Theory of Complex Equality - Case Study Example

What does Walzer mean by 'Blocked Exchanges' and why is this notion important for understanding his theory of 'Complex Equality' Introduction Michael Walzer (13 March 1935) is a political theorist and philosopher of society, politics, and ethics currently working as a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He has written on a wide range of topics, including just and unjust wars, nationalism, ethnicity, economic justice, criticism, radicalism, tolerance, and political obligation. Outside of his academic work he acts as editor-in-chief of Dissent, an American left-wing magazine and is a contributing editor to The New Republic. He is also on the Editorial Board of the academic journal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Walzer One of the Professor Walzer's most enthralling assistance to the field of political theory is his prologue of the idea of complex equality'. In Spheres of Justice, he describes this notion as: "In proper terms, complex equality denotes that no citizen's position in one sphere or with consideration to one social good can be weaken by his position in some other sphere, with regard to some other good. As a result, Citizen X may be selected over citizen Y for political office, and then the two of them will be imbalanced in the sphere of politics. But they will not be uneven usually so long as X's office gives him no benefit over Y in any other sphere - superior medical care, way in to better schools for his children, entrepreneurial opportunities, and so on" (Walzer 1983, 19). In Spheres of Justice Michael Walzer lists fourteen 'blocked exchanges': things which in the USA cannot be bought or sold (Spheres of Justice, 1983, 100-3). He does so out of concern about domination; although his title refers to justice, his target is oppression rather than inequality as such. It lessens domination, Walzer argues, to recognize different spheres -- aspects of life in which different principles of distribution are appropriate. Separating these spheres limits the power any one person can acquire; the greatest wealth, for instance, should not be able to buy human beings, political office, criminal justice, and so on. In fact, of course, money is vastly powerful. If not human beings, it can buy us servants; if not political office, the attention of elected officials; if not criminal justice, the best lawyer in the country. And everyday, it seems, there is more and more that money can buy. Some of the new commodities are inventive: singing telegrams time-share apartments; even the mortgage itself can be sold. Other new commodities, actual or suggested, are more frightening. In some European countries -- Germany for instance -kidney sales have been reported: for a few thousand dollars people have had one kidney surgically removed and implanted in someone else's body. Walzer would impede this march towards commodification. His list of blocked exchanges is rough and unorganized, suggestive rather than conclusive. It includes: human beings; political power and influence; criminal justice; freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly; marriage and procreation rights; the right to emigrate; exemptions from military service, jury duty, and other communally imposed work; political office; basic welfare services like police protection and education; desperate exchanges, such as those involved in accepting dangerous work; prizes and honors; divine grace; love and friendship; criminal acts. He believes the list is complete, but leaves open the possibility that it is not. His general position is that different kinds of goods carry with them different criteria of distribution. Walzer is not alone in wanting to limit the market. Several theorists have offered other approaches to restricting it. Margaret Jane Radin, for instance, distinguishes personal from fungible property: personal property is bound up with one's being the person one is; it is valued for its own sake and cannot be replaced with money alone. Laws may therefore, she contends, prohibit its sale ("Market-Inalienability", 1987, p100). Elizabeth Anderson argues not just from the nature of the goods in question but also from the nature of commerce, and claims that some good things cannot survive therein. Only those things should be for sale 'whose dimensions of value are best realized within market relations'. That is not true of gifts, shared goods, ideals, and objects of need, all of which require other kinds of social relations. In order to attain circumstances of complex equality, Professor Walzer offers a system of blocked exchanges: it must be evaded that goods gained in one sphere are replaced to gain goods in another sphere. For example, the money person X has obtained in the economic sphere must not be used to buy' power as well as influence in the political sphere. Professor Walzer affirms that this system of complex equality will guide to a more democratic sharing of social goods. Perhaps in each sphere separate inequalities will continue, but given the plurality of spheres, ultimately every person will obtain goods in one sphere or another. The idea of complex equality can perhaps best be introduced by contrast with ideas of simple equality. An idea of equality can be called 'simple' when it holds that equality requires the equal possession or enjoyment of some advantage X. A society is egalitarian, on this view, when all its members are equal in respect of X; that is, they equally enjoy the stuff or the condition represented by X. There are as many notions of simple equality as there are plausible contenders for the X in this formula: candidates include property, income, opportunity, rights, resources, capacities, and welfare (Walzer, 1995, p 200-25). If we desire to accomplish a complex equality across spheres, how can we stop person X from using her aptitude both in the political sphere as well as in the economic sphere We can stop her from utilizing money to get votes, but we cannot stop her from having aptitudes which can be used in a variety of spheres. A characteristic instance of this type of self-enforcing disparity is the relation between contributions in the educational sphere in addition to contribution in the