Equality of opportunity

Abstract

‘It is possible’, Tawney wrote ‘that intelligent tadpoles reconcile themselves to the inconveniences of their position, by reflecting that, though most of them will live and die as tadpoles and nothing more, the more fortunate of the species will one day shed their tails, distend their mouths and stomachs, hop nimbly on to dry land, and croak addresses to their former friends on the virtues by means of which tadpoles of character and capacity can rise to frogs.’¹ Tawney was speaking of the notion of equality of opportunity, which has played such a central role in the defense of old-style free-enterprise capitalism. Argue with a defender of this economic system and he would have told you in the past, as he will tell you now, that the inequalities of capitalism represent the working out of equality of opportunity.