Theories of Equality: A Critical Analysis

Every plausible political theory has the same ultimate value, which is equality. They are all 'egalitarian theories'....Some theories, like Nazism, deny that each person matters equally. But such theories do not merit serious consideration.
Kymlicka 1990; 1989

Egalitarian theories abound. Almost every month a new book or article appears defending some version of the thesis that justice consists in treating people equally. Articles on civil rights, affirmative action, and human rights proceed from egalitarian assumptions. Civil rights legislation, affirmative action policies, national health care proposals, liberal immigration policies, and protests against capital punishment are typically based on egalitarian ideas of justice. As the quotation from Kymlicka indicates, the question in contemporary political theory is not whether egalitarianism is correct but which version is correct. Dworkin (1983, p. 24) claims that contemporary theories have reached the "abstract egalitarian plateau" on which all political discussion must now take place. Kymlicka (1990, p. 4) notes that the idea "that the government treat its citizens with equal consideration; each citizen is entitled to equal concern and respect...is found in Nozick's libertarianism as much as in Marx's communism." As though this were enough to condemn all nonegalitarian theories, Kymlicka points out that Nazism was an inegalitarian theory. This may be seen as an argumentum ad nazium: if the Nazis did or believed x, x must be bad or false. In this essay I focus on the variety of uses of the concept "equality." My thesis is that current uses of the concept either attempt to derive substantive conclusions from formal notions or are subject to weighty objections. Rightly understood, equality is a triadic relationship:

Two things A and B are equal with respect to some property P.

When the concept has a normative dimension, as in the case of Aristotle's notion of justice, the relationship is quadratic:

If A and B are equal with respect to P, they deserve equal amounts of D.

There is no such thing as pure equality, equality per se.

All the interesting theories focus on identifying the right property, answering the question, "Equal What?" In my critique I note objections to egalitarian claims.

My intention is not to defend inegalitarianism, except by suggesting that versions of it are not as wicked as philosophers like Kymlicka think. Inegalitarian versions of utilitarianism, perfectionism and libertarianism may emerge as more adequate political theories, but to show that they do calls for a separate paper. We can divide egalitarian theories into two types: formal and substantive. Formal equality states a formula or policy but includes no specific content. Substantive equality identifies a criterion or metric by which policies are to be assessed. Some egalitarians contend that the formal constraints generate a set of substantive egalitarian policies. I will treat formal equality in Section I and substantive equality in Section II. I will conclude (Section III) with a brief discussion of the rhetorical uses of the word "equality."

I. FORMAL EQUALITY

1. Formal Equality

"Equals are to be treated equally and unequals unequally." The view is first stated in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Book V) as a definition of "justice." "Injustice arises when equals are treated unequally and also when unequals are treated equally." If two things are equal in some respect, then if we treat one of them one way based on that respect, it is wrong to treat the other differently based on that same respect. When applied to distributive justice, the formula of formal equality enjoins giving equals equal shares and unequals unequal shares. Treat like cases alike, different cases differently. The following formula of proportionality illustrates the relationship:

A has X of P = A should have X of Q

B has Y of P = B should have Y of Q

That is, if a person A has X units of property P

and person B has Y units of P,

the ratio between A's and B's share is X:Y.

Aristotle's formula does not provide a substantive notion of justice, and he, as an inegalitarian, thought merit was the property according to which people should be rewarded. Some philosophers seem to believe that this formal notion is sufficient for a theory of moral egalitarianism. For example, Sterling Harwood and Anita Silvers write: Egalitarianism is a moral position unified around the basic idea that we must treat relevantly similar cases identically or equivalently, thereby avoiding the injustice of inequitable action toward others. One derivative principle on this view is that we should accept our fair share of burdens in society and avoid taking more than our fair share of benefits at the expense of others who have received less than their fair share.... And still another is that we should not discriminate against people based on such characteristics as race or sex, which are irrelevant to their worth or beyond their control; here, the fundamental notion is that for most purposes, people are of equal worth and that any unequal treatment always needs to be justified (1992, p. 367).

If I understand this passage, the writers are arguing from a formal principle to a normative conclusion. The argument may be outlined thusly: Premises:

1. Treat relevantly similar cases identically or equivalently (central premise).

[2. Possibly other supporting premises not specified.] Conclusions:

3. You are thereby avoiding injustice.

4. You ought to bear your fair share of the burdens in society.

5. You ought not discriminate on the basis of race or sex, which are irrelevant to people's worth and beyond their control.

The problem is this. If justice is interpreted formally,

(3) follows from

(1) trivially, for it is simply a tautology that injustice consists in not treating "relevantly similar cases identically or equivalently." But if

(3) is interpreted substantially, then it does not follow from

(1) alone. It follows from some yet unspecified premise

[2], which could just as well be traditionally inegalitarian metrics of ability, productivity, usefulness to society, race or gender. So, even if we grant Harwood and Silvers additional unspecified premises, the first and central premise isn't doing any of the substantive work, as the authors would have us believe. If the conclusions are warranted, they flow from the supporting premises alone. Formal equality is not unique to egalitarians. It is a principle of consistency accepted by every moral theory. Indeed, every rule-governed system incorporates the principle, for it is implied in the very idea of a rule that it be followed in relevantly similar cases. Conclusion

(4) that "you ought to bear your fair share of the burdens in society," if interpreted formally, also follows tautologically from

(1), but it gives us no information as to what is a fair burden. If the concept of fairness is to do any work, it needs defining. A rule specifying that people of low IQ should 100 serve their intellectual superiors would qualify as satisfying the formal notion of bearing a "fair share of the burdens in society." Nor does this principle entail

(5) "that we should not discriminate against people on such characteristics as race or sex." So far as the formal principle alone goes, we could discriminate against people on the basis of their race or gender - so long as we were consistent in doing so.

I would be treating children under 5 equally if I killed all of them; I would be treating sick people equally if I gave each of them the same dose of arsenic. Harwood and Silvers are importing other moral ideas into their notion of equal treatment, and these are doing all the work. But even here, when they aver that discrimination on the basis of race or sex is unjust, they seem mistaken. Race and sex may indeed be relevant to treatment. In picking someone to act the part of Fanny Lou Hamer, Jackie Robinson or Martin Luther King Jr. in a movie, race and gender are surely relevant traits. If sex and race are sometimes relevant, however, antidiscrimination principles don't follow from a purely formal principle of equality. As part of their grounds for enjoining nondiscrimination on the basis of race or sex, Harwood and Silver assert that "for most purposes, people are of equal worth and that any unequal treatment always needs to be justified."

Overlooking the fact that equal worth could be negative or zero, the authors here take it for granted that the worth we have is positive. This is a common assumption, which is seldom scrutinized, but the opposite seems the case. For most purposes--be that moral integrity, ability to govern a town or nation, the ability to sell insurance, teach physics, practice medicine or play basketball--people have vastly unequal worth. Finally, Harwood and Silvers seem mistaken in making the fact that something is "beyond [one's] control" a reason for not using it as a criterion for distinction. Our genetic endowment is beyond our control, yet we certainly seem justified in discriminating between severely retarded and highly intelligent people in providing types of education. The shapes and sizes of our heads are beyond our control, but we are justified in giving people different sized hats based on those features.

The arguments of Harwood and Silvers [Professor Harwood has responded] are a good example of the ease with which even competent philosophers can overplay the role of formal equality in their zeal to defend substantive egalitarianism. As I will show, this slide from formal equality to substantive equality is very common. In itself, formal equality is innocuous. Inegalitarians can accept it. Indeed, Aristotle, who believed in slavery, and Nietzsche, who believed that supermen were of vastly more value than the average human being, both subscribed to formal equality. In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche asserts that those belonging to the spiritual aristocracy are equal and should treat each other, though not the masses, as such. All morality consists in universalizing the principles you choose to live by. You are free to choose whatever principles you like, provided you are prepared to live by them and prescribe that others do also. The principle of formal equality reduces to mere consistency of treatment. Being contentless, it cannot serve as a sufficient principle of justice. It is simply a condition for consistent application of any idea or rule (viz. like cases should be treated similarly). It is applicable to classifying species of plants and animals, colors (if I call this dress red, I ought to call anything similarly colored 'red'), crimes, restaurants, exams, buildings, and diseases. Perhaps we should call this pseudo-equality, the Principle of Consistency. I will refer to it by that name henceforth.

