Envy and Fair Burden-Sharing: There and Back Again
When should we say that two people are treated as equals from a distributive point of view? The straightforward response is that they are equal if they hold an identical bundle of resources. But since some resources will be indivisible and others too qualitatively different from one another, it is likely that a perfectly identical division of resources would ordinarily be unfeasible. An alternative is to appeal to what has been called the envy test, which is passed if no agent would prefer someone else’s bundle of resources over their own, regardless of what these bundles actually contain. This solution, advanced by Ronald Dworkin [1] as a central component of his theory of justice (commonly known as resource egalitarianism) has been heavily influential in contemporary political theory. Though intended by Dworkin as a purely theoretical device to be employed in assessing distributive inequality, we can identify at least one historical instance where something akin to the envy test was given a decidedly practical application. In this piece I aim to give a brief outline of this case, hoping to show not only that it is in itself an interesting historical example, but also that we can perhaps draw on it in order to reflect on some of our contemporary political concerns.
It was the middle of the 4th century BCE, when the ageing Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, penned a lengthy discourse called the Antidosis, which has survived in full until this day. The discourse itself is atypical for the corpus of works coming to us from ancient orators, since, as per the author’s explicit acknowledgment it was not supposed to be read in the courts or in the Assembly. Rather, it is at once a philosophical and autobiographical treatise, meant to publicly vindicate Isocrates in the wake of a recent defeat suffered in a legal proceeding, from which the discourse takes its name, i.e. antidosis [2]. What was, then, an antidosis? Throughout most of the democratic period of Ancient Athens some public services, pertaining especially to the organization of civic festivals and the support of the fleet, were not directly provided by the polis, but rather through the private contributions of the wealthiest citizens – which were in the earlier stages predominantly voluntary but in time became increasingly compulsory [3]. Given that, ordinarily, several hundreds of citizens (as well as metics in some cases) were eligible for these kinds of so-called liturgies [4], but only some contributions were required each year, magistrates would assign the liturgies for which there were no volunteers based on who they thought would be most able to undertake them, while factoring in some rotational constraints. Still, there was by all accounts sufficient leeway for interpretation on who was in a better position to perform the liturgy. It is here where the antidosis procedure steps in, as the party who was assigned the liturgy could use antidosis in order to redirect the assignment towards someone else who was – in their view – richer.
While there are several mentions of the procedure in ancient sources, our understanding of it mainly comes from Demosthenes 42, Against Phaenippus. On the basis of this speech (but also a few other fragmentary accounts), Matthew Christ offers the following three-stage reconstruction of the process [5]:
- “The party initially assigned to a liturgy could formally challenge another man to perform it in his place. If the challengee consented, the procedure came to an immediate end;
- If the challengee refused to assume the liturgy, the challenger could offer to exchange property with him. If the challengee accepted this proposition, the two parties arranged for an exchange of all their real and personal property. It was then incumbent on the challenger to carry out the liturgy from his new estate.
- If the challengee refused this offer to “trade places” or if difficulties arose during the exchange, the matter could be brought before a popular jury, which then assigned the disputed liturgy to the man it deemed wealthier.”
We do not have accurate information on the frequency with which the procedure was used, but there are good reasons to think it was fairly widespread, with most rich Athenians expecting to engage in these kinds of disputes on occasion [6]. Further, while we do not have direct evidence for exchanges of property, Lysias 4, On a Premeditated Wounding, clearly references such an exchange to have taken place at some point prior to the trial [7]. But these historical details are not especially important for my purposes here.
Rather, I first want to contend that the antidosis procedure embodies a logic that is very much in line with that of the envy test. When initiated, the challenger effectively raises an envy-based complaint, revealing that she would exchange her own bundle of resources (R1) for that of the challengee, minus the sum required for the liturgy (R2 – L). An acceptance of the exchange by the challengee reveals that she would, instead, prefer R1 to (R2 – L), meaning that the envy test would be passed since no one would prefer the other person’s bundle of resources. If the challengee would neither accept to undertake the liturgy, nor the exchange, the envy test would fail and the matter would be independently settled in the courts, but we can surmise that this was considered only a second-best solution. In passing, it might be interesting to note that while in Dworkin’s account the term envy has a purely technical sense, expressing nothing more than a preference relation, the antidosis procedure could accommodate the more common, psychological, meaning as well, since one could challenge a specific person precisely because she was envious of her, aiming to make her pay the costs for the liturgy, to gain her fortune, or to just publicly reveal it. Furthermore, unlike Dworkin’s envy test, the antidosis procedure did not seek to give an overall account of distributive (in)equality, but rather to establish a fair distribution of burdens within a specific redistributive context. This is, however, one of the ways in which the envy test can be fruitfully deployed as well; for example, it has been used in just such a manner in order to assess how the burdens associated with brain drain can be fairly distributed [8]. Beyond this fairness concern, the antidosis procedure also illustrates something deeper about the relation between the broad majority of the citizenry (the hoi polloi) and the rich (the hoi oligoi) in the Athenian polis. As Josiah Ober writes, it “had the double effect of discouraging class solidarity within the ranks of the wealth elite and of making the demos the controller of the fate of major fortunes” [9], contributing at the same time to the public disclosure of the financial status of the rich, who would otherwise have both the incentives and the opportunities to conceal their fortune [10].
