most communist regimes, we actually observe party activists and leaders consuming very little.

So it wasn't their superiority in riches that created the inequality. It was the fact that they had the

power to order other people around and threaten them with dire consequences if they didn't obey.

I think that the obsession with distributive justice, not to say that distributive justice is

unimportant, but it's only one of many egalitarian concerns.

And the obsession with distributive justice has, I think, often tended to obscure unequal social relations, which are at least equally

important as considering how much stuff I have compared to how much stuff you have.

And those relations have to do with who gets to order other people around, who gets to make

decisions without taking other people's concerns and interests

into account, and who is stigmatizing other people, treating them as contemptible beings or

beneath contempt even?