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Alan Carling

It is widely believed that at some time over the last fifteen years the political

values of the left were hijacked and the social theories of the left discredited;and that this intellectual reverse bears some relation to the ascendancy of

Thatcherism. Whatever the merits of this case, four recent books make clear

how much of the intellectual ground has been retrieved. If ideas count for

anything, the right does not look that strong; not half so clever. Richard

Norman’s Free and Equal and John Baker’s Arguing for Equality are mainly

about political values. John Roemer’s Free to Lose and Michael Taylor’s The

Possibility of Cooperation are also about social theories.1 The four books share

a concern for the institutional arrangements which would realize equalitywhile respecting liberty. The books share something else which is no less

significant for being a matter of style rather than content. It is something

like a recovery of common sense and the idioms of dominant expression for

the intellectual purposes of the left. Richard Norman begins by contrasting

two traditions of political philosophy: the tradition which opposes freedom

Liberty, Equality, Community

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to equality and the tradition which does not. Suppose, for example,that freedom is defined purely negatively, as the absence of constraint;that the only options of social organization are the State and the market,and that the State is identified as the only source of constraint. Thenfreedom will be maximized the more activities are taken from the unfreeState and given to the free market. If the operation of the free marketgenerates, or perpetuates, inequalities, then one must choose between

freedom and equality. This is the kind of decision forced upon us inthe first tradition of political philosophy, and it comes as no surprisethat the political right tends to feel most comfortable in this tradition.Freedom is recommended as the primary value, with greater or lesserregret at the loss of equality which seems to be entailed thereby.

Richard Norman insists, and John Baker agrees, that freedom is not soeasily counterposed to equality. The core idea of freedom is the idea ofchoice, and Norman proceeds to collect around this core idea thosechoice-promoting conditions which have sometimes gone under theheadings of negative and positive liberty . . .‘how free one is willdepend not just on one’s being able to make choices at all, but on one’sscope for choice—on the range of meaningful choices open to one.This range will be a matter both of what options are as a matter offact available, and of one’s subjective ability to envisage and assessalternatives. Consequently, the characteristic conditions of freedominclude not only the negative conditions of not being coerced orrestricted, but also certain positive conditions. These fall into themain categories of political conditions, material conditions and cultural

conditions.’

The political conditions involve the practice of participatory democracy,the material conditions access to resources, and the cultural conditionsaccess to goods which facilitate personal autonomy, ‘such as education,knowledge, and understanding’. These conditions are connected withfreedom characteristically rather than logically—that is, not in virtue ofthe definition of freedom but because of ‘certain very basic facts abouthuman beings and the nature of human action’.2 If this is what freedomis, and what it characteristically requires, freedom is characteristically

valued because of its connection with the exercise of the distinctivelyhuman faculties: perception, judgement, creativity. This is the experi-ence which makes freedom a recurrently important political demand:freedom is required for that part of the fully human life whose vision John Mill shares with Karl Marx.

On this account of freedom, we have obviously come a long way froman identification of freedom with the market and unfreedom with theState. The evaluation of the institutional forms in terms of freedomnow depends on how the market, say, or the State allocates political,

1 Richard Norman, Free and Equal: A Philosophical Examination of Political Values, Oxford, Oxford

University Press, 1987; John Baker, Arguing for Equality, London, Verso, 1987; John Roemer, Free

to Lose: An Introduction to Marxist Economic Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press,

and London, Radius Books, 1988; Michael Taylor, The Possibility of Cooperation, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 1987. I should like to thank Jerry Cohen, Norman Geras, John Roemer and Michael

Taylor for their critical commentary on an earlier draft of this paper.2 Norman, pp. 41, 49, 50.

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material and cultural conditions: a matter for social theories rather thanpolitical values, strictly conceived.

Norman approaches equality from a slightly different angle, and perhapsless successfully. Just as the value of freedom is rooted in the experienceof self-fulfilment, so the value of equality is given in our experience ofthat kind of cooperative community ‘in which individuals freely partici-

pate and respect one another’s freedom’. People entering cooperativecommunity ‘will be guided by egalitarian principles of justice: (a) thatpower should be shared equally and (b) that benefits and burdens shouldbe so distributed that everyone benefits equally overall’.3 The egalitarianprinciples flow from the kind of commitment that cooperation is:cooperative action arises from the free decisions of its mutually respect-ing participants to engage in the common purpose which definesthe scope of their cooperative action. (Perhaps Norman thinks freeindividuals would only agree to cooperate under conditions which made

them equal.)

The reach of the ideal of equality is moreover limited by the extent ofthe implied agreement to cooperate: it is ‘not a general moral idealapplicable to all human actions and interactions’. Wherever cooperativerelations prevail, and the principles of equality therefore apply, equalityhas three conditions—or, rather, ‘components’—which are: equality ofpower, equality of material goods and equality of access to culture.Perhaps it is no coincidence that these three components of equality areneatly aligned with the three conditions of liberty, for the alignment

enables Norman to claim ‘that freedom and equality, far from beingopposed ideals, actually coincide’. For Norman, equality of (political)power is the most important element of both equality and freedom, andhe returns a strong conclusion in his second tradition of politicalphilosophy:4 ‘Property rights may be outweighed if they are themselvesa source of power and of control over the freedoms of others. The centralthrust of an egalitarian policy, however, will not be the overriding ofindividual property rights but the establishing of a communal ownershipand control of those institutions which constitute the basic structure ofa society. To do this will be to found equality of wealth on equality ofpower.’

Does Freedom Coincide with Equality?

It is possible that Norman’s equation of equality with liberty is toostrong, and too quickly reached. Given the restricted social range ofthe equality principle, it is not clear why freedom requires globalequality. Why not have a series of internally egalitarian islands of freeindividuals—a series of cooperative communities—standing unequally

community to community, or an elite egalitarianism resting on massoppression, such as Athenian democracy? There is nothing in Norman’sconcept of freedom to deny that the freedom an Athenian elite enjoyamongst themselves is authentic freedom, and there is something in his

3 Norman, pp. 91, 73.4 Norman, pp. 97, 133.

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concept of equality which rather invites our acceptance of an Athenianarrangement as a genuine combination of freedom with equality.

In order to show that freedom overall is maximized where equality isglobal (this is, I suppose, what the coincidence of freedom and equalitywould mean), it would be necessary to add an argument of utilitarianflavour. Assume that the freedom-enhancing powers of the resources

which Norman says enhance freedom show diminishing marginalreturns. I always get more choice with more resources, but the extraamount of choice I get (or the value of the extra amount of choice I get)declines with the amount of the resource I already have. If interpersonalcomparisons are allowed, and people are roughly equal in the way theyconvert resources into ranges of choice (perhaps this implies that theirneeds are roughly the same), then giving resources to the resource-poorwill increase their freedom more than taking the resources from theresource-rich will decrease theirs. Hence global equality will maximizeoverall freedom, as equality ranges over all freedom-enhancing scarceresources.

