Academic Paper Writing Service http://StudyHub.vip/Arguments-For-Equality 👈

1. I
Arguments for Equality1 zyx
DAVID MILLER
begin with a puzzle. Observers of modem Western society, beginning with
Tocqueville and including many not themselves sympathetic to the value in ques-
tion, have seen as one of its most distinctive features the pursuit of equality? Ac-
cording to these observers, our culture is historically unique in attaching value to
the elimination of inequality as such -not unjust inequality, not poverty-producing
inequality, but inequality bare and simple. But when the same observers zyx
turn their
attention to the end of the pursuit, they find it difficult to grasp its attractions.
Why should zyxwvutsrq
equality be thought desirable? Equdity after all means a leveling of dif-
ferences; it means a smoothing down of irregularities or idiosyncrasies. Although I
may from an aesthetic motive decide to trim my rose bushes to an equal height or
polish my wine glasses to an equal shine, to treat people in such a way would be at
best perverse and at worst immoral. So the pursuit of equality seems to be impaled
on a fork: either the ultimate end of the pursuit is not equality at a
l
l but some
other value or values which have become confused in the popular mind with equal-
ity, or our societies are aiming at a goal that cursory inspection reveals to be quite
monstrous.
If this puzzle is to be resolved, it can only be in the following way: equality
must be shown to have a value that is distinct from other political ends such as li-
berty and justice but which is nonetheless something over and above mere uniforrn-
ity. To show this would involve bringing out the human ends served by the pursuit
of equality, at the same time distinguishing these from other ends which might inci-
dentally be promoted by greater equality but had no intrinsic connection with it.
The notion here is that equality is indeed instrumental to further ends, but that
certain of these ends have so close a connection to equality itself that they are pro-
perly and usefully seen as intrinsic parts of an egalitarian package. In this way one
would at least see what was at stake in the argument about equality. Whether or not
one endorses the egalitarian package, it becomes clear that egalitarians are committed zyx
73

2. 74 zyxwvutsrqp
DAVID MILLER
to a distinct and comprehensible set of values, not victims of mere confusion or fa-
natical promoters of uniformity.’
The task of the present paper is to see what can be said in favor of equality,
and in particular to distinguish genuine egalitarian arguments from arguments in
which equality figures only incidentally. It might be thought that the proper start-
ing point would be an analysis of the concept of equality itself. It is, after all, a fa-
miliar observation that people can be treated equally in many different senses, and
that many of the problems about equality arise from a confusion of these senses.
But here I prefer to take the reverse approach. Beginningwith the arguments them-
selves, I shall look at the kinds of equality that they may be held to justify. One
preliminary note of clarification is, however, in order. A distinction may usefully be
drawn between several varieties of procedural equality and as many varieties of
equality of outcome. Procedural equality, at its most general level, means treating
people according to uniform criteria, without necessarily having either the intention
or the expectation that the results of the treatment will be substantial equality.
Two of the most popular variants, both actually presupposing inequality of out-
come, are equality before the law and equality of opportunity. Equality of zyx
out-
come, by contrast, means just that: arriving at a state of affairs in which people are
substantially equal in a certain respect. Popular variants here are equality of wealth,
equality of status, and equality of power. I take it that egalitarians are distinguished
by their commitment to one or more forms of equality of outcome, and my con-
cern in the remainder of the paper will be entirely with equality in this sense?
I now proceed to separate genuine egalitarian arguments from arguments that
are only incidentally arguments for equality and which may therefore be labeled
‘quasi-egalitarian’arguments. The first subclass of the latter may (using the name of
the best-known species for the genus) be called ‘utilitarian’ arguments. These have
the following form: the ultimate end is the maximization of some good X,and the
preferred means is the equal distribution of some other good Y. To illustrate, a clas-
sical utilitarian might argue that his ultimate goal was the production of the maxi-
mum quantity of happiness, and that the most effective means of achieving this was
an equal dismbution of wealth among the population in question. Or again, a dem-
ocrat of a certain kind might argue that his goal was to maximize the amount of po-
litical participation in a given society, and that to realize this goal political rights
should be distributed equally. Under what conditions are arguments of this form
valid? There are several possibilities, but the assumptions that are most likely to
underlie such arguments are (a) that the total stock of Y in a given society is fixed;
(b) that the same function can be used to describe the manner in which each person
converts zyxwvuts
Y into X (and moreover that this function has a certain form). Take, for
instance, the classical utilitarian argument for equal wealth. This is liable to be de-
feated either because the introduction of inequalities of wealth increases the total
stock of wealth available for distribution,or because people are unequally effective
at transforming wealth into happiness-so that if, starting from an equal dismbu-
tion of wealth, a sum of money is transferred from A to B, A’s loss of pleasure is
more than outweighed by B’s gain. Thus arguments for equality of utilitarian form

