I opened last year with a summary of the best postings from each month of the year that had just closed and have decided to open this year's postings the same way. Amongst other things it enables a sense to emerge of how the blog develops over 12 months, in terms of trends of interest at different times of year and an indication of which topics have attracted or should have attracted wider engagement.
January:
A month that lacked any clear focus in postings last year but which did include a report on the Netroots conference I attended and which attracted some considerable interest from others who were present so I'd like to recommend this posting to anyone who wasn't there who might like an indication of what the conference concerned.
February:
A quiet month in terms of postings but included a detailed description and response to the announcement of the philosophy panel in the so-called "research excellence framework". This posting provides important details on those involved in the panel and is worth consulting by anyone in the UK who is likely to have their work judged in due course.
March:
This was the busiest month of the year in terms of postings, which ranged in focus from discussions of the original version of John Rawls' notion of the "original position" to reports on campaigns to keep philosophy alive at Greenwich and Keele universities. Perhaps the most philosophically interesting posting, however, was the first of two that responded to an early Rawls paper on distributive justice.
April:
A fall-off in quantity of postings followed the height of March, partly due to a difficult personal situation during this period. During the course of this month I began blogging my way through Rawls' Theory of Justice, something far from finished by year-end! One of the early postings on this topic that emerged this month is the first one on Rawls' view of utilitarianism which I would recommend.
May:
A small number of postings, mainly focused again on Rawls but, towards the end of the month, I also laid out a sustained defence of the notion of open access publishing and journals which, I think, merits perusal.
June:
A month with a large number of postings on a variety of topics from a response to the New College of Humanities to the beginning of a series of postings on Derek Parfit's new book On What Matters, responses which are on-going on this blog. However, despite the beginning of the responses to Parfit occurring during the course of this month, I think the more important posting during the month concerned Rawls again with a piece on what is involved in constructing the original position that is, I think, one of the best of the year by far.
July:
Postings during this month divided between responses to Rawls and Parfit with, however, the opening of some on Kant's Groundwork. One of the postings of this month succeeded however in attracting a fair amount of attention and this was my response to Simon Blackburn's review of Parfit's book which you can find here.
August:
This was a month with a lot of postings on a very varied range of subjects ranging from a reply to Nelson Potter's reading of the first part of Kant's Groundwork to some opening discussion of John Skorupski's book The Domain of Reasons. The most visited posting of the year was posted this month on the topic of the wrongness of prostitution but I would prefer it if readers looked instead at the first of two postings that respond to Skorupski and his conception of "Critical philosophy".
September:
A slight fall-off in the number of postings after the output of August. Postings again focused on topics as disparate as the annual report on the UK Kant Society conference and a response to the exhibition on Ford Madox Brown held in Manchester. However the response I set out to a profile of Derek Parfit in the New Yorker both served to informed readers of what that profile says and to indicate some additional sides to Parfit himself.
October:
Postings during the course of this month included further replies to Nelson Potter's reading of Kant's Groundwork and a posting on a conference I attended in Romania on cosmopolitics. The month ended with a posting on the account Derek Parfit gives to treating persons as ends during his 2002 Tanner lectures.
November:
A month in which the number of postings increased significantly again and ranged from the beginning of a series of postings on Henry Allison's new book on Kant's Groundwork to some new postings on Rawls. Perhaps the highlight of the month though was a report on Barbara Herman's account of moral worth in Kant.
December:
Final month of the year involved responses to Allison's book on the Groundwork and Parfit's work. Of the Parfit postings the second on his account of treating persons as ends looks at how this developed in his early version of On What Matters which he called Climbing the Mountain.
Showing posts with label distributive justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label distributive justice. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Rawls and Distributive Justice (III)
Sometime back I wrote a couple of postings about Rawls' 1967 pieces on distributive justice: the first one is here and the second here. The topics addressed in these pieces reappear in A Theory of Justice section 43 of Chapter V, the section immediately after the one in which Rawls discussed political economy.
In the version in Theory Rawls describes the "main problem" of distributive justice as being the choice of a social system. By a "social system" Rawls is referring to the way in which a basic structure is regulated and how its major institutions come together. The central conception of pure procedural justice has been the mechanism of regulation promoted by justice as fairness. Since the main point of the second part of Theory is to work through the understanding of institutions the setting of the principles of justice are here being displayed in such a way that the basic structure really does reflect their precepts.