political sphere. Empirical research demonstrates that there is a strong association between political participation -therefore gaining political power -and educational achievement. Those with little education frequently withhold from participation since they have the sense that they do not actually have the assets to play a significant position in the political sphere. The similar cognitive aptitudes which we suppose to be necessary in the educational system are also vital for playing an efficient role in the political system (Hooghe 1999a, 1999b). One cannot forbid the use of intellect by one person in a variety of spheres. He states: "Men and women who are determined to work out power must gather votes, however they can't do that by buying them; we don't want votes to be dealt in the market (...) The merely right means to gather votes is to campaign for them, that is to be influential, inspiring, heartening, and so on" (Walzer 1980, 247). This seems a simple meritocratic principle, but possibly it undervalues the customary drawback of a meritocratic system: it does not essentially decrease inequalities. Those with little qualities stay out of the system, and this is factual both for the economic, as for the educational as well as political sphere (Elchardus 1996). There are but hardly any possibilities to settle meritocracy with a more or less democratic sharing of social goods. A likely solution is a severe sharing of social goods. That is in actual fact what we do with political power, by dealing out one vote to all citizens. By striking monogamy, society to some degree also rations relational, emotional as well as sexual resources. But sharing social supplies in the economic or educational sphere seems a less understandable approach. The manifold utilization of talents as well as abilities in diverse circumstances implies that the blocking of exchanges between a variety of spheres is not enough to arrive at a self-governing distribution of social goods. Such an allocation rather calls for a system of obligatory compensation, in which the state take out the excess one obtains in one sphere, to appear at a more egalitarian allocation in another sphere. The state obtains money from the rich, and uses it to offer educational prospects for those who would not have access to extended education in simple market circumstances. If we really want an equal allocation of social goods across the spheres, we would even have to set up a system of compensatory taxes, as Philippe Van Parijs (1995) suggests. In one of the instances he develops, Van Parijs initiates from the inspection that those having a more than standard physical beauty will have a better life than those who have not. Consequently, it seems reasonable to him to impose taxes on good looks. Though the prologue of such a tax does not in fact seem practicable, the thought points out evidently those blocking exchanges between the spheres will not be enough to guarantee a comparatively equal distribution of social goods. Consequently, the problem remains how the notion of complex equality can be resigned with the multiple uses of talents as well as abilities. How can we stop Alcibiades from using his splendor, not merely to seduce lovers, but also to appeal audiences, to persuade juries, to obtain high grades in university examinations, and to obtain numerous votes for his political party Walzer disputes for a fundamental plurality of ideas, with a type of "complex equality" playing a particular role. According to Walzer, thought of justice always take place within a restricted political community, wherein the members generate their own social goods. Each of these social goods decides an odd decisive factor of just distribution. In the case of the organization of money the principle of allocation is the free market; in the case of health care, the distributive principle is the requirement; in the case of jobs in addition to higher education, it is value; in the case of self-governing citizenship, it is fairness before the law. The virtue of Walzer's notion of complex equality is that, rather than reducing distributive justice to some simple principle of egalitarian form, he openly acknowledges the plurality of principles of justice and seeks to make this very pluralism the basis of equality. An egalitarian society must be one which recognizes a number of distinct goods -- money, power, office, education, and so on -- and which ensures that each of these is distributed according to its own proper criterion. The enemy of equality is dominance, which occurs when holders of one good are able to capitalize on their position in order to obtain other goods for which they do not fulfill the relevant criteria. In each particular sphere of distribution, some people will succeed in getting more goods than others, but so long as they cannot convert this sphere-specific advantage into general advantage by means of illicit conversions, their overall relationship will still be one of equality (Walzer, 1995, p 200-25). Walzer's approach is bottom-up: the principles of justice arise from the common meanings that the individuals in the community offer to their social establishments, rather than being top-down, descending from some conceptual theory. Since each sphere has independence of its own, a kind of complex parity builds up, with an evening out of reimbursement. The financier may be superior at money-making, but deprived at writing literature, science, as well as sports. The finish result is that oppression via supremacy is obviated. "Dominance explains an approach of making use of social goods that isn't restricted by their fundamental meaning or that outline those meanings in it own sphere." (Spheres, 10f) Walzer may be excessively positive concerning the deterrence of supremacy, for one person may be brilliant in numerous spheres and another poor at everything. Complex equality, similar to all types of substantive parity, seems a legend. in addition, Walzer's bottom-up, types of life approach to political idea, while containing some fact, goes too far in the way of moral relativism; so long as an action or organization is recognized by the bulk of its citizens, it is ethically correct. By this decisive factor, a society may well disenfranchise