This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Republicanism of Rawls's Liberalism: An Open Question Property‐Owning Democracy Justice and Stability Tocqueville on the Ills of Democratic Personality The Republican Response Some Objections Conclusion: Lessons for Republicans and Liberals References.

This paper supports the personal data platform cooperative as a means of bringing about John Rawls’s favoured institutional realisation of a just society, the property-owning democracy. It describes personal data platform cooperatives and applies Rawls’s political philosophy to analyse the institutional forms of a just society in relation to the economic power deriving from aggregating personal data. It argues that a society involving a significant number of personal data platform cooperatives will be more suitable to realising Rawls’s principle of fair (...) equality of opportunity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Property‐Owning Democracy Before Socialism: The Rise of Commercial Republicanism Property‐Owning Democracy at the Socialist High Tide (i): Progressive Conservative Origins Property‐Owning Democracy at the Socialist High Tide (ii): Liberals and Labour Revisionists Property‐Owning Democracy at the Socialist High Tide (iii): James Meade Property‐Owning Democracy After Socialism? Rawlsian and Neoliberal Lineages References.

In recent years research on John Rawls has experienced a surge in interest in Rawls’s elaborations on the economic order of a just society. This research entails the treatment of the issue which societal role Rawls attaches to work. Somewhat dissatisfied with these treatments the article at hand develops an alternative account of the function Rawls has in mind for work. It will be argued that within Rawls’s idea of a just society the societal role of work consists of three (...) components: an ‘efficiency component’, a ‘self-respect, component’, and a ‘sense of community component.’ Based on that, reconstruction of the Rawlsian position I will investigate whether such a position is reconcilable with the demand for an unconditional Basic Income. The article’s contribution is mostly exegetical albeit, in dealing with Basic Income it elucidates how an oft-proposed policy consideration with a bearing upon work can and cannot, be justified. (shrink)

This paper explores how a regime recognizable as a Rawlsian property-owning democracy might be enshrined constitutionally in the context of the U.S. Five specific constitutional amendments are proposed: establishing an equal right to education, establishing a guaranteed social minimum, clarifying the legitimacy of regulating corporate political speech for the sake of political equality: establishing an individual right to a share of society’s productive wealth, and assuring communities of significant size the right to remain economically viable over time. The substance (...) and reasoning behind each proposal is discussed in length, and the paper also briefly discusses why a focus on constitutional amendments may be helpful both in clarifying how a property-owning democracy might be realized in practice and in establishing clear goals for social movements motivated by the aim of establishing a more equitable distribution of wealth, power, and opportunity in the United States. (shrink)

The political theory of the property-owning democracy can be seen as a way of overcoming the ideological conflict between individualism and collectivism. Rawls offers the contemporary reference-point for this theory. Rawls contrasted the ideal-type of the property-owning democracy with the ideal-type of a capitalist welfare state. However, the terms of that contrast are not well drawn and raise a number of questions, in particular regarding Rawls’s a priori specification of the welfare state. An inductively derived specification of ideal-typical welfare states (...) suggests that horizontal redistribution, in line with the principle of social savings, is more important than vertical redistribution. Rawls’s preference for a social dividend or negative income tax scheme can be contrasted with the use of social insurance, but the latter has a claim to instantiate Rawlsian ideals better than a social dividend. There is a potential problem with the pre-emption of private savings in the welfare state, but this turns out not to be troublesome empirically or conceptually. The irony of the discussion is that those who have interpreted Rawlsian theory as justifying the welfare state have the better of the argument, despite Rawls’s own views. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: From Liberalism to Republican Liberalism Cohen's Critique of Rawls A Liberal Republican Political Economy Liberal and Republican Approaches to Effective Political Agency The Republican Alternative Conclusion References.

In Justice as Fairness, Rawls presents a case for property-owning democracy (POD) which heavily depends on a favourable comparison with welfare state capitalism (WSC). He argues that WSC, but not POD, fails to realise ‘all the main political values expressed by the two principles of justice’. This article argues that Rawls’s case for POD is incomplete. He does not show that POD is superior to other conceivable forms of WSC. In order to present a serious contender, I sketch what I (...) call a realistically utopian welfare state (RUWS) that (a) guarantees the fair equality of political liberties and opportunity and that (b) maximises the situation of the worst.-off via a kind of participation income. The main aim of the article is to give credibility to the claim that RUWS is not obviously worse than POD by Rawlsian standards and therefore deserves a fair hearing in further research. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Two Forms of Property‐Owning Democracy What Is Stability? Why Does It Matter? The Sense of Justice Participation in Public Life Three Distinctive Features of Rawls's View Democratic Corporatism and Participation Objections Conclusion References.

