ABSTRACT
E galitarianism is a morally and ideologically charged concept with many fac-ets. It has been relied on for solutions to moral dilemmas in almost every aspect of human life, including economic, political, legal, racial, gender, and religious domains. As far as material egalitarianism is concerned, however, the ideology that dictates equal sharing of key resources regardless of individual contributions seems to be out of place in today’s world, when meritocracy and related capitalist ideologies appear to be becoming more and more dominant. In line with such observations, Francis Fukuyama, an inuential American political economist and social philosopher, has argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies has ended, with the world settling on a capitalist liberal democracy since the end of the cold war and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (Fukuyama, 1992). Yet, more than 15 years after the publication of The End of History and the Last Man, we (including Fukuyama himself, 2006) are not so sure if the prophecy has been (or will be) fullled in a world that is divided by so many religious, cultural, and political barriers.
