2Rawls
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Very few, if any, relatively aZuent individuals can credibly claim that those
less well-oVcould have enjoyed their standard of living had they been willing
to make the same choices. Instead, as Rawls often emphasizes, it is more
plausible to claim that the material inequalities present in modern societies
arise from factors beyond the control of those less well-oV, most obviously
their lesser luck in the social and natural lotteries that determine family and
class background and genetic endowment. Rawls’s response to this socio-
logical commonplace is ‘‘to look for a conception of justice that prevents the
use of accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social
circumstances as counters in a quest for political and economic advantage’’
(Rawls 1999 a, 14 , and chs. 11 , 13 , and 63 ). Proposing principles to share the
eVects of luck, he focuses initially on inequalities in occupational opportun-
ity, and appeals to the unease many feel toward inherited variations in career
prospects (Rawls 1999 a, 63 ; Marshall, Roberts, and Swift 1997 ). Rawls then
argues that because it is incoherent to limit our concern only to these
involuntary inequalities, we should adopt a similarly critical attitude to
inequalities in income and wealth that arise from diVerences in natural as
well as social luck (Rawls 1999 a, 64 ). Unlike more radical egalitarians (Temkin
1999 ), Rawls sees no reason to waste beneWts by ‘‘levelling down.’’ So, he does
not conclude that justice condemns all involuntary occupational andWnan-
cial inequalities. Instead his famous ‘‘diVerence principle’’ and principle of
equality of opportunity require distributive institutions to arrange inequal-
ities in income and wealth work to everyone’s beneWt, with priority given in
distributive conXicts to those who are less advantaged, and to ensure posi-
tions are allocated through a fair competition. 1
1 Many interpret Rawls’s conception of democratic equality as favoring a more permissive attitude
to inequalities in income and wealth than to inequalities in occupational opportunity (Arneson, this
volume). So construed, democratic equality permits inequalities in income and wealth provided they
are maximally advantageous to the least advantaged, whilst prohibiting all inequalities in occupational
opportunity, except ones than can be removed only by decisions that violate the lexically prior basic
liberty principle, which protects the institution of family and the inequalities in starting point that
accompany it. There is some textual evidence, however, that democratic equality permits inequalities
in opportunity if they enhance the opportunities of the least advantaged. See, for example, Rawls’s
remarks about the priority of fair equality of opportunity over the diVerence principle (Rawls 1999 a,
265 ), and the Second Priority Rule in theWnal statement of his two principles (Rawls 1999 a, 266 ).
The Rule states that ‘‘an inequality in opportunity must enhance the opportunities of those with the
lesser opportunity,’’ thereby prohibiting inequalities in opportunity that increase the income and
liberty, equality, and property 489