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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 November 2016
G. A. Cohen's critique of Rawls's defence of economic incentives echoes some of J. S. Mill's insights on the subject. Some of Cohen's arguments, however, clash not only with those of Rawls but also with each other as well as with Mill's. A similar charge, however, may be made against Rawls. This article has conciliatory ambitions. It suggests reconciling each author with himself, as well as with each other, by focusing on the worth of liberty. It stresses the importance of non-pecuniary occupational inequalities and proposes various measures to enhance the worth of the occupational freedom of those with fewer options.
1 Mill, , Principles of Political Economy, Book IV, ch. 7, p. 138, emphasis added (Oxford, 1994 edition)Google Scholar.
2 Mill, , Principles, Book II, ch. 1, p. 18 (Oxford)Google Scholar.
3 Mill, , Principles, Book II, ch.1, p. 19 (Oxford)Google Scholar.
4 Mill, , Principles, Book II, ch.1, p. 19, emphasis added (Oxford)Google Scholar.
5 Mill, , Principles, Book II, ch. 1, p. 19 (Oxford)Google Scholar.
6 See Mill, ‘Utilitarianism’, On Liberty and Other Essays (Oxford, 1998), ch. 5, esp. pp. 181 and 193-5Google Scholar.
7 Mill, , Principles, Book II, ch. 1, p. 10 (Oxford)Google Scholar.
8 Mill, Principles, Book II, ch. 14, sec. 1, p. 155.
9 For example, performance appears to be very weakly correlated with payment. A 1% salary increase is associated with only a 0.05 increase in hours worked. Pencavel, John, ‘Labour Supply of Men’, The Handbook of Labour Economics, ed. Ashenfelter, O. and Layard, R. (Amsterdam, 1986), pp. 3–102 Google Scholar. Payments, even of CEOs, are even more weakly correlated with performance. See Michael Jense and Kevin Murphy, ‘Performance Pay and Top Management Incentives’, <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=94009> (2015).
10 In the United States, the top decile accounts for 49.7% of the income share. E. Saez, ‘Striking it Richer’, Pathways Magazine (Winter 2008) updated at <http://eml.berkeley.edu//~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf> (2015). See also A. Gentleman and H. Mulholland, ‘Unequal Britain: Richest 10% are now 100 Times Better Off Than the Poorest’, Guardian, 27 January (2010); Milanovic, Branco, The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality (New York, 2011)Google Scholar and Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the XXI Century (Cambridge, MA, 2014)Google Scholar.
11 Jencks, Christopher, Perman, Lauri, and Rainwater, Lee, ‘What Is a Good Job? A New Measure of Labor-Market Success’, American Journal of Sociology 93 (1988), pp. 1322–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Rawls, Justice as Fairness (Cambridge, MA, 2001), p. 64 Google Scholar. An incentive is a payment required for some individual to prefer one job to others. When, in order to obtain a higher salary, individuals bluff about how much they loathe a job they like, they obtain rent, which is the portion of the salary above their reservation price. Rawlsians may want to defend only incentives, not rents, but the arguments they employ, such as the appeal to efficiency or publicity, tend to apply to either. See, e.g., Williams, Andrew, ‘Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 27 (1998), pp. 225–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, Andrew, ‘Justice, Incentives and Constructivism’, Ratio 21 (2008), pp. 476–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cohen, G. A., Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, MA, 2008), pp. 57–9, 102-3, 181, 368, 398, 401CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 1999), p. 245 Google Scholar.
14 Rawls, A Theory, p. 68.
15 Rawls, A Theory, p. 68.
16 See Cohen, J. A., ‘Incentives, Inequality and Community’, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 13, ed. Petersen, Grethe (Salt Lake City, 1992), pp. 263–329 Google Scholar; ‘Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 26 (1997), pp. 3–30; ‘The Pareto Argument for Inequality’, Social Philosophy and Policy 12 (1995), pp. 160–86; If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Cambridge, MA, 2000); and Rescuing.
17 Cohen, Rescuing, p. 49.
18 Regarding Cohen's appeal to non-monetary incentives, one may recall Mill's observation that in our society most lack the incentives that under socialism a man derives from ‘working for a partnership of which he is himself a member’, and from being ‘under the eye not of one master, but of the whole community’. Mill, Principles, Book II, ch. 1, p. 11 (Oxford).
19 See ‘On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice’, Ethics 99 (1989), pp. 906–44.
20 Rescuing, pp. 61 and 103.
21 Rescuing, p. 197.
22 Rescuing, p. 194.
23 Cohen, G. A., Political Liberalism (New York, 1993), p. 282 Google ScholarPubMed.
24 A Theory, p. 7.
25 Rescuing, pp. 135-6 and 143.
26 Cohen refers to this second conflict employing the term ‘strategic contradiction’ in a 1996 unpublished note he refers to in Rescuing, p. 198, n. 22, before going on to deny there is a contradiction.