In this section Rawls looks at the means by which 'background' institutions are reflective of the principles of justice both in terms of private ownership and in relation to more socialistic systems. In the first type of system we have a constitution that guarantees the priority of liberty and fair equality of opportunity applies. When looking at how the background institutions are to be governed so that these principles are reflected Rawls reaches for the theory of branches of government articulated by R.A. Musgrave. This theory is quite different to the classic ones of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau or Kant since it does not concern the 'separation of powers' but rather an account of public finance.
On this theory of public finance government is seen as having four branches which don't neatly fit administrative categories but are instead descriptive of functions. The first function is allocation which concerns, in a market economy, keeping prices competitive and undercutting tendencies to prevent this. Allocation is also part of the business of ensuring efficiency is met in relation to social benefits and costs.
By contrast to the allocation branch, the stabilization branch is concerned with bringing about "full employment" and works with the allocation branch in terms of ensuring market efficiency.
The "transfer branch" has responsibility for the social minimum which involves taking account of needs, something the competitive price system alone has no concern with. Competitive determination of total income alone would ignore the claims of need so it is rational to insure oneself against this alone setting the standards of living. The difference principle further mandates that these standards are addressed and it is the point of the transfer branch to see to this. Above the minimum the rest of income can be met by the price system assuming that the latter is efficiently governed.
The last branch is the distribution branch. It concerns how distributive shares are provided by means of taxation and regulation of ownership of property. From here comes taxes that concern inheritance in order that the dispersal of property is consistent with fair value of equal liberties. This is one of the places where Rawls makes a 'luck egalitarian' point arguing that the distribution of intelligence is no more just in its distribution than that of wealth. Hence distribution of the goods accruing to those with a greater than average of the former have also to be governed by application of the difference principle.
One of the points of the discussion of the difference principle is, however, to suggest that the institutions of fair equality of opportunity are put at risk when inequalities of wealth exceed a certain limit. One of the effects of that happening is, further, that political liberties have less worth for many than is otherwise the case. If one part of the distribution branch is concerned with taxation and regulation of property the other part concerns raising revenue. The raising of revenue itself can be undertaken by different means since the taxation of consumption is as available to government as the taxation of income and has more chance of being progressive in application particularly if it includes exemptions for dependents. However, the precise questions of policy here are not specifically part of the theory of justice.
The two parts of the distribution branch relate to the two principles of justice as taxation of inheritance and income and regulation of property secure the institutions of equal liberty (at least in a property-owning democracy). Taxes are the means by which public goods are provided and this aspect of the distribution branch works with the transfer branch to meet the second principle of justice. There are questions here concerning how taxation is itself to be regulated involving precepts such as apply to ability to pay that arise from what Rawls terms "common sense" and indicate an intuitive element is here thought of as applicable though the question of the status of such precepts is not investigated in this section.
One of the points of the general description of the private property system described in the way Rawls has given is to prevent too restrictive an ownership of wealth, thus intending to mitigate the effects of capitalism that socialists complain of. However, after raising this point, Rawls refers to the notion of "liberal socialism" suggesting that it has two ways of meeting the principles of justice. The first would be to assume the means of production were publicly owned and thus that collective decisions were made about the general features of the economy. The "liberal" part of this notion is that it still allows firms to be engaged in competition with each other albeit with such competition only covering one of the functions of prices.
The point of such remarks is to suggest that a place for the market does not entail that people are unmoved by altruistic concerns. In stating this Rawls does, however, recognise the automatic and impersonal character of market mechanisms and the way they abstract from individual decisions. One of the reasons is that the theory of justice is not intended to shape a basic structure that is entirely governed by altruism.
Rawls entertains a possible further branch of government, the exchange branch, that is a special body that takes note of social interests and preferences for public goods and looks only at the latter separately from what is strictly mandated by the principles of justice. The description of this further branch does, however, take the discussion into technicalities that are less evidently of foundational constitutional significance. One of the reasons why this is so is that this further supposed branch does not arise out of the principles of justice themselves.
