Two concepts of equality Paul Dumouchel Dumouchp@gr.ritusmei.ac.jp Ritsumeikan University 56-1 Toji-in, Kitamachi, Kita-ku, Kyoto 603 8577 JAPAN 1
When reading current literature on equality and justice it is possible to recognise that it resorts to at least two different concepts of equality that we generally confuse or at least fail to distinguish. Concepts of equality, it is important to note are different from practical goals and political issues such as political or economic equality or equal opportunity or which inequalities, if any, are just, or legitimate, or should be allowed? Concepts of equality are cognitive tools, they are ideas concerning the nature of equality as such that underlie the way in which be think about these issues and that guide us in the decisions we reach concerning them. They should not be identified with the issues themselves. Failure to distinguish the two concepts of equality has lead, I believe, to confusion concerning the relationship between these different practical and theoretical issues. In particular it has been one cause of the priority often given to economic equality over political equality, or to social rights over political rights. It has been a cause of the common belief that political equality is merely formal while economic equality is real. In this paper I want to challenge this common prejudice in the following way. I will argue that the political concept of equality constitutes a much better tool for thinking about issues of inequality even and perhaps especially issues of economic inequality. Even in Rawls, who has done so much to limit the priority of economic equality over political equality, the different concepts of equality remain indistinct. This may explain some of the difficulties in the interpretation of his work. However, my goal is not exegetical but methodological: it is to show that there are two different concepts of equality between which authors often go back and forth and that we should distinguish between them. We should distinguish between them because one of them is a much better tool to think about issues of justice and equality, leaving them indistinct leads to confusions and misunderstandings. In fact, I will argue that one of these two concepts is incoherent, but that incoherence does not appear until the two concepts of equality are clearly distinguished. I propose to call the first of these two concepts of equality the political concept of equality 1 and the other the concept of complete equality. In the first part of this paper, I start from three conceptions of equal opportunity and work my way back to the concept of equality that underlies them. In the second part I analyse this concept and show that it is essentially political. Part three introduces the concept of complete equality and traces its evolution through various recent texts and authors. In part four, I analyse complete equality and distinguish it from the concept of political equality. Finally part five argues that the concept of complete equality is incoherent. 2
1. Equality and three conceptions of equal opportunity Allen Buchanan, Dan W. Brock, Norman Daniels, & Daniel Wikler in Chapter 3 of From Chance to Choice. Genetics & Justice (Cambridge 2000), their book on justice in relation to present and foreseeable future developments of genetic technologies distinguish three conceptions of equal opportunity which they view as alternative interpretations over which authors disagree. The first they name Formal Equality of Opportunity. It requires, they say, the removal of formal and legal barriers that limit equal access to careers, professions, government offices and to all desirable social roles and functions. Characterised in this way, formal equality of opportunity is, as they note, closely related to what historically has been understood by the slogan careers open to talents. 2 The second conception of equal opportunity that they identify retains the prerequisites of formal equality of opportunity to which it adds the central requirement of removing or compensating the different types of informal social discrimination that prevent equal access to different roles and functions. This can be called material equality of opportunity. Under a natural interpretation, the aim of material equality of opportunity can be seen as fulfilling the conditions necessary in order for careers to be really opened to talents. Clearly, even when equality of opportunity is legally entrenched, discrimination or prejudices can prevent members of various groups from having access to many positions, occupations and benefits. Material equality of opportunity is necessary if equality of opportunity is not to remain a purely formal provision that masks real inequality of opportunity. Under this interpretation, material equality of opportunity does not send back to a concept of equality that is different from that which underlies formal equality of opportunity. Contrary to what our authors suggest when they talk of alternative interpretations, material equality of opportunity simply corresponds to a greater awareness of the conditions necessary in order for equal opportunity, understood as careers open to talents, to be realised. However, according to Buchanan et al., material equal opportunity remains insufficient if careers really are to be open to talents. Equality of opportunity requires even more they argue. This third conception of equal opportunity, which we can characterise as real equality of opportunity, they name following John Roemer (1996), the level playing field concept of equal opportunity. 3 Real equality of opportunity, they tell us, requires not only the elimination of legal and informal barriers of discrimination, but also efforts to eliminate the effects of bad luck in the social lottery on the opportunities of those with similar talents and abilities. 4 In other words, real equal opportunity demands not only the elimination of legal and formal barriers, plus measures to combat discrimination and the effect of prejudices, but it also requires policies that compensate for the effects of existing social inequalities on the life prospects of various individuals, i.e. bad luck in the social lottery. 3
