AGAINST EQUALITY:

A CRITIQUE OF BERNARD WILLIAMS

MATTHEW OKEEFFE AND ROBIN SHEPHERD
Equality, as J. R. Lucas has observed, is a difficult notion in politics and a dangerous one.1 In assessing the consequences for personal liberty entailed by any policy of equality we would do well to take note of the father of all modern egalitarianism, as he boldly proclaims in The Social Contract: It is precisely because the force of circumstances tends continually to destroy equality that the force of legislation should always tend towards its maintenance.2 Rousseaus statement of faith brings us directly to the paradox at the heart of all egalitarian theories. In order to destroy one form of inequality, it is always necessary to create others. If, in short, our aim is to reduce material inequality, then new - and we might add more pervasive - relations of inequality will have to be established in the political sphere between legislator and legislatee, government and citizen, state and individual. The choice, then, is never between equality and its opposite, but between two forms of equality (or inequality, depending on your point of view) one which affirms equal political liberty and the other which seeks material equality secured only at the sacrifice of our equal freedom. Lucas suggests that we should be careful in our use of the idea of equality, and that misuse is rather dangerous. This danger is perhaps heightened by the fact that we often take for granted, rather than debate, the case for equality of one sort or another. Writers note that in a given country the wealthiest x percent of the population holds more than that percentage of the wealth (though this is true by definition!), while the poorest x percent holds less. They then proceed immediately to discuss how this state of affairs might be altered. This paper will discuss the meaning and justification of equality as expounded by one particular writer, Bernard Williams. In his essay The Idea of Equality,3 Williams does not immediately assume the case for equality, as other egalitarian writers often do, and he provides some very interesting arguments. We will argue in this paper, however, that Williams arguments do not work. STRONG AND WEAK ASSERTIONS OF EQUALITY Williams identifies two senses in which the idea of equality can be interpreted in political discussion. On the one hand, the idea of equality is used in statements of fact - that men are equal. On the other hand, the idea of equality is used in statements of political principle - that men should be equal. The problem for egalitarians is that on the one kind of interpretation, statements in which the idea of equality figures are too strong, while on the other kind of interpretation, statements in which the idea of equality figures are too weak. It is hard to find a satisfactory interpretation that lies between the two. To take the supposed statement of fact, to make the strong claim that all men are equal in all those characteristics in respect of which it makes sense to say that men are equal, or unequal, is patently absurd. And the weaker claim, that men are equal simply in respect of their common humanity, does not do very much, and in particular does much less than its proponents in political argument have wanted it to do. The strong claim seems absurd, the weak claim trivial. To take the statement of political principle: the practical maxim of equality - that men should be treated as equals is similarly inadequate. It cannot be claimed that all men should be treated alike in all circumstances. This too would be absurd. And the weaker claim, that men should be treated alike in similar circumstances, though perhaps an important principle, can hardly be weighty enough to constitute the principle that was advanced in the name of equality. As Williams points out: It would be in accordance with this principle, for example, to treat black men differently from others just because they were black, or poor men differently just

Philosophical Notes No. 23

ISSN 0267-7091 ISBN 1 85637 115 8 An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance, 25 Chapter Chambers, Esterbrooke Street, London SW1P 4NN www.libertarian.co.uk email: admin@libertarian.co.uk 1992: Libertarian Alliance; Matthew OKeeffe; Robin Shepherd. Matthew OKeeffe read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Jesus College Oxford, and subsequently received a Masters in Political Theory at the London School of Economics. He now works as an analyst for UBS Phillips & Drew. Robin Shepherd read Russian at the University of Londons School of Slavonic and East European Studies. He is currently studying for a Masters in Political theory at the London School of Economics. The views expressed in this publication are those of its author, and not necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, Advisory Council or subscribers. Director: Dr Chris R. Tame Editorial Director: Brian Micklethwait Webmaster: Dr Sean Gabb

FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY

2 because they were poor, and this cannot accord with anyones idea of equality.4 Williams goes on to claim that the two sorts of statement can be combined. The point of the factual assertion, on the one hand, is to back up social ideals and programmes of political action. And on the other hand, such political programmes have their force precisely because they are regarded not as gratuitously egalitarian, aiming at equal treatment for certain reasons, but as affirming an equality which is believed in some sense already to exist. But does Williams combination actually work? It is factual evidence of poverty which is normally used to back up programmes of political action. Conversely, redistributive egalitarian policies have their force precisely because they affirm an equality which does not, as yet, exist. We will put such confusion to one side, however, for the sake of argument, with a view to following Williams in his search for considerations which might save the idea of equality from the extremes of absurdity and triviality. NEED, MERIT AND RELEVANCE Williams considers, first, the subject mentioned earlier in connection with the weak egalitarian statement of fact common humanity. He sees the factual statement of mens equality, suitably weakened, as insufficient, but not, after all, trivial. That all men are human is, if a tautology, a useful one. It serves as a reminder that those who belong anatomically to the species homo sapiens, and can speak a language, use tools and so on, are also alike in certain other respects more likely to be forgotten, such as the capacity to feel pain and affection. And yet there are political arrangements which treat certain men as though they did not possess these characteristics, and which neglect moral claims which arise from them. Secondly, Williams considers moral capacities. Those who assert that men are equal identify more positive aspects in which men are alike: they are equal in certain things they can do or achieve, as well as in things that they need and can suffer. While this may not be the case for things like weight-lifting or calculus, there are certain other abilities, both less open to empirical test and more essential in moral connections, for which it is true that men are equal - and these are the moral capacities. The third question which Williams considers concerns equality in unequal circumstances. We may agree that men are equal in their common humanity, and in their moral capacities. But the notion of equality is often invoked in connections where men are agreed to be unequal, where the question arises of the distribution of certain goods. Williams makes a rough distinction here between two different types of inequality - inequality of need and inequality of merit. And he makes a corresponding distinction between goods - goods whose demand arises from need on the one hand, and on the other, goods that can be earned by merit. The distribution of goods in accordance with merit has a competitive aspect lacking in the case of distribution according to need. Thus it is appropriate to speak, in the case of merit, not only of the distribution of the good, but of the opportunity of earning the good. Williams notices certain similarities and differences between the cases of need and of merit. In both cases we encounter the matter of the relevance of reasons. For instance, the proper ground of distribution of medical care is ill health: this is a necessary truth.5 But ill health is not a sufficient condition for medical care in many societies, since medical care costs money. In the case of wealthy hypochondriacs, medical attention may go towards those who are not even ill, so that ill health is not even a necessary condition of medical care! Those who are genuinely ill, meanwhile, may receive no care at all. Williams sees this inequality between the rich ill and the poor ill as an irrational state of affairs; it is a situation in which reasons are insufficiently operative. By combining the notions of the relevance of reasons, and the operativeness of reasons, Williams believes he has discovered a genuine moral weapon to be applied in cases of unequal treatment. The very weak principle mentioned at the beginning of the paper was that men should be treated alike in similar circumstances; for every difference in the way men are treated, a reason should be given. An objection to this principle was that it sanctions gross inequalities, such as treating some men differently from others for the reasons that they are black or poor. But Williams now has a retort - that these particular reasons are irrelevant. He thus believes himself to be in a position to strengthen the original weak principle - that for every difference in the way men are treated, a reason should be given; these reasons, he believes, should be relevant. A PROJECT ALARMING IN ITS ABSURDITY An immediate problem, for Williams, is one of specifying the criteria of relevance. Why should the matter of whether a patient can pay for his medical care be irrelevant to a doctor? Williams answer draws on a tradition of thought which goes back at least as far as Plato. His reply seems to be that if among the different descriptions applying to an activity, there is one that contains an internal goal of the activity, then it is a necessary truth that the only proper grounds for the performance of the activity are connected with the effective achievement of that internal goal. If the activity involves a service rendered to others, the only proper criterion for distribution is their need. Thus the only proper criterion for the distribution of medical care is medical need; the only reasons for which a doctor should or should not act are those which concern the health of the patient. We may note, as an aside, that even if Williams test of relevance were a correct one, the reasons which he considers relevant would not necessarily motivate egalitarian treatment; people might act on these sorts of reasons with very different results. Nozick imagines an activity, schmoctoring, just like doctoring, except that its goal is to earn money for the practitioner. Williams presents no reason why schmoctoring services should be allocated according to medical need; the only reasons upon which a schmoctor should or should not act, Williams would have to say, are those which concern the wealth of the patient. But let us stick to real doctors rather than imaginary schmoctors. A thorough understanding of what Williams criteria of relevance fully entails reveals a project so alarming in its absurdity that it is difficult to imagine precisely how such an intelligent commentator could have thought it up in the first place. For it seems obvious that if medical care is only rationally distributed on grounds of medical need, then we shall be forced to conclude that any demand for pay on the part of the distributors - nurses, doctors, por-