2. Consideration of Interest Equality

Equal consideration of all people's interests (extended to animals in the case of Peter Singer, 1975). R. S. Peter and Stanley Benn (1959), Monroe Beardsley (1960), E. F. Carritt (1947), and James Rachels (1990) are among the many who interpret egalitarianism in this manner. Carritt (1947, p. 156) writes, "Equality of consideration is the only thing to the whole of which men have a right, [and] it is just to treat men as equal until some reason, other than preference, such as need, capacity, or desert, has been shown to the contrary." What does it mean to give each person's interests "equal consideration"? The locution seems a shorthand for a larger, unspecified theory. Taking the phrase at face value, we have the problem of ranking interests and adjudicating conflicts of interests. The Equal Consideration Doctrine presupposes a system of rules, principles, or standards. It tells us that we must consider each claim equally, but it doesn't tell us how to rank or weight competing claims. Should we rank claims on the basis of need, preference, strength of desire, welfare, wealth, objective good, or some other criterion? It is one of these substantive standards that is doing all the work - with formal consistency serving merely as a constraint.

Moreover, the principle doesn't tell us how to adjudicate conflicting interests. If I help my child with her math homework, do I have a similar duty to help the neglected orphan child across town with? Both children have interests in mastering math, but suppose I can only satisfy one or the other? Even if the orphan has a greater interest, I need not act on it. Furthermore, the principle of equal consideration of interest is, as it stands, consistent with sadism: consider everyone's interest on an equal footing and do whatever one can to frustrate it. It is also consistent with exploitation. If Simon Legree has an interest in having Tom for a slave, that interest merits equal consideration with Tom's interest in being free. So equal consideration of interests seems to reduce to "recognize similar interests as similar" or "assign similar interests similar weight." It imposes no significant action-guiding rules. Perhaps we might strengthen this principle by applying the Jamesian principle: Every desire (or need) should be satisfied unless there is a reason not to satisfy it. Call this the Presumption of Desire Principle.

Its emphasis is on satisfying desires, not on substantive equality, but we still have all the problems mentioned above. If Simon Legree's desire that Tom be a slave is stronger than Tom's desire to be free, we have no grounds for freeing Tom. Even if Tom's desire for freedom is stronger, Simon's desire together with his wife, Mary's desire to have Tom as a slave, might outweigh it. If Tom's desire still exceeds the sum of their desires, Simon might drug Tom, so that Tom loses his love of freedom. Now Simon can say that the sum of their preferences justifies slavery. Referring to the equal consideration of interests thesis, John Rawls (1971, p.507) calls this procedural equality. "Departures from equal treatment are in each case to be defended and judged impartially by the same system of principles that hold for all; the essential equality is thought to be equality of consideration." But Rawls goes on to level a cogent criticism against this type of equality: [Procedural equality] is nothing more than the precept of treating similar cases similarly applied at the highest level, together with an assignment of the burden of proof. Equality of consideration puts no restrictions upon what grounds may be offered to justify inequalities. There is no guarantee of substantive equal treatment, since slave and caste systems...may satisfy this conception. The real assurance of equality lies in the content of the principles of justice and not in these procedural presumptions. The placing of the burden of proof is not sufficient. But, further, even if the procedural interpretation imposed some genuine restrictions on institutions, there is still the question why we are to follow the procedure in some instances and not others (1971, p. 507).

3. The Presumption of Equality

Related to the Equal Consideration Doctrine is The Presumption of Equality, which holds that it is always right to treat persons equally unless a reason is found for treating them unequally. That is, there exists a presumption in favor of equal treatment and against unequal treatment. We have noted this principle (above) in Harwood and Silvers. The classic rendition is given by Isaiah Berlin: The assumption is that equality needs no reasons, only inequality does so....If I have a cake and there are ten persons among whom I wish to divide it, then if I give exactly one tenth to each, this will not, at any rate automatically, call for justification; whereas if I depart from this principle of equal division I am expected to produce a special reason. It is some sense of this, however latent, that makes equality an ideal which has never seemed intrinsically eccentric, even though extreme forms of it may not have been wholly acceptable to either political thinkers or ordinary men throughout recorded history (1961, p. 132).

It is not clear that Berlin is correct here. The cake example may not be the best, for it relies on the inductive generalization that people have relatively similar capacities or appetites and that they can trade cake for other goods. But if the cake were small and we knew that sufficiently large portions would save the lives of hungry people, we might cut only five pieces, saving five persons while allowing the other five to die, rather than give all ten persons insufficient pieces. If we knew that some of the people who would eat the cake were small children with small appetites and some large hungry men, we might cut different sized pieces. Berlin might respond, "Suppose we knew absolutely nothing about these people (except that they were human beings), wouldn't we divide the cake equally?" Perhaps, but one never knows absolutely nothing, and if it turns out that such global ignorance is possible, the presumption of equality imposes no limits on what considerations are allowed to rebut it. If I say that I should get a bigger piece of cake because I am a White Sox fan, nothing in the "presumption of equality" principle can prove me wrong. It is an empty shell. In a sense, Berlin is correct. Inequalities are arbitrary unless a reason is given for them, but the same is true for equalities. Any distribution of goods or treatment, equal or unequal, is arbitrary if no supporting reason is given. There is no reason to presume equality over inequality. I turn next to two types of equality that bear stronger resemblance to substantive equality, and so are often thought to be such, but seem, upon analysis, better classified as versions of formal equality.

4. Legal Equality

We must all adhere to the same laws and be held accountable for our behavior. Likewise, we all have some of the same legal rights: to freedom, legal representation, and the like. This has little or nothing to do with personal equality, resource equality, or moral equality. The idea of the law is to deal with people under general rules which the magistrate applies impartially. The law must be applicable to all, conferring benefits or burdens according to general prescriptions and prohibitions. Equality before the law simply means that the law should be applied impartially. If persons A and B both break Law L which carries the penalty P, A and B should (minus mitigating circumstances) pay the same penalty. What Law L is, whether it is just or not, is irrelevant to the idea of equality before the law. Recall Anatole France's (1894) quip, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the street, and to steal bread." A law that makes it permissible to serve only white patrons at your restaurant is just as much a law as one which prohibits you from discriminating on the basis of race. If this is so, then the idea of equality before the law can be reduced to the formal principle of treating equals equally and unequals unequally. It is not an egalitarian theory at all.

5. Moral Equality

Every person is equally a moral agent, of equal inherent worth, and so equally a subject of the moral order. Everyone must adhere to the same moral rules and be held equally accountable for his or her behavior. Ronald Green (1988) asserts that such egalitarianism is the presupposition for morality itself, the "precondition of moral discourse and the necessary first assumption of any moral system, whatever its resultant values." He continues: If we regard morality in minimal terms as a rational means of arbitrating social disputes, a means whose principal alternative is coercion or force, then it is axiomatic that an equal role in the choice of moral principles must be accorded to all parties capable of this means of settlement (1988, p. 140).

Criticisms can be levelled against both the general thesis that substantive equality is a precondition for morality tout court and Green's specific thesis that equality is a necessary assumption for resolving conflicts of interest by rational means. Regarding the general thesis, people may not be equally able to engage in moral deliberation, understand the moral rules, exercise their will towards moral ends, or act according to the moral rules (even if they want to). Green supposes that everyone has the same moral worth as everyone else, the idea of personal equality or personal equal worth (12 below). But this, as we noted in (1), seems false. Some people are saints, some are scoundrels and some are neither. Regarding Green's more particular thesis that the notion of equality is necessary for morality as a rational means for resolving conflicts of interest: this seems too narrow a view of morality. Although resolving conflicts of interest is one goal of morality, it is not the only one. The amelioration of suffering, the promotion of flourishing, and the assignment of praise and blame are also functions of morality. Even if Green were correct, the fact wouldn't give him the conclusion he wants - an equal voice for all parties. Some negotiators might bring more to the bargaining table. Besides, talk of equal voices is ambiguous. I may agree that everyone may have an equal say in a matter, but it does not follow that all opinions will be given the same weight. And people may be granted special rights on the basis of superior knowledge, moral integrity, or function in the community. At most, moral equality is a shorthand for the idea that everyone must be judged by the same rules, that the same rules apply to all of us.

