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Equality

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 Equality

Yehonatan Alsheh, Dani Filc, Naveh Frumer, Itay Snir

Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon 3:2

Being a lexical enterprise, Political Concepts revolves around what is

probably the quintessential philosophical question at least since Socrates: “What

is X?”. Socrates’ basic idea, much like that of the current lexicon, is that the

everyday use of concepts is often problematic. The attempt to define what is

some X, even when it does not reach a definite answer, often has important

intellectual and political impact. It is thus interesting to note that when Socrates,

in the course of the Phaedo, addresses the concept of equality, he does not bother

to discuss its definition:

Consider, [Socrates] said, whether this is the case: we say that there is

something that is equal. I do not mean a stick equal to a stick or a stone to a

stone, or anything of that kind, but something else beyond all these, the Equal

itself [αὐτὸ τὸ ἴσον: auto to ison]. Shall we say that this exists or not?

Indeed we shall, by Zeus, said Simmias, most definitely.

And do we know what this is?—Certainly.1

Thus, rather than adopting his usual strategy, asking his interlocutor what

equality is in order to then undermine the latter’s taken-for-granted confidence,

Socrates builds upon the premise that the concept is sufficiently familiar and

clear so as to serve as a basis for the rest of his argument, regarding the Theory of

Recollection.

1
See Plato, Phaedo, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing, 1997), 64-65 (74a).
 2

We would like to suggest that Socrates’ recourse to equality when in need

of an intuitive concept that requires no definition is not at all accidental. Contrary

to Ronald Dworkin, who argues that “people who praise or disparage [equality]

disagree about what it is they are praising or disparaging,” 2 we shall argue that

equality, “the Equal itself” as Socrates puts it, is a relatively simple concept that

is easily grasped. This does imply that there is no point in trying to define this

concept, only that such definitions do not and cannot serve to re-conceptualize

equality, nor to highlight contradictions in our intuitive understanding of it, so

much as to provide a more technical, explicit account of those fairly common

intuitions. To be clear, when it comes to the application of the concept of

equality in the social and political domain, things are not at all trivial. What we

would like to suggest, however, is that one can distinguish between the concept

of equality—the Socratic “Equal itself” in its more abstract, intuitive form—and

the principle of equality—namely equality as an organizing normative principle

of the social, political, or economic fields. It is our view that, although political

thinking is fraught with controversies over equality, these have to do for the most

part with the application of equality qua principle, rather than with the very

meaning of the concept. Underlying such controversies is a shared understanding

regarding that basic meaning. To wit, a great deal of the major political texts

dealing with equality in recent decades do not bother to offer a definition of it at

all, quickly turning their attention to related questions, such as whether or not

equality is intrinsically valuable, what is the proper object of equality (recourses,

2
Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 2.
 3

opportunities, capabilities), how can equality be attained, and what are the

legitimate means for doing so.3

This, in our view, is the result of the fact that equality is a pre-political

concept: one that is highly familiar in contexts ranging from everyday use to

mathematics and engineering. Whereas concepts such as freedom, justice, state,

and authority are distinctly political concepts, existing first and foremost as

principles or values in the political arena, the relative clarity the concept of

equality enjoys in extra-political contexts, though not unique to it, appears to

have a direct effect on its functioning as a political principle. Thus, the main

thread throughout this essay would be the following tension that marks the

attempt to define equality: a tension between the familiar, obvious, intuitive

character of equality, with its ongoing correspondence to extra-political, everyday

contexts, and the fact that this obviousness is never self-sufficient, namely that it

takes some kind of qualification in order to turn equality into a political

principle—a qualification that is itself the product of some political decision.

This tension, in turn, gives birth to yet another one: the intuitiveness of equality is

3
For a defense of the internal value of equality see, for example, Thomas Nagel,
“Equality,” in Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 106-
127. For a typical counter-argument see Derek Parfit, “Equality or Priority?”, in The
Ideal of Equality, ed. Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams (Basingstoke: Palgrave-
Macmillan, 2002), 81-125. For a defense of equality of resources see John Rawls, Justice
as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2001); for equality of welfare see Kai Nielsen, Equality and Liberty: A Defense of
Radical Egalitarianism (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985); for equality of
capabilities see Amartya Sen, “Equality of What?”, in Choice, Welfare and Measurement
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982); for equality of political power see Charles R. Beitz,
Political Equality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). For a debate
between a position that justifies state taxation as a means for minimizing equality versus
one that delegitimizes any such intervention, compare Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel,
The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), and
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974). For a typical
example of an attempt to define equality see Felix E. Oppenheim (1970), “Egalitarianism
as a Descriptive Concept”, American Philosophical Quarterly 7: 143-152. For a similar
strategy see Stefan Gosepath, “Equality,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality.
 4

what turns it into a particularly effective basis for political claims; yet at the same

time, it also nurtures the view that disagreements over equality and inequality are

merely disagreements over the employment of a concept whose meaning requires

no further elucidation. In other words, the appeal to the obviousness of equality

often blurs the fact that the way equality is understood and employed, indeed the

very appeal to equality as a political principle, is itself the product of a non-trivial

political decision.

Our discussion will not attempt to exhaust the political content or the

various debates over the many questions related to equality, let alone offer a

comprehensive historical survey of its uses, or an exhaustive genealogy of its

various pre-modern origins. Our task remains lexical, in that it seeks to

understand the concept of equality and its translation into a political principle. In

addition, we wish to offer a critical account of the “egalitarian horizon” that

emerges out of some of the contemporary debates surrounding the concept within

the framework of liberal thought, broadly construed. Part one of the essay

analyzes the political potency of the concept of equality, pointing to the demand

for consistency and rationality embedded in it. Such a demand, we argue, refers

to an order of things that is never an ontological given, but rather the product of

some human interest, or as we like to put it, the product of some egalitarian view:

a view that entails a distinction between certain differences among people that are

deemed legitimate and naïve and those that are deemed illegitimate and wrong.

Part two seeks to trace the emergence of the modern egalitarian view, according

to which all humans are born equal. It does this by tracing a particular

genealogical trajectory: the links between equality, the idea of man being created

in the Image of God, and the historical transformations with respect to the
 5

relation to death. Part three turns to an examination of three paradigms of

equality dominating the landscape of Anglo-Saxon liberal thought in the latter

half of the twentieth century: Luck Egalitarianism, the Rawlsian school, and

“equality of relations” or “democratic equality.” Building upon the third

paradigm’s critique of the former two, we develop three points that we believe

better uncover the blind spots in the contemporary debates over the concept.

First, we seek to sharpen the idea of unequal social relations through a more

accurate definition of structural inequality. Second, we turn to a discussion of the

concept of exploitation, which serves as an example for qualifying one particular

category of structural inequality. Finally, we argue that going beyond the limits

of the predominant liberal image of equality requires going beyond the Kantian-

inspired idea of the equal moral worth of all humans.

