The antipolitical philosophy of John Rawls

Public Interest, Spring, 2003 by Brian C. Anderson

This temptation to define his preferred political views as equivalent to rationality itself shows up right at the outset, in Rawls's original position. Rawls allows behind the veil only those aspects of human psychology he wants his self-interested, rational choosers to have. Why, after all, are those in the original position risk avoiders rather than risk takers? Why not take a chance that one might wind up, if not Michael Jordan, at least a talented overachiever, and endorse institutions that provided maximum opportunity (while still maintaining a safety net, in case one turned out to be Joe Nobody)? From a self-interested standpoint, the risk-taking attitude seems at least as rational as the risk-avoiding one.

A Rawlsian, of course, would point out that the veil supplies the moral constraints within which rational, self-interested choice takes place, and that our intuitions about equality tell us what the veil should obscure. But Rawls simply assumes that we are all egalitarians. He simply assumes that the advantaged recognize that they have no right to the use of their talents and advantages without the permission of an egalitarian society. He simply assumes that justice as fairness will boost social reciprocity and lead to long-term stability. These assumptions ignore both the ambitious drive of the gifted and the corrosive force of envy--two of the basic human emotions. To be plausible, Rawlsian egalitarianism would need argument, not assumption.

Flight from reality

Rawls's rationalist, deductive approach also renders his theory extremely abstract. The reader can range over hundreds of pages in Rawls without meeting an historical example or world-historical figure, a comparative analysis of economic or political institutions, a reference to cultural developments, a discussion of crime, an exploration of collective identification (the strongest political force of our age), or anything else connected to the real world. Rawls describes himself as a realistic utopian. Reality, though, seems to play a limited role in his work.

Rawls discusses "liberal socialism," for example, without once telling us how it might work--an important consideration, one would think, given the many failures of socialism in practice. How would the vast state intervention in the economy and heavy taxation needed to redistribute wealth and opportunities and liberties along Rawlsian lines avoid suppressing entrepreneurial energy and prosperity? Rawls does not say. His emphasis is invariably on the distribution of wealth and other social goods, not on how a society produces them in the first place.

This abstraction mars Rawls's writings on international justice as well. To say that decent societies must only fight defensive wars and must avoid power politics sounds nice, but it is to ignore the harsh realities of democratic statesmanship, where dirty hands are often unavoidable in protecting liberal citizens against illiberal menaces from abroad (or, as September 11 reminded us, from within). For the democratic statesman to pretend otherwise is potentially lethal to those whose destiny he watches over.