As Free and as Just as Possible: The Theory of Marxian Liberalism
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1118720385
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Grafting the Marxian idea that private property is coercive onto the liberal imperative of individual liberty, this new thesis from one of America's foremost intellectuals conceives a revised definition of justice that recognizes the harm inflicted by capitalism's hidden coercive structures.
- Maps a new frontier in moral philosophy and political theory
- Distills a new concept of justice that recognizes the iniquities of capitalism
- Synthesis of elements of Marxism and Liberalism will interest readers in both camps
- Direct and jargon-free style opens these complex ideas to a wide readership
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something else important about capitalism. Marx criticized capitalism for treating the worker as an appendage to a machine and thus stunting and crippling him. However, this applied to the early form of industrial capitalism that Marx saw in the nineteenth century. Later capitalism, by contrast, does not seem to stunt and cripple the worker. Predictions of capitalism deskilling workers, reducing them to ever simpler and more easily replaceable cogs in the productive machine,20 have not been borne
of the theory, and Marxism characterizes the conditions for achieving that goal. Thus, the theory is called Marxian Liberalism. My argument unfolds in the following order. Since Marxian Liberalism develops and alters elements of Marx’s and Rawls’s theories, it will help to have the basics set out for reference and comparison in what follows. Accordingly, in Chapter 2, “Marx and Rawls and Justice,” I present the basics of Marx’s theory of capitalism, and of Rawls’s theory of justice. I shall also
things to different people. Accordingly, I will exercise a fair amount of selectivity in choosing, and philosophical license in interpreting, the elements of Marxian Liberalism as I join them together. I hope that the theory that results is interesting enough to justify this approach. 28 2 Marx and Rawls and Justice Since Marxian Liberalism develops and alters elements of Marx’s and Rawls’s theories, it will help to have the basics set out for reference and comparison in what follows. That
property, and show that it does not respond adequately to this threat. And, in Section 4.2, “Kant, Narveson, and the Ambivalence of Property,” where I take up Kant’s argument, I show that it too leads to the conclusion that property is a threat to the natural right to liberty, and that libertarian philosopher Jan Narveson’s recent version of Kant’s argument does not adequately respond to this threat. In Section 4.3, “Marx and the Structural Coerciveness of Property,” I show that Marx went beyond
25). And Mill wrote that “the idea of legal constraint is . . . the generating idea of the notion of justice.”4 This does not mean that justice must be forced, or that it is always wise to force it. It is however what we are entitled to require, that is, at very least, what we may insist upon from our fellows, regardless of how we make this insistence stick. Thus, I include in the definition of justice both that it can be required, and that it must be reasonable in light of facts about human