Robbins Library Notes

Martin O’Neill (University of Manchester) examines Rawls’ notion of “property-owning democracy” in “Liberty, Equality, and Property-Owning Democracy.”

Here is the abstract of the paper:

This paper investigates the cogency of Rawls’s hostility towards ‘welfare-state capitalism’ and his advocacy of ‘property-owning democracy’ as an alternative to capitalism. I argue that the strongest arguments in support of property-owning democracy are connected to the demands of Rawls’s difference principle. I argue that Rawls’s overall argument against the acceptability of ‘welfare-state capitalism’ is ultimately successful, but it is best understood in relation to his account of the badness of inequality. I nevertheless raise a number of problems for those lines of argument for
‘property-owning democracy’ that work through the principles of fair equality of opportunity or of fair value of the political liberties.

A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for this article.