3.6.2 |
THE TRADITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY |
Everyone who speaks the present language properly must be
in favor of 'justice', and deontologists like to make use of
this verbal consensus by appealing to one or more 'principles of
justice'. (Some of them even subsume, or used to subsume,
everything that is or might be good or right under justice.)
Since the principle of utility can definitely in theory lead to
a very unequal or 'unjust' distribution of good and evil,
antiutilitarians have correctly argued that a principle of
utility could never be the sole, basic standard of right and
wrong. However, a methodically adequate normative doctrine must
not in its principles assign a normative value to something
that is already normative or evaluative in itself. Thou shalt
be just dogmas do not add anything to anyone's substantive
knowledge or insight. (This is not to say that someone who
starts from a so-called 'principle of justice' cannot later
formulate what
'e means in descriptive terms.)
Unlike 'principles of justice', the traditional so-called 'principle of
equality' does make a factual notion into a normative one and is
therefore methodically adequate from this point of view.
Evidently, this in itself does not tell us how the principle must be
interpreted, nor does this in itself make it into a morally acceptable one.
It has thus been argued that egalitarians employ two completely different
conceptions of equality: one in which proportions should be kept
equal when looking at factors such as people's merits or needs, and one in
which the people concerned are made equal, as it were, in a certain
respect.
In the former case it is said to be 'the impartial use of a proper
criterion' which counts.
Such words implicitly refer to the
principle of relevance, which need
not surprise us as the principle of relevance is often regarded or treated
as a principle of equality.
In the latter case equality is said to be a desirable outcome in itself.
This is the traditional egalitarian claim which demands our attention in
particular here.
Quite a few objections raised against the traditional principle of equality
do not so much concern equality as a
doctrinal value but rather the
relationship between a doctrinal value such as equality and the
metadoctrinal foundation of the
kinds of right we have called
"rights of personhood".
Thus, certain theorists have complained that under egalitarian rule
people's personal talents, whether inborn or not, would become the property
of the whole community.
And — it has been added — why not make transplantable organs
into a public good to be distributed in such a way that those who were less
fortunate get their equal share?
In such criticism two issues are confused,
altho the
traditional egalitarian is not able to tell them apart either.
Firstly, there is the question of what is
extrinsically a person's own,
that is, what belongs to
'im as a person. The right to
one's own body (with its talents) vis-à-vis other people is an
extrinsic right of personhood. But secondly, there is the question of what
a person should or should not do, with or without
'er body. It is this
intrinsic side of morality which
tells us that we should declare our solidarity, and act in sympathy with,
the less fortunate. We must do so by distributing what no-one extrinsically
owns in the best way, and by asking ourselves and other owners of extrinsic
property to contribute to a better distribution of goods. The egalitarian
ideal has often degenerated into authoritarianism, but it can only
degenerate into authoritarianism for those who do not recognize equality as
an intrinsic
perfective value, a value to be
chosen by people who are equal. Even tho we respect people's freedom and
the property of their bodies, this does not amount to a status quo
ideology, for also our recognition of what are people's extrinsic property
rights is founded in
normative metadoctrinal, not in
factual-modal, considerations.
Other objections raised against the principle of equality
concern its effect on people's well-being (apart from questions
of their rights).
In itself this is a problem of any
pluralistic doctrine, and of any
monistic doctrine in which an
action may be beneficent or right in one respect and maleficent or wrong
in another.
The argument from well-being does only apply to a
monistic egalitarianism in which equality is the sole value or
sole intrinsic value. One claim is that equality dissolves the
special relationship between the producer and 'er product.
Everything a person produces would be for the common good, and
the realization of 'er desires, or the satisfaction of 'er
needs, would almost entirely depend on the productivity of
others. Contrary to this it has been said that it is also a
human need to manage the satisfaction of one's own needs on
one's own. (Egalitarianism has at once been blamed for treating
people as consumers and for forcing them to produce for others.)
In this kind of argument the measures which may be necessary to
promote equality where inequality exists, are taken to be means
in themselves, but the principle of equality does not proscribe
the realization of one's own desires or the satisfaction of
one's own needs. When it teaches that a situation in which
actions, whether individual or collective ones, have led to
inequality in outcome is bad, it does not say that the sort of
action involved is bad, but the resulting inequality. Equality
in itself does not preclude that everyone produces 'imself what
'e needs: a community or society which is individualistic in
this respect is neither better nor worse from the standpoint of
equality. (Empirically speaking, it might as well be argued that
it is in a state of complete socioecenomic equality that most
people have the opportunity to be productive and creative on
their own, altho no-one will in such a state have so much
opportunity as the happy minority in a state of great inequality.)
