>>> <JKSCHW at aol.com> 01/25/00 03:48PM >>>
Charles says that Marx attacks bourgeois equality but not real equality. This has no support in the teaxt. Marx says that to attend to the different needs of different people, "right would then have to be unequal rather than equal." He could not be more explicit. This is around p. 86 of vol. 24 of the Collected Works, if my memory serves me well.
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CB: This is a good statement of the principle underlying affirmative action, which is a complex thesis of equality. Oppressed races and nations, and women , differently abled are given an advantage, because different people have different needs. In the case of a situation as in the U.S. with a history of various inequalities which has created some of these different needs, equality can only be achieved through inequality. This is the same idea as "from each according to ability , TO EACH ACCORDING TO NEED" , which is direct quote from "Critique of the Gotha Programme". There is a relativity of equality. Marx often has these little loopty loops.
I wrote a paper on the equality of the inequality of affirmative action for your friend Don Regan, as a senior in law school, and on this very point. I think it is in Dworkin.
What do you make of the principle of equality before the law, as old as Hammarabi's code ?
CB