Philosophical Politics

This blog contains my personal commentaries regarding various social, political and economic issues, all with a philosophical emphasis. I do not affiliate myself with any particular political ideology, but I do draw on Marxist, Feminist, and communitarian political philosophies with a broader philosophical tendency to deconstructionism, moral relativism, and existentialism.

[consciousindifference]

A problem with the left

In my humble opinion, the left’s reaction to the Tories’ recent election win is seriously concerning. The reaction highlights the demand for considerable introspection and the evaluation of goals and priorities due to the current risk of the left walking into very illiberal territory. In the following article, taking a leaf out of Nietzsche’s book, I will use the genealogical method to reveal one of the core commitments of liberalism. I will then place that commitment in the current context and within a broader Rawlsian framework of political liberalism in the hope that the left might be better able to tackle what I perceive to be its current shortcomings.

What is the origin of liberalism as we know it? What circumstances gave rise to its establishment? As I see it, liberalism was born of the religious wars that swept across Europe during and in the aftermath of the Christian Reformation. Competing and irreconcilable conceptions of the good life vied for dominance on the continent, presenting a mere two options: the utter obliteration of non-adherents, or the toleration of alternative ways of living and sets of beliefs. These options were the result of Christianity being a religion of salvation. Such a religion predetermines the good life by reference to God’s will, an irrefutable authority admitting of no compromise, and claims authority over all peoples for all times. In comparison, the religions of the Ancients (the Greek and Roman religions) were civil religions. So long as one partook in civil life (voted, rowed in the fleet when called upon to do so, participated in festivities, etc.), then what one considered to be the good life was not of much concern for others and was thus determined by each. Since the former option, that of utter obliteration, simply came at too high an economic and human price, liberalism, the toleration of other reasonable conceptions of the good life, won out. [It should be noted that ‘reasonable’ in this context denotes only those conceptions of the good life that do not entail affording to oneself privileges that are denied to others, thus implying a kind of reciprocity.] This came to a head with the signing of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the treaty that formally allowed rulers to decide the religion of their domains. Further devolution, down to the individual level, of the ability to legitimately conceive of a reasonable conception of the good life continued over the following centuries, resulting in our current right to freedom of conscience.

What this empirical-historical fact is meant to reveal is just how central the principle of toleration is to liberalism, specifically to liberalism in a political sense. Political liberalism does not choose sides when presented with competing and irreconcilable conceptions of the good, it only moderates their conduct between each other. A politically liberal state, such as the UK, does not decide which reasonable ways of living are right and which are wrong, it remains impartial and merely provides a structure of rights and duties within which those forms of life interact. Of course there may be many unreasonable conceptions of the good which deny privileges to some and not to others (such as fascism, racism, sexism, homophobia, most religious extremism, etc.) in the face of which political liberalism is committed to their condemnation. Otherwise, if the principle of reciprocity is satisfied, then liberalism in a political sense must remain indifferent. Should political liberalism speak out one way or another, then it becomes self-contradictory.

It might be helpful to further distinguish what exactly I mean by liberalism in a political sense, that is, political liberalism, as opposed to liberalism’s other forms. The primary source of confusion on the left, as I see it, comes with the conflation of liberal ideology and political liberalism. Liberal ideology, for the purposes of this piece, should be understood in the broadest sense possible, primarily as denoting left-wing ideals in general (whatever they might be). The crux of the matter, however, is that liberal ideology is simply another conception of the good. It comprises the set of ideals that are accepted only by liberalism’s adherents and is thus irreconcilable with other reasonable conceptions of the good. If we are to be liberal in a political sense, then reasons for political decisions that are justifiable only on liberal grounds, only by reference to those liberal ideals, are entirely closed. Arguments that denounce the scrapping of disability benefits, for instance, on the grounds that doing so is immoral, by reference to the liberal conception of morality, should thus be immediately discredited. Instead, arguments for and against issues must be based on commonly accepted grounds, such as examinations of statistically and empirically verifiable facts or on a conception of morality that both debating participants can accept. Thus far, the majority of arguments on the left that I am aware of have primarily been moralistic in nature and reference a liberal conception of morality in doing so. This is the first issue that we on the left must be conscious of and address by moving away from appeals to ideology in our attempts to justify our positions and proposals.