In the version in Theory Rawls describes the "main problem" of distributive justice as being the choice of a social system. By a "social system" Rawls is referring to the way in which a basic structure is regulated and how its major institutions come together. The central conception of pure procedural justice has been the mechanism of regulation promoted by justice as fairness. Since the main point of the second part of Theory is to work through the understanding of institutions the setting of the principles of justice are here being displayed in such a way that the basic structure really does reflect their precepts.
In this section Rawls looks at the means by which 'background' institutions are reflective of the principles of justice both in terms of private ownership and in relation to more socialistic systems. In the first type of system we have a constitution that guarantees the priority of liberty and fair equality of opportunity applies. When looking at how the background institutions are to be governed so that these principles are reflected Rawls reaches for the theory of branches of government articulated by R.A. Musgrave. This theory is quite different to the classic ones of Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau or Kant since it does not concern the 'separation of powers' but rather an account of public finance.
On this theory of public finance government is seen as having four branches which don't neatly fit administrative categories but are instead descriptive of functions. The first function is allocation which concerns, in a market economy, keeping prices competitive and undercutting tendencies to prevent this. Allocation is also part of the business of ensuring efficiency is met in relation to social benefits and costs.
By contrast to the allocation branch, the stabilization branch is concerned with bringing about "full employment" and works with the allocation branch in terms of ensuring market efficiency.
The "transfer branch" has responsibility for the social minimum which involves taking account of needs, something the competitive price system alone has no concern with. Competitive determination of total income alone would ignore the claims of need so it is rational to insure oneself against this alone setting the standards of living. The difference principle further mandates that these standards are addressed and it is the point of the transfer branch to see to this. Above the minimum the rest of income can be met by the price system assuming that the latter is efficiently governed.
The last branch is the distribution branch. It concerns how distributive shares are provided by means of taxation and regulation of ownership of property. From here comes taxes that concern inheritance in order that the dispersal of property is consistent with fair value of equal liberties. This is one of the places where Rawls makes a 'luck egalitarian' point arguing that the distribution of intelligence is no more just in its distribution than that of wealth. Hence distribution of the goods accruing to those with a greater than average of the former have also to be governed by application of the difference principle.
One of the points of the discussion of the difference principle is, however, to suggest that the institutions of fair equality of opportunity are put at risk when inequalities of wealth exceed a certain limit. One of the effects of that happening is, further, that political liberties have less worth for many than is otherwise the case. If one part of the distribution branch is concerned with taxation and regulation of property the other part concerns raising revenue. The raising of revenue itself can be undertaken by different means since the taxation of consumption is as available to government as the taxation of income and has more chance of being progressive in application particularly if it includes exemptions for dependents. However, the precise questions of policy here are not specifically part of the theory of justice.
The two parts of the distribution branch relate to the two principles of justice as taxation of inheritance and income and regulation of property secure the institutions of equal liberty (at least in a property-owning democracy). Taxes are the means by which public goods are provided and this aspect of the distribution branch works with the transfer branch to meet the second principle of justice. There are questions here concerning how taxation is itself to be regulated involving precepts such as apply to ability to pay that arise from what Rawls terms "common sense" and indicate an intuitive element is here thought of as applicable though the question of the status of such precepts is not investigated in this section.
One of the points of the general description of the private property system described in the way Rawls has given is to prevent too restrictive an ownership of wealth, thus intending to mitigate the effects of capitalism that socialists complain of. However, after raising this point, Rawls refers to the notion of "liberal socialism" suggesting that it has two ways of meeting the principles of justice. The first would be to assume the means of production were publicly owned and thus that collective decisions were made about the general features of the economy. The "liberal" part of this notion is that it still allows firms to be engaged in competition with each other albeit with such competition only covering one of the functions of prices.
The point of such remarks is to suggest that a place for the market does not entail that people are unmoved by altruistic concerns. In stating this Rawls does, however, recognise the automatic and impersonal character of market mechanisms and the way they abstract from individual decisions. One of the reasons is that the theory of justice is not intended to shape a basic structure that is entirely governed by altruism.
Rawls entertains a possible further branch of government, the exchange branch, that is a special body that takes note of social interests and preferences for public goods and looks only at the latter separately from what is strictly mandated by the principles of justice. The description of this further branch does, however, take the discussion into technicalities that are less evidently of foundational constitutional significance. One of the reasons why this is so is that this further supposed branch does not arise out of the principles of justice themselves.
