Equal Distribution and Equal Social Relations: An Analysis of Their Significance

Equal Distribution and Equal Social Relations: An Argumentative Analysis of Their Significance
Author’s Name
The Institutional Affiliation
Course Number and Name
Instructor Name
Assignment Due Date
Equal Distribution and Equal Social Relations: An Argumentative Analysis of Their Significance
Social equality is the yardstick to gauge a state or society’s potential for development, prosperity, and sustainability. In his famous “theory of justice,” John Rawls rejects the practical theory, which violates the right of minorities for the majority. Instead, he proposes his theory of justice to explain the nature and mechanism of the just distribution of resources in a society. Based on his propositions, Rawls proposes a fair society based on the principles of a social contract that grants equal rights to people and limited authority to the state. He also argues that resources should be distributed to provide maximum benefits to the least advantaged section of society (Rawls, 1971). Rawls’ propositions appear to support the false distributive egalitarianism that favors taking away resources from the advantaged people and handing them over to the disadvantaged ones. However, such impractical distribution encourages social parasitism and benefits the lazy and unproductive at the expense of the productive. Hence equal distribution is not the key to solving social problems (Anderson, 1999). Conversely, relational egalitarianism is more promising as it aims to eradicate social injustice and oppression and does not attempt to balance cosmic injustice unnaturally. In doing so, it maintains social equilibrium by facilitating equal social treatment to all sections of society to engender a true sense of equality. So, these positive attributes of relational egalitarianism substantiate that equal social relations are crucial to eradicate social injustice and not the equal distribution of resources.
John Rawls’ vehement rejection of the utilitarianism principle that demands social equality and justice for the majority at the expense of minorities reveals his belief in the equal distribution of resources. For the same reason, John Rawls states, “In particular, I do not believe that utilitarianism can provide a satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons” (Rawls, 1971; Fiske 689). Therefore, to counter utilitarianism’s propositions and validate his conception of social justice based on equal distribution, Rawls invents the concept of “original position.” This unique form of thought experiment proposes a hypothetical situation of a society where all factors that arouse social bias, including race, ethnicity, income level, age, and others, are deliberately eradicated from the minds of all people.
Consequently, to verify the need for equal distribution, Rawls uses this “original position” to put an artificial veil over a society’s population; this veil of ignorance facilitates them in making fair decisions about their view on social justice. Thus, while making decisions about social justice under the veil of ignorance, people would prefer a system based on free and fair interaction between various factions of society regardless of any racial, social, theological, or cultural bias (Rawls, 1971). For the same reason, this experiment on the original image provides a comprehensive and unbiased view of equal liberty which entails that all natural liberties are the fundamental rights of all citizens. These rights include freedom of expression, conscience, and association (Rawls, 1971). Moreover, this social experiment provides significant insight into the matter of the right of property by ordinary citizens. Based on this proposition, Rawls verifies that a society can only be called just and equal if its material resources are distributed equally; this view coincides with the famous “luck egalitarianism.”
Moreover, this “thought experiment” reinforces his belief in the philosophy of equal distribution. Thus, Rawls also makes a significant proposal to rectify the erroneous concept of social inequality by proposing his notion of social equality. According to the first aspect of his concept, the utilitarian view of distributing social perks and benefits as per the majority’s demands negates the principles of social justice. Therefore, implementing this erroneous social view would engender social inequality (Rawls, 1971). Thus, Rawls proposes that resources should be distributed in a society so that the least advantaged receive a higher proportion of these resources than the more advantaged (Rawls, 1971). This view openly supports distributive egalitarianism as it considers material equality, regardless of social standing, as the basis of social equality.
Distributive egalitarians demand that it is the state’s responsibility to distribute resources by taking the surplus from the advantaged ones and distributing them to the disadvantaged ones (Anderson, 1999). Viewing Rawls’ theory from this perspective reveals some drawbacks that help us understand the logical and realistic concept of social equality. This discussion is significant for estimating the validity of Rawls’ proposition of social equality and the conception of equal social relations as the basis of social equality. The roots of Rawls’ theory are found in the obsolete conception of luck egalitarianism, which entails that misfortune plays a determining role in a person’s life (Norman 239). So, this misfortune is responsible for people suffering from inborn defects, poverty, and inability to compete in society; therefore, the state is responsible for distributing privately owned resources justly amongst the populace to equate the unfortunate with the fortunate (Arneson, 2000). Hence, this aspect of Rawls’ theory that justifies distributive egalitarianism insufficiently explains the concept of social equality as it focuses on the unjust distribution of resources from the wealthy to the poor.
Scholars of social sciences openly criticize this notion or proposition of social equality, and this criticism forms a solid ground for invalidating this theory of distributive egalitarianism. One scholar correctly points out that using the yardstick of luck egalitarianism to impose social equality negates the fact that all states have limited resources to cater to the need of the populace (Anderson, 1999). Based on this erroneous conception, another scholar makes a rather amusing analogy that in case of scarcity of males in a society, women would be allowed to have an equal tradable share in purchasing the eligible male bachelors. Consequently, all women would have an equal chance to bid for the consort they deem most appropriate, even when he is married. In this way, a state can distribute the wealth of an eligible male from the advantaged married women to the disadvantaged unmarried women (Van, 2003).
Moving further ahead in the search for a credible scholarly critique of distributive egalitarianism reveals another scholar’s opinion that implementing such equal distribution based on the principles proposed by Rawls in his theory would deprive women and men of their private life and make the concept of love and devotion meaningless to society (Anderson, 1999; Deutsch 138). Thus, this form of an egalitarian society is unjust and unequal in the truest sense since it favors the unproductive faction of society over the productive populace. For the same reason, another critic argues that luck egalitarianism promotes moral and social decay by encouraging the talentless, stupid, frustrated people to stay within their self-imposed social boundaries and receive social bounties without contributing positively toward society’s progress (Cohen & Graham, 1990). Moreover, this erroneous conception focuses only on equally distributing material wealth and welfare amongst the masses. It completely neglects the political and social inequality apparent in social activities.
Several examples from everyday life can be quoted to highlight the violation of this concept from the core principle of egalitarianism. For instance, the demands of gay and lesbian people to appear in public in their specific attire and show their specific unconventional social attitude is not a concern of luck egalitarianism. Similarly, disabled persons’ objection to allocating specific public spaces for their social activities as they limit their social liberty is the focus of the discussion of luck egalitarianism (Anderson, 2017). Moreover, implementing such social equality would violate the very core of egalitarianism as it neglects the principle of political equality that treat all individuals of society equally in terms of social standing, cultural freedom, and equal and just treatment. Thus, if implemented in letter ...