Egalitarianism (from French égal, m

Egalitarianism (from French égal, meaning "equal")—or, rarely, equalitarianism[1][2] or equalism[3]—is a trend of thought that favors equality for all people.[4] Egalitarian doctrines maintain that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or social status, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[5] According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the term has two distinct definitions in modern English.[6] It is defined either as a political doctrine that all people should be treated as equals and have the same political, economic, social, and civil rights[7] or as a social philosophy advocating the removal of economic inequalities among people or the decentralization of power. Some sources define egalitarianism as the point of view that equality reflects the natural state of humanity.[8][9][10]
Some specifically focused egalitarian concerns include economic egalitarianism, legal egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism, political egalitarianism, gender egalitarianism, racial equality, asset-based egalitarianism, and Christian egalitarianism. Common forms of egalitarianism include political and philosophical.
Economic
Egalitarianism in economics is a controversial phrase with conflicting potential meanings. It may refer either to equality of opportunity, the view that the government ought not to discriminate against citizens or hinder opportunities for them to prosper, or the quite different notion of equality of outcome, a state of economic affairs in which the government promotes equal prosperity for all citizens.
The free-market economist Milton Friedman supported equality-of-opportunity economic egalitarianism. Economist John Maynard Keynes supported more equal outcomes.
An early example of equality-of-outcome economic egalitarianism is Xu Xing, a scholar of the Chinese philosophy of Agriculturalism, who supported the fixing of prices, in which all similar goods and services, regardless of differences in quality and demand, are set at exactly the same, unchanging price.[11]
Social ownership of means of production is sometimes considered to be a form of economic egalitarianism because in an economy characterized by social ownership, the surplus product generated by industry would accrue to the population as a whole as opposed to private owners, thereby granting each individual increased autonomy and greater equality in their relationships with one another (see: Social dividend and Social ownership). Although the economist Karl Marx is sometimes mistaken to be an egalitarian, Marx eschewed normative theorizing on moral principles. Marx did, however, have a theory of the evolution of moral principles in relation to specific economic systems.[12]
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels rejected egalitarianism in the sense of greater equality between classes, clearly distinguishing it from the socialist notion of the abolition of classes based on the division between owners and workers (which is on their relation to productive property). Marx's view of classlessness was not the subordination of society to a universal interest (such as a universal notion of "equality"), but rather, was about the creation of the conditions that would enable individuals to pursue their true interests and desires. Thus, Marx's notion of communist society is radically individualistic.[13]
The American economist John Roemer has put forth a new perspective of equality and its relationship to socialism. Roemer attempts to reformulate Marxist analysis to accommodate normative principles of distributive justice, shifting the argument for socialism away from purely technical and materialist reasons to one of distributive justice. Roemer argues that, according to the principle of distributive justice, the traditional definition of socialism based on the principle that individual compensation be proportional to the value of the labour one expands in production is inadequate. Roemer concludes that egalitarians must reject socialism as it is classically defined.[14]