These are hard times indeed for the editors of our centre-left press. For unlike their opposite numbers on the right, they do not lick their editorial chops over the government's daily butchery of the last few progressive institutions left standing on this near-bankrupt isle. A situation that leaves them in the uneasy position of though having to live amid the devastation of their old causes, their vocation seemingly prevents them from giving-up their faith in the progressive potential of government, in their own ability to influence such progress- for to what other end are their editorials directed? Such that, just as the Christian ascetics of old, in denying themselves the more carnal satisfactions of their peers, always found themselves desperately seeking some sign that their sacrifice had some meaning, that they had earned God's favour, so too do our centre-left editors today desperately seek out some sign that their progressive voice doesn't go unheard by our axe-wielding politicians.For only in such a context can we understand the over-zealous way in which the Guardian editorial yesterday grasped the news that the monarchy was to get an egalitarian face-lift. Sure, they readily conceded, monarchy and egalitarianism are certainly not compatible bedfellows. But on the other hand, they added, it would surely be 'churlish' not to celebrate the 'egalitarian zeal' of the political classes in such bold policy-making. In fact, so carried away did the editorial get that they even summon-up some histrionics for the occasion: 'For 300 years, the mad and the bad have been ushered on to the throne on the shaky claim of their sex'. Though, of course, how having the eldest child on the throne as opposed to merely the eldest son would have spared us so many mad or bad monarchs remains a mystery; unless of course, we are to infer some highly inegalitarian claim that royal daughters are generally less mad or bad that their brothers. Such excesses amid the frenzy of their enthusiasm shouldn't detract us from the central message though: that we'd been given a sign that the egalitarian spirit was still alive and well. That the Bastille wasn't stormed in vain. That Martin Luther King didn't have a dream for nothing. For now all sexes and creeds have an equal right to....? An equal right to... become the lofty unequal of everyone else?
And isn't this just the rub? That what the Guardian editors see as merely 'churlish' opposition, is just this refusal to enthuse over certain forms of equality being realised internally to an institution which itself perpetuates the grossest kind of inequality. That anyone who wishes to retain anything like fidelity to progressive ideals ought to be highly discomforted by expending their energies and enthusiasm in reforming such constitutively backwards institutions.
Now of course, those editors will reply that should they get the chance to tomorrow, they would wholly enthuse over the abolition of the institution itself if that further promotes the cause of equality. And they'd say that such a commitment wholly compatibly with the fact they today enthusiastically affirm equality rather than inequality in the inequality-promoting institution itself. That in a world otherwise hell-bent on pursuing the grossest of inegalitarian paths, they'd say we ought to encourage even the most tentative of egalitarian steps in what are otherwise wholly inequality-promoting institutions. That they'd hold against us that to demand more today is to demand too much, perhaps to discourage those today willing only to take such tentative steps, but that perhaps, if encouraged, might tomorrow affirm more. Is there anything that can be said to be wrong with so seemingly sensible reasoning?
To see what's wrong with this logic we ought to perhaps take a look at another, more dramatic illustration of the commitments of such 'egalitarian' enthusiasm across the pond. Recall the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy of the US military that so enraged liberal egalitarians and gay rights groups in the US; a policy effectively preventing men from being openly gay in the military, until it was recently overturned by Obama. But what did all that egalitarian zeal thrown into the campaign effectively achieve? That openly gay men can march off to get killed alongside their heterosexual countrymen? Is this really what progressive politics wants to be committed to? That after all the campaign energies that went in to guaranteeing such equality, that people are not going to be happy, perhaps even shed a tear, at the sight of the first crop of openly gay soldiers drafted alongside the rest- irrespective of the fact that they're marching off to kill a lot of innocent people whenever their government decides that it might have been unwise to sell arms to some tyrannical regime. Is that really what today's 'egalitarian' enthusiasm wants to be committed to? A principle of equality-for-equality's sake which amidst the Holocaust, would have presumably got bogged down in insisting as to why only the Jews, the communists, the mentally ill are to be gassed and not anyone else? Missing completely the rather more fundamental question as to whether mass murder on an industrial scale really ought to be happening at all?
Such is the fate of any 'egalitarian' enthusiasm that is content to praise the realisation of some purely formal equality in what are otherwise the grossest, most inequality-promoting of institutions. That instead of campaigning for equality in the sex that might become monarch, progressives ought instead to campaign for the abolition of the inegalitarian monarchy. That instead of promoting equality in the sexuality of who gets to go and shoot a load of foreigners, they ought rather to be promoting an equal right to not to have to kill, or be killed, in whatever wars our governments decide are expedient. That when for the first time within the living memory of most of us, those institutions themselves are increasingly called into question, we need no longer be content with merely realising equality within an institutional framework that is itself the most grotesquely unequal in its consequences. That such 'egalitarian' enthusiasts, if they genuinely to be on the side of equality, need only turn their gaze away from the shadow play staged by the representatives of those discredited institutions- staged only to keep open a little glimmer of hope that those institutions might still be capable of realising their hopes. And instead to step outside the theatre and see those institutions naked, in the clear light of day- from the vantage points of the camps now erected outside stock exchanges and parliaments across the world. That they ought to talk to men and women there who are no longer content with enthusing over reforming that which is in itself bad; men and women who now suffer such bleak prospects in our masochistic age of austerity that, unlike the editors of centre-left newspapers, cannot afford the luxury of a naive faith in the 'progressive' potential of our discredited institutions. That the times are such that it can only be from their vantage point that any genuine egalitarian enthusiasm worthy of the name can be directed.
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