Pursuing G. A. Cohen’s suggestion that ‘‘Dworkin has, in eVect, performed
for egalitarianism the considerable service of incorporating within it the most
powerful idea in the arsenal of the anti-egalitarian right: the idea of choice
and responsibility’’ (Cohen 1989 , 933 ), I have sketched an alternative history
that takes seriously the presence of non-Rawlsian elements in more recent
statements of egalitarianism. Although I am less sanguine than Cohen about
the extent to which Dworkin’s achievement is a service to egalitarians, I have
suggested that Cohen is correct to recognize the role played in equality of
resources by conceptions of economic liberty and liability more often asso-
ciated with critics of equality, such as Nozick. I have also argued that those
conceptions render post-libertarian egalitarianism too hospitable to cleanly
generated inequality. To avoid that problem, egalitarians now need to exam-
ine more carefully the relative merits of liberty-restricting and liability-
spreading means to ensure that inequality remains within acceptable limits.
It is only by scrutinizing the assumptions about liberty and property that
Dworkin injected into contemporary egalitarianism that they can hope to
do so. 9
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9 For helpful discussion, I am very grateful to Brian Barry, Paula Casal, G. A. Cohen, Matthew
Clayton, and Hillel Steiner.
504 andrew williams