Political Theory

Contemporary political thought is characterized, Anne Phillips believes, by a ‘retreat from economic egalitarianism’. This reflects the decline in the intellectual prestige and political influence of Marxism. It is also a consequence of greater concern with establishing and deepening political democracy, and of the emergence of a variety of movements whose claim seems to be less equal treatment than the recognition of difference. Phillips welcomes these developments, but insists nonetheless that ‘economic equality matters’. The best way to establish this is, however, less the kind of philosophical arguments constructed by Rawls and other egalitarian theorists since the 1970s, than consideration of the pertinence of economic equality to democracy itself. The denial of equal recognition to individuals on the basis of gender, race, or ethnicity is frequently associated with economic disadvantage. Moreover, establishing equality of condition does not, as champions of identity politics claim, require the victims’ assimilation to norms established by the dominant group: ‘Neither master nor slave generates a model culture; challenging the one inevitably involves challenging the other’. Phillips is at her most effective in tracing the connection between what Nancy Fraser has called ‘injustices of distribution’ and injustices of recognition’, and in demonstrating that models of deliberative democracy neglect economic equality at their peril. Her treatment of egalitarian theory itself is less sure. Dworkin’s proposal that individuals should be held responsible for the outcome of their choices once resources have been equalized is surely more than a retreat from Rawlsian ‘simple equality’. And one point Phillips comes dangerously close to assimilating welfare and well-being, a problematic move, since Sen’s work in particular encourages us to see well-being as an objective condition that cannot be reduced to welfare (understood as the satisfaction of preferences). But these are relatively minor blemishes in an important and persuasively argued text.