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THESIS 3 1293 01020

This isto certify that the

thesis entitled
EXTENDING RAWLS'S "BASIC STRUCTURE: "

WAGE WORK AND THE FAIR VALUE OF POLITICAL
LIBERTY

presented by

James Van Isaak

has been accepted towards fulfillment
Master of Riftghe requirements Ilshlilosophy

degree in

 

 

SW“ ( {MJK
Major professor

11-7-94

Date

 

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Wanna-9.1

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EXTENDING RAWLS'S "BASIC STRUCTURE"
WAGE WORK AND THE FAIR VALUE or POLITICAL LIBERTY
By

James Van Isaak

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial ﬁilﬁllment of the requirements

for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Philosophy

1994

ABSTRACT

EXTENDING RAWLS'S "BASIC STRUCTURE"
WAGE WORK AND THE FAIR VALUE OF POLITICAL LIBERTY

By

James Van Isaak

Most commentators on John Rawls's A Theory of Justice focus on the liberty and
difference principles to the exclusion of the opportunity principle. In this thesis, I show,
ﬁrst, how a commitment to fair value of political hherty forces us to think of the
opportunity principle as central to Rawls's theory and, second, how this shift forces us to
expand Rawls's conception of the basic structure to include the traditional family and the
workplace. I begin by showing that citizens in the original position would choose
principles of justice which protect the fair value of political liberty. I then argue that this
interpretation of justice as fairness requires us to come to a more comprehensive
understanding of the determining inﬂuence of social institutions on personal development
and choice. In particular, I argue that our ability to realize conditions under which citizens
could participate in the political process as free and equal citizens rests on recognizing
how the basic structure encourages and sustains the dynamics of power relations and
determines the parameters of individual opportunity. On this interpretation, a commitment
to "fair value of political liberty" forces us to include the family and the work environment
as centrally determining inﬂuences on the value of political liberty and, hence, of the basic

structure.

 

Cepyright by
JAMES VAN ISAAK
1994

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Martin Benjamin and Richard Peterson for encouraging me to pursue
my interests in labor issues. I would also like to thank Steven Esquith for his guidance
and exceptional patience in helping me to work through the numerous drafts of this thesis.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Laurie for her constant inspiration and support.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................................. l
A 1. Worth of Liberty and the Difference Principle. ......................................................... 4
A. Does the Worth of Liberty Distinction Work? .............................................. 5

B. Rawls's Revised Position ............................................................................. 11

H. Fair Equality of Opportunity ................................................................................... 17

A Reasonable and Head-start Opportunity. ..................................................... 22

B. Capabilities and Fair Equality of Opportunity. ............................................. 24

C. Fair Equality of Political Opportunity .......................................................... 26

III. The Basic Structure and Fair Value of Political Liberty. ........................................ 29

A. An Analysis of Power. ................................................................................ 31

B. Structural Constraints On Political Liberty in the United States. .................. 38

C. The Action Environment ............................................................................. 40

IV. Unequal Power, Unequal Liberty and the Social Minimum ................................... 45

A Fair Equality of Opportunity and Access to the Work Environment. ........... 46

B. Fair Value of Political Liberty and Secondary Associations. ........................ 55

C. Fair Value of Political Liberty and the Minimum Wage. .............................. 60

D. Fair Value of Equal Political Liberty and Property Owning Democracy ....... 67

Summary and Conclusion ............................................................................................. 76

Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 78

Introduction.

Our social environment has a profound effect on every aspect of our lives. It
affects our life-prospects, what we can expect to be, how well we can expect to do, and
even what we want for ourselves and others. It also inﬂuences the character of our
political decisions, including whether or not we choose to participate in the political
process. A theory of justice that places a premium on establishing and protecting the
rights of all citizens to participate in the political process as free and equal citizens must
therefore pay particular attention to the context in which we make our political decisions.
John Rawls's 'justice as fairness' is such a theory. One reason why Rawls emphasizes the
importance of protecting fair conditions for political participation is because, in a
democratic society, the political process has the potential to allow one to exercise the
important moral capacity of politically participating in and exercising political control over
one's life. But, more importantly, a fair political process allows citizens the opportunity to
shape other important conditions under which social, economic and political activity take
place. Because political participation loses its moral value for citizens when they
recognize its systemic bias and corruption—in the language of social science, they become
ap athetic—it is imperative to ensure equitable conditions for political participation.

Any attempt to implement justice as fairness must therefore focus on the
conditions under which social choices are made. Iffair conditions can be achieved, it is
more likely that the political process will be used to achieve other important goals such as
constructing a just constitution and legislation that protect individual rights and make fair
social cooperation in general more possible. In this paper, I attempt to narrow the
conceptual gap between theory and practice by extending the reach of Rawls's theory to
the workplace and the traditional family in the United States.

2

This extension of the 'basic structure' is more complicated than merely extending
the reach of Rawls's principles of justice to cover the distribution of primary goods within
these two institutions. I argue that it requires that we place Rawls's commitment to fair
equality of opportunity at the center of the theory. It is not simply one part of his second
principle of justice. It also requires that we think of power in more structural terms and
not just one of several primary goods to be distributed. Extending the basic structure
means understanding it as a set of power relations that determine the forms of political
opportunity in a complex democratic society. The family and the workplace are central
and not peripheral parts of this larger social structure where the fair value of political
liberty is created. When we see the basic structure in this extended sense, the gap between
theory and practice is narrowed and we can put aside Rawls's distinction between ideal
and non-ideal theory. I believe this move is consistent with Rawls's turn from a
metaphysical to political conception of justice.

I begin with an analysis of the relationship between Rawls's three principles of
justice. Following Norman Daniels, I challenge Rawls's idealized separation of the
difference and hberty principles by demonstrating their potential for conﬂict in application.
While I basically agree with Daniels's analysis, I maintain that his exclusion of the
opportunity principle results in an incomplete picture of Rawls's overall theory. Further, I
believe his treatment of inequalities requires more detailed attention to how inequalities in
power lead to inequalities in political liberty. I attempt to ﬁll these gaps in the second and
third sections of this paper.

In the second section, I argue for the recognition of two distinct concepts of
opportunity and discuss their relationship to the diﬁ‘erence principle and the liberty
principle. I maintain that these concepts play an important explanatory role in the relation
between political participation and self-respect. In particular, I argue that the relationship
between political eﬁcacy and self-respect rests on recognizing the fairness of a political

process in which one does not always achieve one's aims. I maintain that the fairness of

3

the political process is intricately related to the fair equality of opportunity and difference
principles. The goal in this section is to clarify the details of this relation.

In justice as fairness, the principles of justicedo not apply to individuals but to the
major political, social and economic institutions that constrain and guide social activity.1
The application of the principles thus requires an understanding of how the rbasic
structure' inﬂuences the beliefs, hopes, desires and behaviors of citizens. In the third
section, I argue that these relationships are best understood in terms of power relations.
To this end, I use Thomas Wartenberg's 'ﬁeld theory of power' as a basis for my analysis.
The major claim in this section is that power is the major determinant of political efﬁcacy
and that individual power is best understood as the product of the surrounding political,
social and economic institutions. I pay special attention to how our social and economic
system gives rise to inequalities in power and how these inequalities aﬂ‘ect the value of
political liberty. Understanding power as a social phenomenon puts us in a better position
to formulate strategies to actualize fair conditions of political participation.

In the fourth section, I use the analyses of the ﬁrst three sections as a basis for
assessing the relationship between a 'basic social minimum' and the worth of political
liberty. The focus is on the structure of wage work in the United States. After discussing
the problem of equal access to the workplace, I propose and critically assess three
strategies for minimizing inequalities in power in the workplace. I begin with an analysis
of Rawls‘s proposed solution to the social minimum—the ‘transfer mechanism—and its
relationship to wages and market forces. After showing the problems of using this
mechanism for ensuring the value of political hberty, I argue that a less problematic
approach involves restructuring the workplace to afford equal opportunity for the
acquisition of property. Finally, I propose a reconceptualization of the minimum wage

within a restructured workplace.

 

1John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 258.

4

1. Worth of Liberty and the Difference Principle.

In this section, I focus on the priority of liberty and its relation to the diﬂ‘erence
principle in Rawls's theory. Here I use Norman Daniels's analysis in "Equal Liberty and
Unequal Worth of Liberty" to reveal potential sources of conﬂict between these principles
and to clarify the issues involved. This analysis provides the basis for assessing whether
the demands of Rawls’s theory are incompatible with particular socioeconomic systems.
In addition, it allows us to evaluate Rawls's attempt to answer these criticisms by
reformulating the ﬁrst principle. I ultimately argue that this reformulation does not
adequately answer Daniels's criticisms. I-also deny that fair value of political liberty is
compatible with large inequalities in primary goods.

In the following passage from A Theory of Justice, Rawls draws the distinction
between hberty and worth of liberty.

The inability to take advantage of one's rights and opportunities as a result of
poverty and ignorance, and a lack of means generally, is sometimes counted among
the constraints deﬁnitive of liberty. I shall not, however, say this, but rather I shall
think of these things as affecting the worth of liberty, the value to individuals of the
rights that the ﬁrst principle deﬁnes.2

Rawls uses this distinction to reconcile apparent conﬂicts between the two principles of
justice. For although the liberty principle has priority over the difference principle, the
worth of liberty is affected by factors such as an individual's wealth relative to others in a
given society. When we consider Rawls's commitment to fair value of political liberty,
unequal distributions of income allowed by the diﬂ‘erence principle seem to conﬂict with

the liberty principle.3

 

2Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1971,

p. 204.

3Following Rawls, I will avoid the negative/positive (formal/substantive) liberty debate and assume that
"liberty can always be explained by a reference to three items: the agents who are free, the restrictions or
limitations they are free from, and what it is that they are ﬂee to do." Ibid., p. 201f. Below I will discuss
the traditional distinction only to illustrate how this explanatory method supersedes the more traditional
view. Here, I merely point out that the 'triadic' explanation of liberty allows us to analyze conﬂicts
between political liberty and other liberties and suggests preemptive steps to guarantee the worth of

5

The worth of liberty is not the same for everyone. Some have greater authority
and wealth, and therefore greater means to achieve their aims. The lesser worth of
liberty is, however, compensated for, since the capacity of the less fortunate
members of society to achieve their aims would be even less were they not to
accept the existing inequalities whenever the difference principle is satisﬁed. But
compensating for the lesser worth of freedom is not to be confused with making
good an unequal liberty. 4

The claim here is not that the mandates of justice are met if those with lesser liberty are
allowed more of other goods: "compensating for the lesser worth of freedom is not to be
conﬁrsed with making good an unequal hberty."5 It is only an acknowledgment that the
social and political conditions may limit efforts to more closely approximate the ideals of
the ﬁrst principle. At the same time, Rawls insists that as long as the criterion of the ﬁrst
principle fails to obtain, justice as fairness requires the examination of those conditions
that prevent its actualization and the evaluation of alternative arrangements that could lead
to fairer worth of hberty.

A. Does the Worth of Liberty Distinction Work?

In his "Equal Liberty and Equal Worth of Liberty," Norman Daniels challenges
Rawls's justiﬁcation for the worth of liberty distinction and argues that Rawls's two
principles of justice may be incompatible under certain circumstances. More to the point,
he suggests that certain socioeconomic systems may present insurmountable obstacles to
actual fair value of liberty. IfDaniels is correct, a social commitment to justice as fairness
may require a radical transformation of those socioeconomic systems.

Daniels begins by questioning the justiﬁcation for the distinction between hberty
and worth of liberty. The problem he focuses on concerns an apparent inconsistency in
Rawls's reasoning. We have seen from the above passages that Rawls acknowledges how
certain kinds of obstacles prevent people from enjoying equal value of liberty and that he

claims this is acceptable as long as the diﬂerence principle is satisﬁed. However, Rawls's

 

political liberty. Note that I will continue to use the term 'substantive' to refer to an ensured standard of
liberties and opportunities consistent with the principles of justice within a particular society.

4Ibid.

5Ibid. p. 205.

6

entire project is predicated on the possibility of identifying obstacles to hberty and
removing them He wants to determine what justice as fairness requires and what
background conditions would best ensure those requirements. "The question whether
Rawls's distinction between liberty and worth of liberty is arbitrary reduces, then, to the
question of whether it is arbitrary to exclude economic factors from the category of
constraints deﬁning liberty. "6 The question Daniels poses is why we should exclude
economic obstacles from consideration?7

Daniels points out that although "economic factors, ... are explicitly excluded from
among the constraints deﬁnitive of liberty," there is not a convincing rationale for this
exclusion.8 For example, although there is a historical tradition of excluding constraints
that are not attributable to a single identiﬁable actor or group of actors, Rawls's project is
predicated on our ability to identify and modify 'background conditions'.9 In so far as
justice as fairness aims at establishing fair background conditions for social and economic
activities, he implicitly acknowledges the need to identify outcomes under these
background conditions as fair or unfair, evaluate the effects of these background
conditions, and take steps to alter them to ensure outcomes that more closely approximate
the goals of justice as fairness. Supposing the distinction between worth of h'berty and
liberty rests on recognizing only certain kinds of limitations on hberty, we might say
justice as fairness is only concerned with such and such constraints on liberty. However,
in so far as no non-arbitrary differences exist between the kinds of constraints Rawls
recognizes and those he does not, he is faced with either denying any responsibility for

minimizing these obstacles or acknowledging a commitment to address them all. Since the

 

6Ibid., p. 260.

7Daniels, Norman. "Equal Liberty and Unequal Worth of Liberty," In Reading Rawls: Critical Studies on
Rawls' A Theory of Justice, Ed. Norman Daniels, (New York: Basic Books, 1975), pp. 259-63.

8Ibid.

9Background conditions are laws and incentives that determine the boundaries of socially acceptable
economic activity.

 

7

former would amount to rejecting the entire project of justice as fairness, we are therefore
left to address all major obstacles to liberty.

Daniels's second step is to show the 'relative rationality‘ of choosing principles
other than or in addition to the liberty and difference principles. Using these other
principles, he shows how the difference principle does not in itself preclude inequalities in
distributions that could prevent the actualization of the new principles. He then shows
how the priority of the liberty principle cannot prevent these unwanted effects. Finally, he
suggests how economic systems based on private property rights present obstacles to
actualizing the principles of justice. The workhorse of Daniels's argument is the relative
rationality argument. The reader will recall Rawls's claim that it is rational to choose the
two principles of justice over the other major alternatives of utilitarian or perfectionist
principles because neither of the latter alternatives offers any assurance that we will have
sufﬁcient tools to protect our interests and advance our conceptions of the good when the

veil of ignorance is lifted.

They cannot take chances with their liberty by permitting the dominant religious or
moral doctrine to persecute or to suppress others if it wishes ... nor on the other
hand, could the parties consent to the principle of utility. In this case their freedom
would be subject to the calculus of social interests and they would be authorizing
its restrictions if this would lead to a greater net balance of satisfaction. 10

Daniels argues that even if Rawls is correct about this, he has only shown the rationality of
accepting the two principles over the other alternatives presented and not that there are no
other principles equally or more rational choices than the two principles of justice. He
thus proposes the 'relative rationality argument' stating that "if it is rational for a person P
to choose principle(s) X for a given set of reasons, then if principle(s) Y oﬁ‘er equally
good reasons, it is also rational for P to choose Y."11 Now persons in the original position

are choosing principles that are most likely to protect their interests no matter who they

 

loRawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 207.
11P is a rational person deliberating from behind the veil of ignorance.

 

8

turn out to be once the veil is lifted. When we turn to Rawls's distinction between liberty
and worth of liberty, says Daniels, we must therefore ask ourselves whether it is equally or
more rational to choose principles that 'protect' hberty but allow for unequal value of that
liberty or principles that protect equal worth of liberty. Since it is not liberty but the value
of liberty that reﬂects an actual ability to protect one's interests, it seems to be as or more
rational to choose principles protecting equal worth of liberty.

Now part of Rawls's argument is that it is 'rational' to choose the two principles of
justice from behind the veil of ignorance, but it is 'reasonable' to accept the two principles
once the veil is lifted. Principles that protect liberty are preferable to alternative principles
because people are more likely to recognize them as reasonable and hence more likely to
respect them. Therefor, liberty protecting principles would be more likely to lead to stable
social arrangements. Since the ability to protect our interests depends on having the
effective ability to act on our own behalf, the relative rationality argument suggests that it
is therefore equally or more rational for persons in the original position to choose a
principle protecting equal worth of liberty.