These three conceptions of equal opportunity can be viewed as deriving from one and the same concept of equality, one that is expressed or at least suggested by the slogan careers open to talents. Central to this idea of equality is the requirement that a person s access to different roles or positions should be limited only by his or her abilities. Each of the three conceptions of equal opportunity corresponds to a different social extension of the concept and to a growing understanding of what is necessary in order for the requirements implied in the core idea to be implemented. Formal, material and real equal opportunity are like three concentric circles, representing the shock wave of this idea of equality as it gradually invades the social fabric. First, it is assumed that removing legal and formal obstacles to equal opportunity is enough in order to open careers to talents. When that is revealed insufficient, steps are taken to prevent discrimination and to reduce other informal barriers that defeat the goal of equal opportunity. This corresponds to material equality of opportunity. Finally, real equality of opportunity sets out to level the playing field, to even out differences in the starting point that result from existing inequalities. 5 In all these cases the goal remains the same: that a person s access to different positions and benefits should only be limited by his or her abilities. What changes is the importance of the measures that we believe are necessary in order to reach that goal. As we move from formal to real equality of opportunity the requirements necessary to implement the goal defined by careers open to talents become stronger and the social consequences of doing so more important. Formal, material, and real equal opportunity correspond to practical issues, to real states of affair which have been or which we want to realise in the world. All three of them, from the weakest to the strongest conception of equal opportunity can be viewed as rooted in the same concept of equality. A concept that, I will argue, is essentially political. 2. Careers open to talents and the political concept of equality Which idea of equality, if any, motivates the call that career should be open to talents? Rawls in paragraph 12 of A Theory of Justice (1971) criticises the conception of equality as career open to talents and it may be useful before carrying on to review his criticism. Rawls central objection is that this conception of equality permits distributive shares to be improperly influenced by factors so arbitrary from a moral point of view. (p. 72) What Rawls has in mind, is that the slogan careers open to talents is compatible with considering natural differences in talents as a sufficient justification of social inequalities. It is true that career open to talents can be viewed as leading to a form of moral meritocracy in at least two ways. Under a strong interpretation, agents deserve the more important positions and higher benefits they obtain only if their 4
capacities are superior. In other words, given that social competition is fair, unequal capacities justify unequal benefits. On a weaker interpretation, agents only deserve what they get, whatever that is, if it results from the unfettered autonomous use of their abilities. That is to say, social inequalities can only be justified if social competition is fair. In the first case, under the strong interpretation, differences in ability directly justify social inequalities. They constitute a sufficient condition of legitimate inequalities. Under the second, weaker interpretation, social inequalities can be justified only if the process through which they arise is such that they can reflect natural differences in talents. In this case careers open to talents, rather than differences in talents themselves, constitutes a necessary, but not sufficient condition of legitimate inequalities. Rawls also claims that careers opens to talents leads to a basic structure of society, the system of natural liberty, which he judges inferior to the basic structure recommended by his two principles of justice. One of the reasons why Rawls reaches that conclusion is because he considers that careers open to talents does not imply any provision concerning the passage of time. As a consequence the results of past fair competitions accumulate and create between agents important inequalities that trump the very ideal of equality that gives rise to them. But since there is no effort to preserve an equality, or similarity, of social conditions, except insofar as it is necessary to preserve background institutions, the initial distribution of assets in any period of time is strongly influenced by natural and social contingencies. The existing distribution of income and wealth, say, is the cumulative effect of prior distribution of natural assets that is, natural talents and abilities as these have been developed or left unrealized, and their use favored or disfavored over time by social circumstances and such chance contingencies as accident and good fortune. 6 However, as we have just seen, this need not be the case. Rigorously applied careers open to talents requires not only formal, but also material and real equality of opportunity. In itself it is sufficient to justify the requirement that we compensate for the effects of bad luck in social lottery. Or to put this in a slightly different way efforts to preserve equality insofar as it is necessary to preserve background institutions may have consequences that are much more important that what Rawls suggests. This said, there are two criticisms here on the part of Rawls and they should be distinguished. The first one is that careers open to talents leads to the system of natural liberty. This I have argued is not the case. Rawls accusation rests on an unjustified premises, that careers open to talents does not imply anything concerning the cumulative effect of prior distribution of natural assets and perhaps on an insufficient distinction between the idea itself and the way in which, historically, it was implemented. 7 The second one is that it allows inequalities that are arbitrary from a moral point of view. I have not yet responded to this criticism. 5
