Rawls's thin (Millean) defense of private property

Utilitas

Volumn 22, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 134-147

  Persky, Joseph ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO   (United States)

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EID: 79956346317     PISSN: 09538208     EISSN: 17416183     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0953820810000051     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. J. J. Persky, 'On the Thinness of the Utilitarian Defense of Private Property', Journal of the History of Economic Thought (2009).
2. See, for example, J. Gruber and E. Saez, 'The Elasticity of Taxable Income: Evidence and Implications', Journal of Public Economics 84 (2002), pp. 1-32.
3. R. Krouse and M. McPherson, 'Capitalism, "Property-Owning Democracy," and the Welfare State', Democracy and theWelfare State ed. A. Gutman (Princeton, 1988). Krouse and McPherson forcefully argue that Rawls's theory was hostile to the welfare state.
4. Rawls subsequently endorsed their interpretation in J. Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, Mass., 2001).
5. Rawls Restatement, pp. 7-8. Where possible I try to rely on Rawls's positions in their more or less final form as outlined in the Restatement.
6. In his earlier work A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1971) Rawls hoped to achieve agreement on a 'comprehensive moral doctrine'. In his later works he advances his conception of 'justice as fairness' as a 'political conception'. In either case, the purpose of constructing the principles of justice is to facilitate the choice among social institutions.
7. For example, Wylie Bradford (in W. Bradford, 'Rawls and Meade: Unfortunate Bedfellows?', , 2000) suggests Rawls' property-owning democracy is likely to fail one or more of these requirements.
8. J. Meade, Efficiency, Equality and the Ownership of Property (London, 1964).
9. Rawls, Justice.
10. Meade, Efficiency, p. 33.
11. Persky, 'Thinness'.
12. D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1740), ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (New York, 1978), p. 492.
13. Hume, Human Nature, p. 495.
14. Rosamond Rhodes, in 'Reading Rawls and Hearing Hobbes', Philosophical Forum 33 (2002), pp. 393-412, has argued that Rawls and Hobbes share a great deal in their emphasis on 'stability and justice'.
15. J. Bentham, Principles of the Civil Code (1838), Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Browning, vol. 1 (reprinted, New York 1962).
16. Bentham, Civil Code, p. 309.
17. The sharp contrast drawn here between Bentham and Mill may be somewhat oversimplified. For a nuanced reading of Bentham's theory of property see P. J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice (Oxford, 1990). Kelly argues that Bentham's defense of private property was anchored in his endorsement of personal freedom. This reading moves Bentham closer to John Stuart Mill and Rawls's 'liberalism of freedom' discussed in the last section.
18. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848)
19. reprinted in CollectedWorks of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson, vol. 2 (Toronto, 1965), p. 207.
20. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (1861)
21. reprinted in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Robson, V. 10 (Toronto, 1969) Mill notes that he sees no conflict of this definition with Kant's approach to morality
22. Mill, Principles, p. 208.
23. J. Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. B. Herman (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), p. 330.
24. Rawls, Lectures, p. 366.