life is harsh, and it is certainly legitimate to dream of a society better
organized than this society of struggle and competition that is ours, a
more fraternal society; but none of us and none of those who will
succeed us will ever see even the threshold of this promised land.”^38
Ferry’s equality was the equality of citizens in rights and in oppor-
tunities, not in intrinsic worth and needs.
The split between the republicans and the socialists reproduces
the debate over social justice that D. D. Raphael traces as far back as
classical Greece. In a democratic society, however, this debate is not
only for philosophers. It is constitutive of the public sphere, and
structures politics through and through. This is the case because the
opposition between the left and the right raises the central contra-
diction of a new society, a liberal one, premised on the equality of all
citizens in rights but still marked by profound inequalities.
Liberal democracies were built in opposition to older, hierarchical
orders, in the name of equality and individual rights.^39 The shift in
perspective was huge and difficult, because up to then inequality had
been understood as the natural order of things. The family, the Church,
social classes, even the animal kingdom were seen as hierarchies
designed by God. Ranks and places defined a natural order that was
normal and right, and could only be challenged at one’s peril, as many
tales and myths demonstrated.^40 Breaking with such a social imaginary
was neither easy nor rapid. To stay with the case of France, it was not
until the second half of the nineteenth century that universal male
suffrage and democratic rights were firmly established. Elsewhere in
Europe, the main advances in male suffrage took place only between
1880 and 1920. For women the vote came even later, between 1918
and 1948.^41 In many countries of the world, and for nearly 40 percent
of the world’s population, such basic democratic rights remain
unachieved to this day.^42
The first liberal debates, then, pitted defenders of the old order
against democrats. With the gradual entrenchment of individual rights,
however, democrats themselves split over the meaning of equality. This
(^38) Jules Ferry, quoted in Candar, “La gauche en Re ́publique (1871–1899),” p. 117
39 (our translation).
41 Taylor,Modern Social Imaginaries, p. 22.^40 Ibid., pp. 9–19.
Stefano Bartolini,The Political Mobilization of the European Left, 1860–1980:
The Class Cleavage, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 209–15.
(^42) See http://www.freedomhouse.org.
A clash over equality 17