Must Egalitarians Choose Between Fairness and Respect?

Timothy Hinton
Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 30, Number 1, Winter 2001, pp.
72-87 (Article)
Published by Princeton University
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TIMOTHY HINTON
I
In a recent article, Jonathan WolV argues that egalitarians are forced to
choose between the values of fairness and respect.
1
According to WolV, a
properly egalitarian conception of fairness requires us to tailor the dis-
tributive shares of diVerent individuals in ways that appropriately reXect
the costs their choices impose on other people. In addition, egalitarian
fairness mandates that we distribute resources so as to eliminate the
eVects of sheer bad luck on peoples lives. WolV notes that realizing this
last demand would require some people to acknowledge embarrassing
facts about themselves, concerning, for instance, their lack of talent.
Making people do such things is obviously likely to undermine their self-
respect. And so, WolV concludes, egalitarians should be willing to sacri-
Wce fairness to secure equal respect for all.
Of course, it is not news that a commitment to egalitarianism might
require us to sacriWce other non-egalitarian values. It is often said, for
instance, that equality and eViciency are incompatible and must be
traded oV against each other. But WolVs thesis is both novel and radical,
for he claims to Wnd a genuine conXict of values within the heart of what
he calls the egalitarian ethos.
WolVs argument is, for this reason, well worth considering in its own
right. In addition, it raises several deeper issues about the conception of
fairness currently dominant among philosophical egalitarians. Their view
has two main components, each of which, so I shall argue, ought to be
Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?
I would like to thank Allison Freeman and Seana ShiVrin, as well as the editors of Phi-
losophy & Public AVairs for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
1. Jonathan Wolff, Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos, Philosophy & Public
AVairs 27, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 97122.
2001 by Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public AVairs 30, no. 1.
rejected. The Wrst is the characterization of equality at work in WolVs
argument. According to this, justice is achieved by eliminating the eVects
of brute luck, while simultaneously holding people responsible for the
choices they make. Second, on the basis of this characterization,
egalitarians who take this view reject John Rawlss diVerence principle
on the grounds that it is not suViciently sensitive to the eVects of both
luck and choice on peoples lives. Consequently, they advocate replacing
this principle and its group-centered approach with principles that en-
join a Wne-grained, person-by-person allocation of distributive shares.
My aim is to show that WolVs dilemma aVects only those egalitarians
who embrace this view of fairness. I agree with him that a properly egali-
tarian understanding of respect is indeed inconsistent with implement-
ing such a view. For the kind of information needed to distinguish those
aspects of a persons condition traceable to luck from those traceable to
choice would often have a deleterious eVect on his or her self-respect. I
deny, however, that the brute luck view is the only one available to
egalitarians. Indeed, I think it open to serious criticisms from an egali-
tarian standpoint. Hence, after brieXy rehearsing WolVs line of argument
in section II, I defend its cogency against brute luck egalitarianism in
section III. Then, in section IV, I shall bring additional objections to bear
against this reading of the egalitarian ideal.
In section V, I present a quite diVerent but independently attractive
conception of fairness, which, so I believe, egalitarians ought seriously
to consider adopting. According to this view, fairness is understood to
consist of equality of status, which is concerned primarily with the moral
attributes of the social and economic relations in which people stand. In
particular, equality of status seeks to end all forms of exploitation and
domination and not to eliminate or ameliorate the eVects of bad luck on
peoples fates. When speciWed in this way, I believe, egalitarian fairness
must be taken as assigning to each person a pre-political entitlement to
an equal share of the worlds resources.
Having thus addressed the Wrst component of the dominant view of
fairness, in section VI, I take up its second: the rejection of the Rawlsian
diVerence principle. Here I argue that that principle, properly understood,
is, on the contrary, a defensible normative instrument from an egalitar-
ian standpoint. Then, in the Wnal section, I try to show how implement-
ing the conception of fairness that I have outlined would not require forc-
ing people to reveal embarrassing information about themselves.
73 Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?