To say that one has equal worth of liberty is to say that she has an equal capability
relative to others in that society to make use of her liberty. But her capability to make use
of her liberty is dependent in part on how many resources she has and in part on how
eﬂiciently she can use those resources relative to others in the society. The difference
principle allows inequalities in resource distribution if that distribution is to the beneﬁt of
those who are the least advantaged. For Rawls, these inequalities are measured by the
index of primary goods each representative person has. But, unless representative persons
represent groups of people chosen for their like abilities to convert primary goods, the.
difference principle will not give an adequate indication of the inequalities that really
matter. If these inequalities in wealth and power are relatively small, they may not lead to
inequalities in worth of liberty. However, at some point the disparity could be great

enough to matter. Because justice as fairness aims at ensuring the fair worth of liberty, it

9

therefore requires the identiﬁcation and mitigation of these sources of unreasonable
inequality in the worth of liberty.

Daniels identiﬁes two potential sources of this kind of inequality: a political system
which is not sufﬁciently insulated from the inﬂuence of wealth, and large differences in
distributions of wealth and power. 12 Even though it is unlikely that the political wstem
can be wholly insulated from the inﬂuence of unequal distributions of wealth, a
commitment to fair worth of liberty will probably require efforts to limit these inequalities
to begin with. It is here that we would expect the diﬁ‘erence principle to come into play,
limiting inequalities so that they are to the greatest beneﬁt of the least advantaged.
However, Rawls does not assign this role to the difference principle. Rather he assumes a
clear separation of the two principles such that they each refer to more or less independent
domains. 13 Hence, he seems to suppose that the ﬁrst principle of justice could be satisﬁed
through other mechanisms, e.g., through a progressive tax scheme. Nevertheless, the
potential for conﬂict between the diﬂ‘erence and liberty principles remains a concern once
we begin to assess the limits of using a transfer mechanism. The major concerns here are
the scope of the system and whether its rationale could satisfy the publicity standard. The
mechanisms of justice as fairness require a high degree of publicity as a condition of their
social stability. Whenever a state mechanism is unduly cumbersome, citizens become less
able to understand the rationale behind it and, consequently, more likely to become
suspicious of it. An economic order that required massive transfers would require a
complex bureaucratic apparatus and would therefore be unlikely to gain wide public
acceptance. The difference principle must therefore retain a signiﬁcant role in protecting

the value of liberty.

 

12 Below I will also include unequal access to knowledge of (a) how the system works, and (b) accurate,
relatively complete, and reliable information to guide one's decision making process.
l3Rawls, Ibid., p. 66.

10

This conclusion forces us to confront a potential conﬂict between the difference
and liberty principles. We can see this when we begin to clarify the notion of "inequalities
to the greatest advantage of the least well oﬂ" as allowed by the difference principle. The
conﬂict appears when we ask how they would be better off. For inequalities that work to
the advantage of the least well off in regards to liberty of conscience can work to their
disadvantage in regards to political liberty. ‘4 Because Rawls places a higher priority on
political liberty, one would expect the difference principle to place a higher priority on
limiting inequalities that threaten political liberty. However, when the index of primary
goods other than political liberty and liberty of conscience are maximized, the difference
principle is satisﬁed. Because Rawls leaves out the effects of these inequalities on liberty,
his discussion only focuses on the kinds of inequalities that would lead to greater liberty of
conscience for the least advantaged. Never the less, once we admit the interdependence
between the two liberties and the difference principle, we must acknowledge the potential
for conﬂict between the two principles.

A commitment to justice as fairness thus forces us to determine which economic
and social systems lead towards irreconcilable conﬂict between the two principles. While
Rawls talks of 'perfectly just, just, and unjust' in reference to the maximized expectations
via the difference principle,15 the recognition of the above conﬂict leads me to add the
further criterion of maximized political hberty. I will therefore say that a system is
'perfectly just' when the expectations of the least advantaged are maximized and fair value
of political liberty is preserved. I will call a social and economic order unjust when an

alterable feature of it results in less than maximal worth of political liberty. For example,

 

14While the worth of either depends on holdings of primary goods, the value of liberty of conscience can
be enhanced by allowing inequalities because the pool of available goods can be expanded through
efﬁcient arrangements. Conversely, because the value of political liberty is wholly relational, i.e., the
value of my liberty is determined relative to others in my society, allowing inequalities in the value of
political liberty can only result in diminished value for the least advantaged. I argue below that the
decision to create fairer value of political liberty is thus best construed as a decision to share power. See
pp. 14—16.

15Ibid., pp. 78-79.

11

if the protection of property rights prevents movement towards equal political hberty, and
if altering property rights would not result in less liberty for all, then the system protecting
those rights will be unjust. The goal of justice as fairness is therefore to determine and
establish a basic structure where no ﬁnther changes in that structure would lead to more
equal liberty. A basic structure that strikes this balance between the difference,
opportunity and liberty principles is then said to be perfectly just. 16 However, since it is
unclear whether any social and economic system could meet the ideal conception of
justice, we must focus instead on justice as progress towards the ideal When we restate
the problem in these terms, the important question changes from whether a social and
economic system meets the ideal of perfect justice to whether there are inherent features
or dynamics of that system that obstruct progress towards that ideal In systems where
features of the system make progress highly improbable if not impossible, the difference
principle may be incompatible with the hberty principle. Thus, if Daniels's is correct in
asserting the relative rationality of adopting principles ensuring equal worth of liberty, it
would seem that he is also correct in suggesting a ﬁmdamental incompatibility of a
democratic capitalist system with the demands of justice.

B. Rawls's Revised Position.

Part of Daniels's criticisms rest on the claim that it is at least equally rational to
choose equal worth of hberty than equal liberty. Further, the distinction between liberty
and worth of liberty has no non- arbitrary justiﬁcation. There are several points that need
to be clariﬁed here. Daniels's argument is based on Rawls's apparent commitment to equal
liberty of conscience and equal political liberty. In his more recent work, Rawls insists
that we would only be concerned to ensure fair value of political liberty and not of liberty
of conscience. Fair value, here "means that the worth of political hberties to all citizens,

whatever their social or economic position, must be approximately equal, or at least

 

16Ibid., pp. 70-71.

12

sufﬁciently equal, in the sense that everyone has a fair opportunity to hold public ofﬁce
and to inﬂuence the outcome of political decisions. "17

Rawls rejects any further guarantee for basic hberties as being either "irrational or
superﬂuous or socially divisive. "13 A ﬁuther guarantee would be irrational since it would
allow other needs, for example, needs of eﬂiciency and social organization, to go unmet.
It would be superﬂuous because our basic needs would presumably be taken care of in
accordance with the diﬂ‘erence principle and an unstated principle requiring that "basic
needs be met, at least insofar as their being met is necessary for citizens to understand and
to be able to exercise fruitfully" basic rights and liberties.” Finally, a further guarantee
would be socially divisive if It led to the appearance of differential treatment allowing
special privileges or resources to some groups to the exclusion of others.

The important point to note here is that these are reasons to exclude a guaranteed
right to fair value of hberty of conscience. He does not intend them to exclude a
guarantee for equitable value of political liberty. Indeed, fair value of political liberty is
explicitly guaranteed in Rawls's reformulation of the ﬁrst principle: Each person has an
equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is
compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political hberties,
and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.20 This modiﬁcation is
intended to answer Daniels's argument regarding Rawls's probable commitment to a
substantially egalitarian economic system The unstated assumption, here, is that liberty of
conscience and political hberty are separable in regards to all of the relevant factors. Now
it will be recalled that Daniels's argument rests largely on the connection between

resources and the ability to exercise one's liberty. In order for Rawls's reply to succeed, he

 

17Rawls, John. Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 327.
18Ibid., p. 329.

19Ibid., p. 7.

20Ibid., p. 5.

 

13

must therefore show that the unequal distributions in resources allowed by the difference
principle are a problem for liberty of conscience but not for political liberty.

Now we might suppose that the reply rests on quantitative differences between the
resources needed to guarantee worth of political hberty and h'berty of conscience. The
assertion would then be that the political and social system can be so constructed as to
require virtually the same amount of resources to establish fair value of political liberty for
each citizen. For example, curtailing the inﬂuence of wealth by minimizing campaign
contributions, using only state money to subsidize candidates, and ensuring reasonable
access to polls may lead towards conditions where inequalities in wealth would not unduly
skew individual capabilities to participate in the political process. Because the ability to
effectively participate would require roughly the same resources for all citizens, and
because we could use strategies to lower the index of goods needed to participate, it
seems plausible to suppose that we could guarantee fair value of political liberty through
the imposition of external constraints. On the other hand, since liberty of conscience
refers to individual conceptions of the good, there is virtually no limit to different
resources different people might require to actualize their conceptions of the good.
Consequently, the cost of guaranteeing liberty of conscience's fair worth would vary
considerably. Thus, although guaranteeing the value of political liberty could require the
allotment of roughly the same resources to each citizen, a guarantee for the value of
hberty of conscience would probably require us to allot vastly different amounts to
different people. We can therefore see how a social guarantee ensuring the value of
liberty of conscience would have much more potential to cause social divisiveness than
one ensuring the value of political liberty.

There is little doubt that Rawls would be right in pointing out the different
resource requirements for the two social guarantees. Nevertheless, showing that there
may be different resource requirements would not answer Daniels's criticism regarding fair

value of political liberty. Daniels claimed that the difference principle does not rule out

 

14

unequal distributions of primary goods that could undermine fair value of political liberty.
Answering that criticism would require either showing how allowable differences in
distributions of social and economic primary goods would not undermine fair value of
political liberty or that we can limit distributions to protect that value. The former would
require insulating the political process from undue inﬂuences of unequal distributions of
wealth; the latter would require a principle that compensated for the inadequacy of the
difference principle.

Another response open to Rawls is to note qualitative differences between the
resources needed to guarantee fair value of political hberty and liberty of conscience. For
example, he might argue that educational and informational resources are necessary
preconditions to equal worth of political hberty. We might then suppose that providing
these for everyone through state mechanisms might bring us a long ways towards
equalizing worth of political liberty while allowing inequalities in other resources such as
distributions of income. While I generally agree with this line of argument, I must also
note that its success still rests on our ability to insulate the political process itself from the
inﬂuence of unequal distributions of wealth and power. So although we can imagine how
Rawls's reply might succeed if insulation were possible, the improbability of doing so
means that distributions of wealth and power remain crucial factors in determining the
worth of political liberty.

I therefore conclude that Rawls's move to guarantee only fair value of political
liberty does not adequately answer Daniels's criticisms. He has drawn attention to
potential problems with guaranteeing liberty of conscience's worth and he has drawn
attention to differences between the kinds and amounts of resources required to guarantee
fair value of political liberty and hberty of conscience. Whereas there are wide variations
in resources needed to ensure equal worth of liberty of conscience, equal worth of political
liberty may require roughly the same amount and kinds of resources for all citizens. This

fact about political hberty focuses attention on the background institutions which constrain

15

political activity. Satisfaction of the liberty principle may be compatible with relatively
large inequalities in the distribution of other primary goods in accordance with the
difference principle only on the assumption that the political process could be insulated
from undue inﬂuence from inequalities in wealth and power. However, if the political
process cannot be protected from these inﬂuences, satisfaction of the liberty principle may
require a fairly egalitarian distribution of some social and economic primary goods. I have
suggested that the political process does not seem amenable to this kind of insulation and
that we should expect differences in wealth and income to create unequal worth of
political hberty. IfI am correct, then social and economic systems that rely on tendencies
towards unequal distributions of social and economic goods will be less compatible with
principles of equal political liberty than Rawls suggests.

One might respond to this argument by conceding that differences in worth of
political liberty are allowed by the difference principle and still maintain that this is not
unfair provided the distribution of liberty is to the beneﬁt of the least advantaged.
However, when we talk about being better off by allowing inequalities in income, we are
saying that allowing these inequalities raises the standards of the least advantaged. When
we use this criterion to assess worth of liberty of conscience, it is relatively easy to see
how allowing inequalities in distribution of wealth could lead to higher worth of liberty.
For example, if the income of the least and most advantaged rose disproportionately while
the prices of the desired goods either stayed the same or increased at a slower rate, the
least advantaged would presumably have increased purchasing power and therefore the
means to do more things than they previously could to realize their conceptions of the
good.

When we use the same criterion to assess the worth of political liberty, the case is
more difﬁcult to make. For worth of political liberty is a relative measure between
citizens, that is to say that when we have two groups of people, A and B, the A's worth of

political liberty can increase only if the B's is lowered. Put another way, the decision to

16

allow other people increased inﬂuence within a given process is a decision to share power
and create the need for compromise. Of course, this objection only succeeds on the
assumption that allowing inequalities in political liberty leads to greater political hberty for
the least advantaged. Rawls's intent is rather that inequalities in political liberty are
compensated by increased liberty of conscience: when the difference principle is satisﬁed,
"lesser worth of liberty is compensated for in this sense: the all-purpose means available to
the least advantaged members of society to achieve their ends would be even less were
social and economic inequalities, as measured by the index of primary goods, different
from what they are."21 But unless the political process can be protected from the inﬂuence
of wealth, inequalities in wealth and power are themselves a primary source of political
inequality. That is, inequalities which work to the advantage of the least well off in
regards to liberty of conscience can also work to their detriment in regards to political
liberty. This effect is especially likely in a capitalist society where the standard of living
for the least advantaged may rise in terms of income, while the concentration of the bulk
of capital in the hands of a small minority of people may lead to more political leverage for
the most advantaged and less worth of political liberty for the least advantaged. Insofar as
this tendency is a deﬁning characteristic of capitalist economies, satisfaction of the
diﬂerence principle within such an economy does not appear to have the potential to move
towards satisfaction of the demand for fair worth of political liberty.

This brings us back to Rawls's contention that unequal worth of political liberty is
acceptable only when the difference principle is satisﬁed under the prevailing social
conditions. Here the key questions are whether a given political and economic system,
such as the capitalist democracy of the United States, has the potential for movement
towards satisfaction of the ﬁrst principle and, if it does, what the limits of that potential

are. Ifthere are inherent structural features of that system that inevitably lead to conﬂict

 

21Ibid., p. 326.

17

between the two principles, then that system is just enough only if there are no other
known alternative systems whose structural features allow a closer a approximation to the
ideal of justice. When we assess a given socioeconomic system, we therefore note that (1)
the possibility of moving towards the ideal of justice is a necessary condition for
reconciling the two principles, (2) the impossibility or the improbability of such movement
is a sufﬁcient condition for saying the two principles are in irreconcilable conﬂict within
that particular system, and (3) systems that preclude movement towards reconciliation of
the two principles are just enough only if there are no known alternative social and
economic arrangements that could more closely approximate the ideal of justice.

Supposing Rawls's response is intended to show how capitalism could be
compatible with the ideals of justice, his response to Daniels does not seem very
convincing. The changes Rawls institutes in the ﬁrst principle do not seem to preclude the
possibility of irreconcilable conﬂicts with the difference principle. Nevertheless, it will be
rightly objected that neither 1 nor Daniels have shown the exact mechanisms that prevent
capitalist democracy from moving towards fairer worth of political liberty. I believe that
answering this question ﬁrst requires knowledge of the preconditions for fair value of
political liberty. Once we know what is required, we can then ask whether there are
structural features of a given social and economic system that work against establishing
those conditions and whether those features are alterable or deﬁning characteristics of that
system
II. Fair Equality of Opportunity.

There are two major reasons why the concept of opporttmity is important to my
discussion. First, because political liberty is itself a kind of opportunity. To say someone
has fair value of political hberty is to claim that she has no more and no less opportunity
than anyone else to inﬂuence the political process. However, because this ability is not

something that one passively attains but, rather, is something that must be achieved,

18

having equal opportunity does not at all mean that she has equal ability. Whether it is
unfair that a person lacks this ability depends on three interrelated factors. On the one
hand, it depends on whether she has access to the resources needed to develop skills for
effective political agency. For example, the capability to participate competently in the
political process is often enhanced by the opportunity for a_ good education. To the extent
that this is true, the opportunity for education is a precondition for achieving fair worth of
political liberty. But since an education does not in itself guarantee the opportunity for
equal political voice, we must also pay attention to other factors that may present
obstacles.

