Egalitarianism and the Generation of Inequality

Abstract

The belief that the existing distributions of income and wealth in Western countries are unjust has come to be widely held, and has prompted the inclusion of egalitarian measures in many political programmes. This work uses the methods of reasoned history and comparative statistics to arrive at an assessment of egalitarianism. The book is intended for economists, economic historians, political historians, sociologists, and political philosophers. It is arranged in three parts. Part I, The rise of egalitarianism, provides a history of egalitarianism starting from early principles in ancient Greece and progressing through to the ‘modern’ egalitarianism in the twentieth century. It examines how the change came about from regarding equality as necessitating differentiated treatment of different kinds of people to modern egalitarian attitudes. There are eight chapters, of which the last is a review. Part II, Distributions of income and wealth in the living economy, which has eight chapters, is essentially a statistical study of income and wealth distribution. Part III, Egalitarianism analysed and assessed, has two chapters, and assesses contemporary egalitarianism as a practical policy.

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