Spheres of Justice

Walzer's account of distributive justice, subtitled A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, written against theories that seek one principle for distributing all goods. Its central claim is that goods have social meanings, and that the meaning of a good determines how it should be distributed. Medical care should go by need, offices by qualification, punishment by desert and political power by persuasion. The result is complex equality: no good should allow its holders to dominate other spheres. Walzer distinguishes monopoly, in which one group holds a good, from dominance, in which a good such as money or birth buys access to everything else, and calls the conversion of one good into another tyranny. Chapters work through eleven spheres, from membership and welfare to money, office, education, kinship and political power, with a long discussion of blocked exchanges, the things money should not buy. Critics, Ronald Dworkin among them, object that tying justice to shared meanings makes it too dependent on local convention.

It offers a clear alternative to single-principle theories of justice and explains why buying votes, exemptions or offices feels wrong even in a market society.