It is a pity for the coherence of his full case that Norman rejects thiskind of argument on pp. 64–5. The underlying problem is the exclusiveconnection he makes between the principle of equality and the practiceof community, and the consequent neglect of the inequalities generatedby the impersonal, long-range operations of State institutions andmarket forces.

Baker on Equality

No one could accuse John Baker of advancing a narrow concept ofequality. For him, a commitment to universal, substantive equalityfollows almost immediately from some elementary propositions abouthuman life and a basic sense of common decency: from the facts ofhuman need, the principle of equal respect and the invariable require-ment for some sense of belonging in the world: some semblance ofcommunity.

How well then, Mr Baker, does our, or any existing, society fare by theseelementary standards?

Miserably badly.

But how much better should we do: don’t some people deserve to get more thanothers?

I think social praise for special achievement is a useful and effectivereward. Otherwise, I suppose some people might deserve special

material compensation for particularly taxing or gruelling work; maybetwice as much pay as others with lighter jobs; certainly not twentytimes as much. And it is totally obvious that people who typically gettwenty times as much nowadays aren’t the ones who typically worktwice as hard, let alone twenty times as hard.

OK, but isn’t inequality required as an incentive to elicit the exercise of special

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talents—entrepreneurial ones perhaps—so that we have to live with inequalityeven if it’s not strictly fair?

I think the incentive requirement is grossly overestimated—peopledon’t seem to need large inducements to do overtime, for example. Butmaybe in an extreme case one might pay up to, say, twice as much, butnever twenty times as much. It also seems to present talented people as

distinctly sulky if they have to be paid enormous sums of money to dothings one would expect them to enjoy doing anyway. Surely a talentis there to be exercised, given the opportunity.

What about equality of opportunity then? Isn’t that a more practical goal thanthe extremism of your recommendations?

It may or may not be more practical, and within its limits it’s obviouslydesirable in order to eliminate the gross forms of sexual and racialdiscrimination. But none of the five versions of it has anything much

to do with equality. Not only does equal opportunity mean an equalopportunity to become unacceptably unequal, but the whole rationalefor the principle would more or less collapse if there were an acceptabletype of substantive equality.

OK, I take the point, John, but we all know there are an awful lot of rather poor people and only very few really wealthy people: would it make much differenceto redistribute the available resources; isn’t this at bottom the politics of spite,

and aren’t all our lives made more colourful by the eccentricities of privilege?

As a matter of fact, straight redistribution would do rather a lot for thesituation of the poor: it would triple the income of the poorest fivemillion people in Britain, for example. There is also the issue of justiceto consider along with the far-reaching consequences of ‘the layers ofcontempt found in our society . . . created by its hierarchies of powerand wealth’. Anyway, ‘an egalitarian society wouldn’t prevent peoplefrom becoming pop stars, but it would limit their incomes. Peoplewould be free to develop their skills in medicine, law, finance ormanagement, but they wouldn’t be able to use these skills to make a

fortune.’5

And why on earth should so many people now be denied thepossibilities for themselves that they contemplate from afar in theoverreported antics of new wealth and old?

All very well, John, but what about the dead hand of bureaucracy?

‘Many of the worst excesses of supposedly egalitarian bureaucracies,such as social welfare snoopers and complicated and obscure rules forgrants and allowances, derive not from their egalitarianism but fromthe limits placed on them by an unequal society. The bureaucrats are

there to make sure that the poor don’t get too much—where “toomuch” is far less than equality would demand.’6

But surely you’ve overlooked the crunch issue: the kind of levelling social monstrosity

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5 Baker, pp. 32, 76.6 Baker, p. 9.


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7 Baker, p. 80.

you seem to believe in would be totally unfree. Wouldn’t the Handicapper-Generalbe there to stifle initiative and force us all to be the same: mere clones of somedemented planner ’ s will?

This is simply a travesty of what egalitarians believe. The whole pointof eliminating the larger social divisions of power, wealth and socialclass, and the consequences of entrenched inequalities of gender and

race, is not to eliminate but to promote personal difference and variety:to create the conditions for a satisfying, fulfilling life for all. And howdare they go on about freedom! I’m surprised the word doesn’t chokein their gullets. Can ‘the freedom enjoyed by the owners and controllersof capital . . . be justified in terms of freedom itself? How could anyonehonestly say so, when it is responsible for such a gross lack of freedomon the part of others? How could anyone think that the freedom of atiny minority to control the means of production is more importantthan the freedom of far greater numbers of people to choose interestingand worthwhile careers, to have control over their working lives, tohave enough money to exercise real choice over what they buy?Capitalist property rights are not an issue of freedom versus equality,but of freedom for a few versus freedom for everyone. For anybodywho really cares about freedom, the choice must be obvious.’7 I think John Baker’s namesake should be required by law to post this noticein every classroom in the land.

Arguing for Equality is uncluttered, eloquent, decisive. It is a low-fuss,high-impact book, dedicated to the absurd proposition that a goodargument in plain speech is worth more than a factitious display ofacademic expertise.

The only anti-egalitarian argument John Baker takes at all seriously isthe Rawlsian type of ‘benefit-all’ argument: that some inequalities areadmissible where they genuinely redound to the benefit of the worst-off. But he brings to bear some fairly elementary empirical considerationsto show that this is unlikely to represent any major concession to thescale of inequality that now exists: contemporary capitalism just cannotbe defended in this way.

The conception of equality he advances runs broader and cuts deeperthan Richard Norman’s. He does not tie it to a particular type of socialrelationship, though he shares with Norman the sense of connectionbetween equality and community. They share also a slight impatiencewith what might be called the philosophical aspect of political philos-ophy; the obsession with building an absolutely watertight logicalsystem of concepts and applications, rather than treating political ideasmore as they arise from characteristic experiences of life (Norman) orfrom the everyday run of political argument (Baker). The outwardness

of this outlook is refreshing.

Both are concerned, too, with institutions, but neither is here writingas a social theorist, and their impatience perhaps overlooks the pointthat good social theory—even good political philosophy—sometimes

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requires abstraction, model-building and recourse to formal tools. This,at any rate, is the lesson to be learned in different ways from JohnRoemer and Michael Taylor.

A Unified Marxist Theory

John Roemer’s new book Free to Lose is, I guess, the textbook ofcontemporary Marxist theory. In it, Roemer accomplishes three maintasks. First, he brings down from the mathematical stratosphere hisexisting work on the labour theory of value, social class and exploitation.Second, he includes a long discussion of G.A. Cohen’s version of thetheory of history, with a summary too of Robert Brenner’s work onthe transition from feudalism to capitalism. Taken together, theseconcerns cover the first nine chapters of the book and the full range ofMarxist social and economic theory. My admiration of John Roemer’swork will be known from a previous issue of NLR.8 It is, if possible,

extended by this publication, subject to just two reservations.