It defies human experience to say that everyone has the same moral capacities, is equally autonomous, or is equally responsible. In his seminal essay, "The Idea of Equality" Bernard Williams in criticizing Kant's notion that we all belong equally to the Kingdom of Ends, offers this perceptive critique: Apart from the general difficulties of [Kant's] transcendental conceptions, there is the obstinate fact that the concept of "moral agent," and the concepts allied to it such as that of responsibility, do and must have an empirical basis. It seems empty to say that all men are equal as moral agents, when the question, for instance, of men's responsibility for their actions is one to which empirical considerations are clearly relevant, and one which moreover receives answers in terms of different degrees of responsibility and different degrees of rational control over action. To hold a man responsible for his actions is presumably the central case of treating him as a moral agent, and if men are not treated equally responsible, there is not much left to their equality as moral agents (1962). These are the main forms of formal equality. We turn now to substantive equality.

II. SUBSTANTIVE EQUALITY

Theories of substantive equality either identify the what in the formula for equality in virtue of which people should be treated equally or simply assume that all people should receive equal shares of some good(s). Such theories identify justice with equal treatment. Let us begin with an extreme form of substantive equality and move to more moderate varieties.

6. Absolute Equality

Everyone should get an equal amount of every good (or evil) as in the formula: All Fs ought to receive an equal amount of every G.

This sweeping version of egalitarianism has been called "radical equality," "pure egalitarianism" and "absolute equality." Taken literally it would mean that both babies and coal miners, small girls and huge men should get the same amount of food, the same size shoes, the same bicycles, the same dose of medicine (whether they're sick or not), and so on. If only goods and evils are included, then everyone should get the same amount of pleasure, welfare, happiness, resources, suffering, and headaches--regardless of merit. Isaiah Berlin describes absolute equality this way: The ideal of complete social equality embodies the wish that everything and everybody should be as similar as possible to everything and everybody else....the demands for human equality which have been expressed both by philosophers and by men of action can best be represented as modifications of this absolute and perhaps absurd ideal...[Egalitarians] tend to wish so to condition human beings that the highest degree of equality of natural properties is achieved, the greatest degree of mental and physical, that is to say, total uniformity (1961, p. 155).

Berlin asserts that "if we ask what kinds of equality have, in fact, been demanded, we shall see...that they are specific modifications of this absolute ideal, and that it therefore possesses the central importance of an ideal limit or idealized model at the heart of all egalitarian thought." It is a position associated with the English Levellers (1644-49), named after those villagers who levelled the hedges and ditches that were constructed to enclose the common fields, and who inaugurated a movement to level society by abolishing all social distinctions. While advocating equal rights for all citizens, they were, not without reason, interpreted as denying genuine differences between people. One also calls to mind the zealots during the days of the French Revolution who demanded that church belfries be torn down, since they offended the sense of equality. Perhaps the closest anyone has come to advocating this kind of equality is French revolutionary Gracchus Babeuf: Let there be no other difference between people than that of age or sex. Since all have the same needs and the same faculties, let them henceforth have the same education and the same diet. They are content with the same sun and the same air for all; why should not the same portion and the same quality of nourishment suffice for each of them? (Quoted in Lukes, 1975, p. 155).

Given the contingencies of time and space, absolute equality is an impossibility. Even if everyone were to receive the same amount of any good, say bananas, some would receive the bananas earlier and in better condition than others. Since tastes differ, such equal distribution would result in unequal satisfaction. People who loathed bananas or were allergic to them would not receive the same value as those who thrive on bananas. Yet, Berlin's claims are not without merit. Absolute egalitarianism, though untenable, does serve as a limit with which to compare other versions. Moreover, it may offer the only pure or consistent version of substantive equality.

7. Utilitarian Equality

According to Jeremy Bentham, the founder of modern Utilitarianism, "Each [is] to count as one and no one to count as more than one." This principle individuates persons (or sentient beings) as locuses of utility, but it does little more. It seems to be just another form of formal equality, for individuals are mere placeholders for utility. What is doing the work is the utilitarian norm. My 10 hedons count as much as yours; but what matters is the hedons, not you. While the initial measuring unit is the individual, the relevant goal is aggregative, ignoring any distributive aspect. If I can get 100 hedons by producing 10 dolors (units of suffering) in you, and no other act yields more hedons, I am justified in harming you. Nevertheless, a case can be made that more equal distribution results in greater total utility. Consider the 18th century Utilitarian, William Paley's (1785), Allegory of Paley's Pigeons: If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn and if (instead of each pecking where, and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap; reserving nothing for themselves, but the chaff and refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest perhaps and worst pigeon of the flock; sitting round, and looking on, all the winter, while this one was devouring, throwing about and wasting it; and, if a pigeon more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it, and tearing it to pieces; if you should see this, you would see nothing more, than what is every day practiced and established among men. Among men you see the ninety and nine, toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one; getting nothing for themselves all the while, but a little of the coarsest of the provisions; and this one too, often the feeblest and worst of the whole set, a child, a woman, a madman, or a fool; looking quietly on, while they see the fruits of all their labor spent or spoiled; and if one of them take or touch a particle of it, the others join against him, and hang him for the theft (1785, III, pt. I, chap. I).

This sounds like a Marxist analysis of the exploitation of the proletariat by a Capitalist mogul, but Paley thought that even the poorest folk are blessed by such institutions and are better off than any are where all things are held in common: The balance, therefore, upon the whole, must preponderate in favor of property with a great excess. Inequality of property, in the degree in which it exists in most countries of Europe, abstractly considered, is an evil; but it is an evil, which flows from those rules concerning the acquisition and disposal of property, by which men are incited to industry, and by which the object of their industry is rendered secure and valuable. If there be any great inequality unconnected with this origin, it ought to be corrected (1785, III, pt I chap. II).

Paley is confident that the vast economic differences highlighted by the pigeon allegory can be corrected by moral people without resorting to egalitarian measures. R. M. Hare (1978) argues that inequality tends to cause envy which, in turn, decreases aggregate utility; so we ought to discourage inequalities. But surely, the cure would be worse than the disease. Prohibiting different outcomes between people in order to prevent envy is like prohibiting people from being educated because some will be shown to be smarter than others. If we allow envy to determine social policy, we are likely to end up with a mediocracy of profound proportions, a society discouraging excellence and high achievement. Perhaps anecdotal evidence from the former Soviet Union, where individual initiative was greeted with social disapproval based on envy, should make us suspicious of any social policy dependent on envy. It is doubtful, however, whether we should allow vices like envy to determine social policy. A lot of people were envious of Thomas Edison's prodigious inventiveness, but this envy was a small price to pay for the improvements in the quality of life brought about by the light bulb. Hare's second reason for favoring egalitarianism involves diminishing marginal utility.

The idea is that all things being equal, an additional unit of income, say $1, helps the pauper more than it does the rich, so that we maximize aggregate utility by transferring resources from the rich to the poor. The principle of diminishing marginal utility no doubt supports redistribution of income in many cases, but two things may be said against using it as an argument for egalitarianism. First of all, it is not a principle of equality but a principle for reducing poverty or reducing the gap between the rich and the poor Plato and Aristotle, both inegalitarians, allowed the richest person to have only four or five times the wealth as the poorest. Inegalitarians can be as much against waste, poverty, and gratuitous suffering as egalitarians. But this points to a key objection. Is equality an intrinsic good or is it merely an instrumental good? Do we want equality or the elimination (reduction) of poverty? If it is the former, then we should redistribute wealth even if it leaves everyone worse off, something few egalitarians advocate. If it is the later, then it is merely a question as to the best means to get there - and allowing inequalities, as Rawls recognizes, may be the most efficient way to travel. The idea of diminishing marginal utility only goes so far. It may be that some of the affluent derive and promote more utility through their additional resources than the poor would gain if the wealth in question were distributed more equally. The gourmet with an income of $100,000 may profit from an additional $10 more than the monk who lives on oatmeal, cheese and goat's milk. The scholar with a thousand books would gain more from an additional book than the illiterate who owns none and wants none.

