[PEN-L:32564] Re: Re: John Rawls

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

enilsson@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> He was not claiming that we should look at actually existing societies as
> if they were the product of a social contract. Rather, Rawls asked "what
> would society look like IF it was designed from scratch by people who did
> not know what position they would have in this newly designed society
> when it came into being." The resulting "social contract," Rawls
> suggests, should be the blueprint of the society we should construct.
> This society would, arguably, have no classes. This blueprint has NOT
> guided the construction of the actual societies we see in front of us
> (with classes, injustice, etc).

I don't understand how you can be proposing the abolition of class
society while still being a proponent of liberalism. Rawls's whole
notion of redistributive justice reminds me of nothing less than
Victorian era middle-class pieties, Charles Dickens's "Christmas Carol"
in particular.


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