The first reservation concerns the treatment of the theory of history. InCohen’s reconstruction we have the most coherent statement of whatthat theory is. In Brenner’s historiography we have the most systematicpresentation of the evidence in the case which is the acid test for thetruth of the whole theory. And yet, as Roemer recognizes, the twostatements are in standing contradiction: for Cohen, productive forcesare primary; for Brenner, class struggle. I would expect Roemer tocompare the two accounts rather closely, but he says merely (against

Brenner) that ‘a few centuries’ difference in the development of capita-lism in different parts of Europe—the result of differing balances ofclass forces in regions—is not a significant period of time in humanhistory and that [Brenner’s] evidence therefore does not contradictCohen’s traditional reading of historical materialism.’9

Perhaps not, in principle, but a theory of history might still be thoughtwanting that refuses to engage with the facts at intervals shorter thanhundreds of years, even if the hundreds are few. The point is important

because the promise of a unified Marxist theory depends on the resol-ution of the issues between Cohen and Brenner, not least becauseCohen’s theory of history employs functional explanation, whereasBrenner’s theory of feudalism employs rational-choice explanation con-sistent in principle with the types of rational-choice explanation Roemerhimself deploys with such devastating effect in his work on capitalism,social class and exploitation. It looks, in other words, as if Roemer isputting forward ‘Cohen on history plus Roemer on class and exploit-ation’ as standard contemporary Marxism, whereas ‘Brenner on historyplus Roemer on class and exploitation’ is at first sight methodologically

more consistent, at the cost of depriving Marxism of the support ittraditionally thought it enjoyed from the theory of history. I will notpursue this problem here, just register it as unresolved by Roemer’sbook.

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8 ‘Rational Choice Marxism’, New Left Review 160, 1986.9 Roemer, p. 123.


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10 Roemer, p. 58.11 For an explicit statement cf. ‘When exploitation is an injustice, it is not because it is exploitation as

such, but because the distribution of labour expended and income received in an exploitative situation

are consequences of an initial distribution of assets that is unjust’, Roemer, p. 57.

The gist of Roemer’s social theory is that under a wide range ofcircumstances unequal resource distribution implies unequal exchangebetween rational individuals. Wherever full private property and mar-kets are involved, the theory says, free trade exacerbates inequality.This is why Friedman’s Free to Choose becomes Roemer’s Free to Lose.The inequality in the exchange is measured either by the differencebetween the labour contribution and the labour content of the return

to the contribution, or under a more general concept of welfare thedifference in utilities, or payoffs, among individuals (or coalitions) foundwhen comparing inegalitarian with egalitarian arrangements of propertyin resources. The first kind of measurement obviously bears a familyresemblance to the classical Marxist conception of value, although itdoes not require a labour theory of value, because it is necessary onlythat the labour content of goods and contributions be calculable, notthat goods exchange in ratios proportional to their labour content.

The major kinds of market-induced unequal exchange exist in the labourmarket between capitalists and proletarians; in the credit market betweencreditors and debtors; and in the market for produced goods betweenthe capital-intensive and the labour-intensive producers, or between theskilled and the unskilled producers. Outside the market, there is feudalunequal exchange which results from an inequality of ownership oflabour-power—unfree serfs (or slaves) do not own some (or all) oftheir ‘own’ labour-power—and status unequal exchange resulting fromunequal access to bureaucratic position.

Resource Injustice or Transaction Injustice?

In the previous paragraphs, I have used the term ‘unequal exchange’for what Roemer consistently calls ‘exploitation’. In his technical usage,the term ‘exploitation’ is quite disconnected from political values.Exploitation does not have to be unfair or unjust, as is clear from thefollowing: ‘If the initial distribution is highly unequal because someagents robbed and plundered, then clearly there are grounds for viewingthe ensuing exploitation as bad.’10 The last phrase implies that exploi-

tation could be good. In particular, it would be good if the initialdistribution, though unequal, had come about in a way that was notunfair—for example, if it had come about through honest toil ratherthan robbery and plunder.

This is the general position that Roemer argues very strongly in hisnew book—indeed, it enjoys a much more prominent place in this newsynopsis than in his preceding work taken as a whole. The causal storyis that unequal resource distribution leads to unequal exchange, calledexploitation, and the moral story is that exploitation is unjust if and

only if the unequal resource distribution which causes exploitation isunjust.11

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I think this position involves an unhappy usage and a substantivemisconception, and these thoughts compose my second reservation withthe book. The unhappy usage is the possibility of just exploitation.When most Marxists, or feminists (or most anyone) use the termexploitation in a political context, I don’t think they usually feel theneed to add an argument to the effect that exploitation is a bad thing.I know there are Marxists who think, and/or think that Marx thought,

that the use of the term exploitation can never imply a concern withjustice, because they, or Marx, have no concern with such a bourgeoisvalue as justice, but Roemer cannot be counted among these, becausehe does have an abiding concern with justice. He is surely almost alonein thinking that politically relevant exploitation is sometimes just andsometimes unjust. Roemer’s technical usage is potentially misleading,because there are some kinds of technical exploitation which he wouldnot want to change, and yet when most people talk of exploitation theytalk of things they would definitely prefer to be different. Why notsimply use the term ‘unequal exchange’ for the facts consequent uponunequal resource distribution, and reserve the term ‘exploitation’ forthe kind of unequal exchange that is also unjust, becoming thereby afit object of political concern?

Under this amendment, Roemer’s substantive position is expressed inthe formula that unequal exchange is exploitative if and only if theunequal resource distribution responsible for unequal exchange is anunjust distribution. It now becomes clearer why Roemer rather surpris-ingly regards ‘exploitation’ as a concept lacking political interest in its

own right, because unjust unequal exchange is secondary to unjustunequal resource distribution from both the causal and the moral pointsof view. But I think Roemer is wrong to think this, because moralinterest is properly directed at the inequality of the exchange transactionindependently of the inequality of resource distribution giving rise tothe unequal transaction.

Recall John Baker’s pop stars and their unusual abilities. Is it wrongthat they have these abilities? Perhaps, John Roemer might say, thereare circumstances in their personal backgrounds which unjustly givethem a head start in show business—say, their Daddies were all RollingStones. But perhaps not: perhaps their success is due to raw talent—and is this question in any case relevant? What might be wrong is notthat a person has a talent, but the uses they make of the talent—thekind or scale of reward they are able to elicit from their possession ofthis scarce resource. Now there are, of course, many different viewsabout what kinds or scales of reward are just—the persuasive Bakerline being that only modest inequalities of reward at most are just. Butthe point is that the argument about justice is an argument primarily

about the justice of talent use and not the justice of talent possession.And I think a parallel point applies to property in alienable resourcesas well as talents and skills. What marks out ‘exploitation’ as a conceptis, on the one hand, the causal element showing how the benefits ofsome depend on the burdens of others (unequal exchange) and on theother hand, the normative element showing why certain usages of asuperior position are abusages of that position.

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Exploitation is, I think, a privileged concept in egalitarian politics fortwo main reasons. First, the causal element rules out ‘the politics ofenvy and spite’ by picking out just those inequalities in which some dobetter because others do worse. Second, the moral element will serveas a regulative ideal in a society run according to a non-exploitativeethic, tending to maintain equality by restricting unjustly unequaltransactions. It is not just a question of getting a society off to the right

start by securing a just initial distribution of resources. There is aproblem of keeping it on the right track. I think that this point isrecognized implicitly in the last part of Roemer’s book, which isconsequently in some tension with the first part of the book.

