All in the mind? Why social inequalities persist

public�policy�research�–�December�2009-February�2010226

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My maternal grandfatherwas born in 1916, in anera so different fromtoday that women werenot permitted to vote.

Last year I asked him about the 1929 crashand what life was like for a teenager grow-ing up in Yorkshire in the 1930s. I talked tohim about jobs and he said, “You’d know ifit were as bad again because – almost nomatter what your qualifications – you’d begrateful to take any job.”

For many people in Britain today, espe-cially young adults not living with children,their current experiences and my grandfa-ther’s recollections are not so far apart.However, in other ways social evils todayhave changed almost beyond recognition.Yet there are some uncanny echoes withprejudices of the past in how we now thinkand in how we stall at progress.

In 1942, when my grandfather was 26years old, William Beveridge labelled thegreat social evils as ignorance, want, idle-ness, squalor and disease. I would claim thatnow those five evils have been fought andlargely vanquished, to be replaced by fivenew evils: elitism, exclusion, prejudice,greed and despair. These result today inone in seven children being labelled the

equivalent of ‘delinquent’ and a sixth ofhouseholds being excluded from modernsocial norms. These norms include beingable to afford a holiday once a year: povertysurveys now find that a sixth of householdssay they cannot afford to take a holiday andare living on low income.

One in five adults now routinely report,when asked about their circumstances,that they are finding it ‘difficult or verydifficult’ to get by. This was the proportionreported before the economic crash.Similarly, a quarter report not having theessentials, such as a car if you have youngchildren, even though (if resources werejust a little better shared out) there isenough for all. A third now live in familieswhere someone is suffering from mental illhealth. The fraction that ends this series ofstatistics concerns people’s ability tochoose alternative ways of living and howlimited those choices are: half are suffi-ciently disenfranchised that they choosenot to vote at most elections1.

In the United States almost half of allthose old enough to vote either choose notto or are barred from doing so. Local elec-tions have been held in Britain in recentyears where, at the extreme, less than atenth of the electorate chose to vote.

1 See Dorling (2010) for the statistics, the sources they are drawn from and the arguments made behind these claims, as wellas a much fuller version of this argument. See also http://sasi.group.shef.ac.uk/publications/2010/Dorling_2010_SocialInjusticeStatistics.ppt and the downloadable spreadsheets at www.policypress.co.uk/ (search for ‘injustice’).

All�in�the�mind?Why�social�inequalities�persist

Danny�Dorling suggests�that�as�old�‘social�evils’�havelargely�been�overcome�in�affluent�nations,�in�one�ofthe�most�unequal�of�those�countries�–�Britain�–�theyhave�transformed�into�five�new�tenets�of�injustice.�Acontinued�belief�in�those�tenets�both�maintains�andhelps�to�exacerbate�social�inequality

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public�policy�research�–�December�2009-February�2010 227

The greatest indictment of unequal afflu-ent societies is for their people to be, ineffect, disenfranchised, to think they canmake no difference, to feel that they arepowerless in the face of an apparent con-spiracy of the rich or what might simply becalled ‘circumstance’. Apathy has increasedas we all become distracted by trying tomake a living, lulled into a false sense ofcomfort through consuming to maintainmodern lives. In the space of under 100years we have gone from successfully fight-ing for the right for women to vote, toaround half the population in the mostunequal of affluent countries not exercisingthat right.

No�conspiracy�of�the�richThere has not been any great, well-orches-trated conspiracy of the rich to support theendurance of inequality, just a few schoolsof free-market thought, a few think tankspreaching stories about how efficient freemarket mechanisms are, how we must allowthe few ‘tall poppies’ to grow and suggestingthat a minority of ‘wealth creators’ exist andit is they who somehow ‘create’ wealth.

That there is no great conspiracy was firstrealised in the aftermath of the First WorldWar, when it became clear that no one‘…planned for this sort of an abattoir, for amutual massacre four years long’ (Bauman2008: 6). The men they called the ‘donkeys’,the generals, planned for a short, sharp, war.

Today, those who think they run the econ-omy, from Thatcher to Brown, all believedthat growth accompanied by trickle-downeconomics, variously aided, would reduceinequality. There is no orchestrated conspira-cy to prolong injustice. If there were, injusticewould be easier to identify and defeat.

