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Property-Owning Democracy and the Priority of Liberty

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

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

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-2013-0107

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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