Who’s Afraid of Robert Nozick?

One of the reasons, I suspect, that Roemer wants to trace injustice rightback to the initial distribution of resources is the worry induced by

Nozick’s polemics from the libertarian right of the consequences forfreedom of restraining either transactions or outcomes within somerather rigid mould. But as Baker and Norman (and Taylor and Cohenbefore them) are correct to insist, any regime of property rights, anyinstitutional form, any system of social norms allocating resources,regulates use as well as possession, and distributes its unfreedoms alongwith its freedoms. We can compare systems of property for theiramounts and distributions of freedoms, but we are never in a positionto compare free systems with unfree systems. It is also worth notingthat the application of typical socialist values—say, a social ethic of non-

exploitation—is fully compatible in principle with Nozick’s historicalentitlement views of property. Norman quotes Nozick as follows: ‘Adistribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimatemeans. The legitimate means of moving from one distribution toanother are specified by the principle of justice in transfer.’12 As Normancomments, Nozick seems to equate a just transfer with a voluntarytransfer. If one accepts the equation, then the only possible source of injustice in Roemerian unequal exchange is indeed the initial resourcedistribution, since the relevant transfers are all voluntary (at least infree market exchange). But one need not accept this equation.

A voluntary unequal exchange may be considered unjust, for example,if it violates the needs-contribution principle.13 Exploitative transferswould then result in Nozickian unfair outcomes even if the original

12 Norman, p. 145, n. 8.13 It might be said that voluntary exchanges always satisfy the needs-contribution principle, because

the amount that is given in either direction is a measure of how much the giver’s contribution is

worth to the satisfaction of the receiver’s need. On this basis, the Samaritan who successfully charges

£20,000 to phone for an ambulance is doing good because calling an ambulance must be worth that

much to anyone needing an ambulance so desperately. This kind of needs-contribution principle isnot going to give any independent purchase on the justice of exchange, and so I am happy to have

in mind a needs-contribution principle which depends on criteria of value different from the facts of

payment, just as I am unhappy with Steiner’s conclusion that the free enterprise Samaritan would

only be exploiting the helplessness of the stricken Wayfarer if the Samaritan crippled all other potential

helpers (or otherwise infringed the rights of third parties). Hillel Steiner, ‘Exploitation: a Liberal

Theory Amended, Defended and Extended’, in Andrew Reeve, ed., Modern Theories of Exploitation,

London 1987, p. 144.

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resource distribution was fair. (I also think, contra Roemer (p. 173), thatthis was Marx and Engels’ position, as set out in Capital , 1, ch. 24.)

Now it is, of course, true that the range of justified transactions wouldbe narrower under the no-exploitation rule than under the rule allowingall voluntary transfers. Capitalist acts between consenting adults wouldcertainly be frowned upon. It might appear that in these circumstances

the freedom of everyone would be restricted, because the freedom of aperson to be exploited if they wanted to would be restricted, along withthe freedom of others to exploit them. But it is not actually obviousthat freedom overall is reduced, so that a choice between freedom andequality is forced, for the general reason sketched above that a non-exploitative transfer (or perhaps an almost non-exploitative transferleaving the person in a superior resource position some incentive toexchange) will tend to a more equal outcome than an exploitative one,and the person who will gain, relatively speaking, will be the person in

the worse initial situation for whom the extra resources generate greatercomparative freedom. In sum, Roemer’s treatment of justice in the bodyof the book seems a little more wary than need be of the right-winglibertarian position.

What Is Public Ownership?

This impression is confirmed by the last chapter of the book—on PublicOwnership. Although some of its themes are foreshadowed in Roemer’searlier work on needs exploitation, the argument is essentially new, and

totally original. It represents the first fruits of a rather awe-inspiringdirect confrontation between Cohen’s philosophy and Roemer’smathematics.

Roemer addresses himself to the question of how one might implementthe partial egalitarianism Cohen has been exploring in several writingsdirected against Nozick. The point of partial egalitarianism is to seehow far it might be possible to combine the more appealing liberaldemand of self-ownership (including in the self the skills and talents aperson possesses at birth or acquires by experience) with the moreappealing socialist demand for joint (collective) ownership of the exter-nal world. Ownership here is a moral concept: it implies rights of somekind to the income streams or other benefits stemming from the use ofresources. People have ‘public’ rights in virtue of their sharing to somedegree in all the resources of the external world. They have ‘private’rights in virtue of their exclusive claim to their own persons, and theirpersonal abilities. The public rights tend to be egalitarian, and passive,rewarding people just for being around. The private rights tend to belibertarian, and active, rewarding people for doing something with or

by themselves. Evidently, a certain combination is being proposed ofequality with liberty.14

14 Cohen does not advocate the proposal as such. Hehas drawn my attention to his claim that ‘[because

they are] egalitarians, Marxists must, in the end, abandon their flirtation with self-ownership: a

combination of self-ownership and equality of worldly resources will not supply what Marxists

demand.’ ‘Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality: Part II’, in Ellen F. Paul et al., eds,

Marxism and Liberalism, Oxford 1986, p. 80.

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Roemer does not pretend to know exactly what these rights are, orwhat institutions would respect them. (As he points out, there is muchless clarity about what public ownership of the external world meansthan about what private ownership of the external world means.) Hetakes an even less direct line than Norman and Baker when they discussthe implementation of liberty with equality. He asks instead whatminimal general principles of distribution any institution should possess

which could reasonably be said to implement ‘internal’ self-ownershipwith ‘external’ public ownership. These minimal general principlesframe an ‘economic constitution’, which any social allocation mechanism(any set of rights, social norms or social institutions) must obey.

Arrow’s Axiomatics

The ancestry of this new, axiomatic approach lies in Kenneth Arrow’swork. Arrow asked whether it was possible to have a social decision-

making procedure which always respected a democratic ‘political consti-tution’ consisting of four minimal principles. The principles were:(i) Unrestricted preference-ordering over alternatives (ie. no socialconstraint on tastes); (ii) Pareto Optimality (if no one opposes a decision,and some person(s) support it, then it is the social decision); (iii)Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (the social decision betweentwo alternatives depends only on the individual preferences betweenthose two alternatives); (iv) Non-Dictatorship (the social decisiondoesn’t simply reproduce the preference schedule of a particularindividual).

Arrow’s celebrated answer—his Impossibility Theorem—was that nodecision-making procedure is capable of always transforming individualpreference schedules into a democratic social decision, if what is meantby a ‘democratic decision’ is one reached in a manner consonant withthe four principles of the democratic ‘political constitution’. Arrow’sresult has generated almost forty years of continuous discussion—andits own sub-discipline of social choice theory.

