Michael Walzer on Inequality and Social Justice



Distributive Justice concerns the best way to allocate goods and services in a society or political community. Democracies, in principle, are egalitarian. But in what sense are all citizens entitled to goods and services on an equal basis? The first way of answering that question is called the principle of strict equality. Here it is held that citizens should have the same level of goods and services because they have equal moral value as members of the political group. The usual index for measuring this type of equality is income and wealth. Another measure of inequality is lack of equal opportunities (e.g. the opportunity to get a good education despite race or gender). But it is generally income and wealth disparity that are used as indicators of social and economic inequality, both in newspapers and political theories.

Michael Walzer, in his book, Spheres of Justice, doesn’t think disparity in income and wealth are, in and of themselves, the causes of social inequalities, and so he defines the goal of distributive justice not as strict equality, but what he calls complex equality. Walzer says there’s nothing wrong with some people being wealthier than others on the basis of competitive practices on the open market as long as the resulting income and wealth disparities are compatible with social justice. How can a capitalist market be made compatible with social justice? By making sure that the marketplace remains only one social and political sphere of goods in society among several others of equal importance. The question isn’t how to equalize (or nearly equalize) income and wealth, but rather how to render income and wealth inequalities harmless in terms of their affecting access to those goods our culture deems to be necessary to all members of the political community, i.e. what philosophers have often called the Common Good. He outlines 11 goods which include membership (e.g.citizenship), needs (e.g. security and health), education, kinship and political power. We will look at one or two to get an idea of how this is supposed to work. Those goods that can be left to the marketplace are called commodities (and services).

Drawing on history, Waltzer discusses the case of a railroad magnate, George Pullman, who built an entire town he named after himself, Pullman, Illinois. The town had factories, a library, medical facilities etc. Housing was not for sale but rented. All plant workers had options to live there. But Pullman was, essentially, the CEO of the town making all decisions except those concerning public education. In classical economics, property or ownership goes together with sovereignty. But a “Town” in the US of the 1880s (and still today, of course) was considered a public democratic entity like a democratic “Polis” or City-state in Ancient Greece, not a piece of property to be bought, traded and sold. As such, townships are defined as being beyond the reach of the marketplace. Indeed the Supreme Court ruled that Pullman had to divest all but his business properties. Towns must be organized on the basis of democratic principles in the US. Political power is not distributed on the basis of ownership, but merit as recognized in public elections. We don't end up with CEOs of Towns but elected Mayors. All the legal protections of the state must apply to the town. No one can just carve out a township in the likeness of a feudal fiefdom, because “towns” are culturally defined as being democratic structures here.They are plugged into the democratic political community with its shared values, meanings and norms.

Cultural definitions of the Common Good also change over time. In the US there has been increased sensitivity to the need for provisions to meet the needs and interests of all members of the political community. For example, there was a time when protection against the ravages of fire and other forms of natural devastation were not guaranteed by the state. If you wanted protection against fire you had to pay the fire brigade or else they might not put a fire out on your property. Similarly, police protection was minimal and those who could afford to do so often hired security guards with broad rights to use weapons to protect clients. Indeed, the shootings that occurred at more than one workers strike were carried out by private security forces such as Pinkerton. Our citizenship needs now includes the expectation of public fire departments and police departments. The law is presumed to be egalitarian in principle (if not always in practice). Law enforcement agencies and fire departments operate in a way that goes beyond the logic of the market: a way that addresses our needs as members of society. So fire and police departments have to be distributed without special considerations for the rich and powerful, in principle.

Public education emerged as a public good in the 19th century as well; its cultural meaning was changed from being a luxury to a necessity-- part of the Common Good. Walzer argues that today healthcare is defined culturally in much the same way that police,fire protection and public education were defined in the 19th century—as goods whose distribution should not be affected by the level of wealth or income any particular person or group has. The general principle of this “Complex Equality” (in which commodities are left to the market and culturally defined social goods must be distributed equally) is: “No social good X should be distributed to those possessing some other good Y for that reason (their possession of Y) and without regard to the meaning of X.” So if X is public education and Y is money, I should not expect to get education just because I have money, and for that reason alone. The same should hold for access to healthcare, decent education, clean air and freshwater and many other things that are rated in ways that transcend the logic of the market.
While there will be income and wealth disparities, these should not interfere with the logic of the community which is normative and transcends that of the market. In order to implement Complex Equality, it may be necessary to introduce progressive taxation, but it is not because such redistribution is intrinsically right or fair, but only because it subserves the ends of distributive justice.

But just as cultural meanings and norms have changed in ways that favor provisions of education and healthcare, couldn’t the norms swing in the other direction? Is shared meaning or presumed value consensus really a strong enough principle for insuring the common good in society? If Social Darwinism or Minimal State Libertarianism becomes fashionable in 10 years, and cultural meanings and norms change accordingly, then should we cease to provide equally high quality education, police protection etc.? Further, this culturally relative way of supporting social justice makes it hard to imagine what we say to foreign countries should their norms be undemocratic. Indeed Walzer rules out all authoritarian and totalitarian systems a priori, fully aware that on his own account they lack the cultural meaning systems required to address what we identify as gross inequality.

In a later book, Walzer will try to answer the critics who charge him with a deleterious form of cultural relativism. I will cover that in a follow-up post in the near future. For now, Walzer may at least have found a way to steer a middle course between Welfare-Statism and a situation where the logic of the market is extended to all spheres, even the ethical ones, thus making distributive justice problematic. He may also have steered a middle path between the unrealistic abstractions of much political philosophy and the view from the street. But you be the judge.