Equality is a baseline

"This whole sphere of the merely given, relegated to private life in civilized society, is a permanent threat to the public sphere, because the public sphere is as consistently based on the law of equality as the private sphere is based on the law of universal difference and differentiation." (The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt, 1994; page 301).  

Arendt fails to appreciate the action of desert, which both differentiates and recognizes similarity. Equality is the baseline off of which individual differences can make themselves felt. 

We cannot exercise justice-as-desert without both a sense of equality and a sense of distinctiveness.