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‘Inspiring’ GUARDIAN

‘A welcome reminder of what progressive politics should be’ TLS

‘Stirringly hopeful’

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FREE AND EQUAL

A Financial Times and New Statesman Book of the Year

‘Brilliantly lucid . . . Chandler both explains and reinterprets the philosophy of the great liberal thinker John Rawls, offering fresh approaches to everything from spiralling poverty to entrenched educational inequality to the so-called culture wars’ Melissa Benn, New Statesman, Books of the Year

‘Clear, brave, compelling. This book shows how to put values at the heart of politics in a rigorous way, and is an important contribution to the future of progressive politics’ David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary

‘A shining example of how a lucid writer can develop practical proposals to improve society’ Paschal Donohoe, Irish Times

‘In Free and Equal he seeks to reinvent liberalism as a relevant, radical doctrine . . . he mixes boldness and pragmatism’ Henry Mance, FT

‘An exemplary demonstration of how public reasoning can be done . . . Chandler’s virtue is his blend of philosophy with evidence-based policy. This is a kind of erudite public intellectualism reminiscent of Amartya Sen, and is a welcome respite from the knee-jerk moralism that dominates the op-ed pages and social media’ William Davies, New Statesman

‘A galvanising vision for society that uses the revolutionary ideas of American thinker John Rawls as its starting point’ Guardian, 2023 in Books

‘A brilliantly eloquent, incredibly insightful reimagining of liberalism’ Owen Jones

‘A beautifully written and compelling argument that Rawlsian political philosophy can heal our broken societies and make us, indeed, free and equal’ Sir Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

‘This is a fantastic book. More than ever, we need philosophers to participate in the public debate about inequality and sustainability. In Free and Equal Daniel Chandler provides us with the moral basis for an ambitious egalitarian agenda, and a roadmap for putting this into practice. It is a must-read!’ Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the 21st Century

‘A tremendous book, timely, wise, authoritative and clear’ Stephen Fry

‘An exceptionally sane, judicious essay on what a viable democracy entails . . [Chandler] develops a realistic, humane – and in its way, revolutionary – vision of a society committed to equity, inclusion and accountability. It should become an indispensable tool in political debate in the years ahead’ Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury

‘Daniel Chandler argues that Rawls’s ideas can help us build a fairer society, from strengthening democracy to tackling inequality.

Chandler has an excellent background on the philosophical issues that are central to practical policy making, and given the lucidity and reach of what he writes, this book will meet a very important need’ Amartya Sen, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

‘This is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of the left, and indeed the future of liberal democracy’ Jon Cruddas MP

‘A magnificent attempt to apply fundamental philosophical principles to the practical building of a better world. Far-reaching and well-evidenced, it offers a new, coherent, principles-based approach to policy design’ Professor Lord Richard Layard, author of Happiness

‘In this very timely and refreshing book, Daniel Chandler argues that rather than abandon liberalism we must reimagine it.  Free and Equal asks big questions about how human society should be organised, and offers answers all of us should take seriously, whatever our politics’ Jesse Norman MP

‘Many of us wonder idly why we can’t live in a kinder world. Daniel Chandler has done us all a significant favour by devising a powerful analysis of exactly why the world is not presently kind and how it might become more so. An inspiring work which returns political philosophy to its rightful position: that of working out how to make things better’ Alain de Botton, author of The Consolations of Philosophy

‘Can a philosopher help dig us out of the political hole we’re in?

In Free and Equal Daniel Chandler makes a robust and inspiring case for the philosophy of John Rawls, dragging his theory of justice down from Harvard’s ivory towers and into the street with the people. In clear and impassioned style he returns Rawls to the centre of the conversation, re-establishing his work as a potential agent of radical – and practicable – change . . . a book that is both intellectually rigorous and full of hope’ Zadie Smith

‘Genuinely original . . . An inspiring catalogue of fresh ideas each with a clear and jargon-free philosophical underpinning drawn from Rawls’ work’ John Mitchinson, Byline Times

‘Brilliant . . . there’s no doubt that Chandler is answering a yearning for something . . . a crisp exposition of Rawl’s principles . . . Skipping freely between gritty evidence and high theory, and grappling impressively and impatiently with practical obstacles to change . . . Chandler is reminiscent of his one-time teacher, Amartya Sen’ Tom Clark, Prospect

‘Chandler traverses a range of political, economic and social issues, suggesting one reform or innovation after another. The manner in which he does this is impressive; he writes with great clarity’ Noel Malcolm, Spectator

‘Sparkles with insight and intelligence . . . strikingly innovative’ James Orr, The Critic

‘A refreshing and useful contribution to envisioning a better world . . . Free and Equal provides a model for what politically engaged philosophy should look like’ Jacobin

‘An inspiring and achievable vision for a better society . . . that rarest of things: a comprehensive and down to earth blueprint for a “fair” society . . . a book all liberal egalitarians and democratic socialists should read for its wisdom, lucidity and above all visionary realism’ Matthew McManus, Liberal Currents

‘Timely and optimistic . . . a bold attempt to resuscitate the ideas of John Rawls’ Stewart Lansley, Fabian Review

‘The thinker of the moment . . . Free and Equal offers a manifesto for change shaped by the ideal of a fair society. Clearly expressed and strongly argued’ Glyn Davis, Australian Book Review

‘So many of the answers to our dilemmas about democracy and inequality can be found in the philosophy of John Rawls. Daniel Chandler brings those answers to life with contemporary evidence and solutions. Read Free and Equal and feel hopeful about the future’ Minouche Shafik, President of Columbia University

‘Daniel Chandler is the most exciting new thinker on the scene, making the most complex of ideas digestible even for idiots like me. Free and Equal provides a refreshingly hopeful tonic for our cynical times. I gulped it down’ Hadley Freeman

‘Invaluable . . . Chandler takes a set of universal principles around fairness, based on the philosophy of John Rawls, and applies them to the real world of liberal democracy’ Sir Vince Cable, former leader of the Liberal Democrats

‘A beautifully clear, inspiring, wise book with the potential not only to reinvent liberalism, but to transform our societies for the better’ Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus

‘Daniel Chandler’s provocative book helps make human possibilities more credible than they have been in our neoliberal age. Free and Equal doubles as an accessible guide to a leading philosophical system, and a call for a new agenda for justice in our time’ Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World

‘Chandler shows us how Rawls’s universal moral vision can be a lodestar for our times, helping us to collectively shape and debate a practical blueprint for a fair society and find our way out of our current

political morass – let’s hope it is as widely read as it needs to be’ Kate Pickett, author of The Spirit Level

‘This is superb work, in both explaining Rawls for general readers and in applying Rawlsian principles to contemporary problems of social and political justice . . . It is impressive – clear, concise, thorough, and accessible’ Professor Samuel Freeman, author of Rawls and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Rawls

‘A book full of ideals and ideas, optimism grounded in action. It is as energising as it is timely’ Andy Haldane, former Chief Economist of the Bank of England

‘This is a morally steadfast book, which liberalism’s honest opponents should take for their target, and which will enliven liberal theory and perhaps even reinvigorate liberal political practice’

Daniel Markovits, author of The Meritocracy Trap

‘A rousing and original argument against hopelessness which will convince even the most jaded among us that a better public debate and a more just world are indeed within reach’

Ryan Avent, author of The Wealth of Humans

‘A timely and thought-provoking look into society, Chandler’s insights are much needed in today’s world. Free and Equal offers a well-written perspective on how we live today and provides hope in practical ways for economies to operate for the better in the future’ Rupal Patel, senior economist, Bank of England

‘Serious, progressive, and grounded in a great political philosopher’ Will Hutton (Twitter)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniel Chandler is an economist and philosopher based at the London School of Economics, where he is Research Director of the Programme on Cohesive Capitalism. He has degrees in economics, philosophy and history from Cambridge and the LSE, and was awarded a Henry Fellowship at Harvard, where he studied under Amartya Sen. He has worked in the British Government as a policy advisor in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and Deputy Prime Minister’s Office, and as a researcher at think tanks including the Resolution Foundation and Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Daniel Chandler

Free and Equal

What Would a Fair Society Look Like?

