Abstract
By far the largest school of thought in contemporary political theory is liberal-egalitarianism. Recently, many egalitarians have been very concerned with improving the living standards of people at the bottom but often in the context of a mandatory-participation economy. This section examines three egalitarian theorists, Elizabeth Anderson, Stuart White, and John Rawls.3 Anderson and White both specifically endorse mandatory participation. Rawls is less clear. Although some of his writings provide good arguments for voluntary participation, he seems to come down on the side of mandatory participation all things considered. This chapter examines arguments for and against voluntary participation in these three authors, and argues that a mandatory-participation economy does not live up to liberal-egalitarian ideals.
The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent.
—-John Locke1
The history of … consent theory of the last three centuries largely consists of attempts by theorists to suppress the radical and subversive implications of their own arguments.
—Carole Pateman2
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Notes
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). “Second Treatise, § 22.
C. Pateman, The Disorder of Woman (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), p. 71.
Elizabeth S. Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?, Ethics 109, no. 2 (January 1999): 287–337
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)
John Rawls, “Reply to Alexander Musgrave, Quarterly Journal of Economics 88 (1974): 633–55
John Rawls, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good, Philosophy and Public Affairs 17, no. 4 (1988): 251–76
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)
Stuart White, “Liberal Equality, Exploitation, and the Case for an Unconditional Basic Income, Political Studies 45, no. 2 (1997): 312–26
Stuart White, The Civic Minimum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
Stuart White, “Fair Reciprocity and Basic Income, in Real Libertarianism Assessed, ed. Andrew Reeve and Andrew Williams (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
White (2003), The Civic Minimum p. 17.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Revised Edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. xv, 96.
Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality? p. 318; White (2003) The Civic Minimum, pp. 17, 77, 91 Rawls, “The Priority of Right, p. 257.
Jail was the solution in Edward Bellamy’s Utopia. E. Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982).
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume One (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1887), chapter 26.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract, trans. Christopher Betts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Philippe Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All: What (If Anything) Can Justify Capitalism’? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)
Simon Birnbaum, Basic Income Reconsidered: Social Justice, Liberalism, and the Demands of Equality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Ronald Dworkin, “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources, Philosophy and Public Affairs 10, no. 4 (1981): 312.
Alexander Brown, “The Slavery of the Not So Talented, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 14, no. 2 (2011): 185–96. I apply the idea differently here.
White (2003) The Civic Minimum, p. 17; Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 3.
Stuart White, “What do Egalitarians Want?, in Equality, ed. Jane Franklin (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 1997), pp. 59–82; White (2003) The Civic Minimum.
A great deal of research on basic income and similar policies indicates that a reasonably generous guaranteed income is feasible: Karl Widerquist, “A Failure to Communicate: What (If Anything) Can We Learn from the Negative Income Tax Experiments?, The Journal of Socio-Economics 34, no. 1 (2005): 49–81
Karl Widerquist and M.A. Lewis, “An Efficiency Argument for the Basic Income Guarantee, International Journal of Environment, Workplace and Employment 2, no. 1 (2006): 21–43
Karl Widerquist, S. Pressman, and Michael A. Lewis, The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005)
Robert Levine et al, “A Retrospective on the Negative Income Tax Experiments: Looking Back at the Most Innovative Field Studies in Social Policy, in The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee, ed. Karl Widerquist, Michael A. Lewis, and Steven Pressman (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005)
Karl Widerquist and Michael W Howard, eds., Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend: Examining its Suitability as a Model (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Erich Fromm, “The Psychological Aspects of the Guaranteed Income, in The Guaranteed Income, ed. Robert Theobald (New York: Doubleday, 1966).
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© 2013 Karl Widerquist
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Widerquist, K. (2013). If You’re an Egalitarian, Why Do You Want to Be the Boss of the Poor? Independence and Liberal-Egalitarian Theories of Justice. In: Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income. Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313096_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313096_9
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