In June 2009 the Joseph RowntreeFoundation published the results of it majorconsultation ‘What are today’s social evils?’.This produced lists that included greed,consumerism and individualism as newevils and talked about erosion of trust andgrowth of fear (Joseph RowntreeFoundation 2009), but the consultation didnot delve into the factors that might under-

lie these changes. I think it is more clear today (than even

one year ago) that unjust thoughts and ide-ologies of inequality have seeped intoeveryday thinking from the practices thatmake the most profit. Once only a fewargued that hunger should be used as aweapon against the poor. Now many grum-ble when inconvenienced by a strike, labelthose requiring state benefits ‘scroungers’,but hope to inherit money or to win fame.

The�evolution�of�injusticeIt is not just that greed and individualismhave risen: the nature of injustice appearsto have evolved from the former five giantevils to five quite different looking modernevils. I would suggest we call these: elitism,exclusion, prejudice, greed and despair.They all reflect the way that today toomany people favour arguments that actual-ly bolster contemporary injustices in richnations because they do not recognise thetransformed injustice for what it is. Buthumans are far from being simply the pli-ant recipients of the seeds of social changethey sow. Hardly any foresaw what theywould reap as side effects of affluence, andgreat numbers are now working optimisti-cally in concert to try to counteract thoseeffects.

My contention is that in their modernform social evils suggest that elitism is effi-cient, exclusion is necessary, prejudice isnatural, greed is good and despair isinevitable. These tenets are most stronglyadhered to by those on the right, but manyweaker forms underlie much thinking in thecentre and left, among parts of the greenmovement and are found within other oth-erwise progressive forces. It is belief in thesenew tenets that leads those in power to talkof people only being able to achieve up totheir ‘potential’ (resulting in elitism).

Unjust beliefs that others are different,have different needs and deserts, can resultin relative benefit payment levels being keptlow. As compared to median wages, benefitlevels of people not living with childrenhave been lower under Gordon Brown than

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even under Thatcher (resulting in growingsocial exclusion for poor, childless adults). Aquiet tolerance of racist ideas of inheriteddifference has re-emerged (a new prejudice).There is a desperate, continued clinging tothe coat tails of greedy bankers, despite allwe have seen during the financial crisis(resulting from greed, the new squalor).And a generally unquestioning acceptanceof rising levels of mental illness, where thesymptoms rather than the causes areaddressed (‘despair’ rather than ‘disease’).

There is widespread and growing oppo-sition to these five key unjust principles andthe over-arching belief that so many shouldnow be ‘losers’. Most advocating injusticeare now very careful with their words.

However, it appears to me from reading asample of their words that the majority ofthose in power in almost all rich countriesdo still believe in most of these tenets.This is despite the fact that since late2008 majorities among half a billion peo-ple in some of the richest countries in theworld have successfully voted for moreradical governments than have been seenin a generation. Elections in the US,Japan, Greece and Iceland have putpoliticians in power who were recentlythought unelectable by a majority. Itwould be foolish to believe that furtherprogressive lurches are not possible.

However, in Britain it would take changeat the top of each of the main three politicalparties to make any of them progressiveenough to begin to reverse the 31 year lega-cy of Thatcherism. What was full-bloodedin the early 1980s is now muted in 2010,but, I argue, is still Thatcherism. What

other word best encapsulates the publicsector cuts currently being planned by allthree main parties and the refrain beingsung on concert that ‘there is no alterna-tive’? Why not make pay cuts across theboard, even progressive pay cuts, in placeof layoffs? Such things happened in theearly 1930s to teachers, other public ser-vants, and even to the police in Britain.They are happening in Ireland andGreece and have occurred in recent yearsin Japan. Britain probably has to becomepoorer. It is far less harmful to combinebecoming poorer with becoming moreequal than to distribute most of the painof falling GDP onto those with the leastand the rest of the burden on those livingaverage lifestyles.

The central argument I am trying tomake here is that unjust hegemonic beliefsare still held by enough of us for them tounderlie injustice and to cloud our thinkingso that what are seen as reasonable sugges-tions in other places or at other times areoften not even made in Britain today. To askwhat we do after we dispel enough of thesebeliefs to overcome injustice is rather likeasking how to run plantations after abolish-ing slavery, or society after giving womenthe vote, or factories without child labour.The answers have tended to be: not verydifferently than before in most ways, butvitally different in others.

