Elizabeth Anderson on a theory of justice founded on freedom from oppression rather than mere income equality

 

Protesters carrying Black Lives Matter signs at a demonstration against police brutality in Boston, May 2020. From Britannica.com

The political narrative and institutional arrangement in the UK is based on the premise that those on low incomes are either strivers or skivers, and if the latter they should be be excluded from benefits entitlements. This mentality of restricting benefits to the ‘undeserving’ poor has been a dominant part of UK political narrative on poverty since at least the Poor Laws of 1601.

This view falls out of a theory of justice called Luck Egalitarianism (LE). In her article, ‘What is the Point of Inequality’, Elizabeth Anderson critiques this approach and offers a constructive alternative, Democratic Egalitarianism (DE), where redistribution is motivated by dignity and respect, and the poor are not judged deserving or underserving.

LE is an insurance-based approach to redistribution, and thereby, so it claims, justice. The market is allowed to supply insurance where it can, and where a risk is uninsurable, the state steps in to compensate citizens for their ill fortune. For example, if someone is born untalented, disabled or otherwise less able to generate an income, they should be compensated for it. Redistribution is from the fortunate to the unfortunate and might either seek to equalise welfare or income.

To ensure personal responsibility is retained, individuals are not compensated if they fail to insure privately where a market exists, and if they lose income due to bad choices rather than bad luck, the state has no obligation to step in. Someone unemployed who fails to look for work for example, is not entitled to state support. The negligent and the lazy are disregarded.

Anderson’s first critique of LE is that it justifies redistribution based on envy and pity. These do not sit well with theories of justice, which should be motivated by the collective obligation engendered by mutual respect. Dividing society up into the labels of fortunate and unfortunate, as LE does, is intrinsically insulting. And obliging the fortunate to give to the unfortunate merely because they are envied is an insufficient basis.

Her second critique is that LE does not provide inalienable rights to citizens. It is a so-called starting-gate theory which guarantees you equal opportunity at birth but where you are abandoned to the consequences of any bad choices you make thereafter. 

Those who would lose out include those who become disabled due to excessive risk-taking, those who choose to contribute to society but are not remunerated for it (e.g. carers), and those who choose to prioritise consumption over purchasing insurance (e.g. if a family rationally need to prioritise eating over purchasing health insurance). 

Anderson suggests instead a theory she terms Democratic Egalitarianism (DE), which is motivated by compassion and respect rather than envy and pity, and which guarantees lifetime access to equality. DE seeks equality of social relations rather than distribution and asserts the equal moral agency of all citizens. It prescribes freedom from oppression (she mentions marginalisation, exploitation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence) and equal participation in social and political life. This would include freedom from discrimination, equal access to healthcare, equal access to dignified work, as well as the prequisites for these like equal means of sustaining one’s existence and equal access to education.

You would not be allowed to rescind these freedoms, e.g. by contracting into an oppressive labour arrangement. The state has an obligation to uphold these freedoms whether an individual values them or not.

Unlike theories calling for equality of welfare or wellbeing, DE does not see happiness as relevant to the state’s role in creating justice. Indeed, conditioning state support on private mental states is unavoidably intrusive and judgmental. And by not taking a view on what makes people happy, the theory avoids falling into the trap of paternalism and state interference in people’s personal lives.

The theory only supports economic redistribution as a means to support  freedom from oppression, so the existence of the super-rich is tolerated providing their money doesn’t give them political sway or otherwise contravene this freedom. This approach expresses the insight that financial compensation does not remove an oppression and is not a commensurable substitute. It refuses to acknowledge envy-based claims to equality as unlike dignity and respect, this does not generate an obligation on the part of society.

Consistent with this commitment to respect, the freedoms DE guarantees are inalienable regardless of bad choices, negligence or bad luck. Adhering to a social model of disability, it considers disabled individuals as the victims of able-ist social institutions, and places the onus on changing these norms rather than compensating individuals for the misfortune of being disabled. The unjust part of being disabled is in the way others treat you.

Personal responsibility is maintained in DE by the fact that the set of goods that are guaranteed are limited to those necessary to guarantee freedom from oppression. Economic inequality is tolerated so choices continue to have financial implications.

Anderson’s theory helps make sense of why and when economic inequality matters beyond feelings of contempt, pity and envy. It refuses to fall into the narrative of deserving and undeserving, by guaranteeing the rights of individuals without taking a stance on whether they have made good or bad choices. It also helps clarify the scope of government: areas of policy that are linked to the freedoms DE seeks to guarantee, such as education, prisons and health, are not good candidates for privatisation, since market incentives tend to under-serve those who are vulnerable and therefore often expensive to help. Finally, as Anderson underlines, DE’s emphasis on freedom from oppression aligns the theory with the politics of injustice as we see it in society, where campaigns rally against discrimination and for equal treatment, rather than the more abstract notions of fairness espoused by LE.

There is a tension in the article as to how radical Anderson intends this theory to be. On the one hand, it can seem like a conservative endorsement of society as it is, with it’s support for universal healthcare and education, laws against discrimination and the emphasis on providing freedoms to the disabled to access public spaces, without compelling them to do so. On the other hand, taken seriously, access to dignified work is a very challenging demand that society currently falls well short off. Indeed Anderson herself writes in her later book, ‘Private Government’,  about how many jobs take place in oppressive work places, and how the hierarchy inherent to the organisation of work is inevitably undemocratic and disempowering. Used in this way, DE can help highlight the injustices in society that might hitherto have escaped our attention.

A second critique is that her exclusion of interior mental states from the equation of justice would fail individuals who genuinely are suffering as a result of their disability. She leans on the example of the Deaf community, who she argues are happy being deaf, and ask only that society is set up to be equally inclusive of deaf and non deaf individuals. There are however clear counterexamples of those with chronic mental or physical health conditions who would be much less likely to declare themselves satisfied with their disability. In these cases, the demands of justice would need to extend beyond merely arranging society to be equally accessible,  as these severe disabilities can fundamentally  preclude the possibility of equal access and inclusion.