Why should careers be open to talents? What is wrong with a social arrangement that forbids or limits this? In political and social situations where careers are not open to talents certain groups or individuals are excluded from some professions, roles or social benefits. Who excludes them? It may be the laws or customs or religion, but in a sense it is always other groups or individuals that exclude them, other individuals and groups that profit from and uphold the laws or customs that limit the opportunities open to women, to foreigners or to members of various religious, ethic or social minorities. Such situations imply the existence of privileges in the classical sense of the word, of private laws that allow certain individuals or groups to impose their private will upon other individuals or groups. In other words, these situations imply political inequality in the sense of some being subjected to the private will of others. By the private will of others I mean that when careers are not open to talents there are rules of exclusion to which agents who are morally equal would not agree. Such rules of exclusion are arbitrary. To the opposite morally equal agents can agree to a rule that limits access to various positions on the basis of the agents competence. Political equality it will be said is equivalent to equality before the law. Not quite, political equality implies equality before the law but it is not implied by it. Equality before the law is not in itself a sufficient guaranty of political equality. Equality before the law alone fails to prevent that some agents, for example in virtue of their wealth or of their social standing, may exert disproportionate influence upon the political decision process in consequence excluding others from participating. In order to protect the integrity of the political decision process, political equality will therefore recommend in such cases special rules that limit the influence of these factors. Political equality cannot be reduced to equality before the law because, as our discussion of equal opportunity has shown, not only laws can constitute barriers or exclude agents and subject them to rules to which morally equal agents would not agree. Careers open to talents is a direct expression, a requirement of the ideal of political equality. Rawls was afraid that it could tolerate the existence of inequalities that are arbitrary from a moral point of view. It is likely that he is right. The political concept of equality suggests that morally arbitrary inequalities should only be limited if they lead to political inequality. Contrary to what Rawls suggest at time and to a common belief, political inequality properly understood can exercise very strong constraints upon permissible economic and other social inequalities. From the point of view of political equality such inequalities are in themselves neither legitimate, nor illegitimate as long as they do not lead to political inequality. As Rawls once said: The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just or unjust is 6
the way that institutions deal with these facts. 8 Why then did Rawls also write that the most obvious injustice of system of natural liberty is that it permits the distributive shares to be improperly influenced by these factors so arbitrary from a moral point of view? Why is that such an obvious injustice? Why can t distributive shares be influenced by factors that are morally arbitrary? How is improperly influenced to be construed if it is not equivalent to leading to political inequality? 3. Brute luck and equality. Having distinguished the three conceptions of equal opportunity that I presented in part 1, Buchanan, Brock, Daniels & Wilker (2000) go on to argue that there are two variants of the third conception of equal opportunity, what I have called real equality of opportunity, and that, following Roemer (1996), they name the level playing field conception of equal opportunity. It is in this second variant that we will discover at work a different concept of equality. The main difference between these two variants, they tell us, lies in the reasons that justify why we should compensate agents who have experienced bad luck in the social lottery. According to the first variant, which they call the social structural view, that reason is because how someone fares in the social lottery is significantly influenced by the ongoing effects of past injustice. 9 In other words, according to this first variant the reason why we should compensate an agent born into an underprivileged group is because the disadvantage from which he or she suffers in terms of equal opportunity is to some extent the result of past injustice. If we did not compensate this disadvantage we would actually perpetuate the injustice and in consequence give undue advantage to some other individual or group. 10 The second variant, they argue, is based on a different assumption: the moral intuition or considered judgement that persons should not have lesser opportunities as a result of factors that are beyond their control, in the sense of being unchosen. 