The Egalitarian Plateau
• All political philosophers agree that humans are
morally equal – all enjoy an equal basic moral
status
• Question is the implications of this basic equality
• For the way political decisions are made
• For the way social positions are achieved
• For the way resources are distributed
Equality Before the Law
• The law should treat all citizens as equals
• Don’t have different laws for rich and poor etc.
• Implications for ‘access to justice’
• Legal aid
• Limits on private financing of lawsuits?
• Strict equality of expenditure on legal processes?
Political Equality
• Basic equality often used to justify democracy
• All should have right to vote, hold office, form
political parties, etc.
• ‘Deliberative democracy’ has social preconditions
• Adequate information
• Adequate education
• Lack of poverty
Political Equality
• Basic equality often used to justify democracy
• All should have right to vote, hold office, form
political parties, etc.
• ‘Deliberative democracy’ has social preconditions
• Economic inequality can lead to unequal political
influence
• Application to campaign finance:
• Limit or ban private funding for political parties
Distributive Equality
• Neither distributive inequality nor distributive
equality are ‘natural’
• Both are the result of economic and social
structures
• Ideals of equality require justifications
• But so do ideals that permit inequality
Equality of Opportunity
• Individuals should compete on fair terms for
social positions
• ‘Formal’ equality of opportunity – people’s
chances shouldn’t be determined by gender,
race, religion, etc.
• Ensures relevant competencies determine who
gets jobs
• But doesn’t say anything people’s relative chances
of acquiring those competencies
Equality of Opportunity
• ‘Conventional’ equality of opportunity – people’s
chances shouldn’t be determined by social
circumstances, family background etc.
• Prospects should depend on ability and effort
• Can justify opposition to private education and
policy of universal loans for university education
Equality of Opportunity
• ‘Conventional’ equality of opportunity – people’s
chances shouldn’t be determined by social
circumstances, family background etc.
• Why endorse this ideal?
• Stops people’s chances in life being determined by
factors outside their control
• People’s fate should be determined by their
choices, not their circumstances
Equality of Opportunity
• This argument for conventional equality of
opportunity extends to natural talent
• Leads to ‘radical’ equality of opportunity
• Doesn’t mean that jobs shouldn’t go to the most
qualified and competent
• But affects the rewards attached to such jobs
Choice-Sensitive Egalitarianism
• Two principles:
• Inequalities due to luck are unfair
• Inequalities due to choices can be fair
• Income and leisure case – no real inequality here
• Cake case – inequality of outcome but equality of
opportunity
• Treating people as equals means not letting them
be worse off due to luck and holding them
properly responsible for their choices
Choice-Sensitive Egalitarianism
• Policy implications?
• Actually quite hard to say
• Certainly more redistribution than we currently see
• High levels of inheritance tax
• ‘Conventional’ equality of opportunity also leads to
this
• A lot depends on the broader economic system
CSE is embedded within
Objections to CSE
• Dispute importance of choice/luck distinction
• Impossible to draw a sharp line
• Not so morally significant anyway
• Misses the real heart of egalitarianism – ‘social
equality’, equal standing as citizens, opposing
domination and oppression
• Distributive implications follow from this, rather
than being the starting point
• Too focused on individual shares
Rawls’s Theory of Justice
• Justice concerns the distribution of benefits and
burdens within a scheme of social cooperation
among equal persons
• ‘Original position’ thought experiment
• Principles chosen by parties who do not know their
place within society
• Basic intuition is an ideal of impartiality
Rawls’s Two (/Three) Principles
1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most
extensive total system of equal basic liberties
compatible with a similar system of liberty for all
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged
so that they are both:
a) attached to offices and positions open to all under
conditions of fair equality of opportunity
b) to the greatest expected benefit of the least
advantaged (the ‘difference principle’)
Policy Implications?
• More egalitarian welfare state capitalism?
• Maximising expectations of worst off group =
maximising prospects of those who work in
lowest skilled, least productive jobs
• Wage subsidy
• Guaranteed minimum income
Policy Implications?
• Fair value of the political liberties
• Preventing economic inequalities that lead to
political inequalities
• Fair equality of opportunity + difference principle
+ fair value of political liberties = ‘propertyowning democracy’
• Dispersing ownership of wealth and capital –
‘predistribution’
Property-Owning Democracy
• POD policies:
• High levels of taxation on inheritance and bequest
• Measures to block the influence of wealth on
politics (public funding; limits to private donations)
• Guaranteed minimum income / wage subsidy
• Government support for home-buyers
• Everyone being provided with savings
• Universal access to high-quality education
Final Reflections on Rawls
• Combines insights from proponents of both
social equality and distributive equality
• Doesn’t endorse choice-sensitive egalitarianism
Is Sufficiency Enough?
• What really matters is that everyone has enough,
not how much people have compared to others
• Sufficientarianism contains two claims:
• Positive Thesis – It’s extremely morally urgent that
everyone is brought above a sufficiency threshold
• Negative Thesis – It’s morally unimportant what
the distribution of resources is above the threshold
Is Sufficiency Enough?
• The value of some goods depends on how much I
have compared to you – education, money
• How do we define the threshold?
• Positive Thesis demands a fairly low threshold
• Negative Thesis demands a fairly high threshold
• Can any threshold make both claims plausible?
Why Accept Basic Equality?
• Presupposition of the moral point of view?
• Interest-based view
• What about animals?
• Why do all interests count equally?
Why Accept Basic Equality?
• Presupposition of the moral point of view?
• Interest-based view
• Capacity-based view
• Underinclusive
• Why doesn’t this lead to a scalar view?
• ‘Range property’ response
Why Accept Basic Equality?
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•
•
•
•
Presupposition of the moral point of view?
Interest-based view
Capacity-based view
‘High rank’ view
Christian view – image of God, loved by God
Summary
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•
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Equality before the law
Political equality
Equality of opportunity – ‘formal’, ‘conventional’
Choice-sensitive egalitarianism
• ‘Social equality’ critique
• Rawls: difference principle, property-owning democracy
• Sufficientarianism
• Why accept basic equality?
Equality and Inequality:
Perspectives from Political Theory
Paul Billingham
St Anne’s College and Department of Politics &
International Relations, Oxford
DCM Social Sciences stream, March 21st 2015