Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality
by Ronald Dworkin (Harvard University Press, £23.50)
I am aware of possessing only one item of stolen property. About ten years ago, I was in a university library; lying on a desk were battered photocopies of two long articles by Ronald Dworkin: "Equality of Welfare" and "Equality of Resources" from the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. They were stamped, "Reference. Not to be removed." But there had been so much discussion of them; the photocopier was not working; I half-intended to return them anyway. Honest...
At least, I have had plenty of use from them. They seemed to me (and still do) to represent that rarest of things in philosophy: a step forward. They clarified the debate and enlarged on the options. At last, 20 years after they first appeared, they form the first two chapters and the theoretical kernel of this collection of essays.
The appearance of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971 is rightly thought of as marking a philosophical watershed, igniting as it did a new interest, among analytic philosophers, in substantive political questions. Dworkin's name is associated with Rawls's, for although he was a young man when A Theory of Justice was published, he is also a sharply analytic and ambitious philosopher, left-wing but non-Marxist. But while the two men share many ideas, Dworkin disagrees with Rawls in important ways. He has also shown—as this book reminds us—an unRawlsian willingness to join the political fray. The second half of Sovereign Virtue includes political articles (including one published in Prospect on dilemmas of the new genetics), attacking Clinton's welfare reforms, defending affirmative action and calling for spending limits on US election campaigns—in the name of the principles of justice developed in the first part of the book.
Like Rawls's, Dworkin's theory of equality has two parts: first, a general theory of justice, and then an account of the principles of distribution. With respect to the first, Dworkin is a monist. We tend to think that justice involves compromises with other values—say, freedom, equality, efficiency and community. Dworkin rejects this. He thinks that true liberalism values one thing at heart—equal concern and respect. The value it then attaches to liberty and other goods derives from the deeper commitment to equal concern.
As regards distributive justice, Dworkin's first move is Rawlsian. Egalitarians have tended to be vague about what they think should be distributed equally, but they generally suggest that it should be some measure of welfare, like happiness or utility. Dworkin disagrees. First, it is impossible to find any measure of welfare which all people really desire. Ascetics value happiness less than hedonists, Americans value success more than Italians; any calculus which employs one of these measures rather than another is going to favour some people over others. More seriously still, "welfarist" or utilitarian approaches ensure that those with expensive tastes get special treatment. Thus, as Amartya Sen reminds us, men are generally educated to expect more from life than women, so it takes more resources to bring them up to a given level of satisfaction.
As an alternative to equality of welfare, Dworkin wants equality of resources, but with important individualistic qualifications. The essence of distributive justice is to make sure that the spread of wealth and opportunity respects the distinction between individual responsibility on the one hand and luck on the other, so that "citizens' fates are, so far as government can achieve this, insensitive to who they otherwise are—their economic backgrounds, gender, race or particular sets of skills and handicaps"—while "sensitive to the choices they have made."
So Dworkin asks us to imagine the sort of desert island community beloved of economists and philosophers, in which everyone, starting with same number of clamshells, has been able to bid for a share of the island's resources. If, however, we assume that not every one has the same inclination to work, it follows that over time some will become richer than others. For as long as we also assume that people's talents are equal, this does not represent a departure from the original equality. Those who are resource-poor have opted for leisure over industry. In this respect, the theory is "choice sensitive"—people who choose to work hard reap the benefits, as they should; those who choose leisure enjoy the benefits of leisure.
But people's talents are, of course, not equal. So justice, according to Dworkin, demands that we find ways of negating the impact of arbitrarily distributed handicaps. It also demands that we find ways of ensuring that no one is rendered poorer by virtue of their inferior talents (as distinct from inferior efforts). Apart from his ingenious ideas for hypothetical insurance markets in the sharing of risk, Dworkin has little to say about the sort of institutions that a real society would need if it was to attain even a rough equality of resources. However, he does suggest that it would require a much greater degree of economic equality than now exists, and this would in turn, presumably, require not just a dramatic increase in taxes on the rich but much greater resources spent on educating children from worst-off families.
