What is it about?
This book is the first detailed reconstruction of the late work of John Rawls. It focuses on Rawls’s presentation of two regime-types capable of realizing justice as fairness: property-owning democracy and liberal socialism. Long mistaken as an apologist for welfare-state capitalism, Rawls emerges here as an understated advocate of socialism.
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Why is it important?
Rawls’s final restatement of “justice as fairness” condemns capitalism and, in effect, excludes private ownership of the means of production.
Perspectives
In the last book he published in his life, Rawls declared himself opposed to capitalism in all forms. The same book presented a sophisticated reworking of the argument for his theory justice as fairness. Rawls was curiously reticent to declare that the inevitable conclusion of the reconfigured argument is socialism, but it is.
Regents' Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy William A. Edmundson
Georgia State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: John Rawls: Reticent Socialist, January 2017, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/9781316779934.
You can read the full text:
Resources
New Books in Philosophy: Interview with Robert Talisse
Prof. Robert Talisse interviews the author.
John Rawls and the "New Left"
Interview by Ethan Linehan for the Platypus Review
The Philosophical Case for Socialism
Prospect magazine
Matt Bruenig: Was John Rawls a Socialist?
Policy wonk Matt Bruenig describes the Rawlsian theory of justice and explains why he think it entails socialism, not property-owning democracy.
Contributors
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