3. ARGUMENTS zyxwv
FOR EQUALITY zyxw
75
only value equality incidentally: equality is chosen only under rather special cir-
cumstances, when conditions (a) and (b) hold. Another way of seeing this zyx
is to ob-
serve that utilitarian-type arguments intrinsically demand only equal zyxw
marginal util-
ity? The distribution of Y that is chosen is one where adding a further marginal in-
crement of Y to anyone’s stock would produce an identical gain in X. That this
leads to an equal dismbution of Y under certain conditions is, as Sen puts it, mere-
ly “egalitarianism by serendipity: just the accidental result of the marginal tail wag-
ging the total dog.”6 For this reason arguments of utilitarian form are best des-
cribed as ‘quasi-egalitarian’.
The same label should be applied to arguments of another form which I shall
call ‘entitlement’ arguments.’ These hold that each person is entitled to achieve a
certain condition C; when this demand is met, it is in an obvious sense true that all
are equal insofar as all have achieved-C. Examples here might be the various claims
made in Declarations of Human Rights, where it is said that each person is entitled
to adequate food, decent housing, and so forth. Note that the achievement of C will
in some cases demand an equal distribution of goods, and in other cases not. If every-
one is said to be entitled to five acres and a cow, each person must receive an equal
quantity of resources, in this instance five acres and a cow. If, on the other hand,
everyone is said to be entitled to good health, this clearly requires treatment to be
meted out differentially according to the particular needs of each individual. In eith-
er case, however, we arrive at an equality of outcome by recognizing entitlements.
At the same time it should be clear that equality itself is not being valued
when such arguments are deployed. What is valuable is that each person should
achieve condition C: the fact that, when this happens, there is equality of result is
purely incidental. To see this, we may observe that an entitlement argument pre-
scribes strict equality only in the very special case where there are just enough re-
sources to satisfy everyone’s entitlement. Suppose, by contrast, that there are more
than enough resources. Suppose also that ‘C’ refers to a point on a scale that ex-
tends in both directions (for instance suppose it refers to a certain daily intake of
calories), How will the entitlement theorist regard a state of affairs in which every-
one is at least at point C, but some are further up the scale than others? At the very
most, he may be indifferent between all such states of affairs and the state of affairs
in which each person just achieves C. He may, in other words, maintain that though
it matters a good deal to him that everyone should have an intake of 2,000 calories
per day, he is quite unconcerned about further increments above that point. This is
a possible view, though a rather unlikely one. If one attaches great value to people
reaching C, should one not, other things being equal, attach some value to their
rising further above C? If this is so, there are two rather obvious extensions of the
entitlement argument in cases where there are excess resources. One is to maximize
people’s average position on the scale in question subject to the constraint that no
one should fall below C, The other is to follow the maximin principle: distribute
resources so that the worst-off person is as far above C as possible. The latter exten-
sion might seem more in tune with the distributive concern that presumably lies
behind the original entitlement argument.

4. 76 zyxwvutsrqp
DAVID MILLER zyxwvutsr
Where resources are too scarce to achieve C for everyone, on the other hand,
it would seem grotesque to be indifferent between alternative distributions, and the
entitlement theorist will have to choose between analogues of the two possibilities
in the excess case, and a third alternative. The analogues are (a) minimize the av-
erage shortfall from C and zyxwvu
(b) minimize the maximum shortfall from C (i.e., make
the most deprived person as well off as possible). The additional alternative, which
might be appropriate in special cases where C represents a threshold of some kind,
is to maximize the number of persons who achieve C. It is not to the present point
to discuss the choice between these alternatives. They are brought in merely to un-
derline the weakness of the connection between entitlement and equality. Entitle-
ment arguments point to egalitarian outcomes only incidentally and in special cases;
in other cases, reasonable extensions of these arguments suggest at least that equal-
ity is not mandatory, and more probably that equality is to be sacrificed for the
sake of a higher average outcome or a higher minimum outcome. All of this follows
immediately from the observation that entitlement arguments attach value directly
to each person’s achieving C, and do not attach value to people’s relative standing
on the scale of which C forms a point.
This clears the ground for an examination of genuine egalitarian arguments.
Whereas utilitarian arguments value equality only as a contingent means of maxi-
mizing some other good, and entitlement arguments value it only as a contingent
means of ensuring that everyone achieves some condition C, egalitarian arguments
proper give reasons for preferring equality even when everyone’s standing on some
dimension could be improved by permitting inequality on that dimension. Such ar-
guments must, in other words, indicate what is valuable about a certain relationship
between individual shares. Without such a focus on relational questions, egalitarian-
ism may simply appear absurd, or as expressing a dog-in-the manger outlook on life.
Why stick to equality when everyone can be made better off by allowing inequality?
The only possible reason is that some relational value is lost when inequality is in-
troduced, which value may in certain cases outweigh the benefit that flows directly
from the inequality (sensible egalitarians will not wish to argue that equality should
always take precedence over other values, only that it represents a distinct value
that needs to be weighed against them). I shall consider four arguments, each of
which has genuine egalitarian potential.
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
Like equality,justice is standardly concerned with the relationship between individ-
uals’ shares of some good, and thus is a value of the right general kind to support an
egalitarian argument. In pamcular, if a distribution D is distributively just, there is
no implication that an alternative distribution D’ in which each person is at least as
well off as he is in D is also just, and indeed (puce Rawls) there may well be grounds
of justice for preferring D to D‘. But against this it may be said that principles of
justice are principles justifying unequal forms of treatment, and as such are anti-
pathetic to equality. The answer is that it depends which principles of justice we
have in mind.

