politic4

Social Philosophy: Robert Nozick and John Rawls

Justice requires giving people what they deserve. There are two ways to think of justice:

retributive justice: a punishment or reward given to someone for something he/she has done
distributive justice: the distribution of goods, benefits, and responsibilities in a society based on:

need and ability (socialism: Marx)
private property, capitalism (entitlement theory: Nozick)
everyone's right to equal opportunities (liberalism: Rawls)

I. The Minimal State (or Entitlement) Theory (Robert Nozick):

Legitimate use of power by the state is limited to preventing fraud or the use of force. It does not include the power to tax or to confiscate property. Contrary to the anarchist (state of nature) claim that the state does not have the right to charge for its protection, Nozick responds: the state does not violate individual rights, since the anarchic state would evolve quickly into a minimal state situation anyway (people would hire others to protect their rights), and the strongest protection agency would be the state

Taxation by the state to finance projects other than protection violates individual rights to decide how one's property is disposed of. Thus unconsented taxation is like forced labor

Both socialism and liberalism call for redistributing the wealth: to achieve "justice," they impose a pattern on the distribution of goods, and such a pattern ignores the history of how goods have come to be distributed through trade, labor, purchases, gifts, etc. To take those goods away from people would be unjust, as long as the initial acquisition of the goods was just (e.g., one's own labor, inheritance). The state has the obligation to protect my property and to punish those who violate property rights. Only an unlimited capitalism can produce a just society

Objections:

There are no such absolute rights as the right to property and protection from the intrusion of others. Rights mark out those things about which there are moral reasons to support my free actions; but this does not necessarily include property rights

The idea of original acquisition is puzzling: ownership is justified only if the original acquisition was just; but Nozick's emphasis on the history of ownership seems blind to the fact of original unjust appropriation. When Nozick acknowledges that original injustices have to be corrected, he undercuts his whole position

II. Contemporary Liberalism (John Rawls): wealth is a cooperative enterprise, and all members of a society have a claim to a share of products; there must be a government to resolve disputes about claims by those who produce and those who consume. All citizens must be treated fairly, which means they must be given equal economic opportunities and provided with a minimum standard of living. In this way, justice is fairness

A theory of justice must recognize that rational, self-interested individuals would be willing to endorse it. That theory would have:

principle of liberty: everyone should be given as much liberty as is consistent with others having equal liberty

wealth and power would be distributed equally except where inequalities work to the advantage of all, and everyone has access to the advantageous positions of wealth and power. No one will know (under the "veil of ignorance") where he or she will fit in the order of inequalities; this is called the "original position"

Objections:

if one allows inequalities, then the acceptability (and self-esteem) by the participants will decline
most would risk being at the bottom (thinking they would not be there) if the payoff was high enough
how can one justly agree to a contract not knowing what one is buying into?