Where does this discussion lead us then? What relevance does it have to the left’s reaction to a right-wing majority government? Take the 9 May march on Downing Street. While organised under the guise of being anti-austerity, I think it fair to assume that the real motivation, at least for many attendees, was, in fact, anti-Tory. I justify this claim by noting I think it unlikely that the protest would have taken place should Labour have won the election even though they, too, plan to continue austerity (albeit not to the same extent). While this is undoubtedly a contestable claim, let us suppose for the sake of argument that it is true, that the majority of protestors joined the demonstration to object the Tory win. Would such a demonstration not be purely ideologically motivated if it would not have occurred if Labour had won considering that both parties will continue austerity? Moreover, would it not be unreasonable, in the sense we have defined it, to not accept the Tories’ right to govern but to accept Labour’s? Like I said, these claims are definitely contentious, stemming from considerable speculation. Nevertheless, I think it would be admitted that, more generally, anti-Tory sentiment is on the rise and calcifying, becoming entrenched in left-wing attitudes, a trend that we must be acutely aware of and take steps to remedy, at the very least because, on an instrumental level, it only harms a cause to demonise its opposition.

This is not to say that the Tories should not be fought. An EU referendum, further privatisation of the NHS, harsh budget cuts across the board and all the rest of it would be, I think, disastrous policies to pursue. My point here though is that the left must be wary of how we fight lest we risk becoming inconsistent. If we are to be liberal in a political sense, then we are committed to the toleration of other reasonable ways of living of which I think the principles of conservative ideology (as the counterpart to liberal ideology discussed above) is but one. Having said that, I do not think of the far-right ideology, instantiated by parties such as UKIP, as reasonable since they would indeed afford privileges to themselves that they would deny to others (exemplified by their opposition to same-sex marriage). However much one may disagree with the Tories, they (mostly) satisfy the principle of reciprocity in their policies and thus deserve to be engaged with with the same respect we expect from them. This should read as a warning against righteous indignation and moralistic superiority.

We, as liberals, are committed to toleration – that is what it means to be a liberal. But we now run the risk of becoming increasingly marginalised and caricatured as the counterparts to those we denounce as intolerant in the name of toleration. We have to up our game, so to speak, to the level of impartiality when debating issues in a political context. We can no longer afford to be the movement that pursues high ideals because those ideas are not common to all people, people who have exactly the same right and ability to conceive of and adhere to their own ideals. Any infringement on that devolved ability is a hint of a pre-Augsburgian time and a stain on our credibility. It’s time for the left to stop thinking of itself as the sole group with reasonable solutions to the real problems that face us; we aren’t. It’s time for the left to take a deep breath, compose itself, and engage with the right as equals.

[consciousindifference]

The limits of growth

In my humble opinion, we are reaching the limits of economic and social advancement. My case for this is based upon one of the core principles of physics that has and will always govern the expansion of any physical system: energy surplus. I believe that we are reaching a tipping point beyond which the weight of the global socio-economic system can no longer be supported.

Energy, from a purely scientific perspective, is the ability to do work. It takes energy to throw a ball or lift a hammer above one’s head and smash a rock or to launch a rocket into space. For most of human history, work was done by hand, the energy for this was gained through food, and the absolute amount of food available was relatively invariable since a set amount of energy fell on the earth each year in the form of sunlight. This sunlight was converted by work into clothing, shelter and agriculture and could, collectively, support a certain number of people. It took until 1804 for this number of people to reach one billion.

Around this time, we discovered ancient sunlight – energy trapped in oil, gas and coal – which added to the total amount of energy available to us, thus increasing the amount of work we, as a species, could perform. Whereas it had taken roughly 30,000 years for our population to reach one billion beforehand, the next billion took a little over 120. The next billion took 30 years and the one after that just 15 until we arrive at our current population of 7 billion people, of which 6 billion took just 210 years to add. Now what happens when the supply of oil, gas and coal can no longer match its demand as pressed by 7 billion people? What happens when oil, gas and coal can no longer provide the energy to sustain 7 billion people; when we live on a planet that can only, naturally, sustain 1 billion?

