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Article Excerpt
One of my colleagues at the Gender Institute has a brilliantly colored collage on her office door, presented to her by her students, that defiantly proclaims "Theory Saves Lives." As this suggests, the notion that theory of any kind matters is contested, perhaps particularly in environments where there is a sense of urgency about political and social change. Precisely elaborated theoretical distinctions that threaten to make no practical difference can seem as pointless as those apocryphal debates about the number of angels that can dance on a pin-head; and when one's mind is trained on issues of violence, poverty, or discrimination, it is hard to avoid impatience with those who airily leave questions of feasibility to another day. The complaint often leveled at "theory" is that it fails to engage with the complexities of the real world. But at least with "theory" the failure may be inadvertent: the theorist may have thought herself saying something highly pertinent, but in the eyes of her critics has failed. With ideal theory, the charge sheet will be considerably longer, for ideal theory does not just fail, incidentally, to address real-world complexities; it actively chooses to set these to one side.
My concern in this paper is with an aspect of liberal egalitarian thought that might be regarded as proof against such criticism, a development that could be recommended, to the contrary, for its realism. This is the now almost universal acceptance that a plausible conception of an egalitarian society must accommodate itself to the existence of markets in goods and labor. Grand treatises on justice or equality that nowhere mention money, markets, or capitalism present us with an almost insurmountable task of translation, while condemnations of the market as simply immoral and unjust immediately beg--and have commonly ducked--the question of what, then, we are supposed to do. It would be hard to find examples of either approach in the current literature. With the demise of communism (in both theory and practice), and widespread recognition that any foreseeable future will involve some version of a market economy, even egalitarians have accommodated themselves to this. (1) A significant number go further, deploying the virtues of the ideal market in their condemnation of its often corrupt realities.
Though I share the concern with feasibility, I am troubled by this turn towards the market; and especially troubled by the claim that there are sound egalitarian reasons for endorsing markets in goods and labor. Endorsements in the name of efficiency already risk invoking an idealized version of "the market" that bears little relationship to the often failing markets of the real world. Endorsements in the name of equality mostly make it clear that it is market as ideal type, not as actual practice, that is said to promote equality. Yet here, too, the idealizing move risks blunting the critique of actual market operations, because of the difficulties in disentangling ideal from real. Features from the operations of actual markets may be mistakenly incorporated into descriptions of the ideal, in ways that preempt more radical alternatives; or substantive norms associated with market societies may be written into what are presented as neutral market "mechanisms." From the other side, persistent features of actual markets may be treated as anomalies or irrelevant corruptions, in a manner that recalls distractions between "explaining" and "explaining away." (2) My suspicion, in other words, is that it is not so much the egalitarian accommodation with markets that is the source of my unease, but the fact that this accommodation so often operates through ideal theory.
In what follows, I start with some illustrations of the turn towards the market in liberal egalitarian political thought, and go on to distinguish three distinct meanings that can be attached to the notion of ideal theory) 1 have deliberately broadened the term beyond its reference point in John Rawls's distinction between ideal and nonideal theory, for I see the overemphasis on Rawls's definition as itself an unhelpful narrowing of debate. Within each of the three meanings, I consider ways in which the deployment of ideal theory creates problems in theorizing the relationship between equality and the market. My own view, to state it from the outset, is that differences between one kind of market society and another are going to become increasingly important in the development of egalitarian alternatives, and that questions about the compatibility of equality with the market will come to locus more on the substance of market relations than a general principle of market exchange. Specificity matters here. Markets in what? How "free" is the market'? How regulated'? What kinds of power hierarchies are established in what kinds of market in goods or labor'? Which of these, if any, is compatible with principles of equality? Certain idealized ways of talking about "the market" are unlikely to help in answering such questions.
Modes of Market Accommodation
One dominant mode of market accommodation follows a pattern laid out by Rawls, where the theorizing is sell-consciously ideal, and the market enters as an (also idealized) "fact" of life that imposes efficiency constraints on distribution. The presumption, derived from ideal considerations, is in favor of an equal distribution of social primary goods, but this is to be modified where an unequal distribution turns out to the advantage of the least advantaged. The modification is itself justified in ideal terms (as what any rational person would choose), but its reference point is clearly market society, including what is taken to be the historically established relationship between competitive markets and economic growth, and the need for both profit and income differentials. Rawls himself explicitly assumes a free market system, while remaining agnostic on the precise role of private ownership. (4) In doing so, he moves between an idealized version of the market (which "may then be used to appraise existing arrangements" (5)), and more historically contingent discussion of the relative merits of private property versus socialist regimes. He accepts entirely the efficiency claims made on behalf of a free market system, and regards it as one of the strengths of the difference principle that it makes justice compatible with efficiency.
Claims about market efficiency are not my primary focus, but it can already be said that this idealizes the market in misleading rather than useful ways. Rawls's deployment of an ideal is, of course, entirely deliberate, but his movement between idealized conception and historical actualization is by no means precise, particularly when the ideal involves claims about historical tendencies. Consider, for example, how he deals with objections that the difference principle permits the most extreme disparities in income and wealth so long as the least fortunate receive just the slightest overall benefit: in his illustration, an extra billion dollars to the best off justified by another penny to the least advantaged. (6) This is not, he argues, to be regarded as a real worry, because the just society will also enjoy equal liberties and positions open to all, and the widening opportunities associated with this will exert pressure on inequalities to keep them within acceptable bounds. "In a competitive economy (with or without private ownership) with an open class system excessive inequalities will not be the rule. Given the distribution of natural assets and the laws of motivation, great disparities will not long exist." (7) Yet this is surely a claim about the actual workings of actual market societies, to be tested against historical evidence, not deduced from the concepts themselves. Rawls here fleshes out his ideal market with what might be thought an overoptimistic reading of how actual markets operate.
It can also be said that Rawls's account of efficiency falsely represents the need for incentives as integral to the workings of a free market, in ways that then place them beyond the scope of justice. In his famous criticism, G.A. Cohen likens the refusal of the talented to work for anything like the average wage to a kidnapper demanding ransom, and argues that it would be hard to sustain the incentive justification for inequality if the rich had to make their case for it when face-to-face with the poor. (9) It is not, in this analysis, an "objective fact" about markets that the talented have to be paid more, but something that derives from their own unwillingness, and Cohen argues that there would not be the same "need" for incentives if the culture shifted in a more just and egalitarian direction. I take it as one implication of this that those who represent the need for incentives as definitionally integral to "the market" have engaged in false idealization. In doing so, they commit us to more constrained and unequal consequences than the endorsement of markets as useful coordinating mechanisms need imply.
A second line of argument, initiated by Michael Walzer, represents the market as relatively unproblematic in the way it regulates the distribution of money and commodities, but seriously out of place once allowed to influence the distribution of such matters as education or sex or health.
The merchant panders to our desires. But so long as he isn't selling people or votes or political influence, so long as he hasn't cornered the market in wheat in a time of drought, so long as his cars aren't death traps, his shirts inflammable, this is a harmless pandering ... the exchange is in principle a relation of mutual benefit; and neither the money that the merchant makes, nor the accumulation of things by this or that consumer, poses any threat to complex equality--not if the sphere of money and commodities is properly bounded. (9) The issue, for Walzer, is not whether the market as such is compatible with equality (it isn't, strictly, but it does what it does well). The problem is that "money seeps across all boundaries," (10) and the challenge for egalitarians is therefore to keep it in its place.
Some of the feminist writing on prostitution or contracts for surrogate motherhood has followed a similar train of thought, taking issue not with...
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