Dispelling the untruths that underlie theinjustices we currently live with will notsuddenly usher in utopia. A world in whichfar more people genuinely disapprove ofelitism will still have elitism and somethingelse will surely arise in place of what wecurrently assume is normal, as that ‘normal-ity’ starts to look like crude, old-fashionedsnobbery, as has happened so often before.Almost no one in an affluent country todaybows and scrapes or otherwise tugs theirforelock in the presence of their ‘betters’.

What I have come to understand fromothers is that it is in our minds that injusticecontinues most strongly, in what we think ispermissible, in how we think we exist, inwhether we think we can use others in wayswe would not wish to be used ourselves.

It�is�far�less�harmful�tocombine�becoming�poorerwith�becoming�more�equalthan�to�distribute�most�of�thepain�of�falling�GDP�onto�thosewith�the�least


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Rawls�was�wrong:inequality�harms�us�allAll five faces of social inequality that cur-rently contribute to injustice are clearly andclosely linked. Elitism suggests that educa-tional divisions are natural. Educationaldivisions are reflected in both childrenbeing excluded from life choices for beingseen as not having enough qualifications,and in those able to exclude themselves,often by opting into private education.Elitism is the incubation chamber withinwhich prejudice is fostered. Elitism providesa defence for greed. It increases anxiety anddespair as endless examinations are under-gone, as people are ranked, ordered andsorted. It perpetuates an enforced and ineffi-cient hierarchy in our societies.

Just as elitism is integral to all the otherforms of injustice, so is exclusion. The exclu-sion that rises with elitism makes the poorappear different, exacerbates inequalitiesbetween ethnic groups and, literally, causesracial differences. Rising greed could not besatisfied without the exclusion of so many,and so many would not be excluded nowwere it not for greed. But the consequencesaffect even those who appear most success-fully greedy. The most excluded might bemost likely to experience despair, but eventhe wealthy in rich countries are now moreprone to such symptoms, as are their chil-dren (Dorling 2009). Growing incidence ofdepression and anxiety has become symp-tomatic of living in our more unequal afflu-ent societies.

The prejudice that rises with exclusionallows the most greedy to try to justify theirgreed and makes others near the top thinkthey deserve a lot more than most. Theostracism that such prejudice engenders fur-ther raises depression and anxiety in thosemade to look different. As elitism incubatesexclusion, exclusion exacerbates prejudice,prejudice fosters greed, and greed − becausewealth is simultaneously no ultimate rewardand makes many without wealth feel moreworthless − causes despair. In turn, despairprevents us from effectively tackling injustice.

Removing one symptom of the disease ofinequality is no cure, but recognisinginequality as the disease behind injustice,and seeing how all the forms of injusticethat it creates, and that continuously recre-ate it, are intertwined is the first step that isso often advocated in the search for findinga solution (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009).The status quo is not improved ‘by intro-ducing an inequality that renders one ormore persons better off and no one [appar-ently] worse off’ (Arneson 2009: 25).2 Theawarding of more elite qualifications to analready well titled minority reduces thesocial standing of the majority. Allowingthose with more to have yet more raisessocial norms and reduces more people onthe margins of those norms to povertythrough exclusion. To imagine that othersare, apparently, no worse off due to inequal-ity requires a prejudicial view of others, tosee them as ‘not like you’. This argumentlegitimises greed.

There is a danger that if Britain keeps itsbenefits so low (Job Seeker’s Allowance isjust £9 a day) and allows unemployment torise rather than reducing wages at the top,the country may start to look more like abackwater of social progress. Where socialsecurity is concerned, rights are alreadybeing rapidly curtailed: starting later in2010, ‘clients’ will be compelled to under-take ‘meaningful activity’ after spending 12months on Jobseeker’s Allowance. However,in other areas the outlook is more positive.For instance, a move away from elitism canbe observed. The Government’s Children’sPlan (published in 2007 before the econom-ic crash made change so obviously impera-tive) suggested that schools in Englandshould aim for children to understand oth-ers, value diversity, apply and defendhuman rights and for staff to be skilled inensuring participation for all: ‘[there shouldbe] no barriers to access and participationin learning and to wider activities, and novariation between outcomes for differentgroups. [ Children should] have real andpositive relationships with people from dif-

2 The insertion of the word ‘apparently’ is all that is needed to begin the process of dismantling the logic of this well-knownargument attributed originally to John Rawls.



