Introductory Remarks

I will start my discussion by looking at the first significant theory that has been identified as luck egalitarian – Ronald Dworkin's ‘equality of resources’. From an egalitarian perspective, this theory marks an advance on the renowned work of John Rawls in a number of areas. Two of these areas are especially noteworthy here. First, Dworkin insists as a matter of justice that individuals' choices influence the size of their holdings, whereas Rawls proposes that all inequalities in social goods, however they were arrived at, are open to redistribution if that is to the benefit of the worst off. This is the most obvious reason why it is appropriate to say that Dworkin, not Rawls, presented the first significant luck-egalitarian theory. Second, Dworkin proposes mechanisms for setting the value of goods and the fairness of their distribution not only for social but also for natural goods; he consequently avoids Rawls's ‘primary goods fetishism’, whereby natural inequalities are overlooked. In my view this second move also leads Dworkin's theory to be more faithfully luck egalitarian although this is for the more contentious reason that it overcomes shortfalls in Rawls's account of distributive equality itself – shortfalls that would be present even in a Rawlsian account that did accommodate considerations of choice and responsibility.

My analysis of equality of resources as a luck-egalitarian theory is presented in three stages. The first stage, which takes up the first half of the chapter, aims to show that envy-test equality is well equipped to overcome many of the criticisms that have been raised against Dworkinian equality of resources by welfarist critics.