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Equality and Egalitarianism: Framing the Contemporary Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2015

William B. Griffith
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Extract

For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he....

Col. Rainborough, in the Putney Debates (1647)

The ideal of equality is one of the great themes in the culture of American public life…from the earliest colonial beginnings, equality has been a rallying cry, a promise, an article of national faith.

K. Karst(1989)

…[T]he error of believing that there are powerful moral reasons for caring about equality is far from innocuous. In fact this belief tends to do significant harm.

H.Frankfurt (1987)

Is equality the name of one coherent program or is it the name of a system of mutually antagonistic claims upon society and government?

D. Raeetal. (1981)

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to lay out a framework, both analytical and historical, in terms of which deeply conflicting and surprisingly complicated claims about equality and egalitarianism may be discussed. My aim is to help to make more intelligible what is at issue in contemporary disputes, and hence what kinds of arguments and evidence bear on and might illuminate these competing claims. I then exploit this conceptual framework to sketch a way of organizing some of the voluminous literature in the on-going debate about equality, that is, to bring into focus the dimension(s) in which the issues are being joined, and from which historical tradition an argument emerges, in hopes of clarifying these debates.

Type
Research Article
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Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 1994 , pp. 5 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 1994

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References

1. The quotations are taken from, respectively, Woodhouse, A.S.P. ed., Puritanism and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951) at 53;Google Scholar Karst, K. Belonging to America: Equal Citizenship and the Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) at 1;Google Scholar Frankfurt, H. “Equality as a Moral Ideal” (1987) 98 Ethics 21 at 22–23;Google Scholar Rae, D. et al., Equalities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981) at 2–3.Google Scholar

2. P. Westen notes that an average of something like forty monographs on the subject of equality now appear each year, alongside who knows how many journal articles—a scholarly literature so vast and crossing so many disciplinary lines that no article-length survey can do more than scratch the surface. Westen, P. Speaking of Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) at 285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).Google Scholar It is the conception laid out in this book, and only secondarily the revisions suggested by Rawls in later lectures and summarized in his new book, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), which has been the focus of most of the debate and with which this article mainly is concerned. Use of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” here, as well as later uses of these terms along with “socialist”, are to be understood in terms of the historical traditions from which they derive, not in their current political, often pejorative, uses.

4. Oppenheim, F. “Egalitarianism as a Descriptive Concept” (1970) 7 Am. Phil. Quart. 143.Google Scholar

5. D. Rae et al., supra note 1. Readers might want to compare the analytic scheme offered by Rae and his associates with that offered by Westen, supra note 2 at ch. V “Summary,” although I find the latter less helpful and persuasive.

6. In the following account I lean heavily on the “classical” presentations by Benn, in Abernathy, and especially that of Lakoff: Benn, S. “Equality, Moral and Social”, III Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Co. and the Free Press, 1967) 38;Google Scholar Abernathy, G. ed., The Idea of Equality (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1959);Google Scholar Lakoff, S. Equality in Political Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968 reprint of Harvard University Press 1964 edition).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8. Sigmund, P. “Hierarchy, Equality, and Consent in Medieval Christian Thought” in Pennock, J. & Chapman, J., eds, Equality: Nomos IX (New York: Atherton Press, 1967) 134.Google Scholar

9. The quotation from Col. Rainborough (headnote), and the Putney Debates generally, illustrate graphically the arrival of this historical moment in England. Rainborough and the Levellers argued, on behalf of commoners who had fought the secular and religious tyranny of the British monarch, for elimination of property-limitations on the right to vote, and for conceding the right to religious toleration. While they did not win this particular argument, the foundations had been laid for future victory. See Woodhouse’s, A.S.P. “Introduction” to Puritanism and Liberty, supra note 1.Google Scholar

10. Fernandez de la Mora, G. Egalitarian Envy, the Political Foundations of Social Justice (New York: Paragon House, 1987).Google Scholar

11. Supra note 6 at 9.

12. Nisbet, R. “The Pursuit of Equality” (1974) 35 The Public Interest 103 at 104, reprinted in Letwin, W. ed., Against Equality: Readings on Economic and Social Policy (London: Macmillan, 1983).Google Scholar

13. According to the book jacket for Political Liberalism, supra note 3, “A Theory of Justice was translated into every major European language as well as into Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.”

14. Those who do so include not only those fairly close to Rawls’ own position, such Barry, Dworkin, Nagel, Scanlon or Sen, but also those critical of him from a Socialist perspective, such as G.A. Cohen or J. Roemer, and those writing within the Conservative tradition such as W. Letwin or R. Nisbet.

15. A Theory of Justice (hereinafter TJ) at 3.

16. TJ at 60.

17. TJ at, e.g., 92.

18. TJ at 64, 75.

19. These phrases are quoted from the vigorous set of papers collected by Letwin, supra note 12, which includes, in addition to the editor’s own excellent organization of the “conservative challenge” on which this section relies, papers or book-selections from A. Flew, P. Bauer, J.R. Lucas, Harry Johnson, Richard Posner, and R. Nisbet.

