Rawls’ Theory of Justice

The question for Rawls is what ought the basic structure of a just society be.

Basic structure includes the rules for distribution of Primary Social Goods: A primary social good is something anyone would want, no matter what her particular aims in life—the stuff that makes it possible to pursue one’s goals.

1) Basic Human Rights Negative Rights like Freedom of Speech and Religion, and the right to own property Positive rights like a right to education and health care

Negative rights are rights to behave in certain ways with which the Government cannot permissibly interfere.

Positive rights are rights to some good, some item or service, which the government must provide.

2) Social Position: Job, Social Status, Positions of Social Power

3) Income and the bits of property or services it buys: Money, Food, Housing, Health Care and so on. Rawls is a social contract theorist: He thinks what legitimizes state constraints on the freedoms of its citizens is that it would be rational for them to agree to be bound by those constraints under the circumstances of fair bargaining about what those constraints will be.

If I complain that the state is taxing me, and so taking money that is mine to use for purposes I do not wish, I have no ground for complaint if:

In choosing fairly with others a basic structure for society, I would, if rational, agree to a set of rules which permits the state to tax for those purposes.

So there are two questions: 1) what are the conditions under which bargaining about the basic structure of society is fair, i.e. no one has undue advantage (called the original position)? and 2) what is it to reason rationally in such circumstances? Unfair Advantages.

Natural Primary Goods: Intelligence, Health, Strength, Athletic Ability, Artistic Ability, Family Position

Some people are blessed by superior talents, physical constitutions, or by especially advantaged families (e.g. the Kennedy scions; Bill Gate’s first child, the Bush’s), and so on. Such advantages accrue to a person not as a matter desert, not as a result of having earned these, but just as a matter of luck—the luck of one’s birth. Rawls thinks it is unfair to take advantage of these advantages in bargaining over the basic rules of justice.

If I know, for example, that neither I nor my children will be plagued by any genetic disease, I will be less inclined to agree to rules of justice which provide for basic health care. But the position of power from which I bargain here, knowing I will be free from cystic fibrosis or sickle cell disease, is unearned. I am so positioned only by luck, and the basic rules of a just society should not turn on features of luck. Social Power: If I know that I will be an industrialist with enormous capital at my disposal, I will bargain differently than if I know I will be a working class stiff. I might hold out for different policies about hiring or taxation if I am Bill Gates, or Rockefeller or Carnegie (indeed, the latter two did just this). In some sense, this status is earned, but Rawls thinks it also is unfair. To see why, suppose we also allowed all the working class stiffs to bargain collectively. Collectively, they have a veto just as do especially powerful individuals, but it would be unfair of them in bargaining over the basic structure of society to insist, say, that no person may own more than a million or two worth of private property, since this would unfairly disadvantage the entrepreneurs. The basic structure of a just society should not turn on this kind of information—if it is allowed, the agreement is certain to be unfair to some. Personal Conceptions of the Good Life: People differ in their conceptions of what makes life worth living. Some really value fishing, single malt, poker and philosophy; others Coors and football and the country life, and yet others urban environments filled with opera, modern art, and jazz. We are all inclined to favor basic rules which make it easier to pursue our own conceptions of the good life, even if this makes it harder for others to pursue their conceptions.

Religious tolerance is a case in point. Any number of religious sects would if they could (and at times have) insisted that their religious commitments be compulsory. Persons who take those commitments seriously are unlikely to agree ever about the basic structure of society, making fair bargaining impossible. Rawls’ Solution: The Veil of Ignorance

In the original position bargainers are to abstract from their knowledge of who they are in society.

We are to imagine bargaining when ignorant of: Our physical and mental abilities. Our actual social position—job, wealth, power, status, etc. Our actual conception of the good life: our moral and religious commitments, the particular activities we value, are particular tastes, and so on.

We do know: The facts about human psychology—that people have religious and moral commitments, and that we do too (though we are ignorant of what these are). That people have aims and ambitions, that they generally prefer affluence to its absence, and so on. The role these commitments play in human decisions and in our lives. The facts about how human beings interact with one another—that we are acquisitive, sometimes jealous, often fractious, but capable of generousity and self-sacrifice, and so on. So how are we to reason about the basic structure of society from behind the veil of ignorance?