8. Welfare Equality

The two main varieties of contemporary egalitarians are: welfare and resource egalitarians (see below). Welfare egalitarians assert that society should equalize the welfare of its members by attempting to remedy inequalities that exist due to individual differences. Examples of welfare egalitarians are: Kai Nielsen (1964; 1985), Bruce Landesman (1983), Richard Arneson (1989), and G. A. Cohen (1989). Typical of their position is the following statement by Kai Nielsen: Morality requires that we attempt to distribute happiness as evenly as possible. We must be fair: each person is to count for one and none is to count for more than one. Whether we like a person or not, whether he is useful to his society or not, his interests, and what will make him happy, must also be considered in any final decision as to what ought to be done. The requirements of justice make it necessary that each person be given equal consideration (1964).

The argument simply assumes the Kantian principle "Treat every man as an end and never as a means only," and interprets this as viewing each person with equal worth (see 12 below), deserving of equal amounts of what is truly good. Since Nielsen thinks that this good is happiness, he concludes that morality requires that happiness be distributed equally. The main arguments against welfare egalitarianism are the following:

(1) Downward equality. What if the only way to achieve equality were to make everyone tolerably miserable? If John has 10 units of happiness, Joan 8, Tom 6 and Miserable Mary 0, and if the only way to achieve equality of happiness is to downscale everyone but Mary to an unhappy 2, then is it morally required that we do so? There are depressed and sick people who can be made marginally better off if the rest of us give up enormous resources and reduce our well-being to a much lower level. North American middle class people might have to reduce their life style to that of the average Mexican in order to bring up Haitians and Rwandans to the level of average Mexicans. Few egalitarians bite the bullet on this issue. Instead they confine their equalizing to situations of abundance. But this begins to look like a hybrid or semi-egalitarian theory.

(2) The Problem of External Preferences. Happiness depends on many things. John's happiness may depend on building an expensive temple to his god, decorating the top of Mt. Shasta with expensive jewelry, or seeing members of his race dominate an economic or social area. An application of the problem is that of double-counting, where one person's preference gets counted twice and so outweighs another person's preference. For example, Suppose Sam and Mary both desire to get a prestigious job. However, Mary's preference gets counted twice, because a third party, John, has an external preference that Mary get the job. Double-counting seems unfair and the claim that we ought to take people's external preferences into consideration, seems counterintuitive. One would think that egalitarians would object to such brute luck as having preferences "double-counted."

(3) The Problem of Expensive Tastes. A related problem for welfare egalitarianism is the fact that some people have expensive tastes: for designer clothes, luxury cars, gourmet food, mansions, and expensive jewelry. Welfarism would take from the modest resources of the contented persons and redistribute them to those with expensive tastes. Eric Rakowski (1991) puts it this way: A more egregious example [of welfarism] is that of a severely handicapped person who remains happy in spite of his infirmity. Somebody who is born or becomes disabled, and who had no opportunity to protect himself physically or financially (by buying insurance), is plainly entitled to special benefits whether or not he greets life with a smile. Egalitarian welfarism, however, says just the reverse. It commands Tiny Tim to pawn his crutches to add a few coppers to Scrooge's purse, rather than requiring Scrooge to pay for Tim's physiotherapy. The result is intolerable. Why should the cravings or whims somebody has instilled or tolerated and that did or do lie within his control qualify him for larger shares? How can greed generate a right to gold, or envy to possession? Egalitarian justice requires that people order their lives, including their desires and emotions, in the knowledge of what they are due on independent grounds. The finicky and the phlegmatic have no valid claim to special favors (pp. 41-42).

In addition to these problems welfare egalitarianism faces the notorious problem that haunts utilitarianism of interpersonal comparisons with regard to well-being. See Dworkin (1981a) for a penetrating critique of welfare egalitarianism based on this point.

9. Resource Equality

Resource egalitarianism, the second main contemporary theory, represented by Rawls (1971), Dworkin (1981b), and Rakowski (1991), holds that we cannot guarantee people well-being, let alone equal well-being, so that all we can do is offer them equal resources. As Rakowski (1991, p. 1) puts it, "No one should have less valuable resources and opportunities available to him than anyone else, simply in virtue of some chance occurrence the risk of which he did not choose to incur." [W]hat principles of distribution are just?

It seems easiest to answer this question in stages, beginning with a simple case and adding complications serially. Suppose for now that every member of a group of people is equally healthy, talented, intelligent, and adult, that a finite stock of resources exists for them to divide, and that the stock of resources is not so vast relative to their number that all could realize their every wish if one or several distributions were chosen. How should they divide the resources available to them?... Beginning with these artificially simple cases...capture[s] an important truth.

Although we come into the world at different times, and somebody was always there before us, we enter in the same way, without any more right to the bounty of nature than anyone else who sees daylight for the first time. It therefore seems sensible to ask how the world should be carved up among people who are equally able but equally undeserving, before considering what difference it makes if one relaxes the assumptions of equal intelligence, talents, and health, and if one abandons a static world for one in which procreation, risk-taking, and production occur. As these hypothetical cases frame the initial question, it all but answers itself. Once welfare-based theories have been excluded from consideration, and once one acknowledges that nobody possesses any congenital or acquired advantage that would translate into superior bargaining power if such advantages were permitted by a theory of justice grounded in impartiality to influence the distribution of resources, the natural answer is that everyone should receive an equally valuable share. Nobody would settle for less, because nobody else would have a right to demand more. The presumption must therefore be that people are entitled to equally valuable shares, unless some difference between them justifies a departure from equality (1991, p. 65).

Resource egalitarians reject the idea that justice consists in equal well-being and maintain that it consists in an equal distribution of resources. Resource egalitarians also contend that people are to be held responsible for their decisions, so that they need not be compensated for the risks or bad choices that they make. In this regard, resource egalitarians, such as Dworkin and Rakowski, argue that justice requires compensating brute bad luck, but not optional bad luck and redistributing the fruits of brute good luck but not optional good luck. We should compensate Tiny Tim who is born crippled but not the gambler who lost all his money on a slow horse. But the distinction between what we choose and what happens to us isn't always clear. In many ways my short height has been a handicap throughout my life (e.g., in making the first team in high school football, in impressing people, in getting hired, etc.). According to resource egalitarians I should be compensated for my handicap, but I also identify with my shortness, take it as a challenge and use it to motivate me. Should tall people pay me (and other short people) a height tax? Should we have affirmative action and compensation for ugly people? Fat people? Stupid people? Children indoctrinated with self-limiting beliefs? People with genes predisposing them to life threatening diseases? People born with tendencies to alcoholism or gambling? Pugnacious people? Spoiled children? Animals who didn't have the brute good luck to be born humans? Anyone impressed by the brute/option distinction must be impressed by the fact that the causes of choice of options are themselves brute. If the reason brute bad luck is unfair is that it is unchosen, the genes and upbringing that make me choose unwise options were also unchosen, hence unfair. Therefore, it is unfair that I should suffer the consequences of these unwise choices. There is a still more fundamental objection to resource egalitarianism.

Not everyone shares the intuition that society has any duty to compensate people, as resource egalitarians require. Even by their own values, we should be hesitant to offer compensation. Compensation for brute bad luck often deprives people of their inner resources. It nourishes a new handicap, over-reliance on the welfare state. The state may have an obligation to help those who are desperate, but egalitarians tend to carry sympathy to an extreme. Dworkin and Rakowski's programs call for increased progressive income tax to bring about a fundamental equalization of resources, but it unlikely that such would succeed in bringing about a situation of equal end-states. Some people would save more than others, some make better investments, some work overtime, and some engage in skills which society would deem fitting to reward with greater remuneration - for example paying a surgeon or professional basketball star more than truck drivers or waitresses. And these folk voluntarily give of their resources to their children and favorite charities, thus spreading unequal resources. The bureaucracy necessary to maintain the redistribution process would likely be such as to make our present government mechanisms seem mild and non-intrusive by comparison. Secondly, it's hard to see how the State could adjudicate between optional and brute luck.

