In this concise and elegant work, first published in 1952, Bertrand de Jouvenel purposely ignores the economic evidence that redistributional efforts sap incentives and are economically destructive. Rather, he stresses the commonly disregarded ethical arguments showing that redistribution is ethically indefensible for, and practically unworkable in, a complex society.

A new introduction relates Jouvenel's arguments to current discussions about the redistributionist state and draws out many of the points of affinity with the works of Buchanan, Hayek, Rawls, and others.