Exploitation: Bridging Social and Distributive Egalitarianism

Abstract

Social egalitarians have charged distributive egalitarianism with abandoning the victims of option luck, disrespecting victims of brute luck and misunderstanding the aim of egalitarian justice. Social egalitarians have tended to favour a conception of equality that is concerned with ending oppression and expressing equal respect for everyone. In this article, I argue that what has so far been missing from this debate is the fundamental connection that exists between distributive egalitarianism and a conception of exploitation. Once this connection is understood, we can see that social egalitarians are unfair in their criticisms. Importantly, the connection to exploitation reveals that social egalitarianism and distributive egalitarianism are not rival positions. When it comes to exploitation, the two positions are able to coordinate and identify two core wrong-making features that form part of an exploitative interaction.