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August 9, 2010
I've just come across The Journal of Public Reason--one of the few open access e-journals in philosophy---via Public Reason, a blog for political philosophers.
In the June 2010 issue there is a review of G.A. Cohen's Rescuing Justice and Equality (2008) by Kevin Gray. Cohen's text is insightful critique of elements of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice and on a certain strand of liberal thought that has emerged from dominance of A Theory of Justice.
This is a liberalism that holds that, so long as the well-being of the worst off members of society is not made worse, any arrangement that increases the well-being of better-off members of society is morally acceptable. This is a liberalism that allows rampant inequalities and holds that justice does not in fact require equality.
Cohen wants to rescue equality and justice from Rawlsian liberalism, and to restore the rightful place of social existence to political theory. Gray says that in the first section (‘Rescuing Equality’), Cohen attacks what he sees as the inequality countenanced in Rawls’ name. Gray points out that:
... it is thought just, under most Rawlsian approaches, to sanction differences in income if they benefit the worst off in society. The question is, however, in what way are they likely to benefit the worst off? And why is it the case that the best off need be better off to help the poor? In many cases, it is thought that differences in income will benefit the worst off by causing the more talented (and presumably better off) to work harder: a rising tide raises all boats, so to speak. If it is the case, however, that the best off will only work harder if they them- selves will benefit, at a minimum it would seem that we are rewarding people’s selfishness; second, it would be a very poor argument indeed to allow the rich to argue for greater wealth based on their own greed.
Cohen challenges this belief, arguing that this incentive based approach goes against our most fundamental intuitions of what justice is.
The Rawlsian formulation loses sight of the fact that individuals exist not only within a polity, but within a community as well: to encourage selfishness is to allow an anti-egalitarian ethos to flourish. It would allow the rich to hold the poor hostage by refusing to work harder if they did not see sufficient benefit in it. It would only make sense to adopt this condition if we separate the state from the population, and we call justice what the state does, regardless the actions of the population.
Rawls misapplies the difference principle when he restricts its application to the design of the basic structure A more thoroughgoing egalitarian would hold that it should also apply directly to the actions of individuals and inform the ethos of a just society. Distributive justice, Cohen insists, requires equality, but the difference principle sacrifices equality in the name of Pareto gains. The difference principle is thus not a fundamental principle of justice, but a compromise between justice and other values.
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