Editing SG31SBE-T (section)

=== How Is True Equality to Be Realized? ===
'''B:''' But although these inequalities may at first look like nothing more than the selfishness of the wealthy, haven’t the wealthy made the effort necessary to become wealthy? Couldn’t those differences therefore be regarded as legitimate distinctions corresponding to differences in effort?

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'''A:''' If human society were no different from the competitive life of plants and animals—the strong devouring the weak in the struggle for survival—then I would have no objection to such differences. But insofar as human beings are beings possessed of personality, the differences within human society must themselves be ordered in a manner worthy of human personality. Otherwise, they cannot properly be called the differentiations of human society. Take the example we just used. If a two-person household receives six gō of rice, then a seven-person household should receive two shō and one gō. If a train has second- and third-class accommodation, then perhaps the elderly and children should ride second class, while young people ride third. If someone working two hour receives four yen, then someone working six hours should receive twelve. There would still be differences, but they would not simply be differences produced as the outcome of free competition. That, I think, is what “differentiation is precisely equality” ought to mean in human life. Moreover, as I said earlier, if poverty is not merely a matter of jigō jitoku but a matter of social joint responsibility, then wealth too must be regarded not simply as an individual’s own karmic reward but as something social. A person’s wealth therefore ought not to be used freely and arbitrarily for that person alone. Should not the genuine “differentiation that is precisely equality” of human society consist instead in differences rationally and purposively ordered under social regulation?

Yet on the one hand people loudly proclaim mutual aid and harmony between labor and capital, while on the other, religious figures in the service of established power preach that the differences produced by heartless, ruthless free competition are somehow the absolute truth of “differentiation is precisely equality.” What kind of gospel is that? Just think about it. The many spend their entire lives breaking their bodies in dark mine shafts extracting gold and silver, while the few freely appropriate that gold and silver and spend their lives in luxury. If we simply say that this too is the result of free competition, there is nothing more to discuss. But to take mastery of life and transform instinct into rational, purposive action—to make the world into a consciously ordered product—this is humanity’s task. If that is so, surely it is utterly irrational simply to contemplate these inequalities as they are and call them “differentiation is precisely equality.” Human society is not merely a natural phenomenon. ''It is a society endowed with reason and creative power. Therefore, insofar as this is possible, should not the phrase “differentiation is precisely equality” mean consciously using reason to order differences and thereby create the greatest practicable degree of equality?''

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