Andrew Walton argues that, a Rawlsian property-owning democracy (POD) requires a fraternal ethos and certain forms of social interaction, such as high trade union membership. The basic structure objection could be used to challenge these claims as it indicates that Rawls’s principles of justice should only be applied to the basic structure of society, and not, for example, to an ethos. Walton has two responses to the objection: firstly, that it does not apply to his argument, and, secondly, even (...) if it were to apply, the objection itself is unconvincing. In this article I argue however that (1) the basic structure objection does apply as a fraternal ethos is difficult to reconcile with Rawls’s understanding of what should be included as part of the basis structure, and (2) although I do not defend the basic structure objection, it is not made explicit in Walton’s argument why the objection should be dismissed as unconvincing. (shrink)

Property-owning democracies combine the regulative and redistributive functions of the welfare state with the governmental aim of ensuring that wealth and capital are widely dispersed. John Rawls, political philosophy’s most famous property-owning democrat, argued that property-owning democracy was one of two regime types that best realized his two principles of justice, though he was notoriously vague about how a property-owning democracy’s institutions are meant to realize his principles. To compensate for this deficiency, a number of Rawlsian political philosophers have (...) tried to add institutional and policy content to the idea. While their efforts have advanced the discussion, few have criticized the soundness of these attempts. This article attempts to fill the void. I claim that, in comparison to welfare-state capitalism, property-owning democracy is both prohibitively impractical and unjust on Rawlsian grounds. I first argue that property-owning democracy is economically ineffective. Even granting the assumptions of Rawlsian ideal theory, property-owning democracies generate bad incentives and face severe information problems in comparison to more market-friendly welfare states. Further, in nonideal theory the motivations of political officials and citizens will likely be corrupted by the temptation to abuse the awesome state power at their disposal. Second, I argue that property-owning democracy is unjust relative to welfare-state capitalism. The three principles used to defend property-owning democracy—the difference principle, the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the “political liberty” proviso—do not vindicate property-owning democracy and may even prohibit it. Welfare-state capitalism does much better. (shrink)

This paper addresses ways of arguing fors ome form of economic democracy from within a broadly Rawlsian framework. Firstly, one can argue that a right to participate in economic decision-making should be added to the Rawlsian list of basic liberties, protected by the first principle of justice. Secondly,I argue that a society which institutes forms of economic democracy will be more likely to preserve a stable and just basic structure over time, by virtue of the effects of economic (...) democratization on the development of an active, democratic character among citizens. Thirdly, I argue that a proper understanding of the demands of the difference principle shows that justice demands more than ex post redistribution, but also requires the ex ante redistribution of power and authority in economic life. This connects to Rawls’s discussion of the badness of inequality, and to his endorsement of a “property-owning democracy”. -/- My conclusion is that, even if we may doubt the success of this first Rawlsian argument,the second and third arguments are both successful, and together establish a strong Rawlsian case forseeing economic democratization as a requirement of justice. (shrink)

The dramatic events of the crisis have reignited debates on the independence of central banks and the scope of their mandates. In this article, I contribute to the normative understanding of these developments by discussing John Rawls’s position in debates of the 1950s and 1960s on the independence of the US Federal Reserve. Rawls’s account of the central bank in his property-owning democracy, Democratic Central Banking (DCB), assigns authority over monetary policy directly to the government and prioritizes low unemployment over (...) price stability. I contrast DCB with Central Bank Independence (CBI), which requires that the central bank is independent of the government and pursues low inflation. I evaluate DCB by asking whether justice as fairness requires democratic control of the central bank and argue that it does not. Instead, so I argue, the choice between DCB and CBI should be justified in terms of the difference principle. By reflecting on central banking in a property-owning democracy, I cast new light on the Rawlsian realistic utopia of a just capitalist society, while also investigating democratic objections to today’s independent central banks. (shrink)

Justin Holt argues that the Rawlsian requirements for justice are, contrary to Rawls’ own pronouncements, better met by socialism than ‘property owning democracy’, both of them preferring both to just plain capitalism, even with a welfare state tacked on. I suggest that Rawls’s ‘requirements’ are far less clear than most think, and that the only clarified version prefers the capitalist welfare state.

