy, and church in his criticism of the French Revolution after the banning of feudal privileges (e.g., titles of nobility).
According to Burke, who belonged to the liberal Whig party, there was nothing wrong with the privileging of birth or wealth in government; the well-born and well-heeled, were generally well-educated, worldly, and hence better equipped to govern.
Moreover, since aristocrats were prosperous, they were less prone to be selfish, needy, and corrupt unlike their grasping social inferiors. The aristocracy, in other words, was the “Corinthian column,” as Burke put it. Not that this view was unique to Burke: it was in fact a relatively widespread view that was also adopted by the Founding Fathers of the fledgling republic, the United States of America–especially the likes of the Federalists, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
In their replies to Burke, many Whiggish respondents disagreed vehemently, arguing that the French took a step in the right direction by overturning their ancien-regime government despite retaining their monarch, Louis XVI. Moreover, while accepting that England did not require such a thorough change, some — including Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine — criticized the overweening power granted to the “Corinthian column,” replete with feudal privileges and disproportionately light taxation. Paine went so far as to propose following the French in their eradication of hereditary titles and government.
What is more fascinating from our current perspective, however, is Godwin’s keen awareness of the problems posed by inequality where a great mass of people has very little and a few far more than they need — as aristocrats, burgeoning capitalists (even if he didn’t use the term) and the government perpetuate this inequality, making life a lot tougher for the ordinary Briton in 1793. How does inequality trigger us? What is its cause in wealthy nations? And what, if anything, can be done?
To a far greater extent than other respondents to Burke, including Paine, Godwin delved not only into the economic challenges encountered by the poor but also the psychological effects of inequality: those festering feelings of frustration, resentment, and jealousy arising not only from political but economic and social injustice as well. Perhaps as we read Political Justice 230 years after its publication, we’ll understand why there is so much anger amongst the left and the right in 21st-century America too.
“An Inequality of Property”
Here, Godwin would actually use the word “inequality” when lamenting that the “most refined states of Europe” were witnessing “an inequality of property” that had “arisen to an alarming height.” He proceeded to observe that
Vast numbers of their inhabitants are deprived of almost every accommodation that can render life tolerable or secure. Their utmost industry scarcely suffices for their support. The women and children lean with an insupportable weight upon the efforts of the man, so that a large family has in the lower order of life become a proverbial expression for an uncommon degree of poverty and wretchedness. If sickness or some of those casualties which are perpetually incident to an active and laborious life, be superadded to these burthens, the distress is yet greater.
In spite of Godwin’s turgid 18th-century prose, his words are very applicable to our own time and place in 21st-century America. To translate these words into more modern verbiage: life is extremely difficult when we’re barely getting paid for our labor and keeping our heads above water. And it’s even worse when one parent in a family falls ill or suffers an accident so everyone is suddenly leaning on the efforts of the other.
How true it is in 2023— despite the US replacing Britain as the wealthiest nation in the world. For just like Godwin, Paine, and others, today’s commentators have also criticized the numerous instances of poverty in otherwise wealthy European nations. Because even though far more women today are working outside the home, many families simply cannot afford to have more than two children, while nearly 40% of Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency — especially with raging inflation and salaries that are not keeping up with inflation. Recent reports show that over 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And more people than ever are frequenting food banks.
This is already when homeownership has been pushed beyond the grasp of 75% of Americans, mostly those earning less than 100K a year — with medical debt constituting over 67% of personal bankruptcies in spite of the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. In other words, we are closer to the economics of ancien-regime France and Britain than we are to those of postwar America — but more on that later.
Perhaps more interestingly, Godwin proceeds to mention the resentment arising from the frustrations of poverty, particularly when the well-off parade their wealth. If “a perpetual struggle with the evils of poverty…render many of the sufferers desperate,” the poor will “be induced to regard the state of society as a state of war, an unjust combination, not for protecting every man in his rights and securing to him the means of existence” but rather to “engross all its advantages to a few favored individuals.” This resentment or “destructive passions” is particularly fueled by “the luxury, the pageantry and magnificence” displayed by the wealthy. No wonder the French carried out a revolution as they heard tales of Marie Antoinette’s entertainments while they could barely afford bread. (Note: she never said “Let them eat cake!”)
In fact, more so than other respondents to Burke, Godwin captures this feeling of bitterness so accurately when maintaining that
Human beings are capable of encountering with chearfulness considerable hardships, when those hardships are impartially shared with the rest of the society, and they are not insulted with the spectacle of indolence and ease in others, no way deserving of greater advantages than themselves.
Godwin proceeds to explain that the rich man all too often acts in such a way “as if he could never be satisfied with his possessions unless he can make the spectacle of them grating to others; and that honest self-esteem, by which his inferior might otherwise arrive at apathy, is rendered the instrument of galling him with oppression and injustice.”
So raise your hand if you’ve ever felt more than a tad annoyed when you see your friends’ photos on their luxury cruises but you can barely take time off from your two or three jobs. Or if you’ve had to put off replacing your roof time and time again and happen to see a woman on Instagram flashing a purse that costs as much as that roof. Etc. Yes, the rich love to rub our noses in it, to put it colloquially.