At the same time, whether a person makes use of the available resources depends
in part on her attitudes and beliefs. I have already noted that these subjective features are
largely determined by features of the basic structure. For example, many pe0ple who
perceive the inherent bias in a political process lack the desire to participate and therefore
neglect to develop their resources as political agents. Consequently, it seems plausible to
say that the basic structure itself tends to create and promote unfair political liberty in so
far as it tends to appear biased. Finally, insofar as we need economic resources to
effectively exercise political liberty, the opportunity to attain those resources will be a
precondition for ensuring fair value of political liberty. When unequal distributions of
resources lead to unequal worth of liberty, fair opportunity to compete for these resources
will be a precondition of fair equality of political opportunity. 22

In this section, I discuss two concepts of opportunity at work in Rawls's theory. I
maintain that political liberty, as Rawls defends it, is hberty whose worth is not to be

dependent on an individual's holdings of primary goods but is to be ensured by

 

22While I emphasize the role of competition, I recognize and accept Rawls's denial that competitive
maneuvering plays a role in the original position. See A Theory of Justice, p. 144. I maintain only that
subsequent deliberations at the constitutional, legislative and judicial stages will have to recognize and
take account of competition‘s role as a feature of any society in which there is a relative scarcity of primary
goods. This is especially true where unequal holdings of these goods may lead to unequal worth of
political liberty.

 

l9

constitutional and legislative guarantees. However, I part with Rawls on the adequacy of
using holdings of primary goods as the measure political liberty‘s worth. Our assessment
must be concerned with how individual capabilities and social contexts allow different
people with the same holdings of primary goods different abilities to make use them I
argue that a capability based approach to evaluating opportunity provides the necessary
tools for evaluating the relationship between social context, relative holdings of primary
goods, and relative worth of political liberty.

The discussion so far has centered on the effects of inequalities in wealth and
power permitted by the difference principle on the worth of political liberty. I have not
discussed the fair equality of opportunity principle and its relationship to fair value of
political liberty. The importance of this principle becomes apparent when we note Rawls's
commitment to the 'fair’ and not 'equal' value of political liberty. "This guarantee means
that the worth of the political hberties to all citizens, whatever their social or economic
position, must be approximately equal, or at least suﬁiciently equal, in the sense that
everyone has a fair opportunity to hold public oﬂice and to inﬂuence the outcome of
political decisions. This notion of fair equality of opportunity parallels that of fair equality
of opportunity in the second principle of justice. "23 If we are to understand Rawls's
position on this point, we need an analysis of how fair equality of opportunity functions in
the theory in general.

Rawls construes the principle of fair equality of opportunity as fair equality in a
substantive sense: "The thought here is that positions are to be open not only in a formal
sense, but that all should have a fair chance to attain them."24 Rawls's position is not that
we should concern ourselves with seeing to it that each and every person achieves her
conception of the good. Rather we should see our goal as ensuring that each and every

person has fair equality of opportunity to acquire the primary goods she needs. Virtually

 

23Ibid., p. 327.
24Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 73.

20

all conceptions of the good require some primary goods but, due to their relative scarcity,
not everyone can get all of the primary goods she needs to actualize her particular
conception. Given these considerations, our goal should be to ensure that all have a fair
chance to compete for the ofﬁces and positions that would give them the goods they
desire.

. There are two important considerations to note here. The ﬁrst is that although
some people will not get what they want, they will recognize that given conditions of fair
opportunity they were not treated unjustly. The second consideration is that all citizens
are assumed to have the moral powers to "regulate and revise their ends and preferences in
light of their expectations of primary goods. "25 The claim is that people who are given a
fair chance and fail to achieve their goals will recognize that they were not treated
unjustly, adjust their expectations in light of fair outcomes, and bear no malice towards
those who faired better than they. Naturally, the concept of a social safety net is also
vitally important. For if the difference principle truly reﬂects a deeply held conviction
regarding the demands of justice, we should expect those who were allowed to 'fall
through the cracks' to resent their lot. These three points constitute crucial factors in a
scheme of voluntary social cooperation in which fair equality of opportunity is evident.

By applying this notion of fairness to the previous discussion of the priority of
liberty and the satisfaction of the difference principle, I note that, under conditions where
the difference principle is satisﬁed but the political liberty principle is not, insofar as
unequal worth is due to an unequal distribution of wealth and power, the fairness of this
distribution rests on whether or not everyone had fair equality of opportunity to compete
for these resources. Put slightly differently: if there exists a representative citizen such
that that person has unequal worth of political liberty, that person was treated unjustly

only if that person (1) would have less worth of hberty under any other foreseeable

 

25Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 186.

 

21

distribution of goods, and (2) did not have fair equality of opportunity to compete for the
resources needed for a greater worth of political liberty. Fairness, in this sense, implies the
outcome of a fair process where individuals are competing for scarce resources. This
analysis immediately raises the question of how we are to understand 'fair process' and 'fair
equality of opportunity.‘

Rawls is committed to a substantive sense of fair opportunity. In light of our
earlier discussion regarding each person's obligation to revise his plan to accord with what
he can reasonably expect to achieve, this fact may seem paradoxical. For it is my
responsibility to revise my plans in light of my expectations in accordance with my limited
resources. It is not society's responsibility to give me the resources to attain my goals.
But if that is true, then it may seem as though any opportunity I have is fair so long as my
basic needs are met and I am not actively discriminated against. But this account does not
pay adequate attention to how Rawls's deals with the contingencies of the natural and
social lotteries. Rawls is acutely aware that being born into a particular family or
economic situation can put one at an enormous disadvantage.26 It is his concern with this
problem and the need to take adequate account of it that leads him to insist that "those
who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them,
should have the same prospects of success regardless of their initial starting place in the
social system" and in "all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of
culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. "27 Note that the
relevant factors here are talent, ability, and motivation—not prospects based on holdings
of primary goods. My conclusion is not that Rawls is being inconsistent but that he is
using two distinct conceptions of equality of opportunity. In the next section, I will be
concerned to give an account of these two conceptions of opportunity and their

relationship to fair worth of liberty.

 

26See "The Tendency to Equality," in A Theory of Justice, especially pp. 100-104.
27Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 73 (emphasis added).

22

A. Reasonable and Head-Start Opportunity.

The ﬁrst sense of opportunity is what I will call 'reasonable opportunity' (R0).
Reasonable opportunity is the opportunity one has in light of the primary goods one can
expect to acquire throughout one's life.28 This kind of opportunity requires the evaluation
of one's reasonable expectations and the adaptation of one's life plan based on those
expectations. The second sense of opportunity is what I will call 'head-start opportunity'
(HSO). Its distinctive feature is that it is opportunity which is, in a sense, available
independently of one's holdings of primary goods. One example of HSO would be a
guaranteed level of public education provided through tax subsidies. It is an opportrmity
to explore and develop one's talents so that one can see what one can do. The claim, then,
is that one is forced to revise her plans in light of how she can expect to do only after she
has had signiﬁcant opportunity to develop her talents and abilities. Although HSO would
cover a wide range of learning and developmental opportunities, some of the most
important for this discussion are opportunities to leanr how the political process works,
the variety of different political goals one might seek to achieve, and perhaps different
strategies one might use to effectively voice and advance one's concerns. 29 I will argue
below that, given Rawls's deﬁnition, the value of political liberty depends on fair equality
of HSO.

 

28Rawls's discussion of "the principle of redress" suggests that this kind of reﬂection on and revision of
expectations should start a short time after one's early school years. See A Theory of Justice, p. 101. I
would argue that the relevant time span should depend on a number of different factors such as the aspect
of my life plan that is under consideration, my age, or my native intelligence. A more complete analysis
of R0 and HSO would focus on a number of important aspects of well-being and draw attention to the
special character of each.

29To take an example of HSO from another setting, Norman Daniels has argued in Just Health Care that
fair equality of opportunity in our society demands that certain individual health care needs be met. The
criterion for discriminating between health care wants and needs is based on the notion of normal species
functioning. Although this concept is admittedly a little vague, I think that it is intuitively clear what is
meant: the ability to walk, digest food, see, hear, etc., are all capabilities which allow one to function
within our society. On the other hand, the inability to do any of these things clearly puts one at a
disadvantage when it comes to the ability to compete. If we are committed to fair equality of HSO, it is
evident that the effects of these kinds of deﬁcits must be mitigated as much as is possible. Thus the
opportunities for a basic education and basic health care are, in our society, both prerequisites for being
able to compete with other people.

23

For fair equality of social and economic opportunity and for fair worth of political
liberty to be more than formal, they both require a capability based evaluation. I stated
above that the capability based approach to evaluating advantage focuses on comparisons,
not of what goods and formal liberties people have, but of the capabilities and functionings
these goods and liberties actually allow people to achieve. The ﬁrst thing we need to
convey here is the meaning of 'capability' and 'ﬁrnctioning.‘ These are technical terms
introduced by Amartya Sen to allow us to speak of distinctly different aspects of a
person's overall well-being. There are, of course, many different aspects to a person's
well-being: having a sound body, people who love us, and the freedom to act on our
deepest convictions all constitute facets of our well-being. Further, some of the
aforementioned examples can be further broken down into more fundamental needs and
desires. Sen's terminology is meant to capture those different aspects: "F unctionings
represent parts of the state of a person—in particular the various things that he or she
manages to do or be in leading a life. The capability of a person reﬂects the alternative
combinations of ﬁmctionings the person can achieve, and from which he or she can choose
one collection. "30

The intuitive idea here is that who we are and what we are capable of doing is
partially dependent on three things: (1) internal factors such as whether we have healthy
minds and bodies, (2) external factors which prevent us from becoming or doing things,
and (3) on decisions we make concerning the talents we choose to develop. For example,
a person born with great physical strength and dexterity may decide to develop those skills
to become an athlete because athletic programs exist and she is allowed and encouraged to
participate. However, her decision to do so may come at the expense of neglecting other
aspects of her well being such as developing her musical talents. Further, her earlier

decisions to commit to a certain path may limit her ﬁxture range of choices. A clear

 

30Amartya Sen, "Capability and Well-Being," In The Quality of Life, eds. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya
Sen, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 31.

24

example of this kind is a person who is born into a working class family, brought up to
believe that his only reasonable option for employment is factory work, and who
consequently neglects his studies. Supposing he gets a factory job, marries, and fathers
some children, there is no doubt that these outcomes will severely limit his future options.
Thus his employment options are limited by his earlier neglect of his education while, at
the same time, his commitment to his family along with his lack of time and savings
prevent him from learning new skills. Using Sen's terminology, we may then say that this
person's current firnctionings limit his future capabilities.

The value of Sen's capability approach to an account of substantive liberty and
substantive opportunity is clear. It allows us to focus on both structural and internal
factors that limit individual capabilities to achieve. Further, it allows us to change our
focus from the index of resources an individual has to the things that index allows that
person to do given structural and internal constraints. In the next section, I use these tools
to show how Rawls's commitment to fair equality of opportunity requires a capability
based approach.

'B. Capabilities and Fair Equality of Opportunity.

For Rawls, fair equality of opportunity amounts to this: that although there is a
natural disparity between persons in regards to distributions of natural assets, "those who
are of the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them,
should have the same prospects of success regardless of their initial place in the social
system."31 The most natural reading of this passage is that people's opportunities are
inﬂuenced by the situations they are born into and the qualities they are born with. On this
reading, fair equality of opportunity requires that the effects of these variables be mitigated
as much as possible in order to allow citizens of the same level of talent and ability (and

willingness to use them) to compete with other under fair conditions for scarce resources.

 

31Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 73 (emphasis added).

25

Now there are two interpretations of this passage which we might make. The ﬁrst
is that each person is to have access to the same amount of resources which she can then
use in whatever way she wants. Using the example of education at a public school, for
example, each person is given the opporttmity to attend and is responsible for whatever
she makes of that chance. If she chooses to squander that opportunity, that is her
problem This interpretation accords with R0 in the sense that it requires each person to
take personal responsibility for how she uses her resources. The problem with interpreting
the passage in this way is that it ignores the fact that people's initial starting points may
prevent two people with the same talents and abilities from eﬂ‘ectively using the same
amount of resources to develop those talents and abilities.

For example, supposing we have two children, roughly equal in talents and
abilities, one who beneﬁted from a "head-start" educational program while the other did
not. We would probably expect the head-start student to be better prepared to make use
of the available resources to develop her talents and abilities up on entering elementary
school. This is not to say that the other student could not catch up. It is only to suggest
how the ability to take advantage of developmental opportunities at any given point in a
person's life is often affected by the previous presence or lack of other opportunities. The
conclusion I draw from this is that the commitment to equal opportunity may require more
resources for one student relative to the other at different points in their education. The
message in this case is clear: we should not simply assume that the same index of resource
investment for each student at any given point in their education would result in the same
level of achievement and hence ﬁrture opportunity for each.

Another example regards a third student of equal intelligence who has a mild
learning disability. He would probably also require more resources to achieve more or less
similar results. The point here is that the failure to identify these diﬂ‘erences in ability to

convert the same amount of resources would result in formal and not substantive equality

26

of opportunity. Since Rawls explicitly rejects such a formal opportunity as inadequate for
the purposes of justice, we are forced to look for another interpretation.

On the second interpretation, there must be a commitment to ensure that people
with the same talents, abilities, and willingness to use them are given the individual
resources they need to ensure as much as possible that they have the opportunity to
overcome the disadvantages they have relative to other citizens within the same society.
Now some of these factors are internal, more or less ﬁxed characteristics of the individual
For example, we may not be able to do much, if anything, to compensate for variations in
natural intelligence and physical capacities. Other internal factors may lend themselves to
correction through more personalized attention to the development of their capacities and
functionings. An example here would be people with mild learning disabilities not
indicative of innate intelligence. Finally, there are external factors which may limit
personal capabilities. The most obvious example of this kind would be blatant
discrimination based on morally arbitrary criteria such as race, color or sex. All three
types of obstacles are important to an analysis of fair equality of opportunity. We can thus
see that in order to meet the requirements of Rawls's demands, fair equality of opportunity
must be measured in accordance with a capability based approach. Therefore, Rawls must
be committed to fair equality of head-start opportunity.

C. Fair Equality of Political Opportunity.

The above analysis is relevant to my account of fair value of political hberty for
two reasons. First, whenever the value of political liberty rests on holdings of other
primary goods such as income and power, the fairness of unequal value will rest on
whether the distribution is in accordance with the difference principle and whether all
citizens had fair equality of opportunity to compete for those goods. I have argued that
fair equality of opportunity only makes sense given a capability based approach to
assessing and preparing citizens to compete. The fairness of unequal political liberty

therefore depends, in part, on whether all citizens had fair equality of head-start

27

opportunity. Second, Sen's capability approach focuses attention on external or social
factors that can have differential effects on individual abilities to make use of available
resources. This approach compels us to look both at those factors that prevent people
who want to enjoy equal rights from participating in the political process ﬁ'om doing so
and also those factors that undermine the desire to participate. That is to say, we must
know how the social context and other constraints prevent some persons from
participating in the political process as free and equal citizens. Ifwe can identify obstacles
to equal worth of political liberty—measured by individual capability to eﬁ‘ectively
participate in the political process—we can then ask whether these obstacles are amenable
to change or are inherent in the system Ifthe former, we can focus on formulating
strategies for removing these obstacles; if the latter, we will have identiﬁed a ﬁmdamental
incompatibility of the system in question with the demands of justice.

For Rawls, the sphere in which social, political, and economic activity takes place
is described as the 'basic structure' of a society. The basic structure is deﬁned as "society's
main political, social and economic institutions, and how they ﬁt together into one uniﬁed
system of social cooperation from generation to the next."32 The basic structure has a
profound impact on all aspects of our lives, because it sets the limits on acceptable
behavior in the social, political and economic spheres. Whether we are explicitly aware of
the full extent of its inﬂuences on us or not, we respond to it by shaping our expectations
and behaviors in ways that reﬂect our social positions, resources, and aspirations in
relation to those same aspects of others in our society. We thus recognize how the basic
structures limits our actions in light of what the system allows. For example, if I feel my
employer is taking unfair advantage of my coworkers and myself, I may evaluate the
courses of action Open to me and to my employer. If I am aware of state rulings

undermining employee rights to organize and strike and upholding employer rights to ﬁre

 

32Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 11.

28

people attempting to organize, these aspects of the basic structure will probably play a
signiﬁcant, if not decisive, role in shaping my behaviors, expectations and aspirations.
Accordingly, an evaluation of a given society and its relationship to the demands of justice
requires particular attention to the basic structure and its effects on fair equality of
opportunity and fair value of political liberty.