We do not know our particular position in society—how much we will make, what our aims will be, whether we will be strong or weak, healthy or sick, and so on.

Indeed, we cannot even assign probabilities to particular outcomes —we can’t assign a chance to our being a member of a wealthy family, or a poor one; we can’t assign a chance to our religious commitments being those of the majority, or not (there might not be a majority, and if there is, we can not know how large it will be —51% of the populace, or 99% of the populace), and so on.

We do know that we will have commitments, religious, moral and personal, which define our lives and the value of them. We cannot know whether it is fishing, or Coors, or modern art or our conception of God which makes our lives meaningful; but we do know that there will be some such goal, project or ambition which plays this role.

Consequently, we want to put ourselves in the best possible position to pursue those goals, whatever they may be. But we are reasoning under conditions of uncertainty—there are various possible outcomes, whose value we can define, but of whose probability we are ignorant. Under conditions of uncertainty, rationality requires Maximin decision making: Choose that arrangement whose worst possible outcome is better than the worst possible outcome of any other arrangement.

Maximin decision making might be put this way: choose the rules for the basic structure of society on the assumption that your worst enemy will determine your actual position in society. Since your worst enemy will put you in the worst possible position, you want to choose rules which make that worst possible position as good as possible. Maximin Behind the Veil of Ignorance

Rawls thinks maximin decision making requires that we agree on two rules (the second has two parts), ordered in priority.

The first rule ensures basic political rights: Each person is to have equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.

These will entail the basic negative political and human rights with which we are familiar: Freedom of speech and conscience; freedom from cruel and unusual punishment (torture), rights to privacy (of person and possessions, of rights against being searched without due process, and so on).

Rawls reasons that these goods are so important to pursuing our personal aims, whatever they may be, that we will under no circumstances agree to forego them. The second rule is more complicated, and more contentious. It has two parts.

The first says that positions in society (jobs, positions of power) will be open to all under conditions of equal opportunity.

The second says that social and economic inequalities are attached to positions, and are to everyone’s advantage.

The last part is more than a little ambiguous, and in fact Rawls has a quite unambiguous reading of it in mind. This reading is called the difference principle. The difference principle says: Inequalities in the distribution of primary social goods are justified only if they result in a better position for the worst off in society. Roughly, the difference principle says it is OK for doctors to make more than others, for capitalists to make lots more than others and so on, only if this makes everyone else better off than the would otherwise have been. And moreover, doctors and capitalists should only make as much more than everyone else as is necessary for them to do what they do.

So if a doctor will be equally good if paid 100 grand a year as if paid 120 grand a year, but not so good if paid 90 grand a year, she ought to be paid 100 grand, and no more. If Bill Gates will at an 85% taxation rate produce just as much as he does at a 35% taxation rate, but not at a 90% taxation rate, then he ought to be taxed at 85%. The only primary goods to which the difference principle applies are differences in money and power, not basic political liberties.

Differences in wealth and power must attach to positions in society that are open to all under conditions of equal opportunity (this is required by the first part of the second principle).

Start from a totally egalitarian distribution of wealth and power, i.e. everyone gets the same. Then allow someone to earn a little bit more than the rest. Her earning more can decrease the size of the total pie, leave it unchanged, or increase it. In the last case, when her having more increases the size of the total pie. If that increase is large enough to compensate for the extra we gave her, then everyone is better off. So giving her extra would be an inequality that results in a better position for the worst off in society (here, everyone else). The difference principle says inequalities like this, and no others, are permitted.

Equal Distribution Unequal Distribution

Svetlana’s Share The justification for the difference principle is this. You are bargaining in the original position using maximin procedures. Will you allow a difference in income to attach to a position, if so doing does not improve the position of the worst off? Well, no—you should assume your worst enemy will assign you to that worst off position; your situation is not improved, and probably made worse, by the inequality. So why allow it?

But if the inequality does improve your position—you get a smaller share of what turns out to be a much bigger pie—then you should allow it, because even if you find yourself in the position of the worst off, you are better off than you would be without the inequality (since then you would have a larger share of a much smaller pie).