Of Aspirationalism, Egalitarianism and the Confusion of the One with the Other

Recently revisiting the history that led from "Old" Labour to "New" in writing about the Labour Party's General Election Manifesto I found myself again dealing with the difference between aspirationalism and egalitarianism.

Aspirationalism is about improving one's individual place in an unequal society--endeavoring to climb to a higher rung on the social ladder.

Egalitarianism is about making society as a whole more equal.

This difference with all its implications--the individualistic focus of aspirationalism as against egalitarianism's societal concern, and what a conservative thing the former is against the latter--seems a very easy thing to understand. Yet in our time there is a tendency to flub the understanding, particularly because of the passing off of aspirationalism as egalitarianism, not least in the stress on "equality of opportunity" rather than "equality of outcome."

Thus did it go with the shift from Old Labour to New Labour.

As Clause IV in the Labour Party constitution of 1918 makes clear, the Labour Party was originally a party of working class "emancipation," whose goal was to bring the working class the "full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof."

That went by the wayside when the party revised the clause in 1995, which discarded the special concern for the working class, let alone its emancipation, for a vaguer conception of justice and democracy "in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few" (emphasis added). Then-party leader Tony Blair strengthened the accent on aspiration against egalitarianism in his 1997 General Election Manifesto, describing his goal as "a country in which people get on, do well, make a success of their lives," while pointedly adding "I have no time for the politics of envy. We need more successful entrepreneurs, not fewer of them." His qualification of this statement is limited to the view that "these life-chances should be for all the people."

Thus one had, rather than a more equal society, one where the chance to get ahead was widely available, as the standard of the "good society," with the current Labour Party leader taking the same view, more or less--the hard-working having "a fair chance to get on" as Keir Starmer puts it in his own Manifesto.

Just as no one should slight the difference between egalitarianism and aspirationalism no one should slight the difference between the old egalitarian vision, or the new aspirationalist one; what it says about the distance Labour moved in its politics; and how much continuity there is likely to be between the party of Blair and the party of Starmer.