Thus far I have argued that fair equality of opportunity requires attention both to
the distribution of resources and the different abilities of identiﬁable groups to make use of
these resources. We must pay attention both to characteristics of the individual and how
the institutions in our culture affect individual capabilities. The preceding discussion of
political hberty and social and economic opportunity indicate how they must be seen as
complementary parts of a bigger picture. Distributions of wealth and power can have
profound effects on individual ability and opportunity to exercise political liberties. As

Daniels notes,

The wealthy and the poor are equally ﬂee to express (non-libelous) opinions in the
appropriate circumstances. Yet, the wealthy have more access to and control over
the media and so are ﬂeer to have their opinions advanced. . .. What is worse, even
greater inequalities in liberty emerge when we note that there are combined effects.
For example, if the wealthy have greater liberty to affect the political process, then
they may also acquire greater inﬂuence over the schools and what is taught in
them But the combined effects of control over the schools and the media give the
wealthy vastly greater 'ﬂeedom of expression' than those less well-off. 33

Furthermore, the "inequality does not result primarily ﬂom abuses, like bribery. Instead,
the inequality derives ﬂom the (usually) legal exercise of abilities, authority, and powers
that come with wealth. "34

In the following section, I begin with an overview of Rawls's analysis of the basic
structure and its role in a well ordered society. I then discuss a pivotal problem that the

basic structure must take into account: namely, how aspects of capitalist democracy in the

 

33Daniels, "Equal Liberty and Unequal Worth of Liberty," p. 257.
34Ibid., p. 257.

29

United States encourage and sustain inequalities in power and how these inequalities

obstruct movement towards fair equality of opportunity and fair value of political liberty.

III. The Basic Structure and Fair Value of Political Liberty.

An important goal in this paper is to encourage a view that recognizes how power
relations between citizens are built into the social structure and inﬂuence the kinds of
choices and strategies that individuals will choose to meet their given ends. In this
section, I focus on the structure within which political struggles and debate currently take
place in the United States. I begin by deﬁning what I mean by power relations and
explaining how this conception of power suggests a particularly useful ﬂamework for
articulating a positive conception of individual liberty and opportunity. The primary goal
of this section is to describe how background institutions and social conditions within our
society make it difﬁcult and perhaps even irrational for workers to ﬁght for the kind of
long term structural changes a Rawlsian conception of justice requires. The central claim
is that structural incentives lead workers to settle for the short term satisfaction of material
well-being by making the short term costs of more ﬁmdamental change too high for most
people to aﬁord. Thus, even though workers may see the conditions of their labor as
unjust, the high cost of fundamental change makes it rational for them not to struggle
against these conditions.

"The initial focus,. . ., of a political conception of justice is the ﬂamework of basic
institutions and the principles, standards, and precepts that apply to it,. ..."35 The goal of
justice as fairness is to determine and establish a basic structure that allows all citizens to
participate ﬂeely and equally in the political process. Background conditions are
supposed to protect certain rights and prescribe the conditions within which we are to
conduct economic and social activities. A central idea here is that it is neither a reasonable

nor a desirable goal for a society to orchestrate and coordinate the activities of individual

 

35Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 11.

30

citizens. Rather, the goal should be to create a space in which people are allowed to do
what they want provided that they follow rules of fair play. Background institutions are
supposed to guarantee, as far as possible, that a distribution of social, economic, and
political goods will be just no matter what it turns out to be.36

The progression towards determining and establishing the basic structure has four
stages or levels: the original position, the constitutional, legislative and judicial. At the
level of the original position we decide on the fundamental principles that are to guide our
dehberations. The two principles of justice are determined at this level. We then use the
ﬁrst principle, that of equal liberty, at the constitutional stage. Here the goal is to establish
"a secure common status of equal citizenship and [realize] political justice."37 The second
principle comes into play at the legislative stage, where it "dictates that social and
economic policies be aimed at maximizing the long-term expectations of the least
advantaged under conditions of fair equality of opporttmity, subject to the equal liberties
being maintained. "33 Finally, the last stage "is that of the application of rules to particular
cases by citizens generally. "39

Rawls recognizes two kinds of constitutional essentials. They are:

a. fundamental principles that specify the general structure of government and the
political process: the powers of legislature, executive and the judiciary; the scope
of majority rule; and

b. equal basic rights and liberties of citizenship that legislative majorities are to
respect: such as the right to vote and participate in politics, liberty of conscience,
ﬂeedom of thought and of association, as well as the protection of the rule of
law. 40

The problem with this statement of constitutional essentials is that it describes an

idealized situation which seems quite remote ﬂom the realities of our own circumstances.

 

36Rawls,A Theory of Justice, p. 274.
37Ibid., p. 199.

38Ibid.

39Ibid.

40Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 227.

31

That is, supposing we determine that our own social and political circumstances are
lacking from the standpoint of justice as fairness, it is not altogether clear how we are to
effect a transformation to a more just society. With this problem in mind, the goal in this
section is to come closer to determining the background conditions required by the two
principles of justice. Please note that I will not be concerned to evaluate all of the
constitutional essentials in this manner. That project would be far too broad and
ambitious for my concerns. Rather, I will be concerned only with the problem of ensuring
fair worth of political hberty.

The approach I take proceeds in two steps. First, I present a particular
understanding of power relations. Here I will use Thomas Wartenberg's The Forms of
Power to ground the discussion. The second step concerns identifying different spheres of
society where inequality in power occurs. In particular, I will focus on the family and the
workplace. Here I will use Cohen and Rogers's analysis of social and political structure in
the United States to draw attention to these areas. I then examine how inequalities which
occur within those spheres translate into more general political inequalities. The next
question is whether those inequalities are extensive enough to result in unfair worth of
political hberty. Ifthe answer is yes, then we need to look at (l) the qualitative aspects of
those structures that lead to inequities, (2a) whether those aspects can be changed so as to
retain the basic structure but alter the power inequalities outside of those spheres or (2b)
whether the basic structure itselfwould have to be changed to accomplish that end.

A. An Analysis of Power.

In this section I argue that power relations can constitute a formal barrier to fair
equality of opportunity and fair value of political liberty. This claim will seem odd to
many people because the inability to make use of hberty is most often attributed to a
deﬁcit of substantive or positive liberty—at least, when there is an absence of overt
discriminatory practices. While I agree in part with the more common view, I disagree

with the limits traditionally placed on which kinds of obstacles should count as deﬁnitive

32

of hberty. In particular, I follow the view of feminists such as Susan Okin who point out
that systemic features of our social, political and economic structure present formal
obstacles to equal opportunity and equal political liberty to identiﬁable groups of people.“
The key question I wish to draw attention to is whether the distinction between negative
and positive liberty has any practical utility in discussions of opportunity, discrimination,
and bias.

Discussion of positive and negative liberty relies on a distinction between
situations where there are no formal constraints to pursuing a desired course of action and
situations where both formal constraints are absent and resources needed to pursue that
course of action are provided for those who lack them For example, suppose all literate
citizens over the age of 18 have the right to participate in the political process. Suppose
ﬁrrther that more poor than rich pe0ple tend to be illiterate and that this is because there is
no right to a state provided education. We might further suppose that the reason there is
no public education is because constitutionally protected property rights prevent the state
from collecting taxes for this purpose. When we ask whether those who fail the literacy
requirement lack formal or substantive liberty, we will have to look at the basic structure
of the society in question. Because property rights have priority over educational rights,
we may say that they lack only substantive hberty. The reason is that although all citizens
have a right to vote, the ability to make use of that vote requires resources to which they
presumably have no right. Since it is the lack of resources that prevents them from
exercising their rights as citizens, we therefore say they lack only substantive h'berty.

The pru'pose of this example is to illustrate Rawls's assertion that "the basic
liberties must be assessed as a whole."42 We cannot simply assess one hberty or right

independently of others. When we recognize this fact, we realize that claims about

 

41Although Okin draws direct attention to the concerns of women, I believe her approach generalizes to

other groups as well.
42Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 202.

33

negative and positive liberties oﬁen amount to claims about the relative priority of some
rights over others. In the above case, strong claims to property rights overrode weaker
claims to educational rights. Further, the conﬂict between these two rights undermined
the worth of a third right, the right to vote. The example also illustrates two additional
points. First, it points out how the basic structure can protect a particular kind of
discriminatory practice; in this case, allowing private investors to use their money to
discriminate against targeted groups of people. Second, it suggests how talk about
positive and negative liberty only makes sense when we assume a set of established
background conditions. Thus it illustrates the limited utility of the positive/negative liberty
for determining those conditions. When private property rights always override state
authority to mitigate any negative effects the exercise of those rights do or may lead to,
the practice of using people's lack of resources to discriminate against them will, in
general, be supported.

Justice as fairness does not take the priority of property rights as a given, but
rather places the priority on a commitment to fair value of political liberty and fair
equality of opportunity: "we start with the basic structure and try to see how this structure
itself should make the adjustments necessary to preserve background justice."43 The
example thus serves to illustrate the kind of negative effect that just background
conditions would have to protect against and suggests the kinds of guarantees that justice
as fairness would have to seek. In particular, background conditions would have to
guarantee distributions of income that prevent the possibility of using inequalities in
income distributions from resulting in inequalities in value of political hherty and equality
of opportunity. Because the traditional conception of negative and positive h'berty ignores
the relationship between liberty and background institutions, it loses its relevance when the

discussion turns to the basic structure itself We can speak of either kind of hberty as

 

43Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 268.

34

concerning obstacles and their absence or presence. The important question concerns the
kinds of obstacles justice as fairness would have to be concerned with. The answer is
going to depend on which liberties have priority over others and how the most important
liberties are balanced. In justice as fairness, fair value of political liberty is given the
highest priority and all other liberties are evaluated against its demands.

. We have already noted several potential obstacles to an individual's achieving fair
value of political liberty. Unequal distributions of income, unequal access to an adequate
education, and inadequate attention to diﬁ‘erences in abilities to make eﬂicient use of
primary goods—due both to factors internal to the individual and structural biases external
to the individual—can all reduce political emcacy and therefore reduce value of political
hberty. We have also noted a tradition of excluding many of these obstacles from
considerations of justice because their effects cannot be attributed directly to identiﬁable
individuals. Once we reject that exclusion as arbitrary and unjustiﬁed, any ﬁrrther
evaluation of the basic structure must be conducted in light of the demands of justice as
fairness and the features of the basic structure that lead toward or away from their
satisfaction. When we turn our attention to the political process in the United States, we
are confronted with the fact that eﬂ‘ective political voice requires resources beyond the
means of most working men and women. The basic structure allows the use of wealth and
social position to determine the conditions under which other people labor, the proportion
of income other people must pay in income taxes, the amount of pollution other people
must tolerate, the list goes on. Further, the exercise of this inequality that leads to these
results is allowed within the 'fair‘ constraints of the basic structure of our political and
economic system.

Up to this point, I have merely given a sketch of how the basic structure can lead
to inequalities in the value of both political liberty and opportunity. Naturally, an adequate
account of the basic structure's role in a well-ordered society must pay attention to its

inﬂuence on power relations. In particular, we need to be able to determine how social

35

context creates inequalities in power and how these inequalities aﬁ‘ect individual
opportunities and choices.

In The F arms of Power, Thomas Wartenberg maintains a distinction between two
different concepts of power: 'power-over' and 'power-to.‘ Generally speaking, I will take
'power-to' to refer to an agents ability to effect changes on her environment and 'power-
over' to refer to an agents ability to inﬂuence the choices available to another agent and
hence-aﬂ‘ect her behavior. The important questions for the purpose of my inquiry are,
How do people come to have power and what is it that allows them to inﬂuence the
choices and behaviors of others? And how does the basic structure and other social
relations shape the distribution and operation of power within that society?

Wartenberg's analysis begins by pointing out that a power relation is an ongoing
relation between two or more people in which there is always a background of continuing
action and behavior by the agent and other agents.44 A power relation presupposes an
identiﬁable relationship between identiﬁable individuals or groups or classes of individuals.
More importantly, this relation constitutes a social order in which people learn rules for
determining which courses of action will bring about which reactions from other agents
around them. For example, an effective legal system presupposes a social order in which a
predictable threat of force exists to threaten citizens and prevent them from behaving in
certain ways. For the threat of force to have any effect on behaviors, citizens must
perceive the threat as real, hence the need for enforcing agents, judges, and prison guards
who are believed to act in predictable ways. Further, there must be an expectation that
other citizens outside of the judicial system will also act in ways that reinforce the
authority of the enforcement, judiciary and penal systems. A legal system that functions in
this way forms one of the background institutions that shapes the behaviors, beliefs, and

desires of citizens.

 

44"Thomas E. Wartenberg, The Forms of Power: From Domination to Transformation (Philadelphia,
Temple University Press, 1990), p. 7.

36

A power relation like the legal system in the United States constitutes a 'power-
alignment.‘ Speciﬁcally, A ﬁeld of social agents constitutes an alignment in regard to a
social agent if and only if, it meets the following criteria. First, their actions in regard to
that agent are coordinated in a speciﬁc manner. Second, the coordinated social practices
of these social agents need to be comprehensive enough that the social agent facing the
alignment encounters that alignment as having control over certain things that she might
either need or desire.”

Another important power-alignment in the United States is the capitalist
democratic system This system is partially deﬁned as the presence within a single social
order of private property, labor markets, and private control of investment decisions,
along with formal organizations of political expression such as political parties and regular
elections.46 All of these features are governed by rules that constrain social activity in
particular ways, that is, they are determined in part by the basic structure. At the same
time, individual and group behavior within that system of activity inﬂuences the character
of the basic structure. By saying this we openly acknowledge that our social order is not
'natural' in the sense that we recognize it as a product of human activity which is alterable
by human activity. Indeed, we noted above that Rawls's entire project is predicated on
this fact. As such, an analysis of power relations play a central role in helping us to
understand the demands of justice as fairness within a given society, speciﬁcally in the
United States.

Wartenberg's 'action-environment' and 'action-altematives' are two particularly
useful concepts for an analysis of power. Much like Rawls's 'basic structure,‘ the concept
of the 'action-environment' describes the context or structure within which an agent exists

as a social actor.47 On the other hand, an action-altemative is deﬁned as the "actions

 

45ibid., p. 150.
46Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, 0n Democracy, (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1983), p. 48.
47Ibid., p. 80.

37

speciﬁed in terms of the Options available to [the agent] in her action environment.48 Thus
we can say that a course of action is an action-altemative if and only if there is reason for
an agent in a given situation to follow that course of action in the situation in which she
ﬁnds herself.49 The importance of the 'action-altemative' concept is that it allows us to go
beyond Rawls's sketch of the social situation and assess the real alternatives available to a
particular agent. That is, it allows us to build on Rawls's basic assertion that "we cannot
tell by looking at the conduct of individuals and associations in the immediate (or local)
circumstances whether, from a social point of view, agreements reached are just or fair.
This assessment depends importantly on the features of the basic structure, on whether it
succeeds in maintaining background justice. "50

Both concepts provide us with important tools for analyzing the contexts in which
people make decisions, the decisions are open to them in that context, and the constraints
that prevent them ﬁ'om having other reasonable alternatives. As in our discussion of Sen,
we also note that the agent's evaluation and understanding of the situation play crucial
roles in determining the alternatives she has and her capability to act on them51
Wartenberg's analysis complements Sen's in that the action-environment can be seen as a
particular conception of the ﬁeld wherein we can assess an individual‘s capabilities, while
the term action-altemative emphasizes the eﬁects of knowledge and belief on individual
capabilities. Lastly, when we apply these two notions to the idea of functionings, we
reemphasize the cumulative effects of a person's starting place and her subsequent
decisions on ﬁxture capabilities, options as well as her beliefs about her capabilities and
options.

Wartenberg's distinctions simplify our task of social analysis somewhat by

providing room for debate over the relevant elements to a particular action environment.

 

48Wartenberg, p. 80.

49Ibid., p. 81.

50Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 266-67.
51Ibid., p. 82.

38

Our answers, I suggest, are going to depend on our particular purpose. For example, at a
most abstract level, we can think of Rawls's original position as a particular construction
(of an action-environment with its own set of action alternatives (although an admittedly
small one). There the environment consists of equally situated citizens behind a veil of
ignorance whose action alternatives are to make a decision regarding ﬁrndamental
principles of justice. Similarly, Rawls argues for particular deﬁning features of action-
environments and alternatives at the constitutional, legislative and judicial stages.

My own concern is to understand how the action environment of the typical work
place in the United States affects individual worth of liberty. My contention is that it
doesn‘t make sense to look at, say, employer/employee relationships except within the
broader social context. What I shall do is proceed, like Rawls, from a more abstract level
to the more concrete. I will think of each subsequent level as a component of an all
inclusive action-environment. My initial level of abstraction will begin with a discussion of
the broader institutions which deﬁne our society. Here I will rely on the analysis of Joshua
Cohen and Joel Rogers. I will then go beyond Cohen and Rogers's analysis to discuss the
work place in general. I will be particularly concerned to look at the major factors which
allow one to bias the political process in one's favor. To this end I will be asking three
questions: which factors can be mitigated, how can they be mitigated, and how much must
they be mitigated to reach the goal of ensuring the fair value of political liberty. For those
factors which are resistant to change, our question must be how we are to deal with their
eﬁ‘ects.