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ferent backgrounds, and feel part of a com-munity, at a local, national and internation-al level’ (Department for Children, Schoolsand Families 2007: 73-4)3.

Less bound by elitism, the Welsh govern-ment’s advice to schools in 2006 was thatthey should encourage more play, as learn-ing is about play and imagination. In Walesit is now officially recognised that childrencan be stretched rather than being seen ashaving a fixed potential; the Welsh govern-ment says that if children play just withintheir capabilities, they feel their capabilitiesextend as a result.

In Scotland the educational curriculumis similarly being redesigned, for learning toensure the development of ‘…wisdom, jus-tice, compassion and integrity’ (Shuayb andO’Donnell 2008: 22). All this for Britain isvery new, and for England much of it is yetto come; but it may be a tipping point inthe long-term trend of what people are will-ing to tolerate for their children’s futures.

Conclusion�–�those�towhom�evil�is�doneIn the British Government’s Budget ofspring 2009 taxes were raised so the richwould, if they earned over a certain limit,again pay half their surplus gains as tax.The House of Lords proposed an amend-ment that all companies should, by law,publish the ratio of the wages of their high-est paid director or executive to the wagesof the lowest paid tenth of their workforce4.And the new Equality Bill was introducedto Parliament, with Equalities MinisterHarriet Harman stating that it was now theBritish government’s understanding thatinequality hurt everyone.

At the start of this century wage inequal-ities were ‘higher than at any point since theSecond World War and probably since rep-resentative statistics were first collected atthe end of the nineteenth century’ (Machin2003: 191). People in Britain thought little ofthis before the economic crash; they weretold it did not matter; ‘growth’ wouldimprove everyone’s life. Big inequalitieswere viewed as natural. Key members of theGovernment said they were ‘seriouslyrelaxed’5 about the situation; inequality wasnot an issue for them. Religious leaders con-cerned themselves with the plight of thepoor, not the size of the equality gap. TheBritish had forgotten that for most of theirrecent history they had not lived like this.

Despair grew, greed spiralled, prejudiceseeped in, more were excluded. The elitepreached that there was no alternative, thattheir experts were so very able, that the ‘lit-tle people’ were safe in their hands, andthat greed really was good6. Even when theeconomic crash came they said recoverywould follow quickly and things wouldsoon be back to normal. Many are still say-ing that as I write these words in March2010. There is a general strike in Greecetoday. There have been small runs on thepound and even the Euro! In Ireland theunfair distribution of the struggle hasresulted in more public protests. In Icelandover a quarter of the population petitionedto not pay the newly created national debt(to the UK and the Netherlands). OutsideSheffield Town Hall hundreds of peoplehave just rallied against 1000 job cutsannounced by the local council.

In some ways we have been here before.In 1929 the stock market rallied severaltimes, followed by massive unemployment

3 It is my hope that the DSCF officials were deliberately rejecting the prejudicial beliefs that underlie arguments for ‘equali-ty of opportunity’ – an ‘equality’ that assumes inherent inequality – by emphasising instead the word ‘outcomes’.

4 The Companies and Remuneration Bill had its third reading in the House of Lords on 13 July 2009 and then went forconsideration to the Commons. Many of the Lords were more opposed to high rates of inequality than was the party whoonce represented the interests of the poorest of labouring commoners. There was little expectation that the Commonswould accept the Bill and make it law. When Britain was last bankrupt, in 1945, the only secure and cheap way to providesecurity for all, including many of the affluent, and a health service for all, was to introduce a welfare state and NationalHealth Service. Being less rich creates more possibilities.

5 They did add ‘as long as they pay their taxes’, but avoidance or evasion was allowed to continue to the equivalent ofmany multiples of benefit fraud.