11 In other words, according to this view it is not because they suffer from the cumulative result of past injustice that we should compensate those who have lost out in the social lottery but because their disadvantage is no fault of their own. According to them, even if Rawls is one of the primary advocates of the social structural conception, this alternative view can also be found in his work. For example, in A Theory of Justice (1971) though he affirms the superiority of the liberal interpretation of the two principles of justice over the system of natural liberty, Rawls nonetheless rejects the liberal interpretation because it still permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents. Within the limits allowed by the background arrangements, distributive shares are decided by the natural lottery; and this outcome is arbitrary 7
from a moral perspective. 12 Later on he adds: There is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune. 13 In a just society, our access to different roles and positions should not be determined by our success in the social, any more than in the natural lottery. Buchanan, Brock, Daniels & Wilker interpret these and similar passages from Rawls as indicating that, according to him, benefits and inequalities that result from factors over which a person has no control have no moral basis. The underlying idea, they suggest, is that it seems unfair that an agent should be at a disadvantage because of something that is no fault of his or her own. Following T. Scanlon (1989), our authors call this the brute luck view of the level playing field conception of equal opportunity. Buchanan, Brock, Daniels & Wilker s main interest is with respect to justice issues raised by the capacity of genetic technologies to transform the results of the natural lottery. The appeal of the brute luck view is to them evident, as it seems to extend very naturally and simply from questions of justice concerning the social lottery to justice with regard to the natural lottery. However, before directly addressing these issues they also provide a short genealogy of the brute luck view. From Rawls, they trace the history of this conception to two famous articles published by Richard Dworkin in 1981: What is Equality? Part I Equality of Welfare and What is Equality? Part II Equality of Resources. In those articles Dworkin argues in favour of equality of resources over equality of welfare. According to him, one of the reasons why equality of resources is preferable to equality of welfare is because equality of resources takes into account the natural distribution of talents while equality of welfare does not. That is to say, in the unfortunately now received jargon, equality of resources factors in the original distribution of non-transferable productive assets among a population. If it is true, as Rawls (1971) argued, that an individual s life prospects should not be determined by the morally arbitrary natural distribution of talents, then we should, according to Dworkin, compensate agents who have received fewer talents. He then considers two schemes of compensation. Without entering into the technical details of these methods of compensation, the point that is important to our discussion is that in these two articles Dworkin postulates a type of equivalence between natural assets and social benefits. He considers that natural assets should also be taken into consideration by theories of distributive justice and he proposes mechanisms to even out differences among agents of nontransferable personal goods, that is to say talents. Rawls had argued that the difference principle represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talent as a common asset and to share in the benefits of this distribution whatever it turns out to be. 14 But he also claimed that the distribution of natural assets is a fact of nature and no attempt is made to change or even 8
to take it into account. 15 Dworkin for his part believes that we should take this fact into account and, if we cannot change the unequal distribution of natural assets, we should at least compensate in some way those who have been unlucky. However, Dworkin did not carry to its logical conclusion the transformation of personal assets into objects of distributive justice. He refrained from doing so for a moral reason directly related to the intuition that, according to the authors of From Chance to Choice, is at the hearth of the conception of justice underlying the brute luck view: a person should not have lesser opportunities as a result of factors that are beyond his or her control. Dworkin maintained that while agents should be compensated for their lack of talent or poor abilities, they should also be held responsible for their expensive tastes or preferences. That is to say, if talents and natural abilities are morally indifferent, tastes and preferences are not. Contrary to natural endowments, they reflect personality characteristics for which an agent can be held responsible. Unlike talents, tastes and preferences are not simply things that happen to us, original assets that are given to us at birth, but the result of past decisions and actions. In consequence, if our preferences are expensive and difficult to satisfy, it cannot be said that it is no fault of our own and therefore we cannot claim to be compensated for them. Like talents, preferences and tastes are personal resources or liabilities. They also make it harder or easier for a person to achieve certain goals or to attain a given welfare. Nonetheless Dworkin maintained a clear moral difference between talents and preferences. The first, because they are morally arbitrary factors should be compensated and their consequences evened out among agents. The