Rawls' Influence

Marc Ambinder, pondering the significance (if any) of Russel Kirk, remarks of John Rawls that "Liberals might not know much about him, but his writing and thinking underpin the modern Democratic Party theory of redistributive rights and expansive government." This is obviously a complicated issue, and I'm about to give it short shrift, but it's worth noting that the timing is wrong for Rawls to be politically influential.

A Theory of Justice is published in 1971, after the key elements of the Great Society and the War on Poverty were already in place. The main progressive policy accomplishments of the post-TOJ era have tended to be remote from the concerns about the distribution of wealth and income that Marc is alluding to here.

Comments

It seems to me that Ambinder (in the quoted bit, I haven't looked) is clearly saying that today Rawls underwrites liberal commitments, whenever those commitments were actually made. That seems right. It's not clear if you're intending to disagree, or simply taking the opportunity to talk about something else.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 11, 2007 6:01 PM

Yep. I'd only add that I think the timing issue is worse than that. Difference Principle-style redestributivism strikes me as very New Deal in spirit.

Posted by Scott E. | July 11, 2007 6:03 PM

When I went to college in the late 80s we were all reading Rawls. And Allan Bloom, and Francis Fukuyama...

Posted by Steve | July 11, 2007 6:12 PM

It seems to me that Rawls provides a lengthy justification for the redistributive and welfare state views held by many or most liberals. But considering how few people have actually read Rawls or how infrequently he is actually used in the public discourse, I have a hard time seeing how his writings "underpin" contemporary liberal thought in any meaningful sense.

Posted by blah | July 11, 2007 6:14 PM

Yeah, distinguish between an idea causing a policy program, and that idea underlying later commitment to the policy program.

Posted by minderbender | July 11, 2007 6:14 PM

If anything, Rawls was trying to give some structure and logical coherence to liberal principles that were already out there and in practice to begin with. That was part of the point of reflective equilibrium, if I recall correctly.

Posted by Brian | July 11, 2007 6:15 PM

I think Brian is right that Rawls gives a nice intellectual underpinning to what many of us on the left feel intuitively.

I don't necessarily agree with MY that the timing is wrong for Rawls. In fact, I think just the opposite. That the secular morality embodied in TOJ has a certain appeal in the new, new guilded age.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | July 11, 2007 6:21 PM

It is hard for me to believe that Rawls every talked anybody into believing anything really important that they didn't already believe. He may have helped some people improve the overall coherence of their views, however.

Posted by Dan Kervick | July 11, 2007 6:21 PM

Although John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971), as well as what many consider to be its ideological and philosophical counterpart, Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), could be construed as alluding to or reflecting, or in some way speaking to or about, politics, they were distinctly contextless works written by professional philosophers which lifted the perennial debates about liberalism and the ground of values to a new level of abstraction while apparently allowing academic commentators to believe that they were actually saying something about politics.

John Gunnell, "The Descent of Political Theory", Chicago, 1993, pp. 272-3.

Posted by John Emerson | July 11, 2007 6:52 PM

. He may have helped some people improve the overall coherence of their views, however.

That's not nothing. It's seems entirely possible that providing an understructure to already existing beliefs may lead people to support programs that they had not otherwise thought about.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 11, 2007 6:52 PM

There are lots of late developments in Rawls' thought that people haven't tended to notice so much. Law of Peoples is lame, but Justice as Fairness includes hot stuff like Rawls' critique of the welfare state (that's right, blah above), as opposed to his more just alternative, a 'property-owning democracy.'

In any case, great political philosophy always follows politics, it doesn't lead the way or mark the path.

Posted by matt | July 11, 2007 7:16 PM

But considering how few people have actually read Rawls or how infrequently he is actually used in the public discourse, I have a hard time seeing how his writings "underpin" contemporary liberal thought in any meaningful sense.

I would disagree: very few have read Kant, Hegel and Marx either, let alone understood them, which would require reading what they have read and probably learning german - but I think it's fair to say that they 'underpin' modern thought as philosophical undercurrents.

Posted by novakant | July 11, 2007 7:36 PM

Besides everything else, the fact is that since 1968 or 1976 American politics has been moving away from the kind of thing he advocates. Carter and Clinton were both fairly conservative Democrats on Rawls' issues.

