A citizen’s capacity to act in favour of a just obligation, free of state intervention is highly subjective to the emotional forces of fear and greed (The Global Financial Crises – “OTC Derrivatives” as an ultimate tool of superficial expansion). State intervention at best, acts a logical regulator of this inherent nature, simply relying on a liberty of emotions and logic to act in favour of a just obligation is a recipe of self-destruction under the extreme imbalance of ownership that we face today. (What happened to Easter Island, the Mayans or the Norse who occupied Greenland?)

My theory here is that in order for Cohen’s theory to be more credible, the imbalance of ownership (property, resources and social class) would have to reverse its course so the boundaries of failure and success contract, hence state intervention to diminish in comprehensible proportion.

John is a Christian who does not like Muslims. The states ability to change John is confined to combating acts of hate. The Muslims are in a minority. The state offers John a tax break if he hires students. John discards all the applicants with Muslim like names. This becomes a trend of other employers in this town, so the Muslims end up on welfare. John’s brother, who is a police officer, spends a good part of his career locking up Muslims.

How does justice command the change of people without the states right to promote equality?

Are people’s prejudices towards race much different than their prejudices towards the poor?

-The state has a right to “change people” (Rawl’s imposition of inequality generating incentives is just as long as it benefits the less fortunate)

-Cohen’s view that these kinds of inequalities would not be necessary if people were truly committed to the principles of egalitarianism.

Yes, it would help greatly but I don’t have the time so I limit myself to this thread and to what others report of Cohen, in this case Yarrow. If I do not sufficiently qualify this fact, that I was reacting to second order opinions on Cohen, I apologize. Was Yarrow right on Cohen?

I agree the state needs to do things with respect to sexism, racism and indeed the income gap. So, in this sense of changing people’s behaviour I have no qualms. Also, I’d regard education, advertising and the like as quite proper means so I retract the comment insofar as it seems to be referring to a very strict definition of law and institutions.

But I do think that the objective to ‘change people’ (rather than to put limits on behaviour) is a matter for comprehensive doctrines. I do not think that justice as fairness is to be construed as a comprehensive doctrine regulating what people think or should think, feel or should not feel. To keep the point sharp: I do think there is a general prohibition on changing people – the objective is to allow people to figure out their own thing. The realization of that objective is that we need a conception of justice that puts limits to people’s behaviour (as some of it is quite clearly incompatible with this root-liberal objective, for instance to have failed bankers sell the assets they acquired for 14M$ to their wifes for 100 bucks and get away with it).

(I have no issue he tries to do this. I only have an issue if he’d would succeed in doing this. I feel no compulsion to have an opinion on what he tries to do as I don’t know him – much less care to know him)

It’s not the people that need to be changed, it is the law and the institutions that need change & the reason they need change is to ensure that each & every person has a chance to do whatever the hell she or he pleases with his or her time, with as little interference as possible.

is worth saying something about.

Many of us do not actually think it outrageous, in fact we think it mandatory for justice, that the state do something about racist and sexist attitudes. Yes, of course law and institutions are important instruments in combating racism and sexism, but so is education, advertising, whatever.

[Anticipation of irrelevant comment or reply: those who think that state action against racist and sexist attitudes would be ineffective or counterproductive can butt out – the issue is whether the state would be justified in acting to eradicate such attitudes if it could.]

And of course, Rawls himself believes that the state has a right to “change people” insofar as it is necessary to cultivate their respect for others’ rightt, ensure stability etc. See for ex “Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good”.

So whatever is wrong with Cohen’s view, it can’t be that he violates a general prohibition on “changing people”.

It was opposite to Rawls’ intent to inspire or advance an ethos, let alone one of saving capital from all too revolutionary changes. You make it sound like he is the Heidegger of capitalism, that’s a bit rash, isn’t it? Certainly if based on anecdota. Maybe you mistake Hayek & Rawls?

But none of that (& none of this) is very interesting beyond the particulars.