Some people are born with brains that produce higher levels of endorphins than others. The evidence is that a sense of well-being is caused by a high level of such hormones in the brain. Should the State monitor people's endorphin levels, taking from some and elevating others in order to reach equality of disposition? A recent Finnish study shows that adolescents who watch television, smoke and generally live sedentary lives greatly increase their risk of osteoporosis in later life. If adolescents choose these life-styles, should they be given medical care for their osteoporosis later in life? If I smoked for a few years in my teens and contract lung cancer thirty years later, should the State be responsible for my medical bills? What kind of investigation and institutions to carry out such investigations would have to exist in order to apply such a theory? But practical problems aside, many of us lack the basic intuition of the resource egalitarians that other people have a duty to compensate people for their natural handicaps, whether these be low IQ, phlegmatic personality, shortness of stature, tendency towards cancer or heart disease, or intemperance. Inegalitarians may accept the duty to ameliorate the suffering of the unfortunate, even those who are responsible for their own misfortune (we have an imperfect duty to be charitable), but they see no duty to compensate those whom nature has left less well-off or to spend the necessary resources to bring them up to the level of the best off.

Here we need to distinguish between rights and enforceable rights and between duties and enforceable duties. What frightens lovers of liberty about resource egalitarians is that the latter infer a duty to resource redistribution by the state from a right to equality. But surely these are different types of moral relationships. Suppose that everyone has right to the same resources. Does that mean that I have a moral duty to surrender some of my unequal resources, if I have too many, or does that mean that other people have a right to force me to give up my unequal share? The sheer notion of a right by itself does not appear strong enough to sustain such an inference. You have a right to expect me to show gratitude for a favor, but nobody has the right to force me to do so. Even if, which I very much doubt, we have a right to equal resources, this doesn't show that there should be laws enforcing this equality.

Finally, the resource egalitarian is left with the same problem that haunted welfare egalitarianism, that of downscaling. If equality is the dominant principle for political and social action, we should aim at compensating the worst off even though it means bringing everyone down to a position of misery. Few egalitarians want to go this far. Most people on reflection want sufficient primary goods and resources in order to carry their projects, protection against brute bad luck, fair opportunities, sensible laws which are consistently applied, and freedom to do what they wish with their lives (consistent with not unjustly harming others). In his defense of resource egalitarianism Rakowski inadvertently gives the game away when he fends off Harry Frankfurt's criticism that egalitarianism requires equality even when everyone has enough of the goods in question. Here is Rakowski's (1991, p. 66) response: "Past a certain point, everyone might be so comfortable that nobody cared about remaining inequalities, and the question of justice would become aridly academic, if they were even asked." But if equality is only a means to the goal of universal or local economic sufficiency, as Rakowski seems to imply, what difference does it make whether we use egalitarian or inegalitarian (e.g., welfare-Capitalist or utilitarian) means to achieve that goal? What's so important about egalitarian means? Or is there something intrinsically good about equality, so that it is somehow better that everyone is equally well-off no matter how high or low the average is? While resource equality includes equalizing primary good such as autonomy and the "social bases of self respect," it generally focuses on economic resources. To that subject we now turn.

10. Economic Equality

Wealth and income should be redistributed (e.g., by rigorous progressive taxation and inheritance laws), so that everyone has the same economic resources and power. This is a species of resource equality and related to (7) Utilitarian Equality and (11) Marxist (Socialist) Equality (below). Rawls argues in A Theory of Justice for approximate equality, a state in which the only inequalities tolerated are those which contribute to improving the lot of the least best off. Such a state would be chosen behind the veil of ignorance because in this way the worst off would know that everything possible was being done to better their position, and so be motivated to cooperate with the social scheme in place. Furthermore, those behind the veil would be assured that, regardless of their fortunes, they would be as satisfactorily cared for.

Critics like Hare and Harsanyi have pointed out that a better alternative to Rawls' difference principle is one of aiming at the highest average utility with a safety net welfare system to help those who are in danger of economic disaster. This view would allow great disparities of wealth, so long as it overflowed to the society at large. As we noted in our discussion of Utilitarianism, the doctrine of decreasing marginal utility tends toward eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty, but the need for incentives and investment, not to mention the problem of interpersonal comparisons, somewhat off-set that doctrine, permitting some inequality. Rawls' reputed egalitarian theory really is not so - at least at this one crucial point of dealing with advantage. Rawls says that the only justification for allowing advantage to the better off is that it will (probably) enhance the position of the worst off (the "Difference Principle"). The difference principle has been criticized for being unduly restrictive of gain by the well-off (why can't they be allowed to increase their social and economic position so long as it doesn't unjustly harm the worst off? The worst off are not exploited or left worse off than they would have been before the success of the well-off). But even if we waive this objection, we can see that the difference principle is not especially egalitarian. It doesn't guarantee equality or even make it more likely, for it doesn't put reins on how far the well-off can go in increasing his assets when he helps raise the worse off. Consider two scenarios. In Scenario I Peter increases his fortune from $100,000 to $100,001 but leaves the worst off exactly where they were before (at $100). In Scenario II Paul increases his fortune from $100,000 to $200,000 but raises the worst off to $101. Rawls' principles would allow the second rather than the first scenario, but the second increases inequality. (If you think that what Rawls says only applies to whole classes of people, imagine that Peter and Paul and the worst off stand for classes of people each having 1000 members).

Furthermore, his theory assumes risk aversiveness. He fails to take into account that many people would rather take a chance on being very well-off where failure may have severe consequences than play it safe with a lesser mediocrity. The person who plays the lottery accepts a certain loss in exchange for a purely contingent gain. Fair lotteries are not irrational from the perspective of the participants who can afford small losses for the sake of possible enormous gains. Consider four possible distributions of wealth as they might occur in four different societies that are otherwise alike:

1) Each person gets $10,000,

2) Half get $15,000 and half get $5,000.

3) One percent get $3,000 and 99% get $10,071.

4) One percent get $100,000 and 99% get $9,091.

As William Letwin (1983) points out, "from the standpoint of reason, perfect rationality unembellished by any irrational preferences, all these four - and also an indefinitely large number of others - are perfectly equivalent." All have the same expect value, $10,000, and the rational gambler is only concerned with expected value. The rational gambler would consider an egalitarian society no better or worse than an infinite number of inegalitarian societies or arrangements. Of course, not everyone is a gambler. Some people are risk aversive. They avoid gambling when they can and tend to over-insure. Some others are risk neutral who are indifferent to fair lotteries. And others are risk attracted, who enjoy taking a chance and tend to under-insure. Rawls's theory largely ignores the latter two types and argues as though only risk aversive people were rational. To quote Letwin once more, How widespread is aversion to risk? Not sufficiently widespread to be a reliable clue to what is natural in men. Human nature may be reflected at least as well by the admiration which men willingly pay to heros and others who thrive on riskiness. Apart from heroes and outright gamblers, every investor who knowingly buys risky shares instead of blue-chips, every entrepreneur who sinks his capital in a new enterprise, every writer to labors to produce a book which may or may not sell, every student who spends years of time training for a profession which will yield to him financial rewards that are quite unpredictable - all these and many more deliberately court risk. And as most people marry, eat food which may be contaminated, carry cash in their pockets, and cross roads, it may be said that nobody could get through a normal life without accepting many risks (1983, p. 24).

