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Egalitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Bruce M. Landesman
Bruce M. Landesman*
Affiliation:
University of Utah
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Extract

Despite the popularity of equality as a political value, egalitarianism as a political theory has never, I think, been fully or successfully defended. I aim in this paper to begin the defense of such a view. The egalitarianism I have in mind has as its ideal a condition of equal wellbeing for all persons at the highest possible level of well-being, i.e. maximum equal well-being. Egalitarianism holds that society should be arranged so as to promote and maintain this state. Defending such a view involves, as I see it, three tasks. First, the ideal I have Just mentioned must be made clearer and more specific and its implications for the distribution of particular goods such as material possessions and liberty must be revealed. Second, positive arguments must be given in support of an equal distribution of well-being as a requirement of morality and Justice. And, thirdly, arguments to the effect that there are Just or Justified inequalities which seriously outweigh the claims of equality must be rebutted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 27 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1983

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References

1 This paper is intended to be the first of a series in which the other tasks I have mentioned are also undertaken.

2 McCloskey, H.J. ‘A Right to Equality? Re-Examining the Case for a Right to Equality,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 6 (1976) 632CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Rawls’ theory of Justice is, I think, an example of this view; what is special to him is the specification of the floor as that which maximizes the welfare of the worstoff group, and the Justification of inequalities not on the basis of the desert of those favored, but on the utility of rewarding them, that is, on the incentive value of inequalities in making everyone better off. See Rawls, John A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1971),Google Scholar especially Chapters II, Ill and V.

Other, though less clear, examples of this view can be found in Frankena, W.K. ‘The Concept of Social Justice,’ in Brandt, R. ed., Social Justice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1962) 1–29;Google Scholar Frankena, W.K. ‘Some Beliefs about Justice,’ in Goodpaster, K.E. ed., Perspectives on Morality (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1976) 93–106;Google Scholar Gregory Vlastos, ‘Justice and Equality,’ in Brandt, Social Justice, 31-72; and Rescher, N. Distributive Justice (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill 1966) Ch. 5.Google Scholar

4 Berlin, I. ‘Equality,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56 (1955-56) 301-26,Google Scholar reprinted in Blackstone, W.T. ed., The Concept of Equality (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Co. 1969) 14–34Google Scholar

5 ‘Equality,’ in Blackstone, 22, 24, 25: italics added

6 McCloskey, H.J. ‘Egalitarianism, Equality and Justice,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 44 (1966) 50–69;CrossRefGoogle Scholar ‘A Right to Equalityr, 625-42. Lucas, J.R. ‘Against Equality,’ Philosophy, 40 (1965) 296–307,CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted in Bedau, H.A. ed., Justice and Equality (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1971) 138-51;Google Scholar ‘justice,' Philosophy, 40 (1972) 229-48; ‘Against Equality Again,’ Philosophy, 42 (1977) 255-80. I think the ideal also plays some role in H.A. Bedau's more sensitive criticism in ‘Radical Egalitarianism,’ in H.A. Bedau, ed., Justice and Equality, 168-80.

7 I borrow and modify here some terminology used by Scanlon, Thomas in ‘Preference and Urgency,’ Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975) 655-69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I draw the distinction between subjective and objective theories roughly, but I think adequately for my purposes; a more careful account of the two theories is certainly possible.

8 Some may cavil at calling this a liberal theory. In his recent essay ‘Liberalism’ (in Hampshire, S. eel., Public and Private Morality [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1978) 133-43CrossRefGoogle Scholar), Ronald Dworkin claims that the subjective theory of the good is at the heart of liberalism. It seems to me, however, that liberalism also involves the goods I have Just mentioned and this content is difficult to Justify solely on subjective grounds. There is thus a tension in liberalism between the content and the Justification of the good. Recall here the tension between Mill's hedonism, on one hand, and his emphais on self-development and individuality, on the other hand. The first suggests a subjective, the second an objective, view of the good. Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures is an inadequate attempt at resolving this tension.

