People can be discriminated for or against on the basis of any factor related to their having or not having a certain predicate. Such a predicate may be a proper whole-predicate or a part-predicate. To discriminate for or against people as people is to discriminate between them on the basis of a personal whole-predicate. To discriminate between them on the basis of a physical part-predicate is, strictly speaking, not to discriminate between people but to discriminate between bodies. From the point of view of well-being or happiness-catenality discrimination on the basis of a physical characteristic such as ancestry ('blood', 'purity'), skin color, gender or sexual orientation is more serious than discrimination on the basis of a mental or personal characteristic such as belief in what a political or religious organization claims to be true, if the former type of discrimination causes more unhappiness than the latter. But it might also be the other way around. The gravity of an irrelevant distinction is not solely determined by the suffering or unhappiness it causes (or, if it is, there is more which counts). That is why the norm of inclusivity is an independent norm besides the principle of well-being. Apart from this aspect, the discrimination of people (not bodies) on the basis of a personal characteristic is in a way more serious than on the basis of a physical or body-related characteristic.

Discrimination and inequality in the socioeconomic field does not only concern the social and economic forms of discrimination and inequality which are, or have been, legal in certain countries, and to which groups are liable distinguished on the basis of race, gender, denominational doctrine or other characteristics. It also concerns the discrimination of groups with a particular politico-economic ideology. In politically highly exclusivistic societies every political party with a different ideology than the 'official' one is outlawed, or at least the kind of party that advocates a socioeconomic system which deviates from the established one to a substantial degree. Those whose political convictions deviate from the official ideology form, or did form, a special group often discriminated against, and often even legally excluded from civil equality. Also the alienation from these people causes ignorance and bias, and also in this way the arguments for the exclusion which resulted in that alienation are confirmed (possibly even accentuated by an unjustified militant behavior of members of the oppressed group). To exclude people on the basis of such political convictions is not just to exclude their bodies as in the case of familial, racial or sexual exclusivism, but to exclude them as persons. This is not to say that it would be easier in practise to establish that people's ideological convictions are irrelevant than to establish that their race or sexuality are irrelevant.

When we discussed thought-related subanthropic exclusivism it was already pointed out that it may be 'highly relevant' to make a distinction between systems of thought, while it is not relevant to make a distinction between the people who espouse those systems. (See 2.5.1.) But if, purportedly, 'all' people of one nation, ethnic group or race espouse one system of thought, and 'all' people who do not belong to that nation, ethnic group or race another, the distinction drawn between the systems of thought concerned may appear to be a distinction drawn between the nation, ethnic group or race concerned and all other people. Racialists and nationalists who are not capable of judging people free from their skin color or nationality are often not capable of judging a political, religious or other ideology free from the human beings adhering to it either. Yet, this does not mean that antiracialists and antinationalists have to display the same lack of critical insight. We can completely reject or thoroughly criticize an ideology even when it is only adhered to by people of one ethnic group or nation, provided that ethnicity or nationality are not the reasons for the rejection or objections. (That is why we shall not yield to the cheap immunization strategy of those who claim that everyone who attacks their group's beliefs must be a racialist, ethnocentrist or nationalist.)

What we are concerned with here is not even the rejection of ideologies for substantive reasons but the exclusion of people themselves because of their convictions, especially by the state. Countries where people are murdered, injured, tortured, imprisoned or spited because of their political ideas, for instance, are clearly antidemocratic in that they do not respect people's rights, and clearly exclusivistic in that they discriminate on the basis of political ideology adhered to. But even when no-one is murdered, injured, tortured, imprisoned or spited because of 'er political ideas such countries can still be antidemocratic in that they exclusively allow or disallow certain political parties to exist, or certain political opinions to be made, or not to be made, public. From the normative perspective there is no essential difference between the situation in which a majority of the citizens is in favor of a one-party state, or in which such a majority is in favor of outlawing one party. In a majoritarian democracy this criterion may be believed to be sufficient, but no majority can, normatively speaking, overrule the rights of people belonging to minorities, political or otherwise. If, and to the extent that, the people concerned respect other people's rights of personhood and do not practise or preach the violent overthrow of a democratic government that respects people's extrinsic rights, the state must respect their rights too, however repugnant their political (or other) ideas or behavior may be. Moreover, one must not discriminate against such people, that is, one must not treat them differently in a context which is not political, or which is political but irrelevant with respect to their convictions nevertheless.

Political authoritarianism is not the prerogative of antidemocratic minorities, it can also be exercised by so-called 'democratic' majorities. Rather than being the dictatorship, subordination and symbol imposition of one person or clique, it is then that of a democratic majority or a class comprising the majority of the population. Also in the latter case the state is used as an instrument for the exclusive furtherance of one political ideology among a number of two or more conflicting ones. But there are democrats who seriously hold that this is legitimate, granted that the group in question represents 51% or 67% of the population. Their majoritarian conception of democracy is closely related to the silly, majoritarian conception of culture or national culture. To explain this resemblance let us first look at the culture side of it.

Some people seem to be very sure that the citizens of a particular country, or the inhabitants of a particular region or the 'original' inhabitants of that region have a certain culture distinct from all other cultures. But if they are right at all, it can only mean that most citizens or inhabitants think, feel and behave in a certain way. Yet, if it were just the majority of a population which completely determined what 'the culture' of that population would be, many forms of art would not belong to that population's culture either. Going to the opera, for instance, would probably not be part of that country's or region's culture. And while there might be a particular language essential to that culture, most poetry in that language would probably not be part of it. This is the dilemma of majoritarian culture (that is, of the majoritarian conception of culture). Now, similarly, it is the dilemma of majoritarian democracy that if a majority could decide and do whatever it liked to decide or do, this would be antidemocratic insofar as such decisions or acts infringed other people's extrinsic freedom or treatment as equals.

The state should either represent all citizens or no-one at all; or when it represents a part of the citizens, other citizens should be represented, or have the same chance of being represented, another time. To constantly represent only a part of the citizens, for example, by propagating one political ideology among conflicting ideologies as the official one, and by using the phraseology and emblems of one political party as those of the state, may be democratic in a majoritarian sense, it certainly is not in an inclusive sense, unless the ideology concerned is that of ideological or thought-related, anthropic inclusivity itself.

Politico-economic ideologies are often aimed at certain (socioeconomic) classes of society, also when they purport to strive for a classless society. A distinction made in this connection is the one between the class which is or was, legally speaking, propertied and the class which is or was, legally speaking, propertyless (not seldom equated with the class of workers, or of workers, peasants and students). An inclusive ideology, on the other hand, must be aimed at all classes of society or at a classless society. Ideologies which are only useful for its adherents because they serve the exclusive interests of their own socioeconomic class have to be considered exclusivistic.

While the power of political ideologies waxes and wanes, it is the necessity of the state's politico-ideological and class-neutral inclusivity which invariably remains. Ideological totalitarianism cannot preserve the appearance of unity forever, for where citizens actually adhere to conflicting, political or other, beliefs, ideological oppression and discrimination must sooner or later lead to insurrections: sooner, later or, neutrally, at the right moment.