Power relations in musical chairs

I took graduate courses in conflict management and dispute resolution at Columbia University. A number of courses were devoted, at least in part, to "identity based conflict". In these courses, it was stressed that conflict emerged mainly from entrenched power relations. These power relations served to perpetuate existing inequality.

One group exercise involved allocating chairs among students. One student had 10 chairs, several others had 2 or 3 chairs, and most had no chairs. We were asked to discuss how this made us feel and were told that the unjust allocation of chairs created conflict. Presumably, the simple fact of having more chairs was what made it unjust, and how the chair tycoon came by his wealth was not specified. Moreover, the chair tycoon was asked to sprawl out and take up as many of his chairs as possible and to gloat at his good chair fortune to excite the envy of the chairless. This was supposed to raise our consciousness about economic injustice.

Where I come from, justice means "to each his own"; therefore, how the folks came to have many or few chairs would be relevant to assessing the justice of the matter. Moreover, to make the exercise more realistic, the chair tycoon ought to have been able to rent out his chairs or sell them or otherwise make productive use of them. He would not hoard his chairs any more than a real world tycoon would keep his wealth under his mattress.

The most frustrating aspect of the courses, and indeed of all the egalitarian tendencies in the conflicts program and anthroplogy department in general, was the failure of my fellow students or even faculty to acknowledge that institution of the egalitarian utopia that they envisioned would necessarily entail a new set of power relations with a new set of conflicts associated with the tyranny required to enforce equality. Their thought processes seemed to be that eliminating differences in wealth, income, power, prestige and eliminating normative judgments about cultural and lifestyle choices would be enough to establish peace on earth and goodwill to men.

But what happens on day 2 in the egalitarian Eden? What if my neighbor is productive and enhances his wealth through labor and voluntary exchange? What if he has good luck? Will this excess wealth be confiscated and distributed among the idle and unlucky? In that case, who would produce anything beyond his immediate needs?