natural level in society, the upper classes will, by definition, have greater

capacity than the lower. 2

We are not told precisely what principle of biology guarantees that
biologically inferior persons cannot seize power from biologically superior
ones, but it is not logic that is at issue here. Such statements as Herrnstein's
are meant to convince us that although we may not live in the best of all
conceivable worlds, we live in the best of all possible worlds. The social
entropy has been maximized so that we have as much equality as possible
because the structure is essentially one of equality, and whatever inequalities
are left over are not structural but based on innate differences between
individuals. In the nineteenth century this was also the view, and education
was seen as the lubricant that would guarantee that the race of life was run
smoothly. Lester Frank Ward, a giant of nineteenth-century sociology, wrote,
"Universal education is the power which is destined to overthrow every
species of hierarchy. It is destined to remove all artificial inequality and
leave the natural inequalities to find their true level. The true value of a
newborn infant lies in its naked capacity for acquiring the ability to do. "3
This was echoed 60 years later by Arthur Jensen at the University of
California, who wrote about the inequality of intelligence of Blacks and
whites: "We have to face it, the assortment of persons into occupational
roles simply is not fair in any absolute sense. The best we can hope for is
that true merit given equality of opportunity acts as a basis for the natural
assorting process. "4
Simply to assert that the race of life is fair and that different people have
different intrinsic abilities to run it is not enough to explain the observations
of inequality. Children seem, by and large, to acquire the social status of
their parents. About 60 percent of the children of "blue collar" workers
remain "blue collar," while about 70 percent of "white collar" workers'
children are "white collar. " But these figures vastly overestimate the
amount of social mobility. Most people who have passed from "blue collar"
to "white collar" jobs have passed from factory production-line jobs to
office production-line jobs or have become sales clerks, less well paid, less
secure, doing work just as numbing of the soul and body as the factory work
done by their parents. The children of gas station attendants usually borrow
money, and the children of oil magnates usually lend it. The chance that