It is no affront to liberal socialist egalitarianism, as I understand it, if the entrepreneur who sells portable ventilators makes more money than I do and is more widely known than I am. The socialist state should not interfere with “small-scale ownership,” as George Orwell wrote in The Lion and the Unicorn (1941).
Income differentiation (within decent limits, fixed by tax policy) is defensible so long as the other person’s money isn’t convertible into power over you and me. Convertibility is the key: What can money buy and what can’t it buy? Today, in the United States, it can buy almost anything, but that isn’t a necessary feature even of our own almighty dollar; there are purchases that ought to be barred and others that are harmless. If successful entrepreneurs can afford a more expensive vacation than I can; if they can collect first editions of rare books and I can’t; if they buy the newest fashions and I am hopelessly unfashionable–all that is compatible with a just society. But if they can buy medical care that isn’t available to me; if they get legal representation in civil and criminal cases that I don’t get; if they have influence with government agencies that I don’t have–that is unjust.
Michael Walzer, The Struggle for a Decent Politics: On “Liberal” As An Adjective, 49-50.