5. ARGUMENTS zyxwv
FOR EQUALITY zyxw
77
(a) Justice as distribution according to need. There is some temptation to re-
gard this zyxwvuts
as a principle of proportional treatment. That is, one imagines people’s
needs being measured along some dimension of ‘neediness’, and then resources be-
ing allocated in proportion to the score assigned to each person: if I turn out to be
twice as ‘needy’ as you, I receive twice the quantity of need-satisfying resources.
This would no doubt exemplify procedural equality, but not equality of outcome.
But such an interpretation of the principle is misguided, as I have argued elsewhere!
Distribution according to need is better understood as a principle that requires an
egalitarian outcome, namely one in which neediness is equalized. This can best be
envisaged by supposing that each person’s neediness is measured on a scale running
from (say) 0 (full satisfaction of needs) to zyxwvu
-100 (complete destitution). The imper-
ative of justice to distribute goods according to need should be interpreted as re-
quiring us to equalize people’s needscores; so if my need-score is zyxwv
-60 and yours is
-30, I should receive all the available resources until my score rises to -30. This im-
perative is therefore independent of, and possibly in conflict with, the humanitar-
ian requirement that we should minimize total neediness. It is directly egalitarian
because it prescribes equality of outcome even in cases where everyone might be
made better off (less needy) by permitting inequality.
It may be said that arguments of justice which refer to need are really entitle-
ment arguments, and as such not genuine egalitarian arguments, for the reasons giv-
en earlier. Modern Declarations of Rights, for example, may be construed as claim-
ing that each person is entitled to a range of resources on the grounds of shared
human needs. But even if we allow ourselves to regard such claims as (noncompar-
ative) claims of justice, there is still the separate issue of comparative justice to be
considered, as can be seen if we take a case in which insufficient resources are avail-
able to meet everyone’s entitlement. Suppose there is a shortage of fuel, and the
government distributes the amount available in such a way that some people are
given little or nothing. These people may make two quite separate complaints. They
may attack the government for allowing the shortage to occur in the first place, so
violating their entitlements to quantities of fuel sufficient to meet their needs for
warmth, food, and so on. But they may also register the different complaint that,
the shortage having occurred, the government has acted unjustly by failing to dis-
tribute what is available according to need. The grievance here is not that one has
insufficient fuel, but that one has less fuel than Jones who has no need-related case
for having more. This claim of justice is clearly comparative, and for the reasons
given above it is also egalitarian.
We have therefore uncovered straightaway one powerful argument in favor of
equality. Where people are in need, treating them in such a way that an equal out-
come results is simply a requirement of justice. Equality and justice may conflict in
other cases, but in this case they do not, because the just treatment that is due to
each person cannot be assessed without regard to the equality that it is designed to
produce. How far this argument takes us will of course depend on the scope we as-
sign to the concept of need? Given a wide enough definition, it may be possible to
defend a fully egalitarian society on grounds of justice. But against this it may be
felt that the tie between justice and need which I am here presupposing is loosened

6. 78 zyxwvutsrq
DAVID MILLER zyxwvutsr
when ‘need’ is extended beyond basic human needs to encompass other claims that
are only needs from the perspective of particular individuals’ plans of life. TOguard
against this objection, let zyxwvut
us conclude simply that justice as dismbution according
to need vindicates equality in the satisfaction of basic needs.
(b) Justice as distribution according to desert. Once again this appears at first
sight to be a principle that justifies unequal outcomes, and in this case I shall argue
that first appearances are accurate. But we should look at some ingenious attempts
to extract equality from justice in this sense.” The essential move is to argue that
people who claim to deserve more than others have no grounds for doing SO, and
goods ought therefore, as a matter of justice, to be distributed equally. The argu-
ment takes its inspiration from John Rawls’s claim that the distribution of natural
abilities, including the capacity for conscientious effort, is “arbitrary from a moral
point of view.”” If A claims to deserve more goods than B on grounds of his skill
or effort, therefore, he bases this claim on features for which he himself can claim
no credit, since his acquiring of them was ‘arbitrary’, resulting from genetic endow-
ment, parental upbringing, and so forth. Although Rawls does not himself draw
this implication, it might seem to follow that if A deserves no more than B, they de-
serve the same thing, and so an equal distribution of goods is required.
The fallacy here is that Rawls’s claim does not entail that A and B are equally
deserving, but rather that the whole notion of desert makes no sense. If, in order to
deserve something on the basis of feature F, one also has to deserve to have F itself,
every desert claim entails an infinite regress. For the notion to be viable, it must be
possible to find some basic feature (such as effort) that grounds desert claims, while
not itself requiring any further grounding. I shall not try to show that there is such
a feature. But either one concedes the possibility, in which case one also allows that
people may possess it to different degrees and so have different deserts, or one
agrees with Rawls that the notion of desert is to be discarded and settles questions
of distributive justice without reference to it. In the latter case equality is not ruled
out, but neither is it required. One may, for instance, follow Rawls in arguing for a
distribution of goods that permits inequalities when these work to the benefit of
the least advantaged. This is as appropriate a response to the ‘moral arbitrariness’of
the distribution of natural abilities as is equality. To provide a positive argument
for equality, one would have to show that people deserved, but deserved equally.
Yet this is precisely what the anti-desert argument cannot show. In undermining the
notion of desert, it removes the ground on which such a positive argument might be
erected. zyxwvutsrq
/
SELF-RESPECT
My next engagement is with the view that certain kinds of equality are necessary to
preserve everyone’s self-respect. Rawls has again been the main launching-pad for
this line of argument, with his claim that the value of self-respect is a prima’ry rea-
son for insisting on an equal distribution of liberty.I2 But Rawls’s account of self-

