Equality Renewed

Justice, Flourishing and the Egalitarian Ideal

Christine Sypnowich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315458311
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How should we approach the daunting task of renewing the ideal of equality?

In this book, Christine Sypnowich proposes a theory of equality centred on human flourishing or wellbeing. She argues that egalitarianism should be understood as seeking to make people more equal in the constituents of a good life. Inequality is a social ill because of the damage it does to human flourishing: unequal distribution of wealth can have the effect that some people are poorly housed, badly nourished, ill-educated, unhappy or uncultured, among other things. When we seek to make people more equal our concern is not just resources or property, but how people fare under one distribution or another. Ultimately, the best answer to the question, 'equality of what?, ' is some conception of flourishing, since whatever policies or principles we adopt, it is flourishing that we hope will be more equal as a result of our endeavours.

Sypnowich calls for both retrieval and innovation. What is to be retrieved is the ideal of equality itself, which is often assumed as a background condition of theories of justice, yet at the same time, dismissed as too homogenising, abstract and rigid a criterion for political argument. We must retrieve the ideal of equality as a central political principle. In doing so, she casts doubt on the value of focussing on cultural difference, and rejects the idea of neutrality that dominates contemporary political philosophy in favour of a view of the state as enabling the betterment of its citizens.

Part III

Equality and Living Well

6 What Equality Is and Is Not

In liberal democratic societies many people, philosophers and non-philosophers alike, will attest to a belief that equality is a good thing, or at least that inequality is bad. However, what we might call the ‘equality consensus’ is less clear about what equality means. Pretty much everyone will uphold the equal moral worth of individuals. But should people simply be accorded equal legal and political rights? Or should they also be made equal, in the sense of equal in their income, material resources or standard of living? Most would answer ‘yes’ to the first question, but the second provokes different responses. On the one hand, libertarians contend that we should treat people as equals by intervening only to stop those who threaten to interfere with others’ equal rights to freedom. Respect for equality requires that we not redistribute property or income, as that would constitute interference in individuals’ equal liberty. Radical egalitarians, on the other hand, believe that treating people as equals involves the redistribution of wealth, whether it be to achieve strict equality, to bring everyone to a level of sufficiency, or to improve the position of the worst off. They insist that material deprivation is at odds with the equality consensus.

In this chapter I defend the aim of material equality in light of three conceptual challenges that reflect the fundamental libertarian objection that the redistribution of wealth unjustly invades individual freedom. The first challenge is that egalitarianism is mired in a commitment to levelling down, where equality of resources is irrationally preferred over any other distribution even if it reduces the resources available to the better off at no benefit to the worse off. The second is the problem of talent; here it is charged that egalitarian distribution implies effacing, ignoring or even thwarting people’s special capacities. The third is the matter of partiality, where promoting equality is taken to mean the elimination of any special regard the individual has for her own interests or those of particular others.

Levelling down, talent and partiality are large issues, each meriting sustained analysis; I bring them together here in order to show how they can all be illuminated by a flourishing approach to equality. The discussion will reveal, first, that equality is important precisely because of its effect on well-being, and second, that the egalitarian ideal is best served by aiming for equality in wellbeing, or human flourishing, rather than equality of goods or resources. Conceiving of equality in this way will enable us to see the truth in egalitarian views that are sometimes superficially dismissed as implausible.

Levelling Down

The idea of equality of distribution, taken strictly, dictates that all individuals have the same amount of whatever it is that is to be equalised. On this view, equality entails a uniform pattern in which each person possesses as much as every other person and so we can arrive at an equal distribution by removing wealth from some to bring everyone down to the same level. But to attain equality by ‘levelling down’ is obviously problematic. Individuals seek to maximise their own resources, or ensure that their resources are not below some level of adequacy. But so long as others’ shares do not affect one’s own, it is unclear why one should care about them. Ultimately the rationale for strict equality looks like an aesthetic ideal of symmetry that is divorced from human interests, an odd goal for politics.¹

The libertarian Nozick is famously critical of the redistribution of wealth for focussing on patterns of distribution, arguing that justice requires leaving individuals free to acquire wealth, however unequal the results.² Such libertarian squeamishness may seem beside the point, since the critic of levelling down objects to a particular pattern, strict equality, not egalitarian patterns in general. Strict equality nonetheless invites the well-known libertarian view that egalitarianism is simply a ‘politics of envy,’³ where the freely acquired property of some is taken away to sate the jealousy of others. Equality might leave the rich worse off, but it can leave everyone worse off too. An unequal distribution of resources that accords most citizens a good standard of living and a minority an excellent one is surely preferable to an equal distribution where all have an equal but paltry share. The horrors of strict equality are famously depicted in Vonnegut’s story, ‘Harrison Bergeron,’ where a dystopian society eliminates advantage by forcing the beautiful to don masks, the athletic to be encumbered by weights, and the intelligent to receive radio signals that distract them.⁴ Those who insist on strict equality seem motivated by a dog-in-the-manger attitude that resents others’ benefits, an attitude widely denounced by philosophers as irrational.

