Egalitarianism

Core Idea

Egalitarianism is the family of views holding that equality is a fundamental value in distributive justice. Versions include: strict equality of welfare or resources; luck egalitarianism (neutralize the effects of brute luck — unchosen circumstances — but allow inequalities from option luck — chosen risks); relational egalitarianism (what matters is equal standing and non-domination, not equal shares). G.A. Cohen and Ronald Dworkin developed influential luck-egalitarian frameworks. Elizabeth Anderson's 'What Is the Point of Equality?' argues luck egalitarianism misidentifies the aim — the real goal is eliminating oppression and social hierarchy, not compensating for bad luck.

How It's Best Learned

Map the debate: Rawls → Cohen/Dworkin (luck egalitarianism) → Anderson (democratic egalitarianism). Each step refines or rejects the prior. The key question is: equality of what? Welfare, resources, capabilities (Sen/Nussbaum)?

Common Misconceptions

• Luck egalitarianism is often criticized for being harsh toward those who suffer from option luck (uninsured extreme sports injuries), but proponents distinguish 'harsh' from 'just.'
• Relational egalitarianism does not require equal distribution of resources — it requires equal social standing and non-domination.
• 'Equality' in political philosophy is almost never simple numerical equality of everything — the debate is always about equality of what, among whom.

Explainer

From distributive justice, you know that the central question is how the benefits and burdens of social cooperation should be distributed. From the difference principle, you know one specific answer: inequalities are permissible only when they benefit the worst-off members of society. Egalitarianism as a philosophical tradition takes the underlying commitment to equality seriously and asks: what exactly should be equalized, and why does equality matter at all?

The most influential contemporary debate begins with luck egalitarianism, associated with G.A. Cohen and Ronald Dworkin. The core intuition is a moral asymmetry between brute luck (what happens through no choice of your own — being born with a disability, into poverty, in a war zone) and option luck (what happens as a result of deliberate gambles you chose to take — losing money at the casino, getting injured in an extreme sport you willingly pursued). It seems unfair that people should be disadvantaged by circumstances they did not choose; it seems less unfair — perhaps even appropriate — that people bear the costs of risks they freely embraced. Justice, on this view, means neutralizing the effects of brute luck while allowing option luck to stand.

Dworkin built on this with his theory of equality of resources: we should equalize not welfare outcomes (which vary too much with expensive tastes and subjective preferences) but the external resources available to people. His hypothetical insurance market thought experiment asks what insurance you would buy behind a veil of ignorance about your own talents and circumstances — this provides a principled basis for compensating unchosen disadvantages. Cohen pushed further, arguing that even internal resources (talents, health) are partly a matter of luck and therefore candidates for redistribution.

Elizabeth Anderson's critique — "What Is the Point of Equality?" — reorients the entire debate. She argues that luck egalitarianism has the wrong aim. Its logical conclusion is invasive and demeaning: to compensate people for bad brute luck, society must investigate whether someone's poverty is their own fault, which requires surveilling and judging people's life choices. More fundamentally, Anderson argues the real evil that egalitarianism should address is oppression — hierarchical social relationships in which some people are dominated, marginalized, or treated as inferiors. Democratic egalitarianism (or relational egalitarianism) holds that what matters is equal social standing and the ability to participate as equals in social institutions, not equal shares of resources.

The "equality of what?" question — Sen and Nussbaum's capabilities approach — adds a further dimension: welfare and resources may both be the wrong metric. What matters is what people are able to do and be. The same resource set enables very different lives for different people (a bicycle enables a healthy person but not a person without legs). Equalizing resources while ignoring capability gaps leaves injustice intact. Each framework — luck egalitarianism, democratic egalitarianism, capabilities — reflects a different diagnosis of what makes inequality unjust and generates different policy prescriptions. Mapping these frameworks against each other is the central skill for working in this area.