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Dilemmas of Rawlsian Opportunity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Paul Gomberg
Paul Gomberg*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Philosophy and Political Science, Chicago State University, Chicago60628, USA, pgomberg@csu.edu
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Extract

In A Theory of Justice and elsewhere John Rawls writes that the basic structure of any society affects the life prospects of those growing up in different ‘starting places,’ yet his conception of equal opportunity seems to require that one's opportunities not be affected by the class position of one's birth. Here I explicate this apparent contradiction and reconcile these assertions. In Rawlsian fair equality of opportunity children from working-class families have lesser opportunity to attain advantaged positions.

Rawls's view cannot be easily revised to allow equal prospects for all children. Within the framework of Rawls's understanding of a just society, he is right to say that his own conception of fair equality of opportunity allows deep inequalities in life prospects.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

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References

1 The primary texts cited will be A Theory of Justice revised edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1999), hereafter cited as Theory with page numbers in text, and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Kelly, Erin ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2001)Google Scholar, usually cited as Restatement with page numbers in text.

2 I argue shortly that this is a misinterpretation, and that Rawls does not believe that these inequalities disappear on the democratic conception of justice, but that they achieve a specific social purpose on that conception.

3 Rawls, John Collected Papers, Freeman, Samuel ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1999), 130–53Google Scholar at 143. A similar passage is in Theory §43, 245-6. In Theory the phrase ‘equally good education and chances of culture for all’ is replaced by ‘similar chances of education and culture for persons similarly motivated.’ The insertion of the proviso about motivation is quite important, as we will see shortly. In Theory the thought contained in the sentence ‘Now by the latter we do not mean, of course, the equality of expectations between classes, since differences in lifeprospects arising from the basic structure are inevitable…’ is omitted. Why did he omit this sentence in Theory? The interpretation offered here is that he did not change his mind. Still, the juxtaposition of these two thoughts probably bothered him. I believe that he did not work through, as I will do here, the reconciliation of his ideas about equal opportunity with his ideas about the basic structure creating differences in life expectations. He may have been uncomfortable with juxtaposing the thoughts that the basic structure creates unequal life prospects and that justice requires that social class not affect the life prospects of those similarly endowed and motivated.

4 Why does Rawls object to the liberal conception that ‘the principle of fair opportunity can only be imperfectly carried out’? On both interpretations inequalities in life prospects arise from one's class position. But for Rawls, fair opportunity requires that inequalities in opportunity advance the opportunities of those with least opportunity. The liberal conception does not guarantee that, and that is why, on the liberal conception, the principle of fair equality of opportunity cannot be perfectly carried out.

5 Did Rawls also believe that class position affected one's ‘native endowments’? This much is clear. He thought that in a just society those who held positions of advantage tended to be those who had greater scarce ‘native endowments’; the passage at Restatement 65 quoted above implies that he thought that those ‘least endowed’ were disproportionately represented among the least advantaged. Did he believe that people inherited greater and lesser ‘endowments’ from their parents? The eugenic passage at Theory 92 suggests that he thought something like this; at 245 he speaks of the ‘unequal inheritance of intelligence’ as though it were an established fact. Although his use of the phrase ‘natural lottery’ may be thought to suggest that ‘endowments’ are random, the randomness he intends is ‘morally random’ or undeserved rather than ‘naturally random.’ Still, even if present, the belief that ‘endowments’ are affected by class position is a very secondary theme in Rawls.

6 In Theory §77 at 448, considering how family circumstances affect life chances for different individuals, Rawls writes that those of us who are disadvantaged by natural and social contingencies ‘are more ready to dwell on our good fortune now that these differences [in natural and social advantages] are made to work to our advantage, rather than be downcast by how much better off we might have been had we had an equal chance along with others if only all social barriers had been removed.’

7 This passage could be interpreted as being about unequal expectations among adults rather than about the prospects of children born into different classes. Still, the language here of a person's ‘prospects’ is the same language he uses when writing about opportunity, and the phrases ‘start out’ and ‘initial inequality in life prospects’ suggest he is thinking about opportunity. In any event, this is the closest he comes to explaining why unequal opportunity might be thought to increase the opportunity of those with lesser opportunity, and I believe his explanation of why this is so — more material resources to the less advantaged — has to be the same in both the case of opportunity and the more general case of the expectations of the representative person of different classes.

8 On positional goods see Hirsch, Fred Social Limits to Growth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar To the extent that important goods are positional, what is important is relative position (ranking), not how well off one is in a more objective sense. On the problems that positionality makes for prioritarian conceptions of justice see Brighouse, Harry and Swift, Adam ‘Equality, Priority, and Positional Goods,’ Ethics 113 (2006) 471–97.Google Scholar

9 The interpretation developed here of how Rawls imagines the social division of labor — between, on the one hand, those who organize and design the productive process or who do highly trained technical or intellectual labor and, on the other, those who labor in production doing simpler, less skilled labor — leans heavily on this example of how the difference principle is to be understood. This may be unfair to Rawls, but I am not sure. There are other elements in Rawls's egalitarianism that emphasize the wide dispersal of property, including the ‘powers of office’ attaching to ownership and workplace democracy; these elements suggest a much more egalitarian view that is not so focused on distributive benefits of the division of labor. But, to my mind, they also threaten to void any application of the difference principle and make puzzling his belief that ‘profound inequalities’ are inevitable. I explore the apparent duality of Rawls's egalitarianism briefly in the appendix.