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Introduction

What would a fair society look like?

Most of us –  and by ‘us’ I mean citizens of the world’s rich democracies –  would agree that the societies we live in are far from fair. Although we don’t all agree on exactly what is unfair about them, many of us would point to a familiar list of problems: a political system dominated by the rich; the profound in uence that class, race and gender continue to have on people’s opportunities; the enormously unequal distribution of money, power and social prestige; and a rapidly unfolding climate and ecological catastrophe that threatens the ecosystems on which we and future generations depend.

These problems lie at the root of a growing sense of discontent with liberal democracy as we know it. Across the world, trust in politicians and satisfaction with democracy is at a historic low, and politics is increasingly volatile. This discontent has given rise to an authoritarian populism that now poses the most serious threat to liberal democratic values since the Second World War. From Donald Trump in the USA to Marine Le Pen in France, and from Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Narendra Modi in India, right-wing populists have assumed increasingly prominent roles in national politics and seem determined to roll back basic freedoms and undermine the democratic process. In the wake of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and with the rise of an increasingly autocratic and assertive China on the global stage, the future of liberal democracy is deeply uncertain.

It’s all too easy to decry the state of politics and society today, and there is no shortage of commentary about how and why we have reached this point. What is much harder to nd is a coherent vision of

what a better, fairer society would look like. Our public debate is divided between an established political class that seems broadly content with the status quo, and more radical critics on both the left and right who appear to want to overthrow it altogether. In this book, I will argue that liberal democracy is worth defending, but that we cannot maintain the status quo, and nor should we want to. Rather, we need to recover a sense of the transformative potential of liberal and democratic ideals, and use them to articulate a vision of a better society that people will stand up and ght for.

This kind of vision is sorely lacking. Since the 1980s and the rise of ‘neoliberalism’ –  an outlook characterized by an almost religious faith in markets and an overriding focus on economic growth –  our political discourse has become increasingly narrow and technocratic. This period stands out for its distinct lack of idealism and imagination, as questions about our values and ideals as a society, and how we can realize them, have been pushed to the sidelines. We have, in the words of the philosopher Roberto Unger, been living under a ‘dictatorship of no alternatives’.1 This is not a problem only for those of us who think our societies stand in need of far-reaching reform. It is this moral and ideological vacuum at the heart of our politics that has made space for the rise of illiberal, anti-democratic populism.2

Of course, debate hasn’t stopped entirely, but there is a sense in which the broad outlines of our political and economic institutions have taken on an air of inevitability, and it has become increasingly dif cult to think or talk about big ideas that would really change our societies for the better. In the absence of a clear alternative, moments of crisis –  moments, historically, that have so often been powerful catalysts of progress –  have largely come and gone. Almost fteen years since the 2008 nancial crisis laid bare the excesses of market fundamentalism, what stands out is just how little has changed; and while the Covid pandemic has shone a spotlight on the deadly human cost of entrenched social inequality and underfunded public services, talk of ‘building back better’ seems all too likely to come to nothing. The result is a paradoxical sense of stasis – paradoxical because there is a real appetite for change; and, for better or worse, some kind of change seems all but inevitable.

There have been some promising signs of intellectual renewal. The growing sense of crisis across the world’s liberal democracies has created space for fresh thinking, and we are starting to see a shift from diagnosis to solutions, with increasing interest in some pretty radical ideas, from citizens’ assemblies to a universal basic income. What is missing, however, is an underlying ethical or ideological framework that can bring often rather disparate policy proposals into a coherent whole. This will be impossible to achieve unless we go back to rst principles and re ect on some unavoidably moral and philosophical questions about what is just and what is fair, and about what it means to live together as free and equal citizens in a democratic society. In light of the urgent problems we face – poverty and inequality, war, an ecological crisis – it’s tempting to dismiss this as an intellectual indulgence. But it is nothing of the sort: it is an essential starting point for developing a truly transformative politics. After all, without a clear idea of where we want to get to, how can we know that we are on the right course? And how can we muster the energy to do the dif cult political work that is needed to get there? At stake is more than just the next election – it is the chance to shape a public philosophy for the post-neoliberal age.

In taking up this challenge, we are immediately confronted by an apparent lack of intellectual reference points. Most people would struggle to name a major recent thinker who could rival the likes of Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman –  the pioneers of neoliberalism whose ideas underpinned the politics of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and continue to shape our public debate.3 Indeed, you would be forgiven for thinking that the past few decades have been a rather sterile period for political thought, and that we need to start again from scratch. And yet this could not be further from the truth. The optimistic message of this book is that the ideas we need are hiding in plain sight, in the work of the twentieth century’s greatest political philosopher, John Rawls.

Although many people haven’t heard of Rawls, his ideas revolutionized political philosophy, and he is perhaps the only thinker of the past hundred years whose place in the canon of Western political thought is universally accepted, alongside the likes of Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Adam Smith and Karl Marx. This reputation rests above all

on his book A Theory of Justice, whose publication in 1971 marked a watershed moment in the history of political ideas. Rawls set out to develop a picture of the best that a democratic society could be –  a ‘realistic utopia’, as he put it.4 In doing so, he achieved what many had thought to be impossible, or even a contradiction in terms: whereas politics and philosophy had long been divided between a classical liberal tradition that prized individual freedoms above all else, and a socialist tradition that was often willing to sacri ce these freedoms in the name of equality, Rawls articulated a philosophy that was committed to both freedom and equality at the deepest level.5 His ideas de ne a humane and egalitarian liberalism – a muchneeded alternative to the harsh neoliberalism that dominates our political discourse. In his work, we have an unparalleled, and as yet untapped, intellectual resource for responding to the crises we face today.

