I. Introduction
The social framework of distribution and burdens and benefits resulting from it in each society fundamentally affects people’s lives and perception of justice. With respect to distributive justice, Principles of Justice proposed by John Rawls and Entitlement Theory by Robert Nozick have been considered two of the most influential ideas, but they each faces challenges that can be amended by the other. In this paper, I am going to engage in the conversation of justice and equality by objecting to Nozick from the perspective of Rawls’, responding to that objection, and arguing that Entitlement theory is more convincing than Principles of Justice overall because of its better take on justice.
II. Rawls and Nozick on Justice
Rawls’ theory, Justice as fairness, is constructed around specific interpretations of the ideas that citizens are free and equal and that society should be fair. The guiding ideas of justice as fairness are given institutional form by its two principles of justice:
First principle (on basic liberty): each person is to an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme for others.
Second principle (on inequality): social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
a. (fair equality of opportunity[1]) attached to positions and offices open to all
b. (the difference principle) They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society
Robert Nozick, the right libertarian, argues that Entitlement theory should be the true account of justice. It consists of three part:
A principle of justice in acquisition – This principle is an account of how people first come to own common property, what types of things can be held, and so forth.
A principle of justice in transfer – This principle explains how one person can acquire holdings from another, including voluntary exchange and gifts.
A principle of rectification of injustice – how to deal with holdings that are unjustly acquired or transferred, whether and how much victims can be compensated, how to deal with long past transgressions or injustices done by a government, and so on.
III. Contradiction between the two principles and consequences
In Nozickean term, a “patterned” principle keeps track of attributes of individual, and distribution will be based on those attributes. He claims that liberty upsets patterns, because given the unpredictability of types of distribution we will get with a free market, insisting on imposing a pattern of distribution will inevitably require constant interference from the state---hence no pattern can be preserved without people’s freedom being stumped over.
However, Rawls’ principle is patterned. The difference principle requires us to look at people’s socioeconomic status at all time, pick out the worst off, and decide whether the rich has acquired his wealth legitimately---if the worst off is worse off than his initial status, then no; else yes.
The patterned nature of Principles of Justice is where the contradiction between these two principles lies. This incompatibility invites objections to both sides. With a Nozickean perspective, it seems inevitable that a redistribution of property of the rich, which was rightfully acquired or transferred in a free market, is an unjust violation of freedom; from a Rawlsian perspective, however, we can question whether the Nozick’s entitlement theory will create a society that concurs and favors “inequality”. This concern about consent to inequality has been one of the biggest objections faced by Entitlement theory, not only because we have a tacit consensus on the importance of equality, but also because it creates uneasiness in our intuition that there is no safety net for the “worst off” of the society. In the next section, I will try to demonstrate the superiority of Entitlement theory by responding to this Rawlsian objection, and explain why Nozick had a better take on the notion of justice.
IV. Entitlement theory over Principle of Justice
Note that Rawlsian objection contains of 2 parts:
a. Entitlement theory fails to provide a safety net to the worst off of society, as the Difference Principle does
b. Since entitlement theory does not keep track of better or worse off, it hence almost explicitly allows inequality
Let us look at part (a) first. The Rawlsian objection to Nozick appeals to a contradiction in our perception of “entitlement” ---no matter how justly acquired or “entitled” the properties are, once this entitlement is hurting other people (“the worst-off”, in Rawls’ term), it should no longer be an entitlement. However, Nozick does realize the existence of this intuitive contradiction, so he follows Locke in adopting a version of the claim that an individual will have a complaint in justice against otherwise perfectly just acquisitions by others if those acquisitions do not leave that individual with “enough, and as good” (174–182). Lockean Proviso answers the concern about the worst off of society by guaranteeing that he has enough and as good resources to survive on, hence makes entitlement theory stronger.
Because of Nozick’s explicit appeal to Lockean Proviso, the only problem his theory faces is that it is somehow murky how imperatively Lockean Proviso gets carried out once a society starts seeing individuals lack of “as good” resources. And this problem is easily resolved as soon as Nozick allows Lockean Proviso to have equal or higher importance as principles of justice in acquisition and transfer. The Rawlsian objection to Entitlement theory can be gracefully handled this way without introducing any new elements into the theory, and it therefore does not shake its ground.
