Not if you don’t take peasant revolts as complaints about inequality. Workers may go on strike without agitating for equal status with their bosses.
I’m not standing by the position that they aren’t, but I don’t think that you’ve really established that their occurrence qualifies as a refutation either.
(As an aside, I’m going to note that I’m not the one who’s downvoted your comments.)
At this high level of abstraction, is there more to a peasant revolt than “I’m poor, you nobles caused it, grr”?
Sure, the proximate cause of any particular rebellion will be much more nuanced than that, but I sincerely think that the abstraction is essentially accurate. If that abstraction is accurate, aren’t peasant revolts seeking less inequality. You don’t have to demand identical circumstances to in order to be pro-equality (as the label is used), do you?
In short, a labor strike with the explicit goal of reducing but not eliminating the disparity in wages between management and workers seems reasonable to call “pro-equality” as that political label is normally used.
Would you draw a distinction between a goal or reducing disparity in wages, and a goal of raising wages for the underpaid? Obviously, unless you also increase wages for the managers, this will reduce disparity, but I don’t think it follows that reducing disparity is the motive. If the employers could increase benefits for the workers while at the same time increasing benefits for managers (in practice they generally can’t,) then workers in an equality-motivated strike would reject that solution, whereas workers striking purely out of self interest or self preservation would not.
I think the rhetoric of reducing inequality is merely an attempt to communicate the shared self-interest of the members. People just aren’t used to being even the slightest bit analytical about their lives, so there’s very little pressure to improve the coherent of the rhetoric that leads to the alliance building before edge cases actually occur (plus: mindkiller).
As a lawyer, I’m well aware of spite as a motivation for (less than optimal) decisions, but I think rejection of a plan that calls for a larger share of a bigger pie is not optimal, even measured by the judgment of an anti-inequality activist. In the (more common) bigger piece of pie, smaller share of pie, bigger overall pie offer, anti-equality strongly suggests rejection, but that’s not usually what happens in the real world, regardless of the pre-deal rhetoric.
I think the rhetoric of reducing inequality is merely an attempt to communicate the shared self-interest of the members.
This is not the only rhetoric that can do this job and historically wasn’t the only one (or even the most common one used). You may want to look into the works of Confucius and the theory of the mandate of heaven for an example of an alternate theory of social organization and rebellion.
Not if you don’t take peasant revolts as complaints about inequality. Workers may go on strike without agitating for equal status with their bosses.
I’m not standing by the position that they aren’t, but I don’t think that you’ve really established that their occurrence qualifies as a refutation either.
(As an aside, I’m going to note that I’m not the one who’s downvoted your comments.)
At this high level of abstraction, is there more to a peasant revolt than “I’m poor, you nobles caused it, grr”?
Sure, the proximate cause of any particular rebellion will be much more nuanced than that, but I sincerely think that the abstraction is essentially accurate. If that abstraction is accurate, aren’t peasant revolts seeking less inequality. You don’t have to demand identical circumstances to in order to be pro-equality (as the label is used), do you?
In short, a labor strike with the explicit goal of reducing but not eliminating the disparity in wages between management and workers seems reasonable to call “pro-equality” as that political label is normally used.
Would you draw a distinction between a goal or reducing disparity in wages, and a goal of raising wages for the underpaid? Obviously, unless you also increase wages for the managers, this will reduce disparity, but I don’t think it follows that reducing disparity is the motive. If the employers could increase benefits for the workers while at the same time increasing benefits for managers (in practice they generally can’t,) then workers in an equality-motivated strike would reject that solution, whereas workers striking purely out of self interest or self preservation would not.
I think the rhetoric of reducing inequality is merely an attempt to communicate the shared self-interest of the members. People just aren’t used to being even the slightest bit analytical about their lives, so there’s very little pressure to improve the coherent of the rhetoric that leads to the alliance building before edge cases actually occur (plus: mindkiller).
As a lawyer, I’m well aware of spite as a motivation for (less than optimal) decisions, but I think rejection of a plan that calls for a larger share of a bigger pie is not optimal, even measured by the judgment of an anti-inequality activist. In the (more common) bigger piece of pie, smaller share of pie, bigger overall pie offer, anti-equality strongly suggests rejection, but that’s not usually what happens in the real world, regardless of the pre-deal rhetoric.
This is not the only rhetoric that can do this job and historically wasn’t the only one (or even the most common one used). You may want to look into the works of Confucius and the theory of the mandate of heaven for an example of an alternate theory of social organization and rebellion.