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THE SOCIO-RELATIONAL CRITIQUE OF DISTRIBUTIVE EGALITARIANISM 527
allow for trade-offs with other reasons (so again, (T2*) allows the pluralist to enter the stage).
The equality-grounded reason may be of different types in that it may have various structural
features (e.g. it may be a “silencing” or an “exclusionary” reason), although it will probably be
a moral (rather than an aesthetic or prudential) reason. For the sake of the present argument,
we do not have to bother with these details. Third, (T2*) can be specified with a whole lot of
currencies of justice (see the remark above). What currency we will plug in for C will of course
affect the plausibility of the resulting position; but it is not constitutive of being a distributive
egalitarian that one is committed so some specific currency; all that is needed is that there is
some currency with regard to which unequal distributions count as reasons against the
distribution.
For the present purposes, (T1) and (T2*) provide a suitable explication of distributive
egalitarianism. Indeed I think that this explication is quite uncontroversial; in particular, it
should be acceptable to all critics of distributive egalitarianism.
2. The Socio-Relational Critique
Distributive egalitarianism, is subject to many objections. Perhaps the most widely discussed
problem is the so-called “levelling-down” objection; it purports to show that (T2*) is false, i.e.
that distributive equality is not intrinsically valuable. I am not going to deal with this
objection.
A second prominent problem for distributive egalitarians concerns (T1); on a strong reading
of (T1) – a view that may be called “pure” distributive egalitarianism –, DE is all that is
needed to account for distributive justice; i.e. distributive justice is to be explained in terms of
DE only. The quite common problem for pure distributive egalitarianism is to account for the
proper place of individual responsibility in our intuitions about distributive justice. It seems
that a simple “everyone gets the same, equal amount of the currency of justice” does not
adequately reflect the idea that people sometimes deserve more or less of whatever is up for
distribution simply because of good (clever) or bad (foolish) choices they made. In response,
distributive egalitarians tried to “incorporate” individual responsibility into their accounts,
thereby creating various forms of “luck-egalitarianism”. Luck-egalitarianism is the main
target of the socio-relational critique since it is – rightly or wrongly – often regarded as the
most plausible form of distributive egalitarianism. That it is, indeed, a form of distributive
egalitarianism can be explained within the proposed framework: The luck-egalitarian
distinguishes between two kinds of inequalities – acceptable and unacceptable inequalities.
She does so by some further distinction which she takes to be normatively relevant: the
distinction between features for which a person can be held responsible (like autonomous
choices) and features for which a person cannot be held responsible (like being born with a
handicap). The idea is that inequalities in something (resources, advantages, well-being, …)
which are due to features for which a person can be held responsible are acceptable while
inequalities which are due to features for which a person cannot be held responsible are not
acceptable. Where exactly the line should be drawn (i.e. which features we can be held
responsible for) is a matter of dispute within the luck-egalitarian camp. 3 Disregarding this
dispute, what makes luck-egalitarianism a version of distributive egalitarianism in the sense
defined above is that first, it tries to explicate distributive justice in terms of certain
(in)equalities – namely (in)equalities in the distribution of resources, advantages, well-being,
…which are due to features for which someone cannot be held responsible; and second that
luck-egalitarians, too, think that equality with regard to something (namely with regard to
resources, advantages, well-being, etc. which derive from features for which one cannot be
3
For instance, Dworkin (2002) and Cohen (1989) disagree about whether we can be held responsible
for some of our expensive tastes or character traits.