1. What is Equality

In his definition of equality for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

author Stefan Gosepath emphasizes that equality does not imply strict identity. 4

Such identity can only exist between a thing and itself, whereas equality

presupposes some difference between two compared things. Socrates already

expresses this idea in the Phaedo: “Look at it also this way: do not equal stones

and sticks sometimes, while remaining the same, appear to one to be equal and to

another to be unequal? […] Do they seem to us to be equal in the same sense as

what is Equal itself? Is there some deficiency in their being such as the Equal, or

4
Stefan Gosepath, “Equality,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality.
 6

is there not?”5 Put differently, to say that two things are more equal or less equal

is meaningless if one conceives of equality as mathematical identity. It is only

meaningful if one keeps in mind that, in reality, equality is a relation between

different things. Equality as such does not simply exist “out there”: reality

consists only of differences. Any principle of equality is thus the product of a

human view, of some interest in comparison or equalization; an attempt to apply

some abstract standard of identity on an otherwise varied, fluctuating reality.

Such a standard can never be fully realized, and hence every determination of

equality, every demand for equalization, implies a decision according to which

certain differences are to be deemed irrelevant in some particular context.6

This is why Gosepath refers to equality as an “incomplete predicate,” in

the sense that equality is always equality of something. Every act of comparison

between two things requires a third element of comparison (tertium

comparationis), in relation to which the two can be deemed equal. Louis Pojman

further argues that every normative (and one might add: political) claim for

equality should be construed as a four-part relation: two things are equal in some

5
Plato, Phaedo, 65 (74b, d).
6
The claim that people are not equal by nature, while far from trivial, does not yet imply
an answer to the question whether equality is a natural thing or a human product. The
latter question involves the debate whether people are equal independently of the
political framework in which they exist or whether they are to be considered equal only
relative to such a framework. No side in the debate, however, argues that there are
absolutely no differences between people. That is, both sides agree that to treat people as
equal means actively ignoring certain differences between them. Hobbes, for example,
famously regarded all humans as equal in the sense that, although there are physical and
mental differences between them, what is relevant is only the fact that they are equally
capable of killing each other under certain conditions. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 82. Hannah Arendt provides a different
account of natural inequality versus political equality, writing that: “The equality
attending the public realm is necessarily an equality of unequals who stand in need of
being ‘equalized’ in certain respects and for specific purposes. As such, the equalizing
factor arises not from human ‘nature’ but from outside.” See Hannah Arendt, The
Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), 215.
 7

third aspect, and hence deserve an equal share of some forth element. 7 The

principle of equality expresses a proportion that can be captured by this simple

formula, and political disagreements over equality can thus by regarded as

disagreements over the substantive contents of each of its four variables—

contents without which equality becomes an empty concept. Aristotle makes a

similar point when he highlights the connection between equality and justice,

arguing that the latter opens up questions regarding what is to be equalized, on

what basis, and according to which measure. 8 In other words, in political

discourse, the concept of equality never stands by itself: it must be qualified by

additional concepts in order to turn into a political principle.

But even short of such qualification, the concept of equality, as we

suggested earlier, is not entirely without meaning, for even then it implies some

demand: the demand for the equal treatment of equals, namely for consistency—a

demand that appeals to a certain form of rationality. It would be wrong, however,

to assume, with Pojman, that such formal equality, this appeal to consistency-

based rationality, is simply a common presupposition of the political as such. It is

enough to recall that there are political claims that simply do not rely—at least

7
Louis P. Pojman, “Introduction,” in Equality: Selected Writings, ed. Louis P. Pojman
and Robert Westmoreland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1-16.
8
See Aristotle, Politics, trans. C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998.), 85-86
(Book 3, Ch. 12; 1282b): “But the political good is justice, and justice is the common
benefit. Now everyone holds that what is just is some sort of equality… For justice is
something to someone, and they say it should be something equal to those who are equal.
But equality in what and inequality in what, should not be overlooked. For this involves
a problem and political philosophy.” See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011),
95 (Book 5, Ch. 3; 1131a): “Since the unjust person is unequal and what is unjust is
unequal, it is clear that there is also a certain middle term associated with what is
unequal. And this is the equal… It is necessary, therefore, for the just to involve at least
four terms: the persons for whom it happens to be just are two, and the things involved—
the matters of concern—are two. And there will be the same equality for the persons and
the things involved: as the latter (the things in the given circumstances) are related, so
also are the former.”
 8

not explicitly—on any notion of equality (or rationality for that matter), but

rather, for example, on an appeal to brute force or to some cosmic or theological

order. The construal of political claims in terms of equality should thus be

regarded as an effort to grant rational form to such claims. Instead of the

presupposition that the rationality embedded in the concept of equality as such is

a necessary, not to say trivial aspect of the political, we have to realize that the

appeal to equality as a basis for political claims-making implies a decision in

favor of a particular form of rationality as an organizing principle of the political

field. A political claim that appeals to equality seeks legitimation by way of

distinguishing itself from statements that express arbitrary caprice or mere

interests, referring instead to rational terms that everyone, in principle, could

understand and accept. Conversely, a political claim regarding lack of equality

serves as a way to delegitimize and scandalize certain differences, and to present

them as wrongs.

In other words, since equality as such does not simply exist “out there,”

the concrete content given to the variables of the above equation—including on

what basis the equals are equal, and what is the object to be equally distributed

between them—are part and parcel of the egalitarian view in question. This

moment of decision, which is at the basis of every statement or demand for

equality, is always to some extent arbitrary and never fully justifiable. Contrary

to John Locke’s famous statement that the “equality of men by nature” is

“evident in itself, and beyond all question,” the idea that all humans are equal—

much like the view that equality should be limited to certain groups of people, or

that it should rather be extended to non-human animals—involves certain choices

and decisions that appeal to a reasoning that cannot but be partial and open to
 9

contestation.9 What applies to the subjects of equality applies just as well to the

object of equalization, which can range from economic goods to political rights,

social status, physical accessibility, etc. Étienne Balibar, for example, shows how

the modern concept of citizenship is regarded as the universal right to demand the

status of equal citizen. This, in turn, implies the demand to regard differences

hitherto deemed natural as inequalities that ought to be eliminated; in other

words, to recognize and institutionalize new forms of equality.10 This seemingly

endless range of content that the concept of equality can assume allows the

egalitarian view to expand from where it has already taken hold to additional

areas. It gives birth to a historical dynamic that generates more and more varied

political claims, all of which present themselves as expressions of such

consistency-based rationality.

