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Background Justice over Time: Property-Owning Democracy versus a Realistically Utopian Welfare State

  • Michael Schefczyk
Published/Copyright: February 11, 2016
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Analyse & Kritik
From the journal Analyse & Kritik Volume 35 Issue 1

Abstract

In Justice as Fairness, Rawls presents a case for property-owning democracy (POD) which heavily depends on a favourable comparison with welfare state capitalism (WSC). He argues that WSC, but not POD, fails to realise ‘all the main political values expressed by the two principles of justice’. This article argues that Rawls’s case for POD is incomplete. He does not show that POD is superior to other conceivable forms of WSC. In order to present a serious contender, I sketch what I call a realistically utopian welfare state (RUWS) that (a) guarantees the fair equality of political liberties and opportunity and that (b) maximises the situation of the worst.-off via a kind of participation income. The main aim of the article is to give credibility to the claim that RUWS is not obviously worse than POD by Rawlsian standards and therefore deserves a fair hearing in further research.

Published Online: 2016-02-11
Published in Print: 2013-05-01

© 2013 by Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Contents
  2. Editorial
  3. Property-Owning Democracy and the Difference
  4. The Property-Owning Democracy vesus the Welfare State
  5. Thoughts on Arrangements of Property Rights in Productive Assets
  6. Comment on John E. Roemer
  7. Property-Owning Democracy and the Priority of Liberty
  8. Comment on Gavin Kerr
  9. The Concept of Property in Rawls’s Property-Owning Democracy
  10. Comment on Tilo Wesche
  11. The Place of the Market in a Rawlsian Economy
  12. Between Sentimentalism and Instrumentalism. The Societal Role of Work in John Rawls’s Property-Owning Democracy and Its Bearing upon Basic Income
  13. Fraternal Society in Rawls’ Property-Owning Democracy
  14. Comment on Andrew Walton
  15. Background Justice over Time: Property-Owning Democracy versus a Realistically Utopian Welfare State
  16. Comment on Michael Schefczyk
  17. Investing for a Property-Owning Democracy? Towards a Philosophical Analysis of Investment Practices
  18. Constitutionalizing Property-Owning Democracy
  19. Property-Owning Democracy and the Circumstances of Politics
  20. Authors
https://doi.org/10.1515/auk-2013-0115

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Contents
  2. Editorial
  3. Property-Owning Democracy and the Difference
  4. The Property-Owning Democracy vesus the Welfare State
  5. Thoughts on Arrangements of Property Rights in Productive Assets
  6. Comment on John E. Roemer
  7. Property-Owning Democracy and the Priority of Liberty
  8. Comment on Gavin Kerr
  9. The Concept of Property in Rawls’s Property-Owning Democracy
  10. Comment on Tilo Wesche
  11. The Place of the Market in a Rawlsian Economy
  12. Between Sentimentalism and Instrumentalism. The Societal Role of Work in John Rawls’s Property-Owning Democracy and Its Bearing upon Basic Income
  13. Fraternal Society in Rawls’ Property-Owning Democracy
  14. Comment on Andrew Walton
  15. Background Justice over Time: Property-Owning Democracy versus a Realistically Utopian Welfare State
  16. Comment on Michael Schefczyk
  17. Investing for a Property-Owning Democracy? Towards a Philosophical Analysis of Investment Practices
  18. Constitutionalizing Property-Owning Democracy
  19. Property-Owning Democracy and the Circumstances of Politics
  20. Authors
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