So who was Rawls, and where did his ideas come from? John Rawls – ‘Jack’ to his friends –  was born into a moderately af uent middle-class household in Baltimore, Maryland, on 21 February 1921, the second of ve sons. His mother, Anna Abele Rawls, was an accomplished and politically active woman, and an early chapter president of the newly founded League of Women Voters in Baltimore.6 His father, William Lee Rawls, was a highly respected and successful lawyer. Rawls’s early childhood was marked by the tragic deaths of two of his younger brothers, Bobby and Tommy, one of whom died after contracting diphtheria from him, an experience that left him with a deep appreciation of the role of luck in shaping our lives.7 Despite his comfortable upbringing, as an adult Rawls recalled how his sense of injustice had been awakened by his mother’s struggle for women’s rights, and by a growing awareness of poverty and racism as he made friends with other, less privileged children, sometimes to the disapproval of his parents.8

Rawls excelled at school, and in 1939 he enrolled at Princeton University, where he tried his hand at subjects including chemistry, music, maths and even art history before deciding to major in philosophy. At Princeton, he developed a strong interest in theology and ethics, planning to attend divinity school and become a priest in the Episcopal

Church. But these plans were interrupted by the Second World War. After graduating in 1943, Rawls enrolled as a private in the infantry, where he trained as a radio signaller before being deployed to New Guinea, the Philippines and nally Japan. The young Rawls experienced the violence and inhumanity of war rst-hand: his division was involved in intense combat (he was awarded a Bronze Star for dangerous work behind enemy lines), and he passed through the remains of Hiroshima shortly after it was devastated by an American atomic bomb in August 1945.

Rawls’s experiences as a soldier and his growing awareness of the atrocities of the Holocaust provoked a profound crisis of faith, leading him to abandon his Christian beliefs and ambitions. In 1946, he returned to Princeton as a graduate student in philosophy, motivated by a new set of questions which would come to shape his life’s work. In the face of the bloodshed and cruelty of the war, Rawls found himself asking whether human life on Earth was really redeemable. If God cannot be the basis for our faith in the possibility of a just society, then what can be? What, exactly, does justice require of us? And is a just society realistically achievable?

Rawls devoted the rest of his life to answering these questions. He spent twenty years developing his ideas before publishing A Theory of Justice in 1971, at the age of fty.9 The reception was unprecedented for a densely argued work of philosophy spanning 600 pages. 10 It was reviewed not just in academic publications but in mainstream newspapers such as the New York Times , where it was described as a ‘peerless contribution to political theory’ and listed as one of the ve most signi cant books of the year.11 The book’s historical importance was instantly recognized, and it was widely lauded as a work the likes of which had not been seen since John Stuart Mill, or even Immanuel Kant.12 This assessment has stood the test of time: nearly forty years later, the philosopher G. A. Cohen wrote that there are ‘at most two books in the history of Western political philosophy [that] have a claim to be regarded as greater than A Theory of Justice: Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan ’.13 Rawls spent the rest of his life defending, re ning and, in some cases, amending the body of ideas he set out in A Theory of Justice, including writing a second major book, Political Liberalism ,

published in 1993, just under a decade before his death at the age of eighty-one.

Tributes mourned the passing not simply of an intellectual giant but of a much-loved husband and father of four, and a person of singular moral character. The picture that emerges of Rawls from his friends, colleagues and former students is of a quiet, private man who spent most of his time at work or with family and close friends; a dedicated and conscientious teacher who encouraged female philosophers in a male-dominated eld; and, despite his achievements, an individual of remarkable humility. Re ecting on Rawls’s ‘legendary’ modesty and kindness, the philosopher Michael Sandel recalled receiving a phone call during his rst days as a young assistant professor at Harvard in the early 1980s. ‘A hesitant voice on the other end said: “This is John Rawls, R-A-W-L-S.” It was as if God himself had called to invite me to lunch, and spelled his name just in case I didn’t know who he was.’14

It’s almost impossible to overstate Rawls’s in uence within academia. Before Rawls, political philosophy, at least in the Anglo-American tradition, was more concerned with linguistic analysis of concepts than with substantive questions about how we should organize society – so much so that the respected historian of political thought Peter Laslett had famously declared in 1956 that ‘For the moment, anyway, political philosophy is dead.’15 After the publication of A Theory of Justice, no one could make such a claim. Rawls’s work provided a model of constructive and systematic political thinking which inspired a new generation, leading to ‘an outpouring of philosophical literature on social, political, and economic justice unmatched in the history of thought’.16 He shaped this literature in a profound way –  de ning both the questions that were asked and how people went about answering them. Of course, as with any great thinker, his ideas were ercely contested, but as Robert Nozick, one of Rawls’s leading contemporaries (and critics) put it in 1974, ‘Political philosophers now must either work within Rawls’s theory, or explain why not.’ To a large extent, the same continues to be true today.17

And yet, Rawls’s ideas have had little impact on real politics. Beyond those who have studied philosophy, there is little awareness

of his work: in the words of Rawls’s former student Samuel Freeman –  a distinguished philosopher in his own right –  Rawls’s in uence outside academia has been ‘nil’.18 While some ‘third way’ thinkers irted with his ideas in the 1980s, this largely came to nothing, and there was little evidence of his idealism or economic radicalism in the politics of Bill Clinton or Tony Blair in the 1990s and 2000s.19 Since then, Rawls has been largely overlooked within mainstream political debate.20 In fact, it’s hard to think of any other political thinker where there is such a large gap between their in uence within the academy and in society at large.

How can we explain this puzzling fact? First, there is Rawls’s personality. Rawls disliked public speaking, in part because he suffered from a stammer that developed as a boy after the death of his younger brothers. In contrast to some of his better-known contemporaries, he had little interest in playing the role of ‘public intellectual’. He almost never gave interviews; he routinely declined public awards and invitations; and he rarely commented in public on topical political issues.21

Rawls’s lack of purchase on real politics also re ects the abstract nature of his work. Rawls was a philosopher’s philosopher. He was interested in asking the deepest, most fundamental questions. What is justice? What is the nature of democratic legitimacy? How can we balance the demands of freedom and equality? Although his aim was to develop principles that could help us determine how to organize society, he said relatively little about what this might look like in practice, believing that was a job best left to social scientists.22

Finally, there is the wider political context in which Rawls was writing. One of the ironies of Rawls’s legacy is that just as his ideas were coming to dominate political philosophy, politics was moving in the opposite direction with the rise of Reagan and Thatcher. Rawls’s strongly egalitarian liberalism seemed oddly out of step with the times. In the period since, his potential as the basis for a new political direction has been obscured by misunderstandings that have led some to dismiss his ideas as little more than a nostalgic defence of post-war America.23

Looked at another way, though, the gap between Rawls’s unrivalled stature within philosophy and his lack of public impact may not be as

strange as it seems. It often takes a generation or two before truly great thinkers lter through into popular consciousness: although Adam Smith was writing in the second half of the eighteenth century, it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that his writing really shaped an emerging classical liberal politics; and while Marx was in uential as a writer in the nineteenth century, his ideas had their greatest impact in the communist revolutions and societies of the twentieth century.24 Now, for the rst time since the publication of A Theory of Justice more than half a century ago, there is an urgent need and appetite for systematic political thinking on a scale that only a philosopher like Rawls can provide –  and his ideas are uniquely suited to the challenges we face today.

For all the richness and complexity of Rawls’s writings, at the heart of his theory of justice is a strikingly simple and powerful idea: that society should be fair. If we want to know what this would look like, he argued, we should ask ourselves what kind of world we would choose to live in if we didn’t know who we would be within it – rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight. Rawls proposed that we could use this thought experiment, which he called the ‘original position’, to identify a clear set of principles that could guide us in designing our major social and political institutions. If we chose our principles in this way, he argued, as if behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, they would be fair, in the same way that someone might cut a cake more fairly if they didn’t know which piece they would end up getting.

