Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site tilt.FUN Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!princeton!tilt!chenr From: chenr@tilt.FUN (Ray Chen) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Taking up Richard's gauntlet ... Message-ID: <235@tilt.FUN> Date: Tue, 12-Feb-85 02:02:03 EST Article-I.D.: tilt.235 Posted: Tue Feb 12 02:02:03 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 12-Feb-85 06:47:48 EST References: <326@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <4715@ucbvax.ARPA> Organization: Princeton University EECS Dept Lines: 52 First, my compliments to Barry Fagin for writing a calm, rational article. Now, to the point at hand... Barry writes that > All egalitarian philosophers with which I > am familiar, from Marx to Rawls, imply or state right out that some kind > of equality of wealth is desirable and go from there. In the case of Rawls and Marx, this isn't true. Rawls attempts to describe a philosophical procedure for constructing a just society The desired outcome is a society in which a person, given knowledge of the society, the philosophical principles upon which that society is based, and no knowledge of his place in that society or his resources in terms of natural talents/inherited wealth, etc. would choose to participate in. This does not imply egalitarianism. As a matter of fact, inequalities are specifically allowed as long as "they are to the benefit of the least advantaged". In other words, as long as the inequality in some way improves the lot of EVERYONE in the society. What is prohibited is the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer cycle". Or to be more precise, "the more advantaged get more advantages and the less ..." as advantaged is not defined in terms of wealth per se, but in primary goods of which monetary resources/property are a subset. For those of you interested in Rawls, I'd suggest reading A Theory of Justice, The Dewey Lectures, and "Fairness to Goodness" by John Rawls. A Theory of Justice alone no longer suffices as there have been significant improvements to his theory since then. The Dewey Lectures and "Fairness to Goodness" were both published in The Journal of Philosophy. As for Marx, my classical Marxism is a little fuzzy. However, Marx's main point was that control of the means of production influences the political structure of a society. This has since been refined (and a good thing too, or classical Marxism would have gone the way of the buffalo in theory-land) by the Frankfurt School of Philosophy to the idea of a critical theory, ideology, false consciousness, and their roles in political theory, none of which have ANYTHING to do with egalitarianism. In short, while classical Marxism and Rawls advocate a form of egalitarianism under certain circumstances, I'd hardly label them as egalitarian philosophers. Rawls' theory is a contract theory. While agents in his Original Position are equal in some respects, I don't think that merits labeling the theory as egalitarian as neither economic nor civil (having to do with rights) equality is a mandated result of his Original Position. Neither is classical Marxism really egalitarian as the primary theoretical problem is the influence of control of the means of production on society. Ray Chen princeton!tilt!chenr