10 See Lipset, Seymour Martin and Bendix, Richard Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley: University of California Press 1959), 262.Google Scholar

11 There is a paradox here: limited opportunities are competitive because the number with high aspirations exceeds the number of available advantaged positions. But social stability requires that aspirations be adjusted to the available opportunities. But this adjustment reduces competition. Hence stability requires the reduction of competition.

12 In The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class are Undermining the American Dream (New York: Public Affairs 2004), Sheryll Cashin argues that many parents spend great sums to live in neighborhoods whose schools advantage their children.

13 See note 9 above and the appendix below for problems with attributing this assumption to Rawls.

14 If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2000), Chs. 8 and 9 as well as other essays cited there. These challenges are further developed in Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2008), which I have not yet read.

15 I believe that this asks us to imagine what is socially impossible, that with equal opportunity everyone would be socialized for positions that only a few would attain.

16 The meritocrat's dream seems based on the functional theory of stratification, which was in the air when Rawls started graduate school. For discussion and references see my How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2007), Ch. 9.

17 For criticism of these ideas see How to Make Opportunity Equal, Chapter 10, where I argue that the ‘because’ here is not an explanation.

18 Kamin, Leon The Science and Politics of IQ (Potomac, MD: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 1974),Google Scholar especially Chapter 1 and my How to Make Opportunity Equal, Chapter 10. On related issues see Barry, Brian Why Social Justice Matters (Cambridge: Polity Press 2005),Google Scholar Chapters 8 and 9; there is much else.

19 On nomadic foragers there is much; see, for example, Lee, Richard The Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979);Google Scholar the essays in Leacock, Eleanor and Lee, Richard eds., Politics and History in Band Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982);Google Scholar Turnbull, Colin The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo (New York: Touchstone 1961);Google Scholar Briggs, Jean L. Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1970).Google Scholar

20 On the hypothesis that the intelligence of modern humans arises to master social complexity and negotiate a complex social terrain see Dunbar, Robin Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1996).Google Scholar

21 On the rise of state-level societies and some of the differences it makes for social organization see Haas, Jonathan The Evolution of the Prehistoric State (New York: Columbia University Press 1982);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Fried, Morton The Evolution of Political Society: An Essay in Political Anthropology (New York: McGraw-Hill 1967);Google Scholar Johnson, Allan and Earle, Timothy The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State Stanford: Stanford University Press 1987;Google Scholar and my ‘How Morality Works and Why It Fails: On Political Philosophy and Moral Consensus,’ The Journal of Social Philosophy 28 (1997) 43-70.

22 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1976), Volume 2, 302-5 (Book V, Chapter I, Part III, Article II).

23 See How to Make Opportunity Equal, Chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of the socialization principle.

24 On this point see How to Make Opportunity Equal, Chapter 6.

25 See How to Make Opportunity Equal, Chapter 13.

26 See How to Make Opportunity Equal, Chapter 8 for further explanation of how sharing labor makes it possible to have nurturing rather than competitive relations with others.

27 But see the appendix for a discussion of whether Rawlsian justice could accommodate contributive justice.

28 The problems created by inequality even within a Rawlsian well ordered society are quite serious; Rawls imagines they are lessened by the fact that less advantaged and more advantaged form non-comparing social groups so that (my examples) janitors compare their material resources and social esteem with janitors and cabdrivers while architects compare themselves with architects and engineers. He seems to find the inequalities between the groups severe enough that these separate associations are helpful in diminishing ‘the number of occasions when the less favored are likely to experience their situation as impoverished and humiliating.’ I find this appalling; one of his proposed solutions — separation into non-comparing groups — seems to represent a recognition that, on his view of justice, there is no common basis for social esteem that allows all to be esteemed.

29 Freeman's, Samuel Rawls (London: Routledge 2007), 113CrossRefGoogle Scholar emphasizes these and generally develops the secondary strain into an interpretation of Rawls. I do not understand how Freeman takes account of the dominant strain.

30 My attention to this passage was drawn by Richard Krouse and Michael McPherson's ‘Capitalism, “Property-Owning Democracy,” and the Welfare State’ in Gutmann, Amy ed., Democracy and the Welfare State (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988).Google Scholar Rawls cites this essay favorably in Restatement at 135 n.2 and repeats some of its argument (without citing it) in the preface to the revised edition of Theory at xiv-xvi.

31 How to Make Opportunity Equal Chapters 12 and 13.

32 Explained in ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,’ in Collected Papers, especially 312-13.

33 My thinking about these issues was originally influenced by conversations with Anthony Laden and Daniel Brudney. Early drafts of this paper were a chapter of the manuscript that became How to Make Opportunity Equal, but the chapter was excised from the final version of the book to make the book more accessible to a wider audience. The chapter drafts were criticized by Laden and G.A. Cohen, and this led to a great improvement. A section of the paper was the topic of an APA colloquium where it received some criticism from Charles Mills. Mahesh Ananth read a draft and offered encouragement in pursuing the argument. I received searching criticism of a draft from an editor and two referees for CJP; these led to a substantial rewrite and, I think, major improvement. Finally David Copp and Laden reassured me that the appendix was not insane. I thank all of you.