In the twentieth century, the discussion around the relative weight to be accorded to equality as a goal in human development was i .?.? and conflictive. In the mid twentieth century Tawney made a case against the assumption that inequalities in industrial societies were simply the outcome of individual effort or failures. He argued that opportunities to rise were only one side of the picture and appealed for measures (for example progressive taxation and trade union rights) that would ensure that society actively aimed at eliminating such inequalities as have their source, not in individual differences, but in its own organization.
It was agreed that governments had some responsibility to pursue strategies of greater equality, although there was less agreement on what they were. Yet, by the 1960s, social scientists on both sides of the Atlantic questioned whether their societies were becoming more equal despite the welfare state, estate duties, and higher taxation (in the UK), and equal opportunity measures (the US). This raised important questions about the relationship between equality strategies and social justice theories. John Rawls in his influential Theory of Justice, proposed that all social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth and the bases of self-respect - are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage. In other words, inequalities (benefits to those with greater talents, training etc.) can be justified only if they are to the benefit of the least advantaged, and attached of offices and positons open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity.
During the cold war, these debates in the industrialized world impacted on policies towards the developing world, while in the developing world itself political movements emerged with equality as their stated goal and occasionally became government. Huge controversies surrounded the efforts to put that goal into practice. This section discusses the controversies and the eventual demise of these efforts as neoliberal economies challenged the very foundations of the argument for equality, It also introduces the complex question of measuring inequality.