Socialism and non-domination: a relational egalitarian approach

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (forthcoming)
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Abstract

In recent literature on the philosophical foundations of socialism a growing number of theorists have endorsed the claim that freedom as non-domination is a fundamental normative commitment undergirding socialist politics. On this sort of view, a broad range of traditional socialist claims can be explained and justified by reference to freedom as non-domination. In this paper, I argue that even if these theorists are right that opposition to domination is a core socialist normative commitment, it is not clear that that opposition is best understood in terms of a commitment to a particular conception of freedom. Instead, socialist opposition to domination can be more fruitfully understood as flowing from a commitment to a relational conception of equality, according to which relationships with a substantially egalitarian character have a special value. I argue, first, that a relational egalitarian construal of socialist opposition to domination can retain all of the benefits of the freedom as non-domination construal, and, secondly, that a relational egalitarian account will have benefits that a freedom as non-domination approach will lack. I conclude that there are still significant benefits to retaining a place for equality in our considered account of the normative foundations of socialism.

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Callum MacRae
Jagiellonian University

References found in this work

What is the point of equality.Elizabeth Anderson - 1999 - Ethics 109 (2):287-337.
Socialist Republicanism.Tom O’Shea - 2020 - Political Theory 48 (5):548-572.
What is Egalitarianism?Samuel Scheffler - 2003 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 31 (1):5-39.

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