The year 1971 saw the arrival of two stellar intellectual contributions that would eventually revolutionise the discourse in their respective fields. Susan Strange’s Sterling and British Policy: A Political Study of an International Currency in Decline (Oxford University Press) was the first major work to give substance to the idea of a merger of economics and politics. Ms Strange’s subsequent work (along with other significant contributions, notably from Robert Gilpin) provided the intellectual foundation for International Political Economy, a field that has grown by leaps and bounds over four decades and continues to make seminal contributions as the world grapples with the aftermath of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press) was the other. While Ms Strange was an intellectual pioneer of sorts, Dr Rawls’ genius lay in providing a methodological foundation to a dense and deeply divided literature on human welfare that straddled economics and philosophy. Intellect apart, it took uncommon courage of conviction to seek to overturn what was (despite sporadic criticism) the most deep-rooted tenet of the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, Utilitarianism, which posited that justice was best defined as that “which provided the greatest good for the greatest number”. It should come as no surprise that “maximising efficiency” is, in turn, the guiding dictum of Utilitarianism and by extension neo-classical economics, with its strong roots in positivism.
Dr Rawls’ arguments went beyond efficiency and focused on fair outcomes. In doing so, he insisted that even “efficient” outcomes would be normatively guided if they were to be fair. Dr Rawls’ preoccupation with distributive justice did not constrain his pragmatism in any way. The Difference Principle, the point of departure in Dr Rawls’ work, was motivated by an uncompromising tenet — equal respect for all people. Given that the wealth in an economy varied from one period to the next, the most common (and “fair”) way of producing more wealth is to have a system where those who are more productive earn greater incomes without making anybody worse off. While it may sound utopian at first glance, it has exerted considerable influence on various branches of economic theory ranging from social choice theory to mechanism design, which seek to minimise the adverse effects of market imperfections.
A Theory of Justice was anything but an exercise in idealism. It was intended to provide insights into the vexing questions of the day, mainly involving the distribution of the fruits of economic growth. For example, Dr Rawls’ main concern was with the relative welfare of the individual as opposed to the absolute level. This has important implications for social policy on issues ranging from income distribution within societies as well as at the level of the firm. Dr Rawls’ arguments refute the position long held by neo-classicists that income differences have little meaning as long as the poorest are assured of the wherewithal to survive: very large differences in wealth may make it impossible for the poor to be elected to political office and have their political views heard. As a second example, the long-held link between productivity and wages – more productive people are entitled to higher wages – is itself questioned in a Rawlsian framework, where productivity itself is seen as being endogenously determined by several factors often beyond an individual’s control. Second-generation affirmative action programmes, especially in developed countries, seek to redress this imbalance.
The intellectual influence that A Theory of Justice and subsequent work by Dr Rawls have exerted on a whole generation of welfare theorists is stupendous and extends to issues of justice at a global level (the problem of resource and ecological burden sharing) as well as the questions that have an inter-temporal dimension (justice across generations). Like other great intellectual pioneers, notably Robert Merton and Noam Chomsky before him, Dr Rawls’ work has its fair share of critics. Libertarians object on the grounds that the Difference Principle involves unacceptable infringements on liberty, while others have criticised it on the grounds that it mostly ignores claims that people deserve certain benefits in light of their actions. Feminist theorists complain that the Difference Principle does not adequately criticise the constraints patriarchy imposes on the choices women can make, notably in the amount of time they can spend in the labour market.
While much of this criticism is definitely valid, it cannot and should not diminish the contributions of a body of work that did much to reconcile the philosophical and economic aspects of welfare theory, provided a firm empirical basis to evaluate welfare choices and, above all, liberated the field from its narrow preoccupation with efficiency. Dr Rawls’ work was a relentless quest for ensuring the dignity of the individual. Amartya Sen summed it up best when in a Harvard University speech in 1990, he described equalisation as a “social necessity”.
John Rawls was the James Conant Bryant Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Harvard University at the time of his death in 2002. President Bill Clinton, while awarding Dr Rawls the National Humanities Medal in 1999, described his work as having “helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself”. It was the culmination of a process of scholarly activism that produced great work, with A Theory of Justice as its pinnacle.