Given its treatment of women and slaves, the Athenian political system runs afoul of any plausible modern conception of democracy or justice. Still, when it comes to the treatment of economic elites perhaps we may benefit from studying the Athenian system more in depth, since Athenians managed to set up an institutional framework (including, among others, liturgies and the antidosis procedure) that curtailed both the concentration of massive wealth and the damaging political influence of the well-off. In stark contrast, it could be said, with the obscene accumulation of wealth by the superrich in our present times, and with the enormous political influence which they now wield, even in what are standardly considered to be well-functioning democracies. In this vein, it is perhaps auspicious that this article is published on the same day in which Donald Trump and his new administration will take office in the United States, an administration expected to be in thrall to the interests of a narrow economic elite epitomized by Elon Musk, in a country where the richest 1% now own about as much wealth as the bottom 90% (and over twelve times more than the bottom 50%). And while Biden was right in his diagnostic that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom” in his farewell address from last week, this is neither a novel situation in American politics, nor should it lead us to overlook the considerable role that the Democrats themselves played in bringing it about in the past few decades.
Recent work in political theory, and in particular the theory of limitarianism [11], have justifiably (re)focused the spotlight on the concerns that wealth concentration poses for both justice and democracy. However, its core tenets are unlikely to be pursued in real-world politics anytime soon, given the existing entrenchment of economic elites in positions of power, but also the current lack of appetite that the public seems to display towards limiting wealth [12]. Since heavy taxation of wealth is not really on the horizon, perhaps it might be worthwhile to explore and experiment with weaker but more broadly appealing alternatives. And in reflecting on such alternatives, we may use the Athenian case (among others) a source of inspiration. For instance, some public services, and perhaps especially infrastructural projects, could be financed through the compulsory contributions of the extremely wealthy, drawing on the idea of Athenian liturgies. Since these expenses would be earmarked for particular projects, contributors would be in a position to gain some amount of recognition and prestige that would otherwise be unavailable through conventional taxation (just like wealthy Athenians financing a public festival for example would strive and compete in order to gain charis [13]). As only some of the extremely wealthy would need to contribute resources for specific projects, using a procedure akin to the antidosis – perhaps in quite a different form (e.g. without an actual exchange of properties) but one that still retains the basic principle of the envy test – could be employed in establishing a fair distribution of the associated burdens.
This is, of course, just one (rough) example. The point was not to outline and defend a particular proposal here, but rather to show that what may often seem to be abstract developments in political theory can be bridged with genuine (even if not widely known) policy practices; and, second, to suggest that we could sometimes benefit from exploring such practices in order to see what challenges are raised when normative principles are put into practice (though I did not focus on this aspect here), as well as to open up new possible avenues in contemporary institutional design.
REFERENCES
[1] Dworkin, R. (2000), Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
[2] For an extended commentary see Too, Y. L. (2008), A Commentary on Isocrates’ Antidosis, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[3] Ober, J. (1989), Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 199.
[4] Likely somewhere between 300 and 1,200, depending on the period taken into account (see Ober: 1989, p. 128). Even for the higher figures, this would amount to less than 5% of the entire body of citizens.
[5] Christ, M. (1990), “Liturgy Avoidance and Antidosis in Classical Athens”, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 120, p. 161.
[6] Christ (1990, pp. 163-164).
[7] Apostolakis, K. (2006), “The Rhetoric of an Antidosis: [D.] 42 Against Phaenippus”, Ariadne, 12, p. 94.
[8] Volacu, A., Terteleac, V. (2021), “Mitigating the Costs of Departure. Brain Drain, Disadvantage and Fair Burden-Sharing”, Ethics and Global Politics, 14, pp. 127-141.
[9] Ober (1989, p. 242).
[10] Christ (1990, pp. 158-160).
[11] Discussed a few years ago on this blog by Dick Timmer. See Robeyns, I. (2024), Limitarianism. The Case Against Extreme Wealth, New York: Astra House for a popular introduction.
[12] See Volacu, A. (2024), “Wealth, Political Inequality, and Resilience: Revisiting the Democratic Argument for Limitarianism”, Res Publica, 30, pp. 589-607 for a discussion on the former and Robeyns, I., V. Buskens, A. van de Rijt, N. Vergeldt, and T. van der Lippe (2021), “How Rich Is Too Rich? Measuring the Riches Line”, Social Indicators Research, 154, pp. 115–143 for an empirical inquiry relevant for the latter.
[13] Ober (1990, pp. 226-230).
