Equality and Well-being: Distribution, Recognition and Contribution

1. Equality and Well-being: Distribution, Recognition and Contribution Andrew Sayer Lancaster University UCD Equality Studies 20th Anniversary Conference, 5-7th May 2010, Dublin

2. Beyond distribution . . . • Recognition – equality of standing • Capabilities approach – about what people are able to have and do or be • Both suffer from disregard of the processes which produce inequality – of all kinds • Divorce of normative political philosophy from social science • >> Political philosophy focuses on symptoms and how to remove/alleviate them – e.g. redistribution

3. Basics: Recognition is . . . • important for well-being; • can be unconditional or conditional; • is of some person/group, and can be more or less appropriate to them; • is a matter of deeds and circumstances as well as words.

4. Relations Between Recognition and Distribution • Recognition confirmed or contradicted through distribution • Struggles over distribution often about recognition • But- In capitalism, distribution is largely independent of recognition – yet income and wealth often taken as a reflection of worth

5. ‘Structural’ condescension and disrespect • Attempts at equal recognition and treatment of others in the context of structural inequalities risk being seen as condescending downwards and disrespectful upwards • Misrecognition and spurious egalitarianism • Equal recognition requires equality of standing – in what people are able to do and be

6. Beyond Recognition and Distributive Justice • ‘Contributive justice’*: What we are able/required/expected to contribute • Work as a source of fulfilment, identity, satisfaction, recognition (or not!) *after Paul Gomberg (2007) How to Make Opportunity Equal, Blackwell

7. Contributive Justice • What we are allowed/required to do, rather than what we get • Teams – everyone pulling their weight, no-one hogging the nice work (quantitative and qualitative) • Housework: lacking in gendered division of domestic labour (and labour market) • Not noticed in wider division of labour in employment except in terms of gender dimension

8. Contributive Justice • Quantitative - everyone should contribute what they can, without unwarranted free-riding on others’ labour (unearned income) • Qualitative – good and bad kinds of work should be shared out equally – no-one should be allowed to hog all the best work

9. Contributive Injustice (qualitative) • Product of unequal division of labour • Naturalised, or legitimised as economically efficient, or as response to inequalities of intelligence and ability • The unequal division of labour itself frames how people (mis)judge contributive justice

10. The ‘Contributive Justice’ Argument • Many job seekers, few ‘good’ jobs . . . + • Intergenerational transmission of inequalities >>habitus, adaptive aspirations • >>No genuine equality of opportunity>> for many, not worth competing for good jobs. • Good and bad quality tasks/jobs have to be shared by all to achieve equality of opportunity and contributive justice.

11. Popular attitudes to class inequality • Need • Desert • Pro- greater equality but concern about contributive justice (while seeing unequal division of labour as natural) • Naturalization/legitimation of unequal division of labour leads to support for unequal distribution

12. The return of the rentier class • Able to draw unearned income on the basis of position or ownership without a contribution or function - from rent, interest, dividends – and capital • ’functionless investor’ (Keynes), ‘class of parasites’ (Marx), ‘improperty’ (Tawney), ‘value-skimming’ (Williams et al) • Value extraction by rentiers expanded under neoliberalism • i.e. yet presented as ‘investment’ and ‘wealth creation’ >> i.e. undeserved distribution and undeserved recognition

13. Distributive justice again • Arguments for distributive equality in the absence of contributive justice (I.e. unequal job quality) are unconvincing - invite objections of unfairness on desert grounds - the more skilled and responsible occupations should get more . . . • The unequal division of labour as an engine of inequality – implications too idealistic?

14. Conclusions • Equality of recognition (equal chances of conditional recognition, no structural supports for misrecognition) requires not only distributive justice, but contributive justice. • Contributive injustice is a major source of inequality – legitimizes unequal distribution and recognition • Neoliberal rentier as beneficiary of quantitative contributive injustice • Idealised? Yes and no - contributive justice already a criterion in some spheres • Important part of explanation of economic inequalities

15. Recognition • Recognition important in relation to class as well as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. • Subtext of many distributional struggles • Recognition, especially conditional recognition (i.e. for performance, contributions, skill, etc), as a class/gender/etc mediated response to the actual qualities of performance, etc. • i.e. response to objective differences but distorted by social field

16. The Unequal Social Division of Labour* • ‘Technical division of labour’ - Division of tasks within particular kinds of work producing goods, providing services • ‘Social division of labour’ allocation of workers to tasks • ‘Unequal social division of labour’ - good and bad tasks unequally distributed among workers * James B. Murphy 1993 The Moral Economy of Labour, Yale UP

17. Equality, Distribution and Recognition • “equality is not, in the first instance, a distributive ideal [...] It is, instead, a moral ideal governing the relations in which people stand to one another.” (Scheffler, S.)

18. Gomberg’sbasic argument (cont’d) • Many job seekers, few ‘good’ jobs >> complex work only possible for a minority • >>No genuine equality of opportunity, only ‘competitive equality of opportunity’ • Responses to this: For many, not worth competing for good jobs. Not worth training many for them. Intergenerational transmission of inequalities >>habitus, adaptive aspirations • Persistent class inequalities partly a product of scarcity of good jobs • Good, middling and poor quality work has to be shared by all to achieve equality of opportunity and contributive justice.