B. Structural Constraints 0n Political Liberty in the United States.

Cohen and Rogers are concerned to analyze the features of our political and

economic system so as to provide greater understanding of political behavior:

It is clear that within capitalist democracies there are profound underlying
structural inequalities that shape the normal course of politics. What is less clear is
how that normal course is possible at all. How is it that politics in a capitalist

39

democracy can proceed at all without the underlying inequalities themselves
becoming a central object of political conﬂict? Why do people consent?52

The central claim is that political behavior is shaped by desires, goals and beliefs and that
these factors are themselves shaped by central features of culture. In particular, we learn
on the one hand that certain behaviors are encouraged by material rewards and the
approval of those in the community. On the other hand, we learn that some behaviors are
discouraged either by direct prohibition and coercive threat or by seeing less direct
negative consequences which those behaviors bring. This is not to say that some one
individual or group of individuals 'conspired' to make the system what it is. It is simply to
say that the system engenders power differentials and that conditions of deliberation make
it rational for people to endorse policies reinforcing those differentials. More speciﬁcally,
it is the claim that "capitalist democracy is in some measure capable of satisfying the
interests encouraged by capitalist democracy itself, namely, interests in short-term material
gain. "53 Using Wartenberg's terminology, then, we say that our capitalist democratic
society constitutes an action-environment that encourages certain action-altematives as
more rational than others. Cohen and Rogers's analysis goes a long way towards
identifying and describing the features of that environment and those alternatives.

Following Cohen and Rogers, I hold that a full understanding of political behavior
requires us to look at the social economic space in which people make these decisions.
That is, in order to decide upon the legitimacy of political determinations, we need to
examine the action-environment that these decisions are made in and the action.-
altematives that are open to people when they make their decisions. Ifit can be shown
that they vote for maintaining the status quo because their options are suﬁciently
narrowed to the point where such a vote is the only rational choice under those conditions,
then we will have opened the door for making a case for looking at alternative social

arrangements which would be fairer for all citizens.

 

52Cohen and Rogers, 0n Democracy, p. 51.
53Ibid., pp. 51-52.

 

40

C. The Action Environment.

The ﬁrst structural constraint of the action-environment is a commitment to only
formal or procedural political rights for all citizens and workers. What this means in
practice is that, although fair value of political liberty may require constraints on
distributions of wealth, there is not a commitment to determine (let alone implement)
limits in distributions to protect fair value of political liberty. A movement to protect the
fair value of political hherty would require massive changes in the political and economic
system and sustained public commitment to enact those changes. For an agent to
appreciate the practical problems such a movement would face, there is a need to
deh'berate over of a number of alternative courses of action and these alternatives can only
be ﬁrlly appreciated against the backdrop of structural constraints.

The second structural constraint is the priority of capitalist interests. As a

capitalist society,

proﬁt provides the motive for investment and investment decisions are
preeminently the decisions of competing units of capital. Capitalists earn proﬁts
by, among other things, hiring labor at wages that permit the extraction of proﬁt.
Those whom they hire typically have no other assets than their ability to work. As
a result of their control of investments, the satisfaction of capitalist interests is a
necessary condition for the satisfaction of all other interests within the system54

Now as long as we rely on voluntary cooperation as the basis of labor relationships, there
are clearly limits to how far these other interests can be subordinated. People have general
expectations of what the system is capable of delivering and trends which show an
increasing failure to deliver the goods could conceivably cause people to openly rebel.
Indeed, a compelling argument can be made that whatever work standards and welfare
concessions currently exist, came into being because of just such historical circumstances.
On the other hand, the fact that these standards and concessions are either minimal or

otherwise ineffectual attests to the inﬂuence capital has over other interests. Indeed, since

 

“Ibid., p. 52.

41

welfare and other state provided programs are dependent on the activity of capital,
background conditions support an 'equilibrium' between labor and capital interests that
tilts heavily towards the satisfaction of capital interests.

The third structural constraint for workers is one of dependency. This dependency

makes the future of any given worker uncertain. For

while present proﬁts are a necessary condition for future well-being, they are not a
suﬂicient condition. Material uncertainty remains in the society, since investment
decisions remain out of reach of social control. 55

Excepting unusual circumstances, a company can generally pick-up and move or even
shut-down at the whims of the owners. Threats to move to another state or even another
country, for example, are common tactics to gain concessions from employees and the
state. This mobility of capital undermines employee leverage. Even where tactics such as
refusing to work could have an effect, they require certain background conditions to be
effective. The ability to organize and strike, for example, is either directly or indirectly
inﬂuenced by whether the state recognizes such a right and whether laws exist to protect
others from encroaching on the jobs of strikers.

Three crucial components of the action-environment are thus the lack of fair value
of h'berty, the dependency of worker interests on the satisfaction of capitalist interests, and
the material uncertainty that the lack of social control over capital introduces. There is
little question that the lack of material security is undesirable, and there is little question
that different background conditions could provide a more secure economic environment.
Why, then, don't workers struggle towards achieving such changes? Again, I propose that
there are a number of reasons which are built into the background conditions of our
culture.

One reason is that the ability to make sound political decisions requires access to

reliable primary information. For example, workers deliberating whether to strike for

 

55Ibid., p. 53.

42

better wages or beneﬁts generally lack detailed knowledge of the speciﬁc economic state
of their ﬁeld and current trends in the market. While this information is crucial for
bargaining from a position of strength, there is not a readily available, reliable source nor
the resources to conduct research for one's self Therefore, people who want to make
informed decisions must either have the resources or must be able to combine resources
with others to get this information. Middle and lower class people do not generally have
income that they can expend in this way. Second, effective access to legislators is often
predicated on whether one has made substantial contributions to a legislator and/or
whether one's service to society is valued by that legislator. Although anyone can call her
legislator’s oﬂice and express her opinions, few have the ability to speak directly with a
legislator for extended periods of time and have their views taken seriously. Middle and
lower class people generally do not have this kind of access to the political players. Third,
the ability to make one's views heard in the public arena oﬁen depends on whether one has
surplus income to expend for media coverage.56 Fourth, effective political action requires
the ability to form coalitions with large numbers of individuals who share common
interests. Successful coalitions must be able to formulate clear plans of action and
coordinate their activities effectively. This ability requires both the expenditure of material
resources and the availability of strategic information.57 Here, again, capitalists have a
clear advantage because their ends are more easily speciﬁed and because they have a much
better understanding of the system in which they seek satisfaction of those interests, ie.,
their own operations, the conditions of the industry, and the economic situation in general.
They also have more liquid assets for acquisition of vital information. In addition, because
they are generally a small number of operatives, their actions are easier to coordinate.

Finally, there is the "free-rider" problem The problem here concerns whether or

 

56Of course, one important piece of evidence for this claim is found in the enormous amounts of money
politicians spend on their campaigns.
”Ibid., p. 60.

43

not it is rational to make sacriﬁces for a greater good if you know that others who do not
sacriﬁce will also gain from your actions. In the case of a strike, for example, one or more
workers may decide to keep working and allow others to sacriﬁce their immediate income
for future concessions. Ifthe strikers succeed, all will beneﬁt equally—including the
scabs. Furthermore, it may turn out that the strike could fail and that someone else may
simply take your job from you. In that case, you will again have lost. Taken together,
conditions of uncertainty about the behavior of others and the state's failure to protect
crucial worker's rights thus make it rational for workers to "take what's being given." As
Cohen and Rogers point out, this problem is exacerbated when eifective political agency
requires the coordination of large numbers of people. This requirement creates a different
action-environment for workers than for capitalists. It is harder for workers to organize
because of the larger number of people whose activities must be coordinated and also
because the rewards of effective agency must therefore be distributed to more people.
Hence, the immediate payoffs for the two groups are vastly different. Whereas the
beneﬁts of worker’s collective struggles must be diffused throughout its (large)
membership, the small number of capitalists concentrates the rewards which again make it
easier to garner the groups support.

On the assumption that "actors in the political arena behave in economically
rational ways," the net result is that the action alternatives of workers are reduced to a
rational calculus of short term material gain. This dynamic has an important impact on the
bargaining process. For when "struggles over control of the workplace are transformed
into purely wage-centered struggles, allegiance to those struggles can be undermined by a
downturn in proﬁts or disinvestment or massive levels of unemployment within the
eﬂ‘ected industry. "53 Workers deliberating over how to act "must ﬁrst consider not only

the potential beneﬁts of a course of action, but also both the likelihood of success and

 

58Ibid., p. 168.

44

costs of the action, including the costs of foregoing other courses of action."59 But
"because the formal political system cannot fully redress initial inequalities, because it
tends to reproduce and compound them over time, it continues to generate those
conditions of material uncertainty that ﬁrst lead individuals to accede to the reduction of
politics to short-term material striving. "60

To summarize, the ability to effectively participate in the political process requires
access to the system, reliable strategic information, large quantities of liquid assets, clear
cut goals, social cohesion with others who share your interests, and state protection of
background conditions that equalize power differentials between workers and capitalists.
Under current conditions, the basic structure creates a clear bias that favors the interests
of capitalists by undermining rational political alternatives for workers.

Some people would object to my claim that fair opportunity for equal political
liberty does not now obtain because people have formal hberty to participate. Given the
foregoing account, I think it is fairly obvious that there are features of our economy and
political system which prevent people from making choices that they would prefer under
more equitable circumstances. Because the conditions of our social existence are
constrained by rules determined through the political process and because the political
process itselffavors some interests over others, it is unreasonable simply to assume that
these constitutional constraints are fair. The claim is that the conditions under which
political choices are made have an enormous impact on which choices people will see as
rational. As long as these conditions are determined by a small, relatively cohesive interest
group, this group can promote and institute conditions that constrain the available choices
of others. Appropriate background conditions can thus make it rational for those with less
worth of political h'berty to continue 'endorsing‘ policies that undermine their own ability

to participate in the political process as free and equal citizens. For this reason, it is

 

59Ibid., p. 62.
5°Ibid., p. 66.

45

important that the process of setting the conditions itself should be subject to scrutiny and

public debate.

IV. Unequal Power, Unegual Liberty and the Social Minimum.
Four related claims have been established. We have determined that a person in

the original position would want to guarantee the fair worth of political liberty. She
would want this because, within a democratic society, it is only through political action
that one can establish conditions that protect her interests. Secondly, we have determined
that the fair value of liberty is largely dependent on the distribution of other primary
goods, especially wealth and power. As such, we would want to ensure distributions of
those goods that are consonant with a fair distribution of political liberty. Third, we
would want fair equality of both head-start and reasonable opportunity. We would value
the former because we would recognize that diﬂerent individuals with the same talents and
abilities need diﬂ‘erent resources to achieve the same levels of competency. Hence a
commitment to fair equality of opportunity requires a capability based, head-start
approach to education. We would value head-start opportunity because it would provide
the knowledge needed to participate eﬂectively in the political process. At the same time,
we would see both fair equality of H80 and R0 as preconditions for allowing us to
engage in fair competition for jobs and income. Fourth, we would acknowledge the role
inequities in power play for questions of political liberty. Consequently, we would want to
identify structural sources of unequal power and seek means to neutralize their detrimental
eﬂ‘ects on the fair value of political liberty.

It should be clear from the discussion so far that a social minimum could play a
crucial role in the extended Rawlsian theory. For although strategies to insulate the
political process from the inﬂuence of unequal distributions of wealth and power may
reduce the need to constrain accumulations of capital, they will not eliminate that need so

long as unequal distributions of wealth and power lead to unequal opportunities for

46

realizing the fair value of political liberty. At the same time, the level of resources
available to the least advantaged would have to be ensured through a guaranteed social
minimum For Rawls, this minimum consists of two components: (a) the amount of
income, education and opportunity needed to ensure the fair value of political liberty and
(b) the amount of subsistence goods required to preserve physical integrity, i.e., "those
needs that must be met in order to remain a normally ﬁmctioning human being."61 It is
also clear that current background conditions limit our progress towards such a minimum
In this section, I will discuss two approaches to addressing the problem of the social
minimum and the implications of each for fair value of political liberty. In particular, we
will look at a social minimum given the background of a welfare state and of what
McPherson and Krouse have called "property owning democracy." Discussion of the
welfare state will allow us to evaluate means currently used to address problems of income
distribution and evaluate their potential for addressing inequalities in the value of political
liberty and to discuss alternatives for protecting the fair value of political h'berty.

A. Fair Equality of Opportunity and Access to the Work Environment.

We should ﬁrst note that as long as fair value of political liberty depends on
equitable distn'butions of wealth, and wealth is the product of labor, fair value of political
lrherty for everyone would require that everyone who wanted a job could have one.
Indeed, the primary task of Rawls's 'stabilization branch' is to "bring about reasonably full
employment," allowing individuals freely to choose their occupations and ensure strong
eﬂ‘ective demand.62 While it is obviously diﬂicult to say what this would require without

knowing the precise circumstances, it seems reasonable to assume that job markets cannot

 

“Rawls, Political Liberalism, p. 7. Also see Rodney Peﬂ'er, Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 14. There are two points to note here. First, the
requirements of the ﬁrst criterion are going to be relative to the background conditions within a particular
society, while we can assume that the second refers to fairly universal conditions of existence. And
second, although 'b' is given priority over 'a,' Rawls takes the satisfaction of 'b' as a given in developed
nations.

“Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 276.

47

ermand indeﬁnitely. Indeed, the rationalization of work requires usto eliminate jobs
wherever possible in the name of eﬁiciency. Given the marked success of efﬁciency and
rationalization movements in eliminating jobs and the failure of other quality jobs to
appear in their place, it seems reasonable to suppose that one ﬁrture change would have to
be a restructuring of the job market. In particular, we might expect a need to share jobs
by reducing the individual work week. 63

Naturally, the conditions under which people compete for jobs are critical as well.
I have already noted that the ability to compete requires a sound education (fair equality of
HSO) and that it is only reasonable to expect people to settle for less than what they
hoped for if they lost under conditions of fair competition. Thus, at a bare minimum,
barriers such as morally arbitrary discrimination would have to be minimized or eliminated.
Clearly, Rawls is committed to this goal However, the question arises as to whether this
commitment is enough to prevent inequalities in political liberty from continuing. One
challenge to Rawls's commitment comes from feminist social theorists. They argue that
we must remove all barriers to competition and that this requires an evaluation of existing
social and economic practices to determine whether they perpetuate unequal opportunity.
These theorists argue that some forms of discrimination lack the appearance of being
morally-arbitrary because we tend to assume certain ﬁxed background conditions. The
claim of fair equality of opportunity becomes problematic when these background
institutions systematically render certain groups of people unable to compete.

In Justice, Gender and the Family, Susan Moller Okin argues that many highly
desirable jobs place demands on workers that prevent otherwise qualiﬁed people from
competing. Gaining partnership in a law ﬁrm, for example, requires the dedication of
much more time than other less desirable jobs. A prospective partner must often put in far

more than a 40 hour work week. The reason why this is problematic is seen when we

 

63Richard J. Barnet, "The End of Jobs," Harpers, Sept. 1993, pp. 47-50.

48

consider the fact that the conditions of work are socially constructed. That is, the
conditions of work are determined by negotiation, more often than not from unequal
positions of power, between people who have certain more or less well deﬁned needs and
abilities. This negotiation is of course an evolutionary process, one which commonly leads
to more or less stable conditions. Now the pool of negotiating workers ﬁom the
formative period may or may not be a heterogeneous group. If it is, then we might expect
work conditions to reﬂect relatively heterogeneous abilities. On the other hand, if the
group is fairly homogenous, we would expect the conditions of their labor to reﬂect
different demands than those of a heterogeneous work place.

Historically, women have been excluded from many kinds of jobs. In particular,
they have been excluded ﬁom engaging in 'men's' work in the professions, scientiﬁc
occupations, management, and the skilled crafts.64 These kinds of work are typically the
highest paying, most powerful, and most prestigious occupations. On the other hand,
"females are relegated to residual ﬁelds and to those that ﬁt male stereotypes about the
kinds of work women should do," for example, clerical and oﬂice support work. 65 Given
the argument so far, we can therefore expect professional jobs to reﬂect the capabilities of
men. Moreover, the structure of our culture has been such that most men have been
expected to marry early on and their wives have been expected to take care of most, if not
all, domestic labor. Consequently, most men participating in the work force have had
capabilities to expend great amounts of time on their careers. We should therefore expect
the demands of professional jobs to reﬂect the abilities of a person who didn't have to
worry about taking care of children or even of themselves.

