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THE SOCIO-RELATIONAL CRITIQUE OF DISTRIBUTIVE EGALITARIANISM 529
then the “critique” would amount to saying that luck-egalitarians have the wrong conception
of distributive equality. That is, without (C1), the socio-relational critique would be entirely
internal in the sense that it would amount to a dispute between different conceptions of DE;
instead, I take this critique to be external in the sense that it suggests that a successful
vindication of DE has to “look outside” and to resort to some further argumentative resource
not already given by the idea of DE.
As is already obvious from the fact that ESV figures in all three premises, the strength of the
argument heavily depends on what, precisely, ESV consist in. The set-up so far already
suggests that there are three structural constraints on any substantive characterisation of the
ideal of “equality as a substantive social value”: First, ESV must be distinct from DE, as (C1)
holds. Second, ESV must somehow figure in a proper account of the idea of distributive
justice (and not in an account of some other moral value). This follows from the fact that luckegalitarianism
is the target of the ESV-based socio-relational critique: Luck-egalitarianism is
a conception of distributive justice and if the critique is supposed to show that this conception
is misguided because it does not properly account for ESV, then a convincing conception of
distributive justice must account for ESV. Third, ESV must not only be distinct from DE, but
also from what one might call “moral equality” – the idea of equality in basic moral status
which is taken to ground human rights or taken to be constitutive of membership in the moral
community. 9 This is simply because any conception of distributive justice – be it
sufficientarian, prioritarian, egalitarian etc. – will allow for moral equality; hence, without
further specification, the ideal of “moral equality” does not per se differentiate and, therefore,
not settle the dispute between competing conceptions of distributive justice. So if ESV was
equivalent to “moral equality”, it could not have the implications that the socio-relational
critiques takes it to have – namely to refute a specific account of distributive justice.
These remarks suggest that a substantive characterisation of ESV must look for a middle
ground: On the one hand, “equality as a substantive social value” must be “more” (specific)
than basic moral equality, but on the other hand, it must be “less” (specific) than distributive
equality. So how do proponents of the socio-relational critique characterise ESV?
Unfortunately, this is a place where the critics’ argument becomes a bit evasive; what follows
is a collection of quotations from Scheffler's papers which are supposed to shed some light on
the idea of ESV:
[Equality] is, instead, a moral ideal governing the relations in which people stand to
one another. (Scheffler 2010b: 191)
[ESV] claims that human relations must be conducted on the basis of an assumption
that everyone’s life is equally important, and that all members of a society have equal
standing. (Scheffler 2010b: 191)
As a social ideal, it holds that a human society must be conceived of as a cooperative
arrangement among equals, each of whom enjoys the same social standing. (Scheffler
2010b: 191)
Insofar as equality is understood as a substantive social value […], the basic reason it
matters to us is because we believe that there is something valuable about human
relationships that are, in certain crucial respects at least, unstructured by difference of
rank, power or status. (Scheffler 2010a: 225)
[I]negalitarian societies compromise human flourishing; they limit personal freedom,
corrupt human relationships, undermine self-respect, and inhibit truthful living. By
contrast, a society of equals supports the mutual respect and the self-respect of its
members, encourages freedom of interpersonal exchange, and places no special
9
Cp. Scanlon’s (2002: 41) contrast of “substantive” and “formal” equality.