second should not. Because they are under the agent s responsibility they can ground no claim of inequality. However John Roemer in The Equality of Talents (1985) questioned the stability of this distinction between talents and preferences. While the main thrust of his article is to reject Dworkin s claim that equality of resources is preferable to equality of welfare, in the process he also undermines the sharp distinction between talents and preferences. His argument to this effect rests a large extent on the fact that mathematically we can always portray agents who have different preferences as agents who have similar preferences but over an extended list of goods. As George J. Stigler and Gary S. Becker had already demonstrated a long time ago, differences in preferences among agents can always be represented as differences between prices of objects, production cost or information available to agents who have similar preferences. 16 It follows that there is no fundamental difference between preferences and talents, nothing to ground the moral distinction Dworkin sought to establish. Since different preferences, Roemer argued, can always be expressed as differences in talents, in the information available to agents or in production cost there is no reason to maintain a strong moral distinction between talents and preferences. From a 9
less technical point of view we can ask: Is it really plausible to maintain that there is a radical difference between our talents for which we are not responsible, as if we did not need to cultivate them and discipline to make them fructify, and our tastes for which we are held responsible, as if they were not the result of contingent encounters and of the social lottery? Buchanan, Brock, Daniels & Wilker argue for their part that the radical form of resource equalitarianism that results from the abandon of the moral difference between talents and preferences yields a profoundly expanded conception of the domain of distributive justice. 17 The most obvious difference between the political concept of equality and the concept of equality that underlies the brute luck view is that the first one considers the unequal natural distribution of talents as neither good nor bad, but as morally indifferent. The brute luck view for its part aims at removing this original inequality of natural assets either indirectly through a compensation scheme, as Dworkin suggests, or directly through eugenic intervention, as the authors of From Chance to Choice recommend. That is because under that concept of equality any inequality that is morally arbitrary, in the sense that it does not have any moral foundation, is morally objectionable. As Larry Temkin says of the equalitarian position that he adopts in his book Inequality on this view, undeserved inequality is always objectionable; whether or not it is unavoidable, any one is responsible for it, there is anyone for whom it is worse, or it involves different people, societies, places or times. 18 This last quotation brings out into the open a distinction that is implicit in the difference Dworkin makes between talents and preferences. Relative to this concept of equality there are deserved and undeserved inequalities. Or, to say this in another way, inequalities do not all have the same moral status and what is objectionable are inequalities that morally undeserved. Inequalities are morally undeserved when they befall an agent through no fault of his own. At first sight the conception of moral desert implicit in this concept of equality sends back to the idea of moral autonomy. The apparent intuition is that an inequality can only be morally justified if an agent suffers from it through some fault of his own, that is to say, through the exercise of his own moral autonomy. 4. Complete equality I propose to name this the concept of complete equality. Complete equality because from this point of view, in principle, any difference whatsoever between two agents can be seen as an inequality. As soon as an agent is viewed as suffering from a disadvantage relative to others but through no fault of his or her own, the difference that is responsible for this disadvantage becomes an inequality that gives rise to a claim to compensation. Differences in resources or in welfare, natural or social differences between agents, differences in knowledge, in aptitudes, 10
physical or intellectual, differences in height or in the ability to digest lactose, or differences in the agents natural or social environment, from the vantage point of the concept of complete equality there is no difference that cannot be transformed into an inequality. Amartya Sen once argued that the important question concerning equality is not Why equality? but Equality of what? and it seems clear that when issues of equality are addressed with the concept of complete equality this does constitute a fundamental question. 19 This concept is also complete in another sense: every inequality is either deserved or undeserved. There is no inequality that is outside of the scope of this moral difference and in that sense for the concept of complete equality there is no such thing as a morally arbitrary inequality. There are it seems three major differences between the political concept of equality and the concept of complete equality. The first one concerns the scope. The scope of the political concept of equality is limited to a unique domain, political equality, and only takes into account other differences between agents if and when they lead to political inequality. The scope of the concept of complete equality is apparently indefinite. There is no domain of properties, no space of variables as economists say, in which it cannot be applied. Sen s question Equality of what? is indicative of one of the major difficulties that this conception