The limits of redistribution and the impossibility of egalitarian ends.

AuthorJackson, Jeremy
PositionEssay

One of the many dangers of the modern egalitarian philosophy is that it hides its true objectives behind the guise of social justice. Adherents would insist that they reject the materialistic values of their free-market foes. However, not far below the surface commitment to relational equality and disruption of social hierarchy lies their true motive: material equality. The modern egalitarian is shifting from a focus on equality of relationships to a focus on equality in quality of life and more comprehensive measures of well-being (Arneson 2000). Whether the egalitarian desires to create policies that lead to equality in distribution of wealth or to equality in well-being, it does not matter. Both are impossible ends. Inequalities in wealth and well-being are due in part to inequalities in the distribution of social capital, which can be neither removed nor transferred from one individual to another. Thus, inequalities in wealth and well-being are the inevitable result of a system reliant on humans autonomously making decisions.

The Origins of Egalitarianism

Egalitarianism as an academic school of thought did not actually begin to concretize until the post-World War II era, although certain basic ideas go back as far as biblical times (equality of souls but not "earthly" equality) (Anderson 2014). Many of egalitarianism's roots are traceable to a particular understanding of the philosophy of altruism: the idea that a person has but two options in life--to sacrifice one's self in the service of others or to sacrifice others in the service of one's self (Kelley 1991, 2009). From this understanding of altruism, egalitarians derive a fundamental misunderstanding of "the zero-sum game." Because they mistakenly think of all goods and services as slices of a (finite) pie, they deduce that for one person to gain, another must lose. From this either-or conception of altruism, egalitarianism concludes that the only moral thing to do is to sacrifice one's self in the service of others (Kelley 1991).

Karl Marx himself was no egalitarian, yet many of his ideas have helped to shape modern egalitarianism. His focus on conflict and the exploitation of the subjugated worker, derived from his misconceptions of the labor market and the means of production, contributed to the mid- to late-nineteenth-century push for a shorter workday and higher wages (Anderson 2014). This push then fed into Otto von Bismarck's creation of the first modern welfare state in Germany in an effort to combat Marx's more revolutionary socialism. Anthony P. Mueller states that "social policy was foremost national policy and the social security system was primarily an instrument to lure the workers away from private and communitarian systems into the arms of the State" (2003).

By the early 1940s, which saw the publication of the Beveridge Report in the United Kingdom in 1942 and Franklin Roosevelt's suggestion of the "Second Bill of Rights" in 1944, contemporary crystallization and acceptance of the principles of "distributive justice" had taken place (Roosevelt 1944; Anderson 2014; "The Welfare State" 2016).

Philosopher John Rawls, another one of egalitarianism's most prominent historical standard bearers, was himself not strictly an egalitarian. However, his seminal work, A Theory of Justice (1971), is counted among the most foundational of contributions. In this volume, Rawls explains his most influential concept, the "difference principle," which "gives expression to the idea that natural endowments are undeserved" (Wenar 2012). Rawls felt (as do the so-called luck egalitarians) that just because a person is more intelligent or a naturally gifted musician or better looking or raised with better values, or something else, it does not entitle him or her to be better off than others. To Rawls, being more successful than others by using one's natural endowments (or by any other means) can be justified only if people who are worse off are made better off because of that success.

On the face of it and according to their own descriptions, egalitarians have differing ideas with respect to defining the concepts "justice" and "equality." However, all schools of egalitarian thought lead to the same ultimate goal: distribution.

Most egalitarians do not actually advocate equality of outcomes because most realize that a rigid insistence on the tall being made short or the intelligent being made less so would lead to disastrous consequences. What they want is what they consider to be "lair" distribution (Kelley 1991). So their basic notions of equality hinge on whether distribution is just or in the case of relational egalitarianism that societal relationships are just. However, before discussing the two broad categories of luck egalitarianism and relational egalitarianism, we must say a few more words regarding the concept of justice.

To many libertarians and classical liberals, the claim that a free market, an impersonal mechanism governed by the laws of nature, is either just or unjust is absurd. This claim is evidence of a complete misunderstanding of how the market functions. As Hayek aptly points out, such claims amount to nothing other than anthropomorphism (1998,62,75).

However, those who advocate free markets certainly cannot claim to have ever actually seen them. Much of the egalitarians' perceptions of injustice are the symptoms of the very root causes that such advocates devote the bulk of their work to exposing, refuting, and denouncing. This feature of the justice problem is twofold: on the one hand, egalitarianism incorrectly concludes that the corruption observed is simply the way free-market capitalism works; on the other hand, some market advocates inadvertently defend the corruption as though it were free-market capitalism. It is imperative to acknowledge that which is correctly perceived as unjust as such and simultaneously to point to its being but a symptom of corruption that is rooted in government intervention in the market. It must always be stressed that this corruption is not a product of free-market capitalism because it then becomes possible to illustrate the clear distinction between calls for justice that are grounded in reality and those that are founded on anthropomorphism.

Unfortunately, this distinction does not usually carry much weight in the view of the egalitarian, who frequently finds it completely irrelevant. As David Kelley (1991) points out, every form of "social justice" rests on the belief that individual ability is a social asset, a collective good. John Rawls wrote, "Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all" (1972, 62). On this point, Rawls and Hayek tend to agree. "The most common attempts to give meaning to the concept of 'social justice,'" states Hayek, "resort to egalitarian considerations and argue that every departure from equality of material benefits enjoyed has to be justified by some recognizable common interest which these differences serve" (1998...

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