Rodilyn G.

Basay BSCE-2 GE-TJSM November 7, 2019

John Rawls: Two Principles of Justice ft. The Market

In this society, everybody has different walks of life. Some may have all the things being laid
already on their platter as they were born in this world; some work hard to maintain such thing,
and some has the least of all though he has been crawling to feed himself for alms. With the
abovementioned statement, it entails a question of justice narrowing down to a specific subject
matter such as fairness. To a multitude of reasonable people, these facts seem unjust. While others
disagree: even if these facts are somewhat agitating, they aren’t issues of justice. A successful
theory of justice must explain why clear injustices are unjust and help us resolve current disputes.
John Rawls, was a Harvard philosopher best known for his “A Theory of Justice (1971)”, which
attempted to define a just society. Nearly every contemporary scholarly discussion of justice
references the latter.
Rawls’ theory is oriented toward liberalism and forms the basis for what law enforcement, and the
criminal justice system, should strive for in a pluralistic and liberal society. Grasping over from
some concepts of social contract theory, Rawls conceived of a society in which the principles of
justice are founded in a social contract. However, Rawls identifies problems with the social
contract that do not allow fairness and equality to exist among members of society and therefore
proposes a social contract which is negotiated behind a “veil of ignorance”. By the latter, the
negotiating participants have no idea what their race, gender, education, health, sexual orientation,
and other characteristics are so that the social contract is fair. Ultimately, Rawls argues that the
primary concern of justice is fairness. To identify fairness, Rawls (120) develops two important
concepts:
1. The Original Position
“Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with
a similar liberty for others” (Rawls, 2006, p.63). Rawls goes further by allowing each
person to engage in activities, as long as he or she does not infringe on the rights of others.

2. Veil of Ignorance
“Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably
expected to be to everyone’s advantage (b) attached to positions and offices open to all…”
(Rawls, 2006, p.63). Likewise, everyone should share in the wealth of society and everyone
should receive benefits from the distribution of wealth. Rawls does not argue that everyone
should be paid the same, but rather that everyone should have benefit from a fair income
and have access to those jobs that pay more.

The first principle, The Original Position, the original position is a hypothetical situation:
Rawls asks what social rules and institutions people would agree to, not in an actual
discussion, but under fair conditions, where nobody knows whether they are advantaged
by luck.

The second principle, The Veil of Ignorance, is where fairness is achieved. an imagined
device where the people choosing the basic structure of society (‘deliberators’) have
morally arbitrary features hidden from them: since they have no knowledge of these
features, any decision they make can’t be biased in their own favor. Deliberators aren’t
ignorant about everything though. They know they are self-interested, i.e., want as much
as possible of what Rawls calls primary goods (things we want, no matter what our ideal
life looks like). They are also motivated by a minimal ‘sense of justice’: they will abide by
rules that seem fair, if others do too. They also know basic facts about science and human
nature.

Rawls thinks a just society will conform to rules that everyone would agree to in the
original position. Since they are deliberating behind the veil of ignorance, people don’t
know their personal circumstances, or even their view of the good life. This affects the
kinds of outcomes they will endorse. For instance, it would be irrational for deliberators to
agree to a society where only Christians have property rights since if, when the veil is
‘lifted,’ they turn out not to be Christian, that will negatively affect their life prospects.
Similarly, deliberators presumably won’t choose a society with racist, sexist, or other
unfairly discriminatory practices, since beyond the veil, they might end up on the wrong
side of these policies. This gives rise to Rawls’ first principle of justice: all people have
equal claims to as much freedom as is consistent with everyone else having the same level
of freedom. Rawls further claims that, because their ignorance includes an ignorance of
probabilities, deliberators would be extremely cautious, and apply what he calls a
‘maximin’ principle: they will aim to ensure that the worst possible position they could end
up in is as good as possible in terms of primary goods.

If we imagine ourselves as deliberators, we might be tempted by the idea of total equality

in primary goods. This ensures, at least, that nobody will be better off than you for arbitrary
reasons. However, some inequality might be useful: the possibility of earning more might
incentivize people to work harder, growing the economy and so increasing the total amount
of available wealth.

This isn’t a wholehearted endorsement of capitalism, as Rawls’ second principle, which

addresses social and economic inequalities, makes clear. The second principle has two
parts:
First, people in the original position will tolerate inequalities only if the jobs that pay more
aren’t assigned unfairly. This gives us the ideal of fair equality of opportunity: inequalities
are allowed only if they arise through jobs that equally talented people have equal
opportunity to get. This requires, for instance, that young people receive roughly equal
educational opportunities; otherwise, a talented individual might be held back by a lack of
basic knowledge, either about their own talents, or about the world. Second, since their
reasoning is governed by the ‘maximin’ principle, deliberators will only tolerate
inequalities that benefit the worst off: since, as far as they know, they might be the worst
off, this maximizes the quality of their worst possible outcome. This is called the difference
principle.
These principles are ordered, which tells us what to do if they clash: equal liberty is most
important, then fair opportunity, and finally the difference principle. So, neither freedoms
nor opportunity are governed by the difference principle.

In relation to the market, the market is the key to a realistic interpretation of Rawls's
concept of the state. His view of the market is even at the basis of his renowned principles
of justice. The 'efficiency' and 'freedom' of the market are prized by Rawls and other liberal
theorists. Income inequality and large capital concentration threaten these prized virtues of
the market. Rawls requires a strongly interventionist state to counteract the dangers of
monopoly. His idealized state intervenes, not to promote concentration in the manner of
the monopoly capitalist state, but to promote greater equality. This equality is needed if the
market is to display efficiency and freedom. It is through this intervention that the state
promotes justice. Properly interpreted, the assurance problem on which Rawls bases the
need for the state arises from market tendencies. The market enables initial advantages to
be increased. This is ultimately why people with advantages support the market, whether
the context is private ownership or bureaucratic control within so-called market socialism.
The inequality resulting from increasing initial advantages interferes with efficiency and
freedom. Rawls's state intervenes to preserve the market while restraining it. This can be
seen as an attempt to preserve class society from itself. Consequently, Rawls's conception
of justice is founded on classes.

In closing, these principles should be adhered to, according to Rawls, to ensure that
disadvantages are neutralized and everyone receives the same benefits of justice. Rawls
further addresses ethics in the individual, though this is not the central tenet of his theory,
and is somewhat of a general statement of how moral people should behave (Banks, 2013).
we can now see how Rawls’ theory might evaluate the issues raised earlier. At least within
specific societies, each seems to violate his basic principles of justice, and so would be
condemned as unjust. So, even if we ultimately reject Rawls’ approach, it at least seems to
offer intuitively correct answers in several important cases, and for plausible reasons.
References:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20100058?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2018/07/27/john-rawls-a-theory-of-justice/

https://opentextbc.ca/ethicsinlawenforcement/chapter/2-10-rawls-theory-of-justice/