Five Axioms of Public Provision in a Free Society

In the spirit of Arrow’s theorem, Roemer asks what economic allocationmechanism will implement a combination of ‘private’ self-ownershipwith ‘public’ external ownership, if the combination implies the follow-ing five principles: 1. Pareto Optimality: society will not allocateresources so that everyone is worse off than they need be. 2. Land

Monotonicity: no one in the society does worse when the amount of land(read natural resources) increases. 3. Technological Monotonicity: no onedoes worse when the technology (read productivity) improves. 4. Lim-

ited Self-Ownership: the more skilled (or talented) people never do worsethan the less skilled (or talented) people. 5. Protection of Infirm: the lessskilled (or talented) people never do worse in a society containingpeople with higher skills or talents than they would do in a society withpeople of like skills (or talents) to their own.

Pareto Optimality expresses an efficiency requirement of the economy.

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The second and third principles express a (mild) form of public owner-ship: if our external resources improve, then no one should suffer onthat account. The fourth, self-ownership principle somewhat protectsthe rights of the more able to the fruits of their abilities. No one shouldbe punished for having greater ability. Regarding the final axiom,Roemer ‘is not sure whether [Protection of Infirm] represents a propertyright of public ownership of the external world or of self-ownership.

It is, in any case, an axiom for an economic constitution that hasindependent appeal. The axiom does not commit [the more able calledAble] to sharing the fruits of his relative advantage over [the moreneedy called Infirm]; it only requires that Infirm not suffer by virtue ofAble’s superior skill.’15

It seems clear that this set of principles attempts to formalize at a highlyabstract level the performance of a social system in which: (a) Capitalistexploitation has been eliminated because the ‘privatization’ of the

benefits derived from ‘land’ or ‘technology’ is at the root of capitalistexploitation and privatization is excluded by Axioms 2 and 3. (Nothingis said directly in 2 and 3 about equal rights in the external world but2, 3 and 4 together imply equal rights—i.e. a right to an equal share.)(b) Socialist exploitation has been eliminated, or at least mitigated,because Protection of Infirm prevents Infirm being worse off as aresult of Able being better off in at least one set of counterfactualcircumstances. (c) There is some attempt to implement a version of theneeds-contribution principle of reward, because Limited Self-Ownershipallows differential returns to one kind of skill contribution and both

the Public Ownership axioms and Protection of Infirm rest part of theirappeal on a principle of equal respect for persons, when their personalneeds are regarded as respectively equal and unequal.

Roemer vs. Roemer

I am largely persuaded that this set of axioms departs from Roemer’sassumption earlier in the book that an outcome is unjust if and only ifthe initial resource distribution is unjust. The proposed economicconstitution clearly embodies a certain conception of justice. Accordingto Roemer’s earlier position, conceptions of justice impinge only on theinitial distribution of resources, and are not allowed to tell independentlyagainst transactions or outcomes. Can this be the case with the proposedeconomic constitution?

It is true that some kinds of initial resource allocation are ruled outunder the constitution—above all, unequal, exclusive private propertyin the external world—in a way incidentally that does not enquirewhether or not the inequality came about from robbery and plunder.

But it seems clear that some kinds of transaction are also being excludedon constitutional grounds. Nothing in the axioms suggests it is wrongfor Able to be able, and yet Able is not enabled to disable the lessable—to take advantage of the differential ability. This must surely bebecause Able is not allowed to make certain transactions with Infirm.

15 Roemer, p. 164.

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This point bears two interpretations, depending on whether or not therights to make certain transactions are regarded as built in to the initialdistribution of resources (roughly, whether the term ‘distribution ofresources’ refers to a distribution of possession of resources or adistribution of ownership of resources, where ownership confers distinc-tive rights of use in addition to rights of possession). Thus, if thedistribution of resources refers to possession, the inequality between

Able and Infirm consists in the fact that it is Able and not Infirm whois the one with the ability Able has. If we assume this is a natural ability,which could not possibly be distributed differently (because it cannothave been anyone else who was born with the ability with which Ablewas born) then the inequality is in no way unjust (ought implies can,so cannot implies ought not). If the initial inequality of possession isjust, yet injustice results from possession, the blame must lie with someunjustified subsequent use of what is initially held with justice. Roemer’sformula would be falsified because final injustice would occur withoutinitial injustice, such as would be the case if I deserved my leg, but youdon’t deserve to be kicked with it.

On the second interpretation, which regards the initial distribution asa distribution of ownership, Roemer’s formula is preserved. In thisinterpretation, self-ownership confers on each self rights not only topossess whatever abilities the self possesses, but to enjoy a wide rangeof benefits from the use of those abilities. (The range is never unlimited:I have a right maybe to use whatever native ability I have with numbersto earn as much as I can as an accountant, but no rights to use the same

ability to fiddle the accounts.) If able activities licensed by the initialdistribution of ownership of abilities lead to outcomes which violatethe economic constitution, then one can infer that the injustice lies inthe amount or type of licence granted by ownership, and since thislicence has been assimilated to the initial situation as part of the conceptof ownership, then technically the injustice responsible for the injusticein the outcome may be found in the initial distribution, and Roemer’sformula is upheld. I concede that this second interpretation is possible,but I do not regard it as the most natural, and it can be positivelymisleading if the distinction between rights to possession and rights ofuse is overlooked. The danger is that the compelling argument for thejustice of possession of our natural abilities appears to be an argumentfor the justice of almost unlimited rewards from their use.16

Roemer also reports that the solution known as People’s Capitalism,which equalizes private property in external resources to begin withand then lets the market rip, violates Axioms 2, 3 and 5. This ispresumably because the possession of private property in conjunctionwith superior skill will lead to unequal exchange between Able and

Infirm and a violation of Axiom 5, even when the external resource

16 The second interpretation reflects my understanding of an objection from Jerry Cohen to the first

interpretation. It is not as clear for acquired abilities as it is for their natural cousins that possession

is always just, since any abilities I have acquired might have been acquired instead by you, and injustice

might attend the acquisition. And since natural abilities cannot be set to use except in the context of

acquired abilities and other resources of social origin the scope for just rewards based solely on the

justice of natural talent possession is likely to be extremely limited.

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distribution is initially equal, and because the dynamic construal ofAxioms 2 and 3 rules out the ‘privatization’ of benefits possible whenthe economy expands (in natural resources or productivity) even if thestarting point involves equal rights in the form of exclusive privaterights over equal amounts of the initial resources. This last result seemsto extend Roemer’s previous work, because it suggests that it is theinstitution of private property, and not just the unequal distribution of

property under the institution which is at fault. Also, if we couple themore natural interpretation of the unequal initial distribution of abilitieswith the thought that there are few grounds for the injustice of equaldivision of external resources, then the whole initial layout of People’sCapitalism is just. Yet People’s Capitalism violates the economic consti-tution, so the injustice must lie in what occurs subsequent to the initialdistribution of property—viz: the free market exchange transactionswhich arise in an expanding economy beginning with the equal initialdistribution of external resources. Hence it is not the case under theproposed constitution that the distributive outcome is unjust only if theinitial distribution of resources is unjust.

How Equal Is Liberal Socialism?

