Abstract
The core question of this chapter lies in determining the object subject view, or “for whom and for what kind of life,” in modern society. Humans essentially act from an individualistic selfish view and the utilitarian view is an expression of it. Classical contributors placed themselves either on the side of the interests of the majority group (Smith and Marx) or on the side of the weak (Keynes). Rawls focused on the consent of every person in a society, expecting everyone to be satisfied with the difference principle, which allows income differences with the condition of increasing the disadvantaged people’s share at the same time. In contrast, Sen focused on the group of the disabled, arguing for distribution to them being sufficient to enable their capabilities to flourish. Their ideas have much to appeal to us but are not yet fully developed or demonstrated. The true problem in the consideration of distributive rules is the extent to which or the weight by which the selfish and human fellowship elements exist in modern society. In this sense, our next task is to reconsider and improve the existing distributive rules in terms of both “fairness” and “human fellowship” by focusing on the weight and extent of these elements within us today (Further considered in Chap. 9).
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Notes
- 1.
Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 184–185.
- 2.
Victor George and Paul Wilding describe in detail the conflict between conservative and liberal views on welfare in the UK (George and Wilding 1985). Milton and Rose Friedman state that self-interest is not a short-sighted selfishness but includes all aspects pertaining to social members (Friedman, Milton and Rose, 1979). This view is implemented in some fields of society as restricting private ownership from the viewpoint of the welfare of overall society. Thus, what is important today is to ask about the relationship between private and public interest in concrete terms, e.g., where, how much, and how.
- 3.
Bentham describes the usage of such words as utility, happiness, and pleasure, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure . … On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne” (Bentham 2017, p. 6). “To this denomination [The principle of utility: Tsukada] has of late been added, or substituted, the greatest happiness or greatest felicity principle: this for shortness, instead of saying at length that principle which states the greatest happiness of all those whose interest is in question, as being the right and proper, and only right and proper and universally desirable, end of human action: of human action in every situation, and in particular in that of a functionary or set of functionaries exercising the powers of Government. The word utility does not so clearly point to the ideas of pleasure and pain as the words happiness and felicity do: nor does it lead us to the consideration of the number, of the interests affected; to the number, as being the circumstance, which contributes, in the largest proportion, to the formation of the standard here in question; the standard of right and wrong, by which alone the propriety of human conduct, in every situation, can with propriety be tried” (Bentham 1977, p. 446).
- 4.
See, for example, M. Weber , 1930, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Part II The Practical Ethics of the Ascetic Branches of Protestantism, 5 Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism (the last few paragraphs).
- 5.
Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Liberty Fund edition, pp. 23–24. The accommodation of “the very meanest person in a civilized country” or “an industrious and frugal peasant” “exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.”
- 6.
Smith, Raphael, and Macfie ed., Part II, Section II, Chapter 3, p. 86. He writes, “Although men are naturally sympathetic,
• they feel so little for anyone with whom they have no special connection, compared with what they feel for themselves,
• the misery of someone who is merely their fellow-creature matters so little to them in comparison with even a small convenience of their own, and
• they have it so much in their power to harm their fellow-creature and may have so many temptations to do so.”
- 7.
John M. Keynes, 1926, The End of Laissez-Faire, in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. ix, Essays in Persuasion, Cambridge, 1972, p. 274. “The early nineteenth century performed the miraculous union. It harmonised the conservative individualism of Locke, Hume, Johnson, and Burke with the socialism and democratic egalitarianism of Rousseau, Paley, Bentham, and Godwin.”
- 8.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Liberty Fund edition, Book IV.
- 9.
Smith, ibid, p. 540. “The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.”
- 10.
The idea of fairness and its realized form, social justice, changes in line with any change of object subject views and power relationships among different groups. It is either accumulated and succeeded as social premise or abolished and made anew with such changes.
- 11.
Keynes, 1926, The End of Laissez-Faire, op. cit., pp. 283–5.
- 12.
In this book, this focus of Keynes is termed as human fellowship, fraternity, or benevolence.
- 13.
Keynes, 1936, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Collected Writings VII, p. 374. He writes; “I believe that there is social and psychological justification for significant inequalities or income and wealth, but not for such large disparities as exist to-day. There are valuable human activities which require the motive of money-making and the environment of private wealth-ownership for their full fruition.”
- 14.
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, op. cit.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Amartya Sen, Commodities and Capabilities, North-Holland, 1985, pp. xi, 51.
- 17.
Rawls’ just distributive principles presume (1) a society abstracting the disabled on purpose and (2) the existence of only people with normal productive abilities as mentioned before. Sen’s argument seems to be better situated as a development, not a criticism, of Rawls’ theory.
- 18.
Ibid, p. 10.
- 19.
Sen, 1982, p. 365. He comments on Rawls’ difference principle as follows: “The Difference Principle will give him neither more nor less on grounds of his being a cripple [sic]. His utility disadvantage will be irrelevant to the Difference Principle. This may seem hard, and I think it is.” Although he criticizes the difference principle on these grounds, it is probably based on a misunderstanding. See note 12.
- 20.
Rawls emphasizes the underlying tendency of the fraternity of people today. He writes; “In comparison with liberty and equality, the idea of fraternity has had a lesser place in democratic theory. It is thought to be less specifically a political concept, not in itself defining any of the democratic rights but conveying instead certain attitudes of mind and forms of conduct without which we would lose sight of the values expressed by these rights” (1999, p. 90. Also see Pennock 1950, p. 95.). But it is only as a state of society that he believes it exists and is not incorporated in the main part of his theory, which is the theory to construct the distributive rules of modern-day society.
- 21.
Both fairness and human fellowship must be stressed as being fundamental elements constituting modern society. But assuming the strength of people’s self-interest motive until now, fairness seems to have been superior. Following the growth of this motive, sympathy and commitment to the disadvantaged, as Sen suggests, will also grow with increasing human contact. This point of view seems to be different from Rawls’ and Sen’s in that human motives themselves are understood to change according to changes in human environments as expressed in the “growth” of fairness or sympathy.
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Tsukada, H. (2018). FOR WHOM? Object Subject in Distributive Rules. In: The Market Economy as a Social System. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1837-5_5
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