faces, how can these different domains be articulated to each other and which rule of priority should be established between them? The second major difference concerns the attitude towards what are often called morally arbitrary factors. According to the political concept of equality natural differences between agents, for example differences in talents, are morally arbitrary and therefore should not give rise to political inequality. They should not because political inequality is a morally relevant difference inasmuch as it violates the moral autonomy of some agents by subjecting them to the private will of others. In other words from the point of view of the political concept of equality morally arbitrary differences between agents are in themselves morally indifferent, what is objectionable is to consider that such differences give rise to or ground moral differences between agents and in particular that they constitute a justification of political inequality. The concept of complete equality considers that differences that are morally arbitrary, like differences in natural asset or bad luck in the social lottery are morally objectionable precisely because they are morally arbitrary, because there is nothing that justifies them. That is why there is a sense in which it can be argued that from that point of view there is not factor that is morally arbitrary. Either, as Temkin said, an inequality is underserved and it is always objectionable or it is deserved or in some way legitimate. Note that according to the political concept of equality morally arbitrary differences are neither right nor wrong, what is wrong is to transform morally arbitrary differences, like difference in race, gender or income into moral difference between agents. 11
However, for the concept of complete equality morally arbitrary differences are immediately objectionable. They are wrong in themselves. Finally, according to the political concept of equality there is no such thing as deserved or legitimate inequalities. Natural differences are morally indifferent. They are neither deserved nor undeserved. Political inequality is always illegitimate. On the opposite complete equality establishes a distinction between deserved and undeserved inequalities. As we have seen, ultimately the foundation of that distinction is in the difference between what is and what is not within an agent s control. Inequalities that result from factors that escape a person s control are undeserved; those that proceed from some fault or decision of his or her own are deserved, or at least can be. What is the relationship between these two concepts of equality? Is it possible that the concept of complete equality only constitutes an expanded version of the political concept of equality? Just like I argued that the three conceptions of equal opportunity, formal, material and real equality of opportunity correspond to more ambitious renderings of one and the same idea, can we see complete equality as exporting from politics to other domains the same fundamental concept of equality? Such a reading is suggested by the fact that both concepts of equality are apparently anchored in the idea of moral autonomy. According to the political concept of equality, political inequality is wrong because it robs some agents of their moral autonomy. That is to say, as a consequence of political inequality, there are issues concerning which some agents are deprived by other agents of the possibility on exercising a morally autonomous choice. According to the concept of complete equality inequalities are objectionable whenever they are undeserved. That is to say, whenever they do not result from a morally autonomous decision or action on the part of the agent. It may seem that the main difference is simply that between the two concepts the acceptable range of limitations on moral autonomy has diminished. While the political concept of equality refuses that some agents should have rights that pre-empt the moral autonomy of others, complete equality considers that all limitations on the moral authority of agents, whatever their origin, are equally unjustified. From its point of view, the origin of the disadvantage that is imposed on some agents does not matter, what is important is the disadvantage itself. However, this reading overlooks one major difference between the two concepts: the importance of moral desert for complete equality. What is wrong with undeserved inequalities according to complete equality is that they are undeserved. Yet, compensating an agent for such undeserved inequality will not augment his or her moral autonomy. If I am paid a premium in compensation for my limited talents I am not as a result any more morally autonomous or responsible for my natural assets. My disadvantage is perhaps to some extent lifted, but this does 12
not have any consequence whatsoever on my moral autonomy. 20 The case of political inequality is completely different. It is wrong because it deprives agents of their moral autonomy, not because agents do not deserve this inequality. On the contrary, because political inequality limits the moral autonomy of other agents it can never be deserved. Therefore the question of it being deserved or underserved not is not an issue. It is a conceptual mistake. Furthermore, political equality, unlike complete equality creates the conditions under which the exercise of moral autonomy once again becomes possible. All this suggests that we are dealing with two very different concepts of equality, two conceptions of what it is to be equal that are distinct and that do not have the same moral ground. 