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128 - Marx, Karl
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- Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
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- 05 February 2015
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- 11 December 2014, pp 486-492
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Summary
Although Rawls doesn’t engage Marxism in his writings he does speak of Marx (1818–1883), and while Rawls certainly rejects much of what Marx (and later Marxists) claim, now that we have access to his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, published in 2007, we know that he had a high respect for Marx as a theorist and seems to have agreed with much of Marx’s general labor theory of value (or, more accurately, Marx’s theory of surplus labor or surplus social product), as well as with his theories of the nature of class societies, exploitation, and ideology. (However, this does not include Marx’s specific labor theory of value which claims that prices in equilibrium market conditions are determined by the socially necessary labor time presently required to produce them.) (See Cohen 1979, 23–29, 433–436; Peffer 1990.)
Rawls writes that Marx
turned to economics to clarify and to deepen his ideas only after he was about 28 years old. It is testimony to his marvelous gifts that he succeeded in becoming one of the great 19th-century figures of that subject, to be ranked along with Ricardo and [J. S.] Mill, Walras and Marshall. He was a self-taught, isolated scholar ...Given the circumstances of Marx’s life, his achievement as an economic theorist and political sociologist of capitalism is extraordinary and heroic. (LHPP 319)
It may be thought that with the recent collapse of the Soviet Union, Marx’s socialist philosophy and economics are of no significance today. I believe this would be a serious mistake for two reasons at least. The first reason is that while central command socialism, such as reigned in the Soviet Union, is discredited – indeed, it was never a plausible doctrine – the same is not true of liberal [market] socialism…The other reason for viewing Marx’s socialist thought as significant is that laissez-faire capitalism has grave drawbacks, and these should be noted and reformed in fundamental ways. Liberal socialism, as well as other views [e.g. justice as fairness and property-owning democracy], can help clear our minds as to how these changes are best done. (LHPP 323)
207 - Socialism
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- Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
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- 05 February 2015
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- 11 December 2014, pp 791-794
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Summary
Some on the right wing of the political spectrum condemn Rawls and Rawls’s theory for being “socialist”; some others, on the left side of the spectrum, claim that his theory is a species of “bourgeois ideology” and is incompatible with socialism. Neither of these claims is true. At the theoretical level (before taking actual historical circumstances and realities into account), Rawls’s theory is compatible with certain kinds of socialism but does not require any kind of socialism.
Which of these systems [capitalist or socialist] and the many intermediate forms most fully answers to the requirements of justice…depends in large part upon the traditions, institutions, and social forces of each country, and its particular historical circumstances. The political judgment in any given case will then turn on which variation is most likely to work out best in practice. (TJ 274/242)
Rawls takes private versus public “ownership of the means of production” (TJ 266) to be the essential difference between capitalist (“private property”) and socialist economies (and societies): “the size of the public sector under socialism (as measured by the fraction of total output produced by state-owned firms…) is much larger. In a private-property economy the number of publicly owned firms is presumably small and in any event limited to special cases such as public utilities and transportation” (TJ 235), while “under socialism the means of production and natural resources are publicly owned” (TJ 242).
16 - Basic needs, principle of
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- Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
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- 05 February 2015
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- 11 December 2014, pp 50-54
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In TJ Rawls does not mention a “principle of basic needs,” although he does speak of “needs” and the “precept of needs” (as one of the competing traditional canons of distributive justice) (TJ 244, 271–273).
The social minimum is the responsibility of the transfer branch [of government] . . . The workings of this branch take needs into account and assign them an appropriate weight . . . a competitive price system gives no consideration to needs and therefore it cannot be the sole device of distribution . . . the transfer branch guarantees a certain level of well-being and honors the claims of need.” (TJ 244)
However, even though Rawls clearly believes that the application of the difference principle will ensure that people’s basic needs are met (in all but the poorest societies), this is not stated or required in his two principles themselves.
Neither does TJ speak of “subsistence rights” (or a right to have the opportunity to meet one’s basic needs) or even of a right to life (in general) in his two principles. Nevertheless, it is arguable that Rawls’s theory of natural duties implicitly promulgates a right to life in both its negative and positive aspects (TJ 98–101, 293–301). His duty not to harm (i.e. not to cause unjustiied avoidable substantial harm to people) seems clearly to correlate to the “negative” right to life (i.e. to security rights), while his proposed duty to aid the severely deprived (if one can do so without great risk or cost to oneself) seems clearly to correlate to the “positive” aspects of the right to life (i.e. to subsistence rights). (See Peffer 1990, 20.)
169 - Property-owning democracy
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- Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
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- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
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- 05 February 2015
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- 11 December 2014, pp 656-661
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Contrary to much common opinion, John Rawls has never been an advocate of welfare-state capitalism; or perhaps of any form of capitalism, given his definitions. Rather, as a matter of ideal theory, the only two kinds of modern societies that he believes to be compatible with his two principles of justice are a property-owning democracy – which he sometimes calls “private-property democracy” (PL 328, 364; JF 159) – and a liberal socialist regime that has extensive markets. He contrasts these three types of societies when he speaks of “[Marx’s] criticisms of capitalism as a social system, criticisms that might seem. . . to apply as well to property-owning democracy, or equally to liberal socialism” (JF 139).
It is necessary “to bring out the distinction between a property-owning democracy, which realizes all the main political values expressed by the two principles of justice, and a capitalist welfare state, which does not. We think of such a democracy as an alternative to capitalism” (JF 135–136). We must distinguish “between property-owning democracy and a capitalist welfare state [since] … the latter conflicts with justice as fairness” (JF 8 n.7). “This leaves [only] … property owning democracy and liberal socialism [as types of modern societies whose] ideal descriptions include arrangements designed to satisfy the two principles of justice” (JF 138).
SYMPOSIUM ON GLOBALIZATION AND JUSTICE: INTRODUCTION
- RODNEY G. PEFFER
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- Economics & Philosophy / Volume 22 / Issue 1 / March 2006
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- 18 April 2006, pp. 113-114
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For over half a century in more than a dozen books and 600 philosophical articles Kai Nielsen has developed and defended a radically egalitarian theory of social justice as well as a political vision demanding a democratic, humane form of socialism and, on an international level, a federative world socialist government embodying these values. In Globalization and Justice Nielsen applies his acute analytical abilities and his substantive theories and views to the present ongoing reality of corporate, capitalist globalization, arguing that this sort of globalization is unjust in that it further disadvantages the developing world. He then argues for an alternative sort of globalization, a process that he believes could and should have, as its end goal, a democratic and humane socialist government and society on a world-wide scale. Along the way he compares his theory and vision to those of such other major contemporary thinkers as John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, G.A. Cohen, and Richard Rorty representing, respectively, liberal egalitarianism, critical theory, analytical Marxism (at least formerly), and post-modern eclecticism.