Let me introduce another concept: energy return on investment, or EROI. In much the same way as in finance and business (where it takes money to make money), it takes energy to make energy. Speaking in terms of barrels of oil, it takes a certain amount of oil to get more oil out of the ground since it takes energy to build oil wells and all the other necessary infrastructure around them. The ratio between these two figures, between the amount of energy that must be put in versus the amount that can be gotten out, is the EROI of an energy source – a quantifiable figure. Needless to say, that initial investment is fixed and is a constant drain on the amount of energy available to society; if we stopped investing energy into getting more energy, we wouldn’t be able to do anything else, meaning that we must always invest some energy into energy. Once food and shelter are covered, the surplus energy can be spent on anything at all, be it scientific research, art, skyscrapers, you name it.

The reason why it took 20 years to build the Pyramids of Giza while it took only 11 years to put a man on the moon is because of the difference in EROIs. Obviously there is the technological divide between NASA and the Ancient Egyptians to consider, but that technology could only be invented due to a huge surplus in energy in the first place! During the time of the Egyptians, it took a large amount of energy to grow crops (their only energy source back then) compared to the amount of energy that could be gained by eating them. By the 1900s however, it took only one barrel of oil to get one hundred barrels out of the ground in the US, an EROI of 100:1. Once we had covered the basic necessities for life, we were then left with a huge surplus of energy that could be spent on such social luxuries as the space race.

Now think about how far we have come since 1969. We have a far larger economy, more mouths to feed and societies that require more energy to keep the lights on. Society requires more and more energy in order to be sustained. But where has energy come? Has its supply increased along with its demand? Has its production become more efficient? Unfortunately not. Along with an increased demand for energy, the EROI for oil in the US (from which most of the US’ energy needs are met) has dropped to about 16:1, meaning that both the demand for energy, especially for necessities due to a burgeoning population, and the amount of energy that must be invested into energy (and is thus unavailable to society) have increased.

So what does this all mean? Simply put, and going back to the principles outlined at the start of this article, it means that our ability to do work is being restricted. Strip out the gains that have been made due to technical advances (which allow for more efficient utilisations of energy) and our work potential would plummet.

The traditional response to this problem is typically that efficiency and technology will make up for the shortfall. Indeed, it has propped society up so far. But a total shift from a petroleum-based economy is now necessary, a shift which, of course, requires an energy investment that we cannot afford without sacrificing investment in other necessities such as food production. The question of what is more valuable – the maintenance of our current economic system or food – now arises.

Something I should clarify is that I am not talking about when our ancient sunlight runs out. These limits to the amount of work we can do, these limits of growth, apply far sooner than that because demand for energy need only exceed supply. Should fossil fuels run out tomorrow, we would only be able to sustain one billion people on the energy available to us, as was the case before the 1800s, and society would collapse overnight. But should demand outstrip supply, even slightly, there will be the same collapse, just over a longer period of time in much the same way that a lion will eventually die if it uses more energy hunting its prey than it gets by eating it.

I believe that that point where demand outstrips supply is just around the corner. 2016 will see the newly introduced fracking oil production technique no longer be able to make up the production shortfall we would otherwise be experiencing right now. We have simply left this crisis unattended for too long and now it is too late. I don’t even think that an immediate, unanimous and unprecedented shift from finite energy sources to renewables is enough because renewable energy sources still need huge technological advances to bring their EROIs up to required levels (which would, notwithstanding our time limitations, as always, require an energy investment we cannot afford). As such, economic growth and social advancement much beyond current levels seems dubious. Our energy hungry society is now simply too large for our reserves of ancient sunlight to sustain and the civilisation which has been built atop it will, in all likelihood, crumble just as the Mayans and Romans before us.

[consciousindifference]

Palestine has every right to be radical

In my humble opinion, Palestine is justified in fighting Israel. I want to make it clear from the outset that I am not sympathetic to terrorism. It is never excusable, under any and circumstances, to kill civilians – something Palestinian individuals undoubtedly have done. However, Israel kills civilians too and, furthermore, to a greater degree. Furthermore, I am in no way anti-Semitic, but I am definitely anti-Zionist. It is my claim that Palestine has the right to retaliate against an oppressive Israel in the same way that any oppressed people has the right to fight for its own dignity. Further, it is my claim that Israel is indeed an oppressor, just as the apartheid government was, and that Israel is an illegal occupier in the same way, just as empires once held colonies.

