Unequally egalitarian? Defending the credentials of social egalitarianism

Abstract

In his new book, Luck Egalitarianism, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen responds to challenges raised by social egalitarians against luck egalitarianism. Social egalitarianism is the view according to which a just society is one where people relate to each other as equals, while the basic premise of luck egalitarianism is that it is unfair if people are worse-off than others through no fault or choice of their own. Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the most important objections to luck egalitarianism made by social egalitarians can either be largely accommodated by luck egalitarians or lack the argumentative force that its proponents believe them to have. While Lippert-Rasmussen does offer a version of luck egalitarianism that seems to avoid some of the main lines of criticism, he mischaracterizes parts of both the form and the content of the disagreement, and thus ultimately misses the mark. In this paper, we provide a substantive, a methodological and a political defense of social egalitarianism by elaborating on this mischaracterization. More work must be done, we argue, if social egalitarianism is to be dismissed and its concerns genuinely incorporated in the luck egalitarian framework. Until this is done, the supposed theoretical superiority of luck egalitarianism remains contested.

Distributive sufficiency, inequality-blindness and disrespectful treatment

“…expressing contempt, neglect, or exercising dominating power by arbitrarily interfering with their choices without tracking their interests -and that this is the wrong that we have to account for. In this sense, I interpret Hospital as challenging sufficientarians to incorporate relational egalitarian considerations into their normative framework -namely, the idea that equality should be understood as a social relationship free from domination, oppression, or discrimination, and not a distributional pattern (Anderson, 1999;Axelsen & Bidadanure, 2018;Fourie, 2012;Scheffler, 2005;Schemmel, 2011a). Sufficientarians can deny the intrinsic distributive importance of equality and still claim its relational relevance for justice, explaining why this version of BIO is morally problematic while keeping its commitment to NT thereof.…”

“…Sufficientarians can deny the intrinsic distributive importance of equality and still claim its relational relevance for justice, explaining why this version of BIO is morally problematic while keeping its commitment to NT thereof. Drawing on the recent debate about the possibility of reducing relational egalitarianism to distributive egalitarianism -or vice versa - (Moles & Parr, 2019), the next section explores two strategies for incorporating relational concerns into the sufficientarian framework (Axelsen & Bidadanure, 2018). The first is to object to the outcome of Hospital by internalizing relational issues and claim that unequal distributions and disrespectful relations matter insofar as they affect individuals' absolute levels of advantage.…”

“…Particularly, I claim that, if we accept that the force of BIO comes from relational and not distributive inequalities, different strategies are open for sufficientarians in order to be sensitive to these concerns. Drawing on recent literature about the relation between distributive and relational egalitarianism, and the possibility of reducing one to the other (Cordelli, 2015;Axelsen & Bidadanure, 2018;Gheaus, 2016;Moles & Parr, 2019), I will canvass the strategies of internalizing and externalizing relational egalitarian concerns to a distributive sufficientarian framework, and suggest that both strategies fail in their standard versions. But I will also argue that a hybrid view that endorses a particular form of distributive sufficiency, which internalizes some relational aspects, but accepts that others are non-reducible, is an attractive candidate for the sufficientarian theorist.…”

Harsh and Disrespectful

“…(Cohen 2009, 37;Segall 2007). What we may call the externalizing strategy entails deemphasizing the significance of the value of justice in determining what is important and what to do (Axelsen & Bidadanure 2019). The externalizing strategy enables luck egalitarians to insist that imposing costs on others for the sake of saving Semolina is a violation of justice while still recognizing that Semolina should nonetheless be saved, all things considered (Temkin 2017).…”

“…In response to this objection, luck egalitarians have attempted to internalize the value of respect to which Wolff points (Axelsen & Bidadanure 2019). Luck egalitarians, after all, are concerned with equalizing something that they deem valuable; be it resources, concern, or opportunity for welfare (Dworkin 2000, Lippert-Rasmussen 2016, or Arneson 1989.…”