Could this frustration — not only in the US, but across the globe — explain the number of popular uprisings since the financial crisis of 2008? Think back to the Arab Spring that was unleashed in the early months of 2011 by populations fed up with the self-interest displayed by their leaders — a dissatisfaction that carried over to Occupy Wall Street at the latter end of the year when youthful protesters recast the 18th-century conflict between the “few and the many” as that between the 1% and 99% (Chiu, 2020).
Some might even go so far as to say that the insurrection of January 6th, 2021 was also a product of anger resulting from recent financial difficulties even though unlike Occupy, the protesters were right-leaning rather than left. Regardless of education or party affiliations or leanings, however, many Americans share some resentment of a government that enables Wall Street and corporate CEOs to profit richly from them.
“Nothing would fundamentally change”
Not that any of this would surprise Godwin if he were around today. Too often, he noted, governments are constructed for the welfare of the rich since legislators are drawn predominantly from the monied classes as approved by Burke and others:
The rich are in all such countries directly or indirectly the legislators of the state; and of consequence are perpetually reducing oppression into a system, and depriving the poor of that little commonage.
After all, that was why the game laws, “by which the industrious rustic is forbidden to destroy the animal that preys upon the hopes of his future subsistence” remained in force — and why the land tax in England “produces half a million less than it did a century ago, while the taxes on consumption have experienced an addition of thirteen millions per annum during the same period.” Such, according to Godwin, constitute “an attempt….to throw the burthen from the rich upon the poor.” The irony, of course, is that although “Government was intended to suppress injustice,” its overall effect “has been to embody and perpetuate it.”
Indeed, despite of our purportedly republican, representative government, we might wonder if Godwin’s words on monarchies and aristocracies apply to us as well — probably because more than half of Congress are millionaires and billionaires:
In proceeding from the examination of monarchical to that of aristocratical government, it is impossible not to remark that there are several disadvantages common to both. One of these is the creation of a separate interest. The benefit of the governed is made to lie on one side, and the benefit of the governors on the other.
Could this “separate interest” be why the wealthy are paying the lowest payroll tax rates since the Gilded Age, all while taking advantage of skewed income tax deductions, loopholes, and rate preferences? Is this why the Federal Estate Tax threshold has been increased to a whopping $12.0 million? These are particularly vexing problems in light of our impending Social Security shortage in 2037. Too bad budding politicians are not taught at their overpriced, overrated universities to remember, as Godwin reminds the reader, that “Society was instituted, not for the sake of glory, not to furnish splendid materials for the page of history, but for the benefit of its members.”
Note too how the financing of political campaigns is such that politicians ultimately pay more attention to their donors than the needs of the people they are supposed to represent. This helps explain why big pharma earns more profits from the US than other countries in Western Europe and why healthcare costs are higher here than elsewhere. Why CEOs made record profits from inflation in 2022. Why little effort is being made to curb climate change — effects that are much more serious for the poor and middle classes who don’t have a multitude of mansions or adequate insurance coverage.
And lastly, why there are few attempts to stop private equities from scooping up houses, healthcare offices, and veterinary practices, thereby driving up prices of homes, vet care and medical services. No wonder Joe Biden promised his wealthy donors in 2019 that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.”
In fact, if we just focus on 2016 through 2023, this privileging of the wealthy is nearly as prevalent in the Biden administration as in Trump’s — despite their various promises for change. For just as Trump reduced taxes on the wealthy even more than George W. Bush, Biden and Congress did little to combat inflation last year, unlike Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Richard Nixon: no wonder why at least two economists, Richard Wolff and Hal Singer have separately expressed disappointment in Biden’s handling of the economy. At the same time, state governments did little to discourage gas and power companies from charging markedly higher prices. As the late George Carlin would say, “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”
Sound petty and reeking of class envy? Not when CEO wages have soared while ordinary wages have stagnated since the 1970s with nary a whiff of complaint from the government. After all, talent must be rewarded as Barack Obama enthused in 2010, turning back on his campaign promise to lower CEO compensation! And not when many blue collar and even professional jobs have been outsourced, thanks to the creation and passing of NAFTA under George Bush I and Bill Clinton. Or when American social mobility has declined to a point such that it is now ironically below that of many “Old World” nations — including England.
Indeed, as economist Thomas Piketty has observed, we have now returned to the rentier economies of the 18th- and 19th century Europe where wealth and opportunity was largely dependent on family background and landed property. We have, in other words, returned to the age of William Godwin and Jane Austen — as well as early Downton Abbey.