11. Marxist Equality

The motto "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," first cited in the Book of Acts as a description of the early Christian Church, is in modern times first advocated by the French Utopian Socialists and adopted by the German Socialists in the Gotha Program of 1875. It was appropriated by Karl Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Program and became the rallying point for a Marxist theory of justice. As a broadly Socialist principle, it was adhered to by such socialist societies as the Owenite and Oneida communities and the Israeli kibbutzim. The principle works in families or small groups where a similar set of values, interests, and goals are present, and where there is considerable love and trust. Outside the family, commune or tightly knit society, the principle seems less appealing. First of all, the notions of need and ability tend to become amorphous: what constitutes a need for one person may be a luxury for another. It may cost vastly more to satisfy the perceived needs of upper-middle class Americans and Europeans than the needs of peasants in the Third World or even the poor in the United States. Do psychological needs get counted, as well as basic needs of food and drink? How does one compare the academic's need for a large library with the farmer's need for a new tractor or the playboy's need for a new sports car or the miser's need to possess twice as much money as the average person? If the miser's greed and playboy's need for a new sports car are not to count equally with the farmer's need for a new tractor or the academic's need for books, isn't an independent normative ideal doing all the work here (i.e., "Need N overrides Need M because of criterion C")? But suppose we can define a fundamental need as any condition necessary for the life and health of an organism. We need food and air, the playboy doesn't need a sports car. More broadly, the scholar qua scholar needs books because books are necessary for the performance of the socially recognized function of scholarship, whereas there is no socially recognized function of being a playboy. So the Marxist criterion can be said to have substance and is close to a welfare conception of equality, but this, as we have seen, illustrates that when the principle of equality has content, it obtains it by focusing on a substantive value which has nothing to do with equality. In sum, the Marxist Principle is not egalitarian at all. Since needs, even when defined functionally, are vastly different and demand different levels of input to be satisfied, some people will obtain far more resources than others. Should we emphasize the end state of welfare which results from meeting needs or the input of resources necessary for their satisfaction? We will discuss these two interpretation below.

12. Metaphysical Equality (or Personal Equality)

All humans are of equal and positive worth because of some intrinsic property. Historically, the clearest example of this is the Judeo-Christian idea of equality. Before God each of us is of equal (positive) worth, since we are created in God's image. Stoics held that a divine spark was in each of us, so that we were all related to one another in God. All humans, or all rational humans, belong to a single reference group and thus are of equal positive worth and have equal inalienable rights. This sentiment is found in the opening sentence of The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." It is expressed in the United Nations' Universal Declaration on Human Rights (1948): All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Kant (1959) held that by virtue of our rational nature each of us is to be treated as an end in himself and not merely as a means. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only. Human beings qua rational have an inherent dignity and so ought to treat each other as ends and never merely as means.

Each person, qua rational being, is autonomous in that one's self transcends the categories of space and time and is able to exercise free-will. As such, each person is equally able to participate in moral legislation, and it is this equal ability to engage in moral deliberation that endows us with equal dignity. There are three main problems with the idea of personal equality: (1) to identify the relevant property, (2) to discover whether we have equal amounts of it (or determine how an amount of the relevant property grants us equal worth), and (3) to discover whether a person maintains the property over time. Even if we can locate the value-endowing property, a feat that seems to entail that values are objective, it is hard to see that all individuals have equal amounts of it. If there is a property that endows us all with equal positive worth, it must be grounded in a transcendent reality, one that is not discoverable apart from religious authority. But even if we could agree on what this transcendental property is, it might not be possible to discover whether different people maintained possession of it to the same degree throughout their lives. Even if we can make sense of Kant's notion of a transcendent self, his doctrine of equality has two problems: (1) First, why should we think that rationality - or rational autonomy - is intrinsically (rather than instrumentally) valuable? and (2) secondly, if rationality is valuable, then why doesn't more of it give us more value than less of it? One interpretation of Kant is that he addresses this problem with a notion of a threshold: to have a minimum amount of X gets one into the circle of those with substantive worth. It's an all-or-nothing concept. Rawls uses this kind of method: those who are able to deliberate and give justice are all counted as equally valuable. But this seems unwarrantedly stipulative. Some are able to deliberate better than others. Shouldn't they be counted as more worthy? Aiming to follow Kant, but without his metaphysical notions, Rawls (1971) addresses these queries by developing the notion of a range property based on the fact that a person has a conception of the good and is capable of having a sense of justice (minimal sufficient conditions - he doesn't specify what all the necessity properties are). He justifies the idea that all who have any of x should be treated as having an equal amount of y by appealing to the idea of a range property, such as being enclosed within a circle. The property of being in the interior of the unit circle is a range property of points in the plane. All points inside this circle have this property although their coordinates vary within a certain range. And they equally have this property, since no point interior to a circle is more or less interior to it than any other interior point. Now whether there is a suitable range property for singling out the respect in which human beings are to be counted equal is settled by the conception of justice. But the description of the parties in the original position identifies such a property, and the principles of justice assure us that any variations in ability within the range are to be regarded as any other natural asset.... Now of course none of this is literally argument. I have not set out the premises from which this conclusion follows... Nor have I tried to prove that the characterization of the parties must be used as the basis of equality. Rather this interpretation seems to be the natural completion of justice as fairness (1971, pp. 508-509).

Equality falls in place as an inextricable part of Rawls' total system. If the system as a whole is cogent, the principle of equality will thereby derive cogency. If the system is dubious, the principle of equality loses cogency. Rawls admits that he doesn't have an independent argument for equal human worth - only a metaphor (the circle) that functions within a total system, which he thinks defensible. Rawls is correct. Equality will best be defended if it fills out a complete systematic account of political theory. It doesn't seem to be able to stand alone. So perhaps we should be agnostic about equality until we arrive at a complete moral/political system. Since no one has demonstrated that there is only one true political theory, equality must remain in doubt. But, to return to the metaphysical idea of the equal worth, we may conclude that the idea of metaphysical equality may flourish within a religious community, but given secular society as we know it, this seems irrelevant. Hence Dworkin's quip that his theory of equality is "metaphysically unambitious." Finally, it should be pointed out that substantive conclusions do not follow from metaphysical equality. In the egalitarian Christian early Church the idea of divinely specified functions enjoined women to defer to their husbands and slaves to be returned to their masters.

13. Equal Opportunity

"Equal opportunity" is an ambiguous notion, which, on the one hand, may simply mean that certain irrelevant obstacles should not stand in the agent's way in attaining certain goal (e.g., education, employment, promotion, or other reward), or, on the other hand, it may mean that deeper personal handicaps should be removed from agents so that they are able to compete for scarce opportunities. We may call the former "moderate" equal opportunity and the latter "strong equal opportunity." All equal opportunity is equal is some respect relative to some goal. For example, a university job may be advertised as not discriminating against applicants on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, or physical handicap." Presumably, it may discriminate on the basis of mental ability, academic credentials, and criminal record. The phrase "equal opportunity" in this moderate sense is a shorthand for such policies. Peter Westen (1985) argues that the word "equal" in the statement of non-discrimination is idle, for it could be left out and the meaning would be the same if it simply specified the obstacles that are removed from the pursuit of the goal in question. Nonetheless, the phrase does implicitly convey a message that positions will be open to merit rather than qualities irrelevant to job performance. But global or complete equal opportunity is impossible. Two people never have exactly the same opportunity to reach a goal. Heredity, family, and previous education cause people to have greatly different chances in attaining social goals. More radical or "strong" versions of egalitarianism would seek to nullify these undeserved features of the natural lottery, either by elimination of the family or private schools or - were it possible - genetic engineering. Some egalitarians tend to link equal outcomes with equal opportunity by making proportionate representation of a group in advantageous positions as a prima facie condition for equal opportunity. If the social results we are getting are disproportional to representation in the population, that is presumptive (though rebuttable) evidence of discrimination. Strong equal opportunity would hold that for each person there should be equal life chances, so that the State would have to intervene to compensate children from inferior homes or break up the home and family, since they promote inequality of opportunity. The State would inaugurate a "universal compulsory comprehensive creche" (Flew). Weaker forms of equal opportunity would allow differences in heredity, family, and fortune but emphasize equality before the law (rejecting unjust discriminations), universal education, and desert (coveted positions should be given to those who merit or deserve them - based on achievement or talent, not class or family). The nonegalitarian meritocrat can espouse a moderate equality of opportunity: each person in the society should be free to strive to achieve any position he or she desires, and careers be filled according to ability and achievement, rather than according to traits irrelevant to the performance of the position in question (such as race, religion, gender, or financial status). Not only may meritocrats support such moderate equal opportunity, but moderate equal opportunity seems to be a negative way of asserting meritocracy. We might save ourselves an endless string of "nondiscriminatory" disclaimers if we simply announced that coveted social positions would be given to those who merit them based on features relevant to job performance. Inegalitarians need not reject the concerns of those who advocate strong equal opportunity - they may support special resources to be used to educate the poor and disadvantaged, but they will shy away from aiming at equal outcomes. Since genes, family background, and early education play decisive roles, absolute equality of opportunity will not be remotely approximated. However, equal opportunity in all forms may be inherently inegalitarian. Suppose that we succeed in eliminating all irrelevant distinctions so that the naturally talented attain the highest positions. Perhaps this would result in more women and minorities in positions of prestige and power, corporate executives, doctors, and lawyers, and fewer white males in those positions. Conversely, there would be more white males doing menial labor and fewer women and minorities. While this may constitute a closer approximation to group equality, it does not address the basic differences that exist between social and economic classes. They might even increase, as a natural aristocracy rises and distances itself from the plebeian class. John Schaar (1967) observes: In previous ages, when opportunities were restricted to those of the right birth and station, it is highly probable...that many of those who enjoyed abundant opportunities to develop their talents actually lacked the native ability to benefit from their advantages. Under the regime of equal opportunity, however, those who genuinely are superior in the desired attributes will enjoy rich opportunities to develop their qualities. This would produce, within a few generations, a social system where the members of the elites really were immensely superior in ability and attainment to the masses. We should then have a condition where the natural and social aristocracies would be identical (1967, p. 231).