3 ters, etc. - in excess of subsistence level will have to be designated irrational . As soon as it is accepted that nurses, doctors, ambulance men and the rest will not work (distribute medical care, that is) unless they are paid what they consider a fair wage, then it becomes painfully clear that to that extent they are, following the logic of Williams argument, behaving irrationally. And since it is impossible to distinguish those workers whose inclination to distribute care is influenced by such considerations from those who are not so influenced, the only firm way of ensuring that they do distribute care for rational reasons is to grind down every worker in the industry to the level of Marxs capitalist wage slave. Medical workers should be given just enough money to physically perform their services, while at the same time having as many hours of work squeezed out of them as they are capable of performing. Only then can we be absolutely certain that medical care is being distributed solely for relevant reasons. Williams test of relevance is incorrect, however. If it were true that the only proper criterion for the distribution of medical care were medical need, then, presumably, the only proper criterion for the distribution of barbering services, for instance, would be barbering need. The question Nozick asks is why the internal goal of the activity must take precedence over, for example, the persons particular purpose in performing the activity: Need a gardener allocate his services to those lawns which need him most? 6 Nozicks reductio ad absurdum may lose its appeal in comparing the services of the doctor with those of the barber or the gardener. But in what exact way does the situation of the doctor differ from that of the barber or the gardener? Why is he less entitled to pursue his own goals, within the special circumstances of practising medicine, than everyone else? Presumably, Williams would argue that medical care is more important than a good haircut or a well kept lawn. However, there are things, like food, which are even more important than medicine, yet few consider it a necessary truth that butchers (or farmers, or McDonalds, etc.) must allocate their beef to those who are hungriest. The fact that some things are more important than others will not save Williams. Nozick concludes that: When the layers of Williams argument are peeled away, what we arrive at is the claim that society (that is, each of us acting together in some organized fashion) should make provision for the important needs of all of its members. This claim, of course, has been stated many times before. Despite appearances, Williams presents no arguments for it.7 LIFE IS NOT A RACE Williams treatment of cases of need is inadequate. What, then, of his treatment of cases of merit? Here, we remember, there is a competitlve aspect lacking in cases of need, so that it is appropriate to speak not only of distribution, but of opportunity, Williams takes equal opportunity to mean equality of opportunity for everyone in society to secure certain goods. This notion is introduced into political discussion when there is a question of access to certain goods goods which are desired by large numbers of people in all sections of society, goods which people may be said to earn, and goods which not all the people who desire them can have. Goods of the last sort might by their very nature be limited, such as positions of prestige and management; they might be contingently limited, such as positions at university, in the sense that there are certain conditions of access which everyone, in theory, though not in practice, can pass; or they might be fortuitously limited, in that there are just not enough of them to go around. (Given that the human condition is characterised by what economists call scarcity, one might conclude that all goods fall into the category of what Williams calls fortuitous limitation! One might conclude, in other words, that all cases should be treated as cases of merit, and that equal opportunity should be treated as the correct egalitarian theory. This conclusion would render equality of circumstance an obsolete theory.) One problem with Williamss check list of these cases (cases where it is appropriate to introduce the notion of equal opportunity) is that it ignores the particular epistemic difficulties involved in actually identifying opportunities. We often have no way of measuring opportunities; we may not even know we have them, unless we take them. Success is the only certain proof of their existence, and success we cannot always have. In the face of failure, we cannot tell whether our failure comes of not having taken the opportunities open to us, or whether it comes of our not having had the opportunities. Pride, of course, inclines us to the latter view. As Lucas suggests: We blame external circumstances rather than our own inadequacies, and find in the failures of life fuel for fires of resentment rather than lessons in the grace of humility. Equality of Opportunity has bred envy rather than endeavour.8 If we could identify the important opportunities, perhaps we could line people up at the starting line of the great race of life; we could at least ensure that nobody missed the race. This model, of a race for a prize, is the model most favoured by egalitarians in their discussions of equal opportunity. The point of the analogy is that a race where some had a head start would be unfair, as would a race where some were forced to carry weights. But, as Nozick points out, the analogy is misleading. We are not agreed on what constitutes success in life, and we cannot, therefore, lay down what factors should be relevant, and what should not be allowed to count. We are equally uncertain when the race begins, and where the finishing post is. In Nozicks words life is not a race in which we all compete for a prize which someone has established; there is no unified race, with some person judging swiftness.9 Instead there are different persons separately giving other persons different things. Moreover, those who do the giving (each of us at times) often do not care about desert, or about the handicaps laboured under. There seems to be no good analogy for the trials of life, perhaps because real life, unlike a race, is not a wholly collective enterprise; we care about different things, and set our sights on different goals. THE REMOVAL OF INDIVIDUALITY If he abandons his model of life as a race, can the person with lesser opportunity nonetheless complain at being impeded by another who does not deserve his better opportunity to satisfy certain condition? Nozick thinks not:

