This essay has two main aims: firstly to examine all the various things that egalitarians could argue should be equally distributed, with particular consideration being given to the arguments for and against equality of resources; and secondly to argue that an egalitarian cannot give a convincing argument that anything should be distributed equally, because redistribution would conflict with people's liberty to do what they want with what they own.
There are a whole range of egalitarian views that it is possible for one to adopt, from a very minimal sharing out of initial resources, to an extensive system of continued redistribution. Baker favours the latter approach and begins:
"Imagine a country with no poverty. No one sleeps under bridges; no one looks through garbage for food. On the contrary: everyone has what you or I would call a decent home and a decent standard of living. There's no division into rich and poor, and anyone in a position of authority is democratically elected. Since people's work is meaningful and satisfying, they aren't compelled to do jobs they hate. Neither is anyone snubbed or patronised for belonging to the wrong class, or forced to bow and scrape. Women and men treat each other as equals; skin colour is irrelevant to your prospects in life; and you don't have to suffer for being Irish or Jewish or disabled or gay. That would be a society of equals."
Here Baker alludes to all the areas in which egalitarians have traditionally argued that there ought to be equality, and there are four main areas which I would like to discuss in more detail: equality of welfare; equality of opportunity; political/legal/social equality and equality of resources. I will examine the arguments for each of these in turn and argue that the most plausible arguments seem to be in favour of a theory of equality of resources, which I will evaluate in the latter half of my essay.
The idea of equality of welfare is intuitively appealing as it seems sensible for an egalitarian to aim ultimately for everyone to enjoy the same level of well-being. However, equality of welfare is not as straightforward or appealing as it at first seems, once it is examined more closely. It is important firstly to determine exactly what well-being consists in. There are two main types of theory concerning the goal of equalising welfare, namely conscious-state theories and success theories. The former hold that what is important is people's actual conscious feeling of well-being. But Dworkin objects that this view cannot deal adequately with the problem of expensive tastes. It is an indisputable fact that some people can gain more utility from certain resources than others can and it is also possible for people to cultivate expensive tastes. So it does not seem fair that, just because someone has acquired a taste for something that is expensive, they should be provided with more material goods than others. Success theories, on the other hand, maintain that what is important is that people's preferences are equally satisfied (this is clearly not the same as the conscious state theories, since one's preferences can be satisfied without one being aware that that is the case, or alternatively one may have a preference for something that, when actualised, does not yield the satisfaction that one expected). The problem with this view is that it is also unfair in as much as people may have unrealistic preferences which we would not be able to satisfy to the same extent as reasonable preferences. So Dworkin successfully shows that equality of welfare is both impractical, and undesirable since it is unjust.
Equality of opportunity is something that has been much discussed recently and, as in the case of equality of welfare, it seems appealing. The problem in discussions of equality of opportunity is that it is not always clear exactly what people mean by that, so I will firstly make a few distinctions clear. Nozick makes the point that bringing about equal opportunity could entail either worsening the situation of those currently favoured with opportunity, or improving the situation of those not currently favoured (although this also involves worsening some people's situation because it would mean allocating resources to those with less opportunity). So Nozick's conception of equality of opportunity seems to be that it is a positive measure to use resources to enhance the positions of those with less opportunity, and therefore is incompatible with his view of individual rights. However, Baker's view is that equal opportunity "leaves people free to move ahead of the pack if they want to." which of course he, holding strong egalitarian views, finds unacceptable. He questions the whole system of equal opportunity to become more wealthy than others, and argues that inequality in wealth needs to be dispensed with as well. Baker describes five degrees of equality of opportunity:
(1) Careers open to talents (which holds that jobs should be filled on merit alone).
(2) Fair equal opportunity (which holds that jobs should still be filled on merit alone, but we ought to treat people with the same talents in the same way from the start).
(3) Affirmative action (which entails encouraging people who have been discriminated against to apply for jobs).
(4) Reverse discrimination (which means giving positive preference to minority groups).
(5) Proportional equal opportunity (which states that the proportion of people from minority groups in a job should mirror the proportion of people belonging to that group in society as a whole).
I would argue that equality of opportunity is desirable as defined by the first three views above, but cannot be acceptable if it amounts to positive discrimination. I would argue against any view that stipulates any other criteria for getting a job other than merit. Positive discrimination seems to go against the very essence of equal opportunity, which is that race, sex and so on should be completely disregarded in selecting the best person for the job.
This leads me on to a brief discussion of political, legal and social equality (I will also consider sexual, racial, ethnic and religious equality in this section). Nagel argues that political, legal and social equality cannot be achieved unless equality of resources is achieved first because divisions such as those of class will not be broken down unless the difference in wealth is significantly reduced. It is obvious that a person with more money will have a greater opportunity for political influence, and will also be able to afford more legal aid and so on. So it seems as though support for this type of equality will rest on support for the equality of resources. In the case of sexual, racial, ethnic and religious issues, this seems to be more to do with tolerance of diversity than equality. The argument seems to be similar to that in favour of equality of opportunity in that people ought to have the same chances of achievement (or, to put it in a less ambiguous way, the same rights to non-discrimination) regardless of the social groups they belong to. It seems that someone who does not support the egalitarian position may nevertheless endorse arguments for sexual, racial, ethnic and religious toleration.
The last area I wish to discuss is equality of resources and, as we have seen in our earlier discussions, it is crucial for an egalitarian to establish convincing arguments for equality of resources in order to be able to support political, legal and social equality. I would argue that equality of resources is the most plausible of all the notions considered, but, in my discussion of Rawls' and Dworkin's arguments in favour of adopting such a position, I will raise some serious criticisms of their view and conclude that the egalitarian position cannot be adequately defended.