Firstly, some historical context is necessary. Israel was established in 1948 by the UN as the British Mandate for Palestine came to an end. The British Mandate for Palestine was a pseudo-colony established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to prevent the historically and culturally significant area coming to harm amid the post-World War I chaos. Instead of establishing an independent Palestine, as Britain would go on to do with their other colonies, the UN, under pressure from the World Zionist Organisation, handed control of Palestinian land from Britain to the Jewish population (recently decimated by the Holocaust) in 1947, thus establishing the State of Israel. The same year saw the Arab-Israeli War break out, as neighbouring Arab states intervened to defend the Arab population that was being displaced and persecuted, the outcome of which established the actual and official borders of Israel and the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip and Jordanian-controlled West Bank in 1948. I will disregard this all for the sake of argument though. Whether Israel's very establishment was legitimate or not, that is, whether it was created by a genuine international authority (the UN) or whether it is merely a still standing relic of the colonial age which we have otherwise shed, is irrelevant to my argument. Nevertheless, this sets the tone for the rest of the article.

In 1967, Israel conducted the Six Day War, capturing the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan, expanding their borders beyond those set out in 1948. Although lacking the international outcry, this was as illegal in the eyes of international law as the recent Russian invasion of Crimea. 1973 saw the Yom Kippur War, a concerted and successful effort to recapture the land taken six years prior (with the exception of roughly of the Golan Heights which still remain under Israeli control). As such, the current borders of Palestine were established as the former Jordanian and Egyptian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were declared the State of Palestine.

Now, there are two primary sets of injustices that Israel has perpetrated since the end of the Yom Kippur War: the settlements and partition wall in the West Bank, and the concentration camp-like conditions sustained in the Gaza Strip. In both cases, I believe that the Palestinian people have a collective right to fight back.

In the first of these cases, some 325,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, all of which are regarded as illegal in international law. These settlements are either officially administered by the Israeli government or provided with infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage, etc.) by the authorities. It would be as if Canada established towns in the USA, filled them with Canadian citizens, governed them, provided them with utilities, forcibly prevented any Americans from entering and slowly edged the American-Canadian border further south. As such, Israel de facto controls more than half of the West Bank, as illegal an occupation as their control of the Golan Heights. Furthermore, Israel has built a series of walls and checkpoints on Palestinian land, carving the West Bank up to fit the Israeli agenda like the Berlin Wall carved up Germany, that were deemed illegal by the UN.

In the second of these cases, Palestinians in the south were systematically forced off their land, now controlled by Israel, and into the Gaza Strip just as the Native Americans were forced onto reservations by the first American settlers. From 1967 until 1994, the Gaza Strip was under Israeli military administration, showing a blatant disregard for the Gaza Strip's legitimacy and keeping the population therein repressed and disenfranchised. Since 2007, it has been under a complete land, ariel and oceanic blockade, more accurately called the Siege of Gaza. Freedom of movement (both internally and externally) and association are non-existent, medical supplies are restricted and water, food and electricity are primarily supplied through Israeli channels and as such completely vulnerable to their whims. Israel has repeatedly bombarded the Gaza Strip over the years as disproportionate punishment for minimally lethal rocket fire into Israel. 2008 saw the deaths of 1,200 Palestinian civilians (300 of which were children) in an assault on the territory. This attack also saw the use of white phosphorous in civilian urban areas by Israeli forces, an incendiary weapon outlawed by the Geneva Convention in such areas. In the face of such brutality, can Palestinians be blamed for fighting back?

This disregard for Palestinian life, sovereignty and dignity continually expresses itself in the form of the deaths of countless Palestinian civilians. Just this month, two Palestinian teenagers were shot by Israeli forces for no apparent reason. The houses of political prisoners are frequently destroyed, ruining the lives of their wholly innocent families. 400 Palestinians were arrested recently in the manhunt for the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers. While their murder is inexcusable, so is the Israeli response. Two key principles in just war theory are that civilians are not to be targeted and that every action should only be a proportional retaliation. Israel, in targeting civilians, in being the aggressor and in using excessive force, violates both.

