In the United States today, the public debates about healthcare, Social Security, and the standard of living have reached a new level of prominence. While some of these dialogues pertain to already-existing, but purportedly failing institutions like Social Security and the minimum wage, more than ever the climate of public opinion states, “government ought to provide its people with economic security.” Of course, the degree of the economic security to be provided varies greatly, from simple safety nets such as unemployment payments to outright socialization of particular industries. The nations of Europe are examples of affluent “democracies” (broadly speaking) which incorporate strong social programs, taxing usually between half and over two-thirds of all income to pay for (among many other things) public education, employment agencies, guaranteed housing, and most conspicuously, universalized healthcare. The ideological underpinnings of the pervasion of the belief in the need for such institutions in America have their contemporary roots in the early 20th century, which heralded the Progressive movement. The movement successfully established an essential power for the exercise of any resource-intensive redistribution scheme: the graduated income tax. With the coming of the Great Depression, the shift in the national mood was solidified; attributing the economic decline to Herbert Hoover’s inaction, Franklin D. Roosevelt attained offices. His New Deal solidified, constitutionally and psychologically, the role of the U.S. government as a major actor in the economy. The subsequent creation of his “Second Bill of Rights,” and later the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, codified the supreme change in the language of rights from the Founding’s conception of formal political guarantees, to substantive economic entitlements. No longer would one simply have the Lockean rights to protection from harm, freedom to choose one’s own path in life, and the ability to acquire and hold property freely; one would also have the right to have certain kinds of property, regardless of one’s success in productive endeavors (invariably coming into conflict with traditional property rights).
Changes in attitude toward laissez-faire capitalism historically have been generally defined by any or all of three major shifts: most importantly, the replacement of liberal political rights with economic entitlements; closely connected, a new emphasis on collective instead of individual good; and in effect, the belief in the use of organized coercion (government) as a valuable tool for bettering those collectives. Two contemporary thinkers, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, brought the debate about the role of government in a wealthy liberal democracy (such as ours) back to the philosophical forefront, asking the essential question: if they should at all, for what reasons should government be able to interfere with the market, beyond protecting its citizens from violence and fraud?[1] On one side, Rawls’ Theory of Justice attempts to justify a broader scope of government powers by appealing to a Kant-esque “original position,” in which agents must decide on principles of justice irrespective of what their physical position will actually be in the world. On the other, Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia sets out to construct a consistent account of the ideal libertarian state, and in the process reject Rawls’ arguments.[2] There is strong evidence- both in Nozick’s writings and elsewhere- that the position delineated in A Theory of Justice is a flawed justification for the liberal welfare state.
Rawls on Government
Though the focus of this paper is on government’s role as a redistributor of wealth, a holistic understanding of Rawls’ account of government is essential to understanding his position on redistribution. His primary concern in exploring social justice is what rights and duties members of a society must have in its institutions, and in turn how the benefits (and burdens) of social cooperation should be distributed. He argues from two principles of justice: the equality principle and the difference principle. The former prescribes that each individual must possess the same level of liberty as each other individual, and the latter prescribes that social and economic inequalities should be rectified for the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. These are ordered by priority; the institutions of the first can not be surpassed by “greater social and economic advantages.” Rawls defines these two principles are part of a larger, more general conception of social values: “all social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect – are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage.” One essential implication in this statement is that institutionally, the course of action we should take (as constrained by the equality principle) is an empirical question. If general property rights, freedom of association, and other facets of laissez-faire capitalism most frequently lead to material inequality compared to centrally planned production, yet produce a level of output that makes everyone better off, then they ought to be instituted.
Rawls’ idea of justice through the original position
He arrives at his principles of justice by creating a thought experiment, the “original position,” from which he derives his notion of “justice as fairness.” Before doing so, he establishes two primary premises. The first is a constraint of social unity; the freedom and equality of citizens must be respected. The second pertains to the fact that there always exists a plurality of conceptions of the good; these include one’s fundamental beliefs, values, projects, personal loyalties, and so forth. Because of these underlying necessities, Rawls holds a contractualist position in order to create a theory of justice which does not depend on any of those conceptions, but one with which free and equal citizens could be expected to reasonably agree. The establishment of a contract (a consensual agreement) would be the only way of respecting the autonomy of individuals totally, while at the same time providing a framework for universal governance. For a simple example, a comprehensive moral doctrine such as utilitarianism (“always act in such a way that leads to the greatest happiness”) would not, in Rawls’ view, be used as a starting point from which societal institutions would be designed, because one can always reasonably disagree with such a doctrine. Instead, the principles of justice would be determined by the hypothetical rational agreement in what Rawls argues to be the fair conditions of the original position (hence “justice as fairness”).
The original position has several necessary characteristics to achieve Rawls’ conclusions about justice. Firstly, he defines the participants, positing rational agents, who, in the negotiation, seek the guarantee of rights and resources to pursue their individual conceptions of the good, reflect on them and change them, and apply them. These assumptions are responsible for traditional liberal institutions (rights) of “freedom of conscience”: freedom of speech, press, religion, etc. Likewise, they are partially explanatory of common, universally accessible public resources: free primary schooling, public libraries, universities, etc. Secondly, he delineates the critical constraints: the finality of the contract, and most importantly, the “veil of ignorance.” Those participating in the original position have no knowledge of what their natural endowment, their place in society, or their conception of the good will be, but they will have general knowledge of how the world works and expect moderate scarcity of resources. The purpose of the veil of ignorance is to prevent these self-interested agents from supporting principles of justice that are biased in favor of their characteristics, instead forcing them to adopt universalizable principles. They will not know who they will be when they enter society (rich or poor, utilitarian or Kantian, etc.), and thus any preferential policy which they advocate in the original position is equally likely (from their perspective) to be to their benefit as their detriment.
Rawls on Wealth Redistribution
This leads to Rawls’ position on wealth redistribution. Its primary cause extends from the condition of utility maximization in the context of a lack of information about the distribution of outcomes. In effect, Rawls is appealing to the choices rational economic actors ought to make in the face of uncertainty. Imagine the following example of choice relating to uncertain outcomes. Someone must choose between two different coin-flip games: in one, the heads payoff is $5000, and the tails payoff is $0; in the other, the heads payoff is $2000, and the tails payoff is $1000. The coin is being flipped by a well-known trickster, who is reputable for his pleasure in biasing coins to every possible distribution. The player is aware of this, and thus does not know the probability that either heads or tails will occur on the coin, entailing a situation of total uncertainty. By Rawls’ (and standard game theoretic) reasoning, the player’s rational choice would be to choose the $2000-or-$1000 coin, in effect maximizing the outcome of the worst-case scenario. This coin is known as the maximin option, the uncertain game with the best worst outcome. In distributive justice, the maximin option would be the one in which the least advantaged, whoever it may be, will be guaranteed a certain payoff by society, whether it is in food, shelter, employment, healthcare, or education, at the expense of a higher payoff for others.
Rawls’ position is thus unique, in that he constructs it from no particular conception of the good except that of respecting individual autonomy at the inception of political principles. Unlike most advocates of distributive justice, he does not conclude his principles from some objective conception of the good, but only from a rational contractarian decision by agents to properly define the rules of social cooperation.