The Psycho-Social Origins of Inequalities

What the paper says

This chapter examines the causes of social inequalities: Marxist theory exposes the historical genesis and development of these inequalities but does not explain their psychological roots. The struggle against scarcity is not the driving force, because an abundance of goods does not reduce inequalities, quite the contrary. The thesis of a primal need for domination, shared by Nietzsche, Freud and René Girard, remains in the realm of speculation. The chapter proposes other reasons for aggressiveness and its mutation into a desire for domination, based on sociology and behavioural psychology. The first is that human beings are “ecological animals” in the sense that they are deeply attached to the environment in which they have grown up and will stand up to any stranger who threatens it. The second is that, endowed with sympathy and inclined to identify with others, they also enter rivalry with others, all the more so when they feel inferiorised, a rivalry that can then transform into a desire for omnipotence. This is where the theory of history comes in; the nature of labour processes and the social systems they make possible determine the destinies of these drives. The chapter concludes with reflections on egalitarianism and a conception of justice that would favour both personal autonomy and the pacification of social relations.