On ethics, part VI: Egalitarianism

by Massimo Pigliucci

[This post is part of an ongoing series on ethics in which Massimo is exploring and trying to clarify his own ideas about what is right and wrong, and why he thinks so. Part I was on meta-ethics; part II on consequentialism; part III on deontology; part IV on virtue ethics; part V on contractarianism.]

We are getting close to the end of this multi-part series on ethics. Before I try to put everything together in the next post, I am going to briefly discuss egalitarianism, a view that is as important as it is controversial to contemporary debates in moral philosophy. Depending on what one means by “equality” in this context, egalitarianism can describe moral philosophies as different as Rawls’ type of Kantian contractarianism, Nozick’s libertarianism, and Marxism. No, seriously.

The first obvious question about egalitarianism is: equality of what? For instance, in most modern democratic societies it is uncontroversial that citizens have an equal right to vote, or an equal right to justice. (Of course, both of these are true only in principle, considering that the rich can buy the best lawyers and even determine the composition of the Supreme Court, but that’s another story.) I doubt anyone would reasonably disagree with that sort of egalitarianism, except for despots, many men in a large part of the world (wherever women don’t have equal legal rights), and incurable aristocrats. So let’s move on.

For Rawls, as we have seen, egalitarianism goes pretty radical, as it affects wealth as well as resources. While Rawls does concede the possibility of some inequality in wealth being just because it may be of advantage to everyone, his principle of equality of fair opportunity is as radical as egalitarianism gets (although not-so radical affirmative action policies, for instance, go somewhat into that direction).

Then again, most democratic societies have no trouble with the milder idea of formal equality of opportunity, where public employment, education, and even private employment are regulated so as to guarantee equal access to individuals and groups. (This is distinct from, and less radical than, affirmative action, because it does not establish quotas.)

As I mentioned earlier, however, even libertarians can be thought of — surprisingly — as egalitarians. Modern libertarians are really followers of John Locke, who famously said that people are endowed with a set of fundamental “natural” rights, most clearly life and property. I tend to agree with Jeremy Bentham, who famously referred to the idea of natural rights as “nonsense on stilts” (i.e., very, very tall nonsense). But for the purposes of this discussion, clearly Lockean libertarians agree that all people are equal in terms of natural rights.

Marx, too, though hardly usually thought of as an egalitarian, can be interpreted as advocating some type of equality. When he famously said “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” he was indeed advocating a principle of equal rights, though of course those rights are very different from those that Nozick and other libertarians would entertain.

So, we can see that different moral philosophies can be egalitarian about distinct criteria: a) opportunity (of jobs, of achieving a satisfying life, of pursuing happiness); b) income and wealth (the difference between the two being that the first is a flow, the latter a stock); c) resources (education, health care, etc.); d) civil liberties (including political representation and status under the law). There are more, of course, but these seem to cover most of what people actually care about.

There are several important issues about which, presumably, even the most Rawlsian egalitarian would readily agree. Equality does not mean that society is morally bound to correct all instances of bad luck a person may incur, nor that people cease to have to take responsibility for ill management of their resources. For instance, it is humane to provide additional resources to help people who — by genetic lottery or accident — are disadvantaged physically or mentally. But it would be absurd to pretend that society is morally bound to keep pouring resources on those people so that they achieve the same level of employment, education, and happiness as the population’s average. (Don’t laugh, New York City is legally obliged to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuitions for some students who cannot graduate from high school, even though after all that effort and money they still are functionally illiterate.) By the same token, if people willfully and repeatedly squander their resources (e.g., in the case of addictions that lead to loss of income or jobs), surely it is not up to society to keep providing them, beyond basic sustenance and medical and psychological help.

There is also some interesting discussion concerning what exactly counts as a resource. Clearly, external things like education, access to health care, jobs, housing, and so on, are resources, about which we can have discussions concerning the degree to which they should be equally accessible or distributed. But some egalitarians consider internal resources — i.e., personal talents and inclinations — fair game as well. Obviously, people will always (well, short of permanent genetic engineering of the human species) come with a variety of natural talents, which will immediately put some people to an advantage and others at a disadvantage. But it seems to me that it is going beyond the pale (not to mention the limits of practicality) to say that society ought to redress inequalities in natural attributes.

A trickier problem, actually, comes when we consider the effects of so-called “unchosen luck” (like early socialization) or so-called “chosen luck” (one’s decisions later in life, in college, or on the job). Children cannot be responsible for their early socialization experiences, and yet we hold the resulting adults responsible for their choices, even though psychological research clearly shows that the two are far from being causally independent.

Yet another issue with egalitarianism arises when one asks the question of to whom the principle applies. If we respond that one is concerned with equality within one’s society, the obvious question is why not extend the principle to the whole world? Well, one may answer, because though that would be nice, we simply don’t have the resources, political will, etc. to be able to do much about the rest of the world, except in a slow and indirect way. But then egalitarianism risks being perceived either as too parochial (it’s all about our in-group) or hopelessly quixotic (it’s about the world, man).

A related problem is posed by the consideration of equality among groups, not just individuals. What if we find evidence of inequality between ethnic groups, or genders (if you can imagine that!). Are they going to be eliminated by a focus on inequality at the individual level, or is there room in moral philosophy for group-level considerations? And let’s stay away from the thorny issue of animal rights, of course...

Finally, there is a risk that egalitarians may be mistaken about their central concern: that the issue shouldn’t be equality, but something else that often highly correlates with it. The classic example is the gap between rich and poor. Is the problem posed by inequality per se? If so, we could solve it by making everyone poor, but that would strike most people as absurd. Then perhaps the issue isn’t inequality, but the fact that, as George Orwell famously put it (cited in this very comprehensive article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), “a fat man eating quails while children are begging for bread is a disgusting sight.” Would it be all right if the fat men kept eating quails while the children were still poor but with enough bread to live?

Next: the full shebang...