Rawls and Self-Respect

While discussing the Original Position, Rawls argues that "it is clearly rational for men to secure their self-respect" (154). I want evaluate the significance of and implications of securing self-respect given inequality.

Rawls argues that "[u]nless we feel that our endeavors are respected by [others], it is difficult if not impossible for us to maintain the conviction that our ends are worth advancing" (154). Essentially, if our position on the social ladder is perceived as worthless we perceive ourselves as worthless. Crucially, our self-respect is largely a function of our perception of how others perceive us - that is, it's purely a result of social interaction. Further, living in a meritocracy or free market system actually exacerbates the inequalities with respect to self-worth. Those at the bottom of the ladder feel that their place at the bottom of the ladder is deserved / merited and is therefore a reflection of their inner worth; on the flip side, those at the top feel their inner worth reflected in their merit. This creates an intense system of status anxiety that ingrains class positions.

A system of feudalism, on the other hand, is actually free from much of the effect of status anxiety. Barring the atrocious destitution and brutality that serfs faced, those at the bottom of the pyramid were free from the toxic and psychologically tormenting effects of inequalities tied to merit. Everyone was born into their class division and - because there was no social mobility - never sweat over getting ahead of their peers. Peasants were peasants, knights were knights, lords were lords, and the king was king. Their position on the social ladder was not a reflection of self-worth, it was a reflection of divine and arbitrary placement, and, for the most part, it was generally accepted. This freed most from the psychological rat race.

Obviously, feudalism isn't a preferable system to our current system - but, we must acknowledge the impact a free market system has on the self worth of its citizens. During the Great Depression, many Americans suffered severe depression themselves as they blamed themselves for their inability to work and thus degraded their self-worth.

Even under Rawls' System of Justice, how do we ensure self-respect is maximized? So long as merited inequality exists, self-respect is imperiled. If, according to Rawls, "[s]elf-respect is not so much a part of any rational plan of life as the sense that one's plan is worth carrying out," how must we weight self-respect compared to other basic necessities? (154). If the vast majority of society finds their work purposeless, even if it is efficient - or, even if equality is maximized, what are we left with?

Rawls on Egoism

Rawls presents a very interesting argument for why egoistic conceptions are ruled out by the formal constraints of the concept of right. He arranges these constraints under five general headings—two of which are critical in rejecting the presence of egoism. 

The three egoistic conceptions are:

1.) First-person dictatorship: Everyone is to serve my interests

2.) Free-rider: Everyone is to act justly except for myself, if I choose not to

3.) General: Everyone is permitted to advance his interests as he pleases

The first two conceptions are easy to reject due to the generality condition, which states, "it must be possible to formulate [principles] without the use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions" (113). Because a description or rough understanding of a proper name is needed to fully comprehend the implications behind each case, both the first-person dictatorship and free-rider conceptions can be eliminated. Generality, however, does not rule out the third egoistic conception because, "The principle here can clearly be expressed in a perfectly general way" (117).

Instead, general egoism is rejected by the ordering condition. Rawls believes that a conception of right must be able to resolve conflicting claims by ordering their priority. Furthermore, this ordering must be independent from an individual's social position or capacity to intimidate or coerce. If everyone is truly permitted to advance their interests as they please, then men would be free to use arbitrary factors to successfully secure their self-interests, such as the power to effectively intimidate others into submission. Essentially, it is impossible to fairly rank competing claims if the factors of force and cunning play a role in determining the outcome.

Rawls and The Veil of Ignorance

Prior to section 24, Rawls gives the analogy of a group of people who are dividing up a cake. To ensure equality, Rawls suggests that the person who cuts the cake ought to pick his slice last. The cutter wants as much cake as possible, and assuming the conditions of his cake-cutting are clear, he will divide the cake evenly. Here, self-imposed equality eliminates both his disadvantage of picking the last slice while also eliminating the advantage of deciding where the cake gets cut. For Rawls, societal equality should work similarly. If citizens do not know what role they will play in a future society, it makes sense that those who decide what that society should look like will strive to make it as equal as possible; if their luck is bad, the disadvantage of being born into a poor family is minimized.

Rawls refers to the uncertainty as the "Veil of Ignorance." (119) He continues "These remarks show that the original position is not to be thought of as a general assembly which includes at one moment everyone who will live at some time; or, much less, as an assembly of everyone who could live at some time." (120) While he establishes the mindset that one should be able to adopt this original position mindset at any time, Rawls establishes that the amount of knowledge - or lack thereof - is equal, so no one has a morally irrelevant advantage over another. Strange as it may seem, this ignorance is necessary for these future citizens to plan out their prospective society. If I have foreknowledge that I'm going to be a plumber, I will try and skew society such that plumbers make the most money out of any career. For Rawls, lack of knowledge should logically create unanimity in a creation of an equal society.

Rawls and Free Will

Are individuals in Rawls’ system of democratic equality free? Rawls claims that there are three criteria to any liberty: 1) the agents who are free, 2) the restrictions or limitations which they are free from, and 3) what it is that they are free to do or not to do (177). A person is at liberty to do something “when they are free from constraints either to do it or not to do it and when their doing it or not doing it is protected from interference by other persons” (177). Under Rawls’ two principles of justice, I am unsure if a person actually is at liberty to do what she wants. According to Rawls, the natural lottery determines a person’s talents and abilities, and the arbitrary social environment helps to develop or inhibit these talents and abilities. Therefore, it is completely random if you are the most advantaged or least advantaged person within a society. If you are randomly the most advantaged, your actions are limited to those that not only raise your own well being but also raise the well being of the least advantaged. If you are randomly the least advantaged person in a society, then you can work to better yourself with the knowledge that those more advantaged than you must also help you raise your well being. In this scenario, it seems that the least advantaged then have more liberty to do what they please, while the most advantaged have their choices more constrained. Free will might still be present but it is severely restricted. Should this be a problem when constructing principles of justice?

