English

Noun

égalitarianism ‎(uncountable)

1. (rare) Alternative spelling of egalitarianism
   • 1961, The Iowa Journal of History (State Historical Society of Iowa), volume 59, issues 1–2, page 123

     In this seething cauldron of drastic change, what of the historical society? However democratic it may be today, will it tomorrow, because it reaches only the upper levels of our society, be even more out of touch with the main stream of events, even more isolated from contact with reality, of even less interest to the public than the snobbish, or self-congratulatory, or one-meeting-a-year historical society is today? Not reaching even the plumber from Kenosha today, will it be completely shelved in the greater égalitarianism of tomorrow? And what can we do about this? How can we improve the calibre of the citizenship of the growing megalopolis or effectively participate in the great ideological debate confronting the world today if we cannot reach past the plumber from Kenosha to the less educated, less skilled, less favored man beyond?

   • 1964 June, Paul A. Samuelson, “A. P. Lerner at Sixty” in The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson, volume 3 (June 1972, MIT Press, ISBN 026219080X), ed. Robert C. Merton, page 650, footnote 1

     Since redistribution in real life can never be of the distortionless type, égalitarianism will not (and should not) be carried all the way.

   • 1966, Soviet Studies in Philosophy (International Arts and Sciences Press), volumes 5–6, page 30

     Pierre-le-Grandisme cannot take the social revolution beyond the Gracchus Babeuf’s égalitarianism of prisoners at hard labor and communist corvée of Cabet.

   • 1967, Commonwealth Journal (Royal Commonwealth Society), volumes 10–11, page 298

     Although all the developing countries are pledged to égalitarianism, perhaps they feel that at this moment, and for a long time to come, their real need is for the training of leaders or an intellectual élite.

   • 1982, The Forestry Chronicle (Canadian Institute of Forestry), volume 58, page 12

     Other groups envisage societies based on various forms of socialism and égalitarianism, but with constraints on consumption through strong government intervention in production and in resource allocation.

   • 1987, Labour History (Australian Society for the Study of Labour History), issues 52–55, page 84

     Stephen believed (as I do) that the radical nationalist tradition contains much that is admirable — and that it has been our dominant nationalist ideology, alone unconfused by British loyalties. But I can now see that the nest of radical Australian historians hatched by Manning Clark at Melboume after the War carried an inbuilt self-destruct mechanism: not just ‘bourgeois consciousness’, but the contradiction between égalitarianism and that other convict bequest: love of liberty.

   • 1995, Carlos B. Gutiérrez [ed.], El Trabajo Filosófico de Hoy en el Continente: Actas del XIII Congreso Interamericano de Filosofía, Bogotá, Julio 4 al 9 de 1994 (Sociedad Interamericana de Filosofía), page 43

     In the face of such phenomena, justice demands protection against bogus and thoughtless égalitarianism. The legal claim, conceding the particularity of every member of a political community, constitutes a bulwark against the pressures of public sentiment and the unpredictable vicissitudes of dominant opinion.

   • 2000, John Morgan, “Confucianism, cultural revolution and corporate classrooms: China’s attempts at ‘a Learning Society’” in Lifelong Learning: Education Across the Lifespan (RoutledgeFalmer, ISBN 0203183320), eds. John Field and Mal Leicester, pages 187–188

     As Lee concludes, the Confucian concept of education ‘. . . is strongly coloured by a sense of égalitarianism — you can achieve it if you want to’.

   • For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:égalitarianism.

Related terms

• égalitarian
• inégalitarian