I see Hamas and Fatah, the ruling parties of the Gaza Strip and West Bank respectively, as I see the ANC – of which Nelson Mandela was the leader – during their apartheid years in South Africa. They were branded a terrorist group by the South African government, by the UK and the USA, but they were fighting for the rights of millions of people, the rights that millions of others in the very countries condemning the ANC could enjoy. Yes, the ANC carried out bombings and sabotage, but their cause was not destructive; the ANC's intention was noble enough to justify seditious means. And after apartheid, Nelson Mandela was hailed as one of the greatest men ever to have lived, an ambassador for peace and forgiveness. Likewise, Hamas and Fatah do indeed fire rockets into Israel and they do indeed kill Israeli civilians, but they do so against an apartheid state. When these "terrorists" are kept in pens without food, water, fuel, medicine, infrastructure, education for their children and consistently have their rights violated by Israeli forces, what is the alternative? Negotiation is laughable when the parties coming to the table are unequal, when Israel has the West's financial, political and military support and Palestine is alienated, leaving direct action as the only reasonable alternative.

Lastly, imagine if the same situation were replicated elsewhere. Imagine if Syavlansk, Ukraine were cordoned off by Russia. Imagine if civilians therein were routinely killed by Russian forces, if the food, water, fuel and medical supplies were determined wholly by Russian authorities, if encampments of Russian citizens, annexed by the Russian government, were established west of their border. Imagine the international outcry, even more critical and acute than the outcry over Crimea. Now imagine if the Ukrainian government were too weak to defend the city. Would the international community condemn the people for defending themselves? Would they not rather condemn Russia for their disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty? Would the people fighting against the Russians not be hailed as freedom fighters just like Nelson Mandela and the ANC? Israel is a violent oppressor and Palestine has the right to fight back just as any other oppressed people does. Why they are labelled terrorists is another question altogether.

[consciousindifference]

The USA has lost the war on terror

In my humble opinion, the NSA revelations last year provided the surest proof yet that the perpetrators of 9 / 11 have won. The US government has legislatively instilled a culture of paranoia with such laws as Stop And Frisk and the Patriot Act so that citizens and law enforcement alike regard others with a mutual distrust broadly drawn along ethnic, religious and racial lines. There are more seventeen year old African-Americans in prison than there are in college and a full three-quarters of African-American males said that they have been the subject of unwarranted police interest. Furthermore, Mosques are routinely bugged and the majority of FBI anti-terror operations have used entrapment, imprisoning more otherwise peaceful citizens than radicals. The irony of it all is that these were meant to combat terrorism, but have only gone to serve terrorists' ends.

I base this claim in light of an open letter the rector of Oslo University wrote. In Norway, all prisoners have the constitutional right to study any university level course of their choosing. After Anders Breivik (the man behind the Oslo bombing and Utoya shooting in 2011) was imprisoned, he requested that he take a political science course to the protest of many Norwegian politicians. The rector of Oslo University responded to these outcries with unparalleled insight. He noted that the country trusted the judicial system to punish Breivik appropriately and the education system should be no different.

"Our rules say that an inmate, like any other citizen in this country, has a right to pursue higher education on the basis of merit. The fact that his application is dealt with in accordance with extant rules and regulations does not imply that Norwegians lack passion or that anger and vengefulness are absent. What it demonstrates is that our values are fundamentally different from his.

By sticking to our rules and not clamouring for new ones we send a clear message to those whose misguided mission it is to undermine and change our democratic system. We do acknowledge that there are moral dilemmas in this case, but the last thing we need is a "lex Breivik". We keep to our rules for our own sake, not for his."

In contrast, the United States did change the rules to specifically deal with perceived threats, exhibiting a lack of faith in their legal institutions and destroying the very basis upon which the country was founded: inclusion. Suspected terrorists are not processed by the judicial system, they are sent to Guantanamo Bay; Muslims fleeing oppression are not welcomed into neighbourhood communities, they are shunned; the poor (which includes forty-seven million Americans below the poverty line) and unemployed are not given support to stand on their own feet, they are demonised as lazy and as scroungers.

Similarly, after the Boston bombing last year, the Boston police exhibited what appeared to be a private army in their search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the first showing of the true extent of the Patriot Act. But my greatest qualms are that they did not read Tsarnaev his Miranda Rights, that there were calls for his torture, and that Ann Coulter on national television called for the arrest of his wife for wearing a hijab. The wanton disregard for the supposedly 'sacred' Bill of Rights is disturbing because it reveals a deep-seated lack of faith in the constitution with its ability to deal with challenging circumstances. Moreover, it highlights that the 'terror' all terrorists supposedly want to plant has really taken root. On a side note, the only amendment in the US constitution that really does appear to be impregnable is the right to bear arms, a right that leads to more deaths each year than terrorism has ever claimed.