9 The distinction between equality and sameness of treatment is clearly made by William Frankena in ‘The Concept of Social Justice,’ 11. The failure to make the distinction between good and satisfactions characterizes and vitiates H.J. McCloskey's attacks on egalitarianism. Consider this passage frame ‘Egalitarianism, Equality and Justice,’ 55: treating people equally

would enjoin treating the weak and the strong, the stupid, the clever and the cunning as if they were identical. The deaf, dumb and blind would be treated in the same way as the person possessed of all his faculties …. This equality of treatment would lead to gravely unequal states of affairs, to inequalities of power, status, wealth, privilege, etc. (italics added)

This conclusion follows only if equal treatment is defined as similar treatment but is not implied by an egalitarianism sensitive to the good-satisfaction distinction. An apparent failure to make this distinction also occurs, surprisingly, in Ronald Dworkin's contrast between equal treatment and treatment as an equal. See ‘Liberalism,’ 126, and Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1978) 227. For Dworkin ‘equal treatmenr seems to mean similar or identical treatment, ‘the equal distribution of some opportunity or resource or burden.’ ‘Treatment as an equal,’ on the other hand, means the receipt of equal concern and respect and may sometimes dictate equal treatment, sometimes not. Consider now equal treatment construed in terms of equality of satisfactions. This does not fall under Dworkin's concept of equal treatment. Does it come under treatment as an equal? Perhaps it does but that category can also be construed to involve significant inequalities of treatment. What Dworkin gives us, in effect is a contrast between sameness of treatment and a vague notion of equal concern which can be construed in a number of different ways: the notion of equality of satisfactions or well-being is simply overlooked.

10 Rawls, 94. Rawls has clarified and reinforced this view in some of his essays that have appeared since A Theory of Justice. See ‘A Kantian Conception of Equality,' Cambridge Review, 96 (1975) 97; ‘Fairness to Goodness,’ Philosophical Review, 84 (1975) 553-4; and ‘Reply to Alexander and Musgrave,’ Quarterly Journal of Economics, 88 (1974) 641-3.

11 An obvious application of this point is the Justification of preferential treatment to overcome the liabilities caused by discrimination.

12 The point that Rawls’ exclusive emphasis on primary good overlooks special physical needs was made by Barry, Brian The Liberal Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1973) 55-6.Google Scholar My argument extends this criticism to the claim that social liabilities are also overlooked. In a later paper Rawls responds to a criticism of Barry's sort by saying that for the development of principles of Justice, he assumes that ‘everyone has normal physical needs so that the problem of special health care does not arise,’ ‘Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion,’ American Economic Review, 64 (1974) 142. I suppose he might also assume that the social liabilities I have mentioned don't exist either. This would be equivalent to assuming as the norm for principles of Justice the special conditions in which I have held that equality of good is appropriate. But it seems to me to be highly arbitrary to develop principles of Justice which overlook these crucial social and physical handicaps, and to say nothing about how society should respond to them.

13 I have found very valuable Thomas Scanlon's discussion of the intensity issue in his ‘Preference and Urgency.’ My conclusions, I think, are similar to his but he rejects the responsibility argument as sufficient. He holds that the argument presupposes an objective criterion of well-being according to which certain interests of persons are more urgent or important than others independent of how they feel about them; what matters is not the intensity but the urgency or importance of their desires. Scanlon's argument thus constitutes another set of reasons for maintaining equality of goods in the circumstances I have mentioned: such equality meets equally the equally important wants of persons, this being a more appropriate specification of equal well-being than equal satisfactions. Space does not permit me to show why I persist in the independent validity of the responsibility argument in the face of Scanlon's point, but I intend to treat this whole set of issues in detail in another paper.