Consequentialist reasons for rejecting levelling down focus on how it produces a decline in overall wealth without necessarily improving the situation of the worst off. Raz contends that strict equality lacks content, if it is concerned only that people have the same amount of x. We need an account about the value of x, in order to be concerned to redistribute it, and once we have that account, it is not clear why equality per se matters. Poverty, he argues, is bad for a person; thus there is something perverse about finding a society with widespread poverty (which is thus equal) superior to the society with pockets of poverty. Indeed, the perversity of equality means that the egalitarian will be moved to adopt policies of waste, since if pockets of poverty cannot be eliminated, then strict equality requires destroying concentrations of wealth to ensure equal poverty.⁵

Opposition to levelling down is such that much of the egalitarian literature repudiates strict equality, taking the view that egalitarianism is concerned with disadvantage rather than exactly equal distributions. The point was originally put by Frankfurt, who devised the idea of sufficiency as an alternative to equality. ‘Sufficientarians’ contend that what matters is that people not be impoverished, something missed in the folly of levelling down.⁶ Frankfurt’s deontological argument stresses that what is important from the moral point of view is whether everyone has enough, not whether everyone has the same.⁷ Egalitarian redress attends not to the fact that some have less money than others, but the fact that ‘those with less have too little.’⁸ The moral wrong is not inequality, but the deprivation consequent upon inequality, and that is what motivates human compassion and efforts at amelioration.⁹ Nagel contends that according to the principle of universal impartial concern, we should favour the worse off over the better off, but not begrudge ‘advantages to the better off which cost the worse off nothing.’ Strict equality, in contrast, means taking the side of some against others without improving their position.¹⁰

Building on Frankfurt’s idea of sufficiency, Parfit coined the idea of giving priority, not to equality as such, but to improving the lot of the worst off, however costly that might be. This ‘non-relational egalitarianism’ refuses cost-benefit analyses; Parfit argues that benefiting people matters more the worse off people are, even if the worst off are harder to help.¹¹ This ‘prioritarianism’ is striking for its unfettered focus on individuals and how they are doing, pushing aside such considerations as their relative standing or what it would take to get them to do better.¹² It represents a more radical version of Rawls’s argument that inequality is prima facie illegitimate, but permissible if it mitigates the situation of the disadvantaged.

In sum, there are consequentialist and duty-based reasons for rejecting levelling down conceptions of equality. The consequences of strict equality are bad insofar as they worsen some people’s situations without improving others, and there is nothing fair about undermining some people’s standing without improving the standings of others. Strict equality fails by the criterion of Parfit’s ‘person-affecting claim’: equality is only important if it affects individuals’ rights, freedoms, happiness or dignity, but a policy of strict equality, in contrast, can mean levelling down to achieve a symmetrical pattern to no particular person’s benefit.

All this might suggest we should abandon the concept of equality. Putting the debate in terms of a choice between an irrational preoccupation with levelling down or a focus on the elimination of the deprivation of worst-off individuals suggests equality as such is beside the point. Yet dispensing with substantive conceptions of equality undermines an ideal that animated egalitarian political arguments in the first place, including arguments for the elimination of deprivation. To see what is at stake in this ideal, let’s take another look at levelling down.

Equality and Wellbeing

Strict equality can be defended on deontological grounds: equality is just, even if it fails to produce any good consequences. Temkin argues that inequality is bad even if it is not bad for any particular person. Equality, like retribution, has value when no one derives any wellbeing; thus wrongdoers should be punished despite there being no people for whom it matters (e.g. the punishment is not known, or the wronged community ceases to exist). Temkin contends that inequality is always in some sense unfair, and thus can prompt a sense of injury; it is unfair that some are blind and others are not, even if we should not therefore blind the sighted. ‘Equality is not all that matters. But it matters some.’¹³ On this view, equality should be given prima facie, if not overriding, importance. Cohen contends that arrangements of strict equality are always just, though other considerations might outweigh justice. Equality is the baseline just position, but there might be justice-mitigating considerations such as the Pareto-efficiency criterion where inequality is permitted if one or more persons improve their situation without worsening the situation of anyone else.¹⁴

Putting the problem in terms of a trade-off between the justice of equality and other values enables us to see, contra Parfit, the persisting value of equality. The pitfall of the trade-off approach, however, is that equality becomes an abstract, special good, isolated from, and defeated by, other values, and thus far removed from considerations of human wellbeing. In cases of conflict, equality therefore risks consistently losing out to other human goods. If equality is to survive as an ideal of distributive justice, it must be connected to the wellbeing of persons.¹⁵ Casal astutely notes that once we satisfy the criterion of sufficiency (or priority), so that deprivation is ameliorated and all have enough, there may still be added value in achieving equality. The truth of the positive thesis, that people should not be impoverished, does not demonstrate the negative thesis, that no other distributional requirements are necessary. It is not ‘a matter of indifference how to distribute benefits in excess of those required to attain sufficiency.’¹⁶ Rather, equality co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Human Flourishing and the Century of Equality
• Part I Challenges to Equality
• Part II Liberal Revisionism
• Part III Equality and Living Well
• Conclusion: A Utopia for Mortals
• Bibliography
• Index