Rawls argued that we would select two fundamental principles, concerned with freedom and equality respectively, alongside a further principle of ‘intergenerational’ justice and sustainability. First, we would choose to protect our most important personal and political liberties, including freedom of conscience, speech and association, as well as equal voting rights and opportunities to in uence the political process more broadly. After all, if we didn’t know who we would end up being in society, we wouldn’t want to risk being persecuted for our religious beliefs or sexual preferences, or being denied the right to vote because of our gender or the colour of our skin.

This rst principle – the ‘basic liberties principle’ – is what makes Rawls’s theory distinctively liberal, and it provides the basis for

designing a democratic constitution and political system. His second principle, which has two interlocking parts, provides a framework for thinking about our social and economic structures, and it is this principle that gives his theory its distinctively egalitarian avour. All of us, he argued, would want to live in a society where everyone has a fair chance to succeed in life, irrespective of their class, race or gender. This notion – which Rawls referred to as ‘fair equality of opportunity’ –  isn’t just about preventing discrimination, but about giving everyone a truly equal chance to develop and employ their talents and abilities. At the same time, Rawls argued that we would permit inequalities only where they ultimately bene t everyone –  say, by encouraging innovation and growth –  and that we would organize our economy so as to maximize the life chances of the least well off: something he called the ‘difference principle’. If those who have the least could accept that society is fair, he argued, then surely those who have more could do so too.

Alongside these two principles we would recognize our obligations towards future generations by adopting the ‘just savings principle’, according to which we have an overriding duty to maintain the material wealth and vital ecosystems on which society depends. Whatever we do to increase prosperity and raise the living standards of the least well off must be consistent with this basic commitment to social and environmental stewardship.

I imagine this brief summary will have raised as many questions as it answers. Why is the ‘original position’ the right way to think about fairness? Would we really choose these principles over all the other alternatives? Which freedoms should be counted as ‘basic liberties’? How exactly can inequality bene t everyone?

In the rst part of this book we will unpack Rawls’s key philosophical ideas, and respond to various criticisms and misunderstandings of them. But my aim is not merely to describe or explain these concepts; rather, it is to use and apply them. So, in the second part of this book, we will pick up where Rawls left off, looking at how far our actual societies fall short of his inspiring ideal and, crucially, developing a bold, practical agenda that would make it a reality. In doing so, we will see how Rawls’s theory can help us not just to defend but to

reimagine liberalism – both as a set of values and as a way of organizing society.

Why is liberalism worth defending?

In recent years, ‘liberal’ has become a term of abuse on both left and right. In the popular imagination, liberalism is almost synonymous with the mainstream political establishment; and, for many people, criticizing it has become something of a catch-all for expressing discontent with the state of society today. Among the various criticisms, two main lines of attack stand out. The rst –  what we might call the ‘egalitarian’ critique –  associates liberal ideas with an overriding commitment to free-market capitalism. The problem with liberalism, on this view, is that it leads to economic structures that are the source of so many of the problems we face –  poverty, inequality, insecurity, the climate crisis. A second line of attack, more common on the right, though evident across the political spectrum, is the belief that liberalism is grounded in an individualistic conception of human nature that fails to recognize the importance of family, community and religion in our lives. On this view – often referred to as the ‘communitarian’ critique – liberal ideas are held at least partly responsible for problems ranging from rampant consumerism to family breakdown, and for a wider sense of social and spiritual alienation.

These criticisms deserve to be taken seriously. They highlight real issues, and they are not entirely wrong in pointing the nger at something called ‘liberalism’. But liberalism is not a single set of ideas or policies, it is a broad and evolving intellectual and political tradition – something its critics often fail to recognize. Such strictures are best understood as criticisms not of liberalism per se, but of neoliberalism.25

Rawls’s philosophy de nes a vastly more attractive liberalism which can respond to these concerns. As we shall see, he provides one of the most searching critiques of capitalism developed by any liberal thinker, and a powerful argument for a more humane, equal and sustainable society. And far from celebrating sel sh individualism, it is cooperation and reciprocity that are the cornerstones of Rawls’s theory –  a theory which recognizes the vital role that family, community and religion play in most of our lives.

Contrary to what most people think, it is the egalitarian liberalism of Rawls and the generation of philosophers who have developed and re ned his ideas which represent the mainstream of liberal political philosophy today.26 Indeed, it is surprisingly hard to nd a serious philosophical defence of the kind of individualism or market fundamentalism that so many people have come to associate with liberalism. That this is not more widely recognized re ects, at least in part, a failure on the part of contemporary philosophers – including Rawls –  to communicate more widely and to engage directly with the pressing political issues of the day.

Such engagement is essential, because reinventing liberalism as an intellectual tradition is not an end in itself but the rst step in developing a truly progressive politics that can bring about a better society. In using the term ‘progressive’ here, I don’t want to suggest that this book is addressed to a speci c political party or grouping: part of what is so appealing about Rawls’s ideas is that they transcend, or at least blur, some of the familiar dividing lines within our societies. Engaging with his thinking is an opportunity for each of us –  whomever we vote for, and whether we tend to identify as liberals, conservatives, socialists, greens, or none of the above –  to take a fresh look at our views about politics and society.

Having said that, the ideas in this book will feel most familiar to those on the broadly ‘progressive’ or ‘left’ wing of the political spectrum. In part, this is because Rawls’s principles invite us to change our most basic political and economic institutions – how we organise the democratic process, the role of government and markets in society –  sometimes in rather fundamental ways. In this sense, they represent an alternative to the strong deference to tradition that is one of the de ning features of ‘conservative’ political thought. They are also ‘progressive’ in the sense that they embrace a strong commitment to a diverse, tolerant and substantially more equal society.

And yet, although emphatically egalitarian, Rawls’s theory also represents an alternative to the socialist tradition. This is not to disparage socialism, at least not in its democratic form.27 There is a long

history of fruitful dialogue between egalitarian liberals and democratic socialists – indeed, these two traditions have much in common; and in recent years self-described ‘socialists’ –  those inspired by the likes of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK , or Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the USA  – have been an important source of dynamism within the wider progressive family. But socialist politics still has a tendency towards statism and a somewhat dogmatic hostility to markets and private enterprise; and although today’s socialists often have a strong sense of what they are against –  inequality, poverty, capitalism –  it’s less obvious what exactly they are for, or what the long-term goal is towards which socialism can lead.28 The result is a politics that lacks a deeper sense of coherence. This is not simply an intellectual problem – it is a real obstacle to electoral success. One of the principal criticisms of the Labour Party’s ‘socialist’ manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in the 2019 UK general election was that although it was full of individually popular policies, such as increasing taxes on high earners and nationalizing the railways, it read more like a wish list than a cohesive programme for a better society.