7. ARGUMENTS FOR EQUALITY zyxw
79 zyx
respect is not entirely perspicacious. He says that it involves a sense that one’s plan
of life zyxwvuts
is worth carrying out, and a confidence in one’s ability to fulfill it.’3 This ob-
scures the extent to which self-respect may depend on external factors, particularly
on one’s perceived standing in relation to one’s fellows. A more illuminating ac-
count might run as follows. I have on the one hand an image of myself, a view
about the kind of person that I am, and on the other hand a view about my actual
performance in a number of areas. When performance falls significantly short of
self-image, I am liable to lose self-respect. This loss is not necessarily a bad thing in
itself. If the cause of the shortfall is a personal failure for which I am responsible-
say I fail to live up to a moral precept that zyxwvu
1 espouse-loss of self-respect may rea-
sonably be seen as a natural punishment for the failure and an inducement to be
more self-controlled in the future.14 But where the shortfall has external causes, the
resulting loss is zyxwvutsrq
prima zyxwvut
facie undesirable. Suppose, for instance, that my self-image
involves being the family breadwinner and that involuntary unemployment prevents
me from supporting my family either to the extent or in the way that I expect.
Clearly the loss of self-respect that flows from this is a serious evil. Rawls is at least
right to insist that where self-respect is lacking, other pursuits that would normally
bring satisfaction will cease to do so.
How is self-respect to be connected to equality? The linking factor is that a
person’s self-image is typically defined by reference to others’ attainments. A per-
son whose own performance in a certain area falls significantly below average is
therefore likely to experience the kind of gap between image and achievement that
destroys self-respect. Consider the family breadwinner again. Someone who thinks
of himself in this way will have a view about the level of resources-food, housing,
entertainment, and so forth-that a breadwinner is expected to provide, this being
dependent upon social convention. One who achieves the norm will maintain self-
respect; provision above the norm may be a matter for self-congratulation, but that
is a separate matter.” Thus self-respect is linked in an obvious way to status: where
a person’s self-image involves fulfilling the requirements of a role (such as ‘bread-
winner’) and where the role-requirements themselves are defined by social conven-
tion, self-respect depends on achieving a certain status, a status conferred by fulfill-
ing the requirements in question. Now status is liable to be affected by the degree
of inequality that a society permits.
This occurs most obviously where the status that confers self-respect is de-
fined by a public assignment of rights. Suppose that a society offers full citizenship
rights only to certain of its members: to the extent that the remainder regard citi-
zenship as integral to their identity, they will find this degrading. They are being
labeled publicly as inferiors. Rawls puts the point well, though he appears to think
that only political and other liberties are to be included in the scope of this argu-
ment.I6 Others, working from the same premise, have claimed plausibly that welfare
rights should also be included?’ But even the extended argument shows only that
inequalities in the public assignment of rights may be condemned on the ground
that they injure self-respect. Material inequalities that arise from the workings of

8. 80 zyxwvutsrqp
DAVID MILLER zyxwvutsr
the economy appear to be in a different category, since no one intends these in-
equalities to occur, and so they cannot reasonably be interpreted as an affront to
the less advantaged.
This, however, overlooks the conventional nature of personal self-images. As
the top level of performance rises, the standard of an ‘adequate’ performance also
rises. Consider, for example, the line that is commonly drawn by social participants
between respectability and poverty. It is clear that poverty cannot be defined in ab-
solute terms, but must be understood in relation to the range of basic amenities
that the members of a given society expect to enjoy. The effect of inequality is to
raise the poverty line by heightening these expectations.18 The relationship is not of
course a simple one, depending zyxwvu
as it does on such factors as how ‘visible’ inequal-
ities are to the less well-off. This complexity allows Rawls to hope that a society in
which economic inequalities were governed by the difference principle would not
damage the self-esteem of its poorer members, since they would tend to compare
their position with those close to them in the income distribution rather than with
the rich.lg Such a claim is empirically vulnerable, and one might anyway wish to
fault a society in which comparisons were zyxwvu
so limited on other grounds. But it does
highlight the contingency of the argument from self-respect to equality. Self-respect
does not require complete equality of outcome, but only the absence of inequalities
which, by their effect on the minimum standard needed to achieve social respect-
ability, place numbers of people in a condition that they regard as ignominious?’
The argument may seem contingent at a deeper level as well. I t is clearly not a
necessary truth that the status which confers self-respect should be defined in terms
of equal citizenship rights and a level of economic achievement, as it is in modern
Western societies. One can conceive without difficulty of a hierarchical society in
which each person obtained self-respect from carrying out what he saw as his nat-
urally allotted function, whether as lord, serf, retainer, or whatever. One may even
concede, with Frankel, that such a society might protect self-esteem more effective-
ly than an open and egalitarian one?’ But that does not diminish the force of the
argument from self-respect within a society that is already individualistic in the
sense that people regard one another as equals by nature, and so measure their
worth by their achievements?’ An appeal to self-respect then provides the bridge
between basic human equality (which by itself entails nothing concrete) and various
kinds of equality of outcome. The argument is, however, limited in two ways: (a) the
kinds of equality it justifies depend on how the minimum level of achievement ne-
cessary for a ‘respectable’ status is defined by the members of a particular society;
(b) it is biased toward equality in publicly assigned rights as opposed to material
equalities of other sorts (equality of income, for example), since inequalities in the
former area will appear intentional, and therefore as more directly offensive to the
deprived.
RESPECT FOR PERSONS
There is obviously a close connection between showing respect for a person and
preserving his self-respect, and in some discussions these zyxw
two imperatives are run