27 Such as Principles of Political Economy (1848) and Utilitarianism (1861).
28 See e.g. Wolheim, Richard, ‘Introduction’, John Stuart Mill: Three Essays (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; Thomas, David Lloyd, ‘Liberalism and Utilitarianism’, Ethics 90.3 (1980), pp. 319–34Google Scholar; and Spiegelberg, Herbert, ‘Accidents of Birth: A Non-Utilitarian Motif in Mill's Philosophy’, Journal of the History of Ideas 22.4 (1961), pp. 475–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Spiegelberg, ‘Accidents of Birth’.
30 Mill, ‘On Liberty’, ch. I, pp. 8-9, emphasis added in On Liberty.
31 A Theory, p. 202.
32 Mill, ‘On Liberty’, ch. IV, pp. 83-4 (emphasis added). See also p. 87.
33 Political Liberalism, p. 325.
34 Political Liberalism, p. 325.
35 A Theory, p. 179.
36 For real-life examples see Gladstone, Rick ‘Schoolgirls Are Facing More Threats, U.N. Reports’, New York Times, 9 February 2015 Google Scholar.
37 See Shiffrin, Seana Valentine, ‘Incentives, Motives and Talents’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 38 (2010), pp. 111–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 ‘The Subjection of Women’, in On Liberty, p. 580.
39 Kohn, Melvin L. and Schooler, Carmi, ‘The Reciprocal Effects of the Substantive Complexity of Work and Intellectual Flexibility: A Longitudinal Assessment’, American Journal of Sociology 84.1 (1978), pp. 24–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Job Conditions and Personality’, American Journal of Sociology 87.6 (1982), pp. 1257–86.
40 See Shiffrin, Seana Valentin, ‘Race, Labour and the Equal Opportunity Principle’, Fordham Law Review 72.5 (2004), pp. 1643–75, at 1669Google Scholar.
41 A Theory states that ‘infringements on the basic equal liberties protected by the first principle cannot be justified, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages’ (p. 54), but only ‘for the sake of liberty’ (p. 266). The second claim is implausibly restrictive. Saving our historic, artistic and natural heritage, for example, may justify significant restrictions on liberty. For present purposes, however, we only need the former, more modest claim.
42 This is why contemporary feminists discuss real opportunities and not merely legal permissions. See, for example, MacKinnon, C., Feminism Unmodified (Cambridge, MA, 1978), esp. p. 36 Google Scholar.
43 As Mill observed, for example, in Principles, Book II, ch. 14, pp. 154-8 (Indianapolis, 2004 edition).
44 Robison, James C., ‘Hazardous Occupations within the Job Hierarchy’, Industrial Relations 27 (1988), pp. 241–50Google Scholar.
45 See Dworkin, Andrea, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (London, 1981)Google Scholar; McKinnon, Catherine, Only Words (Cambridge, MA, 1993)Google Scholar; and Langton, Rae, ‘Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (1993), pp. 293–330 Google Scholar.
46 Justice as Fairness, p. 111; A Theory, pp. 54, 178, 266.
47 A Theory, p. 265.
48 Rescuing, p. 194.
49 A Theory, p. 177.
50 A Theory, p. 179.
51 A Theory, p. 179 (emphasis added).
52 A Theory. pp. 131-2, 180-5, 475-6. Justice as Fairness, p. 113. See also Taylor, Robert, ‘Rawls’ Defence of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 31 (2003), pp. 246–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, p. 57.
54 Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 181.
55 Rawls, A Theory, p. 386. See Nir Eyal, ‘Perhaps the Most Important Primary Good: Self-respect and Rawls’ Principles of Justice’, Politics, Philosophy & Economics 4 (2005), pp. 195-219. On maxi-mining the social basis of self-respect, see Freeman, Samuel Rawls (New York, 2007), p. 131 Google Scholar and Van Parijs, Philippe, ‘Difference Principles’, Cambridge Companion to Rawls, ed. Freeman, S. (New York, 2003), pp. 200–40, at 212Google Scholar.
56 Introduction to the paperback edition of Political Liberalism, p. lvii.
57 A Theory, pp. 15-19.
58 A Theory, pp. 126 and 153.
59 ‘The Subjection’, p. 580.
60 Principles, Book IV, ch. 7, p. 139 (Oxford).
61 Rescuing, p. 194.
62 See Shiffrin's ‘Race, Labour’.
63 A Theory, p. 464.
64 See e.g. Williams, A., ‘Incentives’. I reply to Williams on measurability and publicity in ‘Marx, Rawls, Cohen and Feminism’, Hypatia 30 (2015), pp. 811–28Google Scholar.