While Rawls’s ideas can bring greater coherence and ambition to progressive politics, they also show us how we can bridge some of the social and cultural divides in our societies. A common criticism of progressive politics today is that it has become a form of ‘identity politics’, by which I mean that it aims to advance the interests of speci c groups –  women, Black people, the disabled, the LGBTQ + community –  instead of an inclusive idea of the common good. Such disapproval is often overblown: campaigns like ‘Black Lives Matter’ are not about privileging the interests of one group over another but about securing for Black and other minorities the rights and opportunities that the rest of us take for granted. If anything, it is the rise of white nationalism on the right that represents identity politics in its truest and most dangerous form. In any case, Rawls’s principles represent a unifying alternative to identity politics of any kind. This doesn’t mean abandoning the struggle for, say, racial justice or gay rights; and there is nothing wrong with disadvantaged groups organizing themselves to ght for their rights –  indeed, this has often been a vital source of progress. Rather, it means being clearer that these

struggles are part of a wider project of realizing universal values. At the same time, Rawls’s ideas show us how we can overcome the false choice between protecting the rights of speci c groups and developing an economic agenda that would bene t them all. Any meaningful progressive politics must do both.

One of the most striking trends in recent decades has been the way in which politics has increasingly come to be shaped by differences in personal values and culture – like the divide between what the writer David Goodhart has memorably referred to as ‘anywheres’ and ‘somewheres’.29 Mainstream progressive parties have come to be dominated by people with a more ‘culturally liberal’ outlook –  often younger, more educated, less religious and living in cities –  and have struggled to connect with citizens of a more ‘traditional’ or ‘conservative’ sensibility –  often older, less educated, more religious and living in small towns or the countryside. Perhaps more than any other liberal thinker, Rawls explicitly sought to appeal to people with very different moral and religious beliefs, and his philosophy can help us to reach across these fault lines.

Rawls’s ideas also provide the basis for a progressive politics that is genuinely transformative. As we shall see, each of his principles has far-reaching, real-world implications: his basic liberties principle calls for radical reforms to how we fund political parties and the media, and to engage citizens more directly in the democratic process; while his second principle, in combination with his commitment to sustainability through the just savings principle, provides the basis for a fundamental reshaping of our economic institutions. Indeed, it is in this last arena where we really see the profound implications of his ideas. Our rst priority must be to avert ecological and climate breakdown while there is still time, and to bring about the transition to a truly sustainable society – a transformation that will change almost every aspect of how we live, and which is a precondition for the survival not just of liberal democracy but of humanity itself. At the same time, we must embrace an economic agenda that will not only tackle discrimination and achieve equality of opportunity, but also address inequality at its source, hand real power to workers and ensure that everyone has the opportunity for meaningful and digni ed work.

Over the course of this book, we will assemble a comprehensive programme that would reinvigorate our democracy and transform our economy. The aim, in the end, is to use Rawls’s theory to construct a ‘realistic utopia’: to describe a set of institutions that are the best we can hope for, given what we know about human nature and the constraints of the natural world. In doing so, I hope to dispel the pessimism that is holding back our societies, as if our hands are tied by rigid economic laws and large-scale reform is doomed to failure. As we shall see, such pessimism simply isn’t warranted: there are plenty of exciting and workable ideas about how we could do things differently, and we will use Rawls’s principles as a framework for bringing the most promising proposals into one place, drawing on lessons from history, evidence from the social sciences (including my own discipline, economics), and inspiring examples from around the world. This will take us well beyond Rawls’s own brief and often tentative remarks about the practical implications of his ideas; in some cases, we will even have to depart from what Rawls himself wrote. After all, his comments are not the nal word –  how could they be? The problems we face, and our understanding of the world, are always changing and evolving, and in applying his principles we should always strive to rely on the best available information. While no institution is perfect, and we cannot know for sure how new policies will work until we try them, the case for change is overwhelming. Ultimately, the real obstacles to reform are political not practical.

It’s important to state at the outset that Rawls’s principles, and the proposals put forward in this book, are simply a contribution to democratic deliberation –  a set of arguments to be discussed and debated. This might seem obvious, but a common reaction to Rawls, and to political philosophy more broadly, is that they are somehow an ‘elitist’ attempt to pre-empt democratic debate. Why should we accept one philosopher’s opinion as the basis for organizing society? Shouldn’t we leave these matters to the people? Given the dismissive attitude that political elites often take towards the views of ‘ordinary’ citizens, these concerns are entirely reasonable. But, in a democratic society, the arguments proffered by political philosophers are just that –  arguments; and the audience for them is not an all-powerful state but citizens at large. Although I will propose speci c reforms,

my aim is not to draw up a xed blueprint but to demonstrate the power and exibility of Rawls’s theory for helping us to think more clearly about how we can build a better society. These ideas are not an alternative to democratic debate, but an integral part of it; and whether they have any in uence depends solely on their capacity to persuade enough citizens that they are worth pursuing: nothing more, nothing less.

What are the chances that these lofty ideals will have a meaningful impact on real politics? How can we overcome the inevitable resistance from entrenched elites whose hold on political power and economic resources would be challenged by them? I will come back to these questions in the Conclusion. But we must remember that what is politically achievable is not predetermined –  it depends on what people believe in and are willing to ght for. My aim in this book is to sketch a vision of what a fair society could look like, and to persuade you that this is both morally desirable and practically feasible. But bringing this about will require determination and a commitment to action –  to changing minds, to winning elections and to experimenting with new policies and institutions.

I often nd myself coming back to a particular quote which, I think, captures what is so unique and inspiring about Rawls’s ideas. It comes from the philosopher Thomas Nagel’s review of A Theory of Justice in 1973. ‘The outlook expressed by this book is not characteristic of its age,’ Nagel wrote, ‘for it is neither pessimistic nor alienated nor angry nor sentimental nor utopian. Instead it conveys something that today may seem incredible: a hopeful af rmation of human possibilities.’30 We need this kind of outlook today more than ever. My hope is that this book brings that same spirit to the problems we face today; and that, in doing so, it leaves you with a renewed con dence in the possibility of a better society –  and the energy to go out and make it a reality.

Part one

What’s Fair?

Justice is the rst virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how ef cient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.

We tend to take for granted the way in which society is organized: political and economic institutions change slowly, and they can take on an air of naturalness or inevitability. But we must not be fooled by this illusion. There is no natural or neutral way to organize society –our democracy and economy are the products of human choices, and it is within our power to change them. Together, these structures comprise a social system which, in Rawls’s words, ‘is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action’.2

Our societies require a range of institutions in order to function: they require political structures, such as parliaments and elections, which we can use to make collective decisions; a legal system, including courts and a judiciary, which can enforce these decisions; economic institutions, such as markets and property rights, which facilitate production and trade; and social structures, such as the family, which help to sustain our society and pass on our shared culture from one generation to the next. These institutions – what Rawls referred to as the ‘basic structure’ of society –  in uence our lives in profound and unavoidable ways. They determine our rights and obligations as citizens, and the opportunities open to us through education and work;

and, through their impact on culture, they even shape our values, dreams and aspirations, and hence the kinds of people we are and want to be.

In a democracy, we share a collective moral responsibility for how we design the basic structure of our society, and the impact it has on each of our lives. For Rawls, this is what justice is all about, and he devoted his life to identifying a clear set of principles that could guide us in designing these institutions. His starting point was the idea that society should be fair – this is why he called his theory ‘justice as fairness’. His life’s work was, in effect, an attempt to unpack this fundamental idea; to think through what it would mean to live together on terms that everyone could accept as fair. As we saw in the Introduction, Rawls proposed a powerful and intuitive thought experiment, which he called the ‘original position’, in order to answer this question. If we want to know what a fair society would look like, he argued, we should ask ourselves how we would choose to organize it if we didn’t know what our individual circumstances would be, as if behind a ‘veil of ignorance’.

