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Property-Owning Democracy and the Priority of Liberty

Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 11. Februar 2016
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Abstract

The distinction drawn by Rawls between the ideas of property-owning democracy and welfare state capitalism parallels his distinction between justice-based ‘liberalisms of freedom’ (including his own conception of justice as fairness) and utilitarian- based ‘liberalisms of happiness’. In this paper I argue that Rawls’s failure to attach the same level of significance to essential socio-economic rights and liberties as he attached to the traditional liberal civil and political rights and liberties gives justice as fairness a quasi-utilitarian character, which is incompatible with the fundamental objective of protecting the highest.-order interests of citizens conceived as free and equal. I argue that in order fully to protect these interests, rights to access to non-human capital and productive resources should be assigned the same level of significance as that assigned to the civil and political rights and liberties, and prioritized over the lower-order rights and benefits regulated by Rawls’s second principle of justice.

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

© 2013 by Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart

Heruntergeladen am 9.5.2026 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/auk-2013-0107/html?lang=de
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