The Lockean conception of society: society is a cooperative venture in which we engage for our mutual advantage. That is, it is only because each individual cooperates that everybody does better.
Thus, in a Lockean society we can expect society as a whole to become increasingly “wealthy”. But so far we have no method of dividing up this increased wealth in a just or fair manner. Call this the problem of distributive justice. (I’ll return to the issue of rights later.)
One possibility is to divide it up according to The Straight Rule: everybody gets an equal share. This is really a naive form of Marxism. Assuming that everybody pulls their own weight, this does seem like a reasonably fair way of dividing the wealth. But is it the best we can do?
Rawls thinks not. What he suggests is the following general conception of distributive justice: All social primary goods are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least favoured members of society.
It is helpful to see what Rawls is driving at to introduce the concept of an inequality surplus: An inequality surplus occurs whenever an unequal distribution (of future goods), by eliciting greater output, increases the productivity of an activity enough that even after the unequal payoffs have been made their is enough left over to give extra to those who did not receive any additional payoff from the original distribution.
Example: Suppose you have a shop that has sixty workers occupy six roles all of whom are paid exactly the same amount. Suppose that the net annual income of this shop is $600,000. So each worker is paid $10,000 per year. Now suppose that we can increase the net annual income of the shop by deciding to pay those workers in two of the ‘bottleneck’ jobs an extra $5,000 and suppose that 10 workers in all are needed for these bottleneck jobs. So the bottleneck jobs will require an additional $50,000 per year in salary.
Now, if the increase in income is less than $50,000, then the difference will have to come out of the pay of the other workers. That is, their salary will drop below its original $10,000. Clearly it would not be in the best interest of the other 50 workers to agree to this distribution.
But suppose that the increase in income is, say, $100,000. Now there will be $50,000 dollars left over after everyone has been paid that can be distributed among the 50 workers who had remained at the original salary level. Thus, these individual’s will now receive an annual salary of $11,000 or $1,000 more than they would have made under the old distribution scheme. Assuming that nobody is envious of the higher paid workers, there will be unanimous agreement to the new distribution scheme.
However, even though the general conception is a good start, it does not tell us how to balance trade offs between, for instance, restricting freedom and growing wealth. Because of this Rawls gives us the following, more complicated scheme:
The Principles of Justice:
First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
Second Princple (The Difference Principle): Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, and
(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
The Priority Rules:
First Priority Rule: Liberty is more important than (takes precedence over) equality of opportunity and equality of resources. That is, the first principle is lexically prior to the second. Thus, liberty can only be restricted for the sake of liberty.
Second Priority Rule: Equality of opportunity takes precedence over equality of resources or increases in overall wealth.
The Intuitive Argument:
(1) It is fair for individuals to have unequal shares of social goods if those inequalities are earned or deserved by the person receiving them.
(2) In the same way that social inequalities are undeserved (they result merely from the class, race, gender, etc. into which you were born), so inequalities in natural talents are undeserved (they result merely from the genes you happened to get).
(3) The only way for inequalities resulting from underserved natural talents to, themselves, be deserved is if they are to the benefit of the least fortunate.
(4) Therefore, the higher expectations of the naturally talented are just if and only if they also improve the expectations of the least fortunate members of society (i.e. The Difference Principle).
A More Substantive Look at Rawls’ Theory:
We need principles of social justice to provide:
1. a way of assigning rights and duties, and
2. a way of distributing the benefits and burdens of cooperation.
The individuals making up society have the following characteristics:
1. They make decisions on the basis of enlightened self interest.
2. They have roughly similar needs and interests.
3. They are roughly equal.
4. They are not envious (in the sense that they would not allow their envy to keep them from acting on the basis of their enlightened self interest).
Think of these individuals as participating in a non zero sum cooperative game (that is, a game in which there doesn’t have to be winners and losers, everyone can win). The purpose of the game is for the players to arrive at unanimous agreement on a set of principles that will define social justice for the society.
What we want is for the individuals in the bargaining game to come to a unanimous decision on just what these principles should be. Once settled on, these principles cannot be altered. Given the conditions we would expect individuals to reason as follows:
1. I want to get as much as I can (self interest).
2. Therefore, I will try to get principles that are tailored to my situation.
3. However, my situation might change and
4. My opponents will not agree to such proposals, but will try to get proposals which favor themselves.
5. Therefore,, I should try for an equal distribution of resources.
6. But suppose that an unequal distribution led to an inequality surplus.
7. If I hold out for an equal distribution of the surplus, I can be assured of being better off than I otherwise would have been.
8. But I will not accept an unequal distribution that pushes some people (maybe me) below the equality threshold.
Hence, the bargainer will unanimously agree on the two principles of justice given above.
Criticism
Though Rawls stipulates that members of society are “roughly equal” in power and ability, there is still a lot of room for variation. Given this, it would be reasonably well known to the bargainers what their talents and abilities were. This leads to problems:
1. First, with respect to Principle IIa Rawls is basically assuming that bargainers will adopt a “maximin” strategy. That is, that the bargainers will try to maximize what they would get if they were in the worst off or minimum situation. But if you have natural talents, and you know you have them, you can be relatively sure that you will end up somewhere above the minimum position. Thus, you will not agree to IIa, but would prefer some other principle of unequal distribution. Those who know that they are not naturally talented would want IIa. Hence, we would not get unanimous agreement.
2. Second, with respect to Principle IIb. The idea that the favored position be open to all is ambiguous. It could mean that it is open to all under fair competition or it could mean that it is open to all by, say, lottery. Clearly those who are naturally talented will prefer the first and those who are not will prefer the second. So, once again, we fail to get unanimous agreement.
Rawls’ response to the criticism based on natural talents is to introduce the concept of a veil of ignorance. That is, the bargainers are thought of as reasoning in the absence of knowledge concerning their place in society (i.e. their position or social status) and their place in the distribution of natural talents (i.e. intelligence, strength, looks, etc.). They are also denied knowledge of the likelihood that they are in such positions.
However, the bargainers cannot be totally ignorant of the structure of society or they would not be able to reason at all. So we allow them a fairly rich knowledge of society, just not how they fit into it nor enough for them to figure out where they probably fit into it.
The most important aspect of the bargainer’s reasoning behind the veil of ignorance involves the notion of leading a life. Basically, whatever the differences are between people’s conception of the good life, we know that certain things are needed in order to pursue that ideal. Call these things which are common to all conceptions of the good life “primary goods”.
Primary goods come in two varieties: (1) Social primary goods such as liberty and wealth can be directly distributed by social institutions. (2) Natural primary goods, such as health and intelligence, cannot.
Behind the veil of ignorance, bargainers will try to ensure that they will have the best possible access to social primary goods, because having these will by definition give them the best possible capacity for pursuing their own interests (i.e. their own conception of the good life). But since the bargainers don’t know who they are or who they are likely to be, they will adopt the minimax strategy of reasoning.