Yet even this expansive tendency does not imply that the egalitarian view

stood at the basis of every political claim throughout all times. On the contrary,

the historic lesson is that the status of the egalitarian view vis-à-vis other patterns

of political claims-making has itself always been subject to change. The

principled demand for political equality (whatever its particular content might be)

is itself the subject of an ongoing political struggle that has never decisively

ended, and that to a large extent carries on today much more intensively than

9
John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett, 1980), 8 (Chapter II Sect. 5).
10
This rather laconic description already demonstrates the way Balibar ties together the
concepts of equality, liberty, and citizenship, which he expresses through such phrases as
“equaliberty” (égaliberté) and “citizen-subject.” See Étienne Balibar, “‘Rights of Man’
and ‘Rights of the Citizen’”, in Masses, Classes, Ideas (New York: Routledge, 1994),
46–50; and “Citizen Subject,” in Who Comes after the Subject?, ed. Eduardo Cadava,
Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: Routledge, 1991), 33-57. Although his
views on the matter are quite different, Rawls too understands equality as the status of
being an equal citizen, and uses the phrase “equal liberty” to express the first of the two
principles of justice he develops.
 10

before: a struggle against political worldviews that seek to preserve inequalities

between groups of people by presenting these as mere differences, thereby

preserving certain social and political structures that rely on these differences (as

opposed to the latter being a mere accidental byproduct of the former). Thus, a

genuinely political understanding of equality, especially in this day and age, calls

for a historical account of the conditions of its emergence as a major player on

the political stage.

2. The Historicity of Equality

Time and again, with almost worrying ease, historical studies have

revealed the incredibly violent origins of various kinds of inequality.11 Those

approaches that treat equality as a primary concept of investigation—

predominantly Marxism, but also radical feminism, queer theory, and

postcolonialism—are characterized by a methodological historicism that focuses

on exposing the historical sources of inequalities involving class, gender, sex,

race, culture, or geography. A great deal of theoretical attention has been placed

on analyzing the various ways these structures of inequality have been masked or

concealed—first and foremost by presenting certain social structures and identity-

formations as natural and a-historical, and hence as pre- or a-political. The

historicity of the concept of equality itself, however—that is to say, the question

how equality turned into a central object of political claims-making in the first

11
For a brilliant example see Clifton Crais, Poverty, War and Violence in South Africa
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
 11

place, and hence how these concealments of inequality could be scandalized—

seems to have been largely neglected.12

The varying presence of inequality throughout history has to do primarily

with the varying degree of scandal it involves. Tracing the principle of equality

through history thus requires a meticulous, comparative reconstruction of the

fluctuating “scandalousness” that appearances of inequality raised in different

cultures at different times. 13 How do we explain that at certain historical moments

in a certain political culture the egalitarian view began to expand, whereas other

moments saw the emergence of blind spots within its field of vision? How come

outrage over certain forms of inequality erupted in certain junctures and receded

in others? It appears, however, that over and above these unending patterns of

transformation, a certain fault line can be traced. At a certain point in the history

of the West, there occurred a fundamental disturbance in the mechanisms in

charge of neutralizing the outrage over the absence of equality; of refracting

every egalitarian view by regarding every form of inequality as simply a natural

difference. This fault line is the advent of modernity. It can be located somewhere

between Hobbes (1651), who regarded the equality of human beings as a grim

natural condition politics ought to remedy, and Locke (1690), who elevated this

natural, self-evident equality as what politics ought to preserve. It is around that

period that scandals over appearances of inequality turn from episodic incidents

12
See Siep Struurman, “The Voice of Thersites: Reflection on the origins of the Idea of
Equality,” Journal of the History of Ideas 65:2 (2004): 171-189.
13
See Barbara Weinstein, “Developing Inequality”, American Historical Review 113:1
(2008): 1-18; Philip T. Hoffman, David S. Jacks, Patricia A. Levin and Peter H. Lindert,
“Real Inequality in Europe Since 1500,” Journal of Economic History 62:2 (2002): 322-
355; Aldon Morris, “Building Blocks of Social Inequality: A Critique of Durable
Inequality,” Comparative studies in Society and History 42:2 (2000): 482-486; Carole
Shammas, “A New Look at Long-Term Trends in Wealth Inequality in the United
States,” The American Historical review 98:2 (1993): 412-431.
 12

into a central concern that gradually turns into the central “motor” of modern

political unrest. In the intellectual sphere, this move culminates with Rousseau,

who places inequality at the center of the developmental logic of human society:

a development from a harmonious state of nature into an unjust, miserable

political order, in which inequality is institutionalized into the status of law. 14

Equality is thus also (or rather: after all) a modern political concept.

Following Carl Schmitt’s understanding of modern political thought, we can

regard equality as a secularized theological concept. 15 It was secularization that,

so to speak, “ignited” the concept of equality as a motor of ongoing discontent at

the heart of modern society. If one understands secularization not as the

uprooting of superstitions and theological excesses, or as yet another phase in the

progress of truth and rationality, one realizes that the effect secularization had on

equality is an ambivalent one. If one also drops the view of modernity and

secularization as a crisis, one can regard the characteristic instability of the

concept of equality, its constant self-undermining, so to speak, not as a

problematic byproduct of the alleged crisis of modernity/secularization, but rather

as a “positive,” inherent quality of modern politics in general. If one adopts the

view of modern politics as the art of preserving, managing, and channeling mass

unrest, then the alleged instability of modern equality reveals itself to be an island

of stability that in fact serves as an organizing principle.

The first theological idea to be traced at the basis of the concept of

equality is that of man being created in the Image of God (Hebrew: tselem

elohim): an idea that allowed the egalitarian view to encompass (in principle) all

14
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Oxford: Oxford
University Press 1994).
15
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 36.
 13

human beings. 16 It allowed the bringing-together of various appearances of the

human into a single space of differences that do not make a difference. One

cannot be outrageous about inequality among human beings without thinking of

them as comparable to begin with. The half-man-half-god status of a figure like

Hercules was not altogether extraordinary against the backdrop of a worldview in

which the space stretching between gods and humans was filled with such

hybrids. The idea of man-in-the-image-of-god replaces this hybrid continuum

with a relation of resemblance between God and man, which in turn implies a

“flattening” and unification of the human domain. Man remains an icon; εἰκὼν

τοῦ θεοῦ [eikōn tou theou]; imago dei.17

The second theological root we need to trace has to do with the

emergence of modern equality out of the graveyard. In the monotheistic

framework, the primary form equality assumed was the shared mortality of all

humans: their primal association in the absolute certainty of death. All

inequalities of the flesh, as well as those of society, were but fading shadows

compared with the equal ontological status of all souls in their divine origin (the

Image of God again). The relative eternity of the ocean of bones piling up

generation after generation reminded believers of the absolute eternity of the

Kingdom of Heaven—the entrance to which, as is well known, is harder for a

rich man than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.18

16
“And God said: Let us make mankind in our image, as our likeness” (Gen 1:27).
17
See the discussion of the notion of resemblance in Michel Foucault, The Order of
Things (New York: Pantheon, 1971), Ch. 2. See also Yair Lorberbaum’s fascinating
study, The Image of God [Tselem Elohim] (Tel Aviv: Schoken, 2004, in Hebrew). For a
recent discussion of the role of the idea of man’s creation in the image of God in the
emergence of modern political subjectivity, see Jürgen Habermas, “The Concept of
Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights,” in Metaphilosophy 41:4
(2010): 464-480.
18
Matthew 19:23-26.
 14

It is true that such beliefs fed certain egalitarian movements for centuries

prior to modernity.19 There were always some who were impatient, who

demanded curbing the severe inequality of this world precisely in the name of the

absolute equality awaiting everyone in the World to Come. Yet such movements

have always been marginal, and in the final account, anecdotal. They never

succeeded in replacing the dominant political discourse and the dominant form of

political contestation—one that relied on restorative claims, appealing to the

justice of a long-lost past. In such a climate, the egalitarian view mainly took the

form of trying to locate the truth of the Kingdom of Heaven down on earth,

giving birth to egalitarian claims that mirrored the yearning for the World to

Come. This was an egalitarian view from God’s perspective: a perspective in

which man, qua His icon, gets to play a part.

