Doppelt - Rawls' System of Justice

Rawls' System of Justice: A Critique from the Left
Author(s): Gerald Doppelt

Source: Noûs, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 259-307
Published by: Wiley
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Rawls' System of Justice:
A Critique from the Left
GERALD DOPPELT
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SAN DIEGO
In advanced industrial societies which have overcome the technological

necessity of material scarcity, it is extremely plausible to maintain that
social justice requires rough equality in the social bases of self-respect,
and forbids any form of social organization which guarantees that
some individuals or classes will gain self-respect at the expense of
others' denigration. If this assumption is correct, the nature of self-
respect and the ways in which is is and ought to be defined, constituted,
and distributed by competing forms of social order pose a central if
neglected problem for theories of social justice. In this regard, John
Rawls' A Theory ofJustice represents a genuine advance in social theory,
for self-respect is explicitly placed at the heart of his system ([18]:
440-2) Rawls maintains that a just society must, as far as possible,
guarantee its members 'equality in the social bases of self-respect' and
human dignity. Thus he implicitly assumes that the problem of self-
respect is not exclusively an ethical problem concerned with living up to
moral standards of right and personal norms of achievement; if it were,
the individual would bear primary responsibility for gaining or losing
self-respect and this category would have no place in social philosophy.
On the contrary, Rawls assumes that individuals' access to a life with
self-respect is largely a function of their institutional positions and thus
of the way "the basic structure" of society defines such positions.
Though certain inequalities in self-respect only pertain to ethical life,
those which stem from unequal institutional position constitute a cen-
tral problem of social justice.
This paper seeks to explain and criticize Rawls' system of justice
from,the vantage point of its underlying conception of self-respect and
human dignity. We argue that the essential features of this system (the
two principles of justice, the priority of the first principle over the
second, and the institutional model of "a property-owning democracy"
which embodies the principles) stem from Rawls' conception of self-
259
260 NOUS
respect as equality of the basic bourgeois-democratic liberties, those

and only those constitutional rights of citizenship characteristic of
capitalist democracy in the West. This paper argues in various ways
that Rawls' conception does not adequately comprehend the social
reality of self-respect, the deep ways in which equality and inequality in
its social bases are decisively shaped by the distribution of economic
power and position in advanced industrial society. Furthermore, we
show that this is not exclusively an empirical inadequacy in Rawls'
system; it also reflects basic methodological deficiencies, and an "ideo-
logical" dimension in the very philosophical conception of human
dignity and freedom upon which the whole system is founded.
An additional aim of this paper is to clarify the relation of Rawls'
theory of capitalism and socialism. We seek to demonstrate that Rawls'
basic conceptions of self-respect and liberty unwittingly incorporate
and legitimate certain fundamental structural limitations of capitalist
society which are incompatible with the unfettered pursuit ofjustice in
economic life. We argue that Rawls' philosophical detachment of
human dignity and freedom from economic position reflects the fact
that they must be detached in capitalism where economic life is essen-
tially organized in accordance with principles of private control and
profitability (with or without a Rawlsian "social minimum"). Thus the
injuries to human dignity and freedom which stem from its char-
acteristic structure of economic power and purpose are concealed by
Rawls' conception. In effect his conception identifies human dignity
and freedom with what capitalist democracy is capable of delivering.
Hence while Rawls' system is critical with respect to certain injustices
within capitalist society, it is silent about certain deeper injustices result-
ing from its ruling economic principles. On the other hand, an alter-
nate conception of human dignity and freedom implicit in the Marxian
tradition is not represented in Rawls' idea of socialism or the reasoning
of the original position.
To forestall misunderstanding, some remarks are in order con-
cerning the positive standpoint which informs our critique of Rawls, as
well as the injustices of capitalist institutions about which his theory is
silent. Our critique draws on a model of human dignity implicit in the
socialist tradition, though we base its justification on a consideration of
actual social problems and Rawls' theory. We do not assume that either
the Marxist tradition or 'socialism' as presently understood resolves the
problems of social justice raised for Rawls' system; clearly they do not,
though they have an indispensible contribution to make, as does Rawls'
theory and the inherited liberal tradition. Our standpoint is that a
philosophical theory of democratic socialism is required with enriched
conceptions of human dignity, freedom and economic life. Such a
theory must preserve the individual liberties and democratic claims of
RAWLS' SYSTEM: A CRITIQUE 261
Rawls' system while going beyond them to develop a conception of

equal rights and freedom adequate to humanize economic life, and to
fulfill the promise of the liberal tradition. This paper argues for the
philosophical necessity of this project without carrying it out.
For Rawls, the problem of self-respect is at the core of a theory of social

justice. As against the view that self-respect exclusively poses a personal
or ethical problem, Rawls maintains (1) that the distribution of
self-respect among individuals is to a large degree a function of
society's basic institutional structure, and (2) that the justice of this
structure requires rough equality in the social bases of self-respect.'
Among the various "primary social goods" whose distribution deter-
mines the justice of a society, self-respect is "perhaps the main primary
good'; without it, an individual may feel that his or her life is not worth
living, making any amount of the other primary goods (liberty, income,
power, opportunity) count for nothing or very little in achieving a good
life. ([18]: 440, 340, 107.) Although central to Rawls' vision, self-
respect, ironically, nowhere explicitly appears in his statement of the
two principles of social justice. In effect, Rawls' conception of the
primacy and nature of self-respect is translated into the way his
principles order and distribute the other social goods: (1) with liberty
enjoying priority over economic benefits and (2) with the equality
essential to substantive justice requiring equal liberty but allowing
unequal economic benefits. This conception can be clarified by
contrasting it with a utilitarian account of how primary social goods
ought to be distributed in ajust society. From the utilitarian standpoint,
all social goods are in a sense on a moral par-so many more utilities to
be balanced off against one another in a quantitative calculus designed
to maximize overall human satisfaction. From Rawls' standpoint,
utilitarianism obfuscates the central moral distinction between two
irreducibly different kinds of primary social goods: (1) those whose
distribution implicates human dignity and self-respect, as against (2)
those whose distribution only affects persons' capacity to satisfy their
desires. On Rawls' conception of the social bases of self-respect, basic
civil liberties and political rights (along with formal equality of
opportunity) fall into the first category. Economic goods-income,
wealth, institutional authority, economic power and social position fall
into the second category. What gives these two types of goods
irreducibly different status? On Rawls' view, the justice of every
modern society requires that it treat the realm of human dignity and
self-respect as a realm of absolute equality between persons, non-
negotiable against the realm of goods in the second category. Hence his
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fundamental commitment to equality in the social bases of self-respect

is taken to imply a society in which everyone enjoys the equal rights and
liberties of democratic citizenship (the first principle), even if greater
economic benefits might be obtained through inequalities of liberty
and citizenship, or their general abridgement.
On the other hand, Rawls assumes that equality in the social bases
of self-respect is compatible with inequalities of income, wealth, power,
and property in economic life-at least as long as equality of opportu-
nity is maintained. According to the second principle of justice which
regulates basic economic institutions, inequalities of position and
benefit in this sector are just provided that (1) they leave everyone
(especially the worst-off) better off than they would be without these
inequalities and (2) they attach to positions open to all. ([18]: 76-9.) In
effect, justice in economic life does not touch the problematic of
self-respect but rather involves the problem of arranging inequalities
so as to maximize the minimum material benefits everyone receives.
Rawls assumes that this "difference principle" can be realized in a
capitalist democracy like our own minus those excessive inequalities of
wealth and power which exist at the expense of the worst-off and not to
their economic advantage.2 On the other hand, the form of economy
Rawls has in mind throughout his argument and explicitly sketches in
Chapter Five ([18]: 258-84) embodies substantial inequalities of power
and income including those definitive of a capitalist social order. This
feature is based upon Rawls' assumption that this class-stratified
organization of production-with its unequal rewards and powers as
spurs to initiative, innovation, efficiency, discipline, etc.-is necessary
to maximize the aggregate wealth possible for a nation's economy and
thus what is available to raise the worst-off as high as possible.3 The just
distribution of this aggregate in Rawls' system is then guaranteed by the
state through a "negative income tax" or "social minimum" which
redistributes income in accordance with the difference principle,
correcting the degree of economic inequality required by the most
efficient mode of economic enterprise. ([18]: 276-8.) In sum, equality
of self-respect is perfectly compatible with unequal economic advan-
tages; as a realm of instrumental rationality economic life requires
inequality to maximize the material prospects of all.
Thus Rawls' conception of self-respect identifies the social bases of
self-respect with the position of equal citizenship within constitutional
democracy, and detaches it from the positions of individuals within
socio-economic institutions. As such, it generates a two-tiered model of
social justice entailing the priority of equal liberty over unequal
economic benefit, the first principle over the second, and the well-
entrenched institution of political democracy over the more contingent
question of legitimate economic inequalities.4 From this standpoint,
utilitarianism obfuscates the irreducible normative difference between

self-respect and liberty on the one hand, and economic advantages on
the other, treating both as though they were so many more utilities to
be balanced off against one another in the calculus of maximizing
happiness. Thus, it admits the theoretical possibility of a lesser or
unequal liberty and self-respect justified by greater economic advan-
tages. On Rawls' theory, this is always unjust in modern society, hence
utilitarianism comes to grief.
Yet from the critical standpoint to be developed here, Rawls does
not sufficiently separate his own theory of justice from a utilitarian
standpoint; he emancipates the constitutional state from a utilitarian
standpoint which. however, continues to govern economic life (subject
to his second principle's proviso that the utilities of all must be
optimized by just economic inequalities). The individual as citizen and
political agent is no utilitarian but actively engaged in a free life with
dignity and equality; however, the individual as socio-economic
being-a producer and consumer-is a utilitarian exclusively con-
cerned with the maximization of his or her material benefits, within the
constraints of fairness. The daily activities, roles and social relations of
individuals within economic life constitute a sphere of instrumental
rationality which speaks exclusively to human beings' appetitive side
and its fulfillment in a private realm of consumption. On the other
hand, their claims as moral and social beings for a form of life with
freedom, self-respect and human equality are supposed to be primarily
satisfied by their common status as citizen, and by a separate political
realm of human affairs in which this status is mutually affirmed. Thus,
Rawls identifies the classical philosophical distinction between the
higher realm of human freedom or dignity and the lower, of mere
desire or satisfaction with the distinction between the state and
economic life in own society. This way of separating the state from the
economy (with separate Rawlsian principles governing each) stems
from his conception of self-respect as bourgeois-democratic citizen-
ship, and as we will argue, ultimately incorporates structurally neces-
sary, but norally pernicious, features of capitalism. Why do we speak
of "bourgeois-democratic citizenship" in this context rather than
"democratic citizenship" simpliciter? My reason is that the particular
rights through which Rawls defines the equal citizenship demanded by
his first principle ofjustice (equal liberty, equal self-respect) are in fact
identical with the civil liberties and political rights characteristic of
western capitalist democracy. ([18]: 61.) One need not reject the value
or historical significance of these rights in order to question Rawls'
delimitation of liberty and citizenship to the specific measure of
capitalist democracy. Yet to question this conception will ultimately
lead us to reject Rawls' whole two-tiered model of social justice and its
264 NOUS
foundational philosophical conceptions of human dignity, liberty, the

state and economy.
Our critique of this model will draw in part upon empirical research
concerning the social reality of self-respect within capitalist democracy.
This method raises questions concerning the methodological status of
Rawls' own conception of self-respect. Is it a normative or empirical
conception, or both? Rawls' use of the term "self-respect" where his
philosophical predecessors within the liberal tradition exclusively
employed terms such as "dignity" or "freedom" marks a momentous
turn in liberal political philosophy towards a concern with the empirical
constraints upon theoretical construction. For Rawls is not only
concerned to advance a normative model of human dignity as equality
of freedom; he is equally concerned to represent a social system of
justice in which this normative model of human dignity eventuates in
the empirical access of all to the ordinary, daily experience of
self-respect. His system of justice is not only one in which people
"ought" to respect themselves and one another, but a system in which
they in fact will do so. Thus Rawls typically formulates the self-respect
his system requires in overtly empirical terms: "a sense of one's own
worth," "self-esteem," an individual's "secure conviction that his plan
of life is worth carrying out ... and a confidence in one's ability, so far as
it is within one's power, to fulfill one's intentions." ([18]: 440.) Of
course his conception of self-respect is also intended to derive from and
embody an underlying normative Kantian 'ideal of the person' (treated
in our final section). Nevertheless, the socio-empirical dimension of
this conception plays an absolutely indispensible role in Rawls' theory of
social justice, as follows below.
Individuals in the "original position," are constrained to evaluate
alternative principles of justice as "public" and "so they must assess
conceptions of justice in view of their probable effects as the generally
recognized standards." ([18]: 454.) In particular, every conception of
justice is partly evaluated by the likelihood that when it is embodied in a
social system and serves as its members' shared, public, operative
standard, then "a well-ordered society" with "stability" results. A
"well-ordered society" is
a society in which everyone accepts and knows that others accept the
same principles of justice and the basic social institutions satisfy and are
known to satisfy these principles. ([18]: 453-4.)
Furthermore,
a conception ofjustice is stable when the public recognition of its realiza-

tion by the social system tends to bring about the corresponding sense of
justice. ([18]: 177.)
When a conception of justice thus satisfies these criteria of well-

