Abstract
This paper identifies a challenge for liberal relational egalitarians—namely, how to respond to the prospect of emergent inequalities of power, status, and influence arising unintentionally through the free exercise of fundamental individual liberties over time. I argue that these emergent social inequalities can be produced through patterns of nonmalicious choices, that they can in fact impede the full realization of relational equality, and that it is possible they cannot be eliminated entirely without abandoning fundamental liberal commitments to leave individuals substantial discretion in their personal lives. In such cases, I argue that liberal egalitarians should accept fair relational equality—a demanding but nevertheless imperfect form of relational equality.
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Notes
[For helpful comments on previous drafts, I wish to thank Henry Richardson, Judith Lichtenberg, Madison Powers, and audiences at the APA East and Virginia Philosophical Association meetings].
Most accounts of relational egalitarianism are liberal, in the sense of defending paradigmatically liberal individual rights and presuming an economic order that includes some forms of private property. See Anderson (1999), Miller (1997), Scheffler (2003) for early articulations of relational egalitarianism and Schemmel (2011), Hull (2015), and Fourie et al. (2015) for recent developments. The possibility of more radical forms of relational egalitarianism is discussed in Baker (2015) and Schemmel (2012), both of which consider how a relational egalitarian might reject typical liberal divisions of moral labor. There is a generic sense in which value pluralists recognize that not all values can be realized at once, but concerns specifically about social equality and informal social choices have not been discussed.
For examples of this non-ideal, ameliorative focus, see Anderson (2009), Knight (2014), and Wolff (2015). My approach is distinct—rather than starting from real-world inequalities, I start from a positive, ideal-theoretic conception of relational equality (on all of Valentini’s (2012) ways of understanding ideal theory—assuming full compliance, not adjusting for political feasibility, and focusing on an ideally just end state) and argue that there are apt to be impediments to the realization of that ideal under liberal constraints.
Relational egalitarians have explicitly imagined the need for differentiated systems of education. See Anderson (2007).
Alternatively, one might hope that individuals sort into appropriate ‘noncomparing groups,’ each with their own ideals and values (Rawls 1999, p. 387). Such a sorting would blunt the impact of being found deficient, since it would not communicate a unified societal judgment.
Inequalities of wealth and income are objectionable on relational egalitarian grounds to the extent that they frustrate the creation and maintenance of egalitarian social relations. Schemmel (2011) argues compellingly that relational egalitarianism has derivative but quite demanding distributive requirements. I am not engaging here with questions of whether relational egalitarianism offers an alternative to so-called distributive egalitarianism; much of my argument is compatible with accepting a pluralist or hybrid view like Lippert-Rasmussen (2016, 2018).
Most obviously, considerable work would be needed to explain how to interpret people’s interests and how to weigh their comparative significance. Some objective interests—like an interest in being treated with respect and dignity—could be identified in advance and apply to all egalitarian relationships, but the subjective interests of the parties are discovered and developed through the deliberative process.
Elizabeth Anderson calls special attention to power, status, and influence as relevant to relational equality in ‘Equality’ (2012a), and I follow that lead here.
I suspect that there is a structural resemblance between deliberative-practice theories of relational equality and the Scanlonian contractualist characterization of wrongness. On Scanlon’s view (1998), judgments about wrongness are judgments about what would not be permitted by principles that could not be reasonably rejected. That does not mean, however, that assault is not objectionable because it harms someone—in fact that would be one of the reasons for reasonably rejecting principles that permitted assault—only that the appeal to standpoints and reasonable rejectability gives us a way of talking about what it is for something to be wrong. Likewise, deliberative-practice considerations are not meant to displace reasons for objecting to certain forms of treatment; rather, they characterize how people who are interacting as equals approach those reasons.
Niko Kolodny’s (2014) argument about social equality and informal opportunities for influence is illustrative.
Seana Shiffrin describes a ‘fully directive’ view of morality as one that holds that ‘for any decision one could make, assuming there are no ties, it yields a specific requirement about how one is to act’ (2010, p. 136). There is some ambiguity in what it means for a view to impose a specific requirement. A requirement may leave an individual some room for discretion in fulfilling it (e.g., a soldier might be required to wear dress blues or battle fatigues at work). On the other hand, a requirement is not imposed any time one’s set of options is limited (e.g., one may be free to choose one’s own diet even if the sale of arsenic for consumption is prohibited). In this context, what I mean is that the liberal holds that whether a society is just will not be dependent on how individuals make a number of personal choices. Perhaps one could say that liberals think that society can be structured so that individuals can make a certain set of decisions for purely personal reasons, because principles of justice will not speak directly to those choices.
I do think a commitment like this is a central part of most interpretations of liberalism, but ultimately I am more interested in potential conflicts between relational egalitarianism and this commitment than in a terminological dispute. For discussion of competing definitions of liberalism, see Dworkin (1985), Waldron (1987), and Gaus (1996).
This is distinct from Kevin Vallier’s discussion of social injustice as an emergent property (2013). He has in mind a way of explaining phenomena like structural racism, and the emergent property in question is the injustice of the social institutions. I am simply concerned with how distributions of power, status, and influence can be shaped by the cumulative effects of individual social decisions.
Anderson (1999) defends both ideas, and many relational egalitarians have likewise argued or presupposed as much.
Daniel Putnam’s ‘Equality of Intelligibility’ (2015) helps explain why those who take up the deliberative conception of relational equality need to be concerned with how well everyone’s interests are understandable to others.
The literature on implicit attractiveness bias illustrates one possibility (Rhode, 2010; Hamermesh, 2011). The phenomenon of cumulative advantage, by which individuals who are highly esteemed earn disproportionate attention and further credit, illustrates another way in which esteem inequalities could intensify over time (Merton, 1968; Rigney, 2010).
This would be broadly similar to Neuhouser’s (2014, ch. 2) reading of Rousseau, in which social contingencies can shape highly malleable passions and enflame amour-propre.
The question whether emergent differentials in power, status, and influence threaten the process of egalitarian deliberation is distinct from the question whether they are personally deserved. Differences in status that track genuine differences in admirable qualities might be deserved and yet still a worry for the possibility of relating as equals. On the other hand, status differentials that are wholly arbitrary and undeserved might pose less of a threat to deliberation in some cases, if they are less pervasive or have less of an impact on deliberation. This is not a worry for relational egalitarians, since arbitrary status differentials might also be objectionable because they do not equally respect all. Beyond this, not all matters of personal desert or interpersonal ethics need to be resolved by a political ideal of relational equality.
This does not say much about how such decisions should be made—what forums are appropriate, what decision procedures should be used, or what level of specificity is needed.
To be precise, I do not think Rawls contrasts ‘fair equality of opportunity’ with ‘full/perfect equality of opportunity’; rather, he says ‘the principle of fair equality of opportunity can be only imperfectly carried out, at least as long as the institution of the family exists’ (1999, p. 64). ‘Fair’ indicates a richer version of the ideal than merely formal versions, but I want to use it for the further purpose of distinguishing an imperfect but justifiable version of the ideal from one that is perfectly or fully carried out.
This problem is not unique to fair relational equality—something similar applies to imperfectly realized fair equality of opportunity.
See Anderson (2012b).
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Threet, D. Relational Egalitarianism and Emergent Social Inequalities. Res Publica 28, 49–67 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09509-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-021-09509-0