When the Italian anarchist Carlo Cafiero died in the 1890s, he supposedly “ended his days in madness, obsessed with the idea that he might be consuming more than his fair share of sunshine.”

That probably apocryphal story vividly illustrates how the egalitarian left might look from an unsympathetic perspective. In this picture, leftists are obsessed with leveling for the sake of leveling. Why, after all, is it so bad for some people to have a bit more than others?

In truth, the Left’s best thinkers have thought hard about the question of inequality. Most socialists believe that a certain amount of inequality is inevitable. The questions are how much inequality is tolerable, and what kind of inequality the best form of society would allow.