Jubilee

Alexis and I had an interesting discussion a few weeks ago that I've been wanting to blog about and haven't had time until now...

She was writing a paper on social capital and the different ways that it functions in different class settings. For wealthy folk, social capital is used to get ahead. For poor folk, social capital is used to survive. The discussion got me thinking about the year of Jubilee in the Bible (Leviticus 25) as an antidote to the accumulation of social capital.

The largest difference between a "conservative" and a "liberal" mindset is where one believes responsibility lies. For the conservative, responsibility is always personal. Each individual makes his or her own way. For the liberal, it is systemic. The system opens and closes doors and the individual has little or no control. A clear example of this dichotomy is seen in affirmative action programs. Typically, liberals feel that they must be in place for minorities ever to get ahead while conservatives claim that they represent oppression of those who just happen to be in the majority. The program is a way of distributing social capital - who you know, where you went to school, the quality of your education, the doors that are opened to you...

It seems to me that the real world functions somewhere along the continuum between the two poles. Hard work and ability does provide opportunities to get further in life. At the same time, the system provides doors for some that just aren't there for others. (Our current president is a clear example of that... were he not a Bush, there would have been no way that he ever would have become president). Social capital is a resource that is not divided equally and overcoming that lack is extremely difficult.

And here comes the year of Jubilee. Every 49 years, debt was cancelled and lands went back to the original family of ownership. That way, the next generations couldn't live off the hard work, good decisions, or luck of their ancestors and every 50 years the playing field was equaled. It didn't matter who you knew, everyone had more or less the same resources. Hard work and good decisions would pay off evenly. It was the ultimate affirmative action program.

As one would expect, the year was never observed. By the time the 49th year arrived, there were folk who had accumulated considerable power and wealth and they weren't about to give it up. Now, things are so complicated, it would be completely impossible to do something like this without a complete restructuring of the values upon which our society is founded. Still, it s a wonderful dream isn't it? A world where one's work and talent where what counted as opposed to who their parents were and the social capital that they had inherited...