74 Philosophy & Public Affairs
This works roughly as follows. Since equality of status depends on the
kinds of relations in which people stand, there is no need to decide which
portion of a persons share of resources is traceable to luck and which to
choice. In addition, our pre-political entitlements to the worlds resources
do not stem from our choices; they are conferred on us directly by justice
itself. Finally, returning to an employment of the diVerence principle to
regulate inequalities in income permits us to focus on the earnings of
groups of people rather than on those of discrete individuals. Conse-
quently, it does not call for the kind of Wne-grained information that
would, in may cases, undermine peoples self-respect.
II
It will help to begin with a more detailed exposition of WolVs argument.
He appears to trace the attractiveness of the dominant conception of
fairness to a widely shared sensitivity about the importance of individual
responsibility in distributive justice. Such sensitivity is exempliWed by
the perceived unfairness involved in granting equal shares to all though
some work harder or for longer hours than others.
In attempting to accommodate the suggestion that distributive shares
should be Wxed by diVerences in eVort, egalitarians have been led to adopt
what WolV calls, an opportunity conception of justice.
2
The basic idea
is that in so far as there are diVerences in peoples shares over the course
of time, those diVerences are just if and only if they are traceable to sources
over which people have control. The thought, then, is that when some
choose to live hardworking and productive lives, there is no injustice in
their coming to have a larger share of income than others. Egalitarian
fairness, to use Ronald Dworkins terminology, requires us to ensure that
peoples shares of resources (and/or welfare) are at once ambition-sen-
sitive (by appropriately reXecting the costs for others of their choices and
decisions) and endowment-insensitive (by guaranteeing that no one is
worse oV than others because of unchosen factors such as a lack of tal-
ent or disability).
3
Consider now the implementation of such a speciWcation of fairness.
WolV notes that it would require us to be in possession of extremely de-
2. Ibid., p. 101.
3. For this terminology, see Ronald Dworkin, What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Re-
sources, Philosophy & Public AVairs 10, no. 4 (Fall 1981): 283345. It is worth noting that,
tailed knowledge about the lives of diVerent individuals. We should have
to know how talented each person in fact is and to what extent any given
persons preferences and values were freely formed rather than being sim-
ply given.
4
In other words, we should need to know quite generally to
what extent each person is responsible for how well or how poorly his or
her life turns out.
At this point, WolV introduces the expression your respect-standing
to refer to the degree of respect that others have for you. It is, he suggests,
demeaning to do, or be required to do, anything that might reasonably
be expected to lower your respect-standing.
5
Now the problem emerges
clearly. To realize a suViciently endowment-insensitive conception of
equality, we should have to require people to do things that would obvi-
ously lower their respect-standing. In particular, we would have to make
them admit to facts about themselves that they would quite reasonably
Wnd shameful to reveal.
Take, for instance, a case involving people who remain unemployed
at a time in which overall unemployment is extremely low, with there
being no shortage of jobs to be had. For such individuals to qualify for
welfare beneWts, they would have to prove that their unemployment was
the result of a comparative lack of opportunity. But given the objective
circumstances, that deWciency in opportunity would have to stem from
a lack of aptitude for the work that was available. As WolV says,
To press a claim, then, one is required not merely to admit but to
make out a convincing case that one is a failure, unable to gain em-
ployment even when there is no diViculty for others.... But think how
because Dworkin rejects welfare entirely as the appropriate metric of equality, he would
deny any connection between shares of welfare and egalitarian fairness. But other
egalitarians, who endorse (something close to) Dworkins distinction between ambitions
and endowments, do think welfare matters from an egalitarian standpoint. Dworkins ar-
guments against equality of welfare are found in What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Wel-
fare, Philosophy & Public Affairs 10, no. 3 (Summer 1981): 185246.
4. It is worth reminding ourselves that peoples talents themselves are nurtured and de-
veloped as a result of their own decisions and choices. So it is wrong to think of a persons
talents as being simply given and available for measurement at birth, as it were. Obvi-
ously, the role of individual responsibility in the development of talent is a further compli-
cation that would have to be addressed in implementing a conception of justice predicated
on the choice/luck distinction.