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Rawls and Distributive Justice (II)
The 1967 paper on distributive justice that I began to discuss in the previous posting continues by asking how the institutions of a constitutional democracy can be arranged so that the two principles of justice are approximately satisfied. To do this would require, as Rawls explicitly states, arranging a regulation of the economy. Some of these arrangements are pretty familiar such as provision for equal educational opportunities for all though this is left undecided between subsidy of private education and operating a public school system. The general regulation of the economy is one that requires viewing the government as divided between four branches.
These branches of government don't overlap with the usual divisions that are applied to government. The branch that keeps the economy competitive is termed the "allocation" branch which, amongst other things, sets suitable taxes. By contrast, the stabilization branch strives to maintain full employment and these two branches are meant to fit together to preserve the "efficiency" of the economy which relates to the Pareto element of Rawls' discussion.
However, this is certainly only a preliminary part of the discussion, not least because, on Rawls' view, the market alone cannot be trusted to relate to "need". This is why the next branch mentioned is the distributive one. That concerns total income, not merely wages, but also what he terms "transfers" between different elements of the population. This includes inheritance and gift taxes and the general aim concerns equality of opportunity. The distribution branch is effectively discussed in two different ways as it is meant to include the costs of public goods as well as general equality of opportunity.
Subsequently Rawls refers to even more specific notions of a general policy kind including the notion of "just savings" that is meant to relate to inter-generational justice but is perhaps unfit to respond to some of the serious questions that have since been raised about this question in subsequent philosophy.
The overall result of Rawls' analysis is to arrive at the view of a well-ordered society. However the peculiarity of the discussion is that it appears in some general sense to become here quite specific in terms of some of the policy matters recommended whilst being insufficient to meet the requirements of policy thinkers. So the essay's second part is less obvious as a piece of political philosophy than the first part but the detail of some of the questions clearly requires further working through as well as up-dating in relation to subsequent philosophical work (particularly in inter-generational terms).
These branches of government don't overlap with the usual divisions that are applied to government. The branch that keeps the economy competitive is termed the "allocation" branch which, amongst other things, sets suitable taxes. By contrast, the stabilization branch strives to maintain full employment and these two branches are meant to fit together to preserve the "efficiency" of the economy which relates to the Pareto element of Rawls' discussion.
However, this is certainly only a preliminary part of the discussion, not least because, on Rawls' view, the market alone cannot be trusted to relate to "need". This is why the next branch mentioned is the distributive one. That concerns total income, not merely wages, but also what he terms "transfers" between different elements of the population. This includes inheritance and gift taxes and the general aim concerns equality of opportunity. The distribution branch is effectively discussed in two different ways as it is meant to include the costs of public goods as well as general equality of opportunity.
Subsequently Rawls refers to even more specific notions of a general policy kind including the notion of "just savings" that is meant to relate to inter-generational justice but is perhaps unfit to respond to some of the serious questions that have since been raised about this question in subsequent philosophy.
The overall result of Rawls' analysis is to arrive at the view of a well-ordered society. However the peculiarity of the discussion is that it appears in some general sense to become here quite specific in terms of some of the policy matters recommended whilst being insufficient to meet the requirements of policy thinkers. So the essay's second part is less obvious as a piece of political philosophy than the first part but the detail of some of the questions clearly requires further working through as well as up-dating in relation to subsequent philosophical work (particularly in inter-generational terms).
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Rawls and Distributive Justice (I)
In the series of postings I have been doing on Rawls I've been gradually working through the chapters of his Collected Papers but intend to disrupt this when we get to the point that A Theory of Justice is published. But I've now reached his 1967 paper on "Distributive Justice" which seems to me to be worth more than one posting and is, in any case followed by another paper of "addenda" to the original.
In this 1967 paper Rawls introduces the notion of the "veil of ignorance" for the first time, some 4 years after he first described the "original position". The first interesting thing about this paper is the way the first sentence describes human society as "a more or less self-sufficient association" thereby implicitly aligning political life in general with the notion of association. It's also worthy of note that Rawls points out instantly that society, is characterized as much by conflict as identity of interests and that it is this that requires some kind of equilibrium point to be aimed at.