9. ARGUMENTS zyxwv
FOR EQUALITY zyx
81
together by maintaining that when we respect a person, we respect his zyxw
dignity, or
capacity for self-re~pect.2~
In fact the two imperatives are not identical, and they
are connected only because of the important empirical truth that most people can
maintain their self-respect only through winning and keeping the respect of others.
To see how these requirements may diverge, consider on the one hand the man who
loses self-respect because he fails to live up to his (elevated) moral standards,despite
the fact that no one else respects him any the less; and on the other, the courageous
man who keeps his self-respect even though treated in a way that is designed to
humiliate him. So we may show, or fail to show, respect for a person without this
necessarily having an impact on his self-respect; and for this reason respect for per-
sons may serve as an independent argument for equality. When thinking about self-
respect, we assess a distribution of goods according to its impact on the recipients
(particularly on those who receive fewer goods). When thinking about respect for
persons, we interpret such a -distribution as the outcome of an intentional act per-
formed by certain persons, and ask whether the act reveals an attitude of respect or
not. The two assessments are related, but not identical.
What does it mean to show respect for persons? In a weak sense, to show re-
spect is just to consider a person when arriving at a practical decision, and respect-
ing persons would then simply be synonymous with adopting the moral point of
view?4 Thus a utilitarian would show respect for A by counting A’s happiness along
with everyone else’s when deciding which action maximized the general happiness,
and zyxwvutsr
so forth. Clearly this weak sense of respect for persons has no distinctively egal-
itarian implications. We need to find a stronger sense in which respecting someone
entails acting in some definite way toward him. Such an account requires first of all
a view of personality, a view, that is, of the attributes and capacities that constitute
being a person: and then a view of the claims that a person so constituted can make
on others. Respecting a person, in the stronger sense, will mean recognizing that A
has attributes and capacities P, Q, and R, and that in virtue of P, zyxwv
Q, and R I ought
to treat him in ways X, Y ,and Z. zyxwvut
An account of this kind is offered by Steven Lukes when he proposes that hu-
man beings have three distinctive capacities: the capacity to act consciously and to
some degree autonomously; the capacity to engage in intrinsically valuable pursuits
and relationships; and the capacity to develop human excellences, personal charac-
teristics that are intrinsically admirable?’ He argues on this basis that we fail to re-
spect a person when we act so as to frustrate the growth and exercise of one or
more of these capacities. This means either that “we fail to treat him as an agent
and a chooser . . . and consequently treat him not as a person but as merely the
bearer of a title or the occupant of a role, or as merely a means to securing a certain
end, or, worst of all, as merely an object”; or secondly that “one invades his private
space and interferes, without good reason, with his valued activities and relation-
ships”; or finally that “one limits or restricts his opportunities to realize his capaci-
ties of self-development.”26
Without reaching a verdict on Lukes’s account of the capacities that consti-
tute personhood, we can use his argument to assess the egalitarian implications of
showing respect for persons. The first point to notice is that the argument appears

10. 82 DAVID MILLER zyxwvutsr
to be a form of entitlement argument, and we have established already that such ar-
guments are not inherently egalitarian. To respect someone, I must treat him in
ways zyxwvuts
X,Y, and zyxwvuts
Z. zyxwvutsr
so long as i treat everyone in ways X,Y,and Z, it does not seem
that I fail to show respect to others by doing more than X for one particular A.
Furthermore, the kind of treatment demanded seems very distantly related to
equality of outcome in the areas that have interested egalitarians. On Lukes’s view,
I owe people first of all a certain attitude: an attitude that sees them as agents in
their own right with distinctive plans and purposes, not merely, for instance, as cogs
in a social machine?’ This attitude, it seems to me, is revealed primarily in personal
interaction, particularly in conversation (do I show that I am interested in the
waiter as a person, not merely as a more or less efficient waiter?) It has only very
indirect implications for material treatment.28 Second, respect for persons demands
that I zyxwvutsrqpon
refrain from treating them in various ways. I must not, for instance, interfere
in areas of their lives that are properly deemed private. I must not subject them to
degrading or humiliating treatment. I must, in short, allow them the space in which
they can pursue their aims and purposes in their own way. Yet although this does
prescribe a form of equal treatment, the kind of equality involved is an equal right
to noninterference, a principle which liberals properly hold dear, but one which is
not in any strong sense egalitarian.
Lukes’s third condition -no limits on opportunities for self-development -
seems to have greater egalitarian potential. It requires not only that one refrains
from acting so as to prevent people from developing their excellences but also that
one’positively provides the means for self-development. The clearest case is the pro-
vision of education. But even here we have an entitlement argument rather than one
that is strictly egalitarian. Each person is entitled to the education that allows him
to achieve full self-development (insofar as the latter is dependent on education).
This does not amount to a general argument for equality. How might we turn it
into one? We might suggest that the distribution of the total stock of goods and
services affected each person’s chances of developing his personal qualities: we
might also argue that this distribution should be seen not as a natural fact but as the
expression of a social decision, or a series of social decisions. We might then claim
that if the distribution failed to provide each person with an equal opportunity for
self-development, this showed disrespect for those provided with lesser opportun-
ities.
Much will depend here on the intention underlying the distribution. If we
imagine a society deciding to allocate a stock of goods, and if we suppose that the
purpose of the allocation is to provide each individual with the means to develop
and exercise his capacities, it will seem reasonable to conclude, with Dworkin, that
an unequal distribution must reflect a judgment that some individuals’ life-plans are
more worthy of respect than other^?^ But the distribution can be looked at differ-
ently. I t might be governed by incentive considerations-more being allocated to
those in lines of production which it was thought desirable to encourage others to
enter. Or it might be arranged to reflect differences of achievement-say the extent
to which each person had succeeded in realizing his aims and purposes. Indeed this

