ABSTRACT
The idea of distributive justice has as much to do with being and doing as with having. There is, however, no single point of access to this world of distributive arrangements and ideologies. Autonomy is a matter of social meaning and shared values, but it is more likely to make for occasional reformation and rebellion than for everyday enforcement. Distribution is what social conflict is all about. Men and women who make the first claim challenge the monopoly but not the dominance of a particular social good. The argument for complex equality begins from the understanding of the various social goods. And then it moves on to an account of the way people relate to one another through those goods. Free exchange is obviously open-ended; it guarantees no particular distributive outcome. Need generates a particular distributive sphere, within which it is itself the appropriate distributive principle.