5. WolV, Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos, p. 107.
75 Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?
76 Philosophy & Public Affairs
it must feelhow demeaning it must beto have to admit to oneself
and then convince others that one has not been able to secure a job,
despite ones best eVorts, at a time when others appear to obtain em-
ployment with ease.
6
So implementing such a conception of fairness would undermine the
self-respect enjoyed by those with meager personal endowments. Faced
with this worry, WolV believes that egalitarians should sacriWce fairness
for the sake of respect. He proposes that a society committed to a ro-
bustly egalitarian ethos provide an unconditionally guaranteed social
minimum, thereby avoiding the harmful eVects on respect-standing and
self-respect caused by shameful revelation.
7
If the social minimum is
provided unconditionally, no one would be forced publicly to prove that
they suVered from a lack of talent. Such a policy, however, while securing
self-respect for the untalented, would nevertheless require egalitarians
to countenance signiWcant unfairness. For those talented enough to work,
but too lazy to bother, could easily draw upon the guaranteed minimum,
in Xagrant violation of the principle of ambition-sensitivity.
III
It might be objected that WolVs worry is too insigniWcant to be of con-
cern to egalitarians. After all, someone might say, in an egalitarian so-
ciety, people would have quite diVerent attitudes towards talents from
those held by people in our societies. They would view the distribution
of talent as being arbitrary from a moral point of view. And hence, untal-
ented people would have no more reason to feel ashamed at having to
admit their lack of talent than anyone here and now has to feel ashamed
at being brown-eyed or dark-haired.
I do not Wnd this reply persuasive because looks of this kind are too
insigniWcant from a moral standpoint to be compared instructively to
talents. Peoples career aspirations are intimately related to their talents:
one can only realistically entertain certain goals for oneself if one pos-
sesses the abilities needed to achieve them. Yet having a successful or
happy career is, in turn, at least for many people, a crucial component of
6. Ibid., p. 114.
7. Ibid., p. 122.
leading a decent life. These facts are unlikely to change under egalitarian
conditions. Hence, those who were unable to Wnd work when there was
plenty of it about would be unable to realize important human aspira-
tions. In addition, such people would be denied an opportunity to con-
tribute to the common good by sharing in the division of labor. But be-
ing able to contribute in that way might well matter to people in a soci-
ety of egalitarians.
So WolV is quite right to think that it would only further undermine
these peoples self-image if they had to prove publicly that a lack of tal-
ent explained their plight. I do not see that anyone in such circumstances
would be very much consoled by the thought that, after all, his or her
deWciency on the score of talents was just a matter of sheer bad luck. On
the other hand, an unconditional social minimum would leave open the
question of what explained anyones having to rely on it. So it would leave
open the possibility that any given person who drew upon it was in fact
choosing not to work. For the involuntarily unemployed, at any rate, it
would not add further humiliation to their straitened circumstances.
Consequently, I conclude, WolVs concern is by no means insigniWcant.
Some other response must therefore be found.
IV
WolVs dilemma is explicitly presented to egalitarians who work within a
broadly Dworkinian framework for thinking about fairness. I want now
to suggest that egalitarians could in fact reject that framework in its en-
tirety without abandoning their fundamental position. In this way, they
would be in a position to side-step WolVs concern by rejecting the con-
ception of fairness that drives it.
Earlier I described this conception of fairness as possessing two closely
connected elements, both of which help to generate the problem WolV
has identiWed. Each in turn warrants closer examination.
The Wrst is an aspiration to expunge the eVects of brute luck on peoples
fates, where brute luck is to be distinguished from option luck and a
persons option luck is understood to be the kind that results from any
calculated gambles he or she freely and knowingly undertakes. (If each
of us bets on a diVerent horse and yours wins while mine comes in last,
you will end up better oV than me. But that inequality, being as it is Wxed
by diVerences in our option luck, is one for which we are both, in the
77 Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?
78 Philosophy & Public Affairs
relevant sense, responsible). This aspiration helps generate WolVs com-
plaint because of the connection that holds between involuntariness and
brute luck. Only those who can prove that they are worse oV than others
through no fault of their own have any claim to redress.
