After decades of occasionally thinking over political economy, I have actually come to a position I have not heard put forward elsewhere. Specifically, instead of the traditional socialist call for equality (often not very clearly described) I have decided to go for setting limits on inequality. The advantage of this is that I can spell out what the limits should be. No problem with incentives, reward for (legitimate) effort, and the like, provided that the resulting inequalities do not reach the point where certain people can get away with flouting the law and/or abuse of power in whatever form that might take - be it corruption, monopoly extraction, sexual abuse, slavery, and so on. That condition is clearly not being met in many societies today, including some in the 'West'.
Although in my opinion the late Anthony Arblaster (Democracy, 2011) overstated the dependence of democracy on equality, he would have been entirely correct to say that even traditional underpinnings of constitutional government, such as free and fair elections, rule of law, and the rest will not function properly, or at all, if inequality reaches the level where some can ignore those underpinnings with impunity.
I feel the need to respond here to Kemi Badenoch's claim ('Political thinking', BBC) that her experience in Nigeria showed that redistribution by the tax system makes the entire society poor. Now, I reckon history does seem to show that pursuing equality stringently does mean making societies poor. But I suggest we should be able to set reasonable limits on inequality without that happening. In any case, I would take the stand that it is worth a hit on the overall income of a society to prevent inequalities that enable corruption and illegality, and abuses of power, to spread.