In the late eighteenth century, however, the demand for equality here and

now took the place of claims for restoration. Theologically speaking, this

corresponds to the very same period in which the relation to death began to

change. Up until that time, death was at the center of first-rate spectacles: public

executions, deathbed confessions, deeds and other final words. The transfer of a

person from the custody and jurisdiction of an earthly sovereign to that of the true

King of Kings was a ceremony that served to rectify the existing order of things

(or to restore it, in case the death in question violated it). But the meaning of

death began to change. 20 It receded from the public sphere, turning into the most

private experience of all, so much so that even the dying person could experience

19
Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and
Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).
20
See the last section of Michael Foucault, Society Must be Defended (New York:
Picador, 2003), 239-264.
 15

it only up to a point. Death turned from the true judgment of the one true Judge

into an absolute failure, ultimate escape, unavoidable retreat. The dead cannot be

punished, avenged, or compensated for. Death becomes the absolute limit of

modern power—which is why the modern, secularized anxiety in the face of

death is completely unlike its predecessor. The cadaver no longer marks the

horror of hell but the horror of the limit of power, its non-omnipotence. As death

is no longer a journey or movement, equality must now make its appearance in

this world down below.

If we go back to the idea that the concept of equality expresses a demand

for consistency-based rationality, we can see how these two theological

sources—the Image of God, and death—gave birth to immensely important

institutions, whose Western European development constitutes the basis for

modern political liberalism. 21 The idea of man-as-icon was embodied in the idea

of the juridical persona, the generalized man-without-qualities, allegedly “pure”

of any property that would distinguish it from any other person: the equal subject

of the law, the market, and state apparatuses. The view of death as the absolute

limit of power was in turn embodied in a different kind of juridical persona, one

that does not correspond to any particular human being: the state, firm,

association, party, and so on—institutional realizations of social formations that

are distinguished from the individuals who compose them, and are immortal

since they are able to survive their replacement.

21
Douglass C. North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast, Violence and Social
Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
 16

3. The Concept of Equality in the Age of Equality: The Liberal

Horizon and Beyond

The fault line of modernity can thus be marked by the fact that the

presupposition of the equality of all human beings is accepted as an organizing

principle of political justification. This transformation was expressed most clearly

by the rise of the republican and liberal strands of political thought, which

decidedly adopted this egalitarian principle, and sought to turn its universal

applicability into a self-evident requirement. The American and French

revolutions have anchored the principles of civic and even human equality in

their constitutions, thereby granting the decision on this egalitarian view a solid

political foundation.

Alongside liberty, equality becomes one of the two main pillars of

modern politics, engraved upon the inaugurating plaque of the liberal state, even

if only as an abstract principle. The scandal of inequality is now a scandal vis-à-

vis a commitment that the polity had already taken upon itself. This does not

imply that all claims for equality are addressed, nor that all of them are even

registered as such. The tension between the promise of equality and its

fulfillment, in other words, does not go away. Nevertheless, once modernity

decides to adopt the pattern of egalitarian political rationality, such claims have a

clearer address they can be directed at. If previously such claims had to dedicate a

great deal of their energy to establishing the very idea that lack of equality

constitutes a scandalous presence, the bulk of that energy can now be dedicated

to the manifestation of further forms of inequality. This gives birth to a dynamics

in which demands for the abolition of inequality expand into more and more

fields—both in terms of their subjects (equality of whom) and in terms of their

 17

objects (equality of what). More and more forms of lack of equality can now

potentially be presented as illegitimate and as demanding redress.

In what follows we do not intend to present an exhaustive genealogy of

the development of the concept of equality between the rise of the modern state

and the present day, nor a comprehensive mapping of every egalitarian approach.

Instead we would like to leap straight to the contemporary landscape of liberal

thought in the Anglophone world: a landscape characterized by a reexamination

of the political and normative foundations of liberalism, including a revisiting of

the concept of equality. The debates regarding the concept of equality discussed

below are relevant not only because they open up certain fundamental questions

regarding that concept, but also because they help uncover what we would argue

are the fundamental problems of the “picture of equality” that predominates the

liberal horizon today.

3.1. The Distributive Paradigm of Equality

One of the predominant approaches to the question of equality in the

contemporary liberal discourse is the one known as Luck Egalitarianism. Simply

put, it states that the demarcation line between scandalous inequalities and naïve

differences has to do with whether the inequality in question is the product of an

autonomous decision by the parties involved or something that is outside their

control, namely a matter of sheer luck: genetic makeup, circumstances of birth,

unforeseen calamities, or any other factor that cannot be attributed to conscious,

informed decisions. 22

22
For different versions of Luck Egalitarianism and the debates between them see
Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue; Larry Temkin, Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993); Richard J. Arneson, “Luck Egalitarianism and Prioritarianism,” Ethics 110
 18

The concept of equality underlying this approach seems to rely on the

idea that those advantages people enjoy that are not the product of their prudent

decisions or personal effort are basically undeserved, which is to say that those

individuals cannot claim they are truly entitled to these advantages (and thus to

claim that others have no right to demand that they forfeit these advantages). This

is what we might call the “scandalous root” of inequality according to Luck

Egalitarianism. Elisabeth Anderson, one of the sharpest critics of Luck

Egalitarianism, adds that this approach relies on a “humanitarian intuition,”

according to which those who enjoy advantages that are not the product of their

own effort have a moral duty to share the presents showered upon them by

Fortuna with those who have not been so fortunate. 23 Although we generally

accept Anderson’s critique of Luck Egalitarianism, we nonetheless believe that it

relies on a political rather than humanitarian intuition, seeing itself as an

interpretation of the idea of a political community of equals. The “negative

scenario” Luck Egalitarianism would like to prevent is one in which, as a result

of brute luck or sheer circumstances, some group of people comes to win

advantages that are translated over time into political power over their fellows—a

kind of “luck aristocracy,” so to speak. Seeing as we are all equally likely to

either enjoy such good fortune or to suffer from bad luck, a decent political

community, according to Luck Egalitarianism, ought to assume the task of

offsetting such differences precisely in order to prevent such potential scenarios.