I am curious to see how you all would interpret Rawls’ stance on free will and if there is room for it within his system of democratic equality.

The Inevitable Result

Marx’ lack of understanding about how economics works would lead to people in a communist society being even more oppressed than people now.

What Marx seems to deliberately ignore is that the division of labor is not, as Marx puts it, “based on the natural division of labour in the family and the separation of society into individual families opposed to one another.” Division of labor is, in reality based on the fact that it is inefficient for one person to perform multiple careers in the same day, instead of devoting all their time toward one career, and because it is nigh impossible for a person to achieve the knowledge necessary to perform many separate highly professional tasks. Marx claims that in a communist society, man could be a hunter, a fisherman, or a critic, as he pleased. He doesn’t mention that man could be a neurosurgeon, anesthesiologist, or structural engineer as he pleased. He also doesn’t mention that man could be a garbage collector, burger flipper, or janitor as they pleased, even though these jobs are just as necessary in a functioning society. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that, while people may have a burning passion for a certain career, often times people work in certain jobs because that’s what is needed, and the market is willing to pay for that service.

It is because of this market demand, and the subsequent supply by the workers, that Marx believes that the workers are being oppressed. Marx believes that for some reason, when the communist revolution occurs, supply and demand will cease to exist, and men will only produce what they want to. He claims that in communism, “society regulates the general production,” which will somehow magically allow man to do whatever he wants, and not be concerned with what the society needs. In this case, many men will be fishermen, but few will be garbage collectors. Marx may say, that if man becomes a speices-being, then he will want to do what is best for the society. If this is the case, however, the workers are not doing what they please, but what they need to do for their society to succeed. Moreover, because the efficiency of things would be so decreased, far more men would have to work far longer at jobs that benefitted society instead of at jobs they wanted. Inevitably, Communism would lead to all men being forced to work unpleasant jobs to merely sustain society, instead of some men working in jobs that would push society forward. It is difficult to believe that Communism would allow a society in which we as humans would one day be able to send spaceships to Mars, or delve into the mysteries of science at all. Any sort of specialization would be rooted out in for the sake of jobs that sustained basic life.

The Inevitable Failure of Communism in 20th Century

At the end of World War II, half of the globe was red. By the end of last century, I guess nobody will believe in Communism anymore. As China becomes more and more capitalist since then, its economy has paid back. Growing up in China, I blame the impracticality of Communism for all kinds of mistakes happened in 20^th century, including the Great Famine (1960-62), the Great Leap Forward (1963-66), the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and things happened in 1989 (Personally I do fell uncomfortable naming this incident). As I get older, I saw the failure of Communism as a misunderstanding of Marxism. In USSR, it is the Leninism and the Stalinism, and in China, it is the Maoism, that distorts Marxism. Even if all of them correctly understand Marx, and tries to follow his instructions, the failure is still inevitable, as Marx would say.

The reasoning is simple. The world has not met two premises that Marx emphasizes in “The Germany Ideology”:

First, there are too many “lures” in the world. Marx believes that the “intolerable” power “must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity ‘propertyless’ (p161).” This “propertyless” makes each country become dependent to each other, and achieve world-historical so that this form of world could last forever (p162). However, in the last century, not all countries are communist. Therefore, western countries were not only a dependence for the Communist states. Instead, they show too much non-political elements, as I called “lures” to the Communist states. Wealth, education, fame etc. play a large enough role to acknowledge the property and to negate the “propertyless.” Therefore, the first premise Marx stresses does not exist.

Second, the phase of global development has not achieved to the extent that Marx thinks it may fit Communism. Marx denies the possibility of achieving Communism “because without [productive forces] want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced.” Back in the 20^th century, none of the Communist state was well-off enough to claim that they are ready for Communism. But this premise paradoxically explains the call for the Great Leap Forward in the early 60s, for the Chinese government was trying to increase its productivity to achieve the premise that Marx posts in his paper.

P.S. A brief introduction of the Great Leap Forward: The Great Leap Forward is basically a period that China, by giving up everything else, focused on the production of iron and steel, for they are the symbol of industrialization and production. There was a very famous slogan at that time: surpassing Britain and catching up with America. (Paradoxically, China regards Britain and America as the most industrialized countries instead of the USSR at that time.) 

My Weird Understanding of Marx

I 've heard from professor Hurley that some of you want to see the bottom half of my diagram. So here it is! Basically Marx are saying that countries like the US have achieved political emancipation, but political emancipation is not human emancipation. Whereas I kind of reinterpret the meaning of political emancipation, and asserting that America only achieved political emancipation formally, but not in reality. I define the term "real political emancipation" as political state not being influenced by non-political elements at all. Further, I claim that "real political emancipation" will be achieved if and only if human emancipation is achieved. My claim is not exactly the same as what Marx means in his paper, but I do not think Marx would differ. Hope this could contribute to our discussion of "the German Ideology." LOL