Negative Egalitarianism: History and Theory

• In Event: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on Equality, Liberty, and Popular Power

Abstract

This paper makes the case for negative egalitarianism as a distinctive tradition within the history of political thought, as well as a promising path forward in contemporary democratic theory.

Contemporary egalitarian arguments generally have a positive character. Whether one begins from basic, distributive, or relational equality, that is, such arguments rely on the intuition that all people possess certain positive characteristics—such as reason or agency—which entitle them to positive goods like freedom, rights, and participation in rule. Their normative logic is thus one of upward equalization: i.e., granting everyone the status and privileges once reserved for certain elite groups.

Egalitarian arguments for democracy are a case in point. On such accounts, everyone ought to share equally in political rule—in one sense or another—because everyone is equally deserving of it. But this account faces well-known challenges on multiple fronts. In what sense can everyone have equal simultaneous control over collective decisions? And if equal treatment is tied to the possession of certain characteristics, does that necessarily create certain exclusions?

In this paper, we argue that there is a far simpler way to explain the value of democracy. On the negative-egalitarian account we develop, in short, the point is not that everyone deserves to rule, but that nobody does. Whether or not the positive-egalitarian case for democracy can be rescued from the various objections commonly raised against it, ours has the advantage of not facing them in the first place. And while the positive-egalitarian story is more familiar to contemporary ears, we show that negative egalitarianism has a rich history in ancient, medieval, and early modern thought.

For example, Greek observers identified sortition, and not majority-voting, as paradigmatic of democratic equality because it distributed offices indifferently, regarding no citizen as more or less fit for/deserving of rule than any other one. This argument from negative equality was subsequently revived in the 14th century by William of Ockham and other conciliarists critical of papal power. We find it also in the early modern theories of popular sovereignty and popular resistance developed by Catholics and Protestants alike. These arguments, we suggest, constitute a neglected but important tradition of democratic theorizing worthy of recovery today.

Authors

• Samuel Ely Bagg, University of South Carolina

• Teresa M. Bejan, University of Oxford