So why should we think that justice requires us to eliminate inequali-
ties between people when those inequalities areor result fromdiVer-
ences in brute luck? Here it will be useful to distinguish between two
kinds of answers to that question, one essentially consequentialist, the
other essentially deontological in character.
The Wrst involves the thought that there is something intrinsically bad
about any undeserved inequalities. According to this view, it is simply
intrinsically bad that some are born with more intelligence or sunnier
dispositions than others. Add the familiar proposal that we have a stand-
ing duty to minimize intrinsic badness and you reach the conclusion
that we ought to eliminate, so far as possible, the badness of undeserved
inequality. Given the work done by the idea of intrinsic badness here,
this way of connecting egalitarianism and brute luck is quite clearly of a
consequentialist bent.
Now it seems to me that there are many objections to the
consequentialist egalitarians position quite apart from its helping to get
WolVs argument oV the ground. So it is often said that we can eliminate
the badness of inequality just as eVectively by making the well oV worse
oV as by improving the lot of the badly oV. To avoid this sort of com-
plaint, consequentialists would need to adopt welfare-maximizing prin-
ciples that might well have the kinds of unequal results that make stan-
dard forms of utilitarianism unacceptable to most egalitarians. For an-
other thing, it is not at all clear that all undeserved inequalities engage
the demands of justice, as opposed say, to those of benevolence. I grant
that there is such a thing as ordinary human unhappiness, which is in
some sense quite undeserved. Yet it is by no means obvious that those
who are more glum than others have a claim in justice against the rest of
us for extra resources. Perhaps we are under some duty to help cheer
them up, but why should that be counted as a duty in justice?
I said there is another way of trying to ground the connection between
equality and brute luck, one essentially deontological in character. This
is what I take to be roughly Dworkins view, being one that expands upon
a line of thought in Rawlss so-called informal argument for the diVer-
ence principle.
8
The point here would be that it is unjust for peoples
distributive shares to be inXuenced by factors that seem arbitrary from a
moral point of view. And, it might be said, features such as the talents
one is born with, or the social circumstances from which one originates
are, morally speaking, arbitrary. What makes them arbitrary in the rel-
evant sense is the fact that they are Wxed by social and natural lotteries,
which operate by brute luck. After all, nobody chooses to be born into
one set of circumstances rather than another, any more than anyone
chooses to be born smart or healthy or good looking. But then, the thought
continues, how can it be fair to hold people responsible for the opera-
tion of these factors? Fairness requires us to tailor the distributive shares
of diVerent individuals in such a way as to compensate (or at any rate
provide some redress for) those who are unluckier than others. This al-
ternative way of connecting justice and brute luck is deontological be-
cause of its distinctive characterization of our fundamental duty from
an egalitarian standpoint, for it involves the idea that our basic duty in
justice is to treat people as equals by holding them responsible only for
those aspects of their fate that lie within their control.
It seems to me that the basic line of thought on which both versions of
the brute luck story depend is false. We ought to reject the claim that
what makes inequality morally objectionable is its origins in brute luck.
Take the system of racial domination that existed under the apartheid
regime. That system required for its functioning an array of social and
political institutions that enabled white people to dominate and exploit
black people. What made the system evil, surely, was the way that black
people were forced to live: their continual subjection, humiliation, and
deprivation; their lack of access to education, decent jobs, and to the
means of legal and political redress. The evil did not consist in the fact
that the color of ones skin is largely a matter of brute luck. The point
here, I believe, is readily generalizable. Inequalities that prompt egalitar-
ian concern are unjust because of the exploitative and/or hierarchical
political, social, and economic relations by which they are constituted.
What I am proposing, then, is that we eschew the idea that inequali-
ties stemming purely from choice are thereby rendered acceptable from
8. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) pp.
6575.
79 Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?