What is interesting is the attack on basic liberties you seem to associate with Cohen. People have fought long and hard to get rid of sin and its likes trying to procure their freedom to do as they please within the observable limits set by a proper constitutional democracy. I’d be very afraid (to come back on topic) of Cohen’s project it it is about re-introducing some or other soft Gemeinschaftlichkeit that lays claim on how people ‘should’ think – if they are to be considered as ‘good’ people. That’s indeed the great-grandfather story of ‘everybody brushing the street in front of his own house &, sha-boum, the world will be a better place’.

It’s not the people that need to be changed, it is the law and the institutions that need change & the reason they need change is to ensure that each & every person has a chance to do whatever the hell she or he pleases with his or her time, with as little interference as possible.

The realization of Rawls is that this requires some principles, one of which will de facto have a consequence of limiting the difference in compensation (including the income from capital). I don’t care whether some find this too high a price to pay, I only care that they pay the price as it’s only fair to require them to do so. More justice than that would be injustice.

JoB – I’m not saying that Rawls claimed to be advancing an ethos, or intended to be advancing an ethos. I do say (based on a fairly narrow selection of anecdata, but this is a blog comment!) that whatever his intent, he did in fact advance (inspire? provide the intellectual underpinning for?) an ethos—the ethos of folks who believe we need big changes in our current system, whose impulse is then not to wonder how to replace capitalism but how to improve it.

JoB: “…if Cohen understands Rawls’ principles as creating obligations for individual personal & particular decisions, he’s off the mark”

Cohen believes that justice creates obligations for (certain) individual personal decisions; one of his complaints is that Rawls’ principles, as least as Rawls applies them, do not.

Thanks.

I didn’t mean to do a hit-and-run and imply that my quote settled anything definitely. I merely wanted to indicate that the connection between Rawls and ‘capitalism’ wasn’t so easy to make as it seemed to come out here. Words like ‘capitalism’, ‘socialism’ and – as you googled out – a term like ‘property-owning democracy’ are too imprecise to be of a lot of value in a discussion like this.

On a more to-the-point note: I continue to take issue with your reference to capitalism & ethos.

On the latter and following Seana Shiffrin mentioned by Chris, disallowing a personally motivated view on the general conception of justice is exactly Rawls’ programme. So it is not fair (a strawman) to take issue with his argument based on on the ethos involved, taking the ethos out is precisely what he sets out to do. If he didn’t he would be into the type of comprehensive doctrine regulating society he set out to relegate to a 2nd plane.

(as said, I don’t have the time to read Cohen but if Cohen understands Rawls’ principles as creating obligations for individual personal & particular decisions, he’s off the mark)

On the former and as I understand your idea of capitalism (rather laissez-faire): there’s a huge difference. Capitalists of the sort you seem to refer to (say Hayekians) do firmly believe that private property combined with a free market and individual liberties get, as automatic consequence, to the best possible societal organization. Rawls doesn”t go in for this. Much like Smith he sets out to find the constraints that need to be put for us to have an environment wherein everybody has a reasinable chance to act morally. He is a neo-Kantian and his thought experiment (see above OP, VoI) is such that people in constructing those constraints have no choice but to accept something very much like a categorical imperative.

The outcome of his argument (which, to be clear, I don’t fully buy) are the principles – and the principles are not just those of the free market and certainly take precedence on the free market. Just as an example: as far as I remember he gives concrete cases of oligopolies (specifically in the media sector) and distribution of stock ownership as the kinds of things that need regulation even if it goes against the free market.