(2000): 339-49; Gerald. A. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” Ethics 99
(1989): 906-44; John Roemer, “A Pragmatic Theory of Responsibility for the Egalitarian
Planner,” in Egalitarian Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
Nicholas Barry, “Defending Luck Egalitarianism”, Journal of Applied Philosophy 23
(2006): 98-107.
23
Elizabeth S. Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?”, Ethics 109 (1999): 287-337.
 19

Anderson’s main criticism against Luck Egalitarianism is that it fails to

provide a proper interpretation of the very motivation and idea of egalitarianism.

What people find outrageous about inequality—a point that Anderson believes is

confirmed by looking at the history of various egalitarian movements—is not the

fact that some are fortunate whereas others suffer bad luck, nor that the

advantages enjoyed by the first are undeserved. What egalitarianism is driven by

is not the offsetting of chance differences or accidental gaps, but rather the

abolition of unequal social relations—relations that are oppressive, exploitative,

repressive, and so on. At the heart of Luck Egalitarianism Anderson diagnoses

what she calls, following Iris M. Young, “the distributive paradigm” of equality:

the view that the very meaning of equality is an equal distribution of some good,

be it resources, capabilities, opportunities, rights, positions, and so on. Luck

Egalitarianism then interprets this paradigm as the question who is and who is not

entitled to their share in the distribution of fortunes and misfortunes.

Unlike Anderson, Young also includes the work of John Rawls and his

followers under the distributive paradigm. Rawls’s approach to equality is indeed

quite distinct from that of Luck Egalitarianism, seeing as he interprets equality

not as the question of which goods each person is entitled to, but as the question

whether or not what he calls the “basic social structure” is such that each person

is treated as an equal among equals. Young argues that, despite this shift of

emphasis towards social structures, which would appear to distance the Rawlsian

approach from the distributive paradigm, it nonetheless still regards these

structures as chiefly responsible for the distribution of goods, power, positions,

influence, etc. In other words, Rawls evaluates the equality of such structures on

the basis of their distributive patterns of freedoms, rights, opportunities, or goods,

 20

and not on the basis of the question whether or not the social relations instituted

by these structures are egalitarian or inegalitarian, oppressive or non-oppressive,

etc. Young also makes the point that the Rawlsian approach fails to pay sufficient

attention to the fact that social structures tend to institutionalize a certain pattern

of relations among social groups—relations that are often relations of mutual

dependence. It thus fails to note that the ongoing operation and maintenance of

these social structures is itself often the source of various inequalities between

groups. Thus, while Young finds that Rawls does move away from the more

individualistic view of equality characterizing many Luck Egalitarians, his

approach nonetheless fails to develop an adequate conception of structural

inequality.24

Both Young and Anderson argue that the task is to drop the distributive

paradigm of equality in favor of an approach often labeled Equality of Relations,

Relational Equality, or Democratic Egalitarianism: one that relies not on a notion

of more equal distribution but on the removal of relations of subordination,

relations of superiority and inferiority between people (the product of which

24
See John Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 10-12. For Young’s critique of Rawls see her
Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1990), 35;
and Responsibility for Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011), Ch. 2.
Rainer Forst, who agrees with Young’s critique of the distributive paradigm, argues it
does not apply to Rawls, who, in his view, places the emphasis not on the end-result of
the distribution but on what he calls the scheme of distribution. See Rainer Forst,
“Radical Justice: On Iris Marion Young’s Critique of the ‘Distributive Paradigm’,”
Constellations 14:2 (2007): 260-65.
Anderson’s position vis-à-vis Rawls is more ambivalent. On the one hand, she regards
him as belonging to the camp of “equality of relations” rather than Luck Egalitarianism.
On the other hand, she advocates Amartya Sen’s equality of capabilities rather than
Rawls’s equality of resources. The result is what she calls equality as equal participation:
an interpretation of the egalitarian principle as the demand to guarantee social conditions
that allow every person to participate as equally as all others in every aspect of public
life. Compare this also with Nancy Fraser’s development of what she calls “parity of
participation,” in her Scales of Justice (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009),
Ch. 2, 4. For a defense of Rawls from Anderson’s critique see Samuel Scheffler, “What
is Egalitarianism?”, in Equality and Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010),
175–207.
 21

might very well be an unequal distribution of resources, capabilities, welfare,

etc). The very ideal of a society of equals ought to be interpreted not as a society

in which each gets only what he or she deserves, nor one in which we

compensate those among us who did not get what they deserve, but a society in

which no one oppresses or dominates other people, thereby violating the

fundamental idea of a polity of equals. 25

3.2. Two Pictures of Structural Inequality

How, then, are we to understand the paradigm of equality of social

relations, which is meant to replace the distributive one? Young ties the

development of such an alternative to two additional concepts: structural

inequality and oppression. In this section we wish to extend Young’s discussion

by sharpening the definition of structural inequality, and the nature of the

egalitarian view it entails. In the next section we shall focus on one type of

oppression mentioned by Young, namely on the concept of exploitation.

The main distinguishing feature between a structural and what might be

termed personal notion of inequality is that the latter directs the egalitarian view

towards gaps in the condition or position of different individuals and groups,

whereas the first directs it towards the fact that these gaps are the product of

certain social relations. In other words, the structural notion of inequality regards

certain differences between people—whether in capabilities, resources,

accessibility, political power, or any other “good” in the extended sense of the

term—first, as a matter that tends to reproduce itself, and second, as the product

25
See Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?”, 336: “Democratic equality conceives
of equality as a relationship among people rather than merely as a pattern in the
distribution of divisible goods.”
 22

of various social arrangements, institutions, norms, laws, accumulated historical

advantages, etc. To these one might add a third feature, often lacking from liberal

conceptions of structural inequality, namely a non-individualistic social ontology

(an ontology of groups, classes, etc).

To be precise, the problem we wish to focus on has to do not so much

with theories that completely lack these features and hence have no notion of the

structural nature of inequality (at least in its more severe and persistent forms).

Our concern is rather with those theories that, while they do recognize the

existence of inequalities whose nature is structural (that is, inequalities that are

the reproduced result of ongoing social relations), and while they do find these to

be the more severe and persistent forms of inequality, nonetheless go on to

criticize such inequalities in a manner that we shall argue is insufficient. While

such theories do adopt the structural view of certain inequalities, the egalitarian

view they direct at them itself remains individualistic rather than structural. The

issue is thus the incongruence between the structural nature of the social

diagnosis and the individualistic nature of the egalitarian view applied to it.

In order to illustrate this problem, we would like to introduce a distinction

between two notions of structural inequality: a situational notion, which we

regard as problematic, versus a systemic notion of structural inequality. The

situational understanding of structural inequality points to the fact that the

ongoing existence of certain structural, social conditions is responsible for the

fact that inequalities between certain groups tend to reproduce themselves; in

other words, for these groups remaining in the same relative position vis-à-vis

each other, with no possibility of changing that position. A systemic

interpretation of structural inequality, on the other hand, focuses on the

 23

problematization of the social interaction between these groups as coercive,

violent, offensive relations of dependency.

