Domination, Social Status, and Distributive Inequality

Abstract

Is the political value of equality a distributive ideal, governing the allocation of goods, or an idealdemanding egalitarian social and political relationships? Theories of social justice that argue for thelatter understanding of equality have gained currency in the last decade or so. Yet their focus on socialand political relationships should not be taken to imply that they neglect questions of distributivejustice, and settle for a minimalist, sufficiency view regarding the distribution of goods. This paperargues that relational egalitarianism, properly understood, requires a demandingly egalitariandistribution of goods such as income, wealth, and opportunities for desirable social positions, for bothintrinsic and instrumental reasons: egalitarian distributions of socially produced goods expresspeople’s standing as equals in societal cooperation, and are instrumentally necessary to avoid unjustrelationships, such as domination, and the emergence of objectionably inegalitarian status norms.