O egalitaryzmie ekonomicznym
Date
2016
Authors
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Publisher
Uniwersytet im. A. Mickiewicza w Poznaniu Wydział Nauk Społecznych, Instytut Filozofii UAM
Title alternative
On economic egalitarianism
Abstract
Economic egalitarianism, i.e., the view according to which
equality of resources is a social value, has two different forms:
the intrinsic and the instrumental. According to the former economic
equality is a value in itself (i.e., an ‘intrinsic’ value), whereas
according to the latter it is an ‘instrumental’ value, i.e., it is
a value in so far as it contributes to the realization of some other
values (which, as opposed to equality, are intrinsic), such as,
e.g. the alleviation of suffering, higher quality of life, political
freedom, or fraternity. Intrinsic egalitarianism is a controversial
view, as it is susceptible to the famous ‘levelling down’ objection
(formulated by Derek Parfit). We formulate in the paper two
main arguments for the view that instrumental egalitarianism is
not plausible as well. The first argument says that it is difficult
to demonstrate that social and health problems conceived by the
adherents of instrumental economic egalitarianism (such as, e.g.,
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett) as the effects of inequalities
of resources are really caused by these inequalities; we argue that
it is more plausible, at least with regard to some of these effects,
to maintain that their cause is poverty (and thereby the low absolute,
rather than relative, level of income). According to the second
argument, even if the adherents of instrumental economic
egalitarianism are right in claiming that there exists a causal
link between economic inequalities and social and health problems,
it would not be sufficient to morally justify their egalitarian
view, since the link is to a large extent based upon morally
dubious psychological mechanisms, such as envy or the proclivity
to overestimate the importance of material resources. Finally, we argue that the view which best harmonizes with the above critique
of egalitarianism is the ‘doctrine of sufficiency’ proposed by Harry
Frankfurt, which implies that what is important is not equality
of resources but that all persons have enough of them.
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Keywords
economic equality, priority, levelling down, homo socialis, poverty, sufficiency
Citation
Filozofia Publiczna i Edukacja Demokratyczna, 2016, Tom 5, Nr 1, s. 12-36.