The difference between these two interpretations can be highlighted by

looking at the answers they give to the following two questions: what exactly is

the wrong they identify in structural inequality, and what kind of measures could

redress it. We begin with the answers given by the situational interpretation of

structural inequality. With respect to the first question—what turns mere

differences into scandalous inequalities—different theories that subscribe to

situational inequality provide somewhat different answers. Some see the root of

the problem in the fact that such gaps preclude certain groups from assuming an

equally active part in shaping public life, namely that there exists a clear

distinction between those who determine “the rules of the game” and those who

are forced to abide by them. Others see the root of the problem in the fact that

such inequalities close-off any chance of social mobility. Still other approaches

argue that a situation in which different groups enjoy different opening conditions

is inherently unfair. What is common to all these different approaches, and the

reason we regard them as varieties of the situational notion of structural

inequality, is that they locate the scandal of these structural gaps in the fact that it

causally reproduces itself (as opposed to merely happening to sustain itself).

With respect to the second question—what kind of redress should be

demanded with respect to structural inequality—the situational approach suggests

several answers: a demand to transfer resources from advantaged to

disadvantaged groups, affirmative action, the removal of mobility barriers, or

some form of empowerment of the disadvantaged group (usually through

investment in infrastructure or education). What these answers have in common

 24

is that they call for a change in the relative position of the different groups (most

commonly by improving the chances of the disadvantaged). From the situational

perspective, a structural inequality is regarded as less scandalous insofar as, at

least in principle, one can struggle to narrow the gap it results in, or to grant more

groups better chances of improving their relative position with respect to these

gaps (higher mobility). The gaps thereby assume a character that is less static and

more transitory: less a case of persistent inequalities and more a case of

differences that are somewhat contingent and remediable, hence less scandalous.

These and other types of egalitarian demands—greater equality of

opportunity, improved upward mobility, greater access to social resources, more

equal treatment by government authorities, greater recognition of

underrepresented groups, encouraging participation of more groups in the public

discourse—are all examples of vastly important and worthy causes of egalitarian

struggles. The problem we would like to point out, however, is that such demands

often fail to get to the root of the problem that they themselves make visible.

They both fail to fully conceptualize the nature of structural inequality and, as a

result, generate demands that call not for its significant abolition, but only for its

partial offsetting or relief.

Contrast the above two answers with the ones given by the systemic

notion of structural inequality. First, the question what turns a gap between two

groups from an insignificant difference into a scandalous inequality. The

systemic interpretation highlights not only the fact that the gap constitutes an

unjustifiable or unfair advantage of one group over another, nor that this

advantage causally reproduces itself, but the fact that the advantage of one group

is achieved on the basis of the disadvantage of the other. Underlying such a claim
 25

is the view that social activity is not the product of independently-operating

agents (be they individuals or groups), but rather a system of interaction and

interdependence, within which certain individuals and groups often gain a

relatively higher degree of welfare, status, or other advantageous positions at the

expense of others. The systemic view emphasizes the fact that structural

inequality involves not only the self-generating gap between those who have

more of something and those who have less, but that the first is a product of the

second; and that both are the result of the nature of the interaction or

interdependence that takes place between the groups.

The situational notion of structural inequality focuses its attention on such

phenomena as unequal starting conditions, social constraints, various advantages

that un-level the social playing field, and the self-replicating nature of various

forms of capital accumulation (economic, symbolic, or other). But what gets lost

in the situational picture is the fact that under social relations which generate

interdependence between gainers and losers, advantaged and disadvantaged,

empowered and disempowered, the primary violation of the principle of equality

results not from the participants’ conduct under this system of relations but from

the nature of the relations themselves. The systemic view takes more seriously

the idea—which, even if glimpsed at by the situational-structural analysis, is not

fully translated into its egalitarian view—that individuals not only act with or

alongside one another but also upon each other. This implies the possibility that

the nature of the social interaction itself might be the very source of the gap in

question—which in turn means that the issue of inequality lies not solely with the

fact that this gap exists, nor with the fact that it causally re-produces itself, but

with the specific nature of the interdependence that is its source.

 26

Now to the question what kind of redress is implied by the systemic view

of inequality. Such remedies cannot be exhausted by guaranteeing some

transition of individuals or groups from one position to another within the

existing framework of social relations (through upward mobility, the narrowing

of gaps, or making these gaps less fixed and more contingent), nor by increasing

the chances for such positional changes (by empowering the disempowered or by

removing mobility obstacles). Instead, what the systemic interpretation calls for

is a change of the very relations of oppression and domination that sustain the

structural inequality in question. Facing the deep cause and scandalous element

of structural inequality cannot be exhausted by actions that ultimately strive to

either narrow the gaps or to “change ranks” between the groups. As noble and

even helpful as such demands might be, they are misaligned with the nature of

the inequality they wish to tackle.

To recap, the systemic interpretation of structural inequality emphasizes

the fact that to argue that such inequality exists means to argue that there is a

scandalous relation of power and interdependence between two groups, which in

turn results in gaps with respect to resources, accessibility, welfare, or any other

aspect—gaps that are not mere byproducts of these relations but an essential part

of their modus operandi. These gaps sustain themselves not only as a result of the

self-tendency of the system to allocate, divert, or channel more of something to

one group and less to the other, but because the advantage enjoyed by one group

is a product of the fact that the other group suffers a disadvantage. The difference

between these two pictures of structural inequality is thus a difference between a

social-political structure that is characterized by- and sustains inequality, and one

that is founded upon inequality.

 27

3.3. Exploitation as a Qualification of Unequal Social Relations

What does it mean, then, to argue that a certain society is founded upon

inequality? Here we believe one has to resort to additional concepts, in order to

qualify the specific kind of scandalous relations of interdependence that are at

stake. Young proposes a tentative taxonomy of five such relations—exploitation,

marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence—which she

places under the “family names” oppression, subordination, and domination. 26

The following discussion will focus on the concept of exploitation, going

beyond the relatively brief discussion offered by Young. Much like our

discussion of structural inequality, we wish to suggest a distinction between two

paradigms of exploitation, each of which relies on a different interpretation of the

principle of equality. Once again, at the center of our attempt to define

exploitation is the effort to provide a more accurate formulation of the

“scandalous root” it involves. We should be clear that exploitation serves here as

but an example for qualifying one particular category of unequal social relations,

and that we by no means think it can account for every kind of inequality. We do

believe, however, that the move presented here with respect to exploitation can

also be applied to other forms of inequality.