Several decades later, we have become aware of the need to eradicate the eﬂ‘ects

of discrimination in the work place. We can put laws into place that demand equal

 

64George Ritzer and David Walzac, Working, Conﬂict and Change (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 1977), p. 99.
65Ibid.

49

opportunity, but such laws will not give people with the same capabilities and ambitions
the same opportunities to compete because the structure of the workplace does not reﬂect
the capabilities of an otherwise homogenous group of people with the same skills. It
reﬂects the capabilities of married men living in a traditionally sexist culture. Put another
way, the structure of the work place is an artifact of an age when background conditions
allowed and even encouraged sexism and the oppression of women. As such they reﬂect
and replicate the conditions of that period.

In short, work expectations were built around cultural circumstances, most notably
the predomination of men in the work place and a particular conception of the institution
of marriage. Many of the most demanding and extrinsically rewarding jobs. require
applicants to devote a, great deal of time, above and beyond a forty hour work week, to
succeed at their job. This demand translates into an assumption that applicants have
sufﬁcient freedom from other duties to allow them to devote all that time and energy to
their jobs. Who meets this requirement? Virtually no one except a married person with a
spouse at home to take care of domestic affairs.66 Ifthis is not the case, if for instance,
one is a single parent, certain jobs may be inaccessrhle or at least very difﬁcult to break
into. This is because the job was constructed around a particular conception of the kind of
person who would ﬁll it—not because of morally arbitrary discrimination. In this sense,
the work place is not arbitrarily constructed in that it reﬂects the capabilities of the men
thought to be the pool of workers. The question is, If that pool changes, does that
necessarily imply that the structure of the work place should also be changed? If we are
committed to fair equality of opportunity, the answer must be yes.

The claim here is that unfair equality of opportunity exists because the work

environment is dominated by males. Following Wartenberg, I deﬁne domination as a

 

66This assertion is corroborated by labor participation data indicating that the majority of women in the
work force prior to World War II were young, single women (Working, Conﬂict and Change, p. 96). Only
these women had the freedom necessary to function in the workplace. The absence of older women can be
attributed to the social expectations that women marry early and remain home once they were married.

50

speciﬁc use of power meeting three conditions. The use of power (1) must harm the
subordinate group (2) must require a speciﬁc mechanism for its instantiation, and (3) must
be used (a) repeatedly (b) systematically (c) and to the detriment of the dominated agent.67
The claim here is not that we need to identify any particular person or group of persons
who intentionally constrain the choices of women. For once the mechanism is in place—in
this case, the criterion for job qualiﬁcations—it can be used repeatedly, systematically, and
to the detriment of the subordinate agent without any given person even recognizing it.
There is therefore no need to take intentions into account. Background conditions
guarantee that women will be discriminated against. Unless we consider the possibility
that the conditions of labor are historical artifacts, we might accept them as simply natural
features 'beyond our control.‘ We may even wish that we could do something to give
women fair equality of opportunity in the workplace. Nevertheless, adherence to the
sexist criterion of qualiﬁcation and the failure to question and change the conditions of
labor results in the domination of women.

We can make a similar argument concerning unskilled workers. For although
unskilled workers constitute a more heterogeneous group than traditional skilled and
professional workers, they generally share in certain traits which we would expect to show
up in the conditions of their labor. If we look at the historical context of the industrial
revolution and the formative period shortly thereafter, what we generally ﬁnd are people
for whom the Lockean Proviso of 'as much and as good' no longer applied. The vast
tracts of land available to many early settlers quickly became private property. The
unskilled worker lacked land and capital and typically had nothing to sell but his labor.
His need to survive often forced him to the industrial centers. Furthermore, the low skill
requirements meant that just about anyone, including children, could often do the job.

Hence, anyone who complained too loudly could easily be replaced. The ability to protest

 

67Wartenberg, p. 117.

51

effectively therefore turned on the-ability to organize into a large enough group to protect
one's self while causing inconvenience to the owners. But since labor organization was
prohibited both by force of law and by thugs hired to intimidate workers, a culture of
exploitation and domination of unskilled workers arose. Workers had little leverage to
bargain and had to settle for low wages and unconscionable work conditions. Cohen and
Rogers's analysis has already shown the general eﬁ‘ects of this tradition on our particular
form of capitalist democracy. Applied more speciﬁcally here, we see that exploitation of
the lower and middle class is a part of our culture. Although details of the background
conditions have changed, we accept the general terms of negotiation set during an age of
shameless exploitation.

The conclusion here is that a moral evaluation of the workplace as an action
environment requires us to look at the larger historical and sociological context. For
instance, we might ask whether, given the ﬁeld of choices available to a person, if it is a
rational choice for her to choose what she would prefer. Consider a slave state
undergoing a transition towards emancipation. Let us say that all slaves are now free to
do whatever they wish without answering to their former owners. We might suppose that
along with freedom they are now responsible for themselves, that is, they must make
choices as to what they want to do and remain responsible for the consequences or their
chOices. Such a proposal may sound attractive at ﬁrst glance, since freedom is 'obviously'
better than enslavement. However, I will argue that the answer is not altogether obvious
due to the fact that we need to know more about the social context within which the
emancipated person now has to operate.

The point here is that if freedom is important only in so far it is freedom to do
something that is desirable or to resist doing something that is undesirable, then the
options available to a person and her perception of them determines whether or not
freedom is valuable. Suppose that our newly emancipated person ﬁnds out that she cannot

make a go of it on her own. For example, we might suppose that there is no land available

52

for settlement, that no-one will give a poor person a loan to buy land, and that there is an
agreement among the towns people that no one will hire an ex-slave. Under these
conditions, choosing to strike out on one's own would be a decision that it is better to
starve as a 'free' person than to ensure material self-preservation as a slave. Choosing to
exercise one's 'freedom' in such circumstances would require a great deal more resolve and
acceptance of suffering than most people are capable of sustaining. It is not reasonable to
force that kind of decision onto people and pretend that there is some real choice to be
made.

Similar arguments have been made in feminist literature regarding the structural
inequities built into the traditional family. For example, in the traditional family, the man
has been the one to work for wages while the woman stayed home and took care of the
children. While on the face of it, this seems like a fair situation, in the sense that both
beneﬁt from cooperating together, there is a systematic differential of power built into the
relationship which works to the advantage of the 'breadwinner.‘ There are several reasons.
For one thing, the person working for wages has effective control of the family's income
such that the non-wage worker must rely on the other to give her a share of the money.
Another reason is that the wage worker has the opportunity to develop marketable skills
such that his earning potential is increased through his work. At the same time, the non-
wage earner not only doesn't have the opportunity to develop new skills, but becomes less
marketable in general the older she gets. We have already seen that many desirable jobs
make demands on the worker such that they seem to assume that whoever holds the job
either has no family duties to take care of or, what amounts to about the same thing, that
someone else is at home to take care of those duties for him Satisfaction of that
condition requires that the division of labor within the traditional family remains as it is.
However, it is satisﬁed to the detriment of the family with two working parents or the
single parent. All of these conditions place women and children at a distinct disadvantage

when they are faced with abusive or stultifying relationships. It might make sense to the

53

person who believes in freedom at all costs that she should just leave, but the reality of the
situation is that she may be much worse off in terms of material well-being outside of the
relationship than in. And even if she were willing to take those consequences for herself,
the fact remains that she may still be unwilling to abrogate her responsrhilities to her
children.

Now although Okin has suggested a number of institutional changes that could
lead to fairer equality of opportunity for women, it is not altogether clear whether all of
these suggestions would concern a political conception of justice. For example, when she
suggests that "any just and fair solution to the urgent problem of women's and children's
vulnerability must encourage and facilitate the equal sharing by men and women of paid
and unpaid work, of productive and reproductive labor," we are immediately confronted
with the question of what the state could possibly do to encourage these changes.68 In
order to make sense of Okin's claim, we need to recognize her understanding of division of
labor within the family as the manifestation of differentials in power, in particular, what
she refers to as the power of "exit."69

We can readily assimilate this understanding of power to Wartenberg's ﬁeld theory
of power. The claim is simply that the structure of traditional family roles results in an
asymmetry in vulnerability between family members. 70 When the well-being of one
individual rests directly on the actions of another, the action-altematives available to each
differ dramatically. It is relatively easy for the wage earner to view the dependent partner
as a drain on his resources. He would be materially better oﬂ‘ if the relationship were to
dissolve. At the same time, the dependent partner recognizes her reliance on him
Because she would only be worse oﬁ‘ for not making concessions, the power differential

allows one partner to use the other's dependency to gain concessions towards an unfair

 

“Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (Basic Books, 1989), p. 171.
6911514, p. 137.
7°Ibid., p. 136.

 

54

division of labor. The unequal consequences of leaving the relationship thus result in
unequal power of exit. Part of Okin's point is that this inequality is supported by
background conditions such as divorce laws that make it all the more irrational, from an
economic standpoint, to exit the relationship.

It is not at all diﬂicult to see the parallel between Okin's characterization of power
and dependency in the family and Cohen and Rogers's characterization of power and
dependency in the world of wage work. The dependency relationship between the wife,
husband and employer is a transitive one. For if the satisfactions of the wife's interests are
dependent on the satisfaction of her husband's interests, and the satisfaction of his interests
are dependent on the satisfaction of capital's interests, then her interests are also
dependent on the satisfaction of capital's interests. Therefore, following the logic of short
term economic satisfaction, she would act in ways that preserve the oppressive nature of
the relationship and join her concerns with those of her husband to see that the capitalist's
interests are met.

By combining Okin's analysis with that of Cohen and Rogers, we can see how the
value of political hherty is compromised through the institutionalized sanction of
dependent relationships. The wife can exercise her formal right to vote just as she can
exercise her formal right to express dissent within the family; however, the respective
background institutions slant the ﬁeld in a way that threaten consequences much worse for
her than for the dominant agent. Given these considerations, the primary question
regarding fair value of liberty and the structure of the workplace is whether fair value of
hherty is possible under conditions of material uncertainty. If equal power to exit requires
equal material certainty, we need to ask what mechanisms or background conditions could
best insure fair equality of material certainty.

Okin suggests a number of strategies for approaching this problem For instance,

we could imagine how state or company provided child care services would allow women

55

more work options.71 In order to justify state enforcement of something like child care
provisions, we would have to look at the particular work requirements of our society and
determine whether or not the absence of such a provision entailed the violation of
constitutional rights to fair equality of opportunity and fair worth of political liberty. If
justice demanded such a constitutional guarantee, and there seems to be good reason to
suppose it would, it seems plausible to justify that requirement on democratic principles.
Further, this requirement does not seem to point us to any particular economic order. But
note that the problem we are addressing here is that of dependency on the husband and the
inequities of liberty and opportunity that come with that dependency. Closer examination
of the situation reveals that we have not removed dependency but merely displaced it
somewhere else, namely to the satisfaction of capitalist interests.

B. Fair Value of Political Liberty and Secondary Associations.

Is there any way to remove this more ﬁmdamental dependency? In a more recent
paper, Cohen and Rogers suggest that secondary associations might provide a useful tool
to achieve fairer value of political liberty. 72 They argue that current concerns to exclude
the inﬂuence of secondary groups ﬁom the political sphere are ﬁrndamentally misguided.
One reason is that it is virtually impossible to do so. But, more importantly, they see how
other societies have harnessed the power of secondary associations to perform vital
ﬁmctions within a responsive and effective government. Cohen and Rogers do not deny
that such groups can induce tendencies towards faction into a society; what they do deny
is that such tendencies are necessary features of those groups. The key claim, one which
should be familiar by now, is that whether such tendencies emerge or not depends on the

background institutions that deﬁne the social context: "whether a group or group system

 

71See Harriet B. Presser, "Child Care as a Constraint on Employment: Prevalence, Correlates, and
Bearing on the Work and Fertility Nexus," American Journal of Sociology, 85 (1980), 1202-1213.

72An association is a group of individuals joined together to achieve a particular goal. Some examples of
secondary associations would be things like environmental or labor groups.

 

56

produces faction is a ﬁrnction of its qualitative features.”3 When we join this assumption
with the fact that secondary groups do important and productive work in some political
systems, "the contention that certain qualitative features of groups account for their
favorable contribution to certain speciﬁc areas of governance implicitly suggests a general
strategy for curbing the mischiefs of faction, namely, explicit efforts to encourage forms of
group representation that stand less sharply in tension with the norms of democratic
governance. "74

The importance of secondary groups is that they can facilitate the coordination of a
group's efforts towards particular goals. One of their strengths is that they are 'bottom up'
sources of information and guidance. This feature allows them to provide a more ﬂexible
and sensitive mechanism for determining the wants and needs of particular communities
and can therefore aid in shaping policies which reﬂect those needs. One example used by
Cohen and Rogers is the 'worker's council' found in West Germany. These councils
provide a close link between the interests of workers on the ﬂoor and management. They
are a means of communicating, among other things, safety concerns and suggestions to
increase efﬁciency. Their eﬂicacy relies on a combination of state recognition and backing
of their role within the company along with a tradition of cooperation between labor and
management. They provide a means for workers to use their political liberty in a relatively
direct and coordinated fashion.

The superiority of the worker’s council approach to safety and efﬁciency concerns
is apparent when we contrast it to our own. For while safety is a major concern in our
country, work rules and regulations are generally determined in a "top down" manner.

The result is that these efforts often lack coordination and sometimes work at cross

purposes. Consider the following example ﬁ'om the area of pesticides:

 

”Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, "Secondary Associations and Democratic Governance," Politics and
Society Vol. 20 No. 4, supplement (Dec. 1992): p. 405.
74Ibid., p. 395.

57

General environmentalists succeeded in eliminating DDT for use as a pesticide
because it posed serious ecological dangers to wildlife and to the consumer. These
efforts resulted in the increased use by farmers of parathion, which deteriorates in
the environment much faster than DDT. However, parathion may be very much
more harmful than DDT for the workers who handle it. Because mechanisms did
not exist to coordinate the resolution of problems in the work environment with
those of the general environment, control of pesticides in environment came very
much later. 75

Similar problems of coordination occur within the area of worker safety due to different
concerns and goals of the respective agencies. For example, the success of prevention and
treatment programs may depend on the coordination of the appropriate agencies. 76 While
several diﬂ‘erent agencies are charged with safety issues, the legislature is charged with
making the laws and providing the means for enforcement. Two current agencies charged
with enforcing the various decisions are the Environmental Protection Agency and the
Occupational Safety and Health Association. The sheer magnitude of the task and the
lack of personnel make their job impossibly difﬁcult. Now if managers know this and also
know that most workers lack knowledge about safety hazards, it is apparent that for all
practical purposes their consciences are the only enforcementthey can expect to confront.
It might be objected here that I have overlooked worker’s rights to ﬁle complaints
with the government. Such rights do exist and yet relatively few workers actually ﬁle
complaints. Thus, we might conclude from the lack of worker complaints that the
workers themselves are not concerned about the rules and regulations which, as I have
already implied, are the products of agencies removed from the real conditions of work.
There are a two points to make here. First, the objection rests on the assumption that
workers recognize the hazards and risks in their work environment. This assumption is
often mistaken. Unless workers recognize the risk, of course they won't complain.
Second, there is a more essential point to make: namely, that a worker who

complains is making a calculated risk. Unless the anonymity of complainants is protected,

 

75Ritzer and Walzac, p. 420.
76lbid.

58

the worker can often face the consequences of a hostile work environment. The risk of
provoking such a response must be weighed against both the chance of losing one's job
and the possibility that one's complaints will fall on deaf ears or that the responsible
agency is ineffectual 77 Thus the perception of background institutions plays an important
role in protecting workers.

Now although there is formal protection of anonymity, in many cases the context
of the complaint makes it quite clear who is the likely complainant. For example, it may
relatively easy to pick out the complainant in a business with only a few employees. We
must again remember that the role of the employees beliefs play a large role. For example,
if I believe the boss will know it's me, it may not matter whether she actually would know
or not. Returning to Wartenberg's analysis, what this means is that each work place
constitutes a kind of action environment and may encourage a particular set of action
alternatives to its employees. This action environment is itself situated within a larger
economic and social context that determines the relative rationality of pursuing certain
options over others.

