The article argues that the possibility of an unlimited gap in income and wealth between the top and bottom segments of society is incompatible with a democratic commitment to political equality. The first section outlines why current distributive and relational approaches are unable to adequately address this problem. The second and third sections introduce the notion of material domination and argue that the only remedy against it is the containment of economic inequality within a certain proportion, expressed in terms of ratios between the material resources of the best-off and the worst-off. The fourth section spells out the constraints that any definition of these ratios should satisfy and shows, through a case study based on the contemporary United States, that an approximate, yet non-arbitrary definition is within reach. The fifth and final section rebuts some predictable objections to this approach.

文章认为，社会最高阶层和最底层阶层之间收入和财富出现无限鸿沟的可能性与对政治平等的民主承诺不相容。第一部分概述了为什么当前的分配和关系方法无法充分解决此问题。第二部分和第三部分介绍了物质支配的概念，并认为对此的唯一补救方法是将经济不平等控制在一定的范围内，以最富裕者和最贫穷者的物质资源之间的比率来表示。第四部分阐明了这些比率的任何定义都应满足的约束条件，并通过基于当代美国的案例研究表明，可以达到一个近似但非任意的定义。