14. Equal Outcomes (or Results)

This is the doctrine that everyone should end up with the same status and/or income; or that representative groups (based on gender, race, height or ethnicity) should be proportionally represented at each level of society (if x% of the population are physicians, x% of black people should be physicians, x% white people should be physicians, x% of women should be physicians, x% of men should be physicians, etc.). By implication the membership of professional basketball teams would be required to reflect proportional racial (and gender?) representation of the society. John Arthur (1990) seems to embrace such a notion in his discussion of the low scores by blacks on an intelligence test, Test 21. History is important when considering governmental rules like Test 21 because low scores by blacks can be traced in large measure to the legacy of slavery and racism: segregation, poor schooling, exclusion from trade unions, malnutrition, and poverty have all played their roles. Unless one assumes that blacks are naturally less able to pass the test, the conclusion must be that the results are themselves socially and legally constructed, not a mere given for which law and society can claim no responsibility. The conclusion seems to be that genuine equality eventually requires equal results. Obviously blacks have been treated unequally throughout US history, and just as obviously the economic and psychological effects of that inequality linger to this day, showing up in lower income and poorer performance in school and on tests than whites achieve. Since we have no reason to believe that differences in performance can be explained by factors other than history, equal results are a good benchmark by which to measure progress made toward genuine equality (1967, p. 238).

Sterling Harwood (1993, p. 82) seems to support a similar theory, when in defending affirmative action for hiring blacks with lower achievements for professional positions he writes, "When will it all end? When will affirmative action stop compensating blacks? As soon as the unfair advantage is gone, affirmative action will stop. The elimination of the unfair advantage can be determined by showing that the percentage of blacks hired and admitted at least roughly equaled the percentage of blacks in the population." It's not clear from the passage whether Harwood intends for equal results to count as a necessary or sufficient condition for justice, but either way, the passage, seems to presuppose no significant genetic or cultural differences exist between racial groups. His case seems to be that if there is no proof of cultural or genetic differences between racial or ethnic groups, we should "presume similarity (rebuttably)." By this logic, we should suspect that black males have an unfair advantage in playing basketball which requires affirmative action for whites and that justice will not occur until we have proportionate representation in that area. Likewise, Jewish overrepresentation in the professions of physicists and academic philosophers shows that something is wrong in society and should be rectified, so that fewer Jews occupy these coveted positions. Harwood would reject such a move on the grounds that the history of racial discrimination causes the plight of African Americans to be what it is, but he may be neglecting other relevant factors such as genetic and cultural differences between groups of people. There is some evidence that just as average physiological differences account for black superiority in certain athletics, genetically based (average) psychological differences (manifested in the fact that the average black IQ is one standard deviation removed from the average white IQ) account for racial differences in academic success. Bernard Boxill (1992, p. 155) notes the hypothesis that blacks as a group may be inferior to whites based on average low IQ scores, but dismisses this as "highly controversial." Arthur, Harwood, Boxill and most writers in favor of strong affirmative action simply assume that unequal results are caused by oppression, but it could be the case that some oppression is due to differences in native ability or is not a sufficient explanation for unequal results. Historic cultural differences may account for underrepresentation in an area or areas of life. For example, it very likely accounts for the facts that Chinese Americans and Jews are underrepresented in most American sports, and that Italians are underrepresented in education and medicine. Moreover, plenty of oppressed groups have overcome their disadvantage and excelled because of greater determination. In any case, the presumption of similar physical and psychological traits in racial, gender and ethnic groups is a controversial hypothesis, though one not receiving much public attention. It seems to me that, absent decisive evidence on either side, one should remain agnostic on the matter and not presume equality or inequality of native ability. A corollary of the oppression-unequal-results thesis is that differences between groups can be overcome by social engineering. Ironically, this logic is not applied to homosexuality, which liberals are typically eager to locate in genetic causation. Given that a case can be made on both sides of these nature/nurture issues, it would seem ill advised to presume, as Arthur, Harwood, Boxill, and current affirmative action policies do, that all apparent group average differences in capacities are environmentally explained. It would be more consistent with the state of the debate to refrain from aiming at equal outcomes. Perhaps this version of equal outcomes is a version of the Presumption of Equality thesis discussed above (3). In a sense, both equality of welfare and equality of resource can both be seen as species of the doctrine of equal outcomes.

15. Equality of Power or Equality of Condition

According to this theory, each member of a cooperative community should have the resources to live his or her life to the fullest, consistent with everyone else's liberty to live life to the full. No one's life is intrinsically more valuable than anyone else's life. In such a state everyone has an equal obligation to share the burdens of the society and, so everyone should have an equal share of the benefits. We are all in each other's debt, so we should not think of ourselves as isolated individual atoms, but as sharers of benefits and burdens. The only possible justification for inequality is that by giving certain people more power, they will thereby increase the well-being of the rest of society or the worst off. This idea, similar to Rawls' difference principle, is developed at length by both Kai Nielsen (1985) and Richard Norman (1987). The first criticism of this theory is that cooperative schemes do not entail equal power. The slave and the slave master could cooperate perfectly without having an equal distribution of burdens and benefits. But one need not imagine anything so radical as slavery. Political leaders, physicians, air plane pilots, and nuclear power engineers have greater burdens than the rest of us. Should they not be compensated for their unequal burdens with greater benefits? The egalitarian grants that they should because such burdens and corresponding benefits redound to the good of the worst off. But this need not be so. These benefits may not greatly increase the good of the worst off who may not be able to afford expensive surgery or even air travel. Furthermore, it seems that benefits increase one's power, so that those with high social status will have more power in society. Egalitarians like Rawls and Norman accept such inequalities as concessions to bringing up the worst off, but shouldn't we call this type of position "semi-egalitarianism" to differentiate it from the stricter egalitarianisms where the burdens and benefits are actually equal? Why stretch the term to such a thin and broad degree where it merges into a type of inegalitarianism?

16. Democratic Equality or Political Equality

According to this view, each person in the society has the same formal rights. Sometimes this is referred to an equal citizenship, where each person, regardless of differences in intelligence, knowledge of the subject at issue, moral integrity, or even sanity, each person has the same right to vote and run for office. Democracy rests upon the insight that each person typically knows his interests better than anyone else and knows how to satisfy them better than anyone else. So ideally the individual should exercise maximum rule over himself. Hence participatory democracy. The flaw in the argument is the fact this individualized principle of autonomy does not apply to large groups of people with conflicting interests. When, as is the case with majority rule, each is allowed equal vote over policies that will affect everyone, a result may emerge that is in no one's best interest or is only in the interest of some. Plato gave the classic criticism of democracy as rule my the ignorant masses, which promotes mediocrity and leads inevitably to anarchy. "These are the features of democracy, an agreeable form of anarchy with plenty of variety and an equality of peculiar kind for equals and unequals alike." This view was corroborated by Boisy d'Anglais who in the aftermath of the blood-thirsty egalitarian French Revolution presented a new inegalitarian constitution, introducing it with these words: Absolute equality is a chimera. If it existed one would have to assume complete equality in intelligence, virtue, physical strength, education and fortune in all men... We must be ruled by the best citizens. and the best are the most learned and the most concerned in the maintenance of law and order. Now, with very few exceptions, you will find such men only among those who own some property, and are thus attached to the land in which it lies, to the laws which protect it and to the public order which maintains it... You must, therefore, guarantee the political rights of the well-to-do...and [deny] unreserved political rights to men without property, for if such men ever find themselves seated among the legislators, then they will provoke agitations...without fearing their consequences...and in the end precipitate us into those violent convulsions from which we have scarcely yet emerged (Quoted in Hibbert 1980, p. 282).

