So far, it may appear that I have set up the primary debate among egalitarians as being a
dichotomous decision between distributivism and relationalism. Stating this division too strongly would set up a false dichotomy, as most egalitarians recognize that there are relational elements to distributivist approaches, and that relationalist approaches still need to pay attention to distributions. Even so, most theorists take the two to be based on competing principles of equality, and one of the two approaches is given priority in their account. There are a few
theorists, however, who take a pluralist approach, where neither distribution nor relationships are seen as taking priority even at the most fundamental level of importance.
Wolff’s positive position, which he gives after the critique discussed in Sub-section 1.3.1., is a pluralist one. He puts both fairness and respect as the two values that “are equally central to egalitarianism” within an egalitarian ethos(Wolff 1998, 106), and argues that
theorizing a “dynamic balance” of the tradeoffs between these values is the best way to generate
egalitarian institutions (Wolff 1998, 119-120). 17 In fact, in his later article revisiting his critiques, he argues that “it is possible to reconcile a concern for both distributional and social equality by being clear about the goods social equality brings people, and having a wide enough concept of well-being, and a wide enough concept of distribution, so that these ‘goods’ are also included as those to be distributed” (Wolff 2010, 347).
Gideon Elford also presents a pluralist view, arguing that the two views of equality are
“distinct, but potentially compossible” (Elford 2017, e81). He argues that both have normative significance within egalitarianism, and states that although they may appear in conflict they are not inconsistent with eachother (Elford 2017, e81). Furthermore, he claims that something important is lost in each view if it is subsumed under the other. Equal social relations have what he calls an impersonal value, meaning “the value is not wholly reducible to the contribution made to individuals’ wellbeing”, making them valuable for other reasons that are not captured by distributive egalitarianism (Elford 2017, e84). Principles of distributive equality, on the other hand, may be “characterised as part of a broader ideal of relating to others as equals”, but at the same time “should be seen as constitutive elements with a normative authority of their own”
rather than deriving their authority from the relational ideal (Elford 2017, e98). As a result, he advocates an approach to egalitarianism that thinks about the interrelations between these elements of equality, considering them “distinct but both valuable” (Elford 2017, e98).
17I take the value of fairness to be in line with the luck egalitarian distributivist view, and the value of respect to be more in line with relationalist view. However, it is important to note that Wolff’s account in his 1998 article is focused on egalitarian values, rather than distribution and relational models. His 2010 article does turn to these models, and states that the conflict between fairness and respect can be seen as “an instance of a broader conflict between distributive and social models of equality” (Wolff 2010, 347), but the focus on values does distinguish him from other early critics of distributivism. Wolff defines an ethos as “a collection of values, which may sometimes
As mentioned previously, Lippert-Rasmussen’s view is also mixed (although I will be examining the relational component of Lippert-Rasmussen’s account as one candidate for what relational egalitarians mean by “relations of equality”). Starting from his argument that the distinction between luck and relational egalitarianism as it is usually presented is misleading, he then argues that distributive luck egalitarianism, relational egalitarianism, and what he calls dispositional egalitarianism are all both “consistent and distinct” (Lippert-Rasmussen 2018, 19).
Based in that framework, he advocates for a “luckist, partially complete-lives version of relational egalitarianism” (Lippert-Rasmussen 2018, 20), rooted in a concern for fairness (Lippert-Rasmussen 2018, 19). Although this is a less pluralistic view than Wolff or Elford, it still presents an example of the ways in which some egalitarian theorists take a mix and match approach, using components of both relationalist and distributivist that they argue are compatible and desirable, but irreducible. Since he still considers his view relationalist, and he provides one of the few available attempts to explicitly articulate what is meant by relations of equality, I include his account as one of the four I examine in Chapter 3. However, his pluralism and contextualism poses some problems for his account as a relational view, which I will discuss in Section 3.2.1.
The focus of this dissertation is on theorizing components of a relational egalitarian account of justice. In the process, however, I intend to leave as open as possible the question of whether my account of relations of equality is compatible with some version or aspect of distributivism being equally fundamental, or if it takes lexical priority. I will assume that some attention to distribution will be a necessary component for an adequate relational egalitarian theory of justice at some point in the account, but I will not explicitly theorize that component except as it implicitly develops through my focus on what it means to relate as equals.