orderedness and stability, it is said to "generate its own support." The
way the basic institutions implied by the conception actually function
and the desire of individuals to uphold this conception mutually rein-
force one another giving the whole system an internal, self-maintaining
equilibrium.
In sum, the likely social consequences of embedding a conception
of justice in a society, and the moral understanding of its agents,
decisively enters into the very criteria by which the conception must be
justified; it is no mere external matter of how the conception can be
applied. In one of Rawls' main arguments for his principles over
utilitarianism he contends that the former yields a well-ordered, stable
social system of justice whereas there is good reason to hold that the
latter cannot. He links the alleged well-orderedness and stability of his
system of justice to its capacity to sustain equality in the social bases of
self-respect, and therefore the support of its members. On the other
hand, "In a public utilitarian society, men will find it more difficult to
be confident of their own worth." ([18]: 180-2.) In consequence, they
will be less inclined to freely support the utilitarian system of justice;
inequalities in the social bases of self-respect sanctioned by utilitar-
ianism will generate instabilities in this system. Thus
: . . the parties in the original position would wish to avoid at almost any
cost the social conditions that undermine self-respect. The fact that
justice as fairness gives more support to self-esteem than other principles
is a strong reason for them to adopt it. ([18]: 180-2).
From this perspective, Rawls' attempt to sketch a stable, well-

ordered society in which his conception of justice is embodied ("a
property-owning democracy" with "private ownership of the means of
production," ([ 18]: 274)) reflects an essential dimension of its justifica-
tion. ([18]: Chapters IV and V) To be sure, Rawls insists that other
social models (e.g., some form of democratic socialism) might do as
well, though they play little role in his discussion. The only evidence we
get of the well-orderedness and stability of his conception derives from
the institutional model of capitalist democracy which he employs
throughout to embody it.
'Once we take Rawls' methodological notion of publicity, well-
orderedness, and stability seriously, social philosophy must evaluate
embodied systems of justice and not merely their principles taken in
abstraction. For this reason, our study focuses on Rawls' whole vision of
a just society, as well as the socio-empirical assumptions concerning
existing society upon which it rests. When we dispute Rawls' social
understanding of the bases of self-respect, capitalist democracy, or the
significance of economic power in advanced industrial societies, our
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argument fully shares his own methodological presuppositions. As he

insists, "conceptions ofjustice must bejustified by the conditions of our
life as we know it or not at all." ([1 8]: 454.) Or elsewhere, ". . . we have no
hesitation in making the choice of the principles ofjustice presuppose a
certain theory of social institutions." ([18]: 58-60.)
This entire dimension of Rawls' theory has been mostly ignored
in the voluminous literature which has arisen among philosophers
surrounding his work. Nevertheless, the fact that Rawls' approach to
social philosophy includes as an essential component the vision of a
well-ordered, stable society marks a significant advance over the de-
gree of abstraction characteristic of our tradition. It opens up the
possibility of an internal unity in social theory between the evaluation
of abstract moral principles and the concrete understanding of the
actual and possible forms of social life within which such principles live
and establish their adequacy or failings. As such, Rawls' work invites a
form of critical discussion which is simultaneously theoretical and
practical, philosophical and social.
II
The thrust of this critique is that there are serious and unjust injuries to
the dignity and liberty of various groups in capitalist democracy which
are neither represented, analyzed, nor critically challenged by Rawls'
theory of justice. The bulk of my argument seeks to establish (1) what
these injuries are (2) why Rawls' principles of justice do not speak to
them and (3) that they indeed ought to count as problems of social
justice, on several of his own assumptions. Rawlsian theory does not
recognize any problems of social injustice arising from the unequal
positions characteristic of a capitalist economy, other than whether
they admit of equality of opportunity and maximize the income of the
worst-off. The plausibility of this approach hinges on the detachment
of the social bases of self-respect from the positions of individuals
within economic life-production and consumption. But much of what
we know about advanced industrial society in general, and capitalist
democracy in particular, flatly contradicts the plausibility of such a
separation. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that under
capitalism inequalities of power and position surrounding the labor
process and various sorts of inequalities connected with the way income
and wealth are distributed both generate serious injuries to self-
respect. In this paper, I focus the argument upon inequalities of
position connected with the labor process; but the problem of injuries
to self-respect stemming from the form, source, degree, and signifi-
cance of income-inequalities within capitalism is equally important,
and briefly discussed at the end.
To begin with, consider the hierarchical form of the capitalist

labor process in particular firms at the point of production. For the
moment we may exlude from our attention two groups at opposite
poles on the continuum of power: (1) the owners of capital who exer-
cise the decisive power over the whole of the labor process and (2) the
unemployed who lack even the power of access to the lowest rung of
position. Within the remaining strata, from top-level management
down to the lowest rung of workers in the chain of command and
responsibility, there are dramatic and interrelated inequalities of
power of various kinds: in the degree of power each stratum possesses
(1) over the labor of others (from those who mainly give orders to those
who only obey them), (2) over its own labor (its pace, duration, quality,
methods and goals), and (3) over the productive process of the firm as a
whole (its physical environment, the product, production goals, the
introduction of innovations, the social organization and relations of
work). It is clear that where an individual stands in this hierarchical
order shapes his or her opportunities for recognition, self-respect, and
well-being in various ways, quite apart from the mediation of relative
income. A substantial body of social research (nicely summarized in [9])
establishes that ascendant positions involve opportunities for greater
knowledge, responsibility, skill, achievement, interest, recognition,
satisfaciton, pride, and a sense of the worth of one's work and oneself.
On the other hand, those at the bottom of the blue and white collar
work force suffer serious assaults upon their self-respect and oppor-
tunity for elementary human satisfaction in work due to the powerless-
ness, subordination, absence of responsibility, and mindlessness im-
plicit in their positions. ([9]: 1-28; [2]: 245-50; [4]: 166-87; [11]: 36-62;
[19]) In Mental Health of the Industrial Worker, Kornhauser demonstrates
that the low self-esteem traceable to such positions involves a general
deterioration in the psychological well-being of many working people
beyond the work-place. ([13]: 260-3.) HEW's Work in America also
compiles a strong case for concluding that the various deprivations
implicit in an oppressive division of labor and power take their toll
upon working people's health, longevity, family life, and capacity to
enjoy leisure. ([9]: 76-93; [12]: 230-1; [8]: 104-14; [16].) On the other
hand, the same body of research shows that even limited and modest
attempts at a more egalitarian distribution of authority, autonomy, and
variety in work (through measures such as job-redesign, job-rotation,
and so-called "industrial democracy") have resulted in more equal
opportunities for recognition, self-respect and meaningful agency on
the job. ([9]: 96-110; [11]; [23]; [10]). These facts are also evident from
the historical struggles ([29]; [30]) and present desires of those workers
who suffer the indignities under discussion here:
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What the workers want most, as more than 100 studies in the past 20
years show, is to become masters of their immediate environments and to
feel that their work and they themselves are important-the twin ingre-
dients of self-esteem. Workers recognize that some of the dirty jobs can
be transformed only into the mnerely tolerable, but the most oppressive
features of work are felt to be avoidable: constant supervision and coer-
cion, lack of variety, monotony, meaningless tasks, and isolation. An
increasing number of workers want more autonomy in tackling their
tasks, greater opportunity for increasing their skills, rewards that are
directly connected to the intrinsic aspects of work, and greater participa-
tion in the design of work and the formulation of their tasks. ([9]: 13; cf.
[6]: 47-61.)
In short, the social organization of the labor process significantly

contributes to patterns of inequality in the daily prospects of individu-
als and groups for: respect (as against the sense that one's work and
oneself aren't worth as much as higher-ups, professionals, etc.),
autonomous, meaningful activity (as against self-stultifying, and domi-
nated labor), health (as against the diseases of frustration, stress and
despair); and a decent life beyond the workplace (as against a life
plagued by the anger, humiliation, exhaustion, and hopelessness
consequent upon dead-end jobs). The plight of the unemployed is
especially significant in this context. Social research reveals that some
of the most serious injuries to self-esteem in our society are to be found
among the unemployed-who desire work as much as anyone and
blame themselves for their "failure" to find work, to support their
families, etc. ([9]: 6-9; cf, [21]: 55-103.)5
Do these social injuries to self-respect implicity in the structure of
the existing labor process constitute "social injustices" in a sense that
Rawls' own theory does, should, or must recognize? We may best
approach this question by a detailed examination of various aspects of
Rawls' theory which reviewers have ignored but which imply or suggest
a recognition of these problems. These aspects are as follows:
(1) "power" as one of the "social goods" which must be

justly distributed by Rawls' second principle,
(2) a conception of self-respect as necessarily involving the
goods of self-development and community, elabo-
rated in Part Three,
(3) Rawls' own explicit response to the possibility that
economic position may constitute a social basis of
self-respect, and, finally,
(4) Rawls' attempt to derive his social conception of
dignity as bourgeois-democratic citizenship from the
original position and its Kantian ideal of the person.
These aspects will permit our critique to partly ground itself in

considerations internal to Rawls' treatment. We begin in the following
section with (1), the status of "power" as a primary social good.
III
The argument we have drawn from empirical research links injuries to

self-respect with certain extreme inequalities of power in the economic
organization of the labor process under capitalism.6 Our introductory
presentation suggests that, in disassociating the social bases of self-
respect from economic organization, Rawls' system has denied itself
the resources to deal with the problems raised above. But we must
consider the possibility that the reformist intention of the second
principle-its elimination of those inequalities which do not improve
the lot of the "worst-off"-may effectively speak to these social
problems. In its initial formulation, the second principle purports to
deal with inequalities of power ("the power and prerogatives of
authority"), as well as those of income. ([18]: 92, 93, 97.) Thus conceived,
it would stipulate that inequalities of power and income are just only if
they are necessary to raise the worst-off up both in terms of power and
income (or some indexical aggregate of both). However, power in Rawls'
system turns out to be a social good in name only and drops out of the
argument almost as quickly as it appears. Throughout, the bulk of his
argument, the key terms "worst-off' and "better-off' are interpreted
exclusively in terms of income levels and the second principle ofjustice
sanctions whatever inequalities of power are required to maximize the
income of the worst-off.
To give one example, when Rawls, in Chapter 5, sketches a form of
capitalist economy allegedly compatible with his second principle, he
does not even take up the issue of how his state (which redistributes
income) might redistribute power to mnake up for the inequalities of
power workers endure in the private sector. ([18]: 258-84.) Apart from
maintaining equality of opportunity, the difference principle reduces
to a matter of maximizing "the social minimum" which has nothing to
do with power. In Rawls' own terms,
It is clear that the justice of distributive shares depends on the

background institutions and how they allocate total income, wages and
other income plus transfers. ([18]: 277.)
Power as a primary social good has dropped. out of the picture; it is not
even mentioned in the final formulation of his principles of justice
([18]: 303.) On his institutional model ("a property-owning democ-
racy"), the particular division of power and labor within productive
270 NOUS
firms is under the control of a "private" sector composed of the owners

and managers of these firms. This way of distinguishing between the
public and private sectors of society reflects an essential feature of
capitalism: namely, that the internal organization of the labor process is
under the control of "private" parties and not the democratic state, the
citizenry at large, or the workers.
To be sure, during the last century the political action of the
working class have placed legal limitations upon the internal organiza-
tion of the labor process by its owners: the elimination of child labor,
the eight hour day, the right to unionize and bargain, some provision
for health and safety on the job, worker's compensation, etc. Neverthe-
less, such reforms within capitalism, valuable as they are, can never
amount to public, democratic control over the core of the division of
power and labor itself; such control is one of the defining prerogatives
of private ownership in the means of production, and thus capitalism
itself. To this extent, the redistribution of authority within the labor
process in pursuit of social justice raises far more serious problems for
capitalist democracy than a Rawlsian redistribution of income and
equality of opportunity; unlike the former, the latter can be effected (at
least up to a point) by the democratic state without entering into the
heart of the private sector and usurping its most basic rights of control
under capitalism.
If Rawls had taken up his own problem of how the "worst-off' can
be raised up, in terms of "power and prerogatives of authority" as well
as income, he would immediately have confronted the problem of
capitalism-or socialism-in different terms. These forms of economic
system (and variants of each) would no longer appear in his discussion
as merely alternate, technical means for maximizing the income of the
worst-off; but rather, as alternate systems of dividing power with
different implications for social justice. Such problems do not enter
Rawls' argument because the exercise of control within and over the
labor process as a primary social good never really enters into his actual
social analysis. Rawls justifies the deletion of power from his principle
of economic justice on the assumption that degree of power is a simple
function of the degree of income; "worst-off ' in terms of power
correlates with "worst-off' in terms of income, the poorest are also the
most powerless, the richest are the most powerful, etc. ([18]: 97.) But
even if true, this does not imply that inequalities which raise the income
of the worst-off also raise their power or authority on the job. Indeed,
the historical experience shows the opposite to be true; the increasing
monopolization of industry characteristic of the development of
capitalist society has raised the average income of workers at the
same time that it has destroyed the traditional craft-basis of industry
and the earlier measures of control, autonomy, and skill enjoyed by
craft workers. ([5]; [4]: 1-35; [20]: 1-34.) This historical process has
increased both (1) the number of tedious, repetitive and mindless jobs
involving practically no authority or skills and (2) the relative propor-
tion of the total work force holding such jobs. While the proportion of
"white-collar" jobs in the overall labor process has increased enor-
mously since World War II, most of these jobs fit this model of
"alienated labor," as Braverman convincingly argues in [5]. This same
process of monopolization under capitalism increasingly eliminates
smaller, independent shops, businesses, and firms (where work is less
mechanized, specialized, routinized, etc.) with negative consequences
for autonomy, as against income. Furthermore, power and income
mark independent variables in defining the "worst-off'. Supposing (1)
unemployed welfare recipients, (2) unskilled but employed laborers,
and (3) school teachers all occupy the same income-level at the bottom
of the scale, these groups could not be lumped together as "the
worst-off." For, other dimensions of their respective situations roughly
bearing on where they stand on the scale of "the powers and
prerogatives of authority" (whether they have work, how much
authority their work allows them, etc.) will render some of these groups
significantly worse-off than others.7
This problem might be treated by defining some index for the
second principle, ranking trade-offs between incotne and power-now
treated as independent variables (at the point of production, leaving
aside the global relation between the wealth of a class and its power in
society as a whole). But this raises several problems. First it should be
noted that power, unlike income, is not coherently amenable to
regulation by a "maximum" principle. In the case of "the powers and
prerogatives of authority," an inequality which gives some individuals
more power over others' labor, or more power over the labor process
than others have, entails that others have less power than they would
otherwise have. How could any inequality of power give everyone more
power or authority or responsibility than they would otherwise have?
Applied to power, the second principle either always entails equality or
iS incoherent.
Can the plausibility of this principle be preserved by interpreting it
so as to require (a) equality of power, or (b) a definite index of
reasonable trade-offs of power as against income? ([18]: 94.) This is a
difficult question to answer in the context of Rawls' system. His theory
explains why income is a primary good (it is instrumental to one's ends
whatever these are) but not why he thinks of "the powers and
prerogative of authority" as a primary good.8 To what is it instrumen-
tal, on his view? If as our argument maintains, the division of economic
power shapes the social bases of self-respect, then we have a rough
criterion for evaluating inequalities of power. Accepting Rawls' own
272 NOUS
assumption of the priority of equality in the social bases of self-respect,