After making these opening points Rawls quickly dispatches utilitarianism as a possible standard for social arrangements, not least because a loss of freedom for some is not made right by a general sum of advantages for others. This prompts him to specifically present his own doctrine, by contrast to the utilitarian one, as contractarian. It is after this that Rawls discusses original agreement and mentions the "veil of ignorance" for the first time. However, despite invoking this notion, Rawls makes as yet little use of it, mentioning for example that he will not here attempt to show that his two principles of justice would be chosen in the original position (thus the "veil of ignorance" lacks, as yet, methodological significance).
The two principles of justice that Rawls subsequently introduces are, however, themselves more detailed than previously though the principle of liberty continues to have a clear connection to Kant's supreme principle of right. The second principle is more detailed and reads as follows:
This second principle clearly comes in two parts with the second part being one of openness to talents. The notion that inequalities are only to be tolerated if they are to the advantage of the "representative man" opens some significant questions.
Rawls is clearly aware of this and mentions at this point Hume's influential critique of social contract theory which was to the effect that criteria of the kind invoked in the second principle turn out not to be meaningful since, it is quite conceivable, that even slaves are "better off" in some sense than they would be in a state of nature. Rawls also mentions the emptiness of assessing social outcomes on the grounds of efficiency alone as appears occurs on Pareto optimality criteria. So justice has to be clearly distinguished from efficiency.
In responding to these points Rawls makes a key modification of the second principle in favour not of the "representative man" in some general sense but rather in relation to the "least advantaged" and in so doing he describes, for the first time, the first part of the second principle as the "difference principle". It is the "most unfortunate representative man" to whom we have to justify inequalities now. By this means Rawls aims to meet the standards of efficiency in the sense of attaining a sense of Pareto optimality and marrying it to the standard of justice.
In this 1967 paper Rawls introduces the notion of the "veil of ignorance" for the first time, some 4 years after he first described the "original position". The first interesting thing about this paper is the way the first sentence describes human society as "a more or less self-sufficient association" thereby implicitly aligning political life in general with the notion of association. It's also worthy of note that Rawls points out instantly that society, is characterized as much by conflict as identity of interests and that it is this that requires some kind of equilibrium point to be aimed at.
After making these opening points Rawls quickly dispatches utilitarianism as a possible standard for social arrangements, not least because a loss of freedom for some is not made right by a general sum of advantages for others. This prompts him to specifically present his own doctrine, by contrast to the utilitarian one, as contractarian. It is after this that Rawls discusses original agreement and mentions the "veil of ignorance" for the first time. However, despite invoking this notion, Rawls makes as yet little use of it, mentioning for example that he will not here attempt to show that his two principles of justice would be chosen in the original position (thus the "veil of ignorance" lacks, as yet, methodological significance).
The two principles of justice that Rawls subsequently introduces are, however, themselves more detailed than previously though the principle of liberty continues to have a clear connection to Kant's supreme principle of right. The second principle is more detailed and reads as follows:
inequalities as defined by the institutional structure or fostered by it are arbitrary unless it is reasonable to expect that they will work out to everyone's advantage and provided that the positions and offices to which they attach or from which they may be gained are open to all
This second principle clearly comes in two parts with the second part being one of openness to talents. The notion that inequalities are only to be tolerated if they are to the advantage of the "representative man" opens some significant questions.
Rawls is clearly aware of this and mentions at this point Hume's influential critique of social contract theory which was to the effect that criteria of the kind invoked in the second principle turn out not to be meaningful since, it is quite conceivable, that even slaves are "better off" in some sense than they would be in a state of nature. Rawls also mentions the emptiness of assessing social outcomes on the grounds of efficiency alone as appears occurs on Pareto optimality criteria. So justice has to be clearly distinguished from efficiency.
In responding to these points Rawls makes a key modification of the second principle in favour not of the "representative man" in some general sense but rather in relation to the "least advantaged" and in so doing he describes, for the first time, the first part of the second principle as the "difference principle". It is the "most unfortunate representative man" to whom we have to justify inequalities now. By this means Rawls aims to meet the standards of efficiency in the sense of attaining a sense of Pareto optimality and marrying it to the standard of justice.
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