SEEU Review vol. 5 Nr. 2 (pdf) - South East European University

SEEU Review Volume 5, No. 2, 2009
justice and a capacity for a conception of the good”. The former relates to a
public conception of justice while the latter implies an extension of the
narrow conceptions of the good, raising one’s rational advantage to the
values of human life (Rawls, 1999, 398). The conception of person stated
above (equal and free) and the idea of social cooperation becomes the
integral part of the question of justice (Rawls, 1999, 398-9).
The left questions the historical and sociological naiveté of the device of
social contract and the notion of original position. TJ is inherently an
ideology. Moreover, one of the drawbacks of the theory is its separation of
distributive system from production. It is capitalism itself under which
justice is impossible while it is irrelevant under socialism. Macpherson
argued that the theory accepts the settled inequalities inevitable within classdivided
society of capitalism. On the other hand, Gray points to the
indifference Rawls demonstrates towards the economic regimes as regards
the aims of theory of justice and sees this impartiality inconsistent with the
principles of justice (Lassman, 1992, 213).
It is observed that some biases exist in the original position. First, to gain
unanimity, to the parties are not presented a full conception of good (‘thin’
theory of primary social goods). Therefore, the original position accepts and
treats the parties as unequal persons at the beginning. In addition, it is
claimed that Rawls in his second principle prefers the sacrifices of higher
echelons of the society to those of the sacrifices to the lower levels (bias
against the best-off). For this reason, this sort of bias decreases justificatory
quality of the justice as fairness as a fair procedure. Furthermore,
assumptions of the natural equality and freedom are ideological biases.
Moreover, Rawls abstract the men from the real conditions of society. By
doing so, the principles of justice favour the class interests and distort the
instrumental character of state in favour of the dominant class interests.
Furthermore, Rawls reduce the liberal moral and political theory to the
individual rational choice problem (Daniels, 1978, xviii-xix).
Rawls seems to apply to an inter-subjectivist epistemology in which
objective truth is reduced to an agreement between inter-subjective
confrontation, negotiation and compromise. Due to this epistemology,
Rawls’ contract doctrine coincides with governance paradigms of the last
decades. Therefore, theory of justice seems to have turned into a democratic
theory of communication. Such an approach in many respects makes
superfluous the first part of the TJ, since, I believe, any public agreement
needs not necessarily a contract procedure. Furthermore, through this sort of
inter-subjectivism, Rawls places himself completely outside realist ontology.
A complete Marxist critique of Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness, I
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