we will reject as unjust any scheme of inequalities of economic power
which in practice works out to generate scarcities in the social bases of
self-respect avoidable in a competing system. In any case, it is difficult
to see how the justice of inequalities of power, or trade-offs between
power and income could be evaluated without reference to a social
theory which connects the distribution of power in economic life with
the constitution of relations of reciprocal recognition and respect
betwen social actors. This is entirely lacking in Rawls' theory; for while
he draws on economic theory and developmental psychology, the
traditions of sociology (of power, culture, status, work, etc.) and social
psychology do not enter his horizon.
Another way of bringing out the inadequacy of Rawls' principle of
economic justice is to ask how it might deal with what, I have argued, is
the social injustice implicit in the structural unemployment endemic to
capitalism. Rawls himself casually indicates in a few contexts that he
favors full employment "in the sense that those who want work can find
it". ([ 18]: 276.) Elsewhere he even asserts that "meaningful work in free
association with others" is more important that "great wealth". ([18]:
290.) While these sentiments are laudable, what is their status in Rawls'
system? His second principle may entail the justice of significant levels
of structural unemployment just in case they are necessary to raise the
"social minimum". Even if we read "power" back into Rawls' second
principle, how is unemployment (or welfare dependence, unpaid
domestic labor, etc.) to be conceptualized in terms of power, without
the explicit mediation of a theory of the social constitution of human
dignity inside and/or outside the labor process under capitalism or
more generally, advanced industrial society. As it stands, Rawls second
principle sanctions the very injustices to the unemployed that violate
his own intuitions.9
In sum, Rawls' theory initially promises to treat institutional
"power" and position in the labor process, as well as "income," as an
essential component of the material advantages which define "worst-
off' and "better-off' in the second principle of justice. To this extent,
his theory shares our assumption that inequalities of economic power
count as a problem of social justice; furthermore, that justice may
require the maximization of the individual's powers within and over the
labov process, not merely the income he or she derives from it. On the
other hand, "power" effectively disappears from Rawls' system, and
thus the problems posed by the inequalities in our society are never
systematically treated.
IV
Social research concerning work strongly suggests that the injuries to

self-respect in the labor process.partly stems from the self-stultification
implicit in its most powerless positions. Such positions are not only
characterized by an absence of power over the labor process as a whole,
and subordination to the authority of others; they also involve an
absence of control over one's own immediate laboring activity whose
most minute aspects are subordinated to the requirements of job-
design, the existing technological apparatus, the time-clock, the
particular division of labor and underlying all of these, the imperatives
of profit-maximization. Such positions (e.g., assemblyline work and
keyboard punching) characteristically involve little skill, mental capac-
ity, challenge, or responsibility; they are routinized, tedious, mindless,
and, if held by an individual over much time, take a serious toll upon his
or her capacities and well-being.10 Whatever their income, workers in
such positions know that they are as easily replaced as parts of a
machine and enjoy little scope for individual achievement, proficiency,
and self-direction.
In part three of his book, Rawls develops a conception which ties
self-respect to an individual's access to activities and social associations
that develop and confirm his or her higher human capacities. This
conception provides additional internal support for our critique of
Rawls' detachment of self-respect from economic position. Rawls
theorizes that self-respect depends upon some significant measure of
self-development in the context of a community which extends positive
recognition to its achievements. He grounds the self s need for such
achievements upon "The Aristotelian Principle," which asserts human
beings' preference for activities that permits displays of human excel-
lence, proficiency, the development of mental as well as physical facu-
lites, and the use of complex skills and judgments. ([18]: 424-33,
440-2.) The absence in an individual's life of sufficient activities which
satisfy the Aristotelian principle leaves his or her life "dull and
flat,"robbing the self of a "feeling of competence or a sense that they (its
activities) are worthwhile." ([18]: 440.) Furthermore, if there is no
social association in which the individual's proficiencies receive positive
recognition from others, then "it is impossible to maintain the convic-
tion that they are worthwhile." ([18]: 441; cf. [18]: 443.) Furthermore,
"these facts relate ... to the conditions of self-respect..." ([18]: 443.)11
Thus self-respect for Rawls appears to involve some measure of self-
development and what he calls "the good of community." ([18]: 520.)
In this context, he reveals a highly concrete empirical concern with
self-respect as involving "the sense that what we do in everyday life is
worthwhile." ([18]: 441.)
274 NOUS
How is this conception of self-respect related to the two principles

of justice and the basic institutional structure they sanction? Rawls
asserts that the practical implication of this conception is that "for each
person there is some association (one or more) to which he belongs"
([18]: 441) which may sustain the requisite self-development. He
furthermore suggests that in his system (whose first principle guaran-
tees freedom of association) "there are a variety of communities and
associations" which might satisfy this need. ([18]: 441-2. cf, [18]: 529.)
He seems to be thinking of clubs, professional associations, friendships,
perhaps families, etc. Thus, Rawlsian justice, through its principle of
equal liberty, hopes to create the social conditions in which all have
access to communities of "Aristotelian" activity and mutual self-
respect. But the contingency of this connection between equal liberty
and equality in the social basis of self-respect (between the right of all to
form or join a free association and the actual existence or likelihood of
the sorts or associations required for self-respect) is evidently consid-
ered by Rawls to be too weak for the requirements of his theory,
because, the utlimate guarantor of self-development, community, and
self-respect turns out to be the public and political life illegedly implicit
in democratic society. In Rawls' words:
And for the most part this assurance (of self-respect) is sufficient
whenever in public life citizens respect one another's ends and adjudicate
their political claims in ways that also support their self-esteem . . . This
democracy in judging each other's aims is the foundation of self-respect
in a well-ordered society. ([18]: 442.)
In sum, Rawls implicitly maintains that equality of liberty in his

system generates equality in the social basis of self-respect at two
interrelated levels: the same democratic state which provides (1) formal
equality of political and legal status (or, equal citizenship) also
guarantees (2) democratic forms of social association in which all have
access to the requisite self-affirming activity and community through
its distinctive public life, political processes, debate, legal institutions,
etc. The social bases of self-respect thus have (1) a formal and (2) a
material content. This is the heart of Rawls' vision of the dignity of the
individual in a just social system.
The thrust of our critique does not dispute the importance of the
classical democratic liberties and political participation for human
dignity.12 Rather, according to our argument, it is implausible to
discount the central role which the positions of individuals within
productive life play in shaping and distributing social access to
recognition and self-respect. However vibrant and democratic it might
be, can political life as we know it, or as Rawls pictures it, constitute the
main or sole source of "the sense that what we do everyday is
worthwhile"? What most people do everyday is work, and is defined by

their position in the labor process, and, thus, by how this process is
socially organized. Following the "Aristotelian" principle, suppose that
the worst-off s positions in the labor process confine them to daily roles,
activities, and social relations which stultify the self, demean its
capacities for autonomy and mental labor, thwart recognition from
their associates, and block meaningful achievements; then, to use
Rawls' words, much of their lives are "likely to seem dull and flat and
give no feeling of competence." ([18]: 440.)
Thus, the conception of self-respect which Rawls elaborates in part
three goes well beyond the earlier requirement for equality of citizen-
ship. Once his own discussion has connected the social bases of self-
respect to some normal access for all to self-development and com-
munities of mutual recognition the equal liberty guaranteed by Rawls'
principle of justice seem insufficient. But let us see if we can demon-
strate this insufficiency by once again relying on considerations inter-
nal to Rawls' discussion.
While Rawls explicitly counts on the democratic state to constitute
the kind of community his theory requires, his vision of a just society
must also picture economic associations as part of this community, not
antithetical to it. Indeed, Rawls' defense of the second principle in-
volves the suggestion that it also constitutes a kind of community, even
"fraternity" in social relations. ([18]: 105.) The idea here is that frater-
nity result from the public knowledge that everyone-regardless of his
or her special advantages, degree of authority, position, etc.-only
enjoys these advantages as part of an economic system which
maximizes the income of all. Thus Rawls argues for the second princi-
ple as one that could be accepted by free and equal moral persons. The
self-conscious realization of this principle in economic relations is taken
to generate an effective sense of community which further buttresses
that of the democratic state. However, elsewhere, in his discussion of
"social union," Rawls elaborates social pre-conditions for effective
community which are much more stringent than those implied by the
second principle. In the relevant passage, Rawls insists that the "tie of
community" in a social union requires "an agreed scheme of conduct in
which the excellences and enjoyments of each are complementary to
the good of all," "common activities valued for themselves" and "public
recognition of the attainments of everyone." ([18]: 526. cf. 523-5,
footnote 4.) Such a formulation surely restricts the admissible division
of power and labor in an economic "community" well beyond what is
sanctioned by the second principle. At the very least, Rawls' formula-
tion suggests that a social association of labor must be organized so that
the position of each allows some scope for "excellences and enjoy-
ments." In this same section, Rawls even indicates some awareness of
the problems posed by the existing organization and division of labor:
276 NOUS
As a final comment, I should note that a well-ordered society does not

do away with the division of labor in the most general sense. To be sure,
the worst aspects of this division can be surmounted: no one need be
servilely dependent on others and made to choose between monotonous
and routine occupations which are deadening to human thought and
sensibility... The division of labor is overcome not by each becoming
complete in himself, but by willing and meaningful work within a just
social union of social unions in which all can freely participate as they so
incline. ([18]: 529.)
Unfortunately, these points never find their way into the sub-
stance of his theory ofjustice. As they stand, his two principles ofjustice
may indeed sanction an economic system in which the worst-off work-
ers are "servilely dependent on others and made to choose between
monotonous and routine occupations which are deadening to human
thought and sensibility." To summarize this section, Rawls' discussion
in part three reveals certain concerns and convictions which ground
our own critique of his theory. His conception of self-respect as involv-
ing self-development and community implicitly indicates why a form of
economic association with self-stultifying positions implies injuries to
self-respect.13 Furthermore, it is clear that he shares our conviction that
the existing division of labor in capitalist society generates forms of
dependence and self-stultification which ought to and can be sur-
mounted in a decent society. Yet these concerns emerge on the periph-
ery of Rawls' discussion and run against the grain of his foundational
concepts and principles of social justice.
In a few isolated contexts of discussion Rawls effectively acknowledges

the insufficiency of his second principle to handle the problems of
self-respect which grow out of a hierarchical organization of produc-
tion. In such context he says
the confident sense of their own worth should be sought for the least
favored and this limits the forms of hierarchy and the degree of inequality that
justice permits." ([ 18]: 107, my italics.)
Unfortunately these "limits" are never mentioned again and effectly

discounted in the formulation of the second principle and his discus-
sion of economy. The only form of hierarchy Rawls' system attempts to
exclude is an undemocratic hierarchy of political authority in the
organization of the state.
Toward the very end of his book, Rawls reluctantly concedes that
"To some extent men's sense of their own worth may hinge upon their
institutional position and their in

to sketch his strategy for dealing
But theoretically we can if necessary

goods, the index of which defines e
the difference principle, this index c
envy, the expectations of the less ad
the effects... Admittedly this probl
but when necessary the expectation
stood so as to include the primary g
In these remarks, Rawls concede

tached from the organization of p
self-respect to the status of anoth
income or wealth, to be balanced
the overall material interests of the
is that if self-esteem is also affect
too should be plugged into the sec
income. But what a bizarre turn i
bases his system of justice on equa
and a notion of self-respect which
over other goods. Recall that one m
and non-negotiable with respect t
(1) equal liberty guarantees equalit
is "perhaps the main primary goo
far as is socially possible. If social
liberty against economic benefits,
self-respect to be so balanced and
only allowed into the calculus of t
effects of excusable envy". But R
tance of self-respect reveals that i
envy, which may not attend ine
respect. His own later conception
suggests that injuries to self-respe
function of envy, but rather m
stultification, powerlessness, and
plicit in the unequal positions of th
In sum, there are serious tensi
principles ofjustice including the n
embody and much of what he claim
society. This tension is aptly reve
social possibility that his citize
democracy-may suffer injuries to
tions in the economic system. O
normative conception of self-resp
278 NOUS
ship leaves no room for a model of dignity through self-affirming labor

in community with others; hence, in his system individuals "ought not"
identify their self-respect with economic position. Such 'identification'
is unreasonable, inexcusable envy, irrelevant to social justice. On the
other hand, Rawls intends his conception of self-respect to enjoy em-
pirical plausibility. Thus, he concedes the possibility that economic
position may not only generate irrational effects on self-respect, but also
constitute genuine injuries to self-respect, legitimately construed. Yet
his foundational normative conception of self-respect allows him no
category other than that of "the effects of excusable envy" to concep-
tualize the indignities of economic position. Thus an unresolved dual-
ity in his system of justice results: on the one hand, a foundational
conception of self-respect as so central that it demands equality and
takes precedence over other goods in the standpoint of social justice;
on the other hand, a discussion of self-respect which demotes it to the
status of one more economic advantage to be raised or lowered, distri-
buted equally or unequally, depending on the overall requirements of
the second principle.
Before moving to the next stage of our critique, an important
Rawlsian reply to it must be considered, as follows: The injuries to
self-respect entailed by the basic structure of existing capitalist society
are jointly generated by
(1) its distribution of economic power, and