Rawls' Difference Principle holds that the distribution of wealth, income etc. in society should be equal, unless an inequality would make everyone better off. So social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
(a) reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage (The Difference Principle), and
(b) attached to positions and offices open to all.
According to the Difference Principle then, injustice for Rawls would be inequality which is not to the benefit of all. This to me seems to be an unjustified claim because I would argue that maintaining equality unless inequality is beneficial to all impinges upon people's liberty. I would agree with Nozick who maintains that no patterned distribution or end state theory can be right because it is always possible to upset the pattern by purely voluntary actions. His Wilt Chamberlain example illustrates that a state of equality cannot be maintained unless people's actions are strictly controlled, and this would be an infringement of their liberty. Rawls would claim that the resulting distribution in the Wilt Chamberlain case is unjust, but I fail to see how that can be so. I do not think Rawls argues convincingly as to how it is unjustified to act voluntarily so as to change the distribution of wealth. As Nagel points out:
"Opponents of the goal of equality may argue that if an unequal distribution of benefits results from the free interactions and agreements of persons who do not violate each other's rights, then the results are not objectionable."
Jonathan Wolff raises another objection to the Difference Principle on the grounds that there would be no incentive to work hard and achieve the best you can under an egalitarian set up.
Dworkin uses an example of some immigrants washed up on a desert island to illustrate his theory regarding equality of resources, and the first question addressed is what the best way to divide the resources on the island equally and fairly would be. He employs what he calls the 'envy test' to assess whether a chosen distribution is equal or not. This test basically holds that:
"No division of resources is an equal division if, once the division is complete, any immigrant would prefer someone else's bundle of resources to his own bundle."
The best way to ensure that the envy test is satisfied would be to establish a system whereby everyone is given an equal amount of tokens or money (which are not in themselves valuable) with which to acquire their fair share of the resources they would prefer. I would agree with the view that an auction is the only fair way to divide up initial resources so that they can be privately owned (at least in a relatively confined situation like that on the island).
Dworkin then turns to a consideration of what would ensure that the distribution of resources in a particular society stays equal, and here I would contest his arguments. He addresses the question:
"Would the auction produce continuing equality of resources if (as in the real world) talents for production differed sharply from person to person?"
The answer to this question seems to be 'no', as some will be able to make more efficient use of the resources they are given. Dworkin attacks the starting-gate view that "The point of equality of resources ...is that people should have the same external resources at their command to make of them what, given these various features and talents, they can."
However I would argue that he is misguided in assuming that one person's prosperity damaging another is undesirable. He argues that those with fewer talents, and hence a diminished opportunity for economic prosperity, ought to be compensated. But I do not believe that it is right to try to even out talents, because there will always be natural inequalities which affect people's lives, and some people will have worse luck than others when it comes down to the distribution of talents and abilities. But I do not believe that anyone has convincingly argued that just because this is the case, talents somehow become everyone's property. I do not find Dworkin's rejection of the starting-gate theory as convincing as it might be. He makes the claim that the starting-gate theory is contradictory in requiring resources to be shared out equally initially but then requiring laissez-faire afterwards. His criticism rests on the claim that:
"The moment when the immigrants first land is, after all, an arbitrary point in their lives at which to locate any one-shot requirement that they each have an equal share of available resources. If that requirement holds then, it must also hold on the tenth anniversary of that date."
But is this claim obvious? I would argue that it is not. The time when the immigrants first arrive on the island is not an arbitrary point in their lives, but rather a point when they are faced with resources that do not belong to anyone, which must somehow be divided up equally and fairly among everyone. This seems to me to be a totally different situation from the one, say ten years down the line, when everything on the island is owned by someone and it does not seem obvious that in the latter case material resources must be redistributed equally. Dworkin's arguments do not seem to apply to society now because our situation is vastly different to the inhabitants of the island and we cannot just pool all our resources and share them out again.
To conclude then, we have seen that equality of welfare is implausible; equality of opportunity can be incorporated into a system which still allows great inequalities, and hence seems compatible with a Nozickian-style theory of individual rights. Political, social and legal equality all seem to rely on equality of resources (as does positive equality of opportunity, as opposed to negative equality of opportunity). So resources can be shown to be what most egalitarians believe ought to be distributed equally. However, having examined the arguments for equality of resources, I hope that I have shown that even the arguments for this are not convincing, and that the reasons for adopting a Nozickian theory of rights and abandoning egalitarianism are strong.The crux of my argument against egalitarianism is that the distinction between positive rights and responsibilities and negative rights and responsibilities needs to be clearly made. I would argue that, whilst we have a duty not to interfere with other people so as to harm their interests (although this is permitted in cases such as economic competition), we do not have a duty to actively provide for people. So the idea of having a right to be treated equally is plausible if this simply means not being discriminated against because of irrelevant factors, but it does not entail a right to have the means to be able to compete on an equal footing with everyone else. As we have seen, people naturally have advantages and disadvantages both because of innate abilities and disabilities and also because of luck, but I hope I have shown that society cannot legitimately restore the balance, and that doing so would incur a serious infringement of individual rights.
© Anne Witton 1997. No part of this article may be copied without my permission.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, J Arguing for Equality Verso, 1987
Dworkin, R 'What is Equality?' in Philosophy and Public Affairs 10, No.4 (1981) Part 1: Equality of Welfare and Part 2: Equality of Resources
Honderich, T (ed) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Oxford University Press, 1995
Nagel, T Mortal Questions Cambridge University Press, 1979
Nozick, R Anarchy, State and Utopia Blackwell, 1974
Rawls, J A Theory of Justice Oxford University Press, 1972
Wolff, J An Introduction to Political Philosophy Oxford University Press, 1996
