How egalitarian is Rawls’s “Difference Principle”?

What is it about?

John Rawls’s ‘difference principle’ holds that inequalities should benefit the worst off. The principle seems egalitarian, since it holds that inequalities have to be justified, and that they can only be justified by bettering the prospects of those who have the least. Followers of Rawls have tended to assume that the principle supports social or so-called ‘property-owning’ democracy, with an active regulatory and redistributive state. However, defenders of capitalism have argued that an economic order based on private property and free markets with at most a limited welfare state maximizes long-run income growth for the worst off. According to this view, capitalism outperforms socialism and social democracy, as far as the economic interests of the worst-off are concerned. This paper argues that the Difference Principle should not be interpreted to require maximizing long run income growth. The main idea is that it is unfair to make the present worst off accept inequality that doesn’t benefit them, for the sake of benefitting the future worst off, if the future worst off will be better off than they are anyway.

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Why is it important?

This paper responds to what has been referred to as ‘bleeding-heart libertarianism.’ People such as Jason Brennan and John Tomasi accept the Rawlsian methodological principle that the social order needs to be justifiable to everyone, including the worst off, rather than the historical-entitlement approach of natural rights libertarians influenced by Locke and Nozick. However, Brennan and Tomasi claim that this approach supports a form of classical liberalism rather than socialism, social democracy, or ‘property-owning democracy’. Part of the debate concerns which rights count as basic. This paper addresses the interpretation of the difference principle. The paper claims that Brennan and Tomasi’s account of the difference principle has implausible intergenerational implications.