Under the five axioms, resources are being somewhat equalized, andtransactions somewhat restricted. How much? At first sight, one wouldimagine that the answer corresponds roughly to John Baker’s vision ofan egalitarian society, so that his good arguments for egalitarianismcount as good arguments for these axioms. Public Ownership will

eliminate the grosser inequalities of capitalist wealth; Limited Self-Ownership will allow income differentials to exist and Protection ofInfirm will imply a mildish Welfare State. There will be a range ofinequality—substantial from some points of view but bounded aboveand below, and much less extreme than now exists.

Roemer’s remarkable new result is that this plausible initial picture ismistaken. Under some restrictions on the production functions in theeconomy, and the utility functions of agents, there is only one way toimplement this economic constitution: perfect egalitarianism. This is,

one might say, A Necessity Theorem. From the infinite number ofschemes of reward that might implement the constitution, there is onlyone in fact that will. This is the scheme in which the economy performsefficiently at the Pareto frontier, and the rewards (and welfare) ofeveryone in the society are exactly the same.

Does Freedom Conflict with Equality?

The implication of the Theorem is that ‘public property rights in theexternal world trump private ownership of skills’.17 Even a relatively

mild claim by everyone to benefit in some respects (in fact, not to beharmed) from the enhancement of external resources is sufficient inconjunction with the other axioms to mandate universal substantiveequality. Does this, ironically, force the choice between freedom andequality which the radical tradition has always wanted to refuse?

17 Roemer, p. 168.

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It does, if freedom means something stronger than limited self-owner-ship. The Theorem says that one cannot at the same time have: (i)Efficiency, (ii) Some claim of everyone upon all the external resourcesin the world, (iii) The non-exploitation of the less able, (iv) Sufficientfreedom to guarantee welfare differentials in favour of the more able.Liberals will reject (ii) in favour of exclusive, private property in externalresources, inaugurating a society in which there will almost certainly

be immediate or eventual exploitation of the poor by the rich and theinfirm by the able. Socialists will reject (iv), which involves a strongnotion of self-ownership, and are subsequently bound to be strictegalitarians even though they have attempted to meet liberalism half-way by adopting the principle of limited self-ownership. The socialistpackage will certainly restrict the freedom of the more able along withthe freedoms of any who would enjoy the exploitative potential ofprivate property under the free market regime. How much freedomdiffers under the socialist compared with the liberal regime will dependon several factors: first, on how much freedom is implied by limitedcompared with strong self-ownership; second, on how much freedomis generated by the public access to resources guaranteed under socialismand denied under liberalism; third, how these varied distributions offreedoms with unfreedoms are aggregated.

In all likelihood, socialism increases freedom—that is, individual free-dom—in virtue of enhanced rights for most people over externalresources and the fruits of the abilities of others and it decreases freedomin virtue of restricted rights of (?) most people over the material gains

from the exercise of their own talents. This implication of the Theoremfor freedom must be qualified in two respects. First, the Theorem isdoubly removed from reality: it is not even about idealized, or stylizedinstitutions, such as the Weberian ideal-typical State, the neo-classicalperfect market or the Norman free community. It is about the idealprinciples which ideal institutions might respect. Without even idealinstitutional specification, it is not very clear what the rights enshrinedin the economic constitution would imply for practice, and thereforehow much practical freedom they would underwrite. Second, Roemer’stheorem has implications for freedom principally in its connection with

Norman’s material conditions of positive liberty: the distribution ofscarce material resources. The model of the theorem says very littleabout the negative and positive political conditions (e.g. the balance ofcoercion between socialism and liberalism and the extent of participatorydemocracy). It says nothing about the cultural conditions. But havingsaid all that, the Theorem clarifies considerably the political choices tobe made. If strong self-ownership is what you want from freedom, thenyou cannot have your libertarian cake and eat your egalitarian outcome.But strong self-ownership is not obviously desirable in itself, and theinequalities to which it leads will hamper freedoms of some other kinds.

The Politics of Feasible Anarchism

Whatever public ownership means, it must imply that all the membersof a relevant public have some claim to benefit from the resource theyjointly own. If the resource is thus a public good, and there are burdensin providing the resource, each member of the public is free to enjoy

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and will self-interestedly want to enjoy the benefit of access to theresource without incurring the burden of helping to provide it. But ifno one has any incentive to provide the resource, then either theresource will not come into being or, if the resource exists already andis subject to deterioration in use, no one will make any effort to restoreor reproduce its beneficial properties. Either way, the resource will failto exist. Yet we may each be worse off without the resource than we

would be doing our share to provide it as a public good for the use ofourselves and everyone else.

This type of problem, called the Prisoner’s Dilemma from the examplewhich introduced it to the modern literature, is assumed away inRoemer’s axiomatic treatment of public ownership. The Dilemma con-sists precisely in the fact that rational individual action leads to anoutcome—no public provision—which is worse for everyone thanpublic provision. In jargon, the outcome is a Pareto inferior one, inviolation of the Pareto Optimality Axiom. Roemer has in effect, andquite reasonably for his purposes, assumed that people can collectivelyovercome the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

How could they have done so? There are two standard answers to thisquestion, which can be called Norman’s answer and Hobbes’s answer.Norman’s answer, as we have seen, is that free people would agreeunder these circumstances to collaborate to produce and enjoy thepublic good, taking an equal share in the work of providing it. Theywould agree to form a cooperative community. The problem, though,

is that these free cooperators retain an incentive to break the cooperativeagreement it is in their interest to make. (The air of paradox is dispersedby thinking that what each person really wants is for everyone butthemselves to abide by the cooperative agreement.) Norman’s solutiontherefore relies on norms. People are no longer wholly self-interested;they are assumed to be sufficiently moral to abide by their interest-oriented agreements.

Hobbes’s apparently normless solution holds that the people agree tovest power in an external deterrent force—alias the Sovereign—which

will reliably punish people who rat on their agreements just enough toensure that people will prefer not to rat on their agreements. Under thewatchful eye of the Sovereign, people will cooperate to produce publicgoods when it is in their interests to do so. The beauty of this solution,in theory at least, is that the Sovereign never has to do anything. Thedeterrent value of the State presence is sufficient to make cooperationrational. Pradeep Bandyopadhyay has recently argued persuasively thatit is this structural condition in the public provision of goods ratherthan the undeniable contingencies of history which explains why theState in actually existing socialism shows so little sign of withering

away.18

Michael Taylor is unhappy with both Norman’s and Hobbes’s solutionsto the problem of public goods provision, and his long-standing theoreti-cal project has been the search for middle ground between these two

18 Pradeep Bandyopadhyay, ‘The State in Socialist Society’.

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solutions. As an Anarchist, he wants to deny that the State is necessaryfor the achievement of cooperation and, like Norman, he favours thecommunity as an alternative to the State. Also, as he points out,Hobbes’s solution is no kind of solution at all, since the deterrent effectis itself a public good. Just as we each have an interest in others beingdeterred from reneging on their agreements to cooperate, so each of ushas an interest in not paying our share of the taxes that sustain the

arrangements which deter others from reneging. Hobbes’s solution tothe Prisoners’ Dilemma presupposes the solution to another Prisoner’sDilemma.19

But Taylor is in other respects like Hobbes, and unlike Norman, manyAnarchists, quite a few Utopian Socialists and Marx in The Critique ofthe Gotha Programme. He does not want to rest the possibility ofcooperation on a transformation of human nature so profound thatpeople never yield to the temptations of back-sliding on their agree-

ments; or a transformation of social conditions so profound that allcontributions to the common good become sheer joy and pleasure.

