09/25/2023
Historian McMahon (Divine Fury) tracks the concept of equality across time in this meticulous account. Surveying the concept from early hunter-gatherer societies through today, McMahon contends that the idea of equality is often utilized to buttress “hierarchy and exclusion,” since the notion of equality is often formed through the identification of an out-group. In ancient Greece, the out-groups were the lower classes and foreign enemies of the city-states; during the rise of Christianity, sinners or nonbelievers; and in colonial America, enslaved Africans and women. McMahon notes the paradox that in these societies, one’s “independence” was partially measured by “the ability to exercise authority” over others. In the 20th century, Marxism “generated and thrived on exclusions,” according to McMahon, while fascist regimes used “new languages of equality to bind their peoples together on the basis of shared history, identity, and blood.” After WWII, the notion of equality was extended to encompass relationships between nations through the U.N. Charter’s call for “sovereign equality.” McMahon concludes with a consideration of questions of equality generated by today’s identity politics, noting the emergence of “an extraordinary, even utopian, departure from previous understandings” that embraces acknowledgment of difference as the foundation of equality. While this thoughtful account provides no easy answers about where society is headed, it ably shows how opposing viewpoints can draw on the same ideal while advocating for starkly different futures. (Nov.)
Fascinating… McMahon’s book is less a call to action than a goad to thinking.”—New York Times
“At a time when equality is widely lauded as an uncomplicated good, McMahon’s sweeping… study provides a thought-provoking reminder of its pitfalls.”—Washington Post
“McMahon admirably fills that void and sheds light on the complex, contradictory and elusive history of an idea that remains central to understanding and overcoming the persistent disparities in wealth, income and status that continue to plague the United States and countries around the world.”—Truthout
"An important examination of the past, present, and future of a key concept of political thinking."—Kirkus
“A landmark work of intellectual history… Deeply researched, tightly argued and sparklingly written. It ought to be read by anyone interested in equality, and also anyone interested in people, history, God, politics, religion, nationalism, war or love.” —Literary Review
"A meticulous and thoughtful account."—Publishers Weekly
“McMahon’s book is a rare general study of the topic… Sweeping and discerning.”—Library Journal
“Ideas of equality have a long and chaotic history—long before modern political battles and institutions made the rise of equality possible. At a time when the march toward equality seems so fragile and uncertain, this fascinating and refreshing book is more necessary than ever. A must-read for all citizens interested in the past and future of equality.”—Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century
“Darrin McMahon once again delivers a brilliant intellectual history of one of humanity’s most important and least understood ideas. Sweeping, incisive, and provocative, Equality is nothing short of a masterpiece.”—Daniel Gilbert, author of the New York Times–bestselling Stumbling on Happiness
“This is an essential book for thinking about the most pressing issues of our time. We instinctively react against inequality yet have confused and conflicting ideas about how to make equality a reality. McMahon explains why equality remains so elusive.”—Lynn Hunt, author of Inventing Human Rights
“In this ambitious book, McMahon places equality at the center of human history, showing us how elastic and unruly the concept is and illustrating struggles over its meaning continue to be central touchstones for our contemporary moment. This intellectual and political history is a critical resource in our age of inequality.”—Adom Getachew, author of Worldmaking after Empire
“McMahon’s Equality is a remarkable book full of penetrating insights, good humor, and hard truths. By subjecting this supposedly ‘self-evident’ idea to historical scrutiny, McMahon uncovers the many different ways in which human beings—as strongly status-conscious creatures—have imagined equality from prehistory to the present day. What emerges is not only an elusive idea, but a strikingly ambivalent one. Equality may be more at home with hierarchy and exclusion than modern egalitarians care to admit. Yet McMahon argues that to maintain its power—and promise—in an unequal world, one must first confront equality in all of its complexity. I count myself convinced. There is no better place to start than with his wonderful book.” —Teresa M. Bejan, University of Oxford
“McMahon’s Equality is a magisterial and path-breaking history of the dialectic of equality and inequality, which has always been and remains today indispensable to understand the history of humanity. The author’s fine-tuned analysis demonstrates that equality-thoughts are always ambiguous and polysemic. Concepts of equality can be deployed to enlarge the community of equals but also to exclude categories of people from equality. McMahon’s history of equality runs from the palaeolithic hunter-gatherers to the present time, taking in the interaction of status, class, gender, and race. The concluding essay, fittingly named ‘The Crisis of Equality,’ discusses the struggles for and against equality in our time.”—Siep Stuurman, author of The Invention of Humanity
11/01/2023
McMahon (history, Dartmouth; Happiness: A History) has produced an authoritative intellectual history of Western concepts of equality. Much ink has been spilled about inequality by Thomas Piketty, Walter Scheidel, Branko Milanović, and other scholars of economics, history, and philosophy, but McMahon's book is a rare general study of the topic; it examines the ways in which humans across millennia have formed and reformed notions of equality that buttress exclusion and hierarchy. McMahon traces egalitarianism across prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies, ancient Greek democracies, Christian theologies, Enlightenment philosophies, the American and French revolutions, socialism, fascism, the United Nations, and the U.S. civil rights movement. He shows how equality typically went hand in hand with exploitation of outgroups, yet he also believes that equal rights are elusive but not illusory, despite mounting global disparities of income and wealth. He writes prosily and reprises timeworn theories, such as the existence of a universal Axial Age. The book concludes that equality depends upon assumptions of inequality, which can generate more disparities. VERDICT Sweeping and discerning. This book about equality rewards readers comfortable with a dense academic style.—Michael Rodriguez
2023-08-11
An eminent cultural historian examines equality, a thorny but crucial issue that requires deep consideration.
Given the importance that the notion of equality plays in political discourse, it is odd that there is no universally accepted definition of it. This is not for want of trying: Communists, democrats, conservatives, fascists, and any number of would-be revolutionaries have all laid claim to the idea. McMahon, a professor of cultural history and the author of several well-regarded books, takes an intellectual tour from classical Athens to modern times, looking at the ways in which the term has been used and abused. In fact, he goes back even further, examining primate and primitive societies. All societies have hierarchical structures, and there is an inevitable tension between hierarchy and equality. But when those at the bottom rise up to topple the elite by “leveling down,” as in the French Revolution or Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the eventual result is simply a new elite, with a lot of blood spilled along the way. Nevertheless, after 1945, the idea of equality, while vague, seemed to have won the ideological debate, with the “arc of history” seeming to bend in that direction and eventually including women, people of color, and other marginalized groups. Perhaps, but some of the people who currently scream loudest for equality do not seem inclined to share it outside their own circle. McMahon does not provide his own definition of equality, but he believes there is an obligation to do more than pay lip service to the idea. Hierarchies are unavoidable, he notes, but “we hold it in our power to make them less severe and more fair.” It is not an easy conclusion, but, given the depth and complexity of the ideas that McMahon tackles, probably the most appropriate one.
An important examination of the past, present, and future of a key concept of political thinking.