80 Philosophy & Public Affairs
an egalitarian point of view. Even if there had been people under apart-
heid who had freely undertaken to accept the fate of black people, that
would surely not ameliorate the evil of the unequal conditions that they
would have had to endure. Racial domination, like slavery, is, at its heart,
a relationship of unjustly unequal power. Even if such relationships were
to be grounded in voluntary acts on the part of those subject to them,
that would not make them just.
V
So it strikes me that attempting to base egalitarianism on an aspiration
to eliminate the eVects of brute luckwhether or not that aspiration is
couched in consequentialist termsis open to very strong objections.
9
But of course it is possible that all of these could be countered. Even so, it
seems to me, there is no reason to think that this speciWcation of equal-
ity is the only viable account of the egalitarian ideal, for you might deny
altogether the existence of a connection between brute luck and equal-
ity and say instead that our fundamental egalitarian duty is to secure an
equal status for all by eliminating two basic forms of injustice that at-
tend human interaction, namely, economic exploitation and social domi-
nation. By the former I mean, roughly speaking, social relations that
empower one group to take systematic advantage of the work done by
the members of another group. By the latter I mean, again roughly, so-
cial relations that permit one group to exclude another from access to
important beneWts, institutions, and liberties. Plain examples of eco-
nomic exploitation are provided by the way in which working-class people
are paid at dismally low wages to perform repetitive or dangerous or dis-
tasteful work, or again by the way in which women are pressured to re-
main at home to perform the bulk of domestic labor while men do the
real work. Plain examples of social domination are provided by the way
in which people of color are more often than not condemned to live in
squalid conditions with the most meager of opportunities for education
and health care, or again by the way in which gay men and lesbians are
harassed or viliWed for seeking to live the kinds of lives they want.
I call this view equality of status because what drives it is the thought
that each individual has an equal moral standing, so that a just society is
9. For an impressive battery of objections to this kind of view, see Elizabeth S. Anderson,
What is the Point of Equality. Ethics 109 (1999): 287337.
one in which all social and economic relations properly reXect that basic
equality. This ideal can be thought of as a form of deontological egali-
tarianism, although not one based on a concern with any kind of unde-
served fallout from the cosmic lottery. Instead, it is committed to the
idea that all human beings, in virtue of their standing, possess a pre-
political entitlement to the resources of the world. Consequently, to un-
derstand what exploitation and unfair exclusion consist in, we need to
bear in mind the fact that each of us shares in common the ownership of
the worlds resources. Those who systematically exploit or dominate oth-
ers do so most frequently by denying them fair terms of access to the
external world or else to the goods that are produced by working on it.
10
VI
Before I address the worry that WolV has raised, I wish to take up the
second main component of the view that currently dominates egalitar-
ian thinking. This is the idea that Rawlss diVerence principle must be
rejected on the grounds of its insuVicient sensitivity to the eVects of both
luck and choice on peoples lives. As a result, most contemporary
egalitarians seek to replace this principletogether with its group-cen-
tered approachwith ones requiring a much more Wne-grained, person-
by-person allocation of resources.
I believe this to have been an overly hasty move, because I think the
diVerence principle, suitably interpreted, could be a useful device in
implementing the conception of egalitarian justice I have just described.
Given that it requires us to maximize the shares of income enjoyed by
the least advantaged group of workers, implementing this principle would
probably not require detailed information about peoples lives and
10. Of course, it might be objected on Dworkins behalf that while people are indeed
entitled to equal status, that kind of equality is to be attained by giving them equal re-
sources and permitting inequalities to stand if only if those inequalities result from choice.
But this objection would miss the mark. For one thing, I could happily re-describe my po-
sition using Dworkins terminology. Whereas people are entitled to equality of resources, I
could say, that kind of equality is attained only by ensuring that the relations in which people
stand are such as to guarantee their equal status. But our status as equals is undermined by
efforts to distinguish the portion of our resources that got there by luck from the portion
that got there by choice. So we reach a terminological impasse. The real point at issue,
however, is which of these two viewsequality of resources or equality of statuscan claim
to provide the most faithful rendering of the egalitarian ideal, all things considered. The
full set of objections that can be brought to bear against equality of resources, in my view,
shows that it is beyond doubt the less faithful of the two.
