Equality: From Hunter-Gatherers to Totalitarian Regimes

The idea of equality has long been alluring—and at the same time it has carried a threat. It became a driving force behind revolutions, influenced the shaping of laws and social orders, yet remained elusive, internally contradictory, and constantly changing. Darrin McMahon traces how, over the centuries, philosophers, statesmen, and revolutionaries tried to define equality, bring it into being, and preserve it—and why today it still functions more as a goal than as an achieved condition.

In a coherent, chronologically structured narrative of 11 chapters, the historian Darrin McMahon shows how the understanding of equality has shifted across a wide range of societies—from the world of hunter-gatherers to the era of totalitarian regimes.

McMahon reveals the key duality of equality: it almost always goes hand in hand with hierarchy and the practices of exclusion. In the Greek polis, “equals” were not everyone—women, slaves, and non-citizens remained outside that circle; monotheistic religions claimed the unity of God’s children, but excommunicated those who did not accept the faith; the French revolutionaries, inspired by the Enlightenment, declared equality to be a natural right—and at the same time this logic helped give rise to racial theories. Even the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century created their own rhetorics and models of “equality.” For a long time, it seemed that the new—liberal—equality was inevitable within the framework of the “end of history.” But we still live in a world where equality is difficult not only to implement, but even to clearly imagine.