' Let us now look at the problem of work safety from the perspective of an action-
environment where (1) there is an active effort to inform workers about safety issues, (2)
there are worker’ s councils that serve as ombudsmen for employees, and (3) the work
councils decisions have legal force based on state recognition. The ﬁrst point to note rests
on the observation that although the various government agencies may still act more or
less independently of one another and hence lack coordinated purposes and goals, the
results of their actions become apparent at the point of application, in this case, in the
work place. People charged with complying with conﬂicting rules and regulations are

quite aware of where the conﬂicts lie and can often oﬂ‘er suggestions to help coordinate

 

77See Kitty Calavita, "The Demise of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration: A Case Study
of Symbolic Interaction," Social Problems, 30 (1983), 437-448. Also see Kathy Sawyer and Pete Barley,
"OSHA Beﬁiends Industry, but Draws New Fire," The Washington Post (July 5, 1983), pp. A1, A2.

   

 

 

59

efforts. The second point to note is that workers may have a great deal of autonomy in
dealing with management on the importance of a particular issue. That is, there is room
for negotiation and negotiation is facilitated by the equalizing effect of appropriate
background conditions on the employee/ employer relationship.

A third and perhaps weaker point concerns the anonymity issue. The idea here is
that the council could serve as a buffer to protect individual anonymity. This could work
because the council acts as the voice of the complainant but also because the members of
the worker’s council would presumably know or at least have the potential to know of the
hazards themselves. It therefore becomes plausible that the there is no one person to
whom retribution could be directed. The weakness in regard to anonymity is that there
would still be some circumstances where the context makes it obvious or at least likely
who the complainant is. However, since this complaint applies to our current system as
much or more than to the worker‘s council system, it is not damaging to my account of the
worker's council. Finally, the possibility of using the workers themselves to police the
workplace makes it much more efﬁcient and comprehensive than our own system

Although we can see how the secondary association approach could lead towards
ensuring fair value of political h'berty by creating fairer conditions for political
participation, it is important to note that it does not remove the dependency component.
That is, the material uncertainty that undermines the subordinate agent's bargaining
position is left intact. Nevertheless, we have shown where background conditions can be
altered in ways that preserve the capitalist character of the economic system while moving
towards fairer value of political liberty. We might suppose that similar moves for state
protection of worker’s rights could also lead to substantial improvements in wages. The
question is whether it makes sense to think that these kinds of actions could ever be
enough to lead to fair value of political liberty. To answer this question, I will now turn to

the issue of a minimum wage.

60

C. Fair Value of Political Liberty and the Minimum Wage.

It is my contention that minimum wage work constitutes a decisive test case for
justice as fairness. The application of the diﬁ‘erence principle requires the identiﬁcation of
the least advantaged and speciﬁes a criterion of primary goods as its measure. Not only
does the minimum wage point to a clearly deﬁned and readily identiﬁable class of
individuals, but these individuals are clear candidates for the dubious distinction of '1east
advantaged.‘ However, my concern with minimum wage workers goes beyond the mere
counting of primary goods. As Ihave argued above, the lack of expendable income and
the difﬁculties of organizing workers are crucial obstacles to achieving fair value of
political h'berty. Minimum wage workers are the least likely to organize and virtually by
deﬁnition have the least liquid assets.78 At the same time, minimum wage work generally
requires the least investment in education and skills. Consequently, they can usually be
replaced at will Finally, the products and services produced by minimum wage workers
are some of the least socially valued as measured by consumer willingness to pay. As
such, the minimum wage worker has little political leverage for bargaining. Given all of
these considerations, our suggestions for resolving the fair value of h'berty problem will
seem implausible unless they point towards the resolution of the problem for minimum
wage workers.

When we look to possible solutions for this problem, it is important to recall that
Rawls is committed to ﬁnding background institutions which require the least amount of
corrective actions to ensure fair distribution of income. Further, he is clearly committed to
letting market forces determine wage levels. We must also note that the basic social
minimum, for Rawls, is guaranteed by transfers—not by wages: for the method of transfer
is "more effective than trying to regulate income by minimum wage standard and the like.

...Since the market is not suited to answer the claims of need, these should be met by a

 

78See Richard B. Freeman and James L. Medoﬂ‘, What Do Unions Do? (New York: Ballantine Books,
1984), p. 27.

 

61

separate arrangement."79 Thus he maintains that "once a suitable minimum is provided by
transfers, it may be perfectly fair that the rest of total income be settled by the price
system, assuming that it is moderately efﬁcient and free from monopolistic restrictions,
and unreasonable extemalities have been eliminated. "30

Rawls thus asks us to imagine a starting point where everyone has their basic
needs met. Once these needs are met, the implication is that people will work for reasons
other than survival They may, for instance, work out of a sense of duty to society and/or
the need to engage in creative activity. They may also work because they desire to attain
material satisfaction above and beyond subsistence level, that is, they may want income for
what it contributes to their effective liberty of conscience. The implicit assumptions in this
discussion are, of course, precisely the ones that Daniels showed to be unlikely: namely,
that the political system could be sufﬁciently insulated from the inﬂuence of money and
that the diﬂ‘erence principle would not allow inequalities in income sufﬁcient to undermine
fair‘value of political liberty. If we reject those assumptions, the market, through its
effects on wages, retains its prominent role in determining worth of political liberty.

Now we have already suggested that secondary associations could help us address
some of the inequalities present in our current system—that is, provided appropriate
background conditions obtained. In particular, the combination of incentives to organize
along with state recognized, protected and enforced bargaining rights could produce the
solidarity and authority to negotiate within a more equitable political arena. While I
believe it would be desirable to take steps in this direction, I note that there are also
problems peculiar to this approach that require our attention.

In this section, I propose three different scenarios of income supports aimed at
bringing up the least well off. The aim is to draw attention to the attractions and the

problems inherent in each. The central problem can be stated as follows. Market forces

 

79Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 277.
80Ibid.

62

determine the prices of goods. These prices reﬂect an equilibrium between the amount
consumers are willing to pay and the cost of production. The cost of production includes
the cost of raw materials, labor and the means of production. Wages are the result of
another kind of equilibrium between workers and capitalists. The amount of pay workers
require to perform is determined by the conditions of negotiation including the social value
of their services, the relative scarcity of people with their skills, and the degree to which
laws, on the one hand, acknowledge the right to organize and strike and, on the hand,
preclude actions undermining that right. The role of need also plays a large role for
people at the low end of the wage scale. That is to say, under conditions of free speech
and the absence of violent repression, there is probably a threshold of need below which
people will refuse to work and may openly demand changes in the conditions of
negotiation.

In this picture of the economy, it is obvious that no single factor can be considered
independently of another. The particular character of each aspect is determined by the
unique effects of the others. Now when we consider Rawls's proposal that we can remove
'need' from the equation, we should no doubt wonder (1) whether this is true, and (2) how
such a radical change would reverberate throughout the rest of the system These
concerns are further compounded if we reject the claim that wage concerns can be
detached from considerations of protecting the value of political liberty. For the hherty
principle implies that wage diﬁerentiak retain social and political signiﬁcance if they
contribute to differences in worth of political liberty. If inequalities in income undermine
the conditions of fair equality of political hherty, we are therefore left with the important
conclusion that all of these negative effects of wage differentials would have to be
canceled out through income transfers. Thus transfers according to need would not be
prior to wage considerations, as Rawls supposes. Rather, they would be a response to
counteract the effects of large inequalities in wages brought about through market forces.

Ifthat is true, it begins to appear as though transfers take on an interesting and unwanted

63

character: namely, by augmenting employee incomes, they begin to look like "differential"
subsidies for businesses. That is, businesses which generate less income for their
employees would require greater income supplements than those which generate higher
incomes. Ifthis is true, then these subsidies would be most prominent with regard to
employers of minimum wage workers.

Now when we turn our attention to the minimum wage employee, we are
confronted with a number of concerns. For once we take the next step of subsidizing
income through a transfer mechanism, we ﬁnd ourselves in the interesting position of (1)
providing incentives for business not to pay their employees as much as they otherwise
might and (2) in effect subsidizing industries which do not make much money.81 This
raises some interesting question regarding the desirability of using a transfer mechanism
rather than a minimum wage system to support income. Consider the following example.
Ifa company has to pay a certain amount to its employees, this cost is reﬂected in direct
consumer costs. Now suppose a company pays somewhat over the minimum before a
transfer system takes effect. Once the transfer system begins, the company could save
itself money through lowering pay to the legal limit, thus allowing either more direct
proﬁts or the opportrmity to lower its product cost to consumers thus giving it a
competitive edge. There is no reason to suppose that the company's competitors would
stand still while all this happens. They too would have incentive to lower wages to allow
them to remain competitive. Ifthere were no mechanism to prevent this chain of events,
the result would be a shift of burden from the company to the state. Thus the company
would retain its proﬁts while the state would pick up more of the costs of production.

Is there any way to prevent this shifting of burden without raising the minimum

wage so high that we lose jobs? I don't see how as long as the people who proﬁt ﬁom

 

810m might argue that we already do this to some extent through various in-kind income supports.

64

lowering wages are diﬁ‘erent from the people whose wages are lowered.82 For once the
state takes on the role of ﬁlling the gap, it would not even matter how high or low the
minimum was set. Unless the minimum and the maximum coincided, there would always
be businesses paying above the line which could lower the wage once the state agreed to
step in. The only way around the problem would be a huge bureaucratic intervention in
the form of monitoring company books to ensure that they were paying what they are able
to. But if the cost shift allowed the company to lower the price of its product, pay may
still be in accordance with market prices and the books would show that indeed the
employees are being paid what the company can afford anyway. There is therefore no
advantage to turning to bureaucratic intervention to start with. On the other hand, ﬁxing
wages at pre-intervention rates would be unsatisfactory, as well For it sometimes
happens that a company really must lower its wages in order to compete due to changes in
the market such as a competitor's introduction of more cost emcient techniques. If a
company lacked the freedom to adjust its wages accordingly, odds are that it would have a
tough time making enough proﬁt to stay aﬂoat.

Now it might be argued that reducing wages in the fashion I have indicated would
not be as widespread as I suggest. If, for example, we can see how wage reduction would
lead to morale problems, less production, etc., we could see how incentives would exist
for keeping wages relatively high. But in so far as the difference would be made up by the
state, there would be no effective loss of income to the employee. So unless the fact of
getting state money itself were demoralizing, as it is for many people on assistance today,
there is little reason to suppose that morale would be unduly affected.

The second objection concerns the government adding support to businesses that

otherwise might not make enough proﬁt to sustain themselves. This state of affairs would

 

82In the discussion of property owning democracy below, I propose that the problem of diﬁ‘erential proﬁt
making within a company suggests an obvious strategy for determining a minimum wage, namely, that
the people who control the wages should be the ones who would stand to lose through lowering them.

 

65

raise interesting questions regarding whether such a business really ought to exist if it can't
sustain itself on its own proﬁts. This kind of result brings us ﬁrll circle in detailing the
relationship between the state, employer and employee. For the failure to mandate a social
minimum in effect provides companies with the same incentives (or lack thereof) to
produce "socially valued" goods as would guaranteed government subsidies. I will use the
concept of "social value" to refer to the amount consumers are willing to pay for a product
of service given a price that reﬂects "true social costs." I will use the term "true social
costs" to refer to the total costs of a product given costs of production including all major
external costs. Thus I will say that a product is socially valued if and only if consumers
demonstrate a willingness to pay a price reﬂecting true social costs of production.

The intuitive argument here is that we all recognize that numerous products could
be produced proﬁtably by excluding all external costs, but that no one would say that we
must keep marginal businesses aﬂoat regardless of their external costs. Of course, this
debate over external costs currently takes place, albeit in a different form For example,
we often hear the argument that raising the minimum wage would create more external
costs to society by destroying jobs than could be recouped through beneﬁts to the
employee. Now while I concede that sustaining a job market is an important
consideration, my objection is that there are clearly ethical limits to this line of reasoning.
Consider the fact that by far the most important contribution of a business to a community
is revenue: revenue in the form of taxes and revenue in the form of employees income
spent in the community thus supporting other local businesses. Obviously, if the only
factor we took into account when deciding whether a business makes a positive
contribution to a community was whether it provided jobs and tax revenues, virtually any
business would rank positively, regardless of what it paid its employees. My point is that

those are not the only relevant factors. For any enterprise there are 'externalities' which

 

66

need to be taken into account.83 While I acknowledge a whole array of negative
extemalities as relevant and important, my primary concern with the inﬂuence of wage
differentials on worth of liberty precludes a thorough discussion of them here.84 For now
I merely conclude that so long as a company does not have to deal with the real social
costs of producing a given product, they will not have the incentive to make products that
are worth producing and hence may produce goods of questionable social value.

Perhaps the strongest objection to the income transfer solution is that it may not
create a fairer worth of political liberty. The reason is that additional income in itself does
not address power differentials within the company. Thus the potential for income
transfers to assist in satisfying the h'berty principle depends on other contextual features
that augment or diminish individual capability to exercise political liberty. I am inclined to
think that reliance on the transfer system is inadequate because of its exclusive focus on
income as a source of power inequalities. Probably the largest single contributor to this
inequity is not due to wage diﬁerentials per se but rather to different holdings of the means
of production. These inequalities will always imply unequal consequences for challenging
the terms of that relationship. The simple fact is that as long as there are unequal
consequences for exiting a relationship, the dominant agent will always have inﬂuence
over the choices available to the subordinate agent. I maintain that it is this inequality that
leads to the unfair value of political h'berty.

The second scenario involves the combination of a minimum wage for the least
advantaged with a progressive tax for the most advantaged. One advantage to this plan is

that it preserves the eﬂiciency of free market distribution with mechanisms (1) to ensure

 

83"An extemality is a 'neighborhood' or 'third-party' eﬂ‘ect of a market exchange: an effect on someone's
well-being which is not taken into account in the market exchange. Those neighborhood effects which are
beneﬁcial are called external economies or positive extemalities; those which are detrimental are called
external diseconomies or negative extemalities" Buchanan, Allen. "Efﬁciency Arguments For and
Against the Market", excerpted from Justice and Economic Distribution (Arthur and Shaw, eds.)
84BelowI will suggest a strategy for determining a minimum wage that precludes differential worth of
liberty as a negative extemality.

67

that wages reﬂected the 'true' social costs of production and (2) prevent the negative
effects of too wide a range of income distributions on the value of political liberty. When
combined with transfer programs aimed only at those disadvantaged by circumstances
beyond their control, for example, people with certain handicaps, this route seems
promising.85 On the negative side, there do seem to be reasonable constraints on how
high a minimum wage could go. If Daniels is correct about the need to guarantee equal
worth of political liberty, it would seem that the social minimum would have to be quite
high indeed. Ifthe responsibility for providing such a minimum fell exclusively onto the
employer in the form of a minimum wage, many businesses would simply fail to survive.
Consequently, it seems unlikely that a minimum wage could ever be adequate to the task
at hand. Our options would therefore seem to be a commitment to income transfers or an
economic system which does not generate these kinds of inequalities. Since we have
already noted several problems with the income transfer approach, I now turn to the third
scenario.

D. Fair Value of Equal Political Liberty and Property Owning Democracy.

Insofar as the internal structures of individual businesses lead to conditions of
unequal liberty outside of the company, we should expect that a restructuring of
companies themselves would be required. As I have mentioned at several points now, part
of the problem in unequal worth of political hherty stems from the mobility of capital and
its autonomy with respect to employees. This implies that the fair value of political liberty
is predicated on 'tying' capital down. This could mean two things: either government
control of capital's movement or dispersing control of capital in such a way that it is

inherently tied to a geographical area and/or to the workers. I do not ﬁnd the ﬁrst option

 

851 suppose that we would also want to allow for a cautious commitment to removing the burdens of
family obligations, as well. The reason for my restraint is that the right to a large family would fall under
the liberty of conscience. As such, it is the individual's responsibility under the conditions of reasonable
opportunity to accept the consequences of their actions. Failure to stick to this principle would amount to
subsidizing individual conceptions of the good, something which is neither universally achievable or even
desirable.

