Anthropologists have often criticised ideas of egalitarianism by pointing to the spaces of hierarchy and inequality that such ideologies of similarity and equivalence typically mask. From the feminist critiques of the 1970s, which highlighted the systematic devaluation of women, to the recent work of Marshall Sahlins, who suggests that all egalitarian societies are necessarily caught up in relations of subjugation to Gods and spirits, the aim is invariably to undermine the edifice of equality by demonstrating that it is built upon foundations of hierarchical exclusion. This article takes the opposing tack, arguing that egalitarianism, qua ideology of equivalence, is only possible insofar as it excludes those who, by definition, are incommensurable – be they women, spirits, immigrants or animals. It is only by analyzing the modalities of exclusion proper to a given system that we can grasp the logic of equivalence that underpins its claim to equality.