I would actually go a step further to argue that even without Lockean Proviso, Entitlement theory is still corrigible when facing the Rawlsian objection. Let us look back at this objection. It states that nothing in Entitlement theory prevents the worst off of the society from living in utter destitution; it condemns Entitlement theory for its lack of a similar mechanism as the Difference principle, where a safety net is provided for the poor. However, consider a society made up of three people, A, B and C, with total resources being nine dollars. Let us imagine that from the initial condition where they each have three dollars, A and B have rightfully acquired all resources and they each have four dollars. C now has one. Now will we say that under the Principle of justice in acquisition, A and B can rightfully, justly, legitimately acquire the one dollar of C, and leave C to starve to death? The answer should be no, even from an entirely Nozickean viewpoint. Entitlement theory provides a way of protecting individual property from getting unjustly redistributed, but never does it bet against humanity and our moral intuition by defining the standard of justice as only “meaningful labor”. Justice of acquisition is comprehensive enough to avoid the Rawlsian concern.
To respond to part (b) of Rawlsian objection properly, we should ask a central question: is this part of the objection engaging in the same terms as Nozickean principles? Can we rightly accuse Nozick of creating a “unequal” society with Rawls’ assumptions on a equal society? I would say no, for the reason that Nozick and Rawls adopt drastically different meaning of equality. Rawls has a relatively more naïve view of equality, where two people are considered to start off as equal as long as they have the same amount of primary good[2]. Hence to preserve Rawls’ notion of equality, or to cater to his acceptance of inequality (the difference principle), all we need to do is to look at the socioeconomic status of the worst off, based on which we adjust our current distributive scheme. However, equality in Nozickean context is about applying the same and just standard--- if A and B devote the same amount of work into acquiring something and are equally qualified, there is no reason why A should successfully acquire and B should not. Everybody is subject to the same, one and standard of acquisition. Therefore, we cannot reasonably object to Nozick in Rawls’ terms, because of the immensely different perceptions of equality these two philosophers adopt.
Leaving the objection aside, entitlement theory itself also has a better take on justice than Justice as Fairness. Even though Rawls strictly distinguishes “Justice is fairness” from “Justice as fairness”[3], the Difference principle, which most predominately governs redistribution, prefers a scenario where person A gets 90 and person B gets 80 over a scenario where person A gets 100 and person B gets 70, if they both starts at 80. In this preference it is implicitly embedded that everybody being poor is preferred over anyone being affluent. An implicit comparison of person A right now is being made with person A in the past, and person B right now with person B in the past, and possibilities are being ruled out based on the result of this comparison---that is what fairness is about, fairness is about comparison. We shall not say that based on the comparison it is unjust A progressed and B regressed, but rather that it is unfair, since they started off equal, and they ought to reach an equal state. It is not unjust that A made a fortune with B’s relative regress, it is unfair.
However, justice is not fairness[4], and it should not be a result of any form of comparison. That is where Entitlement theory shows its advantage. The fact whether one justly acquires something has nothing to do with whether the worst off has benefited from his acquisition, but is entirely dependent on what he has done to justify his acquisition. Justice as a standard should be self-sufficient and independent of the context. That is indeed the case for Entitlement theory, we can discuss “Justice in acquisition” in any way of our choice---we can demand in it a moral and humanitarian consideration of the worst off of society, but it should and could still be a pure discussion of justice, which exists as an absolute standard independent of the context or which society we are in or what the condition of the worst off is.
V. Conclusion
In this paper, I have demonstrated the robustness of Entitlement theory by responding to the potential objections of one of its rival theories, Justice as Fairness. I also attempted to show why by itself entitlement theory is more sensible, given its better notion of justice. Future work should be devoted into investigating whether we have a clear idea of what constitutes as the “justice” in “justice of acquisition”, “justice of transfer” (voluntary transaction is a good start), and “justice of rectification”.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my peer Elvin Gu for his careful review, thoughtful objections and revise of my work. I would also like to thank my instructors Amelia and professor Gray, for without them I could not have come up with a systematic understanding of relationships between Rawls and Nozick, or formed any satisfying opinion on equality and justice.
Reference
Rawls, J. (2005). A theory of justice . Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press.
Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state, and utopia . New York: Basic Books.
[1] Fair Equality of Opportunity. Fair Equality of Opportunity (FEO) requires that social positions, such as jobs, be formally open and meritocratically allocated, but, in addition, each individual is to have a fair chance to attain these positions.
[2] Social primary goods: this category includes rights (civil rights and political rights), liberties, income and wealth, the social bases of self-respect, etc.
[3] Justice within a Liberal Society
[4] Justice is not fairness, because imagine professor Gray giving everyone D at the end of the semester. He is fair, in the sense that he used the same standard on everyone---everyone gets D. But he isn’t just, in the sense that you might actually deserve a D while I deserve an A.
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