Posted by John Emerson | July 11, 2007 7:56 PM

Maybe, but Rawls hasn't had the time to enter modern thought as an undercurrent.

And is Hegel really underpinning modern thought? I can buy Kant, and a very debased version of Marxism, but I don't see Hegel as being relevant to much of anything.

Posted by AlanC9 | July 11, 2007 8:10 PM

The Owl of Minerva takes flight only at dusk, etc., but we still read philosophers centuries after they first give discursive order to their world. Philosophers point at things with flair. As Tim might say, that's not nothing.

Posted by Wilbur | July 11, 2007 8:43 PM

Matt is absolutely right. And in 1971 we had a real lock on this country. We were the default party of most Americans. The Democratic party, at the behest of wealthy interests, decided that Reagan's personal popularity was the result of his policy preferences instead of his skill with acting. Because of this, Democrats now have to struggle to win any of the branches of government, and are widely seen as being little better on class issues than the Republicans.

Posted by soullite | July 11, 2007 8:47 PM

Maybe, but Rawls hasn't had the time to enter modern thought as an undercurrent.

I'd bet that a majority of senior policy wonks on the Dem side have direct exposure to Rawls at some point early in their education. And that it offers them a fairly coherent, if sometimes ill-remembered, position from which to direct their policy inquiries when necessary. Insofar as modern liberalism has a religion, I'd think Rawls would have to be one of the more important parts of the bible. Who goes before him?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 11, 2007 8:48 PM

I don't see Hegel as being relevant to much of anything.

I'm aware that Hegel has fallen off the wayside a little in the Anglo-American sphere for various reasons, but in Europe he's still a figure of major influence. I gotta go now but here are three pointers:

No Marx without Hegel.

Semantic holism pretty much originated with Hegel.

Hegel's dialectics, making inherent contradictions explicit and moving to a higher plane of reason from there, are so ingrained in modern thought that we don't even notice it anymore.

Posted by novakant | July 11, 2007 9:02 PM

Its not clear to me that the Great Society wasn't also "remote" from concerns of redistribution. LBJ didn't raise any taxes to fund those programs, famously relying on deficit spending instead. The idea was that a booming economy combined with Keynesian "demand management" would allow all the social spending that was needed. More than enough for all was the theme. Hard questions of distribution across classes were studiously avoided.

Posted by rd | July 11, 2007 9:38 PM

John Rawls, unlike Russell Kirk, is still read by people who are interested in serious political thought and his work is included in the reading list of any halfway decent political theory student in any halfway decent American university, also unlike Kirk. And no, that's not just because of "liberal bias" or anything like that.

John Rawls and Robert Nozick are both children of the Enlightenment, and are the two key poles for American secular political thought in the last half of the 20th Century. While their followers (and many people are their followers, whether they've heard of them or not) may go in different directions politically, neither go in the direction of a worthless bag of hot air like Russell Kirk, and that's a good thing.

Posted by Mark in Houston | July 11, 2007 11:41 PM

John Rawls and Robert Nozick are both children of the Enlightenment, and are the two key poles for American secular political thought in the last half of the 20th Century.

It's been a good decade or so since I read Anarchy, State, and Utopia, and this makes me want to re-read the thing, but I don't remember it as being an "opposite" of Rawls. I don't have a copy handy, but I what I remember is that coming from a Bakunin inspired political position (I was a kid), it was sort of a utilitarian version of old fashioned anarcho-socialism.

I could be totally, incredibly, wrong about this. I remember chapters about why health care and various other things aren't best served by private contracts, maybe I'm thinking of another book. I don't think so though.

This isn't an endorsement, that book killed me on anarcho-syndicalism as a viable society. If it wasn't an endorsement of anarcho-syndicalism and I misunderstood the whole thing I need to go back and re-evaluate some things.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 12, 2007 12:37 AM

"very few have read Kant, Hegel and Marx either, let alone understood them, which would require reading what they have read and probably learning german - but I think it's fair to say that they 'underpin' modern thought as philosophical undercurrents."