The Possibility of Cooperation

The solution he offers in The Possibility of Cooperation refurbishes theargument originally made out in his 1976 Anarchy and Cooperation. Thecurrent republication is particularly welcome because it should makeclearer to a wide audience what is the most important source of theideas made fashionable more recently and crudely in Robert Axelrod’sEvolution of Cooperation.20 The nub is to regard the insoluble Prisoner’sDilemma as one member of a sequence of similar games played out intoan indefinite future with decreasing payoffs. Each of us has an interestin what we will get in the future, but this is not quite as pressing asthe interest each of us has in the here and now. In this frame ofreference, corresponding to what is called an iterated or supergame, thechoice is less stark between once-for-all cooperation (which risks beingtaken for a ride by other people’s non-cooperation) and once-for-all non-cooperation (which risks losing the mutual advantages of cooperation).

People can now indulge in conditional cooperation. Instead of ‘Shall I;Shan’t I do my share?’, the spirit is rather ‘I shall do my share for thetime being and expect you to do yours. But if you dare rat out on me;I, too, reserve the right to rat.’

Conditional cooperators are less vulnerable than unconditional cooper-ators, because they need not so long suffer being taken for a ride. Butthe lesser vulnerability of cooperation implies the lesser attractivenessof non-cooperation, for would-be free riders will pretty soon find no

public good exists on which to ride. If all of this can be foreseen, andeach of us values future payoffs sufficiently in relation to the currentincentive each of us retains to take advantage of our fellows, then long-

19 Taylor, p. 30.20 Michael Taylor, Anarchy and Cooperation, London 1976; Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation,

New York 1984. Taylor’s criticism of Axelrod’s crude use of earlier work on supergames is in

Possibility of Cooperation, pp. 69–71.

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term cooperation can be rational and stable. It is, so to speak, the rats’choice.

This solution is formally similar to Hobbes’s.21 The difference is thatfor Hobbes, the deterrent effect is achieved by postulating the existenceof an external deterrent agency—the State—whereas for Taylor, thesame effect is achieved by the threat each of us holds over the others

of withdrawing our cooperation in the event that other people cease tocooperate. Hence Hobbes’s problem can be solved in non-Hobbesianfashion—by a decentralized system of mutual vigilance rather than acentralized system of State control. Notice what Taylor’s solution hasachieved. It is superficial to think that a joint interest in cooperationis always sufficient for free individuals to cooperate—and therebycreate community. But there are at least some conditions underwhich free and rational individuals will found a community of equalparticipation of the type advocated by Norman and Baker, in theabsence of the State.

Is Taylor Really Normless?

As an exponent of the new economic realism in social theory, Tayloris rather hostile to the claims of norm and value (on pp. 30–1, he ispositively unkind). Now, although it is true that considerations ofideology and social representation are not prominent in Taylor’s treat-ment, I am not convinced that they are banished altogether. First, thesupergame solution depends on regarding agents in a special light—as

having a conception of self extending well into the future.

22

Second,the cognitive operation in which conditional cooperators are involvedis to promise to themselves that they will not change their cooperativestrategy unless other people change to non-cooperation. And eachperson weighs up their choice of cooperation knowing that this principleof consistency governs the mentality—and hence the choice—of everyother agent. Taylorian supergamesters are not bound to each otherdirectly by morality, yet they treat each other in moral fashion becauseeach knows all are prepared to defer gratification in favour of a futureself.

Third, in other, more empirical writings partially incorporated into thisnew book, Taylor has advanced an excellent definition of communityas ‘a group of people (i) who have beliefs and values in common,(ii) whose relations are direct and many-sided and (iii) who practise

21 In both cases, deterrence reduces the highest payoff in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, so that mutual

cooperation is preferred by both players to ‘one-sided’ cooperation. The game is thereby transformed

into what is called an Assurance Game, first analysed by Amaryta Sen, ‘Isolation, Assurance and the

Social Rate of Discount’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 81, 1967 and discussed in Jon Elster, ‘Marxism,

Functionalism and Game Theory: The Case for Methodological Individualism’, Theory and Society, Vol.

11, No. 4, 1982.22 Supergames can be interpreted either as involving discounted payoffs into an infinite certain future

or as involving undiscounted payoffs into a future of uncertain, potentially infinite length. In the first

case, the discount parameter is akin to an interest rate and in the second, the probability that the

relationship will end in the next period. Both interpretations were offered in the paper that proposed

the supergame solution, but the probabilistic interpretation has tended to be lost in the subsequent

debate. Martin Shubik, ‘Game Theory, Behaviour, and the Paradox of Prisoner’s Dilemma: Three

Solutions’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 14, 1970.

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generalized as well as merely balanced reciprocity’.23 Relations are ‘directand many-sided’ when they are not mediated by money or bureaucracy.Hence community is analytically distinct from the market and the State.Reciprocity is generalized and balanced when much (most?) of sociallife is enacted via a network of equal exchanges of goods and services.Community is thus defined as a non-exploitative social form, and inview of Roemer’s work on the market and the State, it may very well

be the only non-exploitative social form. The question then arises ofthe relation between the final element of the definition (which impliesthat Prisoner’s Dilemmas are overcome in community) and the firstelement, which says that shared beliefs and values characterize com-munity. On a strict interpretation of the supergame solution to thePrisoner’s Dilemma shared beliefs and values are not necessary toachieve what will look like community (i.e. generalized and balancedreciprocity), except in the senses mentioned above that all agents havea similar conception of their morally extended selves. It might well be

that shared values and beliefs of other kinds are liable to arise as a resultof successful long-term cooperation, but the existence of long-termcooperation would not depend on the existence of shared values andbeliefs.