(and as far as ‘pure rational choice’ as part of capitalist ideology: maybe so – although I think that the defense of capitalism is increasingly emotional – but: if A is part of B and A is part of C, it does NOT follow that B equals C, in fact nothing else follows than that B and C share at least one thing, namely A)

Seana Shiffrin’s paper was hugely thought-provoking on the topic of incentives. She argues that we need not assume that individuals must show adherence to the difference principle in their individual decisions about work, BUT that if they accept that principle, they must treat their talents as morally arbitrary for the purposes of determining their own marketplace rewards – hence they will not rent-seek on the basis of higher talents. For Shiffrin, this makes the basic structure debate somewhat arcane (because principles of justice need not apply to individual decisions, but one of the justifications of the difference principle, the point about the arbitrariness of talent, does apply there, at least in one context. We can assume that individuals accepting the difference principle do so at least partly because they accept that justification). It was also very interesting to get a more nuanced approach to the arbitrariness of talent: for Shiffrin (and Rawls), it is not wrong for one’s talents to influence the positions one fills. The Aristotelian argument means we are quite entitled to choose a job we can only get because of our own talent, and to earn the ‘psychic’ reward of being fulfilled in it. What we’re not entitled to do is unduly materially benefit (vis-a-vis the less talented) in so doing (other than in the form of compensation). Gerry didn’t really say what he thought about it, but it was a fine paper.

Consider that each case: the principle imbalance of safety, the deficit of participatory culture and the criminally neglected – all have the opportunity to achieve equilibrium through an alternative or sometimes dually competitive means such as philanthropy and other forms of trade that are not taxed or even monetized. This is where the monetary and non-monetary benefits (#12) of incentive versus compensation and empiricism versus rationalism evolve into multiple complex dimensions. Phil happens to be a prosecutor who is not a fan of the ballet, his taxes are decreased which helps to supplement a generous donation (monetary) to “MADD” The experience of Phil’s life (empirical) and conflict of interests (rational) are imposed on his will, luckily for the poor ballet dancer Phil does her a favour (non-monetary) within his circles of philanthropy. This is about as simple as I can put it without going further. Now, reconsider the implications of comprehensive justice of a higher income tax and how the money is distributed. If Phil could not afford a university education, should this be a tax funded priority, or should it be left to philanthropy? How can tax dollars build a social conscience which benefits society? It seems to me that a comprehensive justification cannot be rationally achieved in a monopolized monetary environment. The functions of non-monetary benefits provide empirical engagement within our native boundaries which evolve into a more rationally inclusive consciousness. The almost limitless boundaries of monetary incentives and compensations are dissociating the inclusive nature of our being. Phil provides legal services to the victims of drunk drivers as a charity (non-monetary), his close contact to the horrible pain these victims are suffering has an emotional effect on him; Phil successfully takes on legislators to enforce tougher penalties. If Phil donated money instead of his time, would the result have been the same? If Phil had to pay more income tax would he donate time instead of money? These types of questions are endless. The more relevant question is why would Phil want to do either charity in the first place and how can we balance monetary with non-monetary forms of trade to achieve a more comprehensive justification of policies?

As I confessed above, my knowledge of Rawls is beyond sketchy—so I needed Google to tell me what “property-owning democracy” means. The first three hits are (1) a paper by Wonsup Jung maintaining, apparently contra Rawls, that democratic socialism is not compatible with Rawls’ liberalism (but property-owning democracy is); (2) a 1987 article in Time headlined with the Margaret Thatcher quote “We Are Building a Property-Owning Democracy”; and (3) a paper by Amit Ron which “argue[s] that Rawls inherited a discursive matrix from the British Conservatives in which the notion of ‘property-owning democracy’ refers to the limits that should be set on democratic practices to make it compatible with the needs and interests of property-owners”, but that Rawls, following James Meade, turned that around “to re-examine the distribution of property-ownership from the perspective of what is required for viable democratic deliberations.”

Another paper, by Martin O’Neill, gave me a few more details: he mentions “wide dispersal of the ownership of the means of production, with individual citizens controlling productive capital (and perhaps with an opportunity to control their own working conditions).