Except Kant, Hegel and Marx have all been around for over a century. If there are philosophers that the average man on the street have heard of, it would probably include some combination of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Marx, Adam Smith and maybe Ayn Rand (a la South Park). In high school we had to read excerpts of Marx, Locke, Burke, and others, but never got to Rawls. Most high school American history classes really get a chance to go as far as the Vietnam War, many stopping around the WWI or the Great Depression. If your college doesn't have a core curriculum like Columbia (like mine did), you likely only read Rawls in philosophy, political theory, American politics or possibly economics courses. For instance, I spent most of my time in college in classes relating to international relations and foreign policy, so I if I read philosophers in those classes they tended to be Montesquieu, Kant, Burke, etc. while focusing more on historical events and policy debates. What I got to read of Rawls was what I chose to read on my own.

Posted by Reality Man | July 12, 2007 7:35 AM

Nozick strikes me as an anarcho-capitalist with no syndicalist traits. I haven't read him, though.

Providing an ex post facto justification for a declining political practice strikes me as a small accomplishment. Welfare liberalism / social democracy don't need philosophical underpinnings, they need a jolt of energy (and maybe some updates), and Rawls doesn't provide that.

Posted by John Emerson | July 12, 2007 9:45 AM

Providing an ex post facto justification for a declining political practice strikes me as a small accomplishment.

Well, gee, Emerson, what is it you want to do? Take Rawls's name off some plaque?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | July 12, 2007 9:55 AM

Dig up his body and subject it to humiliation, of course. Unless he's still alive.

I think Gunnell nails it.

Posted by John Emerson | July 12, 2007 9:57 AM

Despite not having read Nozick, you think Gunnell nails it? That's impressive.

I dunno about the jolt of energy. The impression I got after Rawls died was that A Theory of Justice did provide a jolt of energy to European socialism, (and the Chinese were supposedly waving it in Tianemen (spelling? No idea) but meh...

It seems to me that Rawls has considerable indirect influence (or perhaps I should say he has considerable influence for a philosopher) which is the only influence philosophers can really have these days in the United States. I mean, Eliot Spitzer started writing his senior thesis on Rawls. And Rawls is read often in law school in the more theoretical jurisprudence phil law type classes. While his influence might be limited to law/political theory/philosophy classes, I would suggest that those are the majors that people who get involved in classes tend to adopt.

I always thought it kind of disappointing that Rawls so steadfastly rejected the public intellectual role that I think was open to him. But he was a pretty shy, private man.

Posted by patrick | July 12, 2007 11:13 AM

I think it is *flat out wrong* to say that the Rawls' work came too late to influence the progressive programs of the postwar era. Two key points:

(1) Rawls published in 1971, but the academic world had been following him with rapt attention for two decades. "A Theory of Justice" was preceded by years and years of papers, seminars, conferences, and works written by students and colleagues drawing on Rawls' approach to political philosophy. This, in fact, is *precisely* why "Theory" made such a big splash; the interested parties had already pre-digested the arguments, so everyone wanted to read (ok, skim) the actual book and debate its merits. This still doesn't mean Rawlsian ideas influenced '60s social policy, but they certainly emerged at the right time.

(2) The Great Society was a twin -- it was born along with the propaganda machine, which has become increasingly clever and influential with each passing decade. It's silly to deny that Rawls has strengthened the egalitarian backbone of liberal elites during an era when egalitarian policies are smeared and undermined with greater vigor every year.

Posted by string | July 12, 2007 2:37 PM

Not quite following you, string.

From point 1, it seems that the ideas and the policies were developing at the same time. Causality could go in just about any direction on those facts. It's not uncommon to see "A Theory of Justice" dismissed because it's really just a rationale for policy preferences that folks had already decided to adopt. That's a little cynical for my tastes, though.

And exactly what sort of effect are you claiming in point 2? That Rawls gave liberals the courage to persist in their increasingly-ineffectual defense of the Great Society programs? That the Great Society would haew been delegitimated even faster without Rawls?

Posted by AlanC9 | July 12, 2007 4:14 PM

I assumed, naturally, that you meant LOU Rawls.

To be expected when Frank Sinatra said of him "he has the classiest singing and silkiest chops in the singing game." And he was called the funkiest man alive.

Forget "you'll never find", he sang backup to Sam Cooke on Bring it on home. That's all the philosophy you'll need.

Posted by Chris | July 13, 2007 9:28 AM