John Rawls

By Alan Go

John Rawls is often called the most important political philosopher of the 20th century, and even the most important philosopher in this field since John Stuart Mill. His name and ideas have been referenced frequently in many recent articles about the Occupy movement. If Ayn Rand has been adopted by the Tea Party as their intellectual backbone, then maybe Rawls can have a similar role to play for Occupy.

Rawls is a liberal philosopher. He believes that everybody should have access to basic rights such as freedom of speech and expression, and the right to vote and stand for political office. Presumably there is not much to disagree with here. What is exciting though, is how Rawls arrived at this principle, and the other ideas that flow from this process.

He believes in a particular form of social contract. In order to decide what conditions in society would be fair, he asks what principles citizens would be willing to agree to, were they all to start with equal bargaining power. The contract is therefore a hypothetical one, made from what he calls the original position.Rawls reasons that some people have more resources or knowledge than others. This gives people differing amounts of power in negotiations, and any agreement that emerges is likely to be unjust.

To correct this imbalance, it is necessary to put everybody under a ‘veil of ignorance’. This means that when deciding on the principles that will govern society, people know nothing about their race, gender, religion, social status and other similar features. Now, everyone is equal, and even when people simply try to secure the best outcome for themselves, the agreement they come to will be a fair one. His idea is often referred to as ‘justice as fairness’.

It is easy to see how Rawls’s first principle, of equal liberties and rights, emerges from this scenario. Since people do not know whether they are part of a despised religious or political minority, they will want to make sure that a tyranny of the majority is not possible, and that they will still have an equal chance of success at life.

However, it is the second principle that Rawls believes would emerge from the original position that makes up the more radical part of his philosophy.

The first part of the second principle is a strong commitment to equality of opportunity. Since your background and the social class and family you were born into are morally arbitrary facts about you, they should not affect your chances of holding political office or becoming successful. This right isn’t simply a negative one that guarantees a lack of interference, but a proactive positive one, that says we should try to even out the disadvantages people receive at birth. Again, there is likely not much disagreement here.

What Rawls then does is argue that if we agree that morally arbitrary facts about us should not affect what we deserve, then we should go further than mere equality of opportunity, and also push for equality of outcome.

If it is unfair for the circumstances we are born into to affect us, then is it not also similarly unfair for the natural talents we happen to have to play a role? After all, you may just happen to be born into a society that values the skills you happen to be good at. This is just pure luck. Other societies might place no value on those particular skills, and since you do not deserve to be born into a particular society, you cannot deserve any benefits you gain from being part of it.

Rawls even rejects appeals to reward effort, since this is still based on things like the environment you were raised in, and what genes you were born with. If you don’t believe in free will, you could stretch this reply further.

On this account, nobody deserves to earn more than anybody else, so in a fair society, everybody would get the same.

However, the second part of the second principle is known as the difference principle, and states that inequalities are permitted, but only if they benefit the least well-off people in society. So, if discrepancies in salary are needed in order to incentivise people to become doctors that can provide healthcare for the population, this is allowed. If some sectors are willing to pay high salaries for some if its employees, this is still acceptable, as long as part of that salary can be recouped through taxes, and then used to improve something like education.

Rawls also argues for equality on other grounds. He thinks that we should not allow salaries at the top to rise indefinitely with little or no benefit to those at the bottom, since this would break down cohesion and trust in society, leaving the poor feeling exploited, and making the system less democratic.

What then, would a Rawlsian state look like? At a minimum, it would be a system of welfare-state capitalism, with a highly progressive tax system. Rawls actually argued for something more, since he feared that this could still lead to too much political power being placed in the hands of society’s richest members. He wanted to encourage ownership of assets for as many people as possible, and even favoured institutions such as worker-managed companies.

Rawls has come a long way towards bringing together the quests for liberty and equality, and there are many different aspects of his ideas worth carefully considering. His philosophy is attractive both intellectually and emotionally, and manages to produce admirable sentiments like the following:

The least advantaged are not, if all goes well, the unfortunate and unlucky—objects of our charity and compassion, much less our pity—but those to whom reciprocity is owed as a matter of basic justice.