Book Review: PAUL GOMBERG, How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, 192 pp. ISBN 9781405160827, £50 (hbk)
| Author | Kay Goodall |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639090180040706 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
PAUL GOMBERG, How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice.
Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, 192 pp. ISBN 9781405160827, £50 (hbk).
Paul Gomberg disarms his audience from the start of this fascinating work: ‘I have
tried to make this book as good as I could,’ he writes, ‘but some things I wrote are
wrong or confused. If I knew which they were, I would not have written them’, and
he invites readers to contact him at his website to suggest improvements (p. vii). It is
an arresting start, and the argument which follows this invitation may intrigue, irritate
or charm the reader, but in the tradition of Orwell, it speaks plainly.
Gomberg describes his work as utopian and radical, and strives to put into practice
his ideals. The style of the early chapters is so clear that I initially wondered if the
book were written for school students, and he takes time to explain things that most
academics take for granted in teaching, such as what citations are and how he uses
his. In spelling out his ‘non-competitive’ conception of equal opportunity, it is
obvious that as a teacher he reaches out to those who have not had the advantage of
elite education, while avoiding making his arguments simplistic.
Gomberg draws on a wealth of arresting examples from social research to illustrate
the importance of the wholesale revolution he (implicitly) calls for. The book goes far
beyond the demand that we allow fairer opportunity to compete for prestigious occu-
pations; that we redistribute income; or that we redefine ‘work’ to include under-
valued forms of unpaid labour. Gomberg argues instead that what counts is quantity
of opportunity for desirable social positions – and this should be unlimited. We should
all take part in what he calls ‘routine labour’, such as cleaning public spaces or caring
for others’ health, and we should all engage in complex labour too. A society in which
only a few have access to desirable social positions cannot be a fair one; competition
requires that there be losers and failures. This transformation requires much more
than a level playing field as liberals conceive it, and indeed to achieve it we must move
beyond market economies, by a social transition which Gomberg breezily suggests
will be violent (see Chapter 7). Gomberg’s arguments do not depend on Marxism, but
he is asking for nothing less than revolution.
With much the same passion and brio that led Dawkins or (John) Gray to take a new
broom to sweep the dust from familiar but fuzzily understood concepts, Gomberg is
bold and combative in his assertions. He does not try to play down the reasons that
the conceptions of what equality should be vary from society to society and genera-
tion to generation (in contrast to others who vaguely suggest that our struggle to
broaden these demonstrates that we are groping our way towards a fairer world).
How we define equal opportunity is influenced by power and logic, Gomberg says
– and especially power. Elsewhere, he insists that providing advanced education for
large numbers of people to compete by equal opportunity is wasteful in a society
where few can succeed and make use of that education. It is unlikely that such waste
will be permitted to continue for long. These are uncomfortable thoughts and
Gomberg offers many more like them.
Along the way he takes on Rawls, Dworkin, Roemer, Adam Smith, Nozick, Sen,
Nussbaum, Waltzer and more. We say goodbye to distributive justice and consider
instead contributive justice – the duty and the opportunity of all to contribute our
abilities to society through work in its widest sense. The good life is one in which we
develop our complex abilities, contribute them to the benefit of others, and are
esteemed for doing so. The good life depends on membership of the good society.
Complex, satisfying work which makes a social contribution must be available to all,
so that all can flourish. And all are to be encouraged to participate in it, compelled
by the attraction of social esteem.
Gomberg recognizes that some will see such a society as unjust. It limits the free-
dom of the entrepreneur to design the labour model of his choice for his employees.
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