The authors suggest that we should redefine egalitarianism as a set of equalizing processes that redistribute status, resources, and political power, rather than basing it on the presence of equal outcomes for most or all members of a society. As the authors note, such processes can lead to egalitarian outcomes – however, they do not always succeed. Why, exactly, might the kinds of processes described by the authors fail to achieve their apparent purpose? Here, we survey the ethnographic record to identify examples in which egalitarian processes do not facilitate egalitarian outcomes: for instance, by supporting individual gains in status or power, by legitimizing unequal systems, and by partially satiating the demands of disadvantaged classes to ward off the desire for change. The existence of these apparently egalitarian processes – which, despite their mechanisms, ultimately encourage inequality – suggests that outcomes remain a necessary feature of any intuitive definition of egalitarianism.

First, redistributing material resources can provide unequal gains in status and political power to redistributors. The famous potlatches of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, were grandiose feasts in which the chief host solidified his political capital by giving lavish supplies of food, canoes, slaves, or copper to the attendees (Adams, Reference Adams1973). Similarly, “Big Men” of Papua New Guinea participated in a system of exchange called “moka,” in which they competed for power by organizing huge distributions of pigs and pearl shells for members of rival clans (Strathern, Reference Strathern1979; Weiner, Reference Weiner1995). Each chief aimed to give away more wealth than what he received in a previous ceremony in an attempt to increase his following and status. For the noble class of the Wolof people, an important strategy to ensure one’s rise to prominence and secure a potential position on the chief’s council was to build a reputation for “largesse in redistribution” (Irvine, Reference Irvine1974, 221). High-ranking men of the Siuai people went further by giving out pigs and money to humiliate the recipient: “such gifts are given purposefully to create unfulfillable obligations, the donor actually desiring that his gift will not be returned” (Oliver, Reference Oliver1955, 229). Alongside social resources, these processes can also allow arbitrators to secure greater goods for themselves by “skimming the fat off the catch” (Betzig, Reference Betzig1988, 55). According to their Jesuit critics, for instance, important Huron chiefs took advantage of ritual fur redistributions to claim the largest shares (Trigger, Reference Trigger1969, 86). A study of the Ifaluk sharing practices showed that the chiefs similarly manipulated their customarily accepted role of redistributor in their favor by saving a larger portion of collective resources for themselves and their kins “in a manner consistent with their own reproductive interests” (Betzig, Reference Betzig1988, 55).

In addition to creating inequalities of status and access to resources, redistributive processes can also legitimize preexisting unequal systems. The French expression “noblesse oblige” refers, for instance, to the idea that an inherited higher social status comes with the moral obligation to be generous toward those less privileged (Coleman, Reference Coleman1990). Common across the European aristocracy, this view can also be found in the traditional Songhay social order, where a “fundamental belief in social inequality, which is ascribed at birth,” is paired with the expectation that nobles should play the roles of patrons by redistributing grain, cows, horses, and money to their clients (Stoller, Reference Stoller1997, 172).

Finally, and relatedly, redistributive processes can help prevent political mobilization by partially redistributing benefits to disadvantaged classes. This is most clearly illustrated by the Roman practice of panem et circenses – bread and games – where it has been argued that the public provision of food and entertainment served to generate public approval and prevent political mobilization (Köhne, Reference Köhne2000). A similar dynamic can be seen in the behavior of Classical Mayan elites, who disproportionally built infrastructures used for public entertainment (such as ballcourts) in times of drought (Rubio-Ramos, Isendahl, & Olsson, Reference Rubio-Ramos, Isendahl and Olsson2024).

Following the original argument, these and other ethnographic examples suggest that apparently egalitarian processes may lead to unequal outcomes. Such outcomes may occur not solely due to inefficiencies but because the processes can actively – and in some cases, intentionally – generate, legitimize, and maintain unequal outcomes. Naive intuitions about the nature of egalitarianism would seem to view such systems as inegalitarian due to the blatantly unequal outcomes enabled by them. Yet under the process-based definition suggested by the authors, the presence of equalizing mechanisms would potentially denote the social systems described above as egalitarian. To categorize these systems as egalitarian or inegalitarian, processes alone are therefore insufficient. Instead, these claims must be at least partially tempered by relying on outcomes as an important metric. Potlatches, for instance, are a form of prosocial reputation building – an egalitarian process, according to the authors – but their inegalitarianism becomes clear only when considering their actual outcomes. We thus suggest that entirely abandoning outcomes as a metric of egalitarianism is premature. Instead, a useful definition would distinguish between apparently egalitarian processes and actually egalitarian processes based in part on outcomes.