81 Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?
82 Philosophy & Public Affairs
choices. It might thus make shameful personal revelations of the kind so
troubling to WolV unnecessary. Before I say more about how it could be
used in Wnessing these concerns, however, I want to show why (at least
some of ) the egalitarian animus against the diVerence principle is mis-
guided.
11
In particular, I want to confront two powerful and inXuential
aspects of Dworkins critique of Rawls.
12
The Wrst, which has to do with the dimension of luck, Wnds fault with
Rawlss treatment of the inWrm and disabled. Dworkin suggests that a
society committed to implementing the diVerence principle would sim-
ply provide such people with the same shares of income as everyone
else. But this would be, in eVect, to disregard the moral salience of their
physical conditions from an egalitarian point of view. Therefore, the diVer-
ence principle must be rejected for being insuViciently egalitarian on
grounds of its blindness to this variety of bad brute luck.
I agree with the thrust of this criticism, but I think it wrong to construe
it as an objection to the diVerence principle per se, for one could accept
that principle while insisting that among the primary social goods we
must include that of health care to which justice requires there to be
equality of access. If we ensure equal access to health care, then those
with challenging physical conditions will receive the attention and re-
sources they need without any extra expenditure of income on their part.
So what Dworkins objection proves is that Rawls has (partially)
misidentiWed the social goods that should have primacy in justice: his
list of primary goods needs to be extended. In other words, the diVer-
11. I should emphasize that I take the difference principle as regulating shares of in-
come, rather than shares of income and wealth. Furthermore, I not address the powerful
objections which G. A. Cohen adduces against Rawlss use of this principle, namely those
having to do with its injudicious attitude toward incentives for the talented. See in particu-
lar Cohens Incentives, Inequality, and Community, in The Tanner Lectures on Human
Values, vol. 13, ed. Grethe B. Peterson, (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992) and
Where the Action is: On the Site of Distributive Justice, Philosophy & Public Affairs 26 no.
1 (Winter 1997): 330. This is because, for the most part, I agree with these objections, but I
do not think they demonstrate that this principle has no place in an egalitarian theory of
justice. For example, it strikes me that people who make sacriWces to earn educational cre-
dentials deserve some compensation for doing so. At least some of the inequalities licensed
by the diVerence principle could plausibly be said to play this kind of compensatory role.
12. The points I want to discuss are conveyed by Dworkin (in reverse order to that in
which I consider them) in the following passage: The diVerence principle . . . supposes
that Xat equality in primary goods, without regard to diVerences in ambition, taste, occu-
pation, or consumption, let alone diVerences in physical condition or handicap, is basic or
true equality. Dworkin, What is Equality? Part 2, p. 343.
ence principle cannot be taken as stating a suVicient condition on egali-
tarian justice. But that important truth is fully consistent with thinking
that the diVerence principle states a necessary condition on equality.
13
It is crucial to see, however, that the fact that we have a duty to equal-
ize access to health care does not entail that that duty is grounded on a
quite general requirement to ameliorate the eVects of brute luck. On the
contrary, so it seems to me, it is grounded on the need to promote and
sustain an equal standing for all. Those who are disabled and inWrm share
joint ownership in the worlds resources with the rest of us. A proper ac-
knowledgment of their status necessitates ensuring that they receive the
medical care and other special resources they need.
The other objection I wish to consider has to do with the role of indi-
vidual responsibility. It purports to show that Rawlss diVerence principle
must be rejected precisely for being insensitive to inequalities that come
about as a result of the diVerent choices people make. Its thrust is nicely
brought out in an example provided by Will Kymlicka.
14
Kymlicka invites
us to imagine two equally talented people, one of whom wants to play
tennis, while the other wants to plant a garden in order grow vegetables
for herself and others. Kymlicka says that,
The gardener will quickly come to have more resources than the
tennis-player, if we allow the market to work freely... [for] his occa-
sional farm work only brings in enough to sustain his tennis-playing.