This chapter contains sections titled: Redistributing Wealth, I: Taxing Large Estates and Incomes Redistributing Wealth, II: The Structure of Universal Assets Individual Assets versus Common Wealth Property‐Owning Democracy as an Incomplete Ideal Appendix: Accumulation of Capital Assets Over a 35‐Year Period References.

John Rawls is arguably the most important political philosopher of the past century. His theory of justice has set the agenda for debate in mainstream political philosophy for the past forty years, and has had an important influence in economics, law, sociology, and other disciplines. However, despite the importance and popularity of Rawls's work, there is no clear picture of what a society that met Rawls's principles of justice would actually look like. This article sets out to explore that question.

The distinction drawn by Rawls between the ideas of property-owning democracy and welfare state capitalism parallels his distinction between justice-based ‘liberalisms of freedom’ (including his own conception of justice as fairness) and utilitarian- based ‘liberalisms of happiness’. In this paper I argue that Rawls’s failure to attach the same level of significance to essential socio-economic rights and liberties as he attached to the traditional liberal civil and political rights and liberties gives justice as fairness a quasi-utilitarian character, which is incompatible (...) with the fundamental objective of protecting the highest.-order interests of citizens conceived as free and equal. I argue that in order fully to protect these interests, rights to access to non-human capital and productive resources should be assigned the same level of significance as that assigned to the civil and political rights and liberties, and prioritized over the lower-order rights and benefits regulated by Rawls’s second principle of justice. (shrink)

The term ‘predistribution’ draws attention to the need for policies and institutions that are designed to improve the position of the least advantaged members of society by generating a fairer distribution of opportunities and benefits from the operation of the free market system, with less reliance on redistributive tax-and-transfer mechanisms. Although the idea of progressive predistribution has only recently begun to attract the attention of politicians and commentators in the mainstream media, there is an older and more philosophically grounded predistributive (...) approach that goes back to the idea of the property-owning democracy proposed by Economist James Meade and further developed by liberal political philosopher John Rawls. In this article, I argue that neither the Meadeian/Rawlsian POD model, nor the more recent analysis of the idea of progressive predistribution, provide a clear and convincing account of the distinction between predistributive and redistributive mechanisms. I then argue that a more promising account of this distinction is provided by the idea of the socialization of economic rent through taxation of the rental value of land, and that there are good reasons to think that a shift in the burden of taxation away from production and employment and on to the rental value of land might turn out to be both more genuinely predistributive and more effectively progressive than other possible predistributive mechanisms that have recently been proposed, most notably the aggressive taxation of private inheritances as a means to broaden the distribution of privately owned capital and productive property. (shrink)

The paper analyzes Rawls's moral psychology and the claim that a just society must foster a sufficiently strong sense of justice. When Rawls investigates the development of the sense of justice under a just basic structure, he tacitly narrows down the focus: he only demonstrates the development of a sense of justice on the premise that all members of society are already in possession of a full-fledged sense of justice, save the one individual under investigation. This (...) begs the question, largely presupposing what needs to be explained, namely, how citizens at large develop a sense of justice. Rawls's narrowing of perspective leads to distortions in the analysis of stability, particularly with regard to a property-owning democracy. However, in lesser known parts of his work, Rawls offers clues for a more plausible account. Here, the idea is that institutions must be structured such that they enable all of us to nurture the sense of justice of each of us. With this idea of collective self-transformation in place, it becomes clear that economic institutions must be broadly democratized because of their profound educational role. Thus, the choice between a property-owning democracy and liberal socialism falls more strongly upon the latter. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Why a Politics of Property‐Owning Democracy Is Needed Property‐Owning Democracy and Public Opinion Property‐Owning Democracy Versus the Welfare State, Revisited The Viability of Property‐Owning Democracy The Core Issue: The Morality of Large‐Scale Taxation of the Very Rich From Moral Critique to Mobilization: Who Would Be For Property‐Owning Democracy? Conclusion: Going Public With Property‐Owning Democracy References.