6 ‘It may not be pretty but, on the whole, greed is good.’ (Peston 2008: 336)


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in the US, and real falls in prices in Britain,which occurred again in 2009. TheGovernment cut wages across the publicsector by 10 per cent in the 1930s. Althoughwe began to become more equal in wealthduring that decade, inequalities in healthpeaked as those dying young fell dispropor-tionately among the poorest. In many othernewly rich countries, especially Germany, itwas far worse. In his poem September 1, 1939W.H. Auden wrote:

‘I and the public know/ What all schoolchildrenlearn / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil inreturn.’

The most unequal of rich countrieswere those most willing to go to waroverseas 64 years on from 1939. Moreequitable nations are more likely tofind it easier to refuse to join any sup-posed ‘coalition of the willing’, ormake only paltry contributions to it.When injustice is promoted at home tomaintain inequality, it also becomeseasier to contemplate perpetratingwrongs abroad. In the richer countriessocial wounds caused by inequalityhave been plastered over by buildingmore prisons, hiring more police andprescribing more drugs. But by 2007 itwas becoming more widely recognisedthat rich countries could not simplyallocate money to ease the symptomsof extreme inequality. There was muchagreement that: ‘Extreme socialinequality is associated with higherlevels of mental ill health, drugs use,crime and family breakdown. Evenhigh levels of public service invest-ment, alone, cannot cope with thestrain that places on our social fabric’(O’Grady 2007: 62-3).

Inequality cannot keep on growing. But itwill not end without the millions of tiny actsrequired in order that we no longer toleratethe greed, prejudice, exclusion and elitismthat foster inequality and despair. Above allelse these acts will require teaching andunderstanding, not forgetting once againwhat it is to be human: ‘The human condition

is fundamentally social − every aspect ofhuman function and behaviour is rooted insocial life. The modern preoccupation withindividuality − individual expression, indi-vidual achievement and individual freedom− is really just a fantasy, a form of self-delu-sion’ (Burns 2007: 182). We need to realisethat, and accept that none of us − includingand especially our political leaders – is super-human, but also that none is without signifi-cance. Everything it takes to defeat injusticelies in the mind. So what matters most is howwe think.

Danny Dorling is Professor of Human Geographyat the University of Sheffield. This article includes asummary of some of the arguments made inInjustice: Why social inequality persists, published by Policy Press in April 2010.

Arneson RJ (2009) ‘Justice is not equality’, in Feltham B(ed.) Justice, Equality and Constructivism: Essays on G.A.Cohen’s ‘Rescuing justice and equality’, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 5-25

Bauman Z (2008) The Art of Life, Cambridge: Polity Press Burns J (2007) The Descent of Madness: Evolutionary origins of

psychosis and the social brain, Hove: RoutledgeDepartment for Children, Schools and Families (2007) The

Children’s Plan: Building brighter futures, Norwich: TheStationery Office

Dorling D (2009) ‘The Age of Anxiety: Why we should livein fear for our children’s mental health’, Journal of PublicMental Health, 8, 4, 4-10

Dorling D (2010, forthcoming) Injustice: Why social inequalitypersists Bristol: Policy Press

Haydon D and Scraton P (2008) ‘Conflict, regulation andmarginalisation in the North of Ireland: the experiencesof children and young people’, Current Issues in CriminalJustice, 20, 1, 59-78

Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2009) Contemporary Social EvilsBristol: The Policy Press

Machin S (2003) ‘Wage inequality since 1975’, in Dickens R,Gregg P and Wadsworth J (eds.) The Labour Market UnderNew Labour: The state of working Britain 2003, Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, Chapter 12

O’Grady F (2007) ‘Economic citizenship and the new capitalis-m’, Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, 15, 2/3, 58-66

Peston R (2008) Who runs Britain? How the super-rich are chang-ing our lives, London: Hodder & Stoughton

Rutherford J and Shah H (2006) The Good Society: CompassProgramme for Renewal, London: Lawrence & Wishart

Shuayb M and O’Donnell S (2008) Aims and Values inPrimary Education: England and other countries (PrimaryReview Research Survey 1/2), Cambridge: University ofCambridge Faculty of Education

Stephens L, Ryan-Collins J and Boyle D (2008) Co-Production: A manifesto for growing the core economy, London:New Economics Foundation

Wilkinson RG and Pickett K (2009) The Spirit Level: Whymore equal societies almost always do better, London: AllenLane


All in the mind? Why social inequalities persist

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