The gardener, however, ... [will generate] a steadier and larger stream
of income through larger amounts of work. Rawls would only allow
this inequality if it beneWts the least well oVi.e., if it beneWts the ten-
nis-player who now lacks much of an income. If the tennis-player does
not beneWt from the inequality, then the government should transfer
some of [the gardeners] income to him in order to equalize income.
15
13. In his more recent work, Rawls appears sympathetic to something like this approach
to health care. However, it should be noted that he still conceives the question of medical
needs to be of less than primary concern from an egalitarian point of view, and I diVer from
him on that score. See Political Liberalism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996),
especially pp. 184 V.
14. Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1990).
15. Ibid., pp. 734.
83 Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?
84 Philosophy & Public Affairs
I do not believe that this case refutes the diVerence principle. The Wrst
question that needs asking is whether or not the tennis player in
Kymlickas story is to be counted as a member of the least advantaged
group in Rawlss sense. It strikes me as perfectly reasonable for Rawls to
deny that he is, for Rawls assumes that each person is willing to work, at
least, for the length of time that makes up the standard working week.
Rawls, it seems to me, could with perfect justice oVer the riposte that
because the tennis player is refusing to work for the length of time that
makes up the standard working week, he has no claim under the diVer-
ence principle to receive the kind of income that the least advantaged
group of workers receives.
So in order for the example to count against Rawls, we should have to
stipulate that the tennis player does in fact labor for the length of the
standard working week. In other words, by opting to work on a farm, he
is choosing an occupation whose earnings equal those of the worst oV.
In doing so, he is deliberately choosing to earn at the minimum and for-
going the opportunity to join the ranks of those earning at the maximum,
something he could easily do, given his talents. Now the question is: can
the gardener rightfully complain about the choice that the tennis player
has made? Consider: he is opting to live at the level aVorded to the least
advantaged under Rawlss scheme, being willing to sacriWce the chance
of being better oV Wnancially to focus on improving his game. Surely,
then, the gardener has no right to complain: after all, she is likely to be
doing better, perhaps signiWcantly better than he is. How can she com-
plain that the tennis player has wronged her by failing to join the ranks
of the best oV?
It might be said that this misses the real thrust of the gardeners com-
plaint. For surely, it could be urged, the gardeners labor is being ex-
ploited by the tennis player: her hard work is being used to subsidize his
relatively indolent lifestyle. To this way of putting the point, I have two
replies. One is to ask what principle might be cited by an egalitarian to
justify the exploitation claim. After all, egalitarians deny that justice en-
titles talented and hardworking people to reap the kinds of rewards they
are apt to receive under free market conditions. I suspect that only non-
egalitarian principles of entitlement could do the normative work needed
to sustain a charge of exploitation here, since, as I have said, the tennis
player is in fact laboring for the standard length of time and the gardener
is in fact earning more than he does. Even if I am wrong about that, how-
ever, there is a further point that needs to be made, for there is obviously
a question to be raised about the terms on which the gardener has any
claim on making productive use of the resources of the external world.
As I said earlier, on my conception of equality of status, all individuals
share a common pre-political title to the resources of the external world.
This means that the gardener has no stronger claim on the plot of land
and the seeds she uses than does the tennis player. In order for her use of
those resources to be equitable, there must be some beneWcial upshot to
others that Xows from it. Since the diVerence principle functions to regu-
late the equity of the overall cooperative scheme, and it mandates this
particular beneWt to those working for the minimum, I see no reason to
think that the gardener is being exploited. She would indeed be suVering
exploitation if her after-tax income were the same as the tennis players.
But because it is not, I see no merit in the complaint. So the case does
not show that the diVerence principle is unjust because it is insuViciently
ambition-sensitive. Nor does it reveal that there is something misguided
in Rawlss focus on the position of those in the least advantaged working
group. In requiring us to maximize their shares of income, Rawlss theory
is not vulnerable to the charge that it would allow the least advantaged
to exploit the more advantaged.