Perhaps to control their own working conditions! Sounds like capitalism to me—either (a) the idyllic Adam Smith picture of capitalism, only for real, where oligopoly doesn’t happen because none of the individual actors are large enough to sway the market, or (b) something like Bush’s “ownership society”, only for real, where everyone starts out with a fairly equal distribution of stock in the oligopolists. (Presumably in the first instance, but not the second, workers would have an opportunity to control their own working conditions.) In either case, this still sounds to me like (an ideology of) an ethos of capitalism.

JoB: “On the point of ‘ethos’: see above, I think the ‘ethos’ part is excluded from the Rawlsian view – or at least that’s what I always read him as saying – and replaced by pure rational choice. Not that I want to argue that he succeeds, I just want to ensure I understood it as he meant it.”

That sounds something like the Rawls that Cohen is arguing against, anyway. (And “pure rational choice”, of course, is a big part of capitalist ideology.)

I’m worried about this consequence too, but I’m not exactly sure what to say about it. Cohen says in footnote 15, “It follows, harmlessly, that penal policies adopted to reduce the incidence of crime lack comprehensive justification. The very fact that such a policy is justified shows that all is not well with society” (p. 41). So, apparently, that a policy lacks comprehensive justification can sometimes be “harmless.” I’d like to see how we are supposed to distinguish the times when we do require comprehensive justification from the times we don’t. This amounts to asking when we need to justify our individual behaviors and preferences (I think: insofar as our behavior is based on these preferences) to our fellow citizens, and when we do not. Rawls, of course, does give an answer to this question; a very rich answer in his account of public reason and its proper place.

Here’s another example, to add to the pool (consisting so far of religion and rail travel among other): let us say we are considering a policy to form a series of grants to promote ballet, including need-based grants to those who lack the money to pay for ballet classes and such, to be paid for out of tax revenues. A good majority of people in the society at issue believe that the fine arts, and ballet in particular, are important and worthy of promotion as part of the national culture. Still, when considering comprehensive justification, consider the case of the poor ballet dancer trying to justify this policy to someone who is not in this majority, and thinks there is little value to the fine arts (let’s call this person “Phil” (…istine… ba dum bum)). The poor ballet dancer says, “Phil, I cannot afford to pay for ballet classes, so I would like to use taxes on your income/payroll/spending (whatever) to pay for my ballet classes.” Phil, of course, finds this to be ridiculous. So, the policy lacks comprehensive justification. Does this matter? Is this like the crime case, or like the difference principle case?

Here’s my difficulty (only having read parts of Rawls) – my understanding was that his Original position was designed so as to require participants to wear a Veil of ignorance by which the participants lost the partiality to their specific interests. As far as I knew this means that the rich would not be able to weigh in their particular state of richness nor would the religious be able to weigh in their particular state of faith nor vice versa.

Having followed this discussion (and not having the time to read Cohen) it seems to me that the discussion here (& what it intimates of what Cohen says) is at odds with Rawls’ basic thought experiment since constant reference is made to what people would do in case they would weigh in their personal interest based on their particulars (‘being rich’ seems the example at hand). Now, whatever one may think of Rawls’ argument (I have always thought his conclusion was intuitively more powerful than this way of reaching it via rational argument): isn’t it unfair to attack his conclusions on the assumptions he took specific care to avoid i.e. the partiality of the moral agents to their particular way of life?

Yarrow,

You say:

It seems to me that Rawslianism is an ethos of capitalism (or more precisely the ideology of one ethos of capitalism).

Rawls says (footnote on p.8 of Justice as Fairness, A Restatement):

(..) distinguishes between a property-owning democracy and a capitalist welfare state and maintains that the latter conflicts with justice as fairness.

Maybe you have a very clear distinction between Rawls and Rawlsians maintaining the latter necessarily disagree with the former on this point but, failing that, what versions of capitalism are you referring to that Rawls did not sunsume under capitalism?

On the point of ‘ethos’: see above, I think the ‘ethos’ part is excluded from the Rawlsian view – or at least that’s what I always read him as saying – and replaced by pure rational choice. Not that I want to argue that he succeeds, I just want to ensure I understood it as he meant it.