(2) the cultural criteria governing respect between per-
sons characteristic of it.
Yet on Rawls' theory , this society as it stands is neither well-ordered nor

just. In particular (2) above embodies a cultural deformation of the
Rawlsian liberal-democratic ideal of the person and entails improper
social bases of self-respect. As such, these social bases need to be
transformed into the Rawlsian ideal, not equalized, by the system of
justice. Thus, the Rawlsian response envisages a just, reformed,
welfare-state capitalism which abolishes existing injuries to self-
respect: not by necessarily abolishing
(1) its distribution of economic power (powerlessness in

work, unemployment, etc.)
but rather by transforming
(2) the criteria of respect so as to cancel the cultural sig-

nificance and oppressiveness now associated with (1).
This important response raises two questions:
(1) Does Rawls' system effect this transformation of the

dominant social bases of self-respect?
and
(2) Does his contractarian argument justify the view that

economic position and power are in principle, im-
proper social bases of self-respect?
Leaving the second question for an extensive discussion in section VII

below, we turn here to the first question.
From our perspective, this Rawlsian response fails because (2), the
cultural criteria of respect, cannot be transformed without transform-
ing (1), the capitalist division of economic power, position, and activity.
Rawls formulates the general sociological point at issue here well: the
socio-economic system
shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have. It deter-
mines in part the sort of persons they want to be, as well as the sort of
persons they are. . . " ([18]: 259.)
While he underscores the point in the abstract, he does not follow

through on its methodological implications for his own project. He
does not pursue the question of what conception of the person is
sustained by the capitalist division of economic power preserved
through the Rawlsian reforms; or, more broadly whether any modern
economic and cultural system is compatible in fact with his 'political'
conception of the person as citizen.
While this 'political conception' is influential in capitalist democ-
racy, it typically clashes with that other conception of the person en-
demic to capitalist relations: the original 'bourgeois' conception on
which unfettered market relations, activity, and position constitute
human freedom and the ultimate measure of the individual (his or her
capacities, success, or worth in 'the real world'). This bourgeois con-
ception of the individual, theoretically renewed by Nozick, underlies
the existing social bases of, and injuries to, self-respect in our society
examined above. There is no reason to think that Rawls' system of
justice, however fully realized would undermine this bourgeois con-
ception: either the cultural assumptions or social conditions which
jointly sustain injuries to human dignity connected with unemploy-
ment, and the various forms of powerlessness on the job we have
discussed.
280 NOUS
Indeed the argument of our paper so far indicates the opposite

view: ironically, Rawls' principles and institutional model sanction a
form of economic life in which Nozick's ideal of the person thrives,
undermining in various ways the Rawlsian (democratic) vision of
equality in the social bases of self-respect through equal citizenship.
Suppose we look beyond capitalism with or without Rawlsian reforms.
It is still implausible to think that any alternative modern society can be
based primarily on the Rawlsian ideal of recognition through the en-
joyment or exercise of civil and political liberties. For in an advanced
industrial society, the labor process looms very large in the develop-
ment of the whole society and in the daily activity, social identity, and
development (or stultification) of the individual. Thus for better or
worse, the capacities, identities, and recognition of persons will be
mediated by the economic positions and roles open to them by a
modern society's basic economic structure. As we have seen, some such
recognition is betrayed in several of Rawls' own peripheral discussions
(his Aristotelian model of self-respect, his critique of the demeaning
division of labor, his strong sentiment for full employment and mean-
ingful labor, etc.).
In this case, a more adequate conception of human dignity, free-
dom, and self-respect will have to be worked out as the basis for a
different conception of social justice. The arguments of the following
two sections will open the way onto this alternate conception.
VI
Up to this point, our critique argues that Rawls' two principles ofjustice
rest on an inadequate conception of self-respect, one which implausibly
detaches its social bases from individuals' positions in relation to the
labor process of advanced industrial society. In effect, these principles
may be satisfied by a form of society much like our own (some form of
capitalist democracy), which despite Rawlsian reforms (e.g., income-
redistribution) will continue to generate serious injuries to human
dignity resulting from its characteristic division of economic power.
Arguing from "the conditions of our life as we know it" (as Rawls insists
we must), our discussion has sought to establish that his system of social
justice fails its own test of well-orderedness and stability. Contrary to
Rawls' own argument, it is not the case that in a Rawlsian social system,
as opposed to a utilitarian one, ordinary individuals will experience
rough equality in the social bases of self-respect and on this basis
support its principles and institutions.
In this context, it is noteworthy that the body of research sum-
marized in Work in America traces several of the actual instabilities and
dysfunctions of the American social system (e.g., alcoholism, crime,
drug addiction, political cynicism or apathy, juvenile delinquency, etc.)

in part, to the injuries to self-respect in the labor process discussed
above. ([9]: 76-92.) This suggests that Rawls' system, in allowing or
indeed requiring unemployment, powerlessness on the job, etc. may
fall prey to many of social problems which signal the breakdown of a
Rawlsian "well-orderedness" and "stability" in our own body politic.
But, even if Rawls' system does rest on an implausible or mistaken
socio-empirical conception of self-respect, in what sense is it "ideolog-
ical" as we suggested at the outset? To begin with, let us explain the
methodological conception of ideology as it will be employed here. Its
central aim is to illuminate the interrelations betweenl a social philoso-
phy and social reality, and to develop a critique of the former which
takes its relations to the latter into account. The elucidation of a system
of philosophy as ideological in the context of a given social system
involves positive and negative relationships between the two:
(1) on the positive side, the elucidation of the ways in

which the positive historical achievements of the given
social system are faithfully comprehended and raised
to the higher plain of philosophical analysis and justifi-
cation by the system of philosophy; and
(2) on the negative side, the elucidation of the ways in

which the structural limitations placed on the possibil-
ity of further historical development by the social sys-
tem are hidden from theoretical and practical under-
standing by the system of philosophy.
What then are the relations between Rawls' system and capitalist de-
mocracy?
On the positive side, Rawls' theory incorporates the historical
achievements of bourgeois-democracy and provides them with a
clearer analysis and more powerful justification than they receive in
ordinary social life and other theories (e.g., utilitarianism). Among
these historical achievements, we may single out the following: the
abstract assumption that all individuals possess equal dignity, the de-
mand that a just society must embody in some way this equality of
dignity, the equal liberties of bourgeois-democratic citizenship (em-
compassing the rule of law, political democracy, civil rights, etc.) and
formal equality of opportunity. Rawls' conception of self-respect as
equality of bourgeois-democratic liberties represents a decisive ad-
vance over utilitarianism (as we suggest above in section one); as he
effectively argues, utilitarianism seems to justify under certain condi-
tions a regression below the achieved level of human equality in our
282 NOUS
social system. ([18]: 160-1, 542-3.) Unlike Rawls' theory, utilitarianism

cannot clarify or ground the central place of this equality (or freedom
and dignity) in contemporary institutions or our understanding of
them. Furthermore, Rawls' second principle expresses the historical
achievement in our society of some form of welfare state which makes
public provisions for the minimal material needs of all, independently
of the market. Compared with the resources of utilitarianism, Rawls'
principle and the argument for it constitutes a far more adequate
philosophical expression, defense and extension of the recognition in
our society of some moral claim of individual need or right in the
domain of economic life, which takes precedence over the blind law of
the market, or even the rule of economic efficiency. Rawls' second
principle defends and sharpens this recognition, and employs it to
reform the existing distribution of income. In sum, the characteriza-
tion of Rawls' theory as ideological serves at one level to clarify its
relationship to the positive achievements of capitalist democracy and to
credit the philosophical lucidity and justification it brings to them.
But to bring the methodological category of ideology to bear on
Rawls' theory is also to argue that it stands in an uncritical, philo-
sophically arbitrary relation to other structural features of capitalist
democracy which block further historical development and prevent it
from acknowledging other human claims. The Rawlsian detachment
of the bases of self-respect from individuals' positions in the labor
process uncritically reflects two interrelated features of capitalist de-
mocracy: first, the structural fact that within this system the labor
process cannot be systematically organized to affirm the dignity of its
laborers; and secondly, the system's own offical ideology of man as
citizen which rationalizes in thought the detachment of dignity from
economic position which it requires in fact. Let us explain these claims.
Capitalist democracy is essentially a social system in which the
labor process is under the control of a private sector of competitive
units whose survival depends on an organization of the labor process
responsive to the economic imperatives of profitability and the
accumulation of capital. The state within capitalist democracy can and
has in fact come to control by law certain aspects of the labor process
(minimum wage, right to collective bargaining, eight-hour day, pro-
hibition of child labor, etc.); however, if we envisage a process by which
the state, the public, or law were to control the core of the labor
process-what is produced, the 'legitimate' division of labor, the
proper division of authority within firms, the conditions of labor,
employment practices, etc.-then it is clear that we are no longer
talking about capitalism in any form. Similarly, under capitalism, the
basic principles which private firms must obey if they are to survive and
prosper are those of profitability and capital accumulation, which
dictate within certain limits how the labor process must be organized.
For these reasons, under capitalism the labor process as a whole

cannot be reorganized by the public, democratic state, or law in order
to meet claims of human dignity, self-respect, the laborer's self-
development, or a more equitable distribution of economic power.
This does not imply that particular firms within capitalism cannot
experiment with job-rotation, job-enrichment, some measure of
'industrial democracy' etc. which in fact often do turn out to lessen to
some degree its injuries to human dignity, the stultification of work,
etc. ([9]: 96-110.) However, under capitalism, (1) the state or demo-
cratic citizenry is in no position to require this sort of reorganization of
the labor process and (2) such experiments as the private sector may
itself undertake are always subordinated to its dominant criterion of
profitability (which they often serve) and restricted in advance so as not
to generate any challenge among working people to the most basic
prerogatives of management and owners. In sum, because the princi-
ples of private control and production for profit govern the organiza-
tion of the labor process under capitalism it is impossible (in theory and
fact) for the public to introduce any principle of equal dignity or social
justice to govern the internal division of power or labor within
economic life.
This structural limitation which capitalism places on the organiza-
tion of the labor process is expressed in the liberal ideology of man as
citizen: Because capitalist democracy must detach the claims of human
dignity from individuals' positions within the labor process, its domi-
nant ideology has characteristically asserted the social assumptions
necessary to vindicate this detachment. This ideology assumes the
identification of the individual's dignity with his liberties as citizen and
suppresses or ignores the labor process as a domain in which claims of
human dignity can arise, gain legitimacy, and provide the locus for
public action. This social conception of self-respect appears to be 'a
priori,' until it is conjoined to the structural limitations of capitalist
democracy; in this context, it makes perfect sense, at least as long as
these limitations are taken to reflect "the" natural and insurmountable
limits of modern economic life (bureacracy, technology, mass produc-
tion, etc.) or human nature.
Rawls' socio-empirical conception of self-respect seems to derive
uncritically from this liberal ideology of man as citizen, and incorporate
the structural limitations of capitalist democracy which it reflects. At no
point does Rawls pursue the question of whether individuals within
,capitalist democracy (or any modern society) do or are able to derive
rough equality in the social bases of self-respect from citizenship and
effectively ignore the inequalities of power and position of the labor
process in their relations to one another and themselves. While there is
a body of historical evidence and sociological theory concerning this
284 NOUS
matter, Rawls makes no attempt to develop any social conception of the

bases of self-respect in capitalist democracy or "the conditions of our
life as we know it." On the other hand, he does not argue that the
structural limitations which capitalism places on the labor process
reflect such universal features of work, economic life, modern methods
of production or human nature that any injuries to self-respect which
may arise from its inequalities are simply unavoidable. Indeed, while
we cannot pursue the matter here, there are several features of his
discussion which reject such a 'deterministic' view of economic life.15 In
sum, Rawls' theory seems to incorporate capitalist democracy's own
official assumptions concerning the bases of human dignity, instead of
developing an independent socio-empirical argument for or against
the tenability of these assumptions. As such, it also uncritically
incorporates a major structural limitation which capitalism places upon
the extension of human dignity of all central areas of human activity
including the world of work. This constitutes the negative ideological
dimension of Rawls' thought.
Before our critique is complete, we need to consider an important
Rawlsian reply. Rawls' theory does not simply preserve the historical
achievements of our society (e.g., equal bourgeois-democratic liber-
ties), but independently demonstrates that they are achievements
(through the contractarian argument). Similarly, his theory may argue
in its defense that it does not uncritically incorporate the limitations of
our form of society, but rather independently demonstrates that these
are not real or important limitations. Rawls might grant that in fact
individuals suffer the injuries to self-respect in our society we've de-
scribed, for the reasons that our account of capitalist democracy gives.
Yet, his theory intends to transform our society by clarifying its philo-
sophical foundations to ordinary social agents. Its contractarian ap-
proach holds out the hope that rational individuals can be convinced by
arguments that they ought to identify their dignity with bourgeois-
democratic citizenship and treat the labor process as the second prin-
ciple indicates it should be treated. Of course, Rawls cannot avoid the
problems of socio-empirical reality brought to the fore by his criterion
of well-orderedness and our critique. But let us set these problems
aside now.
Rawls' response to the ideological characterization is clear:
whether or not his conception of self-respect enjoys socio-empirical
plausibility, it is not taken over uncritically from capitalist democracy.
Rather, his contractarian argument contains an independent philo-
sophical ideal or conception of the person and argues from it to the
priority of the equal bourgeois-democratic liberties and the unimpor-
tance of inequalities of position in the labor process.
If Rawls' theory does ground the liberal ideology of man as citizen
in a more general, less controversial conception of the person (cf. [26a])
then the ideological critique developed above is weakened. In the final