Rawls argued that we would select two overarching principles of justice, relating to freedom and equality respectively, alongside a further principle of intergenerational justice and sustainability. As we shall see over the course of this book, these principles provide a remarkably clear and powerful framework for thinking our way through many of the most challenging issues facing our societies today, from questions about free speech and the role of money in politics, to those concerning poverty, inequality and the climate and ecological crisis; and in the second part of this book, we will adopt these principles as the basis for developing a practical agenda to change our society for the better.

But before we take up these real-life challenges, we need to look in a bit more detail at the principles themselves. Although just over 100 words in total, they are the essence of Rawls’s theory, and contain within them an enormously rich set of ideas.

Rawls’s Two Principles of Justice

First principle: Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible

with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.

Second principle: Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: rst, they are to be attached to positions and of ces open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest bene t of the least advantaged members of society, consistent with the just savings principle.3

At rst sight, the principles are rather dense: it’s not obvious what they mean, or why they are so distinctive, and the aim of this chapter is to explain this. But one thing is readily apparent: they are designed to answer the speci cally political question of how we should organize our most important social institutions, rather than any wider moral questions about what makes life worthwhile, or what we owe our friends and family. This focus on social justice –  the justice of institutions, as opposed to the justice of individual actions – set Rawls apart from many thinkers in the liberal tradition, so much so that one prominent philosopher referred to this aspect of his theory as ‘the coming of age of liberal political philosophy’.4

Rawls also distinguished between ‘domestic justice’ –  which is the focus of his theory –  and both ‘local’ and ‘global justice’.5 While domestic justice, and hence Rawls’s principles, are concerned with how we should organize the basic structure of society – the core institutions without which it couldn’t function – they are not meant to tell us how we should organize the internal life of the various associations that operate within the basic structure, such as families, churches or sports teams.6 These are matters of ‘local justice’. Of course, Rawls’s principles set some limits on how these associations can operate –  churches cannot punish heretics beyond expelling them, and parents cannot deprive their children of medical help or a decent education. But within these broad limits, private associations should be free to organize themselves as they see t.

Neither are his principles designed to answer questions about ‘global justice’ –  justice between, rather than within, countries –  such as what obligations rich countries have to poorer ones, or whether one country can intervene in another to protect human rights. In the context of enormous global inequalities, climate change and even war, these are

What’s Fair?

undoubtedly pressing issues, with hugely important practical implications, from how we structure the global trading system to how much money we should spend on international aid and how we should share the costs of phasing out fossil fuels and adapting to a warmer planet. But the relationship between countries differs signi cantly from the relationship between citizens within a country, and working out the details of these obligations calls for a different set of principles.7 Following Rawls, we will focus on domestic justice – on how we should design the basic institutions of an individual country –  since it is disagreement about this question which underpins the crisis of faith in liberal democracy today, and which must be the starting point for the political and social renewal we so urgently need.8

Freedom

The foundation of any liberal democracy is a commitment to protecting certain fundamental rights and freedoms. This idea is accepted today across the political spectrum: it is the driving force behind the modern human rights movement, and many countries enshrine a set of fundamental rights in a written constitution. And yet, although there is general agreement that everyone is entitled to certain basic freedoms, there is disagreement about which ones. Should gay people have the right to marry? Should women have the right to an abortion? And what should we do when our most basic freedoms come into con ict with one another? Should, for example, freedom of expression give religious believers the right to refuse to serve gay customers?

Rawls’s rst principle –  the basic liberties principle –  can help us answer these dif cult questions. Let’s start by looking at which freedoms Rawls considered to be truly ‘basic liberties’ (in this discussion, I will use ‘liberties’, ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’ interchangeably). We can group them into three loose categories: personal, political and procedural.9 The personal liberties include freedom of conscience, thought and expression, freedom of association, and the rights that are needed to ensure our individual freedom and bodily integrity –  including freedom from violence and coercion, freedom of movement, free

choice of occupation, the right to a private family life, freedom of choice in questions of sexuality and reproduction, and the right to own personal property like clothing and housing. These freedoms create a protected space in which we can think freely and pursue our own idea of how we want to live our lives – what religion we want to follow, if any; whom we want to be in a relationship with, and whether we want to start a family; what kind of work we want to do, and how we spend our time outside work. They re ect a deep commitment to the liberal ideal of a society in which people with different moral and religious values can live side by side, and where we agree not to use the power of the state to impose our beliefs on anyone else. At a time of rising intolerance and growing ‘culture wars’, this commitment is more important than ever.

Next come the political liberties, which encompass all the rights and freedoms that underpin the democratic process. These include not just the right to vote and to stand for of ce, but also wide-ranging freedoms of political speech and association, including the right to scrutinize and criticize the government and to form political parties and campaign groups. Crucially, Rawls’s rst principle does not seek only to guarantee our formal equal political rights but also to create a political system in which we have substantively equal opportunities to exercise those rights and to in uence collective decision-making, irrespective of wealth, race, gender and so on. This is what Rawls meant when he said that the equal political liberties ‘are to be guaranteed their fair value’.10 In most advanced democracies, rich individuals and powerful corporations have come to exert an outsized in uence over the democratic process, in large part through making donations to political parties and their ownership of the news media. This tendency for democracy to degenerate into plutocracy –  government by the wealthy – concerned Rawls deeply, and he argued that the failure to address this was one of the most serious problems with our societies.11 As we shall see in Chapter 5, achieving political equality in this sense will require far-reaching reforms to democracy as we know it, starting with an entirely new system for funding political parties and the news media.

The personal and political liberties are the core substantive freedoms protected by the basic liberties principle, and they correspond

to the liberal and democratic aspects of the familiar term ‘liberal democracy’. Alongside them are what we might call ‘procedural liberties’, or the rights and liberties associated with the rule of law. At the most basic level, ‘the rule of law’ means that the state should act in accordance only with laws that have been approved through a legitimate political process. Moreover, everyone should be subject to the same laws, which should be administered in a regular and impartial manner. In practical terms, the procedural liberties underpin vital protections like freedom from arbitrary arrest and the right to a fair trial. These freedoms are a precondition for enjoying all the other basic liberties: after all, without the rule of law, democracy would be meaningless since the state could act with impunity, and none of our personal liberties would be secure.

But what exactly does it mean for a liberty to be ‘basic’? Basic liberties, as Rawls conceived them, are both ‘fundamental’ and ‘inalienable’. They are ‘fundamental’ in the sense that a basic liberty can be limited only in order to protect another basic liberty. To take a relatively uncontroversial example, we can limit free speech where this is necessary to prevent violence, and hence protect our basic right to physical safety and bodily integrity. But it would be wrong for the state to limit our basic freedoms simply in order to satisfy the moral or religious views of the majority. So, for example, it would be wrong to ban gay relationships simply because some people –  or even most people – think homosexuality is a sin. Similarly, the state cannot limit the freedom of a religious minority simply because this would satisfy the beliefs of the majority. No matter how much we might disagree with our fellow citizens about personal morality and religion, the basic liberties principle calls on us to respect each person’s freedom to live according to their own beliefs. The only limit on this freedom is the freedom of others to do the same.