11. ARGUMENTS FOR EQUALITY 83 zyx
last possibility suggests an inner complexity in the idea of respect for persons. We
have seen that it requires zyxwvut
us to regard people as potentially free agents with their
own aims and intentions. But if we do regard people in this way, we cannot help
taking account of the degree to which they succeed in achieving these aims, and
success demands recognition and applause. So equal initial respect implies unequal
subsequent praise, so long as people perform unequally by their own standardsM zyx
An unequal distribution of resources, therefore, need not imply a judgment about
the relative worth of life-plans, and by the same token need not violate respect for
persons. Everything depends on what the grounds of the inequality are taken to
be.
The fact that respect for persons is linked to intention constitutes its weak-
ness as an argument for equality. We have seen that respecting a person involves
first zyxwvutsr
of all adopting a certain attitude toward him, and then by extension refraining
from interfering with his plans and activities. To develop the argument still further,
to encompass a demand for material equality, requires contestable assumptions.
The distribution of goods in a society must be interpreted as expressing a social de-
cision-an assumption which will immediately be challenged by those who regard it
as the unintended consequence of many individual decisions. Then i t must be
shown that an inegalitarian distribution expresses a judgment that certain individ-
uals’ plans of life are more worthy of respect than others. Since these assumptions
are challengeable, the argument for equality from respect for persons remains weak
and defeasible. It may be relevant in special circumstances: if I am charged with dis-
tributing goods among a group of people, and if no other moral considerations
come into play, the demand that I should respect each person does imply that I
should distribute the goods so as to give each person an equal opportunity to realize
his aims. But it does not follow that an unequal distribution of goods and resulting
opportunities in society necessarily manifests a failure of respect, especially where
the inequality is confined to the upper reaches of the opportunity scale, so to
speak. The argument is strongest when applied to basic goods such as education
whose unequal distribution would seriously hamper personal development, and
weakens progressively thereafter.
FRATERNITY
The final argument that I wish to consider derives equality from a concern with fra-
ternity. Taken in one way, this argument closely parallels that developed in the pre-
vious section. If you and I stand in a fraternal relationship, I shall express that rela-
tionship in material terms by sharing goods equally between us,making allowance
for differences in need and capacity. Fraternity as an attitude, therefore, is a more
warmly colored version of respect for persons, and as such points more strongly
toward an egalitarian distribution of goods. We might call this version of the argu-
ment ‘equality as an expression of fraternity’. Its limitation is that it is difficult to
envisage a large society embodying generalized fraternity in the strong sense re-
quired by the argument. It seems to be most at home in the context of a small,

12. 84 zyxwvutsrq
DAVID MILLER zyxwvutsr
close-knit community whose members aim deliberately to achieve brotherly or sis-
terly relations?’
The argument from fraternity may, however, be taken in another way. It may
be claimed that inequalities in the distribution of goods prevent the growth of fra-
ternity, even of such a weaker form of fraternity zyxwv
as may be possible in a large soci-
ety. This version might be labeled ‘equality as a precondition of fraternity’. It ap-
peals to the fact that where wealth and income are unequally distributed, people on
different rungs of the financial ladder tend to form themselves into exclusive gioups. zyx
An unequal society tends, in other words, to be a class society, not in the Marxist
sense (which is concerned primarily with production) but in the sense that social re-
lationships occur largely within income brackets rather than across them. Why
should this be? It has to do with the role of consumption in social life. In the first
place, it is plain that not merely the extent but also the pattern of a person’s con-
sumption changes as his income rises: in particular, certain leisure activities (ocean
racing, for instance) are only realistically available to those with high incomes,
others (skiing, theater-going) to those with middle-range incomes, still others zyx
to
more or less everyone. Since social relationships are formed and maintained through
activities such as these, it is not surprising that social stratification should flow from
economic inequality. In the second place, social life depends a great deal on the ex-
change of services, particularly those special services (parties, meals, gifts, etc.) used
to mark important occasions (calendar events, weddings, and so forth)?’ People
with markedly different incomes find it hard to maintain an equal exchange of ser-
vices without embarrassment or strain. Of course it would be absurd to claim that
no personal friendships ever surmount these difficulties. But again we should not
find it surprising that the norm is for people to form social ties with others of
roughly equivalent economic standing.
What does all this imply for fraternity? Within each social stratum relation-
ships may of course be as fraternal as one would like, but between strata there is
liable to be incomprehension and hostility. Lacking direct personal connections,
people in one class form stereotypes of those in others. They find themselves un-
able to sympathize with the predicament of people whose circumstances are mark-
edly different from their own. Differences in speech and culture, the likely result of
stratification, create two or more ‘nations’ in a single country. Now even if one zyx
is
doubtful about the possibility of extending fraternity in its strong sense beyond a
small group of intimates, one may find the complete absence of social solidarity
deplorable. Partly this is a matter of wanting to live in a society that is in some way
a community, a society where each person has a sense that he belongs together with
the rest. There are also more mundane considerations: a society that lacks overall
solidarity may find itself tom apart by sectional conflict, and it may be difficult to
mobilize collectively for common defense. Tawney, the great aposde of equality,
was not beyond gesturing toward nationalist values in his attack on a class-divided
~ocjety.’~
Granting that some degree of fraternity is a desirable social asset, how strong
an argument for equality does this give us? There is clearly no simple correlation

