For those of you who might not be Rawls scholars, Rawls argued that his principles of domestic justice might be satisfied by two types of regimes: (1) liberal socialism, and (2) property-owning democracy. While the former regime-type has been long discussed, the latter regime-type has been the recipient of increased interest lately, thanks to the work of Samuel Freeman and others.
Anyway, Kevin Vallier has just posted a great new article to philpapers, "A moral and economic critique of the new property-owning democrats: on behalf of a Rawlsian welfare state" (forthcoming in Phil Studies). I think Vallier's argument is pretty devastating. It is also one that invokes a point that I invoked in the comments-section of this post: namely, that moral and political philosophy need to make and be evaluated partly on the basis of empirical predictions related to human psychology and behavior. Vallier is up to precisely this, arguing that the Rawlsian case for property-owning democracy is based on (1) pure, unadulterated speculation about human psychology and behavior, that (2) neither Rawls nor his followers have provided any evidence for, and which (3) contradicts a lot of what we do know about human psychology and behavior. As Vallier writes,
I have a number of general concerns about...[difference principle] arguments [for property-owning democracy]. First, they are... based on psychological claims about the bases of self-respect that seem highly speculative...Perhaps in some cases employees, say, would respect themselves more and receive more respect from others if they were partial owners of their workplace. But then again, maybe not. Plenty of people have a healthy sense of self-respect apart from their jobs, say based on the other social roles they play and the relationships they have throughout the course of their lives...Maximizing the participation rights and social bases of self-respect available to the least advantaged is a messy empirical matter, so it’s not at all clear what the different principle requires in this case. Given that these arguments amount to little more than hand-waiving, it is hard to justify giving the state the authority to monitor capital stocks to a degree sufficient to realize and protect individual and collective capital rights...The general worry I have about difference principle arguments for POD is that their success depends on empirical claims that Rawlsians have to my knowledge never defended. (pp. 17-18)
Vallier, I believe, is plainly right. Political philosophers have no business speculating on which principles of justice should govern society--or what a just, well-functioning society's institutions should be like--in the absence of deep and broadly well-informed understanding of human psychology and behavior (note: such speculation is not innocuous. Rousseauian speculation about human nature arguably contributed to the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror" and Marx's speculations led to communism, mass famine, mass murder, etc.). Doing empirically informed political philosophy takes a ton of work, and indeed, education in psychology, sociology, and politics. It requires far more than abstract philosophical reflection on normative notions of freedom and equality or Rawlsian original positions. It requires situating those normative philosophical arguments within background knowledge from those other areas. A mature political philosophy must, in other words, be deeply interdisciplinary--far more than than political philosophy has often been (though, I should add, significant parts of political philosophy have been long informed by empirical stuff!). Anyway, I congratulate Kevin (a former grad school colleague) on writing such a great article. Although I disagree profoundly with just about everything he has to say on public reason and religion, I think his empirically-informed approach to political philosophy is important and, hopefully, the wave of the future!
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