Mathematical Expressions of Equality of Opportunity: John Roemer’s Contribution and Limitation
Yang Yulian1, Zhang Guoqing2
1.Faculty of Law and Sociology, The Party School of CPC Hangzhou, Hangzhou 310024, China 2.School of Philosophy, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China
Abstract Justice as fairness is the unremitting pursuit of mankind, and equality of opportunity is an important principle reflecting social fairness and justice. Theoretically, equal opportunity is often associated with social justice, and it is a major hotspot of concern and discussion in the social sciences. In practice, justice as fairness is the inherent requirement of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, and equality of opportunity serves as an important foundation for social fairness. Therefore, realizing equal opportunities is of great significance to maintaining social justice. How to define and realize equality of opportunity remains a significant challenge. Scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds, such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and John Harsanyi, have put forward their own theories of justice. After them, John Roemer, a contemporary American Marxist, analyzed Rawls’ Justice as Fairness and Dworkin’s Equality of Resources, and put forward an equal-opportunity policy with precise mathematical formulation, which stands out as a significant and innovative contribution to the current research on equality of opportunity.Equality of opportunity and equality of resources are two important paths to realizing distributive justice. Rawls advocates for “Fair Equality of Opportunity”, which requires the equality of the index of primary social goods and Dworkin advocates for “Concerns over Equality”, which requires the equality of resources. Roemer affirms Dworkin’s theory of resource distribution and questions the feasibility of “maximum criterion” proposed by Rawls, which is based on the “veil of ignorance”. In the distribution of resources, the least advantaged may not be able to achieve a “priority maximize expectation”.Roemer criticizes Rawls’ concept of primary goods, identifying three main shortcomings: First, the randomness of Rawls’ natural distribution of the primary goods does not answer the question of why the object of maximization is an indicator of the primary goods rather than happiness or the fulfillment of a life plan. Second, the conception of the primary goods has difficulty in accomplishing the transition between the moral randomness of individual characteristics and the equality of the primary goods. Third, the veil of ignorance protects individuals from random information and fails to explain the motivation of individuals to work on their life plans in the social contract.Therefore, in response to the academic debate over the equality of opportunity, Roemer proposes the equal-opportunity policy of “advance opportunity dominance”. To implement this idea, Roemer sorts people with similar circumstances into types and takes their free choices to be represented by their behavior relative to other members of the same type or, as Roemer calls it, by their “relative effort”. John Roemer’s normative criterion of equal opportunity provides a novel perspective for the development of the theory of distributive justice, and innovatively provides mathematical references for the government to formulate reasonable rules. Roemer’s equal-opportunity policy divides individuals into different types, and separates individuals from background variables to be able to fairly and responsibly choose a certain form of opportunity, which is the brilliance of Roemer’s equality of opportunity theory. Indeed, Roemer’s equal-opportunity policy is in part a limited Rawlsian egalitarian definition of a justice chance in life.Roemer’s equal-opportunity policy represents a kind of equality that lies between formal equality and result equality. Although he has written extensively about it, neither mathematical projections nor philosophical musings have precisely defined the Equality of Opportunity. In particular, he connects equal opportunity to personal responsibility, but does not specify how personal responsibility is delineated, and inequality may still lie behind equal opportunity. Marx criticized the Equality of Opportunity as a merely formal equality. Although Roemer’s equal-opportunity policy incorporates Marxist ideas to a certain extent, the introduction of type, which categorizes individuals from different backgrounds, acknowledges the differences of human beings and implies underlying inequality.
Yang Yulian,Zhang Guoqing. Mathematical Expressions of Equality of Opportunity: John Roemer’s Contribution and Limitation[J]. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2025, 55(2): 70-81.
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