ABSTRACT
The reinvention of sociology will also benefit from the mutual recognition of the fundamental equality of individuals that accompanies a redistributionist ethic. The contrast between the welfare state and bioliberalism is typically presented in terms of attitudes toward risk: The former supposedly aims to minimize risk, while the latter aims at least to accept risk, if not exactly to maximize it. However, given the ease with which bioliberals pre-empt negative life chances, this way of putting the matter is paradoxical. During the Cold War, and especially in the United States, the link between ‘socialism’ and ‘social science’ was treated as little more than an accident of spelling. Socialism’s inegalitarian roots remain latent in the Marxist motto: ‘From each according to their ability to each according to their need’. The statistical nature of genetic science provides the best chance for reviving the fortunes of both social science and socialism in the 21st century.