section, we explain and evaluate this claim. Our argument poses a
dilemma for Rawls: either (1) his contractarian ideal of the person is too
abstract to yield the bourgeois-democratic liberties as 'basic' or (2) it
arbitrarily presupposes the bourgeois-democratic content it is sup-
posed to yield.
VII
Does Rawls' original position express a general ideal of the person

sufficiently powerful tojustify the bourgeois-democratic liberties as the
'sole' legitimate bases of self-respect? Some interpreters have read the
contractarian argument without seeing any ideal of the person in it
(e.g., R.M. Hare, [7]: 81-108.). On this reading, the original position
embodies (1) a conception of the moral, and (2) a theory of basic human
interests, but no "ideal of the person." The restrictions placed on the
deliberation in the original position (e.g., the veil of ignorance) are
supposed to capture the fairness, impartiality, universality, etc. re-
quired to make the deliberation and its product 'moral.' Furthermore,
the theory of primary goods allows the individuals deliberating under
these constraints to maximize their most basic shared human interests,
while remaining ignorant of their individual interests, values, ideals,
etc. Thus Rawls' principles are supposed to emerge from a deliberation
reflecting (1) the constraints of morality and (2) a knowledge of basic
instrumental human interests (what it is reasonable to want as a means
to one's ends, whatever these ends may be); no ideal of the person is
involved.
Yet other interpreters ([22], [25]) as well as Rawls himself ([18]:
251-8) understand the contractarian theory of his book to involve an
underlying 'ideal of the person-the Kantian interpretation of justice
as fairness'. Since the book's publication, this Kantian 'ideal of the
person' increasingly has been identified as -the primary justificatory
basis for the design of the original position and thus the content of the
principles it is supposed to generate. It has gained this prominence
through Rawls' subsequent articles (e.g., [18]), his critics (e.g., [27],
[28]), his sympathetic interpreters ([7b], [7c], [7d], [26], [26a]) and
especially in his recent Dewey Lectures ([18f]).
I share this Kantian interpretation and indeed try to show below
why it is required to ground the priority of equal liberty over economic
goods and how Rawls might have thought that
(1) this abstract ideal of the person leads to

(2) his concrete social conception of human dignity as the
equal liberties of bourgeois-democratic citizenship.
286 NOUS
In what follows, we argue that (1) does not justify (2), sustaining our
characterization of (2) as ideological. Furthermore we argue that (1),
when conjoined with the plausible background social theory developed
in this essay, justifies
(3) a 'democratic-socialist' conception of human dignity.
Finally, we argue that the inherently contestable character of the back-

ground social theories available and necessary to justify any determi-
nate social conception of human dignity and freedom over its rivals
tends to undermine the contractarian program itself, and not just
Rawls' use of it (in the book) or its present state of development (see our
'Postscript').
Rawls' Kantian ideal of the person represents human beings as
essentially 'free and equal rational beings.' ([18]: 252, [18c]: 92.) It is
supposed to follow Kant in seeking to capture that feature of human
beings which is both (1) presupposed by the very meta-ethical
possibility of moral action, and (2), on another level, provides the
positive normative criterion for correctly determining its content (what
is just, unjust, etc.). (cf. [14]: 55-108.) For Rawls, this feature of human
beings is what makes them 'moral persons', persons able to give and
entitled to receive justice in social life. It is basically (1) the capacity for
freedom and (2) the capacity for morality: (1) the capacity to develop,
pursue, and revise some conception of the good in one's life, and (2) the
capacity to respect that same capacity in others, limiting one's 'freedom'
to make way for that of others. ([18]: 505; [18c]: 94.) These capacities
not only underlie the possibility of moral action, but also generate the
most basic equal rights of all persons within moral life: The equal right
of each to protect his most fundamental interest, freedom (to deter-
mine one's own life) while accepting his most basic obligation of
respecting the same freedom of others. Thus the dignity of a person is
grounded in the supreme value of freedom in general.
This philosophical conception of the person is supposed (1) to
determine the design of the original position giving moral force to
whatever principles emerge from it, and (2) to find some direct
expression in Rawls' principles of justice and the actual argument for
them. ([18c]: 99; cf. [18]: 179-80.) The original position is designed so
that those who deliberate under its constraints cannot help but reason,
act,, and treat one another as 'free and equal rational beings.' These
constraints are supposed to deprive them of all knowledge, interests
and capacities which would allow them to act in any other way
('heteronomously' in Kantian language). Thus whatever their content,
the principles which emerge from the original position preserve the
dignity of persons who follow them because they are the principles
those persons would themselves choose if they based their choice on

those properties and interests which give them their human dignity.
Furthermore, among the various incompatible principles all of which
might be acceptable to persons in the original position, they are
supposed to determine which principles, along with the social system
which embodies them, constitute the most adequate, public, institu-
tional expression of their nature as 'free and equal rational beings'.
Rawls' conception of the person thus provides a criterion not simply for
the original position, for the form of deliberation from which valid
principles ofjustice must emerge; it also provides a criterion within the
deliberation for the adequacy of the content of the principles ofjustice.
([18c]: 99; cf. [18]: 179-80.) What then is Rawls'argument to show that
his principles of justice constitute the most adequate social expression
of our dignity as 'free and equal rational beings'?
Rawls introduces his theory of primary social goods to answer this
quxestion, and to overcome Kant's inability to answer a similar question.
([18]: 254-55.) The Kantian categorical imperative implies some
structure of equal moral rights and duties, but poses problems when we
try to fix what these rights and duties actually are. Rawls' project is thus
to supplement the Kantian morality (applied to the case of political
rights) with certain universal anthropological premises concerning the
range, instruments, and structure of human ends in general; these
premises are supposed to indicate what social goods persons must need
if they are to be able freely to determine and pursue their own plans of
life in society. ([18]: 62, 90-5.) Such premises must be sufficient to
determine which rights among many possible competing ones are 'basic'
and constitute the most adequate social expression of an abstract
Kantian equality of freedom and dignity. ([14]: 87-108.)
Rawls' theory postulates a list of primary goods which are
supposed to constitute the most indispensible means to any system of
human ends whatever its particular content. In his terms, ". . . whatever
one's sytem of ends, primary goods are necessary means." ([18]: 93.)
The primary goods of Rawls' system (liberty, opportunity, income,
wealth, and self-respect) are also assumed to be distributed or
distributable by the basic structure of a society. This theory provides
the,crucial link between abstract Kantian equality and the way a just
society might best affirm this equality in the design of its basic
structure. The just distribution of these primary goods is the most
adequate way any society can enable all of its members to (1) plan and
pursue a free life and (2) gain public recognition as free and equal
beings. According to Rawls' 'general' conception, a just distribution of
these goods is an equal one unless inequalities in their distribution
results in everyone's gaining a greater index of the goods than they
have at the point of equality. The "special" conception, which applies to
288 NOUS
modern so
bourgeois-
might be
At this po
Rawls' sys
terms? Th
limiting t
under mod
ends some people embrace make income and wealth far more
instrumentally valuable to them than the equal liberties. These are
major groups who do or would support the abridgement of civil and
political liberties if necessary to protect or advance their economic
power, position, and wealth. How can the priority of equal liberty over
economic goods be defended if these primary goods are 'basic' to the
just society solely because of their instrumental value relative to the
actual ends of (modern) persons?
The answer is that throughout the bulk of his argument, Rawls
does not treat equal liberty in these terms. Rather liberty represents the
inviolable normative core or pre-condition of every (modern) system of
ends which Rawls is willing to countenance as fully human and rational.
Freedom is no mere means to the system of ends (modern) persons
happen to have. Rather it is the most fundamental interest within any
system of ends fitting for a Kantian being with human dignity. As such
a being, my dignity requires not simply that I have a fair access to what I
need (e.g., income) to pursue the ends I have chosen. It requires also
that my ends and activities be 'mine;' that I enjoy and value above all else
(except justice) the exercise of this distinctively human capacity for
self-determination. The priority of equal liberty thus rests directly on
the Kantian ideal of the person. This is evident in the key argument for
the priority of equal liberty over economic goods given in Rawls' book.
There he assumes that once modern society develops and basic
material needs are satisfied, the exercise of freedom becomes "the chief
regulative interest that the parties must assume they all will have in
common in due course" ([18]: 543, my italics).
In effect, the argument gives the Kantian ideal a major new role in
contractarian methodology. It is no longer simply built into the design
of the original position or one 'interpretation' of the doctrine; this ideal
of the person must now function explicitly and self-consciously as the
major normative premise of the parties in the original position. They
select and order the primary goods not as means to the particular ends
they may end up having in actual life, but as instrumental (income) and
integral (liberties) requirements of persons who interpret themselves
in accordance with the Kantian ideal. This view was implicit in much of
the argument of Rawls' book; but it was obscure and incompatible with
other elements such as the anthropological characterization of primary

goods (as universal means to human ends) and his account of "the
rationality of the parties," more reminiscent of Hobbes than Kant ([ 18]:
142-5). This reflected a deep ambiguity and ambivalence in Rawls'
'contactarianism'. The result was confusion among Rawls' readers on
the fundamental character of his theory. In the Dewey lectures, the
role of the Kantian ideal becomes clear and explicit: the parties in the
original position select the primary goods, the priority of equal liberty,
the two principles, etc. in order to realize "the highest-order" powers
and interests which they possess "as moral persons" in accordance with
their Kantian self-interpretation. ([18f1: 526-8.) Freedom or self-
determination and the respect for it in others constitute the two
highest-order powers and interests which ground their reasoning.
We are now in a position to see how this Kantian ideal of the person
provides the basis for the priority of equal civil and political liberties,
and their identification as the 'proper' social bases of respect between
persons in Rawls' social conception. This ideal determines the kind of
institutional equality which constitutes the most adequate social embod-
iment and public expression of persons' essential powers and interests
as 'free and equal rational beings'. Thus they choose the first
principle-equal bourgeois-democratic liberties-both because (1) it
guarantees all equal protection of their most fundamental human
interest and (2) it constitutes the most adequate public basis for
expressing mutual respect between persons as equals by writing it into
the visible structure of institutional life. They choose the second
principle because 'free and equal rational beings' also have need of
certain instrumental goods (income, wealth, economic position) to be in
a position to realize whatever system of ends they freely determine.
However, they have no need of an equal distribution of these goods,
because as instrumental goods they do not in themselves socially structure
and signify human freedom and dignity. The Kantian conception of
persons cannot find adequate social expressions simply through a just
distribution of the means to human ends, but rather only through the
equal liberties. Thus Rawls often asserts that his principle of equal
liberty is chosen in the original position as the most adequate social
expression of persons as 'free and equal rational beings'. ([18]: 179-80,
541-6, [18c].) Equality of bourgeois-democratic citizenship is the
foundation of that mutuality of respect visible in a just society.
By this route, Rawls can explain why the individual within his
sytem of justice ought to identify. the social bases of self-respect with
their equal freedom as citizens and think of economic position, power,
income, etc. in a different way. His theory may then be able to avert our
criticism that, its conception of dignity as equality of bourgeois-
democratic freedom is ideologically derived from capitalist democracy.
290 NOUS
Yet at this point, a more serious problem arises. Suppose we grant