VII
I want to end by explaining how the view that I have called equality of
status could be set to work in addressing WolVs concern. Consider, Wrst
of all, what is likely to be the usual story for untalented people. They will
not by any means be unemployable but will instead command only the
skills and credentials needed to earn at the minimum level. And so they
will be members of the least-advantaged group in Rawlss sense. Notice
next that that group is likely to contain at least one other typical sort of
member: those, like the working tennis player in my amended version of
Kymlickas case, who choose to earn at the level of the least advantaged
while in fact possessing the talent and/or credentials enabling them to
earn at higher levels.
If we assume, with Rawls, that peoples after-tax earnings will be tied
to the total labor time they supply, then there will be no need to tailor
each persons shares in order accurately to track his or her native endow-
ments. The tax-and-transfer scheme will be designed simply to maxi-
85 Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?
86 Philosophy & Public Affairs
mize the post-taxation income Xowing to workers earning at the mini-
mum. A fortiori, there will be no need for potentially humiliating revela-
tions about whether in fact ones overall lack of talent explains ones mem-
bership in the least advantaged working group.
What then of more unlikely cases involving people who are unable to
Wnd work when there is plenty of it about? I see no obstacle in the way of
taking on board the policy WolV suggests to cope with them. By provid-
ing a decent but unconditional social minimum, we need not require
shameful admissions from such individuals either. I take it that this so-
cial minimum would have to be generous enough to ensure that people
receiving it could live reasonably well, although not as well as those who
fall into Rawlss least-advantaged group of workers. As I have empha-
sized, the duty of egalitarians should be to eliminate social domination
and economic exploitation. Since the involuntarily unemployed who were
receiving the minimum would be victims of neither of these evils, their
position would, in my judgment, involve no injustice.
It might be wondered if this really would allow egalitarians to side-
step WolVs concern. For, it might be asked, wont people who are un-
willing to work be able to take advantage of the social minimum, and
isnt that allowing them to take unfair advantage of the work of others?
This concern seems to me to be quite legitimate, and I have two com-
ments to make about it, the Wrst mollifying, and the second less so.
The Wrst is that we need to be leery about using the economic choices
and decisions people make here and now to predict the conduct of people
under conditions of equality. Those who evidence great reluctance to
work in our society are often the most marginalized and excluded people
who see no point in laboring for meager wages and long hours at the
behest of others. The conditions of work in an egalitarian society are likely
to be much more attractive across the board, and people will, accord-
ingly, have much less incentive to remain unemployed. Furthermore, the
prevailing ethos of such a society will, I imagine, emphasize other-re-
garding motives for labor over the self-regarding motives that are cur-
rently predominant. For these reasons, I think that there are likely to be
almost no citizens who would end up choosing not to work when they
had both the talent and the opportunity to do so.
The less mollifying point is that, in my view, there would be no loss of
fairness in allowing those who choose not to work to take advantage of
the social minimum. As I have said, equality of status ascribes to each
person a pre-political but shared title to the resources of the external
world. This means, I believe, that even those who elect not to work have
a right to some share in the wealth that is produced as the worlds raw
materials are transformed. The social minimum strikes me as a fair way
of giving them such a share, for it constitutes an acknowledgment that
they, along with the rest of us, are partial owners of the worlds resources.
I conclude that egalitarians willing to forego the dominant view in fa-
vor of the approach I have sketched are not under pressure to choose
between fairness and respect. I have argued that this would mean aban-
doning the idea that equality must be speciWed in terms of choice and
luck, and agreeing to use the diVerence principle to regulate inequalities
in earned income. It would mean, in addition, conceiving of egalitarian
justice as driven primarily by a concern to bring an end to exploitation
and domination.
16
If I am right, then WolVs powerful argument need be
of embarrassment only to one group of philosophical egalitarians.
16. Nothing I have said is meant to suggest that the value of choice has no significance
from an egalitarian standpoint as I conceive it. For one thing, having recourse to the differ-
ence principle commits me to the idea that some economic choices that people make en-
title them to be better off than others. For another, what justifies the fact that those who
choose not to work are worse off than those who work is precisely the fact that their situa-
tion depends on choice.
87 Must Egalitarians Choose
Between Fairness and Respect?