[PEN-L:32603] Re: Re: Re: John Rawls

["ken hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Why does it remind you of middle class pieties. In his discussion of
background institutions for a just society Rawls envisions extensive
government involvement to secure equal opportunity, a basic standard of
primary goods for all etc.etc.. I append examples from a lecture on Rawls.
Rawls could be faulted for not showing how it is possible within capitalist
society to achieve the sort of just society her imagines but he is hardly
just expressing middle class pieties. He sketches out the sort of
institutions that would be required.

Cheers..Ken Hanly.

3) Background Institutions for Distributive Justice
Rawls argues that justice as fairness requires many particular things about
just societies. The first principle implies that basic civil and political
liberties will be protected by a constitution (either written or implicit)
that ensures that these rights are respected and makes it impossible for
society to override them for social or economic reasons. Moreover, the
principle of fair equality of opportunity implies that society should fund
education for all (either directly, through public education, or indirectly,
by subsidizing private education), and police firms and private associations
to ensure that fair equality of opportunity is not violated. Finally, to
satisfy the difference principle, society must guarantee an acceptable
minimum level of the social primary goods, and police firms and private
associations to ensure that their gains are not at the expense of the least
fortunate in society.

This implies that resources must be transferred from one sector of society
to another to provide the acceptable minimum to each person, and that there
is some mechanism for redistributing social primary goods to ensure a just
society according to the difference principle. Certain taxes (e.g.,
inheritance taxes) would exist solely for such purposes of redistribution.

Rawls (page 277): "The purpose of these levies and regulations is not to
raise revenue (release resources to government) but gradually and
continually to correct the distribution of wealth and to prevent
concentrations of power detrimental to the fair value of political liberty
and fair equality of opportunity."

There would also be a branch of government (the "allocation" branch)
designed to ensure that unreasonable (i.e., unjust) gains in market power
are not acquired by certain firms over others, and another branch (the
"stabilization" branch) designed to ensure that employment opportunities are
efficiently and justly distributed in society (so that full employment, as
far as this is possible, is secured). There would also be an "exchange"
branch so that those segments of society that would benefit from certain
goods being made public (e.g., transportation, the arts, public parks) will
not create injustice for those who would not. A taxation scheme to support
such public goods would have to satisfy the difference principle.

Finally, there would also need to be taxation to ensure revenue to the
government, rather than just to redistribute social primary goods. Such
taxation would have to be justly distributed. (In an ideal society, Rawls
argues that consumption taxes would be preferred to progressive income
taxes. However, in a society with injustices, progressive income taxes may
be permissible to balance other injustices.)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 7:54 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:32564] Re: Re: John Rawls


> 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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>