If our political system is not all that different from Godwin’s England, our capitalist system that runs through corporations and universities (i.e., winner take all) is not that different either particularly with the shrinking opportunities offered those below the upper-middle classes. (Just consider how Ivy admissions relies to a great degree on legacy and lineage where wealthier students get a leg up.) The following lines from Political Justice might easily apply to those employees working at minimum wage for a Wharton-educated CEO born into an upper-middle-class family. Or an adjunct working for a Stanford-educated college president and daughter of a CEO:
But it is a bitter aggravation of their own calamity, to have the privileges of others forced on their observation, and, while they are perpetually and vainly endeavouring to secure for themselves and their families the poorest conveniences, to find others revelling in the fruits of their labor…
Conversely, we might find the set of the fashionable, well-coiffed, and upwardly mobile but otherwise mediocre Ivy graduates at their swank, exclusive gatherings reflected in these words of Godwin:
There is a numerous class of individuals, who, though rich, have neither brilliant talents nor sublime virtues; and, however highly they may prize their education, their affability, their superior polish and the elegance of their manners, have a secret consciousness that they possess nothing by which they can so securely assert their pre-eminence and keep their inferiors at a distance, as the splendour of their equipage, the magnificence of their retinue and the sumptuousness of their entertainments. The poor man is struck with this exhibition; he feels his own miseries…
Perhaps that’s why our upper middles are obsessed as they are with endless remakes of Jane Austen novels and Downton Abbey: because they long for the days of pride, privilege, and property.
And perhaps that’s why they seek to maintain the status quo — for instance, in their warm support for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren — as opposed to a Bernie Sanders — in 2016 and 2020. (Some Democrats even preferred Trump to Sanders!) It is why so many in the upper decile oppose Medicare for All, a higher minimum wage, unions, and the forgiveness of student loans: all would entail higher taxes and costs for them. Trips to the Caribbean or Europe will not be as frequent! No multiple pairs of Louboutins and Ferragamos! Here, Godwin’s criticism of the comfortably well-off who dread any idea of reform is thus equally applicable to the top decile of 21st-century earners:
There is no mistake more thoroughly to be deplored on this subject, than that of persons, sitting at their ease and surrounded with all the conveniences of life, who are apt to exclaim, ‘We find things very well as they are;’ and to inveigh bitterly against all projects of reform, as ‘the romances of visionary men, and the declamations of those who are never to be satisfied.’ Is it well, that so large a part of the community should be kept in abject penury, rendered stupid with ignorance and disgustful with vice, perpetuated in nakedness and hunger, goaded to the commission of crimes, and made victims to the merciless laws which the rich have instituted to oppress them? Is it sedition to enquire whether this state of things may not be exchanged for a better? Or can there be any thing more disgraceful to ourselves than to exclaim that ‘All is well,’ merely because we are at our ease, regardless of the misery, degradation and vice that may be occasioned in others?
No wonder Godwin maintained that “the real enemies of liberty in any country are not the people, but those higher orders who profit by a contrary system” — and why he regarded anarchy a better condition than despotism:
The nature of anarchy has never been sufficiently understood. It is undoubtedly a horrible calamity, but it is less horrible than despotism. Where anarchy has slain its hundreds, despotism has sacrificed millions upon millions, with this only effect, to perpetuate the ignorance, the vices and the misery of mankind. Anarchy is a short lived mischief, while despotism is all but immortal.
It is not surprising either that his daughter, Mary Shelley, would integrate some of these ideas into Frankenstein as the Creature points out the corrupt ways of the world, where the shallow considerations of birth, beauty, and money are the most significant markers of human worth.
Yet, as much as Godwin inveighed against the wealthy and powerful, he did not altogether welcome a revolution. Indeed, in 1796, as he completed a second edition, he was even less inclined to endorse any form of redistribution in his belief that the protection of property was an important function of government. Instead, the wealthy should be encouraged to be more generous — an absurd hope in light of his recriminations against their selfishness. So he looked forward to the day when reason would eventually lead the rich to be more generous. (As recent research has it, the rich remain the least generous in society.)
It is as such that modern scholars have said of Godwin that “He ends up with a view of property that is incoherent, in the sense that the system he endorses seems inconsistent with the guiding principles for political and ethical behavior that he himself has lain down” (Pierson 2010). This faltering may help explain why Godwin came to be viewed as an apostate radical with wavering views.
Perhaps the most viable and practical solution to the problem of inequality might is still that of “Mad Tom” — a moniker coined of Paine in a political cartoon after his publication of Rights of Man. Here, he advocated progressive taxation and redistribution among family members so that no branch of any family could ever accumulate property at the expense of other kin. Hereditary government and privilege were to be axed — and there would finally be room for equal opportunities: which many misinterpreted as “levelling.”
This is not to say that Godwin offers no practical solutions for moving forward. With his goal being the eventual termination of government, he realized that discussion and the refinement of ideas was the only path forward. So if we are ever able to solve our issues of inequality, we must engage in what Godwin refers to as “free and unrestricted discussion.” Indeed, we might even say he foretells our very own Medium. For if “we would improve the social institutions of mankind, we must write, we must argue, we must converse.”
Sources:
“Reform, Revolution and the relevance of Frankenstein in 2020” in Frankenstein Reanimated: Conversations with Artists in Dystopian Times, ed. by Marc Garrett and Yiannis Colakides (London: Torque, 2022), 33–44.
Chris Pierson, “The Reluctant Pirate: Godwin, Justice, and Property,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 71, no.4 (October 2010), 569–591.
Thomas Piketty and Arthur Goldhammer, Capital in the 21st-century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2017).
© Frances A. Chiu, December 24, 2023. All Rights Reserved.