14 A recent discussion which casts considerable doubt on the adequacy of subjective theories of the good based on satisfactions is Sen's, Amartya ‘Utilitarianism and Welfarism,’ Journal of Philosophy, 76 (1979) 463—89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Sen criticizes what he calls ‘welfarism': ‘the Judgment of the relative goodness of alternative states of af. fairs must be based exclusively on, and taken as an increasing function of the respective collection of individual utilities in these states’ (468). Welfarism in· volves the subjective theory of the good.

15 We have already seen some cases in which the distinction between particular and overall equality could have been used, e.g. giving those physically or socially deprived more resources than others is a particular inequality meant to promote overall equality. It is often assumed that the egalitarian must require particular equality for every good. Cf. J.R. Lucas:

We can secure Equality in certain respects between members of certain classes for certain purposes and under certain conditions; but never and necessarily never, Equality in all respects for all men for all purposes and under all conditions. The egalitarian is doomed to a life not only of grumbling and everlasting envy, but of endless and inevitable disappointment. ('Against Equality,’ 150)

The rhetorical force of this claim depends I think on assuming that the egalitarian must favor complete particular equality.

16 It is possible to approach the issue of equality by distinguishing different types of equality, such as economic, political, social, moral, etc., and treating each of these separately in terms of moral arguments held appropriate for the particular case. In doing this one resists the idea, central to my outlook, of an overall good or well-being of which the goods connected to the particular types of equality are elements; and one resists the idea that those goods should be distributed, at least to some extent, in terms of their effect on the overall good. Part of my aim in this section is to show that the intuitions of the ‘separatists’ can be accommodated within the ‘overall equality’ framework I put forward.

17 Cf. the distinction between personal and external preferences put forth by Ronald Dworkin in Taking Rights Seriously, 231-8, 275-6; and ‘liberalism,’ 134-6

18 I make this distinction roughly, in a way adequate for my purposes but I do not deny it needs to be qualified. Those holding the substantive view may not require complete equality of means, nor will those holding the formalistic account hold that means are entirely irrelevant. The standard defense of the formalistic account of liberty is Berlin's, Isaiah ‘Two Concepts of Liberty,’ Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969),Google Scholar Ch. Ill. See also Hayek, Freid rich The Constitution of Liberty (South Bend, IN: Gateway Editions 1960)Google Scholar Chapters 1-2. A well-known criticism of Berlins view is MacCallum's, Gerald ‘Negative and Positive Freedom,’ Philosophical Review 76 (1967) 312-34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A sensitive discussion of this issue, defending what I call the substantive conception of liberty, is Norman, Richard ‘Does Equality Destroy Liberty,’ in Graham, Keith ed., Contemporary Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982), 83–109.Google Scholar

19 If liberty is construed formalistically, then I think trade-offs with economic goods can be rejected on the sort of grounds of incommensurability appealed to for the rejection of trade-offs between economic goods and political liberty.

20 Cf. the discussion in J.R. Lucas, ‘Against Equality,’ 147-9

21 Rawls also distinguishes power from these other goods by leaving it off his list of primary goods. He thus denies that power is the sort of good a rational person would want whatever else he wants and this seems to be correct. See Rawls, ‘Fairness to Goodness,’ fn. 8, 542-3.

22 I have overlooked in this section the fact that not all who want power and for whom it would be a good can have it. So inequality of power can sometimes be an inequality of well·being. This is an instance of the general problem of scarcity which I simply do not treat in this paper.

23 Rawls, ‘Reply to Alexander and Musgrave,’ 641

24 The use of the word ‘validly’ is meant to rule out ‘gimmicked’ self-respect, as when a person comes to respect a self not worthy of respect because he is misinformed or deceived into thinking some characteristic of his is admirable. All sorts of examples of this abound - see especially Hill, Thomas ‘Servility and Self-Respect,’ The Monist, 57 (1973) 87–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar - and the question of when selfrespect is genuine is a difficult one.

