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Rawls's Thin (Millean) Defense of Private Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2010

JOSEPH PERSKY
JOSEPH PERSKY*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Chicagojpersky@uic.edu
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Abstract

This article suggests that Rawls's break with early utilitarians is not so much over the greatest happiness principle as it is over the relation of the institution of private property to justice. In this respect Rawls is very close to John Stuart Mill, arguing for a cleansed or tamed version of the institution. That said, Rawls's defense of private property remains very thin and highly idealized, again following Mill. If Hume and Bentham fail to demonstrate their claims, Rawls and Mill do little better. Rawls, like Mill, has constructed a challenging standard, admits to severe limitations on our empirical knowledge, and remains deeply ambivalent over the role of private property.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 134 - 147
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 J. J. Persky, ‘On the Thinness of the Utilitarian Defense of Private Property’, Journal of the History of Economic Thought (2009).

2 See, for example, Gruber, J. and Saez, E., ‘The Elasticity of Taxable Income: Evidence and Implications’, Journal of Public Economics 84 (2002), pp. 1–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Krouse, R. and McPherson, M., ‘Capitalism, “Property-Owning Democracy,” and the Welfare State’, Democracy and the Welfare State ed. Gutman, A. (Princeton, 1988)Google Scholar. Krouse and McPherson forcefully argue that Rawls's theory was hostile to the welfare state. Rawls subsequently endorsed their interpretation in Rawls, J., Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Kelly, Erin (Cambridge, Mass., 2001)Google Scholar.

4 Rawls Restatement, pp. 7–8. Where possible I try to rely on Rawls's positions in their more or less final form as outlined in the Restatement.

5 Rawls, Restatement, p. 7.

6 Rawls, Restatement, pp. 42–3.

7 In his earlier work A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) Rawls hoped to achieve agreement on a ‘comprehensive moral doctrine’. In his later works he advances his conception of ‘justice as fairness’ as a ‘political conception’. In either case, the purpose of constructing the principles of justice is to facilitate the choice among social institutions.

8 Rawls, Restatement, pp. 136–7.

9 For example, Wylie Bradford (in W. Bradford, ‘Rawls and Meade: Unfortunate Bedfellows?’, <http://www.econ.mq.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/15261/8-2000_Aug00.PDF>, 2000) suggests Rawls’ property-owning democracy is likely to fail one or more of these requirements.

10 Rawls, Restatement, p. 138.

11 Meade, J., Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

12 Rawls, Justice.

13 Several writers, and especially Bradford (Bradford, ‘Rawls and Meade’), have pointed out the rather special assumptions Meade makes with respect to automation.

14 Meade, Efficiency, p. 33.

15 Meade, Efficiency, p. 41.

16 Meade, Efficiency, p. 54.

17 Persky, ‘Thinness’.

18 Hume, D., A Treatise of Human Nature (1740), ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (New York, 1978), p. 492Google Scholar.

19 Hume, Human Nature, p. 495.

20 Rhodes, Rosamond, in ‘Reading Rawls and Hearing Hobbes’, Philosophical Forum 33 (2002), pp. 393–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has argued that Rawls and Hobbes share a great deal in their emphasis on ‘stability and justice’.

21 J. Bentham, Principles of the Civil Code (1838), Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Browning, vol. 1 (reprinted, New York 1962).

22 Bentham, Civil Code, p. 309.

23 Bentham, Civil Code, p. 309.

24 The sharp contrast drawn here between Bentham and Mill may be somewhat oversimplified. For a nuanced reading of Bentham's theory of property see P. J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice (Oxford, 1990). Kelly argues that Bentham's defense of private property was anchored in his endorsement of personal freedom. This reading moves Bentham closer to John Stuart Mill and Rawls's ‘liberalism of freedom’ discussed in the last section.

25 John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), reprinted in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson, vol. 2 (Toronto, 1965), p. 207.

26 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1861), reprinted in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson, V. 10 (Toronto, 1969) Mill notes that he sees no conflict of this definition with Kant's approach to morality.

27 Mill, Principles, p. 208.

28 Mill, Principles, p. 209.

29 Rawls, Justice, p. 290.

30 Rawls, Restatement, p. 159.

31 Rawls is unconcerned or perhaps unaware of Austrian arguments that product markets cannot be easily separated from investment markets.

32 Rawls includes ‘dwellings’ and ‘private grounds’ in the category of ‘personal property’ and apparently doesn't consider such capital as part of the ‘means of production’.

33 Rawls, Restatement, p. 114.

34 Rawls, Justice, p. 274.

35 This seems almost like an admission of the impossibility of determining the justness of some subset of regimes.

36 Rawls, J., Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. Herman, B. (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), p. 330Google Scholar.

37 Rawls, Lectures, p. 366.

38 In later works, such as Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, the central concept is a somewhat scaled down ‘political liberalism’, which is meant as a base rather than a complete philosophy. However, it shares the general outlook of the liberalism of freedom.

39 Rawls, Restatement, p. 13.