Posted on 06/27/2012 11:59:59 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
There are times when things get shuffled around, put in a drawer, forgotten. I meant to get back to this in a much more timely fashion, but it just never happened.
John Rawls' most well known work, "A Theory of Justice", is where he writes the following: (page 241)
It is necessary, then, to recognize that market institutions are common to both private-property and socialist regimes, and to distinguish between the allocative and the distributive function of prices. Since under socialism, the means of production and natural resources are publicly owned, the distributive function is greatly restricted, wheras a private-property system uses prices in varying degrees for both purposes. Which of these systems and the many intermediate forms most fully answers to the requirements of justice cannot, I think, be determined in advance.
Rawls last line in particular is alarming: "Which of these systems and the many intermediate forms most fully answers to the requirements of justice cannot, I think, be determined in advance"
So what.... the planners are just going to have to conduct a series of social experiments in order to make sure they get it right? At the cost of whose life, liberty, and property? Hasn't enough destruction been wrought out in America at the hands of progressives and their schemes? Oh well, I suppose. Just as long as the Rawlsians achieve their "well ordered society"? See my prior posting, he uses this phrase over 70 times in the book. Justice? Screwing around with people's lives just to achieve your utopian view is not just. This is not just.
Rawls is correct though, in that socialism would restrict wealth redistribution, as the state would suck all it up indefinitely. This is actually something you can verify across the wider socialist world, by noting how often socialists will complain about the 'excesses of capitalism' and so forth - it produces more and they know it. So did Rawls. Which produces a very fascinating contradiction in this book of his, A Theory of Justice. How does a would be planner properly plan society - a "well ordered society" - without growing government so large so as to end up as a tyrannical socialist regime? Still on page 273, he writes:
In conformity with political decisions reached democratically, the government regulates the economic climate by adjusting certain elements under its control, such as the overall amount of investment, the rate of interest, and the quantity of money, and so on. There is no necessity for comprehensive direct planning. Individual households and firms are free to make their decisions independently, subject to the general conditions of the economy.
This is too contradictory to stand, which is possibly why Rawls' theories remain a creature of college indoctrination and nothing more. So 'comprehensive direct planning' isn't necessary, how about indirect? How about piecemeal? Some form of planning is clearly necessary, otherwise you don't have a "well ordered society". 40 years after being published, these ideas are still being pushing in academia which is why I have no intention of letting it go.
I'm not in the class anymore where Rawls was a hot topic, which is what made it easy for me to forget about this. But this sounds a lot to me like the earlier progressives who wanted a more activist government, but weren't socialists either.
Should the colleges ever become successful in indoctrinating enough utopian Rawlsians, hopefully someone will find what I'm attempting to do here, and be prepared to deal with this at that time.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. The purpose of socialism is to ensure that those on top STAY on top, and are not bothered by smart, energetic upstarts.
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