20. This line of attack has been famously pursued by Nozick, R. Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).Google Scholar

21. Okin, S. Justice, Gender and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989);Google Scholar Pateman, C. The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

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23. This view is eloquently expressed in Nagel, T. Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) at 7.Google Scholar

24. See the intriguing account in Steiner, G. Constitutional Inequality: The Political Fortunes of the Equal Rights Amendment (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985).Google Scholar

25. For good surveys of the issues here see Hoff, J. Law, Gender, and Injustice, A Legal History of U.S. Women (New York: New York University Press, 1991)Google Scholar esp. Ch. X, “Beyond Legal Liberalism: From Equality to Equity” at 350, and the papers collected in Weisberg, K. ed., Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), Part III.Google Scholar

26. Rhode, D. “Definitions of Difference” in Rhode, D. ed., Theoretical Perspective on Sexual Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) 197 at 207–08.Google Scholar

27. (1987),479 U.S. 212.

28. (1986), 628 F. Supp. 1264 (N.D.Ill.)

29. Hoff, supra note 25 at 258, 298.

30. Retired Judge Lois Forer provides a graphic account of such intuitively unfair outcomes for women and other vulnerable groups under supposedly “gender–neutral” statutes and procedures in Unequal Protection: Women, Children, and the Elderly in Court (New York: Norton, 1991).

31. See Jackson, D. Even the Children of Strangers: Equality under the U.S. Constitution (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992);Google Scholar Rosenfeld, M. Affirmative Action and Justice: a Philosophical and Constitutional Inquiry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991);Google Scholar and Carter, S. Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby (New York: Basic Books, 1991).Google Scholar

32. See especially Rosenfeld’s and Jackson’s reviews of these legal developments, supra note 31.

33. Cohen, G.A. “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice” (1989) 99 Ethics 906 at 906.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Beginning in “What is Equality?” (1981) 10 Phil. & Publ. Affairs at 185: “Part I: The Equality of Welfare” at 283: “Part 2: “Equality of Resources”, and continuing through the ‘80s.

35. For Sen’s most recent summary of his evolving position, see Inequality Reexamined (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992).

36. Arneson, R. “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare” (1989) 56 Phil. Studies 77;Google Scholar Cohen, supra note 33 at 907, 916ff.

37. Hayek’s, conception is perhaps best articulated in The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).Google Scholar Friedman’s, Milton best known work is Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).Google Scholar

38. The principal “communitarians” are usually taken to be Sandel, M. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982);Google Scholar Maclntyre, A. After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1981),Google Scholar and Taylor, C. Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Phil. Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985),CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. “Atomism” at 187 (Ch. 7) and sometimes Walzer, M. Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983).Google Scholar There are useful review articles by Gutmann, A. “Communitarian Critics of Liberalism” (1985) 14 Phil. & Publ. Affairs 308 Google Scholar and Buchanan, A. “Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism” (1989) 99 Ethics 852.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. See especially “The Nature and Scope of Distributive Justice” in the collection of papers cited supra note 38 at 289 (Ch. 11).

40. Fishkin, J. Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983) sounds a note on protection of family integrity which is repeated and broadened, especially by Taylor.Google Scholar

41. See the helpful collection (now perhaps bypassed by events) in Horvat, B., Markovic, M., & Supek, R., eds, Self-governing Socialism—A Reader (White Plains, NY: International Arts & Sciences Press, 1975).Google Scholar

42. Rawls’ very recently published Political Liberalism, supra note 3, (hereinafter PL) summarizes the substantial revisions to TJ he has been working out in a series of lectures throughout the 1980s. Because this book has been out such a short time, it will only be possible to summarize it superficially here. Note that Rawls explicitly denies he is responding to communitarian criticisms (at xvii).

43. Rawls, PL, Lecture VI.

44. PL, at 7.

45. See Sher, G. Desert (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987);Google Scholar Young, R. “Egalitarianism and Personal Desert” (1992) 102 Ethics 319.Google Scholar

46. Scheffler, S. “Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and Liberalism in Philosophy and Politics” (1992) 21 Phil. & Publ. Affairs 299.Google Scholar

47. Dworkin, R. “Foundations of Liberal Equality” in 11 Tanner Lectures on Human Values XI 1990 1 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990).Google Scholar

48. The U.S. Census Bureau’s annual series, as its title indicates, reports Money Income of Households, Families and Persons for the preceding year, along with a companion report, Poverty in the U.S. The complexities of estimating the in-kind transfers are set out in, e.g., Technical Paper 58: Estimates of Poverty including the Value of Non–cash Benefits, 1987 (all Washington, D.C. US GPO).

49. See Mead, L. Beyond Entitlement: the Social Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Free Press, 1986),Google Scholar and Murray, C. Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984).Google Scholar

50. Novak, M. The New Consensus on Family and Welfare: A Community of Self-Reliance (Wash. D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Milwaukee, Wise. Marquette University, 1987);Google Scholar Gueron, J. & Lougy, C. From Welfare to Work (New York: Russell Sage, 1991).Google Scholar

51. Among recent writers are Wilson, W.J. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987);Google Scholar Harvey, P. Securing the Right to Employment: Social Welfare Policy and the Unemployed in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989);Google Scholar Kaus, M. The End of Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1992).Google Scholar Impressive philosophical, psychological, and historical arguments may be found on opposing sides in Shklar, J. “American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion”, (1990) 11 Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990) at 385,Google Scholar and Elster, J. “Is There (Or Should There Be) a Right to Work?” in Gutmann, A. ed., Democracy and the Welfare State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) at 53.Google Scholar

52. See Summers, L. “Why Is the Unemployment Rate So Very High near Full Employment?” (1986) 2 Brookings Papers on Econ. Activity 1986 339;Google Scholar and Harvey, supra note 51.

53. A powerful example of the latter is Kozol, J. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools (New York: Crown Publishers, 1991).Google Scholar