Much contemporary egalitarian theorizing is broadly divided between luck egalitarians, such as G. A. Cohen, Richard Arneson, and John Roemer, and relational egalitarians, such as John Rawls, Samuel Scheffler, Josh Cohen, and me. The two camps disagree about how to conceive of equality: as an equal distribution of non-relational goods among individuals, or as a kind of social relation between persons - an equality of authority, status, or standing (Anderson 1999).

This disagreement generates a second, about when unequal distributions of non-relational goods are unjust. Luck egalitarians claim that inequality is unjust when it is accidental: when it is caused by morally arbitrary factors such as circumstances of birth. Relational egalitarians claim that inequality is unjust when it disadvantages people: when it reflects, embodies, or causes inequality of authority, status, or standing.

Imagine a democratic society in which all members are full citizens and citizens relate to each other as equals. Social arrangements bring it about, to the maximum possible extent, that all adults are full functioning members of society. The society is not marred by caste hierarchies, invidious status distinctions, or unequal power relations. No one is able to dominate others. Moreover, the urge to dominate over others does not loom large in social life. Each person's relations with others manifest the belief, shared by all, that each person is fundamentally the equal of all others and that this equality calls for treating others with civility and mutual respect and forbearance. Each is viewed as having the right to live as she chooses, within broad constraints of morality. This individual entitlement to freedom establishes a strong presumption against paternalism, restricting a person's liberty against her will for her own good. Regarding distributive justice, the norm is that each should be enabled to have enough by way of resources and opportunities to sustain herself as a full functioning member of democratic society.

It is well known that there are large differences in the per capita income levels of the world's states. While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, for some countries, the gaps are growing wider. Most of this global inequality is between countries, not within them. In other words, even if income were equalized within countries, a large part of the gap in average income levels between countries would remain.

At the same time, the majority of movements in the wealthier countries for greater distributive equality have tended to focus on inequalities within their own borders: on issues such as raising minimum wages, changing the domestic tax rate, and ending national health disparities. This state-centric focus is frequently justified in moral terms. It is a familiar claim, for example, that we have special obligations to our own citizens and that these obligations are both weightier and more extensive than our obligations to strangers outside our borders.

Introduction

The various special concerns and commitments that individuals ordinarily have, for example towards family members, friends, and possibly compatriots, present an interesting challenge for justice. Justice, after all, is said to be blind and imposes demands on persons that ought to be impartial, at least in some respects, to personal ties and relationships. Yet individual special concerns are obviously of moral importance and are deeply valued by participants in these relationships. Thus any conception of justice to be plausible has to be able to accommodate to some extent the various types of valuable and valued special concern characteristic of ordinary social life. In particular, it is important to see how the impartial demands of justice can be maintained while accommodating special concern.

All modern democratic societies claim to be egalitarian. They do not agree, of course, about what egalitarianism demands; the ideal of equality is hardly transparent and can be plausibly understood to encompass any number of social arrangements and values. That some form of equality is to be prized, though, is uncontroversial. Indeed, it may be true that all political theories that have stood the test of time can be understood as specifying and interpreting the ideal of equality (Dworkin 1973, 500; 513). Whether or not this is true, I think it is hard to deny that democratic political philosophy can generally be understood as egalitarian in character; to know how to treat people as moral equals, on this account, is to know what justice demands of us. We are all, if this is correct, egalitarians now, however much we argue about what such a label truly demands.

There is a rich philosophical literature on the value of equality: on whether and why it matters, what its “currency” ought to be, and whether it should be balanced against other important values, such as freedom, or conceptualized in terms of equal access to them. Most of this literature is a contribution to debates about distributive justice: it is concerned with how we should understand equality when our aim is to arrive at general principles of justice that could guide social or political authorities in distributing goods under their control. But there is also a different context in which we can, and do, ask about equality. Sometimes, when we ask whether someone has been treated equally, our aim is to assess whether they have faced discrimination. This is, of course, what courts and human rights tribunals do when interpreting constitutional or statutory equality rights – for these rights are usually understood not as general rights to equal treatment in the distribution of social goods, but rather as rights not to be discriminated against on the basis of a select number of prohibited grounds.