Before the race begins. John Roemer and the 'circumstances' of life

To emphasise this difference, Roemer introduces three different concepts: 'circumstances', 'types' and 'commitment'. The 'circumstances' are the factors that influence the possibility of obtaining a certain advantage but for which we cannot hold the individual responsible. They include place and family of birth, social environment, economic conditions, cultural capital, health status, gender, ethnicity and the quality of schools attended. Types', on the other hand, are groups of people who share similar circumstances. The idea of 'commitment' (effort) refers to whatever remains as the space of individual responsibility once circumstances and types have been taken into account. Here Roemer's move is both intuitive and radical. We cannot compare individual commitment as if it were a pure quantity, measurable in the same way for everyone. The same apparent amount of commitment can have different costs, different meanings and generate even very different probabilities of success. Studying two hours in a quiet home, with parents with university degrees, a room of their own, and the implicit idea that university is the natural path, is not the same thing as studying two hours in a crowded house, with parents working precarious or demanding jobs, few stimuli, and no one capable of interacting effectively with the educational institution. The question is not that the former's commitment is false or the latter's heroic, by definition. The issue is that we want to talk about justice then we have to decide what weight to give to the different 'circumstances' in promoting the commitment of the two students.

This is why we must distinguish between 'degrees' (degrees) and 'levels' (levels) of commitment (1998, p. 12). The absolute level of commitment can be the same while its degree, assessed against the realistic possibilities of belonging to a certain social 'type', can be very different. The Yale philosopher's proposal is to evaluate individuals not simply in an 'all against all' comparison, but with respect to the distribution of effort within one's 'type' and group of 'circumstances'. Those who rank very high in the distribution of effort in a disadvantaged group may have exerted a greater degree of effort than those in a privileged group who score higher but with a relatively low degree of effort.

This is a troublesome thesis for the common sense to which meritocratic rhetoric appeals, because it removes innocence from the ranking. What appears as individual performance is also the condensation point of a social history. It is not enough to look at grades, income, qualifications or curriculum. One must ask what distance has been travelled, from which point one started, with what resources at one's disposal and what obstacles one had to overcome. The principle of merit does not disappear in Roemer's theoretical framework, but it changes status. It no longer stands for pure individual value, but becomes a relational quantity, dependent on the conditions in which it was formed;

In this, Roemer places himself within a broader tradition of egalitarian political philosophy. Rawls had already written that 'No one deserves either his greater natural abilities or a better starting position in society. But, of course, this is no reason to ignore and even less to eliminate these distinctions' (A Theory of Justice, 1971). Richard Dworkin, for his part, tried to distinguish between what depends on people's ambitions and what depends on their endowments, going so far as to argue that "The 'starting ribbon' theory, according to which (...) one should start with equal resources, and then become prosperous or remain poor through one's own efforts, is an indefensible combination of very different theories of justice. Something like that combination makes sense in games, such as Monopoly, whose purpose is to allow luck and skill to play a highly circumscribed and ultimately arbitrary role; but it cannot hold up at all within a political theory' (Sovereign Virtue, 2000). Cohen had then summarised the egalitarian impulse in the need to 'eliminate all kinds of involuntary disadvantage' (On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, 1989). Roemer fits into this important debate, but gives it a more analytical form, focusing in particular on the fact that if we want to talk seriously about opportunity, we have to decide which circumstances we consider morally arbitrary and how to neutralise their distorting effects.

This is where his originality emerges. Indeed, Roemer does not merely denounce privilege but sets out to construct an operational criterion. Equality of opportunity, for him, does not necessarily require equal results. It requires that people in the same commitment percentile, but belonging to different social types, have access to comparable outcomes. Put differently, if two individuals engage in the same degree of commitment, each relative to their starting world, their prospects should not diverge due to circumstances they did not choose and for which they cannot be held responsible.  

This idea speaks directly to Italian society. Not because our country is short of talents, but because it too often recognises them late, selects them poorly and then calls 'merit' what has already been filtered through inequalities at the start. A child born into a family with high cultural capital encounters school as a continuation of the domestic world. It recognises its lexicon, expectations and implicit codes. A child born in a fragile context often encounters school as an alien institution. He may love it, he may succeed, he may even excel, but he must first translate his world into a language that is not always designed for him. When both are assessed by the same yardstick, we are tempted to say that justice and impartiality have been done, forgetting, as Don Lorenzo Milani used to say, that there is no greater injustice than making equal parts among unequals. The case of the Italian school is paradigmatic. The territorial gaps, the different level of infrastructure, the quality of buildings, the availability of full time, of libraries, services for children, tenured teachers, together with the conditions of families that affect, for example, the different availability of digital devices, more or less suitable home spaces, extracurricular activities, etc., produce opportunities that do not become equal just because the final exam is the same. The South, inland areas, urban peripheries, poor families in terms of income and education are not mere sociological variants. They are 'circumstances' in the Roemerian sense of the term, because they end up influencing the ability to transform commitment into results. If policy ignores these differences, it is not rewarding educational merit. It is certifying a selection that has already taken place elsewhere. 

Of course, Roemer's position exposes a difficulty. Where do we stop? How many circumstances do we have to consider? If even ambition, perseverance, confidence, and the ability to postpone gratification are influenced by the environment, what is left of personal responsibility? Roemer does not untie the knot by eliminating the role of individual responsibility. But responsibility only becomes credible when it is not loaded with what it cannot bear. If we attribute everything to the individual, we turn justice into guilt. If we attribute everything to the structure, we erase freedom. Equality of opportunity lives in this unstable but necessary in-between space.

Its interest for us lies precisely here. At a time when public discourse oscillates between two opposing simplifications, on the one hand the moralism of 'whoever wants to make it', on the other the temptation to see in every fate only the product of a structure, Roemer offers a more demanding grammar and a more complex reasoning. He neither absolves nor condemns en bloc. He calls for looking at the social genesis of capabilities, without denying that individuals act by choice and for such choices they must be held accountable. It asks, however, to measure effort without pretending that it arises in a vacuum. It calls for defending personal responsibility from its punitive caricatures.

That is why his critique of meritocracy is more radical than many invectives against merit. He does not simply say that merit does not exist. He says that merit exists, but it is rarely ours alone, which is even more uncomfortable. It is a rich mixture of inheritances, encounters, institutions, recognitions, protections, languages learned before we knew they would be privileges. Justice must not humiliate those who succeed, nor deny the value of commitment. It must, however, prevent success from turning into a theory of moral superiority, and failure into a diagnosis of personal guilt.

There is a subtle cruelty in the idea that once the competition is formally open, everything that follows is fair. It is the cruelty of societies that multiply rankings and then call freedom the loneliness of those who enter them losers at the start. It is necessary not to look so much at the finish line, Roemer tells us, but to shift our gaze further back to where possibilities silently form. For before the race begins, some lives have already received training and encouragement, while others have been loaded with a ballast they will carry with them all their lives.

Vittorio Pelligra - Professor of Economics (13/A2) - C-BASS (Centre for Behavioral and Statistical Sciences) - Director. Department of Economics and Business - University of Cagliari

pelligra@unica.it