The article argues that Rawls’s property-owning democracy should not be understood as a necessary standard of democratic legitimacy. This position contradicts Rawls’s own understanding to some extent, but a rejoinder with elements of political liberalism is possible. He concedes that justice as fairness is a ‘comprehensive liberal doctrine’ and that a well ordered society affirming such a doctrine ‘contradicts reasonable pluralism’. Rawls makes clear that reasonable pluralism in combination with the burdens of judgment lead to rare unanimity in political life (...) and to the necessity of majority and plurality voting procedures. (shrink)

The first book length study of property-owning democracy, Republic of Equals argues that a society in which capital is universally accessible to all citizens is uniquely placed to meet the demands of justice. Arguing from a basis in liberal-republican principles, this expanded conception of the economic structure of society contextualizes the market to make its transactions fair. The author shows that a property-owning democracy structures economic incentives such that the domination of one agent by another in the market is structurally (...) impossible. The result is a renovated form of capitalism in which the free market is no longer a threat to social democratic values, but is potentially convergent with them. It is argued that a property-owning democracy has advantages that give it priority over rival forms of social organization such as welfare state capitalism and market socialist institutions. The book also addresses the currently high levels of inequality in the societies of the developed West to suggest a range of policies that target the "New Inequality" of our times. For this reason, the work engages not only with political philosophers such as John Rawls, Philip Pettit and John Tomasi, but also with the work of economists and historians such as Anthony B. Atkinson, François Bourguignon, Jacob S. Hacker, Lane Kenworthy, and Thomas Piketty. (shrink)

Im this paper I argue that Rawls distinguishes two different ways in which a system can be inconsistent with justice as fairness. The first concerns those systems that are based on principles that simply deny justice as fairness, as in the case of capitalism. The second concerns systems that, while pursuing aims similar to those of justice as fairness, are structured in ways that cause them to work very differently from their intended aims. Following Esping-Andersen’s identification of different “worlds” of (...) welfare states, I will show which specific kind of welfare state falls under Rawls’s first argument. (shrink)

This paper discusses what type of sociological context is appropriate for Rawls’ ‘property-owning democracy’. Following certain suggestions offered by Rawls and in the work of Joshua Cohen, it explores, in particular, the kind of fraternity and social interaction suitable for citizens in Rawlsian society and the role of the state in engineering these bonds. Utilising a normative framework based on Rawls’ discussion of a property-owning democracy and various data sets, the paper argues that bonds of social trust, active participation (...) in trade unions and enrolment in public schools, and the use of state policy to organise a mixture of public, cooperative, and private economic institutions would be suitable for a Rawlsian society to adopt because it appears that these structures are favourably connected to the ends of Rawlsian justice. (shrink)

This paper foregrounds one argument in Rawls’s work that is crucial to his case for one, determinate, form of political economy: a property-owning democracy. Section one traces the evolution of this idea from the seminal work of Cambridge economist James Meade; section two demonstrates how a commitment to a property-owning democracy flows from Rawls’s own principles; section three focuses on Rawls’s striking critique of orthodox welfare state capitalism. This all sets the stage for an argument, presented in section four, from (...) the complexity of economic interactions to the strategy of making markets fair in the only feasible way that they can be made fair, namely, by “patterning” their effects. Section five concludes by asking whether any scheme of this general type is a realistic form of utopianism for a society such as ours. (shrink)

There is a growing contention in the Housing Justice movement from activists, theorists, and politicians that not only should everyone have enough housing, but there is something wrong with having too much of it. This paper provides a framework to articulate and defend efforts to create housing wealth ceilings. Building on the work of Ingrid Robeyns, it develops the moral and political doctrine of housing limitarianism. This doctrine asserts it is morally wrong to have too much housing while others, human (...) or animal, do not have enough, and that governments ought to limit the excessive acquisition/consumption of housing by individuals and corporations. I employ the Rawlsian ideal of property-owning democracy to argue for the dispersal of homeownership throughout society. Lastly, I discuss how housing justice can ethically negotiate the apparent conflict between increasing the supply of affordable housing and the preservation of natural habitat for wildlife. (shrink)