It is worth underscoring two features of Dworkin's theory. First it insists, controversially, that no one can be said to merit resources which accrue to him or her as a result of natural talent rather than hard work. In this, Dworkin agrees with Rawls—and disagrees with almost all western politicians, who believe in rewarding "merit." In fact, Dworkin contends that the distinction between wealth deriving from effort and from inherited talent is one embedded in our common political morality, but if so, it is very deeply embedded. I am not sure that he appreciates how strongly people cleave to the belief that JK Rowling's literary gifts or David Beckham's athletic skill entitles them to a significant part of their wealth. At the same time, Dworkin neatly sidesteps the whole question of whether differences in wealth which work to benefit the worst-off are justifiable on egalitarian principle—Rawls's "difference principle." On Dworkin's account, the economic inequalities which his system permits do not have to be justified by reference to the worst-off at all, because they are not the result of innate, unmerited talent, but hard work.
Dworkin's vision, like Rawls's, has some of the high moral seriousness of Kant. But just as Kant's views sometimes prove to have inhumane implications, so, it appears, do Dworkin's. Thus Dworkin will condemn old men to pay the costs, no matter how terrible, of a rashly spent youth. According to Dworkin, a man who has frittered away his money and opportunities and ends up destitute has no claim on the public purse: dire need is not an entitlement. If Dworkin is rather to the left of public opinion in his rejection of meritocracy; here he is considerably to the right.
Dworkin is an easier writer than Rawls, better able to express the moral vision which underlies his case. Nevertheless this book is long, difficult and a little ungainly. While some questions are covered in almost too much detail, others are hardly addressed at all. His dismissal of the claims of merit is, for instance, a little cursory.
One day Dworkin should write a short book in which he defends, as simply as possible, his basic ideas. The arguments which Rawls and Dworkin have developed are influential in philosophy but have had little influence on the real world. This should worry them more, I fear, than it does.
I am aware of possessing only one item of stolen property. About ten years ago, I was in a university library; lying on a desk were battered photocopies of two long articles by Ronald Dworkin: "Equality of Welfare" and "Equality of Resources" from the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs. They were stamped, "Reference. Not to be removed." But there had been so much discussion of them; the photocopier was not working; I half-intended to return them anyway. Honest...
At least, I have had plenty of use from them. They seemed to me (and still do) to represent that rarest of things in philosophy: a step forward. They clarified the debate and enlarged on the options. At last, 20 years after they first appeared, they form the first two chapters and the theoretical kernel of this collection of essays.
The appearance of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971 is rightly thought of as marking a philosophical watershed, igniting as it did a new interest, among analytic philosophers, in substantive political questions. Dworkin's name is associated with Rawls's, for although he was a young man when A Theory of Justice was published, he is also a sharply analytic and ambitious philosopher, left-wing but non-Marxist. But while the two men share many ideas, Dworkin disagrees with Rawls in important ways. He has also shown—as this book reminds us—an unRawlsian willingness to join the political fray. The second half of Sovereign Virtue includes political articles (including one published in Prospect on dilemmas of the new genetics), attacking Clinton's welfare reforms, defending affirmative action and calling for spending limits on US election campaigns—in the name of the principles of justice developed in the first part of the book.
Like Rawls's, Dworkin's theory of equality has two parts: first, a general theory of justice, and then an account of the principles of distribution. With respect to the first, Dworkin is a monist. We tend to think that justice involves compromises with other values—say, freedom, equality, efficiency and community. Dworkin rejects this. He thinks that true liberalism values one thing at heart—equal concern and respect. The value it then attaches to liberty and other goods derives from the deeper commitment to equal concern.
