The Destructive Effects of Inequality

Abstract The first aim of this chapter is to argue that Mary Wollstonecraft’s approach to inequalities of property and wealth is a form of “non-intrinsic egalitarianism.” The second aim is to nudge republican political theory in our own time towards accepting this approach as part of what freedom requires. Republican theory is not fit for purpose in the contemporary world unless it acknowledges economic inequality as an instrument of domination. Non-intrinsic egalitarianism is the view that economic inequalities are bad due to their detrimental effects on states of affairs that one has reason to value morally. On Wollstonecraft’s version, the values destroyed by wealth inequalities are already egalitarian: living together in a community of equals. Inequality is a self-sustaining system of oppression which corrupts the social fabric and makes the poor subservient to the powers of the rich. These are the same reasons that republican thinkers invoke when conceptualizing freedom.