Abstract: The gist of Welsclie’s argument seems to be to pick up on an idea he attributes to Rawls, that in a true property-owning democracy, productive wealth would be distributed more broadly ‘ex ante’ rather than, as now, ‘ex post.’, the point of demarcation being the use of capital to generate wealth and income. As against this, I argue that ex ante distribution of capital is impossible, because business activity creates wealth, and thus we don’t know what there is to (...) distribute ex ante. Moreover, the prospect of greater wealth for the producers ex post is what especially motivates them to produce, and without production we are poor. It is also noted that Rawls’s ‘difference principle’ does not in fact have the egalitarian implications he supposes, nor really any distributive implications, despite Rawls’s intentions. (shrink)

This article extends property-owning democracy to the digital realm and introduces “data-owning democracy,” a new political economic regime characterized by the wide distribution of data as capital among citizens. Drawing on republican theory and acknowledging data's unique role in the digital economy, it proposes a two-tier model that combines different modes of data ownership and corresponding rights. The first layer of “data-owning democracy” is characterized by a digital public infrastructure that enables citizens to collectively generate data and have a say (...) in how their citizen data are used. In the second layer, individuals automatically receive machine-readable copies of their data whenever they are generated—a slightly more advanced form of the European Union's existing right to data portability (Art. 20). With its focus on empowerment, data-owning democracy is designed to be complementary to existing data protection regulations. It also illustrates how political theory more broadly, and republican theory specifically, can be instructive for specifying the normative components of a new political economy dealing with questions of empowerment and digital rights. (shrink)

This article makes the case for a specific variety of what we call Collective Capital Institutions (CCIs), by returning to the idea of Wage-Earner Funds (WEFs) – a 1970s Swedish policy proposal designed gradually to shift ownership and control over parts of the economy to democratically controlled institutions. We identify two attractive rationales in favour of such a scheme and argue that both can fruitfully be transposed to the current worldwide economic situation. The egalitarian rationale is that WEFs could help (...) in the pursuit of equality by giving a wider set of people a stake in collectively owned companies and a right to their profits. The democratic rationale is that WEFs redistribute not only these profits, but also the power over economic decisions made within companies. We then contrast such schemes for collective capital ownership with the similar but much more privatised proposals set out in, for instance, John Rawls's idea of a ‘property-owning democracy’. We argue that CCIs ultimately are more likely to contribute to the development of the ‘sense of justice’ within society that is needed for a stable just society. We conclude that CCIs deserve a great deal more exploration in academic and political discussions of egalitarian economic systems. (shrink)

As is well known, John Rawls opposes the idea and policy of basic income. However, this paper posits that his view of self-respect and activity could accommodate its implementation. Rawls lists the social basis of self-respect in social primary goods as the most important good, but does not assume that it is derived from wage labor alone. It appears that his theory of justice aims to criticize the work-centered (wage-labor) society and to overcome it. Besides, as Rawls desires, for our (...) work to be meaningful and our life worthwhile, we should institutionalize basic income because it can improve workers’ bargaining power and their attitude toward work, in addition to enhancing their leisure time. In this paper, by considering the normative relationship between meaningful work, worthwhile life, and self-respect from a Rawlsian perspective, I inquire into the potential of basic income in his well-ordered society. (shrink)

The idea of a 'property-owning democracy' became central to John Rawls's re-evaluation of his theory of justice. This article traces the origins of Rawls's concept of `property-owning democracy' first to the writings of the economist James Meade and then to those of early twentieth-century British conservatives, focusing on the question of how the meaning of democracy was defined and re-defined throughout this history. I argue that Rawls inherited a discursive matrix from the British conservatives in which the notion of 'property-owning (...) democracy' refers to the limits that should be set on democratic practices to make democracy compatible with the needs and interests of property-owners. In addition to tracing the genealogy of the idea of a 'property-owning democracy', the article points toward more recent attempts, partially inspired by Rawls's 'political turn', to re-examine the distribution of property-ownership from the perspective of what is required for viable democratic deliberations. The article ends with an addendum lamenting the fact that when George W. Bush's administration adopted the British ideas and policies associated with 'property-owning democracy' it chose to omit 'democracy' altogether and to describe its initiative as 'ownership society'. (shrink)

Understanding the relationship of democracy and property ownership is one of the most important tasks for contemporary political philosophy. In his concept of property-owning democracy John Rawls explores the thesis that property in productive means has an indirect effect on the formation of true or false beliefs and that unequal ownership of productive capital leads to distorted and deceived convictions. The basic aspect of Rawls’s conception can be captured by the claim that for securing the fair value of the political (...) liberties a widespread dispersal of property in productive resources is required that minimizes the formation of delusions and therefore improves the conditions of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Justice as Fairness and Property‐Owning Democracy Part One: Property‐Owning Democracy: Theoretical Foundations Part Two: Interrogating Property‐Owning Democracy: Work, Gender, Political Economy Part Three: Toward a Practical Politics of Property‐Owning Democracy: Program and Politics References.