Not even every liberal has endorsed equal citizenship. John Stuart Mill (1972) wrote: I do not look upon equal voting as among the things which are good in themselves...I look upon it as only relatively good; less objectionable than inequality of privilege grounded on irrelevant or adventitious circumstances, but in principle wrong, because recognizing a wrong standard, and exercising a bad influence on the voter's mind (1972, p. 288).

Mill advocated weighted votes, deeming the uneducated and semi-educated less able to make judicious political decisions than the well-educated or well-informed. Depending on what laws are in effect, democratic equality is consistent with majority oppression of minorities and with intolerance towards social deviance. It is at home with discrimination against members of racial or gender classes. While space prohibits comprehensive treatment of this issue, it's certainly not obvious that democracy is superior to all other forms of government. Suffice it to say that democracy is malleable and take on variegated forms, ranging from the pure democracy where everyone has a vote on every social issue to complex representational democracy, where the individual voice is largely muted. Nevertheless, although it may seem largely formal, it requires equal votes and not merely equal protection by the law, so we may conclude that political equality is not purely formal, but minimally substantive.

III. RHETORICAL EQUALITY

Finally, a word is order about the rhetorical uses of egalitarian language. If equality is, as I have argued, such an ambiguous concept, and if on analysis it reduces to many other concepts, what is it about this term that compels so many otherwise reasonable people to resort to it? The answer seems to lie in the history of the idea as is associated with reform movements to eliminate extremes of wealth and poverty, to bring into the circle of considerability other beings (women, blacks, homosexuals, and non-human animals) hitherto shut out for no good reasons (or so it seems to many), to end privilege and to spread wealth and opportunity to those previously denied it. The idea is tied to the struggle to eliminate oppression, slavery, unjustified hierarchies, and unjust discrimination. The abolition of slavery can be looked upon as a great step towards freedom, but it can also be seen as a great step towards equality, in the sense of granting people equal legal and moral rights. Attached as it to many noble causes and movements, equality becomes a code word for many other moral categories, many other inspiring ideas. To a large extent, then, the term "equality" is a connotative term, an hurrah word, having more emotive force than descriptive meaning. We could just about do without it for most purposes and use more precise language to describe what it stands for. This would help in extricating the positive meaning of the term from its ideological aspects. We could speak of eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty or of fairness or justice or of ending human misery or improving the lot of the worst off rather than of "equality" which may be all of these or none of them. Yet some uses of equality seem to be useful shorthands for other more complex ideas: equality before the law signifies that we must all obey the same laws and will be held accountable for our behavior; moral equality asserts that we must all obey the same moral principles and will be held accountable for our behavior; political equality means that everyone will have the same access to political decisions - to vote, hold office, and influence the political process; social equality means that everyone will be viewed as having equal status and have his or her interests given equal weight, though this may not be just. Equal opportunity may means that goods and offices will be open to those who meet the relevant standards of competence, regardless of irrelevant features like race, gender, religion or class. Perhaps it would be useful generally to attach the relevant adjective to equality in order to be more precise (though the context often makes this clear enough). But some uses are more controversial than others. Legal equality means that we must all adhere to the same laws and receive the same rights, but does it mean that we must all have equally good legal representation? Should the rich be able to buy better representation than the poor? Likewise, moral equality seems relatively uncontroversial when it means that we all must obey the same moral rules, but it probably false when it signifies that everyone has the equal capacity for moral deliberation, for exercising one's will to the good, of acting according to the moral rules. The idea that we are of equal intrinsic worth is the most problematic of all. It seems to have a deeply metaphysical or religious connotation. If one rejects a notion of objective value, one could say that everyone is of equal worth, that worth being zero. But egalitarians, even if they hold a subjective theory of value, refrain from such demeaning locutions. Apart from religious uses, worth seems a functional locution: You and I have worth in accordance with our social, political or economic roles. Except in families and small intimate groups it seldom makes sense to speak of equal worth. In society at large we have different relative values: the scientist who discovers a cure for AIDS or a way to off-set the Greenhouse Effect is worth more than the crook who embezzles - whether as a bank teller or a Savings and Loan Officer or bank president. The political leader who leads a nation or community through hard times is worth more than the common citizen who is still of positive relative worth.

CONCLUSION

I have attempted to describe several different concepts that go under the name equality and indicate the functions that the concepts play in political thought, ranging from the purely formal notion, first set forth by Aristotle, to more substantive notions of economic, welfare and resource egalitarianism. I think we can divide up the various types into three main categories: formal, substantive and metaphysical, this latter being a nonempirical, transcendent quality, as distinguished from secular substantive types. The following chart indicates the classification I have in mind:

Conceptions of Equality

Formal                          Substantive     Metaphysical
                                                                                                        
Aristotle's Notion of           Absolute        Religious       
Formal Equality                 Welfare         Non-Religious
Equal Consideration 
Presumptive Equality            Opportunity     
Legal Equality                  Need-Satisfaction
                                        Utility 
Moral Equality                          Resource
                                        Economic
                                        Power
                                        Political/Democratic                                           

Substantive equality can be sub-divided into two types: equality of opportunity (starting points) and outcomes (end points), and the latter can be further divided into resource, welfare and absolute equality (this being an extreme form of either of the other equalities). Resource and welfare equality can also be further subdivided. The following chart may better show the essential relationships:

                Metaphysical
                        Equal Consideration
                        Presumptive Equality
                        Legal
Equality--Formal  Moral
                        
                                                Opportunity 
                                                (starting point)                                
        Substantive     
                        Outcome(end point)

        Absolute        Resource                   

        Power           Primary Goods 
                        Economic Utilitarian    Welfare
                                                Liberal Marxist
        Political                               Need-
                                                satisfaction

The scheme is not complete. Egalitarians like Nielsen and other Marxists seem to embrace both resource and welfare positions. The more Utopian a theory gets, the more it tends towards the ideal of making everyone equally and maximally happy. Liberals like Dwrokin are resource egalitarians, whereas the majority of liberals tend toward the ideal of welfare equality. Utilitarians typically only subscribe to minimal unit equality (each to count as one and none to count as more than one), but those who do accept a type of egalitarianism, like Hare, do so on the basis that resource equality is a necessary condition for maximal aggregate welfare.

I have noted that some of these conceptions overlap and that the conceptions of equality form more of a family resemblance pattern than of possessing a clear core.

I have raised the question not carefully addressed by egalitarians of whether equality (in any of its substantive forms) is intrinsically good or a mere instrument for a just society. We have found that, when the "principle of equality" is analyzed carefully, it either becomes an empty formal rule or becomes the endorsement of substantive values having nothing particular to do with equality. For example, moderate "equal opportunity" really is a misleading (or rhetorically charged) way of stating something else - meritocracy - that all positions should be open to talent. On reflection few of us value equality as an intrinsic good. What we value are increased autonomy, utility, happiness, economic and social well-being, and the elimination of prejudice, exploitation and poverty. Because we value these goods, we can accept a prima facie case for reducing the vast economic and social differences without accepting the rhetorically loaded but misleading dictates of egalitarianism. These conclusions, if sustained by further and more detailed analysis, have obviously negative implications for equality as a moral and political ideal.

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Louis P. Pojman

Dr. Louis Pojman is a Professor of Philosophy at the United States Military Academy. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, has his PH.D from Oxford University, and has been a Fulbright Fellow to the University of Copenhagen. He has taught at Oxford University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Texas, and the University of Mississippi. He has won several Outstanding Teaching Awards, including the Burlington Prize for Outstanding Scholarship and Teaching. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, Life and Death: Grappling with the Moral Dilemmas of Our Time, What Can We Know? and The Search for Truth.