As regards distributive justice, Dworkin's first move is Rawlsian. Egalitarians have tended to be vague about what they think should be distributed equally, but they generally suggest that it should be some measure of welfare, like happiness or utility. Dworkin disagrees. First, it is impossible to find any measure of welfare which all people really desire. Ascetics value happiness less than hedonists, Americans value success more than Italians; any calculus which employs one of these measures rather than another is going to favour some people over others. More seriously still, "welfarist" or utilitarian approaches ensure that those with expensive tastes get special treatment. Thus, as Amartya Sen reminds us, men are generally educated to expect more from life than women, so it takes more resources to bring them up to a given level of satisfaction.
As an alternative to equality of welfare, Dworkin wants equality of resources, but with important individualistic qualifications. The essence of distributive justice is to make sure that the spread of wealth and opportunity respects the distinction between individual responsibility on the one hand and luck on the other, so that "citizens' fates are, so far as government can achieve this, insensitive to who they otherwise are—their economic backgrounds, gender, race or particular sets of skills and handicaps"—while "sensitive to the choices they have made."
So Dworkin asks us to imagine the sort of desert island community beloved of economists and philosophers, in which everyone, starting with same number of clamshells, has been able to bid for a share of the island's resources. If, however, we assume that not every one has the same inclination to work, it follows that over time some will become richer than others. For as long as we also assume that people's talents are equal, this does not represent a departure from the original equality. Those who are resource-poor have opted for leisure over industry. In this respect, the theory is "choice sensitive"—people who choose to work hard reap the benefits, as they should; those who choose leisure enjoy the benefits of leisure.
But people's talents are, of course, not equal. So justice, according to Dworkin, demands that we find ways of negating the impact of arbitrarily distributed handicaps. It also demands that we find ways of ensuring that no one is rendered poorer by virtue of their inferior talents (as distinct from inferior efforts). Apart from his ingenious ideas for hypothetical insurance markets in the sharing of risk, Dworkin has little to say about the sort of institutions that a real society would need if it was to attain even a rough equality of resources. However, he does suggest that it would require a much greater degree of economic equality than now exists, and this would in turn, presumably, require not just a dramatic increase in taxes on the rich but much greater resources spent on educating children from worst-off families.
It is worth underscoring two features of Dworkin's theory. First it insists, controversially, that no one can be said to merit resources which accrue to him or her as a result of natural talent rather than hard work. In this, Dworkin agrees with Rawls—and disagrees with almost all western politicians, who believe in rewarding "merit." In fact, Dworkin contends that the distinction between wealth deriving from effort and from inherited talent is one embedded in our common political morality, but if so, it is very deeply embedded. I am not sure that he appreciates how strongly people cleave to the belief that JK Rowling's literary gifts or David Beckham's athletic skill entitles them to a significant part of their wealth. At the same time, Dworkin neatly sidesteps the whole question of whether differences in wealth which work to benefit the worst-off are justifiable on egalitarian principle—Rawls's "difference principle." On Dworkin's account, the economic inequalities which his system permits do not have to be justified by reference to the worst-off at all, because they are not the result of innate, unmerited talent, but hard work.
Dworkin's vision, like Rawls's, has some of the high moral seriousness of Kant. But just as Kant's views sometimes prove to have inhumane implications, so, it appears, do Dworkin's. Thus Dworkin will condemn old men to pay the costs, no matter how terrible, of a rashly spent youth. According to Dworkin, a man who has frittered away his money and opportunities and ends up destitute has no claim on the public purse: dire need is not an entitlement. If Dworkin is rather to the left of public opinion in his rejection of meritocracy; here he is considerably to the right.
Dworkin is an easier writer than Rawls, better able to express the moral vision which underlies his case. Nevertheless this book is long, difficult and a little ungainly. While some questions are covered in almost too much detail, others are hardly addressed at all. His dismissal of the claims of merit is, for instance, a little cursory.
One day Dworkin should write a short book in which he defends, as simply as possible, his basic ideas. The arguments which Rawls and Dworkin have developed are influential in philosophy but have had little influence on the real world. This should worry them more, I fear, than it does.