5. An impossible goal Amartya Sen in Equality of what? claims that equality in one domain or one space of variables most often leads to inequality in another domain. For example equality of libertarian rights might not be compatible with equality of income or equality of welfare consistent with equality before the law. There are two moments in his arguments. First he suggests that this trade off between a domain where equality is the rule and one where inequalities are at least tolerated is what Rawls, Nozick, Buchanan, Nagel, and Scanlon do, as well as most authors who deal with issues of equality. They defend equality as an ideal in one domain that they consider particularly important, but, in order to achieve that goal, for example, equal rights for all, they are ready to accept or even to recommend inequalities in another domain, for example, economic inequalities. Thus he concludes it is important to recognize the limited reach of that usage, and also the fact that demanding equality in one domain no matter how hallowed by tradition can lead one to be anti-egalitarian in some other space. 21 He then goes on to argue that this surprising balancing act is not an accident, nor the result of inattention or confusion on the part of these authors. The fundamental reason, according to him, why equality in one space is generally inseparable from inequality in another space is human diversity. Had all people been exactly similar, equality in one space (e.g. income) would tend to be congruent with equalities in others (e.g. health, wellbeing, happiness). One of the consequences of human diversity is that equality in one space tends to go, in fact, with inequality in another. 22 Tends to go, in fact says Sen. His conclusion is prudently empirical. Had he determined instead, as one might well, that equality in one domain implies inequality in another, he may have been lead to question the consistency of such a concept of equality. Instead, from this fact he inferred that what is most important is to answer the question: the Equality of what? What is the domain in which we want to establish equality? 13
His argument nonetheless is not strictly empirical. It rests on two points: the multiplicity of variables from which we can evaluate interpersonal inequalities and human diversity understood as variety both in natural and social circumstances, as well as in personal characteristics. It is because of these two very general considerations that equality in one domain is not congruent with equality in another. Yet this result is not empirical, it simply follows from the structure of the problem that equality cannot be consistently applied simultaneously in all the domains where the question may arise. That the measure of equality over the various variables will give inconsistent results is here imbedded in the structure of the situation as it is construed. To say, as Sen does, that equality in one domain will tend to go with inequalities in another is an understatement. Unless you are ready to abandon either human diversity or the multiplicity of point of views from which inequalities can be measured, this result is inevitable. There is an argument from John Roemer that suggests a similar result: that complete equality can only be consistently applied at the price of abandoning either human diversity or the multiplicity of points of view from which inequalities can be evaluated. In Egalitarianism, responsibility and information (1987), which is a sequel to his (1985) paper where he challenged Dworkin s distinction between preferences and talents, he argues that incompleteness of information concerning welfare functions, in particular, carves out a realm for personal responsibility, and thereby drives a wedge between welfare and resource egalitarianism. (p. 173) In other words, even if Dworkin s distinction is to some extent ambiguous, as argued before because mathematically it is always possible to portray agents who have different preferences as agents who have identical preferences over an extended list of goods, Roemer recognises that in concrete cases this is something that we cannot do. What prevents us from translating differences in preferences into other types of differences, he claims is lack of information about the welfare functions of the agents. In a language closer to Sen s that is to say, it is because, in reason of their various personal, environmental and social circumstances, agents evaluate their welfare from different points of view. It is, Roemer says, the impossibility of gaining perfect knowledge concerning those differences that justifies the distinction between welfare equality and resource equality, and motivates the imputation of personal responsibility to agents. The only reason, he claims, why we assign responsibility to agents for their action is because we lack complete information about agents internal state or the state of the world that determined them. It follows, Roemer adds, that if I knew everything about you, there would be no predictive or instrumental value in letting you choose: your welfare could as well be fulfilled by my choosing for you, insofar as choosing your preferred option is concerned. (p. 175) In other terms, it is only because 14