The protection of basic liberties covered by Rawls’s rst principle also takes strict precedence over the pursuit of economic justice, which is the focus of his second principle (in this sense, the order in which he listed his principles really matters).12 So, for example, the state cannot take children away from their parents, even if doing so would promote equality of opportunity; and neither can it bypass the democratic process, or disenfranchise particular groups of voters,

even if doing so would lead to faster economic growth and make it easier to address poverty. In other words, we can immediately reject the kinds of arguments that authoritarian communists have sometimes made to justify the denial of basic personal and political freedoms, and which continue to be made in present-day China and elsewhere. And, of course, it isn’t only those on the hard left who are or have been willing to subordinate basic freedoms to economics –  the same is true of authoritarian neoliberals such as General Augusto Pinochet, who oversaw a brutal free-market regime in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s.

The basic liberties are also ‘inalienable’, meaning we cannot voluntarily give up, or ‘alienate’ ourselves from, them.13 In other words, in a society organized according to this principle we would not be able to sell ourselves into slavery or sell our right to vote, even if we wanted to. For Rawls, the role of the state is not, as some libertarians believe, simply to enforce voluntary contracts; rather, it is to maintain the conditions that are the basis for our freedom and equality as citizens, and to permit slavery would go against this most basic commitment.

Rawls’s account of which liberties are ‘basic’ has a number of distinctive features that distinguish his theory from other liberal thinkers, with important practical implications.

First, as we have seen, he argued that both personal and political –  or liberal and democratic – freedoms are ‘basic’ and so deserve special protection. We often talk about these freedoms as if they are inseparable –  hence the term ‘liberal democracy’. But this hasn’t always been the case, and in giving both types of freedom equal weight Rawls sought to transcend an important philosophical divide.14 On one side of this divide is a school of thought often associated with the eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but with roots going back to classical Athens. It argues that political or democratic freedoms, or what the philosopher Benjamin Constant referred to in an in uential essay in 1819 as the ‘liberties of the ancients’, are the most important. On this view, personal freedoms like those of religion and conscience are, at best, instrumentally important because they help to promote a healthy democratic culture. The problem with this way of thinking is that it has a dangerous

tendency towards illiberalism, or the ‘tyranny of the majority’: when the will of a democratic majority clashes with the personal freedoms of a minority, the former takes priority. This is the idea that selfprofessed ‘illiberal democrats’ like Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, appeal to when they argue that in a mainly conservative and Christian country there is nothing wrong with laws that discriminate against gay people.

A second school of thought, more closely associated with thinkers like John Locke and with the modern liberal tradition, instead regards the personal freedoms –  the ‘liberties of the moderns’ –  as the most important. Its proponents tend to value democratic freedoms mainly as a means to securing our personal freedoms and economic prosperity more widely, rather than as intrinsically valuable in their own right. But this way of thinking can lead to distinctly undemocratic conclusions: until the early twentieth century, many self-described ‘liberals’ were opposed to universal suffrage on the grounds that it posed a threat to freedom (though they were often more concerned with protecting the property rights of the rich than with freedom of conscience and expression).15 In a more modern context, we can see similar notions at play when neoliberals have used international institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to impose a particular idea of economic freedom on crisis-stricken developing countries.16 In rich countries, meanwhile, the tendency to hand over ever more power to unelected regulatory agencies and central banks sometimes displays a similar disregard for the importance of democratic oversight.17

The basic liberties principle, by contrast, says that political and personal freedoms are equally important and neither has an automatic priority over the other. For Rawls, these freedoms are ‘co-original’ –  they share a common source in an underlying ideal of citizens as both free and equal. Free citizens must be able to choose how they want to live, and equal citizens must have the same power to shape the law as everyone else. Both types of freedom have inherent value, in addition to their instrumental value in protecting one another.18 In this sense, Rawls’s theory is a true theory of liberal democracy.

Perhaps the most striking and consequential feature of Rawls’s list of basic liberties is that it includes only a very limited set of economic

freedoms –  namely, freedom of occupational choice and the right to own personal property, which Rawls de ned rather narrowly to include, for example, a right to own personal possessions and to have control over one’s living space. In other words, Rawls rejected the notion, associated with many followers of the classical liberal tradition, that freedom of exchange is on a par with, or should even take priority over, personal freedom or political equality. Various thinkers have offered their reasons as to why economic freedoms should have this privileged status, and we will look at some of these arguments in Chapter 3. But whatever the justi cation, the practical implication is always the same: if wide-ranging economic freedoms are given such a strong priority, this severely limits what the state can do to address poverty or inequality, or even to regulate markets in order to promote economic growth. It is this strong precedence given to economic freedoms that explains the association between (classical) liberalism and laissez-faire economics, and it is this way of thinking that has prevented us from addressing many of the failings of contemporary capitalism. Rawls, however, rejected this approach, arguing that questions about taxation and property should depend on how we can best promote the idea of economic justice de ned by his second principle.

What justi es Rawls’s claim that personal and political freedoms are basic, but most economic freedoms are not? The answer brings us to perhaps the most original aspect of Rawls’s rst principle: not its assertion that some liberties are more important than others, but how it gives us a framework for determining which liberties are ‘basic’ and for handling the con icts that inevitably arise between them.19

In expanding on his rst principle, Rawls explained that the basic liberties are those rights and freedoms that we need in order to live freely and to play our part in society.20 As citizens, he argued, we need two essential moral ‘powers’ or ‘capacities’. First, the ‘capacity for a conception of the good’ – in other words, the ability to re ect on and pursue our own idea of how we want to live. Second, the ‘capacity for a sense of justice’ –  the ability to form our own view about how we should organize society, and to cooperate with others on fair terms. Having these capabilities is what makes us free and equal

citizens, and they are a precondition for the existence of a democratic society.21

The basic liberties are the freedoms we must have if we are to develop and exercise these capacities. The political liberties guarantee our freedom to discuss moral and political questions, to criticize the government and to take part in public life, without which it would be impossible to cultivate or act according to a sense of what is fair – our ‘capacity for a sense of justice’. At the same time, we need the personal freedoms of thought, speech, conscience and association in order to de ne and pursue the kind of life we want to lead – our ‘capacity for a conception of the good’. These personal freedoms give us space to follow our own path and they are the foundation of a rich social and cultural world in which we can explore different ideas about how to live beyond those we were brought up with.22

Being clear about the underlying purpose of our basic freedoms helps us to think about their limits. The basic liberties principle does not protect every instance of an abstract right like free speech: speech is protected as a basic liberty only where it is essential for us in developing and exercising our moral capacities. So, for example, we should give the strongest possible protection to speech about political, moral and religious questions, since that is integral to developing our sense of what is fair and how to live. But some forms of speech, such as commercial advertising, play no meaningful role in enabling us to develop or exercise these capacities. While true basic liberties can be limited only in order to protect other basic liberties, freedoms like commercial speech can be limited, Rawls argued, for a wider set of ‘public reasons’, such as promoting public health or economic ef ciency.23

Keeping in mind the underlying purpose of our basic freedoms also provides a way to resolve the con icts that inevitably arise between them. When faced with such a con ict, we should seek to prioritize them according to their importance for living freely and for cultivating our two moral capacities. At the heart of this approach is a recognition that no basic liberty is absolute: in principle, we can limit any of them if doing so is necessary to maintain a ‘fully adequate’ set for everyone. As we shall see in Chapters 4 and 5, this exibility is an important corrective to the absolutism about rights that is common in

contemporary political debate, as if one basic freedom must always take complete precedence over everything else.24 We can see this, for example, in the way in which the US Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down laws to limit political donations on the basis that these are protected forms of speech, and that freedom of speech has an almost absolute priority over the claims of democratic political equality; or in the notion that freedom of religious belief should always trump the rights of the LGBTQ + community, which has been used to justify wide-ranging exemptions for religious believers from antidiscrimination laws.

