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Power, Predistribution, and Social Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2019

Martin O'Neill
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Abstract

The idea of predistribution has the potential to offer a valuable and distinctive approach to political philosophers, political scientists, and economists, in thinking about social justice and the creation of more egalitarian economies. It is also an idea that has drawn the interest of politicians of the left and centre-left, promising an alternative to traditional forms of social democracy. But the idea of predistribution is not well understood, and stands in need of elucidation. This article explores ways of drawing the conceptual and normative distinction between predistribution and redistribution, examining those general categories when considering the roles of public services and fiscal transfers, and looking at the ways in which government policies can empower and disempower different individuals and groups within the economy. This article argues that the most initially plausible and common-sensical ways of drawing the distinction between predistributive and redistributive public policies collapse when put under analytical pressure. It concludes that the distinction between predistribution and redistribution is best seen in terms of the aims or effects of policies rather than a deeper division of policy types, and argues that, once seen in those terms, predistribution is a central concern of social justice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 95 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 63 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2019 

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References

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18 A caveat about my argumentative strategy: In this section and the two sections that follow, I shall put quite a degree of pressure on Hacker's attempts to give more definite shape to the intuitive distinction between predistribution and redistribution. But this is not intended as criticism of Hacker per se: he has done a great deal to develop an important public policy agenda in this area, and his ways of articulating the conceptual distinction between these kinds of policies are valuable in pointing us towards intuitively appealing, if ultimately unstable, ways of thinking about these issues.

19 Op. cit. note 13, 35.

20 Op. cit. note 13, 35.

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41 Meade op. cit., 38–9.

42 See O'Neill, Martin, ‘What Should Egalitarians Believe?’ Philosophy & Public Affairs, 36.2, 2008, 119–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the idea of the “distributive paradigm”, see Young, Iris M., Justice and the Politics of Difference, 2nd edition, (Princeton University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

43 Scanlon, op. cit.; O'Neill, op. cit.

44 For helpful and stimulating comments and questions, I am grateful to audiences at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University, at the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University, at the Harvard-Fudan-NYUAD Conference on Justice at Fudan University, Shanghai, at the Social Justice Centre at Concordia University, at the Universities of Jerusalem, Belgrade, Minho, and Sydney, and at McGill University, UCL, and the Universidad de Chile. I am also grateful to the Fabian Society, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung of the German Social Democratic Party, and the Chifley Research Foundation of the Australian Labor Party for opportunities to discuss ideas of predistribution with political audiences. Thanks in particular to Pablo Aguayo Westwood, Daniel Attas, Tongdong Bai, Juliana Bidadanure, Jim Chalmers, Lindsey Chambers, Prithviraj Datta, Avner de-Shalit, Patrick Diamond, Peter Dietsch, Steven Durlauf, Bela Egyed, Marc Fleurbaey, Pablo Gilabert, Joe Guinan, Jacob Hacker, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Ben Jackson, James Johnson, Liam Kennedy, Hélène Landemore, Ben Laurence, Ted Lechterman, Dominique Leydet, Désirée Lim, Fernando Lizárraga, Rocío Lorca Ferreccio, Roberto Merrill, Henning Meyer, Ed Miliband, Oded Na'aman, Dai Oba, Kristi Olson, Rachel Reeves, Jonathan Riley, Mathias Risse, T. M. Scanlon, Shlomi Segall, Nicole Selamé Glena, Ania Skrzypek, Lucas Stanczyk, Isaac Stanley, Christine Sypnowich, Alan Thomas, Isabella Trifan, Laura Valentini, Daniel Weinstock, Stuart White, Karl Widerquist, Andrew Williams, and Bernardo Zacka for illuminating discussion of the issues with which this article is concerned. I also thank the journal's anonymous referees for their extremely helpful suggestions. I am pleased to be able to acknowledge research support from the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF), in the form of a research fellowship on ‘Social Justice, Predistribution, and the Democratization of Capital’.