the economist cannot gain perfect knowledge of the welfare functions of agents he studies that there is sense in attributing them personal responsibility. It is true that the problem addressed by John Roemer is different from the question raised by Sen. Yet, the question, equality of what? and the distinction between deserved and undeserved inequalities are clearly closely related. In both cases the issue is to determine which inequalities are acceptable and which are not. Roemer s argument is that this issue only arises and becomes an urgent political question because the welfare functions of agents are different, and because no one can chose for all others given that no one can know everything about them. It seems therefore that complete equality cannot be achieved. It is impossible first of all because the measure of inequality cannot be consistently applied over various domains and in consequence equality in one domain leads to inequality in another. It is impossible also because the distinction between deserved and undeserved inequality is predicated on the state of our knowledge concerning each other. Perfect knowledge of the welfare function of other agents would do away with the distinction. Complete equality is impossible finally because it could only be realised if we could put an end to human diversity, at which point of course perfect knowledge of everyone s welfare function would also be possible. At this point it may be claimed that political equality is just as much impossible. No matter what laws we enact, which measures we take there will always be some agents whose power allows them disproportionate influence upon the political decision process. This is certainly true, nonetheless one fundamental difference remains. In the case of political equality this impossibility is practical rather than conceptual. Perfect political equality cannot be realised in the real world, but the idea is clear and there is nothing contradictory about granting all agents the exercise of their moral autonomy. Because of that political equality can serve as a regulatory ideal. Complete equality is conceptually impossible. The concept of complete equality is inherently inconsistent because it requires the removal of all differences between agents for which the agents themselves are not responsible. That is incoherent because it is equivalent to demanding that agents be causa sui, causes of themselves. Barring that, which is clearly impossible, it settles for second best, and demands that every difference for which agents are not responsible be compensated. Something which if could be realised would effectively put an end to human diversity. In consequence there are I fear little reasons to believe that complete equality constitutes as a useful guide to think about issues of inequality. 15
Bibliography: Buchanan, A., Brock, D.W., Daniels, N., & Wilker, D. From Chance to Choice Genetics and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) Dworkin, R. What is Equality? Part I: equality of welfare Philosophy and Public Affairs 10: 185-246. - What is Equality? Part II: equality of resources Philosophy and Public Affairs 10: 283-345. Rawls, J, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971) Roemer, J. Equality of Talents Economics and Philosophy 1: 151-181 (1985) reprinted in J. Roemer Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) pp. 119-147. - Egalitarianism, responsibility and information Economics and Philosophy 3: 215-144 (1987) reprinted in J. Roemer Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) pp. 148-178. Scanlon, T. A Good Start: Reply to Roemer Boston Review 20(2): 8-9 (1989) Sen, A. Equality of What? in Inequality Reexamined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 12-30. Spitz, J.-F. L Amour de l égalité, essai sur la critique de l égalitarisme républicain en France 1770-1830, (Paris : Vrin, 2000), p. 286. G.J. Stigler & G.S. Becker De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum in The American Economic Review 67,2: 76-90 (1977). Temkin, L. S. Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 352. Notes: 1 In order to distinguish the political concept of equality from the issue of political equality with which it is often confused. 2 Buchanan, A., Brock, D. W., Daniels, N. & D. Wilker From Chance to Choice Genetics & Justice Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 65. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Note that it is not necessary for existing inequalities to be unjustified in order to compensate agents which suffer from them. The reason why this is so is that even in the conditions of what Rawls (1999) defines as 16
ideal theory where it is assumed that existing inequalities are morally justified, bad luck in the social lottery would reflect inequalities that are not to the advantaged of the least privileged and therefore not justified if as a consequence of them some agents would be robbed of equal opportunity. Therefore even ideal theory requires that we compensate for this bad luck. 6 Rawls, Op. cit., p. 72. 7 On this last topic one can consult Jean-Fabien Spitz L Amour de l égalité, essai sur la critique de l égalitarisme républicain en France 1770-1830, Paris : Vrin, 2000. 8 J. Rawls A Theory of Justice, op. cit., p. 102. 9 From Chance to Choice, op. cit., p.66. This is a view of which they believe Rawls is one of the major representatives. 10 As was already indicated in endnote 5 from the point of view of political equality difference due to bad luck in the social lottery should be compensated even if they do not result from past injustices. 11 From Chance to Choice, 0p. cit., p.69. 12 Op. cit., p.73-74. 13 Ibid, p.74. 14 Ibid, p.101 15 Ibid, p. 107 16 Stigler, G.J. & G.S. Becker De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum» in The American Economic Review Vol 67, No 2 (March 1977): 76-90. 17 From Chance to Choice, op. cit., pp. 84-86. 18 L. S. Temkin Inequality New York : Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 12. 19 Amartya Sen «Equality of What?» in Inequality Reexamined, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 12-30. 20 It may be argued that this depends on the importance of the disadvantage from which an agent suffers. Severe deprivation can make moral autonomy impossible and relieving becomes a necessary condition for its exercise. This is true, but note that it depends on the importance of the disadvantage whether or not others also suffer from this disadvantage. Which is why the concept of equality is perhaps not the best to think about this issue. 21 A. Sen, Op. cit., p.16 22 Ibid, p.20 17