Of course, the idea of ‘striking a balance’ raises its own dif culties. We cannot simply look at Rawls’s rst principle and read off a de nitive solution to any given clash of rights. Resolving them inevitably involves a degree of judgement about the relative importance of different freedoms, and there may be a range of reasonable solutions. This exibility is not a bug or a aw, it is a valuable and intentional feature of Rawls’s approach: rather than seeking to answer every question in advance, it recognizes that democratic debate about the precise scope of our basic freedoms is often justi ed, and provides a coherent framework for conducting this debate.

We are now in a position to understand why Rawls’s rst principle only includes a limited set of economic freedoms, like the right to hold personal property. We have a basic right to own housing and personal possessions like clothing, books and computers, because otherwise it would be impossible to live freely and to express ourselves. To see how vital these liberties are, we only have to imagine what it would be like to live in a society where the state, or indeed other citizens, could come into one’s home at will, or tell us what to wear or read.25 The same is true of freedom of occupational choice: for many of us, what we do for a living is an important part of our identity, and being free to decide what job to do is an integral part of living our life according to our own beliefs. But most of the economic freedoms prized by classical liberals – being free from taxation, being able to run a business without regulation, and so on – do not pass this test. We simply don’t need these rights in any absolute sense in order to live freely or engage in democratic debate.

What’s Fair?

This way of thinking explains Rawls’s approach to the question of who should own the ‘means of production’ –  rms, machinery, raw materials and so on –  which historically has been at the heart of the debate between socialism and capitalism. While we have a basic right to own personal property, this does not imply that companies or natural resources should necessarily be privately owned. Rawls was clear that the basic liberties principle is compatible both with private ownership and with ‘liberal socialism’, where rms are ultimately owned by workers or by the state. This is not to say that we can leave issues around ownership and workplace democracy unresolved –  indeed, they are at the heart of the economic agenda that we will develop later in the book; only that the basic liberties principle alone cannot provide us with an answer. That requires a broader ideal of economic justice, which brings us to Rawls’s second principle.

Equality

While the basic liberties principle gives us a template for protecting our most important freedoms and designing a democratic political system, Rawls’s second principle can help us think about how we should organize our core social and economic institutions: the structure of the education system, the role of markets, the size of government, the nature of property rights and so on. In combination with the just savings principle, which we will return to shortly, it provides us with an ideal of economic justice that is both liberal and egalitarian, while recognizing the limits of our nite planet –  a truly systematic alternative to the neoliberalism that continues to dominate economic thinking and which serves to justify the ecological destruction and inequality that blight our societies today.26

As we have seen, Rawls’s second principle has two distinct parts. First is ‘fair equality of opportunity’: the idea that social positions –  not just jobs, but places at university, public of ces (such as being a judge) and so on –  should be open to all on the basis of their skills and abilities, and that everyone should have an equal chance to develop their talents in the rst place. The second part is the ‘difference principle’: the idea that inequalities in society are justi ed

only if they bene t everyone, and speci cally that we should organize our economy so as to maximize the life chances of the ‘least advantaged’.

Before saying more about the different aspects of this principle individually, it’s important to see how they relate to one another. To do so, it helps to imagine a society in which people hold different positions –  for example, cleaners, teachers, architects –  each of which comes with different rewards: some are more highly paid or have more power, while others offer greater scope for gaining social recognition or developing a sense of accomplishment. Fair equality of opportunity is about making sure that each of us has an equal chance to compete for any of these roles regardless of where we are born or who our parents are. The difference principle, by contrast, is about making sure that the rewards attached to those positions are fair. In other words, even if we all had a fair shot at becoming an architect, this wouldn’t necessarily make it fair that architects earn so much more than cleaners. Whether this disparity is justi ed ultimately depends on whether it helps to promote the interests of the least advantaged – by encouraging people to undertake the long training needed to become an architect, say, and to apply their skills to building things that people value, such as houses, shops and of ces.

We can also illustrate the relationship between fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle using the analogy of a competition or race. Equality of opportunity is often described as giving everyone a fair start in the ‘race’ of life. But equality of opportunity has nothing to say about the prizes at the other end. Should the race be one in which ‘winner takes all’, as is increasingly the case in our societies today? Or should everyone get the same reward for taking part? Or somewhere in between? If equality of opportunity is about having an equal start, then the difference principle is about making sure that the prizes are fair. By combining these two elements, Rawls’s second principle rejects the false dichotomy between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome that characterizes so much debate about economic justice. And yet, while the two parts of Rawls’s second principle have to be understood together, each also has transformative implications of its own.

Fair Equality of Opportunity

Equality of opportunity is, of course, a familiar concept – it is one of the guiding principles of economic policy in most modern liberal democracies. But while most of us would agree that equality of opportunity is something we should be aiming for, this apparent consensus masks deep divisions over what it actually means and what it would take to realize in practice.

We can distinguish two distinct interpretations of this principle that sit behind our political debate. The first, which Rawls referred to as ‘formal’ equality of opportunity, is the idea that jobs and other positions should go to the most quali ed candidate, irrespective of irrelevant characteristics like class, race or gender. Formal equality of opportunity is, in effect, a principle of nondiscrimination. At a minimum, it requires laws that make outright discrimination illegal, and it also calls for policies which would help to overcome unconscious bias and prejudices that put some groups – women, certain ethnic minorities, LGBTQ + people – at an unfair disadvantage.

Formal equality of opportunity is a basic requirement of equal citizenship, and a precondition for any fair society. To be denied access to a job or a place at university simply on the basis of your gender or the colour of your skin is to be denied one’s basic dignity and equality as a citizen. But formal equality of opportunity on its own is not enough. The problem is that making sure that jobs and other positions go to the most skilled candidates doesn’t count for much if some people don’t have a chance to develop those skills in the rst place. We know, for example, that children who are born into richer and more educated families tend to go to the best schools and have more opportunities to develop valuable social and cultural skills at home. These unequal starting points have huge effects on people’s lives. In countries like the UK and USA , for example, someone whose parents earn £10,000 more than their friend’s parents will, on average, go on to earn £5,000 more than their friend.27 This relationship is even worse for certain ethnic minority groups: in America, Black children born to low-income parents have just a 2.5 per cent