Summary of William Ryan's "Equality"

This study will provide a chapter-by-chapter summary of William Ryan's Equality. The book challenges the ideas of "equality" and "Fair Play" as defined by American society, and offers the alternative idea of "Fair Shares" as a more truly humane and just approach to society and the distribution of wealth.

Chapter 1---"The Equality Dilemma: Fair Play or Fair Shares?"---establishes the context for the book, namely, the differences between various definitions of equality and the implications of such definitions for the structure of social, economic and political relationships. Specifically, the "Fair Play" position (which Ryan condemns) is contrasted with the "Fair Shares" position (which Ryan champions). The Fair Play position is the standard American position "stresses that each person should be equally free from all but the most minimal necessary interference with his right to 'pursue happiness'" (8). The Fair Shares position focuses on "equality of rights and of access, particularly the implicit rights to a reasonable share of society's resources, sufficient to sustain life at a decent standard of humanity and to preserve liberty and freedom from compulsion" (9).

Ryan argues that the system of Fair Play and equal opportunity are not fair or equal at all because it is a system where the rich and powerful become more rich and powerful, and the weak and powerless become weaker and more powerless. Ryan says that the ideas on which the American system is based are simply justifi

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would be nurtured and used to benefit society. Chapter 4---"Help the Needy and Show Them the Way: Ideology and Social Policy"---Ryan argues that the Fair Play approach will never produce a state of real equality in the United States, while the Fair Shares approach at least has a chance of producing such equality, or at least moving the society in the direction of a more fair and humane distribution of wealth. Ryan argues that the social programs in the United States which are designed to do away with poverty are only ways to perpetuate poverty. Also, it gives the advocates of Fair Play an excuse to say that the poor are an inevitable part of society: The failure of social programs . . . designed to reduce poverty (which is to say, reduce inequality), provides further justification for the continuation of inequality. "We tried and we failed. Poverty and inequality are apparently not susceptible to anything we might do" (120). Such social programs try to treat only the surface of the problem of inequality, rather than trying to treat the deep, structural beliefs and relationships of the society which depend on continuing inequality and poverty. In Chapter 5---Dishwashers Trained Here: Ideology and Education"---Ryan argues that

Category: Psychology - S