Rawls' Kantian conception of the person and his argument to the
priority of equal liberty as the most adequate social expression of this
conception within modern institutional life. In itself, the argument
does not establish the identification of human dignity or freedom with
the bourgeois-democratic freedoms. The freedom implicit-in Rawls'
Kantian ideal is quite general, abstract and uundifferentiated: the
freedom to determine, pursue and revise one's ends and activities. The
bourgeois-democratic liberties are considerably more specific. They
protect persons' freedom to pursue certain ends, to engage in certain
activities, to move unhampered in certain areas of life and not others.
Like every system of rights or liberties, it frees persons from certain
impediments, to do or become certain things, by erecting other impedi-
ments which prevent persons from doing and becoming other things,
which are incompatiable with the favored system of rights. Why or how
does the abstract 'Kantian' freedom of self-determination lead to the
bourgeois-democratic liberties rather than some rival system of basic
freedom?
The challenge to Rawls' system may come from the right or left.
Those of Nozick's persuasion may contest the derivation of the
Rawlsian liberties because they do not protect (indeed threaten) a
'more important' kind of self-determination and basic rights: those
which free persons to engage in pure capitalist market relations and to
accumulate bourgeois property unfettered by state or legislative
restrictions aimed at Rawlsian redistribution. The left standpoint
implicit in our critique contests the derivation of the bourgeois-
democratic liberties because they exclude a kind of self-determination
which has become increasingly important in the social dynamics of
self-development and respect in modern society. This kind of self-
determination calls for a system of 'democratic-socialist' liberties
surrounding the labor process which goes well beyond the Rawlsian
liberties of the first principle and is incompatiable with the kind of
unequal economic rights and powers permitted by the second princi-
ple.
In sum, different and indeed incompatible theories or systems of
rights can all equally claim to realize the Kantian conception of the
person, for all such universal systems or conceptions make some kind
of self-determination available to all persons.
Rawls may argue that in principle some kinds of ends, activities, or
areas of life are more important, basic, or essential to human freedom
(and dignity) than others, yielding a criterion of basic rights and
freedoms. Indeed he must be able to make out such an argument;
otherwise, his identification of the abstract freedom essential to
Kantian dignity with the particular list of bourgeois-democratic liberties
presently characteristic of the western democracies, appears arbitrary

and ideological.
Various reviewers have found Rawls' theory obscure concerning
its criterion for "basic" liberty. In a sympathetic review, Scanlon
observes that given the centrality of Rawls' distinction "between the
basic liberties and other goods and opportunities, it may seem
surprising that no theoretical account of this distinction is offered."
([22]: 1037.) He goes on to suggest that the basicality claimed for Rawls'
list of liberties implicitly derives from "the importance for anyone of
the interests they safeguard and their great instrumental value for the
enjoyment of the other goods." ([22]: 1037.) Scanlon's suggestion
simply pushes the problem back one step to the question of what makes
any human interest "basic" or "more basic" than another. What will
Rawls or Scanlon say to the individual or groups which values the
opportunity to compete as a capitalist on the market, or to participate in
a meaningful and democratically self-managed labor process, more
than the interests protected by one or more of the Rawlsian civil and
political liberties.
H.L.A. Hart argues that Rawls' theory must inevitably answer this
question simply to provide a principled way of resolving conflicts be-
tween its own basic liberties and the incompatible interests they respec-
tively protect. ([7]: 230-53.) An example is provided by Rawls' discus-
sion of the constitutional problem where a balance must be struck
between "the liberty of the ancients" (rights of political participation)
and "the liberty of the moderns" (civil liberties); the civil rights of the
individual or a minority must be protected in some measure from the
political rights of majoritarian rule. To treat such cases, Rawls appeals
to (1) his first principle which demands "the greatest" or "most exten-
sive" equal liberty compatible with a like liberty for all ([18]: 124, 203,
229, 244); elsewhere to (2) the rational preferences of representative
citizens ([18]: 204, or to (3) the common interest. ([18]: 97; [22]:
1038-9.) Hart persuasively argues that in such cases of conflict the
appeal to (1) the maximization of libertyper se is incoherent because we
are faced with a conflict between two irreducibly different types of
liberty. ([7]: 240-4.) Tradeoffs between liberties in such cases must
embody qualitative judgments concerning their relative value and can-
not be based on some absolute quantitative measure of the amount of
liberty' per se. Furthermore, rational individuals disagree concerning
such qualitative judgements. Thus Rawls' appeal to the rational prefer-
ences or common interests of representative citizens is either
question-begging or inconclusive. Hart concludes that
... in the constitutional case above, it seems difficult to understand how

the conflict can be resolved. . . without appeal to utilitarian considera-
292 NOUS
tions or to some conception of what all individuals are mutually entitled

to have as a matter of human dignity or moral rights. ([7]: 241-2.)
For Rawls, an appeal to utilitarian considerations to characterize

basic liberties is out of the question. On the other hand, some norma-
tive ideal of human dignity more concrete than the Kantian conception
may underlie Rawls' identification of "basic" liberties, as well as his
intuitions concerning the priorities among them. Parts of his discussion
suggest the view that certain liberties, together with the activities,
interests, and areas of life they protect, are more basic than others
because they constitute what he calls 'the integrity of the person'. Thus,
he sometimes argues that equal civil liberties enjoys priority over polit-
ical liberties because the former are essential to 'the integrity of the
person' while the latter are not. ([18]: 274.) In a discussion of Mill's
principle of "plural voting," Rawls suggests that unequal political liber-
ties may have been or be instrumentally justified as a means to better
secure the equal civil liberties of all, which "define the intrinsic good" of
persons. ([18]: 233.) On the other hand, these latter civil liberties are so
essential to 'the integrity of the person' (their 'intrinsic good'), it is
always unjust to contravene their equality. Hence in the eighteenth
century,
while unequal political liberty might conceivably have been a permissable

adjustment to historical limitations, serfdom, slavery and religious intol-
erance clearly were not. ([18]: 247.)
Unfortunately, Rawls does not explicate, develop, or even consist-

ently adhere to this conception of the integrity of the person. In the
discussion just cited, he goes on to alter the thrust of his remarks:
. . .equal political liberty is not solely a means. These freedoms

strengthen men's sense of their own worth, enlarge their intellectual and
moral sensibilities, and lay the basis for a sense of duty and obligation
upon which the stability of just institutions depends. ([18]: 234.)
In this vein, equal political liberties seem to be as essential to the

integrity or dignity of the person as civil liberties.
In sum, Rawls' various discussions do not yield a philosophical
criterion of "basic" liberty. Without it, he has no argument from (1) his
Kantian conception of the person to (2) his social conception of
bourgeois-democratic liberties as the true content of self-
determination and the 'proper' social bases of self-respect in a just
society. Thus our criticism of (2) as ideological, as uncritically derived
from the structure and official self-understanding of capitalist democ-
racy, seems to stand. Rawls' Kantian conception provides no indepen-
dent reason for the view that economic position, power, and activity are
in principle, improper social bases of self-determination and self-
respect. The move in Rawls' thought from freedom-in-general to the
established historical paradigm of bourgeois-democratic citizenship
remains ungrounded and therefore ideological.
VIII
To our above line of argument; Rawls might reply by arguing that the
criterion of 'basic'-liberty is simply the fact that a liberty would be chosen
by the parties in the original position as an essential social expression of
their capacity for and highest-order interest in self-determination. Of
course, we can ask on what grounds they choose the Rawlsian liberties
and not some other or larger system of liberties. But perhaps the force
of, Rawls' reply is to shift the burden of proof onto our critique. What
reason can we give to show that the parties in the original position
would or ought to treat other liberties or human interests as basic, or
more basic than the bourgeois-democratic liberties? What are the
plausible alternatives to Rawls' social conception of human freedom?
As Rawls insists, his conception of justice is grounded in the original
position, only relative to competitors, not absolutely.
From this standpoint, our critique of Rawls' conception as ideolog-
ical can be reformulated in terms of the fact that there are no compet-
ing conceptions of human dignity and freedom admitted into the
argumentation of the original position in the first place. Most of Rawls'
arguments on behalf of the equal liberties are directed against a ubiqui-
tous utilitarian interlocuter who challenges the status of equal liberty
on utilitarian grounds. But utilitarianism does not itself contain any
distinctive conception of human dignity and freedom; therefore it is
not the best alternative to Rawls' conception, if the aim is to generate
fundamental theoretical debate concerning rival social conceptions of
human dignity and freedom. To this end, the historical opposition
between the Marxian and bourgeois-democratic tradition of social
theory ought to have found some theoretical expression within the
alternatives and argumentation in the original position. In that case,
Rawls might have justified the bourgeois-democratic conception of
human freedom and dignity in open debate with one of its main rivals,
a Marxian conception of human dignity and freedom.
As matters stand, Rawls can claim that his system of justice is in
principle neutral as between capitalism and socialism, because he does
not seek to understand the socialist tradition in its own distinctive
terms. ([18]: 280-1.) From his standpoint, the sole question posed by
capitalism and socialism is which system in some definite circumstances
294 NOUS
yields a more efficient economy and thus allows the democratic state to
maximize the income of the worst-off. In Rawls' understanding, these
two social systems emerge as nothing but two alternative technical
means for producing wealth with no fundamental differences in ethi-
cal or political principle between them. Yet socialist societies and the
Marxian tradition from which they draw their self-understanding,
characteristically claim to bring economic life under collective social
control on behalf of human freedom and dignity, not primarily on
behalf of a more efficient production or just distribution of the same
economic wealth pursued in capitalist society. This Marxian paradigm
postulates an essential link between human freedom and the division of
power within economic life; as such, it marks a significant break with
the bourgeois-democratic conception of freedom. For on this para-
digm, the freedom and dignity of individuals requires in the first
instance that they exercise control over their own laboring activity.
In fact, socialist conceptions of 'collective social control' and 'hu-
man freedom' have been interpreted and used to justify a labor process
as undemocratic in its political management and stultifying in its daily
social content as any under capitalism.16 Nevertheless, viewed from
within the liberal tradition, the basic thrust of the Marxian paradigm
can be minimally understood to imply that the claims of human free-
dom and democratic right must speak in the first instance to the
organization of the labor process. The theoretical representation of
this paradigm within Rawls' original position would then focus debate
concerning the relative basicality of the socialist, as against the
bourgeois-democratic freedoms. On the other hand, the absence of
any such competitor to the bourgeois-democratic paradigm of human
freedom gives the deliberation in the original position its ideological
cast.
Finally, there are features of Rawls own conception of freedom,
which in the context of the advanced industrial capitalism, strongly
make the positive case for certain "democratic-socialist" rights for all.
In his key argument for the priority of equal liberty, Rawls elaborates a
broad conception of freedom which does not favor its exclusive delimi-
tation to the bourgeois-democratic liberties. In this argument, the
freedom and dignity of individuals broadly involves (1) "The funda-
mental interest in determining our plan of life," ([18]: 543.) (2) "some
control over the laws and rules that regulate our association," ([18]:
542-3.) and (3) "the free internal life of the various communities in
which persons and groups seek to achieve.... the ends and excellence
to which they are drawn." Formulated at this level of generality, while it
is fairly clear how Rawlsian freedom may plausibly justify the basic
bourgeois-democratic liberties, it is not clear why it is exclusively iden-
tified with them. Indeed, this freedom, on the face of it, would seem
also to require some set of individual liberties and democratic rights

concerning the governance and legitimate positions of the labor
process. On what grounds?
The most compelling answer to this question draws on the special
conditions imposed by advanced industrial capitalism in our own
historical epoch. During this century, the advanced capitalist democ-
racies in the west have witnessed two profound transformations in
social and economic life: (1) the growing concentration of private
economic power in the hands of a ever fewer (often multinational)
monopolies with ever greater control over our environment, patterns
of consumption, natural resources, cities, etc., and (2) the increasing
integration of the wage-earning and salaried working population into
large-scale, bureaucratized, units of monopoly production. These
developments pose two of the most widely discussed social problems of
our age: (1) the powerlessness of the democratic public significantly to
influence or control those economic decisions which determine its
social and physical environment, as well as the products and services
available to meet its needs, and (2) the powerlessness of ordinary
citizens to shape the availability of employment, or the conditions of
their own laboring activity.17 Moreover, these problems of human
freedom have grown in scale and significance precisely during the
period in which the bourgeois-democratic liberties have been secured
for the largest proportion of people in our history. Thus to speak as
Rawls does of a basic human interest in determining one's own plan of
life, and in democratic control over social policy in our historical
context, seems to call for an enlarged conception of human freedom
which directly concerns the governance of economic life and the rights
of its laborers within work itself. At the very least, a non-ideological
discussion must confront such problems and debate their significance
for human freedom and dignity.
A Rawlsian may grant that the labor process has come under the
increasing domination of the few, but still doubt that the human
interests, activities and aspects of life which are thus dominated are
sufficiently "important" or "basic" to ground claims of human freedom
and dignity on a par with the bourgeois-democratic liberties. This
doubt is best treated by reviewing certain aspects of Rawls' discussion of
humnan freedom. His conception of freedom as the determination of
one's own plan of life often creates the impression that its content
refers exclusively to the realm of leisure, private life, personal affairs.
If this were the case, then we might understand how a person could be
free independently of his or her position within the labor process. Now
indeed, the equal civil liberties are largely justified to secure the rights
of all to a personal, private life of their own choosing. But, the role of
the equal political liberties in Rawls' system cannot be explained in this
296 NOUS
way. Equal liberties are also important to us because they secure our
"control over the laws and rules that govern (our) association" and "the
free internal life of the various communities in which persons and
groups seek to achieve. . . the ends and excellences to which they are
drawn." ([18]: 543.) While freedom does entail the rights of personal
life, it also entails the access of all to a democratic role, activity, and
participation in the wider institutions of society. Thus, equal political
liberties engender "an activity enjoyable in itself that leads to a larger
conception of society and to the development of (one's) intellectual and
moral faculties." ([18]: 234.) In such contexts, Rawls echoes earlier
liberal theorists such as Mill, T. H. Green, Hobhouse and Dewey in his
assumption that a free society must actually nurture and develop the
human capacities presupposed by an autonomous and democratic
character among its citizens.18 This view places Rawls" Kantian' ideal of
the person in a different perspective. From this perspective, for this
ideal to find suitable social expression in principles of justice, these
principles would need to imply institutions which give persons the
normal opportunities and social positions required for them to develop
and exercise the human capacities and interests presupposed by the
Kantian ideal.
Rawls never considers whether or not bourgeois-democratic
society as we know it actually does or could sustain (or even permit) the
development of these human capacities. The adequacy of the
bourgeois-democratic liberties to his larger, richer conception of
human freedom with its Kantian ideal of the person, is uncritically
assumed by Rawls. Setting this assumption aside, it is hard to deny the
centrality of the institutions of labor within advanced industrial
capitalism in developing or stultifying the basic capacities, sensibilities
and social identities of its citizens. In this social system, work is
increasingly one of the central ways in which individuals make social
contact with one another, gain a normal role and participation in the
wider affairs of society and acquire a daily social context in which to
develop and gain recognition for their capacities, contributions, etc.
Indeed, the institutions of labor are far more influential in shaping the
identity, activity and capacities of most persons than is the case with
political institutions. As a result, much of what a person is able to do and
become in the realm of labor, personal life and political life is
importantly shaped by the labor market and his or her position inside
(or. outside) the institutions of labor ([7]: 45-67.) Thus even if Rawls'
theory focuses exclusively on freedom in personal life and political
participation (an ideological focus, itself) the exercise of even this
freedom prestupposes capacities for judgment, understanding, coop-
eration, public concern, responsibility, independence, etc. which are
either nurtured or crippled within the dominant institutions of
production. In a word, most individuals find it difficult if not