In a recent article in this journal, Alan Thomas presents a novel defence of what I call ‘Rawlsian Institutionalism about Justice’ against G. A. Cohen’s well-known critique. In this response I aim to defend Cohen’s rejection of Institutionalism against Thomas’s arguments. In part this defence requires clarifying precisely what is at issue between Institutionalists and their opponents. My primary focus, however, is on Thomas’s critical discussion of Cohen’s endorsement of an ethical prerogative, as well as his appeal to the (...) institutional framework of a ‘property-owning democracy’ in his elaboration of the precise institutional requirements of Rawlsian Institutionalist justice, and his related claim that Cohen’s rejection of Institutionalism involves an objectionable ‘double counting’ of the demands of justice. I argue that once we are clear about both the kind of justification that can be given for a prerogative within a plausible ethical theory, and about the key points of departure between Institutionalist views and their rivals, Cohen’s rejection of Institutionalism appears well-motivated, and Thomas’s claim that his view is guilty of double counting the demands of justice can be seen to be mistaken. (shrink)

Like a great work of literary art, which indeed it is, Alexis de Tocqueville's extraordinary analysis of American society grows more impressive with each exposure to it. Everything has changed and nothing has changed since Democracy in America was published in the 1830’s. Its author grasped with remarkable perception both the mutable and the immutable qualities of man. There could be nothing more salutary for us today than to assimilate his fine sense of what was permanent in a (...) world which, like ours, was undergoing deep convulsions. Committed to the classical economics of Adam Smith, Tocqueville did not share Smith's illusions about the eternal nature of the market. On the contrary, as Albert Salomon has emphasized, his point of view was Heraclitean, the specter of continual change and ceaseless transformation dominating his thought. Surely such a perspective, which antedates both Darwin and Marx, is more appropriate for sociologists in a revolutionary age than elegantly constructed theories of social equilibrium which treat change as a special problem or a deus ex machina. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Indictment Background Institutions for Distributive Justice A Non‐Capitalist Property‐Owning Democracy Economic Democracy ED Versus POD POD Modified References.

In his defenses of empire, Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized the need to achieve grandeur for France, and his writings on Algeria have shaped our understanding of his political career. In pursuing empire abroad as a remedy for weak politics at home, scholars maintain that Tocqueville abandoned the participatory politics of Democracy in America. This essay argues, however, that the focus on Tocqueville’s international turn has obscured his interest in the greatness of domestic party politics. It demonstrates that Tocqueville championed a (...) version of grandeur tied to the latent energies of the lower classes and distinct from the Bonapartism and aristocratic nostalgia that characterized his thoughts on empire. This version of grandeur was a political reclamation of disagreement and debate that supported great party opposition to counter the malaise of bourgeois rule. The essay concludes by comparing Tocqueville’s attitude toward foreign others, whose freedoms had to be sacrificed to the cause of French nationalism, with his description of the lower classes within his own nation, whose inclusion in the franchise could foster great politics. This comparison enables us to draw modest lessons for interpreting political grandeur in the present day. (shrink)

John Rawls says: “The main problem of distributive justice is the choice of a social system.” Property-owning democracy is the social system that Rawls thought best realized the requirements of his principles of justice. This article discusses Rawls’s conception of property-owning democracy and how it is related to his difference principle. I explain why Rawls thought that welfare-state capitalism could not fulfill his principles: it is mainly because of the connection he perceived between capitalism and utilitarianism.

A half-century of Rawls interpreters have overemphasized economic equality in A Theory of Justice, slighting liberty—the central value of liberalism—in the process. From luck-egalitarian readings of Rawls to more recent claims that Rawls was a “reticent socialist,” these interpretations have obscured Rawls’s identity as a philosopher of freedom. They have also obscured the perhaps surprising fact that Rawlsian liberties (basic and non-basic) restrain and even undermine that same economic equality. As I will show in this article, such undermining occurs (...) in three areas: first, in the lexical priority of the basic liberties; second, in the (underappreciated) role played by free and competitive markets in Rawls’s theory; and third, in the structure and functioning of Rawls’s preferred economic institutions, viz., liberal socialism and property-owning democracy. (shrink)

Alan Thomas’ Republic of Equals: Predistribution and Property-Owning Democracy sets itself the ambitious task of synthesising neo-republican political theory and Rawlsian justice as fairness. It is...