We would like to begin with the classic Marxist definition of exploitation

as the appropriation of the fruits of the labor of others against their will, in a

manner that necessarily involves some form of coercion. According to the

standard Marxist narrative, in capitalist society this coercive dimension is masked

26
We fully agree with Young that such a taxonomy of unequal social relations might
very well remain open-ended. For example, we tend to think that the category of
dispossession is not covered by the other forms of oppression listed by Young. See, for
example, David Harvey, “Accumulation by Dispossession,” in The New Imperialism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
 28

by two main claims. First, the claim that the labor contract between employers

and employees expresses the will of two parties who are equal before the law to

freely enter into these relations. Second, the claim that the share of the capitalists

in the product does not constitute a violent appropriation, but represents the

relative share they legitimately deserve, based on their relative contribution to the

production process (which means, primarily, the fact that they supply the means

of production and assume the risk of investing their capital). Marxists counter the

second claim with the labor theory of value along with the idea of surplus value:

The value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor necessary for its

production, and the difference between the value of the labor time (qua

commodity) and the value of the commodity that labor produces is the surplus

value, which is the profit the capitalist appropriates.27 With respect to the first

claim, Marxists argue that the unequal distribution of ownership of means of

production generates a structural inequality, which implies that the contract in

question is not one between two independent, free parties. If workers believe the

labor contract does express their free will, they are merely expressing false

consciousness.

The labor theory of value, however, does not appear to withstand the

critique according to which it fails to sufficiently account for the place of non-

labor factors, and for the translation of value into price. This implies, in turn, that

the concept of exploitation cannot rely on this theory. The idea of false

consciousness has also been subject to critique in light of its repressive potential,

ascribing to the theorist the position of knowing better than the workers what is

good for them, thereby negating their political agency as subjects who might

27
Karl Marx, Capital Volume 1 (New York: Penguin, 1981).
 29

become aware of their condition and demand its transformation. As a result of

such critiques, several thinkers have attempted to develop a concept of

exploitation that relies solely on the unequal ownership of means of production.

Aage Sørensen, for example, suggests that the unequal ownership of

means of production allows those owners (capitalists) to sell commodities for

more than what would have been their ideal price under conditions of perfect

competition. He goes on to define exploitation as “structural locations that

provide rights to rent-producing assets.” 28 While this definition has the advantage

of pointing to the structural nature of exploitation, it might apply just as well to,

for instance, those people who receive transfer funds (unemployment etc.), or to

workers who enjoy structural benefits that result from collective bargaining

positions.

John Roemer takes a different approach: Group A is said to be exploited

by group B if, had society were so organized that the ownership of means of

production were egalitarian, group A would have benefitted whereas B would

have gained less.29 Part of the problem with this definition is that it relates only to

the initial distribution of means of production (roughly equivalent to Marx’s

“primitive accumulation”), failing to highlight the ongoing nature of exploitative

social-economic relations.

Gerald Cohen seems to offer a better definition, which consists of the

following conditions: (1) Workers are the ones who produce valuable goods; (2)

capitalists accumulate a portion of that value; (3) workers receive in return less

28
Aage Sørensen, “Toward a Sounder Basis for Class Analysis”, American Journal of
Sociology 105 (2000): 1523-1558, 1525.
29
John Roemer, A General Theory of Exploitation and Class (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1982).
 30

value than what they produced. 30 One significant advantage of this definition is

that it has no recourse to some ideal, hypothetical state of affairs (Sørensen’s

ideal competition, or Roemer’s ideal distribution of means of production).

Instead, it “directly” characterizes the nature of the structural inequality in

question. Nevertheless, condition (1) still relies on the problematic labor theory

of value.

This problem is overcome by Erik Olin Wright’s definition: (1) The

material well-being of group B occurs at the expense of the well-being of group

A; (2) this inverse relation depends upon the exclusion of group A from access to

certain resources; (3) this exclusion enables group B to appropriate the labor

effort of group A, thereby gaining a material advantage.31 According to this

elegant definition, the scandalous element of the relations between A and B is not

B’s appropriation of the “invisible object” of surplus value generated by A’s

labor, but the inverse codependence of well-being between them. Nevertheless,

condition (3), which relates this inverse codependence to the labor power of the

exploited, still presupposes the problematic labor theory of value.

We would thus like to suggest the following correction to Wright’s

definition: (1) The material well-being of group B occurs at the expense of the

well-being of group A; (2) this inverse relation depends upon the exclusion of

group A from access to certain resources; (3) the labor performed by group A is

necessary for the process of production. The advantage we see in this definition is

that it has no recourse to the labor theory of value, hence also to the theory of

30
Gerald A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
31
Erik Olin Wright, “The Shadow of Exploitation in Weber’s Class Analysis,” American
Sociological Review 67 (2000): 832–857, 845.
 31

surplus value. All it presupposes is that the cycle of production requires working

hands (group A). More importantly, it avoids yet another problematic idea, which

we have not pointed out so far, and which stands at the basis of most definitions

of exploitation in the Marxist tradition. This is the idea according to which what

makes the capitalists’ accumulation of the labor power of workers morally

outrageous is the Lockean view of possessive individualism, namely the

normative idea that everything a person manufactures is the sole ownership of

that person, and hence its accumulation by others implies robbing that person of

what belongs to them by right. According to our interpretation, however, the

scandal of exploitation is not (solely) a matter of depriving someone from what

rightly belongs to them, namely of group B taking away what properly belongs to

group A, but has to do with the fact that the greater (often also increasing) well-

being of B depends on the lesser (often decreasing) well-being of A.

If we now “zoom out” to the wider concept of inequality, we believe this

definition of exploitation helps shed light on the claim put forward by Anderson,

Young and others that the object of the principle of equality, the focal point of the

egalitarian view, is not the individuals or groups that make up society but rather

the system of relations between them. A systematic concept of inequality

emphasizes not the offsetting of differences resulting from being born into a

lower class, nor from the violation of the Lockean principle of ownership over

the fruits of one’s labor; nor does it ask whether the basic social structure treats

all participants as equals. Instead it focuses on the inegalitarian nature of the

interdependence between different kinds of participants.