65 A Theory, p. 245.
66 A Theory, p. 245.
67 Political Liberalism, p. 328.
68 See Van Parijs, Philippe, Real Freedom for All (Oxford, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
69 See ‘ The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’, John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. Freeman, Samuel (Cambridge, MA, 1999), p. 582 Google Scholar. See also Theory, pp. 244-5, 251-2 and 267.
70 Mill, Principles, Book II, ch. 14, pp. 154-8 (Indianapolis). The Oxford edition contains all other quotes but not ch. 14 ‘Of the Differences of Wages in Different Employments’.
71 A Theory, p. 269.
72 Gunter Wallraff's documentary Ganz unten, for example, shows how he, disguised as a Turkish Gastarbeiter, was repeatedly offered dangerous jobs like cleaning nuclear power plants on the condition he leave the country afterwards, so employers could avoid all liability.
73 See Robinson, J. C., ‘Hazardous Occupations within the Job Hierarchy’, Industrial Relations 27.2 (1988), pp. 241–50Google Scholar.
74 Lucas, Robert, ‘The Distribution of Job Characteristics’, Review of Economics and Statistics 56 (1974), pp. 530–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Viscusi, Kip, ‘Wealth Effects and Earning Premiums for Job Hazards’, Review of Economics and Statistics 60 (1978), pp. 408–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
75 Robinson, ‘Hazardous’, p. 250.
76 See Jencks et al., ‘What Is a Good Job?’ Jencks's metric records objective factors, like hours worked and tasks repeated hourly and daily, answers to objective questions like ‘are you allowed to take a phone call?’ or ‘how often are you supervised?’, as well as aggregate opinions, which turned out to be remarkably convergent.
77 Jencks et al., ‘What Is a Good Job?’, p. 1328.
78 Jencks et al., ‘What Is a Good Job?’, p. 1352. The other two features are getting dirty, which matters to women less than to men, and holidays.
79 See Filer, R. ‘Male-Female Wage Differences: The Importance of Compensatory Differentials’, Industrial and Labour Relations Review 38 (1985), pp. 426–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Jencks et al., ‘What Is a Good Job?’.
80 As suggested by Arendt Gast, ‘Rawls and Opportunities for Meaningful Work’, unpublished paper.
81 See Barry, Brian, Theories of Justice (London, 1989) pp. 224 Google Scholar.
82 Ronald Dworkin presses a similar idea when he insists that a just distribution of an island's resources among shipwreck survivors not only involves granting each equal bidding power, but also the right construction of the resource-bundles. See Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA, 2000), p. 67. The bundles of job/leisure/income/location and other job features also need appropriate construction.
83 Rescuing, p. 194.
84 See, for example, my ‘Occupational Choice and the Egalitarian Ethos’, Economics and Philosophy 29 (2013), pp. 3-20.
85 Both the 1984 Spanish Incompatibility Law, which drastically reduced the number of paid positions that an individual may simultaneously occupy, and Oskar Lafontaine's proposal to reduce German unemployment by shortening the working week encountered firm opposition. It is a standard Cuban practice, by contrast, to share, between two people or more, the most desirable jobs.
86 Paternity leave may be spent catching up with work, and rather than liberate career women, subsidized childcare may make remaining a housewife more attractive.
87 For example, apparently when North American companies tried to imitate the successful organizational structures of their Japanese competitors, they found themselves trapped in intractable Prisoner's Dilemmas, which the Japanese, thanks to a different ethos, were able to avoid. See Hargreaves-Heap, S., ‘Entrepreneurship, Enterprise and Information in Economics’, Understanding the Enterprise Culture: Themes in the Work of Mary Douglas, ed. Hargreaves-Heap, S. and Ross, A. (Edinburgh, 1991), pp. 80–101Google Scholar; ‘Social Capital and the Economy’, in Growth, Employment and Inflation, ed. Setterfield, M. (London, 1999), pp. 180–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘A Note on Participatory Decision Making, Rationality and Social Capital’, Cambridge Journal of Economics 28.3 (2004), pp. 457–67.
88 Rescuing, p. 194.
89 I thank Andrew Williams for generous and helpful comments on several versions of this article. I am grateful to Jerry Cohen not only for comments on earlier drafts but for my own occupational choice. Having worked on my thesis in Oxford, I could not obtain a position within the endogamic Spanish academia, and being Spanish, without his reference, I may not have been flown to an interview abroad. I am also grateful to David Miller and Hillel Steiner for this reason.
