Why are modern societies characterized by social, political, and economic inequalities?
I think Rico said it well – as soon as people got together in groups larger than tribes or villages, what we find in history is some kind of hierarchy which implies inequality of some kind. Still, we could ask, isn´t modern society based on the ideals of freedom and equality, which the enlightenment thinkers thought did not exist in medieval feudal society? And why weren´t those ideals achieved? My answer to that would be that freedom and equality are actually purely formal ideals in the domain of law – meaning freedom of contract and equal rights = the same laws for all, which are the basic values of private law (contract law). Formal equality of rights leads to material (economic) inequality because if you apply the same rights to different individuals, they will have different effects. Also, modern capitalism is based on competition, which always creates winners and losers; and we know that in modern socialism, some people also were “more equal” than others (ie, had material advanta