13. ARGUMENTS FOR EQUALITY zyxw
85 zyx
between the extent of economic inequality in a society and the strength of class di-
visions. Tawney, in the same place, contrasted the stratified societies of the old
European countries with the relatively ‘classless’social systems of the U.S.A. and
the Dominions (now the white Commonwealth).34 The contrast still holds good,
despite the fact that there is little variation in the pattern of income and wealth
distribution between the two groups of countrie~?~
The passage from economic to
social inequality is clearly marked by additional factors such zyxw
as the degree to which
economic position is inherited or acquired, and the prevailing culture. To concede
this, however, is only to concede that we do not know beforehand how great an ad-
vance toward equality will be necessary to create a fraternal society. Complete
equality is obviously not required: on the other hand, all the industrialized societies
currently embody a degree of inequality that makes them (to a greater or lesser
degree) class societies. So the argument from fraternity has considerable egalitarian
potential in the context of the present, even though we cannot tell how far along
the road to equality it will eventually take us.
CONCLUSION
The four arguments for equality that I have considered are all genuine egalitarian
arguments because they are sensitive to relational factors: that is, they are con-
cerned not merely with how well off individuals are, measured along some dimen-
sion, but with the zyxwvutsrq
relative standing of different people on that dimension. The four
arguments are also in broad terms complementary, in the sense that there is no ob-
vious tension between, say, the wish to protect self-respect and the wish to promote
fraternity. I t comes as no surprise to find each of them deployed as part of a gener-
al defense of equality?6 At the same time, they pick out slightly different aspects of
equality as being of especial significance. The argument from distributivejustice fo-
cuses on the equal satisfaction of zyxwvut
basic needs. The argument from self-respect claims
that material inequalities should not be so great as to erode a basic equality of sta-
tus. The argument from respect for persons demands provision of equal opportun-
ities for self-development. Finally the argument from fraternity is essentially an ar-
gument for limiting economic inequalities so as to promote sociai equality. zyx
A-
though each of these objectives might imply an attack on current economic inequal-
ities, the strategy chosen would vary according to which was given priority. In pur-
suing the third, for instance, one might attach special importance to changing the
education system and work relationships, whereas hierarchical differences in con-
sumption patterns would be a major concern in the case of the fourth.
The character of all four arguments shows that in choosing equality one is
opting for a society in which personal relationships have a certain general quality.
This explains both why economists have difficulty in coming to terms with equal-
ity as an independent value and why philosophical argument in the narrow sense
fails to capture the nature of the case for equality. There is not much illumination
to be gained by constructing formal arguments starting with some premise concem-

14. 86 zyxwvutsrq
DAVID MILLER zyxwvutsrq
ing human equality and ending with conclusions prescribing equal treatment in a
certain respect. To understand why greater equality has zyxwv
so often been thought valu-
able, one zyxwvuts
has greater need of sociological and psychological insight than of formal
logic. As an example, consider again the argument from self-respect. How can a de-
crease in inequality enhance the self-respect of the worse-off members of a society
even though they themselves are made no better off in absolute terms? To see the
force of this, one needs to understand that a person’s self-assessment depends upon
the norms of achievement that he draws from his environment, and that these
norms themselves are affected by the range of achievement within a given society.
This is an empirical, not a formal, truth. The case for equality rests on a series of
such truths. People who value equality do so not because they find a leveling of in-
comes, etc., morally valuable in itself, but because they consider it a necessary part
of a general vision of society which they find attractive for other reasons.
Notes
1. I should like to thank David Harris and Joseph Raz for their comments on an earlier
2.For some recent examples of this outlook, see David L. Schaefer, ed., The New Egalitar
3
.As suggested in, for example, Antony Flew, The Politics of Procrustes (London, 1981).
4.In drawing this distinction 1 follow Flew (and indeed many others), but my intention is
precisely the reverse of his: I wish to see what can be said for equality of outcome, not to dis-
miss it. zyxwvutsrq
5 . See Amartya Sen, “Equality of What?” in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, ed.
Sterling M. McMurrin (Cambridge, 1980).p. 198.
6.Ibid., p. 202.
7
.For the ideas in the following paragraphs I a
m indebted to Joseph Raz,“Principles of
Equality,”Mind 87 (1978):32142,though my terminology differs somewhat from his.
8. David Miller, “Social Justice and the Principle of Need,” in The Frontiers of Polirical
Theory,ed. Michael Freeman and David Robertson (Brighton, 1980),pp. 173-97.
9.For further discussion see David Miller, Social Justice (Oxford, 1976),chap. 4 and
“Social Justice and the Principle of Need,” pp. 174-76.
10.See Albert Weale, Equality and Social Policy (London, 1978),pp. 3340;Alan Zaitchik,
“On Deserving to Deserve,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 6(1976-77):370-88.
The two argu-
ments differ in important respects, and I have singled out for discussion what seems to me a
core element in both, without trying to do justice to their full complexity.
11.John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971). pp. 311-12;
see also pp.
draft of this paper.
ianim: Questions and Challenges (Port Washington, N.Y., 1979).
103-4.
12.Ibid., pp. 543-47.
13.Ibid., p. 440.
14.See R. S
. Downie and Elizabeth Telfer, Respect forPe7sons (London, 1969),pp. 83-92.
15. Failure to make a distinction of this sort vitiates Robert Nozick’s attack on self-esteem
as a basis for equolity in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford, 1974),pp. 23946.Nozick points
out correctly that where achievements differ, so will levels of self-applause; but he equates these
with differing levels of self-respect. In my view, the very idea of levels of self-respect makes no
sense: one either has self-respect or one does not. Nozick helps his argument by using ‘self-es-
tnm’ in place of ‘self-respect’ throughout. ‘Esteem’ carries heavier overtones of praise than
does ‘respect’, and so lends itself more readily to his purpose.