Since World War I, the United States has pursued the defense of Western civilization as a critical element of its own national interest. In his provocative reconsideration of that goal, Robert Strausz-Hupe asks whether the American people can still agree upon and adopt foreign policies consistently devoted to that end. He specifically examines popular and paradoxical attitudes that often undermine Washington's ability to defend American and Western interests, attitudes towards society and the state, politics and government, instruments of foreign policy (...) and the people who wield them. As the backdrop for his analysis, Strausz-Hupe employs the wisdom of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, reiterating Tocqueville's finding that the driving force of American life is its passion for equality and democracy. To this insight, Strausz-Hupe adds another: When one realizes that domestic politics is the driving force behind foreign policy, one understands why "the foreign policy of the United States cannot be other than the defense of democracy everywhere." Unlike some analysts, however, Strausz-Hupe believes that this proposition states only the problem for American statesmen not the answer. The answer, Strausz-Hupe concludes, lies in a universal federation of democratic states. In an appreciative foreword that examines the evolution of Strausz-Hupe thought, Walter A. McDougall demonstrates that this idealistic vision of a democratic world-state has been the unifying thread in Strausz-Hupe's intellectual career, not the calculating Realpolitik so often attributed to him. Democracy and American Foreign Policy will be of central importance to international relations specialists, policymakers, political scientists, and students of political philosophy. Its chapters include "Tocqueville and Nationalism"; "Tocqueville and Marx"; "The Hypocrisies of Egalitarianism"; "Foreign Policy and Interest Groups"; and "Isolationism and the New World Order.". (shrink)

This commentary challenges Michael Scliefczyk’s proposal for a realistically utopian welfare state (RUWS). As it stands, RUWS says too little about the concrete measures it will offer to avoid political domination and harmful inequalities. Moreover, RUWS follows Rawlsian Property-Owning Democracy (POD) by being silent on crucial issues such as banking regulation, the governance of investments and the issue of actual control over capital. Ultimately, it therefore seems that RUWS does not present an attractive alternative to POD since it suffers (...) from very similar problems and shortcomings as POD. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 30.2 (2000) 113-126 [Access article in PDF] Dissenting Words:A Conversation with Jacques Rancière 1 Davide Panagia:In your writings you highlight the political efficacy of words. In The Names of History, for instance, this emphasis is discussed most vividly in terms of what you refer to as an "excess of words" that marks the rise of democratic movements in the seventeenth century. Similarly, in On The Shores of Politics, (...) you begin your discussion with an excursus on the end of politics as the end of the promise. Finally, in Dis-agreement you speak of "the part of those who have no-part" as voicing a "wrong" for the sake of equality.In each of these instances, however, your treatment of words (and language more generally) is very different from those thinkers of the "linguistic turn" in political philosophy who expound on an ethics of deliberation as the first virtue of modern democracies. For that matter, your approach is quite different from those thinkers who focus on the aporias of language as such.Could you discuss this thematic of the proliferation of words in your thinking about democratic politics?Would it be fair to characterize your research on and exposition of democratic thinking as a "poetics of politics"?Rancière's Reply:In order to address your question adequately, it would be wise to enlarge the sense of "linguistic turn" you invoke. In its most generally accepted sense, the linguistic turn in philosophy consists in ascribing to linguistic processes certain phenomena and specifiable modes of relating objects attributed, in a previous instance, either to factual processes or lines of thought. This approach is not limited to the two figures you invoke in your question. The linguistic turn also has two stages of development that, from my experience, have been more noticeable in France than in the United States. The first phase, then, emerged with Lévi-Strauss and his structural approach to social relations founded on a linguistic model of relationality, subsequently reprised in Lacan's psychoanalytic notion that "the unconscious is structured like a language" that, in its turn, conjoins the energetic mental processes Freud discusses to linguistic practices. The primacy of "the linguistic" thus granted language all the properties of the Freudian unconscious [End Page 113] along with those of a Marxist notion of infrastructure. The Saussurian opposition between langue and parole provided a privileged status to a linguistic model whose role was that of a general law that unconsciously structures the behavior of individuals and societies. It is on the basis of these parameters that the structuralist moment of the linguistic turn was constituted. At one and the same time, the analysis of speech acts became first and foremost a "symptomatic" analysis of those procedures of misrecognition that linguistically structured both the behavior of individuals and social relations. When we "read" Le Capital with Althusser, the interpretive and methodological schema for linguistic phenomena operated like a kind of "policing of the enunciated": that is, a search for those unsuccessful (i.e., inadequate) modes of expression that exemplify such symptomatic procedures of misrecognition.The second phase of the linguistic turn constituted itself more ambiguously. For those who shared intellectual experiences similar to my own, this version involved a critique of the langue/infrastructure model; that is, a further and more favorable consideration of the value of the political and the linguistic games therein that, according to the Althusserian/Marxist model (and, indeed, with structuralism more generally), were to be treated as ideological artifacts. In a very real sense, it all began with the May '68 assertion that "we are all German Jews"--an entirely ideological statement, the validity of which, if analyzed at the level of its content, one finds to rest entirely on the capacity to overturn the political relationship between the order of designations and that of events by emphasizing the gap that separates subject and predicate. From there, an entire field of understanding speech acts as political gestures opened up: a field that reconfigured the division between words and things while rearranging the distinction between legitimate... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Care and Gender in Contemporary Capitalist Societies Supporting Care and Moving Toward Gender Justice The Consequences of Property‐Owning Democracy for Gender and Care Conclusion References.

