Women who work for less than £2 an hour, six days a week, no sick pay, no pension, and three days holiday a year if they are lucky: 40% of Japan’s labour force are women, who receive less than half the pay and none of the fringe benefits of the men. ibid.
Today the face of Japan is strong and confident, but the cracks reveal that many working people are quite unlike the happy stereotypes, and living conditions are poor compared to the nation’s wealth, and the young are trapped in a moulding process which too often leads to tragedy. ibid.
It did always seem so to us, but now in the division of the kingdoms it appears not which of the Dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighted that curiosity in neither can make choice of either’s moiety. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear I I @3, Gloucester
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, ‘This is mine’ and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.’ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754
This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal. And that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. My fellow Americans, this is a problem which faces us all. In every city of the north as well as the south. Today there are Negros unemployed two or three times as many compared to whites. Inadequate education, moving into the large cities, unable to find work, denied equal rights; we cannot say to 10% of the population you can’t have that right ... We owe them, and we owe ourselves, a better country than that. John F Kennedy 19th June 1963
The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities. John F Kennedy
The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional necessity, and in all cases a temporary one. John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread. Anatole France
When we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality in about 475 years. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait that long. Lya Sorano
Tom and his younger brothers as they grew up went on playing with the village boys without the idea of inequality (except in wrestling, running or climbing) ever entering their heads, as it doesn’t till it’s put there by Jack Nasty’s or fine ladies’ maids. Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 1857
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. Mahatma Gandhi
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? Mahatma Gandhi
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost. Aristotle
I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream – a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. Martin Luther King, The Papers of Martin Luther King vol VII
Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children. Martin Luther King
We – as individuals – have been concerned with the place of the black man in American Society and his struggle for equal rights. As members of the United States Olympic team, each of us has come to feel a moral commitment to support our black teammates in their efforts to dramatize the injustices and inequalities which permeate our society. This commitment led us to initiate conversations with the Olympic Project for Human Rights. OPHR statement sent to individual competitors
I don’t think we can give anybody any guarantees. That we’ve reached a point where we’re almost at where the Jews were at when Hitler took power. So are you going to sit by and wait for a man to put you in a concentration camp or you going to organise and fight? Andrew Young
The history of these tyrannies, however, tells us something very different. There is a pattern to them which reflects the central characteristic of the world we live in: that it is run by a small class for profit; and the source of that profit is the workers who produce the wealth. The class on top much prefers to make its profits without any nastiness from the masses it exploits. The rulers prefer to operate where the people choose their governments, and where everyone in society is subject to the rule of law. If people vote for their government, and are protected by the rule of law, they are much less likely to complain about their exploitation. Hence the ‘norm’ which seems to emerge from the history of the western democracies – a norm of elected governments and a set of laws which at any rate pretend to apply equally to everyone. Paul Foot: No Time to Make Up
This sameness and uniformity, however, are increasingly the characteristics of monopoly capitalism. All around us privately controlled mass media and mass production churn out things that assume that their consumers are all the same. Differences and distinctions between human beings are far more likely to blossom in a society which rewards everybody equally and does not single out a few for special treatment. As the Communist Manifesto puts it: ‘In place of the old society ... we will have an association in which the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all.’
Another argument against the idea of equality is that it will discourage skills. This argument usually starts with a question: ‘Would you pay a brain surgeon the same as a dustman?’ If you reply ‘Yes’, the argument is pressed home. ‘Aha! This will produce a society where there are millions of dustmen and no brain surgeons.’ The brain surgeon, it is assumed, will not study or practise for his or her skills unless the rewards for this are ten or twenty or preferably fifty times that of a dustman. People would just as soon hump a dustbin on their backs as be a brain surgeon for equal money.
The socialist argument is that people are far more likely to do what they want to do, and what they are best able to do, if the reward for everything is roughly the same than if a fortunate minority are beckoned to a specific set of skills by huge rewards. Paul Foot, The Case for Socialism ch5
In his speech in the House of Commons debate on war with Iraq, Tony Blair allowed himself a rather rambling excursion into what he saw as the basic reasons for the conflict. Perhaps unwittingly slapping down those of his ministerial colleagues who had likened Saddam Hussein to Hitler, he accepted that comparisons with the 1930s were not very relevant. The real battle, he said, is not between relatively rich countries, as it was then. Instead, the battle now is between civilised democracies like Britain and the United States and rogue regimes that could get control of weapons of mass destruction.
This analysis conveniently avoids the real reason for the world crisis – the growing division between rich and poor, between those who have enough money so that they enjoy democracy and those who have hardly any money, food or water, and therefore can’t. Paul Foot, Born Unfree and Unequal
Different ethical values apart from the market ethic must be protected: trust, fairness and the acceptance of obligations should not be seen as tiresome obstacles in the creation of economic efficiency, but as central to it. Will Hutton, The State to Come
Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal — as we are! Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience. ibid.