When it is attempted to reach equality by means of collective action, it
cannot be required that everyone produce and make use of the same products
so long as there are given needs and desires which are different.
It would promote inequality and be
exclusivistic, if solely the needs or
desires of one particular group (such as the majority) were taken into
account, and not those of other groups.
To exclusively distribute oranges, where
only a part of the human beings concerned like or prefer
oranges, is to favor those who prefer oranges and to hurt those
who like or prefer other products (let us say, of the same
price). Likewise, to have everything produced collectively,
where only a part (however great) of the human beings concerned
prefers to have everything made for them, is to favor 'consumers'
and to hurt those who have pleasure in producing things
themselves. What egalitarianism needs is a guideline when
equality in one respect is inequality in another respect; yet,
such does not mean that equality would not be a value.
(Note that we touch on a seeming discrepancy between egalitarianism and
inclusivism here.
For, whereas egalitarianism stresses equality, inclusivism implicitly
recognizes and even seems to stress differences between people or other
primary things.
It might look as if it is exclusivism which furthers
unity and equality. But appearances are deceptive: exclusivism first
draws an irrelevant divide and then ignores or maltreats what is
on one side of the divide. Exclusivism's purported 'unity and
equality' is therefore always a partial one. Inclusivism, on the
other hand, does not assign an exclusive status to the given
needs, desires or preferences of any human being or group of
human beings in particular and is thus fully compatible with the
kind of egalitarianism here put forward.)
A favored kind of argument against utilitarianism is that
utilitarians would have to prefer a situation in which A and B
both had 11 units of happiness and C nothing to one in which all
three of them had 7 units. Similarly, a favored kind of argument
against egalitarianism is that egalitarians would have to prefer
a situation in which A, B and C each had 7 units of happiness
(or well-being) to one in which A and B both had 7 units and C
11 units. (The former example of 11, 11 and 0 is then suddenly
not used anymore.) But is the fact that someone prefers the
division 7-7-11 to the division 7-7-7 an argument against the
principle of equality? Of course not: at the most it is an
argument against monistic egalitarianism. For any egalitarian
doctrine which is not monistic, the distinction between equality
and inequality can solely be illustrated in an adequate and
sincere manner by varying the
difference-catenary quantity and
by studying the effect this has on people's preference or
opinion, while keeping all other quantities constant. (Physicists
could never have discovered the relationship between the
temperature and the pressure of a mass of gas if they had not
held it at constant volume at the same time.) Taking the
necessary methodical precautions, a division like 10-10-10 must
be compared with divisions like 9-10-11 and 0-10-20. Anyone who
then still maintains that equality does not count at all (that
is, other things being equal) does not have 'our normative
intuitions'.
The principle of equality only assigns a superior value to equality when
compared with inequality, and not with any particular level on which the
equality is to be maintained.
In
practise the modal
conditions may be such that equality can only be realized at a lower level,
but it is then these modal conditions which should be blamed for making it
impossible to realize equality at a higher level.
Consider, for example, the case that there are
three persons, A, B and C, who start with 10 units of happiness or
well-being each, and imagine that something happens to A so that 'e loses,
say, 3 units. On the principle of equality alone the division 9-9-9
would then be a better one than the actual division 7-10-10. But
antiegalitarians might want us to consider a situation now in which it is
possible to transfer 1 unit from B to A, and another from C to A, while it
is not B and C's fault either that A lost 'er 3 units.
If it is nevertheless possible to reduce B and C's number of units, altho
impossible to increase A's number of units, then — the argument may
run — an egalitarian will have to prefer the division 7-7-7 to
7-10-10.
(We are asked to forget about the ceteris paribus clause.)
Even if the egalitarian is not of the monistic type, 'e will still have
a reason to prefer 7-7-7 to 7-10-10.
This may seem odd in a case like this, yet it is quite reasonable when
taking into account that a principle like equality does not apply to one
isolated case with exceptional modal conditions but to a great variety of
cases.
Those who decide from one case that there would not be any
reason to prefer 7-7-7 to 7-10-10 (given that there is not any
relevant difference between A, B and C, and in addition to the
reason to prefer 7-10-10 to 7-7-7 because it yields more units
in total), never have such an egalitarian reason. All other
things being equal, they will not have any reason either to
prefer, for example, 10-10-10 to 1-10-19. If it is no-one's
fault that A lost 'er 9 units (even not A's own fault), and if C
acquired 'er 9 additional units without stealing anything from
A, people should on a nonegalitarian conception of justice be
wholly satisfied with such a situation, so long as 1 unit is
'just' enough to stay alive or 'just' too much to die.