or even enchain a minority or support atrocious rituals such as or discriminate in opposition to people on the base of religion, gender, or sexual preference. There are ethical main beliefs which relate generally, so that some appraisal of a culture is external. Shortening freedom devoid of a severe ethical reason as in the case of slavery is ethically wrong, as is causing preventable suffering, for instance takes place in the practice of clitoridectomies, female genital defacement (Mchsane, 1991). Additionally, contra Walzer's communitarian nationalism, fairness has relevance beyond local borders; there is a widespread, global relevance of justice. Justice pertains across the spheres. Nonetheless, for all these warnings, a rehabilitated Walzerian system of complex justice is convincing. People do make society as well as social institutions (nonetheless some organizations correspond better to moral main beliefs than others), and these organization have an internal set of principles to rule the allocation of goods within their borders. Walzer's pluralistic relativism is partially true and a good place to start a study of justice, even though some aim center criteria will endure his relativistic altitude. Complex equality requires us to adopt a different starting-point. We should abandon the search for some favored characteristic X, the equal distribution of which would realize equality. Instead we should envisage social equality arising as a by-product of many separate distributions, each of which is in itself inegalitarian, in the sense that individuals enjoy different quantities of X, Y, Z, and so forth. So here equality does not refer to the way some identifiable good is distributed, but describes the overall character of a set of social relationships. How is it possible, though, for relationships of this kind to be regarded as egalitarian in nature A society whose distributive practices are radically pluralistic -- recognizing many irreducibly different kinds of social goods, each having its own criterion of just distribution -may achieve an overarching equality of status among its members. This idea of a fundamental equality of status yields the best interpretation of social equality (Walzer, 1995, p 200-25). Justice is one significant social asset among others, including liberty as well as utility. Justice deals with the proper criteria for dealing out benefits as well as burdens among individuals within a society, chiefly a delimited society, but spreading out to the human society in general. Nonetheless, justice does need a central organization to make a decision on the criteria for distributing benefits as well as burdens, as well as for performing the distributive process, create laws, implement contracts, tax surplus wealth as well as reallocate it. It brings to court, struggles and penalizes suspected misfeasors. Social life is multifaceted, made up of quite a few spheres or areas of social communication, each with an internal coherent set of standard. The rules leading the free marketplace are diverse from those leading a health care system or a university system. Conclusion The reason for forbidding exchange is danger to the participants. Besides the complete prohibitions (kidneys, for instance), regulations like food and drug laws fit here. And when the state forbids certain actions, like offers of unsafe employment, out of fear of exploitation that too is motivated by a desire to protect people. Are these rules at the boundaries of 'spheres', or within them The answer is not clear. Complete prohibitions seem to act at the boundary of the sphere of money, but what sphere is protected is not obvious. Safety and health do not seem like spheres. And regulations seem to operate within a sphere. Perhaps, however, these prohibitions could fairly be described as means of protecting a sense of equal citizenship. They all keep disadvantage in the market from damaging or destroying the rest of one's life (Martha 1986). Finally there are areas where markets put our shared understanding of something at risk. Should children be given a price Should blood be considered a commodity Here it is a little clearer that boundaries are being protected: not only is the domain of commerce limited, but neighboring protected domains can be described: family life, perhaps, and a health-care-providing gift exchange network. In the end, however, Walzer's 'complex equality' seems to me more properly 'complex inequality'. The separation of spheres helps keep any person or group from being dominant in all; it also helps, a little, to ensure that no one is subordinate in all. But it is not just social arrangements that make defeat in one area so often lead to defeat in another. People are complex emotional, social, cognitive wholes, who can find themselves in downward spirals: one failure breeds others. We get discouraged, we lose our footing, and we turn away from our friends. Reference: David Miller (1995), Complex Equality', in David MILLER& Michael Walzer (eds.), Pluralism, Justice, and Equality. Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 197-225. D'Hooghe, B. and Pykacz, J., 1999a, "Classical limit in fuzzy set models of spin-1/2 quantum logics", Int. J. Theor. D'Hooghe, B., 1999b, "A system model with quantum logic, but non-quantum probability: the product test issue", Found. John Mchsane (1991), Cognitive Development: An Information Processing Approach. Oxford, Blackwell. Mark Elchardus (1996), Class, Cultural Re-Alignment, and the Rise of the Populist Right' in A. Erskine, M. Elchardus, S. Herkommer & J. Ryan (eds.), Changing Europe: Some Aspects of Identity, Conflict and Social Justice. Avebury, Aldershot. p. 41-63. Martha Nussaaum (1986), the Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Philippe Van Parijs (1995), Freedom for All: What (if anything) can Justify Capitalism Oxford, Clarendon Press. Michael Walzer (1980), Radical Principles: Reflections of an Unreconstructed Democrat. New York, Basic Books. Michael Walzer (1983) Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality. New York, Basic Books. Michael Walzer (1993), "Exclusion, Injustice, and the Democratic State", Dissent, 40, 55-64. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Walzer Read More