68

particularly attractive because it seems likely to be unduly clumsy and liable to
mismanagement. Thus its reliance on top down government regulation seems highly
unlikely to meet the publicity requirements necessary to ensure public conﬁdence and
support. However, I believe that an examination of the second alternative will show that it
provides a promising possibility. The essential concept I will use to examine this
alternative is "property-owning democracy. "86

Daniels's argument showed that inequalities in distributions of primary goods
compatible with the difference principle could lead to inequalities in the worth of political
h'berty. Cohen and Rogers's argument showed that, more speciﬁcally, inequality in
political liberty is attrrhutable to unequal power relationships built into the basic structure
of society.” We can understand these unequal power relationships in terms of the
dependency relationship sustained by unequal holdings in the means of production. In
"Capitalism, 'Property-Owning Democracy,‘ and the Welfare State," McPherson and
Krouse articulate a general economic scheme compatible with the priority of liberty and a
commitment to fair equality of opportunity. Their claim is that the most plausible
foundation for justice as faimess is a just system of property institutions. In contrast to
welfare-state capitalism, which allows severe inequalities and then "seeks to reduce the
consequent disparities in market outcomes through redistributive tax and transfer
programs," property-owning democracy "aims at sharply reduced inequality in the
underlying distribution of property and wealth, and greater equality of opportunity to

 

86This is a term mentioned by Rawls in A Theory of Justice, p. 280, and elaborated on by Richard Krouse
and Michael McPherson in "Capitalism, 'Property-Owning Democracy,‘ and the Welfare State," In
Democracy and the Welfare State, ed. Amy Gutman, Princeton, N. J .: Princeton University Press, 1988, p.
8"The analysis in On Democracy leads Cohen and Rogers to suggest seven main institutional
requirements of the democratic order—"civil rights and civil liberties, public subsidy for organized
competitive political groups, egalitarian distributional measures, public control of investment, workplace
democracy, equal opportunity, and a foreign policy informed by the principles of democratic legitimacy
that underlie the domestic system," p. 167.

69

invest in human capital, so that operation of the market generates smaller inequalities to
begin with."88

The claim here is that a just system of property rights will lead to (A) the
compression of wage differentials between lowest and highest paid employees, and (B) an
increased ability of all employees to share in company decismns, i.e., that they have
decision making power concerning company policy, investments, manufacturing decisions,
wage and safety policy. (A) could come about in one of three ways: (1) if by some
miracle market forces became such that supply and demand of employees at different
levels resulted in a compression of wage differentials; (2) if wage caps were set on the
highest paid employees while the minimum ﬂoor is raised; or (3) conditions are set up such
that wage decisions would be made by all employees as free and equal, e. g., if they all
owned equal shares in the company.

There are three problems with suggestion (1). First, it seems unlikely to make a
dent in the problem even under the best of circumstances. Second, it would be a highly
unstable foundation to base worth of liberty on. And third, it would leave no room for
recourse if and when it fails. (2) would could take two forms, both requiring some level
of state intervention. Although it is conceivable that some such program could have an
effect on worth of h'berty of conscience, the fact that it leaves the essential power structure
and its inherent inequities intact makes it a less than ideal choice for addressing inequities
in political hherty. The third option seems like a more reasonable solution from the
perspective of justice as fairness.

The ﬁrst question we might reasonably ask here is how we are to envision such a
system as coming into being. After all, it might seem like the only way such a
transformation might happen is through the expropriating of someone else's property. If

this were true, we might reasonably expect stability problems. My answer is twofold.

 

88Ibid., p. 84.

70

First, if Rawls is correct in identifying the two principles of justice as supported by
overlapping consensus, then there is evidence of a fundamental social commitment to the
fair value of political liberty. Supposing his account is plausible, as I believe it is, a social
order which recognizes this commitment must recognize the need to take steps towards
actualizing it. Now it is certainly true that one may agree with such a commitment and
still deny that my conclusions for actualizing it are correct. I answer only that I believe I
have shown the incompatibility of several alternatives with this commitment and challenge
the critic (l) to show how my own proposal is equally or less compatible with justice as
fairness than the aforementioned alternatives and (2) to propose a more convincing
alternative.

Secondly, I answer that the objection supposes that whatever changes came about
would come about quickly. However, I believe it is possible to imagine how such a
transformation might come about over a extended period. We might imagine how
employees could, through a gradual process, come to be stakeholders with equitable
holdings of property and power within the company. For example, employees who were
paid partially in company stock could gradually become equal stake holders in a company
through an incremental and relatively peaceﬁrl process.

This point brings us to a second objection. For it might turn out that not everyone
could aﬂ‘ord to take part of their pay in stock Others might wish to trade their stock in
for more liquid assets. We can also imagine how a person could come to amass majority
share in the company through her trading just as it can be done under today’s
circumstances. Ifthis is the case, we might suppose that there would have to be rules
regarding whether or not one could have the option to do so. Ifso, we will need laws to
prevent that tendency.

In regards to rules and laws, I merely point out that the function of background
conditions is precisely to address these kinds of problems. While I would scarcely venture

to say exactly what form background laws would have to take, I offer the following

71

illustration as general suggestion of what we might expect. Given the goals of protecting
equal worth of political h'berty through ensuring and preserving equitable distributions of
income, I suppose we would want two conditions to be met: that all employees would
have to have a certain part ownership in a company, and that no one would be allowed a
share large enough to undermine the equity in power. The ﬁrst condition would ensure
that all members would have to hang onto their interest in the business as long as they
continued to work there, while the second condition would undermine any advantage that
might come from trying to amass more stock than one needed to maintain employment. I
submit that these laws are not particularly novel, since they currently form the basis for
anti-trust laws.

The objection that some people might not be able to afford taking part of their pay
in stock brings provides the basis for cashing in the promissory note for a Rawlsian
minimum wage principle. In short, I suppose that the minimum wage within any given
company would have to be such that each employee could reasonably be expected to
afford to live and still have enough left over to take a portion as company stock. Further,
we might suppose the invention of some sort of formula to determine a just rate of
accumulation.

A third objection is that if we make part ownership a prerequisite to employment,
how would a person just entering the job market come to be employed? Here I would
only suggest that we might suppose a transfer program which gives high school and
college graduates a stake to invest. We might also suppose that the acceptance of
someone into a company would be predicated on an agreement that they must take so
much of their pay in stock and that they must have such and such a holding by such and
such time. We might then suppose that they could trade their holdings in should they
choose to take a different job. To facilitate the exchange of stock from one company to
another, there might be an agency that serves as an employment clearinghouse. We might

further suppose that there would be several such agencies that could serve as both

72

clearinghouses and sources of primary data on job distributions within a certain domain of
occupations.

A fourth objection is that being a part owner in a company has risks along with
beneﬁts. Along with the ability to inﬂuence decisions regarding one's own fate is the
liability that comes with tying one's fate to the success of the company. If the company
fails, you fail with it. In response, I concede the truth in the objection. But this 'danger‘ is
really no worse and in all probability would be better than that which most employees
work under now. When a company fails now, the employees are still going to lose their
jobs; so, there is really only the potential for gain. Second, the fact that one is more
invested in both the losses and now, really for the ﬁrst time, the gains, gives more
incentive to make sure that the company succeeds. Third, it seems at least plausible to
expand the above conception of a minimum wage to include income for something like
what we now think of as unemployment insurance.

Now suppose everyone agreed that the just thing to do is to restructure individual
businesses in a way that ensures that differences in wealth and power within each company
would not give any employees within those companies unfair political advantages outside
of the company. It would still be possible that we didn't go far enough. For suppose two
companies A and B each restructured themselves as we have described. That means that
members of company A are all on a par with each other and that members of company B
are all on a par with each other. Now suppose company A makes a product which nets its
employees much more than company B's product does for them Let's say, for example,
that company A has 50 employees and nets $5 million in proﬁts while company B has 50
employees and nets $1 million in proﬁts. Suppose that each employee shares equally in
the proﬁts. That means that each employee of A gets $100,000 while each employee of B
gets $20,000. I am supposing that this ﬁgure would be tacked on to whatever wage they

73

could have expected to get under 'normal' circumstances. 89 Let's say each had a base
salary of $20,000. That still leaves representative employee A with 120K and
representative employee B with 40K The question we would have to ask is whether that
difference is so great that it can translate into an inequitable worth of political liberty. If
so, then as long as market forces create differences in income sufﬁcient to generate
unequal worth of hherty, steps to restructure from within individual companies alone will
not be suﬁcient.90

Here, again, a commitment to ensuring fair value of political liberty requires us to
determine which steps and strategies would be most satisfactory to make the background
institutions meet the goal of fairness. Again, we could go in either of two directions. We
could (1) effect a transfer of funds from one to the other to compress the differential or (2)
we could seek to ensure conditions under which it would turn out that everyone would
end up negotiating distributions of wealth between themselves to reduce the inequality.
The effects of the ﬁrst step would be more or less the same as simply providing an income
supplement to attain a social minimum That is to say, the distribution of wealth might be
more equitable but the power differential would probably remain unchanged. And since it
is the power differential that is more likely to translate into political inequality, that
solution would be unsatisfactory.

This leaves us with the second proposal and the question of what background
conditions would be most likely to result in a close approximation to the desired result.

Again, the goal is a distribution of wealth and power that does not undermine equitable

 

89Figuring wages in this manner is common in many law ﬁrms.

90A further question concerns non-wage workers. For a large portion of people who work, do not get paid
directly. They are oﬁen dependent on their spouse's income and their spouse's willingness to share it
equally with them. I think that this is a real sticking point for the traditional set up, because no matter
how much income is transferred to the family, the need for such transfer makes the non-wage worker
dependent on the actions and attitudes of wage worker in a way that makes the former particularly
vulnerable. In important ways, this dependency is similar to the dependency of the spouse on the wage
earner. And, carrying this line of thought all the way through, it is also similar to the dependency which
many wage workers have on employers. Whether or not we ﬁnd that situation acceptable, I submit that if
it is unacceptable in one of these spheres, it should probably be unacceptable in the others.

74

political efﬁcacy. Here, we might try to apply the same strategy as we took to resolve the
problem within individual companies. That would mean making everyone substantial
shareholders in every company and hence deserving of equal remuneration. There are
important differences, however. In the case of the individual companies, it turned out that
the transfer of company stock would take place through payment of actual work done. In
essence, the employees are paid in pieces of the company. The question is how that
strategy would work when the people who are 'buying' into the company do not actually
work for it? Clearly, this strategy would have to involve some sort of transfer mechanism.

There is a second variation of the unequal power between companies argument.
The ﬁrst argument drew attention to differences in income between the employees of two
diiferent companies. In the second argument, I suppose that company A's product is much
more vital to society than company B's. Suppose A produces most of the energy we use
to produce heat, light, etc. B produces salad shooters. We might imagine that the
problem here is not only that the A's product is more vital and thus provides the A team
with more bargaining power, but that the A's jobs require specialized skills such that the
social cost of replacing them would present an unattractive option. These diﬂ‘erences
could give the As an unequal political advantage even if the A employees received the
same pay as the Bs.

In accordance with the goal of establishing conditions where it becomes more
rational than not to choose compromises that work to the advantage of everyone, I
propose two general solutions to this kind of problem The ﬁrst is to make such wild-cat
actions illegal and provide legal channels for promoting arbitration. I am assuming some
such steps would inevitably have to be taken. But suppose one company resists efforts to
negotiate with other companies. Let us assume that there is no differential in wealth. Let
us further assume that we have determined and implemented laws optimizing fair
conditions of cooperation. What this means is that the need for compromise arises, ie., it

seems like they must work out the problem for themselves. We must then ask what

75

conditions would be necessary to facilitate negotiation to mutually satisfactory solutions.
I maintain that above all else the ability to empathize with the views of the other will be
necessary. The reason is because natural variations in personality type, intelligence,
interpersonal ability to argue for one's position and negotiate will always confer some
political advantage to some over others. Thus, as long as these differences exist, there is
the potential for one person or group of persons to take advantage of another. The
question is then what could prevent people from so taking advantage of others. The
answers, I am supposing, are (l) the ability to recognize that one has the ability to take
advantage of another, (2) the ability to see when one is doing so, (3) the ability to stop
oneselffrom doing so, and (4) the ability to see when that is the appropriate thing to do it.
Insofar as (4) requires the ability to see when it is wrong to exercise power over another,
the ability to empathize with the other person's views may be necessary to equalize the

power differential.91

 

91An adequate treatment of these issues would require an extensive analysis of how 'the family' affects
moral development. For nowl only point out that, if the above analysis is correct, optimal background
conditions are merely a precondition for fair equality of political liberty. In so far as people learn to do be
moral by observing how the world around them works, there is an argument to be made for looking at how
different institutions in our society help people to learn these skills and values. Naturally, the home is the
ﬁrst place where people learn such skills as empathy and also their ﬁrst exposure to such social
phenomena as the sharing or hoarding of responsibility and power. This is one of the ﬁrst places to look
at how institutional features of society translate into inequities in worth of liberty.

The argument I would make here is as follows: (1) Fair worth of liberty depends on the ability
and willingness of those who can manipulate others to their own advantage to refrain from doing so. (2)
Refraining from exploiting other people requires learning how to empathize with others. (3) People ﬁrst
learn to empathize with others at home through both interacting with others and observing the
interactions of others. (4) One of the things kids learn from is how power and responsibilities is shared
between parents. (5) Inequities in power and responsibility sharing between parents is reinforced by the
structure of job markets. This reinforcement happens in several ways. (a) The job market makes demands
on employees which often require one spouse to stay at home at take care of the family. (b) These
demands allow one spouse to develop and enhance his skills and marketability while preventing the other
from doing the same. (c) This state of affairs results in one spouse becoming increasingly dependent on
the other. (d) This state of aﬂ‘airs sends a message to children about personal roles and expectations for
their own lives. (6) Teaching children how to share power and emphasize with others requires a
restructuring of the family responsibilities and hence of the job market.

76
Summagy and Conclusion.
In the course of this paper, I showed how satisfaction of the liberty principle

depends on both the diﬁ‘erence principle and the opportunity principle. I argued that fair
value of political liberty rests on a just distribution of primary goods and a social and
economic context that takes adequate account of individual capabilities to effectively use
those goods. I showed how fair value of political liberty requires a capability based
approach to preparing people to compete for jobs and political ofﬁces. I also showed how
we need an understanding of how the socioeconomic environment inﬂuences political
decisions so that we can establish conditions where the possibility of fair value of political
participation could obtain. In particular, I attempted to show how the basic structure
creates inequalities in economic power and, consequently, in political power.

In section four, I provided an analysis of the workplace that illustrated several
common features that limit opportunity by limiting access to women. I also showed how
unequal power in the workplace translates into unequal power in the political sphere. I
showed how the division of labor in the traditional family leads to systematic inequalities
in power between the wage and non-wage worker, both by making the latter dependent on
the former for payment and by allowing the wage-worker to develop his skills,
marketability and hence wage earning potential at the expense of the non-wage worker. I
suggested several options for reducing the dependency relationship between wage and
non-wage working family members. For example, to the extent that the structure of most
jobs enforces this inequality, I proposed that justice as fairness may require a
reconsideration of that structure, including the forty-hour work week and any other
aspects of the job market that can exists only through a systematically biased power
structure.

Finally, I showed how economic and social conditions systematically undermine
the value of political liberty for wage workers by allowing those who control the means of

production to narrow the rational choices available to workers and those dependent on

77

them I provided an analysis of several strategies for addressing this structural problem
and showed that an exclusive reliance on transfer mechanisms for redistributing income
causes problems for markets and leaves the fundamental source of unequal worth of
political hberty intact. For this reason, I argue that transfer mechanisms should be
secondary to establishing background conditions to ensure property rights in the means of
production and prevent unreasonable accumulations of the same.

While I see these steps as necessary for ensuring the fair value of political liberty, I
emphasize that they are only preconditions for the possibility of achieving fair value of
political liberty. Because there will always be the possibility for exploitation, the value of
political hherty for some will always rest on whether or not people with the ability to
exploit them refrain from doing so. For this reason, we must emphasize the role of
individual moral capacities in the just society. To the extent that we get our moral
education in the family, we must pay adequate attention to the family as an essential part
of the basic structure. It is there that we acquire our ﬁrst knowledge of the uses and

limitations of power. 92

 

92As I have indicated, this is a complex problem that requires further reﬂection. See note 90 supra.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buchanan, Allen. "Eﬁiciency Arguments For and Against the Market." excerpted from
Justice and Economic Distribution. eds. Arthur and Shaw, Englewood Cliﬁ‘s, N.
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Cohen, Joshua and Joel Rogers. "Secondary Associations and Democratic Governance,"

Politics and Society Vol. 20 No. 4, supplement (Dec. 1992): pp. 391-471.

 

. 0n Democracy. Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1983.

Daniels, Norman. "Equal Liberty and Unequal Worth of Liberty." Reprinted in Reading
Rawls: Critical Studies on Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, ed. Norman Daniels, New
York: Basic Books, 1975.

Krouse, Richard and Michael McPherson. "Capitalism, 'Property-Owning Democracy,’
and the Welfare State." In Democracy and the Welfare State, ed. Amy Gutmann.
Princeton, N. J .: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Okin, Susan Moller. Justice, Gender, and the Family. Basic Books, 1989.

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