Neoliberalism versus distributional autonomy: the skipped step in rawls’s the law of peoples

ABSTRACT

Debates about global distributive justice focus on the gulf between the wealthy North and the impoverished South, rather than on issues arising between liberal democracies. A review of John Rawls’s approach to international justice discloses a step Rawls skipped in his extension of his original-position procedure. The skipped step is where a need for the distributional autonomy of sovereign liberal states reveals itself. Neoliberalism denies the possibility and the desirability of distributional autonomy. A complete Rawlsian account of global justice shows the necessity and possibility of a charter between liberal states, assuring each a proper minimum degree of distributional autonomy

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• globalism
• distributive justice
• distributional autonomy
• international justice
• Rawls
• law of peoples

Acknowledgments

We thank the members of the Spring 2017 seminar on Theories of Justice at Georgia State University, and the two anonymous referees for this journal, whose careful and sympathetic suggestions have improved our final product.

Notes

1. For a detailed history of this process, see Slobodian (2018).

2. ‘Unfavorable conditions’ characterize ‘burdened societies’ that ‘lack the political and cultural traditions, the human capital and know-how, and, often, the material and technological resources needed to become well-ordered’ (Rawls 1999, 106).

3. The eighth principle was added in The Law of Peoples. The list Rawls set out in his Amnesty Lecture consisted of only the first seven.

4. See Harris (1982, 271–75). In 1947, Karl Polanyi wrote, ‘Britain had now a socialist government. And how long would the United States be ruled in the spirit of the New Deal? An industrialized island could not plan its domestic existence unless it controlled its foreign economy’ (2018, 228).

5. See Rodick (2012, 99–101).

6. See Sengupta (2017).

7. For a more general account of how states and non-state actors interfere with distributional autonomy, see Farrell and Newman (2015) and Andrews (1994).

8. In an all-too-brief exchange with Philip van Parijs, Rawls did disparage the European Union as an undemocratic imposition by the banking class. See Rawls and van Parijs (2003).

9. See Christiano (2006).

10. President Donald Trump recently declared that the United States will ‘expect that … private investment, not government planners, will direct investment’ by its trading partners. See Holland and Tostevin (2017). Contrastingly, Rawls makes clear that a liberal people may choose to live under a democratic socialist constitution that allots central planning by the state a significant though not exclusive role in economic life.

11. See Stiglitz (2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William A. Edmundson

William A. Edmundson is Regents' Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State University, Atlanta GA, USA.

Matthew R. Schrepfer

Matthew R. Schrepfer is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Brown University, Providence RI, USA.