This interpretation, which minimizes the significance of shared valuesand beliefs, is however more restrictive than the interpretation ofcommunity Taylor advanced in Community, Anarchy and Liberty.24 Thereit is emphasized that community will sustain public goods provisionnot just through mutual threats to withhold reciprocal aid, but through

moral sanctions (gossip, shaming rituals and so on) rooted in thoseshared values and beliefs which condemn free riding. The norms createa decentralized deterrent external to the original calculations of therational actor, in like manner to the deterrent effect of the centralizedHobbesian state. In so far as ‘shared values and beliefs’ are independentlyimportant in resolving the Prisoner’s Dilemma faced by an egalitariancommunity, Taylor is moving closer to Norman’s solution, and neitherwriter has a good explanation for the existence of community unlessthey provide a good explanation for the existence of the requisite valuesand beliefs. (A functional explanation might be tried: cooperation-

promoting norms exist because of their propensity to promote cooper-ation.) So Taylor cannot sustain a total purge of moral values.25

A Question of Chicken

If totally normless solutions to the Prisoner’s Dilemma are unlikely,then they are even less likely in an alternative model of public goodsprovision whose discovery marks the major development in Taylor’sthinking since the original publication of Anarchy and Cooperation.26

23 Taylor, Possibility of Cooperation, p. 23.24 Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy and Liberty, Cambridge 1982.25 It might be said that, for example, shaming rituals or practices of ostracism are sanctions external

to the individual, and so non-normative, but it is difficult to conceive of the sanctions existing, or

being effective, unless some values are relevantly internalized in the members of the community at

large and in the victims of its punishments.26 The thinking was first published in joint work with Hugh Ward ‘Chickens, Whales and Lumpy

Goods: Alternative Models of Public Goods Provision’, Political Studies 30, 1982.

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Say that a baby is crying. You and I are in the room. The sight andsound distress us both, and the more so the longer they go on. Hadn’tsomebody better do something? Yes, but whom? You, let us say, goto console the infant. The crying stops. Great relief all round.

The cessation of distress is a public good for both the adults, and oneadult has made all the effort to create it. Yet this is not a Prisoner’s

Dilemma, because each of us finds the child’s cry so distressing that wewould each intervene to try and calm the baby for ourselves—at leasteventually. Even if each of us knows that no one else will cooperate,each of us still prefers to create the public good. This is the structureof the Chicken game, and it will apply whenever the non-provision ofthe public good is so awful a possibility that there really is no choiceabout its being provided, save the choice of who provides it. It willtend to apply, inter alia, to the public provision of goods which satisfyneeds rather than simply desires.

In the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the problem is that the equilibrium ofrational action—no public provision—is Pareto-inferior, although it isegalitarian. With Chicken, the equilibrium is inegalitarian—one personis left holding the baby—although this outcome is Pareto-optimal.Moreover, the equilibrium is almost certainly exploitative, because theperson not holding the baby is doing better as a result of someone elseholding the baby, and it is plausibly unjust that someone shouldbenefit from toddler tranquillity without taking their share of mewlamelioration.

Chicken presents three points of interest. First, it makes clear thatthere are circumstances in which free and rational individuals will findthemselves trapped at an inegalitarian outcome. One-sided cooperationdoes not always unravel. Second, this can occur on a small scale, say,in a two-person domestic setting. (Norman is wrong in Ch. 4 to thinkthat home-life has to be a paradigm of non-exploitative community.Intimacy can easily go with inequality.) Third, and most significantly,an unequal equilibrium can occur even if the payoff structure is perfectlysymmetrical, so that all the relevant resources are equally distributed—

the baby’s cry affects us both equally; we have equal soothing skills.

John Roemer’s work has done much to restore the classical perceptionthat since unequal resource distribution causes exploitation, resourceequalization is necessary for non-exploitation. The case of Chickensuggests that resource equalization may not be sufficient because exploi-tation can persist when resources are the same. A very strict determinist,such as John Roemer, might object at this point that there mustbe some undisclosed reason—a latent inequality of situation—whichexplains why you and not I are left holding the baby. If your nerve is

weaker than mine or—more plausibly—if you have been socialized bygender to have a lower threshold of reaction than I to a baby’s cry,then here is a resource inequality which explains the inequality of outcome. This may be true, except that the inequality of outcome ishere out of all proportion to the inequality of resource distribution: sayyour nerve breaks one hundredth, one millionth . . . of a second beforemine, then you will do absolutely all the child care. And supposing the

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payoff structure of a Chicken game really is symmetrical, a strictdeterminist will have to say that an inegalitarian equilibrium exists, butit is not clear how it can ever be reached, because there is no way totell which of several identical people will be left holding the baby. Itseems better to accept that an equilibrium of a symmetrical Chickengame will be attained, but under a distribution of individuals to choicesthat remains essentially accidental. There is exploitation of those who

happen to be trapped in a pattern of cooperative behaviour by thosewho happen to have escaped. Chicken violates the limited self-ownershipaxiom of Roemer’s constitution, since people who are equally able orinfirm (who are, in fact, identical) receive quite different rewards, andthis will be intolerable to liberals and socialists alike.

It is then a matter of concern to find with Mike Taylor that Chickensare prone to roost in the Prisoner’s Dilemma supergame. Suppose thereare 100 people in an egalitarian society and it is in each person’s interest

to help provide a good in the public social mode on condition that atleast 59 other people do the same. Then any coalition of 60 people willprovide the good, and be exploited by the remaining 40. The 61stperson will rat out, but the 60th is trapped—if they rat out, allcooperation will collapse completely, and this would be against theirbest interests. The suffering sixty may not like it, but they have to grinand bear it. Thus, the generalization of the two-person Prisoner’sDilemma will often involve Chicken-like phenomena.27 It follows thatinstitutions of egalitarian public ownership will always have to resolvethe problem posed by Chicken. There must be deterrence of free riding,and this will either come from the socialist State, the socialist conscienceor the socialist community. Michael Taylor’s middle ground ofunprompted rational cooperation has ceased to exist, for the free ridersin Chicken will know that those they exploit will never cease to providethem with the public good. My threat to withdraw unreciprocated aidfrom you is idle, if you know that what will punish you will hurt meas much. It is true that the suffering sixty have an obvious response: toexclude the forty free riders from access to the good, unless the fortycompensate the sixty for their efforts. But then the good is no longer

being provided in the public social mode, and the principle of publicownership is that much infringed.

Social Norms and Social Forms

No doubt Conservatism has succeeded recently for several reasons,some of them entirely prosaic. But part of its success has still derivedfrom a simple formula of institutional reconstruction that has provedconvincing: if it moves, privatize it; if it can’t be moved, shackle it toWhitehall. And part of the appeal of the formula has come from theimaginary association of the market with the freedom of the wholepopulation.

27 Mike Taylor overlooks a very general technical reason for this result: the only possible configuration

for an inegalitarian equilibrium in the (cardinally) symmetric N-person binary-choice game reproduces

the essential structure of 2-person Chicken. This argument is developed in ‘Symmetry and Social

Division’, available from the author.

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It would be reassuring if the Left could return a formula of correspond-ing simplicity, uniting an appealing social value with a preferred insti-tutional form. But I am not so sure that such an easy connection canbe made. It seems fairly clear that equality deserves reassertion as avalue in its own right; that some kinds of equality conflict with somekinds of liberty, and that equality sometimes has the greater claim. Butit is less clear what egalitarian institutions are. Community embodies

equality, but the range of full community may well be short. And ifcommunities are joined decentrally by markets, one might require thepolitical inequalities inherent in the powers of State to restrict thegrowth of economic inequalities between communities.

Very likely the Left is in the position of everyone in fact rather thanrhetoric: it must live with states, markets and communities, and a decentegalitarian society would very likely need them all. One who wouldcook the Thatcher goose should not put all their eggs in one basket,and never count their chickens before they are hatched.