4 If the woman who later became my wife rejected another suitor (whom she otherwise would have married) for me partially because (I leave aside my lovable nature) of my keen intelligence and good looks, neither of which did I earn, would the rejected less intelligent and handsome suitor have a legitimate complaint about unfairness? Would my thus impeding the other suitors winning the hand of fair lady justify taking some resources from others to pay for cosmetic surgery for him and special intellectual training, or to pay to develop in him some sterling trait that I lack in order to equalise our chances of being chosen?10 The major objection to speaking of the rights to various things such as equality of opportunity, equality of circumstance and so on, and the objection to enforcing these rights, is that these so-called rights require a substructure of things and actions, over which other people may have rights. Nozick suggests that although we do not deserve such things as our natural assets, we nonetheless own them. His position perhaps captures the intuitive truth that it is only the randomness of genetic endowments which enamours us to them. Williams presents the centrepiece of his argument for equality of opportunity in the form of a political axiom: It seems then that a system of allocation will fall short of equality of opportunity if the allocation of the good in question in fact works out unequally or disproportionately between different sections of society, if the unsuccessful sections are under a disadvantage which could be removed by further reform or social action.11 So, for example, in competitions such as the old 11+ exam, it is not enough simply to ensure that participants take the exam under the same conditions, applying the same criteria of judgment to all. It is vital, according to Williams, that we take into account all the antecedent and unequal environmental factors which contributed to the unequal abilities which each candidate might now possess. Williams clarifies his point by reminding us that the identity of the individuals concerned for these purposes, does not include their curable environment, which is itself unequal and a contributor of inequality. This abstraction of persons in themselves from unequal environments is a way, if not of regarding them as equal, at least of moving recognizably in that direction;12 a direction, we might add, which takes us a long way down the road to removing all those characteristics which constitute our very individuality. For if, as Williams enjoins us, we are to abstract the individual from all those outward characteristics which could conceivably be altered, we are left with a picture of individuals conspicuous only by their mutual similarities. (Williams himself raises the thorny issue of potential advances in genetic engineering, which would render our very genetic make-up part of our curable environment.) In denying that any characteristics which may be attributed to the environment in which we grew up can ever be considered authentically ours, Williams removes at a stroke every cultural, familial, ethnic, and educational influence. His denial succeeds only in tearing away the veil of innocence which covers the true face of the egalitarian argument, and reveals the striving for a dull, grey uniformity which has lain at the centre of all demands for equality since the fateful writings of Rousseau. EQUALITY AND OPPORTUNITY ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE GOALS But Williams in fact does much more than this. For if the opportunity in the equality of opportunity equation is to have any meaning at all, then it must surely signify the possibility of our becoming or acquiring something different. But as soon as we have availed ourselves of any opportunity, we have thereby availed ourselves of a good which, by definition, is part of our curable environment. For the benefit of those more accustomed to presuming, rather than arguing, the case for equality, the point may as well be spelled out. Equality and opportunity are mutually exclusive goals. As we explained at the beginning, equality itself is a deceptive and slippery slogan, since it is achieved in one sphere only by denying it in another. Even with regard to a particular, localised, competition, where Williams requirements for equality of opportunity are met, it is surely obvious that the first casualty of opportunity in this competition is equality in the next. And since equality in the next competition will demand the removal of those advantages which opportunity provided in the last, it is difficult to imagine the point of having equality of opportunity in the first place. Even if Williams could provide a strong foundation for either equality of opportunity, or equality of circumstance, this would not settle the argument. Williams believes it a mistake to abandon outright one sort of equality in favour of the other. His argument (another that will upset the logical purist) is that we must simultaneously try to have, and to eat, as much of our cake as possible. Unfortunately we cannot have our cake and eat it; as we have seen, equality in one sphere is achieved by denying it in another. Williamss paper has become a seminal work for the discussion of equality as a political principle. It is an eloquent and accessible case for equality which should be read by anyone who recognises the importance of the concept to modern political thought. It is, however, flawed at a fundamental level, and characterised throughout by a drive for uniformity molded by authority: the hidden agenda egalitarians have generally lacked the courage to display. We may conclude that the meaning given to equality in Williams essay is indeterminate; its justification is illusory. NOTES
1. J. R. Lucas, The Principles of Politics, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966, Section 56, p. 243. 2. J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, J. M. Dent and Sons, London, 1973, ch. XI, p. 204. 3. Bernard Williams, The Idea of Equality, in Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society, 2nd series, Blackwell, Oxford, 1962. 4. Williams, The Idea of Equality, p. 111. 5. Ibid., p. 121. 6. Robert Nozick. Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books, New York, 1974, p. 234. 7. Ibid. 8. Lucas, The Principles of Politics, p. 247. 9. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, p. 235. 10. Ibid., p. 237. 11. Williams, The Idea of Equality, p. 127. 12. Ibid., pp. 127-128.