The United States has lost the war on terror because the country itself dismantled the foundations it was built upon. The Edward Snowdon revelations and the current administration's use of drones has proved that much since it shows that there are some decisions that are not subject to the law. The Norwegian Prime Minister responded to the 2011 attacks with more democracy, more inclusion and more freedom so that the vision Anders Breivik saw was guaranteed to fail. The US, however, has done the opposite, repressing its own people and doing away with the need for external terror altogether. The US, in its post-9/11 zeal, destroyed itself, and it was exactly that that 9/11 was intended for.

[consciousindifference]

A defence of socialism

In my humble opinion, socialism has somehow earned a bad reputation over the years – and I simply cannot get my head around why. The traditional American critique of socialism is that it infringes upon civil liberties to an unacceptable extent, an extent that capitalism and the minimal state does not. But I fail to see the justification for the prioritisation of civil liberties over other issues such as distributive justice. I agree that personal rights and freedoms do hold an important position in the functioning of a just society, but the claim that they are impregnable under any and all circumstances seems somewhat unjustified, especially in the face of the extraordinary injustices in the distribution of wealth found all across the globe today.

Theoretically, free-market capitalism and a smaller state allows for unbridled social mobility. While the facts of the matter may not agree, considering the immense difficulty it actually takes to progress from the middle- and working-classes to the upper-class that we all aspire to, the theory claims that any individual can start with very little and, simply through hard work, become rich (where 'rich' is defined as when passive income – income that one need not work for such as dividends – exceeds expenditure). This is comparatively harder under socialism because the higher tax rates found in socialist societies mean lower take-home incomes and thus a more difficult climb to the top of the ladder. In this sense, capitalism is (theoretically) superior to socialism.

However, it is simply not the case that everyone can take advantage of this (theoretical) social mobility because of one simple fact: those entrepreneurs who make it through the ranks need labour – specifically cheap labour. It is in the interests of the upper-class to keep wages down because labour is merely a cost of production to them in the same way that natural resources are. Lower costs mean higher profits, the sole aim of the traditional capitalist. This means that it is in the interests of those with power (i.e.: those with money, land, and connections to others with money and land) to keep wages artificially low, that is, below the true productive contribution that labour introduces to the economy.

So what happens to these labouring individuals who are, in virtue of the dialectic between them and the owners of capital, artificially prevented from rising through the social structure? What happens to those who cannot, due to those who benefited from the very same system and the system itself, rise through the ranks and benefit as well? They are prevented from climbing the social ladder and kept at the minimum level of income that dissuades a change in the status quo.

Before continuing, I must point out a fundamental difference in premise that separates conservatives from liberals: both conservatives and liberals champion equality, but conservatives believe in starting equality while liberals believe in endpoint equality. Starting equality is the conception of equality that relates to the conditions at the beginning of a situation while endpoint equality is the conception that relates to the conditions at the end of a situation. In other words, conservatives think that individuals should start with equal resources while liberals think that individuals should end with equal resources, that people should get equal resources and that people should have equal resources respectively.

The problem with starting equality is that while the state may be able to give people the same advantages at the start, no two people are exactly the same. Forgetting things such as which country, sex, race and family you're born with, even tiny discrepancies in natural ability mean that some will be more likely to succeed financially while other will not in the same way that genetic variability determines which organisms are more likely (on average) to survive. These natural abilities are, however, morally arbitrary because they have not been chosen, in turn meaning that no one should be put at an advantage or disadvantage because of them.

As such, those who are economically disadvantaged due to factors outside of their control – such as one's family wealth, natural talents, and the suppression of wages by the entrepreneurial class – must be provided with a safety net in which any arbitrary individual would be comfortable. The standard of living provided by this safety net must be high enough to guarantee practical (and not simply theoretical) social mobility because otherwise people would remain disadvantaged and be economically and socially punished by morally arbitrary considerations.

The fact that socialism provides this kind of safety net, that it judges itself not by how well one can do, but by how bad one can do, is why I think it is morally superior to capitalism. To put it another way, while there is a higher possibility of being billionaire-rich under capitalism, there is a smaller chance of being dirt-poor under socialism. I simply cannot accept a scheme that allows for dirt-poor situations (even one), even if it guaranteed a large number of billionaire-rich situations because, removing myself from the knowledge of my current situation, there is the possibility that that single dirt-poor situation could be me.