STARS

by Kevin Carey

G21 Staff Writer

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Kevin Carey

You know what Sly Stone meant when he sang: "Everybody is a Star"; it ranks alongside John Rawls statement that everyone is entitled to equal concern and respect, or the Christian tenet that everybody is equal in the sight of God. It's a statement about social attitudes, about dignity and about the equal worth of all people; but it has nothing to do with aptitude. Nor, for that matter, has it anything to do with wealth. If we were genuine followers of Stone, questions of aptitude and wealth would be of little concern but as we find it extremely difficult to love our neighbours, whoever they are, most of us resort to the pursuit of achievement, wealth or power in order to command that admiration of our fellows which may be a poor substitute for love but is all that we can reasonably expect.

This is one of the areas of life, deeply bound up with politics, which separates different countries inside our more general consumerist culture. Americans enjoy equality of concern and respect under the Constitution and Bill of Rights but it seems rather theoretical, even in the context of the judicial system. There seemed not to be very much concern for Nathaniel Brazill's age and background when a rigidly draconian 28-year sentence was handed down. Away from the courts, in the slums and the ghettos, on the nightshift of the formal and informal economies, the lack of concern is matched by a lack of respect. In Lochner versus New York (1905) the Supreme Court interpreted liberty as almost entirely a matter of laissez faire economics and 30 years later it tried to stop Roosevelt's economic reconstruction. By the late 1960s these decisions were seen to be profoundly ill judged but we are now returning to Wild West ideas of liberty. In spite of this the 'American dream' persists. The idea that anyone can reach the top has suffered very little discredit in spite of its obvious limitations. The biggest dreamers of all are those who think that social engineering is an unpardonable interference with liberty.

In the European Union there is a general consensus that our individual and collective weaknesses are such that legislation must try to repair our lack of virtue. The "Social model" is a common expression of the belief in redistributive taxes and a high level of social engineering. These provisions are based on written constitutions and dense and iterative legislation. The great exception to this is the United Kingdom which, in spite of the classic textbook aphorism, does have a written constitution. The criticism is that the constitution only concerns itself with the rights of the legislature and the duties of subjects and says nothing about the rights of the citizen. This has recently been ameliorated by the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law. On the whole, people in the UK try to reconcile economic liberty and social equality by gently oscillating between the two with a slight bend towards the American viewpoint. The key indicator of the second Blair administration will be whether the UK moves ever closer to the European Social Model or whether it makes a decisive break with it in favour of American laissez faire.

In Europe we legislate so that everybody can be a star but that may simply be because we are more acutely aware of the obstacles. We live in lands with old money, old privileges and old prejudices. Barons have fought over our commons and copses since the end of the Western Roman Empire and in places not very far from our firesides they are still fighting.

There are still massive scores to be settled in neo-feudal Poland and the still feudal states that were once the Soviet Union.

You need look no further than Moscow to see how badly the 'American dream' travels. Neo-liberal economics turns out to be a sanctioning of the criminal. it is not far from that in America itself but there is still a veneer of economic respectability which, admittedly, President Bush is doing his best to tear away.

During the last two decades the most important development in social attitudes has been the idea of political correctness. Except for its extreme tenet that nothing should be said which might, incidentally rather than solely, give offence, it is a welcome development. People may not be expected to alter their opinions but they can be required to alter their behaviour. In the UK this term is used by Conservatives as a sneer of political chauvinism. The Labour administration, however, shows dangerous signs of populism to bolster its already incipiently authoritarian stance. The 'left' has had as many problems with liberty as the 'right' and they all revolve around the false dichotomy between economic liberty on the one hand and moral authoritarianism on the other; but whereas the 'right' legislates for its own good the 'left' legislates for everyone's good.

Notwithstanding differences of theory and policy and the crab-like progress of social attitudes, we are all closer to the possibility of stardom than we were a century ago.

There is more room for stars, there are more routes to stardom, we have much longer lives to achieve what we want. Conversely, then, failure is all the more bitter which is why the promotion of the importance of individual worth is so vital for our social health. As our progress falters, as, for example, infant mortality amongst the poor is beginning to rise in some rich countries, the sharpness of the divide between achievement and failure becomes ever clearer and whether or not it actually is, it looks wider.

Poverty was hard to bear but it was socially respectable as long as it was the lot of the majority, or even a plurality, but to the economic miseries of poverty we have added social stigma.

Even the people of Continental Europe are beginning to look down on welfare recipients.

I would not, consequently, wish to advocate the plausible but lazy idea that worth of itself is a substitute for wealth; if it were you can bet your life that clever people would have got hold of all the worth and left the wealth to somebody else. And there is the clue. There are, admittedly, many people who are rich because of what they have inherited but the link between education and economic sufficiency is too strong to ignore. Regardless of our ideologies of worth, liberty and wealth, we can surely agree that education is a proper sphere for public investment and that it is not only socially but also individually beneficial. What is more, education is the best method for helping to fuse ideas of tolerance with tolerant behaviour. That way, anybody can be a star, even those who sing in the second row of the chorus.

"Anybody Can Be A Star" doesn't scan as well as Sly Stone's original line but it's nearer to the truth of our existence.

KEVIN CAREY is social entrepreneur, economist and Director of the UK's humanITy. He can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

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