15. ARGUMENTS FOR EQUALITY zyxw
87 zyx
16. zyxwvutsrqpo
Rawls, zyxwvutsrqp
A Theory ofJustice, p. 544.
17.See Frank Michelman, “Constitutional Welfare Rights and zyxwv
A zyxwv
Theory ofJustice,” in
Reading Rawls, ed. Norman Daniels (Oxford, 1975),pp. 319-47;
Amy Gutmann, Liberal Equal-
ity (Cambridge, 1980),pp. 126-29,
198-201.
18.Here I borrow from my argument in “Democracy and Social Justice,” British Journal
of Political Science 8 (1978):18 (reprinted in Democracy, zyxwvu
Consensus,and Social Contract, ed.
Pierre Birnbaum, Jack Lively, and Geraint Parry, London, 1978,pp. 96-97).
19.Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 535-37,543-46.
For criticism of the position see Rus-
sell Kert and David Miller, “Understanding Justice,”Political Theory, 2 (1974):22-25.
20.Cf. Robert E. Goodin, “The Political Theories of Choice and Dignity,” American Phil-
osophical Quarterly 18 (1981):97-99.
21.Charles Franke., “The New Egalitarianism and the Old,” Commentary 56(3)(Septem-
ber, 1973):56.
22.Cf. Gutmann, Liberal Equality, pp. 222-23.
23.For example Goodin, “The Political Theories of Choice and Dignity,” pp. 95-97.
24.This is the basic position taken by Downie and Telfer in Respect for Persons.
25.Steven Lukes, “Socialism and Equality” in The Socialist Idea, ed. Leszek Kolakowski
26.Lukes, “Socialism and Equality.” pp. 78-81.
27.The attitude in question has been explored more fully by Bernard Williams in “The Idea
of Equality” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Series 11, ed. Peter Laslett and W. G.Runci-
man (Oxford, 1964),pp. 116-20.
28.Except in cases where material treatment is itself the direct expression of an attitude.
In the context of my example, tipping would qualify. Readers may recall that in George Orwell’s
revolutionary Barcelona, where “waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated
you as an equal” and barbers’ shops displayed notices “solemnly explaining that barbers were
no longer slaves,” tipping was forbidden by law; and the law was socially enforced, as Orwell
found out to his cost. See George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (Hamondsworth, 1962),pp.
8-10.
29.Ronald Dworkin. “Liberalism,” in Public and Private Morality, ed. Stuart Hampshire
(Cambridge, 1978),pp. 128-29.
30.For an elaboration of the distinction between respect and praise, see W. G. Runciman, zyx
“ ‘Social’ Equality,” in Sociology in Its Place and Other Essays (Cambridge, 1970),pp. 201-11.
31. For a theoretical model of the kind of society that would embody fraternity in the
strong sense, see my discussion of Kropotkin in Social Justice, chap. 7;for the connection be-
tween fraternity and equality in small communities, see ibid., pp. 324-35.
32.I am indebted here to Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood. The World of Goods (New
York, 1979).where the idea of differences in consumption as a source of stratification is also
explored.
and Stuart Hampshire (London, 1977).pp. 77-78.
33. R. H. Tawney, Equality, 4th Ed. (London, 1964).
34.Ibid., p. 62.
35. There are, of course, some differences in distributive pattern within each group. My
point is that the ‘old world’ does not systematically exhibit greater economic inequality than
the ‘new world’. Estimates for the distribution of income only are given in Harold Lydall, The
Structure of Earnings (Oxford, 1968),chap. 5.This picks out New Zealand and Australia as en-
joying a particularly high degree of equality, but places Canada and the United States below the
United Kingdom, West Germany, and the Scandinavian Countries in a middle group of moder-
ately equal societies. France stands out among industrialized societies as exceptionally inegal-
itarian.
36.They are all used fairly haphazardly in Tawney’s Equality, for example.