impossible to determine a rich life freely or respect it in others if within
the dominant organization of labor they are treated and perceive one
another as powerless, unintelligent, restricted beings compelled to play
subordinate roles in a process they are in no position to understand or
control.
If this 'background social theory' is plausible, we have shown why
the labor process involves human interests, activities and aspects of life
sufficiently 'important' to ground claims of basic liberties and rights for
all. 'Free and equal rational beings' will be concerned with the domain
of labor as an area of life and activity in which their most essential
human capacities as 'free and equal rational beings' will either be
nurtured or starved. The dignity of self-determination will require the
practice of freedom not simply in personal and national political life
but within the institutions of labor. As such, it will be reasonable for
them to socially express their nature as 'free and equal rational beings'
in some structure of equal basic rights and liberties for all within the
labor process. Rawls' own broad Kantian conception of the person
cannot demonstrate that individuals within modern industrial society
ought not identify the social bases of self-respect with their positions in
the labor process; that is, this demonstration fails unless Rawlsian
freedom is simply equated with the bourgeois-democratic liberties, his
'Kantian' id-eal of the person simply identified with the citizen of
bourgeois democracy. On the other hand, starting from Rawls' broad
Kantian conception (taken non-ideologically), there is as much or more
reason to conclude that the injuries to self-respect suffered by many
persons due to a capitalist organization of production are indeed
injuries to their freedom, their basic liberties, and thus to their dignity,
properly construed.
We have not said what these basic rights for all concerning the
labor process are. This would itself require a positive theory of
democratic socialism, its foundational conception of human dignity,
freedom and social justice. But some introductory suggestions can be
advanced to clarify the nature of the alternatives and the domain of
controversy. Under capitalism, the labor process is under the control of
a private sector and organized in accordance with the criterion of
profitability; Rawls assumes that his system's freedoms and its social
minimum can exist along side such private control. Under democratic
socialism, the labor process would be under the democratic control of
the public and organized in accordance with the criterion of the equal
right of all to the fullest development of their capacities as free, rational
beings compatible with the like development of all. What might this
entail? I assume that this socialist conception can and should preserve
the bourgeois-democratic freedoms which do not (as Rawls construes
298 NOUS
them) encompass rights of private property in the means of produc-

tion. In addition, this conception constitutionally extends the rights of
democratic participation and majority rule to encompass public control
of the most important sectors of the labor process, economic decisions,
etc. Yet, if this public control is to serve the maximal development of
free persons (their capacities for understanding, judgment, indepen-
dence, cooperation, etc.), I assume it must be constitutionally directed
to provide substantial democratic rights of self-management to labor-
ers within particular, local units of production. Finally, I assume that it
must also be constitutionally directed to structure the overall labor
process so that all citizens have a right to work and moreover a right to
conditions of work (a division of labor, authority, and knowledge) and a
kind of work which enhances the development of their capacities as
free, rational beings.
The last condition raises problems whose complexity can only be
glossed here. One of the most controversial aspects of the demo-
ctratization of the labor process is its impact on productivity and
economic efficiency. The socialist conception of human dignity and
freedom does not in itself exclude a role for expertise, some inequalities
of authority and reward, some differences in the level of skills and
autonomy in various jobs, some role for market arrangements, etc.
Though, all of these features of the labor process would be restricted by
the principle of equal 'democratic-socialist' freedom and dignity; and
thus, the democratic decisions of workers, who could not be expected
to tolerate the oppressive sorts of inequality of authority, skill, reward,
expertise, and autonomy dominant in a capitalist economy. The
question for the socialist conception is how its laboring citizen ought to
view any incompatibility which may arise between the fullest humani-
zation of the labor process for all and its efficiency in producing the
most adequate standard of living for all.
This question points to a necessary revision and further elabora-
tion of the democratic-socialist conception of freedom suggested here.
While the capacities of free persons develop through a democratic
participation in the labor process (as well as political life on a national
level), this development also depends on the availability of certain
goods, services, and environmental conditions (as well as civil liberties)
in the domain of leisure. Clearly, people cannot fully develop or
exercise their capacities for freedom if they lack adequate food, shelter,
health care, transportation, recreational resources, access to culture,
educational opportunities, etc. The democratic control of the labor
process is thus important because the products of this labor, as well as
the structure of its activity both influence persons' capacities for a life of
freedom and dignity. Given the criterion of the self-development of
free persons, there may be necessary trade-offs between the develop-
ment opened up to individuals by the activities of labor and its

requirements in the domain of consumption (a conflict of basic rights
similar to that in Rawls' system). Nevertheless, this approach avoids the
pitfalls of Rawls' difference principle which also detaches freedom and
dignity from equal access to their material prerequisites in consump-
tion. While Rawls' principle maximizes the income of all, there is no
guarantee that this income will provide persons with equal or any
access to that minimal level of good, services, and environmental
conditions they need in order to live free lives, develop their capacities,
etc. Because this principle may be embedded in a capitalist framework,
the public does not control what is produced, how it is priced
. (distributed, etc.), or what it can get with its 'maximin' income; thus, a
rising social minimum may still leave many without effective access to
* decent health care, adequate food and shelter, tolerable environmental
conditions, or a "respectable" standard of living.'9
Thus, equality in freedom and the social bases of self-respect
cannot be detached from a certain level of equal rights within the realm
of consumption as well as production.
We hope to have provided a sufficient sketch of a democratic-
socialist conception of human freedom and dignity to focus the
challenge it poses to the bourgeois-democratic conception assumed in
Rawls' system. Our point here has not been to establish or refine this
conception; rather we have sought to employ its plausibility in the
context of Rawls' own general 'Kantian' conception of the person, to
expose the ideological character of his identification of freedom with
the particular liberties of bourgeois-democratic citizenship. Our
democratic-socialist conception of human dignity and freedom, what-
ever its problems, unclarities, or evidential status, serves to underscore
the ideological character of Rawls' move from freedom in general to
the historical paradigm of bourgeois-democratic citizenship.
In the final analysis, the richness and substantial power ofA Theory
of Justice consists in the deep internal tensions it exhibits, between its
basic system of social justice and the larger humanistic demands and
promises that it holds out to the human agents of this system. The
system Rawls delivers is unequal to his own larger demand for equality
in the social bases of self-respect, a stable "well-ordered" society in
which all have access to the goods of community and 'Aristotelian'
activity, an association of persons who can develop and exercise the
'Kantian' capacities for freedom through their institutions. These
tensions withinA Theory ofJustice reflect and embody the contradictions
of bourgeois democracy itself. For it is one of the achievements of this
social system to advance implicitly radical claims of human equality, the
dignity of the individual, the ideal of full self-determination, which
expose the limitations beyond which its own institutions cannot
develop.
300 NOUS
POSTSCRIPT
In his recent Dewey lectures, Rawls formulates "the immediate practi-

cal task of political philosophy" and his Kantian conception ofjustice as
the attempt "to dispel the conflict between the different understand-
ings of freedom and equality" responsible for "an impasse in our recent
political history" ([1 8f]: 517-73). This formulation seems to move
Rawls' approach closer to the kind of problems raised in my critique.
Yet, the question remains concerning the adequacy of the contracta-
rian framework to undertake this immediate task. In this short post-
script, I hope to clarify the bearing of my above critique on this ques-
tion, which is ambiguous as it stands.
We have challenged the contractarian approach to explain how it
proposes to reason (non-ideologically) from
(1) its Kantian conception of the person to any socially

determinate conception of human freedom and dig-
nity, in particular
(2) Rawls' bourgeois-democratic conception.
In the Dewey lectures ([18fl: 534-5; cf. [7b], [7d]) an answer is s
gested: a 'background social theory' and/or a 'theory of human nature'
will provide the missing links between (1) and (2). This seems promis-
ing; yet in this recent work, we still do not learn what background social
theory is supposed to be available to help derive (2) from (1). To my
mind, this problem is the most urgent one for the Rawlsian 'research
program' unless Rawls and Rawlsians are willing to give up his system
of justice in order to save its contractarian shell.
From this perspective, the thrust of my critique was to develop
(3) a background social theory adequate to test Rawls'

system against his own methodological demand for
(4) well-orderedness and equality in the social bases of
self-respect.
We found his system inadequate and then employed (3), our back-
ground social theory, along with (1), the Kantian ideal, and (4), to argue
for
(5) our democratic-socialist conception of human free-

dom and dignity over
(2) Rawls' bourgeois-democratic conception.
Did our method of argument take place within contractarian method-

ology (the original position) or did it pose a challenge to the latter?
The contractarian methodology requires that any background so-

cial assumptions introduced into the original position be "general
beliefs," "publically known" and "present commonly based and shared
beliefs" ([18fl: 541-2). I believe that the background social theory
developed in our above critique is more reasonable than its main
contemporary rivals. Yet, it is eminently contestable and controversial
as are all other rival social theories of the sort which are available and
necessary for the grounding of a conception of human freedom, dignity,
self-respect, well-orderedness, etc., under modern social conditions.
When it comes to questions concerning the social bases of self-respect
under capitalism, the feasible alternatives to its division of labor and
power, the relation of individuals' 'true' human capacities to the social
positions they occupy, etc. there is no public knowledge or consensus of
belief, least of all among social scientists, in modern society. Yet, with-
out the development of social theory to treat such questions, the Kan-
tian ideal leads nowhere except to ever higher reaches of abstraction
back into itself.
These considerations suggest a dramatic shift in methodological
strategy away from contractarianism and the quest for reflective equi-
librium. Any plausible social theory, e.g., of the social dynamics of
recognition and respect in a given form of society, will need to focus on
a particular society (as we focussed on America) and argue its case to
persons whose social experience and identities the theory seeks to make
sense of. Insofar as they abstract from their social experience and
identity to enter the original position, they lose the only basis they have
for evaluating social theories which lack the status of public knowledge
and require interpretative cultural self-understanding (but also more
than this). Or consider the sort of social theory required to show that
people in some historical society (e.g., the English working class in
mid- 19th Century) have capacities for a form of self-determination
(e.g., rational democratic participation in political life) to some degree
cramped and hidden by the prevailing roles, identities, and ideology.
In fact, such a social theory hardly ever gains general acceptance and
credibility until after those whose interests are most vitally affected
have rationally asserted their capacities in the process of transforming
the established paradigm of human capacities, freedom, dignity. Con-
crete hiuman beings with definite social identities who suffer specific
deprivations discover, enlarge and confirm their uncharted 'Kantian'
capacities within their own historical practice (a far cry from anything
available in the original position). Of course, the methodological ques-
tion arises concerning what kind of 'rationality' such processes can
possess and whether the social theories involved are or could be 'value-
free', or 'publically known' at the historical junctures where they are
required to generate a more just society. Hence the issue of relativism
in social theory must be confronted if not conceded. (cf. [31], [32])
302 NOUS
To end where we began: Rawls' demand for equality in the social

bases of self-respect and well-orderedness as criteria for theories of
justice opens the way to overcoming the gap between theory and
practice, philosophy and social inquiry. Yet the project requires a kind
of social theory (and a methodological inquiry into its cognitive and
normative status) which points beyond the contractarian framework to
some more historically grounded approach (cf. [32a]).
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NOTES
'Rawls' view concerning self-respect and justice is explicitly articulated in [18]

440-2, and especially 544-6 where he defends the 'priority' of equal liberty because it
"entails equality in the social bases of esteem". At various points in the book ([ 18]) Raw
indicates that justice requires that the basic structure "provide for each individual a
secure sense of his own worth" (101), or as he puts it elsewhere that
. . . the parties in the original position would wish to avoid at almost any cost the
social condtions that undermine self-respect. The fact thatjustice as fairness gives
more support to self-esteem than other principles is a strong reason for them to
adopt it. ([18]: 440.)
My treatment is based primarily on Rawls theory in his book [18]. However, Rawls
continues to stress throughout his works and in the recent Dewey lectures that his theory
of justice requires equality in the social bases of self-respect, e.g.,:
It (his theory) accords with the conception of free personality held in a democratic
society that citizens should secure the conditions for realizing and exercising their
moral powers, as well as the social bases and means of their self-respect. ([18f]:
531, cf. 526.)
2Rawls' underlying assumption that a capitalist democracy can be made economi-

