ABSTRACT
The desire for greater equality has been part of the inspiration of all socialist thinkers and of all socialist movements. The absence of this desire, indeed, provides the most useful of all exclusive definitions of socialism. Where there is no egalitarianism there is no socialism. The force and form of the desire have of course varied greatly. To take two seemingly extreme examples, Gracchus Babeuf was not only much shriller than Evan Durbin: he was also, thanks to his iconoclasm, his impossibilism and the violence of his times, much more urgent and absolute in his goal. A modicum of redistribution would obviously have increased the total welfare of the individuals who made up the nation. The liberal view that every individual had an equal right to seek his own happiness and the Màrshallian concept of diminishing marginal utility, amounted, between them, to a very strong levelling case.