 32

3.4. Beyond the Principle of Equal Moral Worth: Equality of Vulnerability

The series of critical arguments presented here appears to lead to yet a

further basic idea of the liberal conception of equality. Starting with Rawls, the

vast majority of liberal thinkers—including internal critics such as Anderson—

believe that political equality is to be understood in terms of the Kantian idea of

treating every person as having equal moral worth. While liberal-political

thinkers disagree as to how this principle is to be translated into the political

domain, most of them return to this Kantian formulation as the moral foundation

of the principle of equality.32

Although it seems almost impossible to deny such a formulation, we

believe that the moves we have taken so far suggest that basing the principle of

equality on the idea of equal moral worth preserves the same problematic picture

of equality typical of early-modernity and enlightenment liberalism: a picture in

which the egalitarian view is applied to individuals, whose being precedes the

fabric of social interrelations within which they conduct their lives. Worthy and

lofty as it might be, the principle of equal moral worth cannot but promote an

ultimately individualistic view, in which these individuals—even when they are

32
The most significant source of this view is what is known as the “humanity
formulation” of Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act so that you use humanity, as much
in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and
never merely as means.” Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Allen
W. Wood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 46-47. Rawls gives this Kantian
formulation (which he regards as a development of Rousseau’s ideas) a contractualist-
republican interpretation, as the moral foundation for his theory of political justice. See
Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 179-183,
256, 504-512. Dworkin, despite his deep disagreements with Rawls, agrees with him on
this point, namely on “the assumption of a natural right of all men and women to
equality of concern and respect, a right they possess not by virtue of birth or
characteristic or merit or excellence but simply as human beings with the capacity to
make plans and give justice.” See Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1977), 182. For a recent discussion of the principle of political
equality that explicitly relies on the idea of equal moral worth, see Thomas Christiano,
The Constitution of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
 33

perceived as always operating in some social context—can only put forward

egalitarian demands form the point of view of autonomous “units of equality,” so

to speak. Even those theories that subscribe to a social ontology of relations of

co-dependence, and are thus allegedly non-individualistic, find it hard to

incorporate this view into their concept of equality, so long as they remain

committed to the egalitarian view captured by the idea of equal moral worth.

Our point is that placing the idea of equal moral worth at the basis of

egalitarian claims turns away from the systemic understanding of equality we

defended above. To be clear, rejecting the idea of equal moral worth does not

imply that people ought to be treated as having unequal moral worth, but that the

concept of equality is to be understood on a different basis. Here we can only

briefly mention what seems to us to be the most promising alternative as of late,

namely the idea of equality based on the concept of vulnerability: a concept that

emphasizes the fact that the subjects of the egalitarian view are always-already

found in some relations of co-dependence. According to this view—which merits

a longer discussion—vulnerability, in the double sense of suffering and pain, is

an ontological condition of most living organisms, including humans. This

ontological vulnerability implies several things: That all of us are always-already

dependent upon each other in one way or another; that social structures (our

being-with-others) is not a follow-up but rather a precondition of our individual

existence; and that on a basic level we are all equal in being existentially

vulnerable (despite the fact that social structures lead to an unequal

differentiation in the degree to which we are actually vulnerable).

The fact that we all equally share this ontological vulnerability says

nothing about the egalitarian or inegalitarian nature of the social order. Indeed, it
 34

can even serve to justify, as it does in Hobbes, the perpetuation of radical

inequality between a sovereign rule and the ruled subjects. And yet, insisting on

vulnerability as a shared element opens the door to an egalitarian view according

to which those social relations that institute, perpetuate, and encourage various

hierarchies of vulnerability are regarded as scandalous, and are to be replaced by

relations that seek to ensure that the relatively lower vulnerability of some would

not depend on the greater vulnerability of others. Going back to our above

discussion of exploitation, the point according to which the scandalous root of

exploitation has to do not with the condition the groups in question are brought

to, but rather with the very fabric of social relations between them, is to be

interpreted on the basis of the idea that such relations generate an inequality

between some who are more vulnerable and those who are less vulnerable (to

market instabilities, lay-offs, loss of work capacity, financial turmoil, etc). What

now stands at the center of the principle of equality is the vulnerability-inducing

(injurious, offensive) nature of certain social relations, and its reliance on an

unequal “distribution” of vulnerability (where the relative non-vulnerability of

some depends upon the relative vulnerability of others)—and not the idea of the

equal worth of all moral personas.33

Once the telos of a political community is regarded not only as that of

respecting each of its members as an autonomous moral agent, but also as

providing some protection against our basic vulnerability, one can go on to

33
For recent suggestions for regarding vulnerability as a starting point for political
thinking see, among others, Peta Bowden, Caring: Gender-Sensitive Ethics (London:
Routledge, 1997); Martha Fineman, “The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the
Human Condition,” Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 20 (2008): 8-40; Virginia Held,
The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global (New York: Oxford University Press,
2006); Michael Slote, The Ethics of Care and Empathy (Abington: Routledge, 2007);
Bryan S. Turner, Vulnerability and Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
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problematize and scandalize social structures that induce vulnerability. Contrary

to a common objection, we find this idea does not necessarily entail a

“victimized” view of people, denying their being active political agents that seek

to freely institute a community of equal citizens among equals. Instead, we

believe that recognizing our shared ontological vulnerability implies a different

interpretation of the human being qua zoon politicon, according to which a

political community means not only a republican community, but also one that

aims to struggle against injurious (vulnerability-inducing) relations among its

members. On this view, inegalitarian social relations, economic structures,

cultural norms and so on are to be criticized not as forms of violating people’s

rights or of depriving them of what is rightfully theirs (good, labor, or anything

else). Instead, the question whether these are egalitarian or inegalitarian is to be

interpreted as the question whether some are systematically more adversely

affected than others. The point of departure for thinking about equality becomes

the recognition of the fundamental mutual codependence of all human beings: the

fact that they are always in some way vulnerable vis-à-vis each other. The

egalitarian concern this gives birth to is then formulated by such questions as

whether the relations of codependence human beings institute among themselves

are exploitative or not, injurious or not; whether they seek to equally reduce

everyone’s degree of vulnerability, or whether they instead promote a pattern in

which some are made less vulnerable at the expense of others.

4. Conclusion

Our discussion began by pointing to the constitutive tension between the

intuitive and allegedly extra-political (or at least, the not-uniquely political)

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nature of the concept of equality, and the need to qualify this concept in order

precisely to turn it into a political principle. This qualification, in turn, always

relies on some network of perceptions regarding the structure of society, the place

individuals occupy within it, and in previous eras, the relation between the social

world and the afterworld. We saw how in modernity the concept of equality was

translated into the idea of political equality or equal citizenship. We then saw

how this view of equality requires further qualification through the question of

what is to be regarded as scandalous inequality; and how this question, in turn,

requires a further qualification of the concept of inequality through a series of

additional concepts, such as (but not limited to) exploitation.

Although the conceptual move presented here is far from exhausting the

debate over equality, we hope we have been able to point to some fundamental

transformations that are required in the common understanding of the concept, its

historical dynamic, and its functioning as an organizing principle of the political

field. First, we sought to put our finger on the unique nature of the concept,

namely on the fact that it serves both as a political principle and in extra-political

contexts, and that it seeks to base politics on a form of rationality that relies on an

intuition of consistency (equal relation to equals). We went on to argue in favor

of a different kind of historical view of equality (which we applied mainly to the

period of the formation of modernity): a view that examines the history of

equality through the question of how new forms of outrage over the lack of

equality arose; that is, how come social conditions began to be perceived as short

on equality. Finally, we sought to pinpoint the heart of the contemporary debate

over the nature of the idea of a political community of equals, and to highlight the

required shift towards rethinking inequality as structural: a shift that in turn

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requires rethinking various patterns of structural inequality, such as exploitation,

and reestablishing the principle of equality on the basis of the concept of

vulnerability.

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