cally just is reflected more or less explicitly on pages 78 and 87 of [18].
31bid.
4This two tiered model emerges most clearly in [18], 544-6:
The basis for self-esteem in a just society is not then one's income share but the
publicly affirmed distribution of fundamental rights and liberties. And this distri-
bution being equal, everyone has a similar and secure status when they meet to
conduct the common affairs of the wider society. . .When it is the position of equal
304 NOUS
citizenship that answers to the need for status,the precedence of the equal liberties
becomes all the more necessary. Having choosen a conception of justice that seeks to
eliminate the significance of relative economic and social advantages as supportsfor men's
self-confidence, it is essential that the priority of liberty be firmly maintained. So far this
reason too the parties are led to adopt a serial ordering of the two principles...
([18]: 545, my italics)
Thus, the best solution is to support the primary good of self-respect as far as
possible by the assignment of the basic liberties that can indeed by made equal,
defining the same status for all. . . distributive justice . . . justice in the relative
shares of material means, is relegated to a subordinate place. Thus we arrive at
another reason for factoring the social order into two parts as indicated by the two
principles of justice. While these principles permit inequalities in return for
contributions that are for the benefit of all, the precedence of liberty entails
equality in the social bases of esteem . . . ([18]: 546.)
In the Dewey lectures, Rawls reiterates the role of his conception of self-respect in the
theory of primary goods ([18fl: 526).
5A complete analysis (and critique of Rawls) would need to explore the positions of
other groups within capitalist society who also suffer a lack of access to the social bases of
full human recognition and self-respect, e.g.: (1) welfare-recipients, who bear the stigma
reserved for those who cannot support themselves and are thus 'dependent' upon 'the
taxpayer' for support, (2) women whose unpaid domestic labor in the home marginalizes
the significance of their activities and renders them economically dependent upon men
or 'the taxpayer', (3) senior citizens, forced or pressured into retirment who thereby
often lose the central expression of their agency and identity, (4) the so-called 'handi-
capped', who are labelled as unfit to work because the existing division of labor is not
designed to employ the capacities which they possess, and (5) the sons and daughters of
people in the above positions, who characteristically interiorize the indignity experienced
by their parents, and many of whom already know that in all liklihood they are headed
for one of these positions in society themselves.
6The research which exists mostly derives from the study of work under a capitalist
division of economic power. But, it seems clear that other socio-economic orders (e.g., the
communism of the USSR) do not resolve the problems of labor under discussion here.
Thus, while the focus of our critical discussion centers on the inadequacies of capitalist
democracy and Rawls' system, the perspective developed here also implies a critique of
communist states and indeed fateful ambiguities within the Marxian theoretical tradi-
tion. But this latter critique is not developed here and it would of course, be quite
different than our critique of Rawls' theory, and the bourgeois-democratic society it
presupposes.
7One dimension of economic power which I neglect here, but treat elsewhere,
concerns the role of unions in affirming the power and dignity of workers through their
successful struggle to determine certain economic politics (wages, working conditions,
employment practices, etc.) and prevent others. On my analysis, unions as a political
force under capitalism are no substitute for a "democratic-socialist" division of labor and
power which would give workers a normal, daily access to authority at various levels on
the job. Workers in the most powerful unions still suffer the injuries to human dignity
discussed above (e.g., see [4] and [6] for an analysis of workers in the UAW and
automobile industry); nevertheless, other things being equal, they do enjoy access to a
measure of power and dignity denied to unorganized workers. Under capitalism, orga-
nized workers' struggle for higher wages, better working conditions, improved benefits,
etc. is also a struggle for power and dignity-for it wins them a measure of control over
the only aspects of the labor process they can control within the limits set by capitalism.
8Primary goods are assumed by Rawls to be goods it is reasonable to want whatever
one's ends in life, because they are typically so important as means to human ends. We
have an intuitive grasp of this assumption for income and opportunity. But how does it
work for authority-which in many cases seems valuable for what it allows an individual
to do and become in daily laboring activity, itself, independently of one's general ends in
life. Of course, those who have power and authority over the means of production, over
capital, can use it in many ways to achieve their ends. But, what remains entirely unclear is
how the lesser and different types of authority at stake in more egalitarian division of
labor and power are supposed to be evaluated as primary goods (e.g., as against income)
in Rawls' system. This problem is never posed or tackled. Indeed, in a later article Rawls
denies that he ever intended "the power anid prerogatives of authority" (a phrase he
originally introduced as a primary good in [18]: 93) to count as a primary good ([18a]:
542, fn. 8).
9Another important dimension of this problem concerns the special injuries to
women under capitalism (but not only under capitalism) whose unpaid labor in the home
poses problems of human dignity and social justice that I do not treat in this paper, and
are certainly not resolved by Rawls' principles. The "democratic-socialist" rights of
citizens sketched at the end of this paper would clearly imply several special trans-
formations in the position of women in economic life and require in some sense the
democratization of those unpaid tasks and functions (e.g., child-rearing) forced upon
women in all patriarchcal societies.
10There is substantial evidence of significant connections between the conditions
under which people work and the larger capacities and disabilities (including higher risk
of illness) that are developed in their lives as a whole. See [9]: 1-28, [2]: 245-50, [4]:
166-87, [11]: 36-61, [19], [15]: 26-263, [12]: 230-1, [8]: 104-14.
"Here as elsewhere Rawls assumes (1) that self-respect is intimately dependent
upon the respect of others and (2) that at the most basic level, the members of any given
society employ common criteria in according themselves and one another respect. In this
paper, I accept these working assumptions though they require qualification and clarifi-
cation. Furthermore, these assumptions do not specify the sense in which Rawls or I
employ the expressions."social bases of self-respect." This expression possesses a fruitful
ambiguity as between the different but interrelated levels on which the bases of respect
are constituted in a society. It refers to:
(1) the cultural criteria or standards underlying the ways respect is ac-
corded in a society.
These criteria select out
(2) the socialpositions and predicaments in a society on the basis of which

respect is accorded or denied.
These in turn provide the individuals occupying these positions with the opportunity (or
inopportunity) for developing and exhibing
(3) those capacities andforms of agency on the basis of which respect is

accorded in a society.
(1), (2), and (3) reflect
(4) a social ideal of the person which specifies what a person must do and
become, which capacities he or she must develop, togain full recog-
nition in that society.
Ineqtiality or scarcity in the social bases of self-respect in a society C thus implies a scarcity
in (2) the social positions and opportunites, therefore (3) the forms of agency which (1)
and (4) define as bases of recognition in C. For such an inequality or scarcity to constitute
an injustice it must result from the basic structure or institutions of C and it must be
socially possible to have another society D whose basic structure overcomes this scarcity:
by transforming the social bases of self-respect in (1)-(4) and/or universalizing (2) the
kind of positions and opportunities whose scarcity results in the injuries to self-respect.
In this context, it is noteworthy that the expression 'equality in the social bases of
self-respect' does not imply equal self-respect.
306 NOUS
12Although it is doubtful whether Rawlsian and/or existing democracy can function

to sustain dignity through participation in the context of the deformations of "political
equality" which result from capitalist inequalities of economic power and wealth, Rawls is
of two minds concerning this problem. On the one hand, he accepts the fact that the
economic inequalities sanctioned by the difference principle imply that "equal" political
liberty will be of "unequal worth" to individuals and classes of disparate means. ([18]:
204.) On the other hand, he also insists that ajust society "must take steps to enhance the
value of the equal rights of participation for all members of society." ([18]: 224-5.) He
suggests a principle for preserving "the fair value for all of the equal political liberties"
which seems to work against the difference principle and provide an independent
criterion of legitimate economic inequalities. On these problems, see the valuable
Contribution by N. Daniels ([7a]).
13Rawls treats the Aristotle principle as a universal psychological fact about human
beings. I have serious doubts about this because it seems to me impossible to specify what
counts as a more 'complex' or 'intricate' activity, skill, or judgment ([18]: 427-8.) inde-
pendent of the standards of particular societies or historical epochs. In any case, among
the many exacting 'Aristotelian' activities existing in bourgeois-democratic society, the
special subset which in general bring recognition and respect are a function of the
socio-cultural bases of self-respect, not a universal psychological law.
14Our expression "social injuries to self-respect" is intended to allow the possibility
that the individuals so injured do not necessarily lose all respect/self-respect or suffer the
same losses. Individuals and groups struggle in various ways, overtly and covertly, more
or less successfully, to shield themselves from such injuries, to minimize their toll, to
compensate for the losses they sustain, to reconstitute their self-worth on less vulnerable
bases. For example, the injured might try to shift the burden of identity onto the family,
church, union, sports team club, disco (Saturday Night Fever), neighborhood, gangs, etc.
or membership in an 'ascendant' sex, race, ethnic grouping, or nation-state. Without
denying the richness of possibilities here, the bottom line for our critical argument is this:
the social positions and injuries surrounding the labor process which we have discussed
provide the most basic, all-pervasive, inescapable framework of social identity and
recognition in modern capitalist society. For the great majority of people more or less
trapped by circumstance in these positions, whatever they do and however resourceful or
lucky they may be, the struggle to rescue some semblance of self-respect and recognition
is an uphill battle which cannot be won on the terrain of bourgeois-democratic society.
151n several contexts, Rawls makes the assumption that there are economically
feasible alternatives to the division of labor and economic power which obtains within
advanced capitalist society: (1) in his suggestion that the division of labor can be
reorganized to eliminate "monotonous and routine occupations... deadening to human
thought and sensibility" ([18]: 529), (2) in his suggestion that the second principle of
justice might conceivably be satisfied by a "liberal socialist regime" in which "the means of
production are publically owned and firms are managed by workers' councils." ([18]:
280), (3) in his suggestion that a genuine equality in "the fair value of political liberty" for
all may require a greater degree of equality in economic power than what the second
principal by itself requires ([18]: 225-6), (4) finally, in the implicit empirical flexibility in
his "maximim" principle which is supposed to justify different forms of economic
organization each of which may in some set of historical circumstances maximize the
income of the "worst-off" and thus satisfy the principle.
160f course, there are historical reasons underlying this process, for example the
fact that socialist revolutions have occurred in nations in the throes of serious
underdevelopment and lacking any indigenous democratic political traditions (contrary
to the Marxian model of socialist revolution). But, in addition, the Marxian paradigm of
human freedom as freedom from a system of alienated and exploitative relations of
production leaves many controversial questions of interpretation open, concerning its
precise meaning, its institutional consequences, its relationships to the bourgeois-
democratic freedoms, its redefinition of the boundaries of public and private, the role of
law, etc.
'7The recognition of these social problems expresses a transformation in the
character of capitalist society itself, from an earlier stage of entrepeneurial, competitive
smaller-scale and independent firms to the advanced industrial state of the huge
multinationals and oligopolies which concentrate vast economic (and political) power in a
small number of firms and owners. This economic transformation during the 20th
century has itself generated the indispensible pre-conditions for public control of
economic life which were lacking in the earlier stage (19th and early 20th century
America): namely, (1) the economic knowledge required to exercise various forms of
public control over an industrial economy, (2) public recognition in some degree or other
of the vast social consequences upon public life of the growing concentration of private
economic power and wealth, and (3) an educated, organized working class with some
experience and traditions in political action concerning economic life. Thus, the
democratic public has developed the need and capacity to exercise control over economic
life precisely in the period in which the power of private ownership has grown so
dramatically and become so evidently "public" in its consequences and significance.
'8See e.g., Green's Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (University of
Michigan, 1967): 206-10; Hobhouse's Liberalism and Socail Action (Capricorn, 1963):
28-93, cf. [15].
t9Furthermore, Rawls' welfare-state measures for delivering the social minimum to
the "worst-off' (e.g., transfer payment or a negative income tax) preserve one of the most
serious indignities of capitalist society: the degrading distinction between (1) all those
"worst-off' who must depend upon the state or public to achieve the social minimum as
against (2) everyone else who is seen as depending on no one but themselves for the
achievement of their livelihood. This argument is elaborated in my book.

Doppelt - Rawls' System of Justice

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Rawls' System of Justice: A Critique from the Left

Author(s): Gerald Doppelt

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT SAN DIEGO

In advanced industrial societies which have overcome the technological

respect as equality of the basic bourgeois-democratic liberties, those

Rawls' system while going beyond them to develop a conception of

For Rawls, the problem of self-respect is at the core of a theory of social

fundamental commitment to equality in the social bases of self-respect

utilitarianism obfuscates the irreducible normative difference between

foundational philosophical conceptions of human dignity, liberty, the

a conception ofjustice is stable when the public recognition of its realiza-

When a conception of justice thus satisfies these criteria of well-

From this perspective, Rawls' attempt to sketch a stable, well-

argument fully shares his own methodological presuppositions. As he

To begin with, consider the hierarchical form of the capitalist

In short, the social organization of the labor process significantly

(1) "power" as one of the "social goods" which must be

These aspects will permit our critique to partly ground itself in

The argument we have drawn from empirical research links injuries to

It is clear that the justice of distributive shares depends on the

firms is under the control of a "private" sector composed of the owners

assumption of the priority of equality in the social bases of self-respect,

Social research concerning work strongly suggests that the injuries to

How is this conception of self-respect related to the two principles

In sum, Rawls implicitly maintains that equality of liberty in his

worthwhile"? What most people do everyday is work, and is defined by

As a final comment, I should note that a well-ordered society does not

In a few isolated contexts of discussion Rawls effectively acknowledges

Unfortunately these "limits" are never mentioned again and effectly

institutional position and their in

But theoretically we can if necessary

In these remarks, Rawls concede

ship leaves no room for a model of dignity through self-affirming labor

(1) its distribution of economic power, and

Yet on Rawls' theory , this society as it stands is neither well-ordered nor

(1) its distribution of economic power (powerlessness in

but rather by transforming

(2) the criteria of respect so as to cancel the cultural sig-

This important response raises two questions:

(1) Does Rawls' system effect this transformation of the

(2) Does his contractarian argument justify the view that

Leaving the second question for an extensive discussion in section VII

While he underscores the point in the abstract, he does not follow

Indeed the argument of our paper so far indicates the opposite

drug addiction, political cynicism or apathy, juvenile delinquency, etc.)

(1) on the positive side, the elucidation of the ways in

(2) on the negative side, the elucidation of the ways in

social system. ([18]: 160-1, 542-3.) Unlike Rawls' theory, utilitarianism

For these reasons, under capitalism the labor process as a whole

matter, Rawls makes no attempt to develop any social conception of the

then the ideological critique developed above is weakened. In the final

Does Rawls' original position express a general ideal of the person

(1) this abstract ideal of the person leads to

(3) a 'democratic-socialist' conception of human dignity.

Finally, we argue that the inherently contestable character of the back-

those persons would themselves choose if they based their choice on

other elements such as the anthropological characterization of primary

Yet at this point, a more serious problem arises. Suppose we grant

presently characteristic of the western democracies, appears arbitrary

... in the constitutional case above, it seems difficult to understand how

tions or to some conception of what all individuals are mutually entitled

For Rawls, an appeal to utilitarian considerations to characterize

while unequal political liberty might conceivably have been a permissable