Equality

Abstract

Hardly anyone in mainstream political discussion seriously doubts that freedom is a good thing, whatever the disagreements about the details. Nor should anyone doubt that efficiency is a good thing, at least when it is understood in certain senses. But it is much less clear what people’s attitudes are or should be to the third of the values we discuss, equality. In one perfectly respectable sense, the views which most people hold could be classed as radically egalitarian by contrast with those of earlier centuries, with their justifications or assumptions of all sorts of inequalities of race, sex, class, or caste. But many reject equality when it is understood in other senses, particularly if it is thought to require redistribution or, worse, levelling down.