25 Consider Lucas's remarks:

Two inequalities are better than one. It is better to have a society in which there are a number of pecking orders, so that a person who comes in low according to one can nevertheless rate highly according to another …. So long as we have plenty of different inequalities, nobody need be absolutely inferior. ('Against Equality Again,’ 268)

An egalitarian can agree with this though I find Lucas's language insensitive to the difference between real and spurious self-respect referred to in the previous footnote.

26 I say ‘make plausible’ because I am aware that my arguments need more development, a task incompatible with my overall aim in this paper of exhibiting the different parts of a plausible egalitarian perspective.

27 Suppose an ‘egalitarian’ were to think that there is nothing of value besides equality, not well-being, not liberty, not self-respect, etc. Finding nothing of value to distribute, he might then be led to the view that equality means nothing but identical or uniform treatment; this would be the only content he could give to equal treatment. This may explain how some get to the uniformity view of egalitarianism: they assume that the egalitarian can embrace only one value and needs no ‘independenr theory of the good.

28 I have tried to clarify in more detail the notions of absolute and prima facie obligation, and have distinguished different types of prima facie obligation, in ‘The Obligation to Obey the law,’ Social Theory and Practice, 2 (1972) 67-84.

29 I shall not discuss the important question of upon whom the obligation falls. I assume it falls on ‘society’ but it needs to be made clear wl'lat this means and what its implications are, and how this obligation accords with the obligations of particular individuals, in both public and private capacities. My overall view is that society needs to provide and maintain an egalitarian ‘basic structure’ within which individuals will be free to a-ct on nonegalitarian reasons. But this needs more clarification than I can give it here, though some of my remarks concerning what I call the ‘morality condition’ below are relevant. For the notion of a ‘basic structure’ see Rawls, A Theory of Justice, sections 2, 11–17,Google Scholar 41-43; and ‘The Basic Structure as Subject,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977) 159-65.

30 Cf. Dworkin, Ronald Taking Rights Seriously, xi.Google Scholar

31 The idea of the ‘absolute weight of Justice in regard to utility is found in ‘Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play,’ in Hook, S. ed., Law and Philosophy (New York: New York University Press 1964) 13–14.Google Scholar For the notion of lexical priority see A Theory of Justice, sections 8, 14, 46, 82.

32 For a discussion of the sort of desert considerations which may be containable within an egalitarian structure, see Feinberg, Joel ‘Justice and Personal Desert,’ in Doing and Deserving (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1970), Ch. 4.Google Scholar

33 For a discussion of necessary inequalities see H. Bedau, ‘Radical Egalitarianism; 175-6.

34 If a claim of necessity can overcome or suspend a right, then the reality condition could be seen as a special case of the rights solution of the morality condition; alternatively, it is a solution with respect to necessity analogous to the rights solution with respect to competing moral considerations.

35 The formulation is somewhat limited in scope because of two assumptions I have implicitly made. First, I have taken as my unit a single society, rather than the whole world; and secondly, I have tried to aim at picturing an egalitarian society at a single instant and have not considered what equality requires over time, especially in regard to future generations. The wider perspective involves both more people and fewer resources per capita and thus needs to be considered for a fully adequate treatment of the subject.

36 Rawls discusses the lexical difference principle in A Theory of Justice, 82-3. My version differs from his in that his is meant to cover both social inequalities and inequalities due to natural characteristics, while mine is intended to cover only the latter. The possibility of such a principle for social inequalities is discussed, and rejected below. I am indebted to Rolf Sartorius for suggesting the objections to my view that this section attempts to deal with.

37 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 7Google Scholar

38 Ibid., 78

39 See J.R. Lucas, ‘Against Equality,’ 148-9.

40 Note that in both these cases the expensive need is not a function of specially intense preferences, which I have argued, do not require special moral treatment.

41 I am indebted to the following for extremely valuable feedback on earlier versions of this paper: Margaret Battin, James Bogen, Leslie P. Francis, Charles Landesman, Richard Norman and Rolf Sartorius.