This essay is concerned with the question of what kind of economic system would be needed in order to realize Rawls’s principles of social justice. Hitherto, debates about ‘property-owning democracy’ and ‘liberal socialism’ have been overly schematic, in various respects, and have therefore missed some of the most important issues regarding the relationships between social justice and economic institutions and systems. What is at stake between broadly capitalist or socialist economic systems is not in fact a simple choice in a (...) single dimension, but rather a range of choices across a range of different dimensions. This essay, then, has a dual objective: first, it aims to provide a richer account of this normative territory, while showing how issues of economic democracy, decommodification and the limits of markets, and the role of democratic economic planning, all raise questions of justice that are not well captured by focusing only on questions of ownership. Second, it aims to show how the case for democratic socialism can be developed from Rawlsian foundations, in a way that is sensitive to the normative affinities between Rawlsian liberal egalitarianism and democratic socialism, and which attends carefully to the different kinds of institutional elements which a stable, just, and democratic society would require. Taking these aims together, the hope is that we can move onward to a richer debate about the ways in which the realization of democratic socialist institutions may be seen as a requirement of social justice. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Is Equality? From the Fact of Inequality to the Fact of Pluralism The Difference Principle Ideals Latent in Public Political Culture How Egalitarian Are We? Outside of the Bounds of Public Reason References.

This article assesses John Rawls's case against the welfare state as a means for implementing socio-economic justice, and for a ‘property-owning democracy’, from both a normative and a methodological point of view. It points out several flaws of Rawls's critique of the welfare state, through a focus on an existing variety of it — a Swedish-style universal welfare state — which can be said to be relatively successful, both in terms of normative merits and in terms of institutional stability and (...) capacity for self-perpetuation. On this basis, the article argues that a universal welfare state should constitute the institutional bedrock of Rawlsian social justice, even though it cannot completely fulfil all its requirements. It also develops some reasons to think that, in order to adequately and stably implement those requirements of Rawlsian justice that cannot be fulfilled even by a universal welfare state, the latter should be supplemented by democratic socialism, not by a ‘property-owning democracy’. (shrink)

This essay critically revisits Jiwei Ci’s prudential argument for political democracy in China from the very Tocquevillian standpoint on which Ci’s core theoretical argument is predicated. I argue that Ci’s underlying assumption and argument regarding the enabling conditions of democracy actually depart significantly from Tocqueville’s own view due to Ci’s overly positive understanding of equality of conditions as directly constitutive of a democratic society and his assumed causal connection between capitalist society and political democracy. After clarifying what Tocqueville meant by (...) equality of conditions and discussing his prudential remedy for the perils of democracy, I conclude by suggesting an alternative pragmatic and prudential justification for democracy in China that is more consistent with the Tocquevillian conception of democracy. (shrink)