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"Social Equality" was invented to neutralize Indigenous American criticism of European society

Turgot, a French economist of the 1700s, used the concepts of "progress" and "social equality" in an attempt to neutralize the Indigenous critique.

Technological determinism is incorrect

Turgot invented evolutionism--the idea that societies progress from primitive to barbaric to civilized. For Turgot and his friends (like Adam Smith) this linear and inevitable "progress" is driven by improvements in technology, which allow increased specialization, which produce surplus, which lead to hierarchy and civilization as we know it.

Technological determinists, like Turgot (and Marx), believe that history is driven by technology (and perhaps ecology) rather than human choice. For determinists, history is a series of sudden technological revolutions, each followed by long periods where we are imprisoned by our inventions (or environment).

This view is generally wrong. For example...

Contemporary anthropologists and archaeologists disavow this kind of evolutionism, but continue to practice a version of it. Or at least, they haven't created an alternative vocabulary, and so fall back on categorizing societies as progressing from bands, to tribes, to chiefdoms, and, finally, states.

Pre-Enlightenment, Europeans saw history as decline

For Renaissance scholars, history was not progressive, but disastrous. The Fall from Grace. The Flood. Philosophy was largely an attempt to recover the lost wisdom of the Romans and Greeks.

And, initially, American societies were not thought of as primitive, but as fallen or failed societies.

(Source: the writings of José de Acosta, an early Spanish missionary.)

Before the Enlightenment, Europeans didn't think much about social equality

Pre-Columbus, the word "inequality" was only used to describe social relations in 3 specific contexts:

  1. European folk festivals, like May Day and Christmas, which did sometimes turn into popular revolts.
  2. Equality before the law (of the King or of God), which was an equality of subservience.
  3. The Res Publica, a Greco-Roman ideal, itself a call-back to an imaginary utopia.

"Progress" and "equality" undermined the Indigenous Critique by making it seem like we couldn't and shouldn't "go back"

Turgot admits that equality seems nice. But he believes that equality is only possible if we're equally poor. As soon as technology and specialization enter the picture, there will be surplus, which means there will be inequality.

To achieve equality we'd have to go back to being "primitive." We'd have to give up culture and cities and agriculture and medicine and civilization.

In contrast to Turgot, Rousseau and Marx romanticized a lost past of primitive communism. But they adopted the same assumptions about "progress" and "equality."

Rousseau framed indigenous society as perfectly equal. By idealizing Americans, he turned Indigenous societies into an impossible to achieve utopia. By shifting the terms of the debate from freedom to equality, and accepting the trade-off between equality and progress, he also made it seem impossible for Europeans to adopt American values.

Marxists had more hope for the future. But like Turgot, Marx had a teleological view of history--meaning he believed that history has a purpose it slowly but surely moves towards. Marxists see an inevitable progression from slavery, to feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and, finally, communism.

Both Marx's trust in the laws of history and Rousseau's utopian vision of pure equality have tended to inhibit action.

Over the last 300 years, thinking in terms of "equality" and "progress" hasn't led to substantial reforms.