> This essay might be of interest to lbo folks. I welcome comments. http://monthlyreview.org/2012/03/01/the-great-inequality
You conclude the piece by saying that forty years ago you were "in the process of escaping the clutches of the neoclassical monsters and finding my way into the all-embracing arms of Karl Marx". Despite this, there is unfortunately no consideration given to the full implications of Marx's method on the subject of in/equality.
On my reading of Marx, inequality is a necessary consequence of the capitalist mode of production. It follows therefore that attempts at social reform of inequality, however well-meaning or enlightened, are ultimately futile. Marx did of course support various reforms in his own day, but these were usually for politically expedient reasons and it seems doubtful that he believed they could actually reduce inequality.
Contrary to popular myth, Marx and Engels did not frame their arguments for socialism in terms of material equality. As Allen Wood has pointed out, they did not criticise capitalism because poverty is unevenly distributed, but because there is poverty where there need be none, and that there is a privileged class which benefits from a system which subjects the majority to an artificial and unnecessary poverty. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx argued that socialism would be based on the principle of: from each according to ability, to each according to need. This is not an egalitarian slogan. Rather, it asks for people to be considered individually, each with a different set of needs and abilities.
As useful as the information is in your essay it does not support your assertion that "What is needed is a theory of distribution, because this can give us guidance on what political strategy might best confront the underlying forces that generate inequality". On the contrary, what is needed is a theory of (capitalist) *production* because this will determine distribution. That, I suggest, will give us the best guidance on political strategy because it reveals the real underlying forces that generate inequality.
-- Lew