Rawls's Difference Principle — Epoche B2
The Wrong Objection: Levelling Down, Reciprocity, and the Shape of the Difference Principle The problem, as usually posed A recurring complaint against John Rawls's difference principle is that it licenses "levelling down" [1] : that in the name of the worst off it would sanction making everyone poorer, so long as the result were more equal. Defending Rawls against this charge is easy [2] , and that is the trouble with it. This research note argues that the levelling-down objection is misaddressed — it was never an objection to Rawls, and no serious egalitarian has pressed it as one — and that clearing it away exposes the question that does need answering. If the difference principle escapes levelling down, it escapes because it does not treat inequality as bad in itself. But then its egalitarian credentials must come from somewhere else, and the place Rawls puts them is reciprocity. My thesis is that reciprocity supports giving substantial priority to the worst off but does not by itself deliver the strict lexical form the difference principle takes, and that Rawls's own later presentation of the argument concedes more of this than is usually noticed. A Rawlsian can deny this, and the penultimate section states his best case. The principle, briefly In A Theory of Justice (1971) Rawls asks which principles would be chosen for the basic structure of a society by parties who did not know who they would be in it. He argues for two principles in a fixed order. The first secures for each person an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a like liberty for all — in the later restatement, an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic liberties. The second holds that social and economic inequalities must be attached to offices and positions open to all under fair equality of opportunity, and must work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. The last clause is the difference principle. The currency is Rawls's index of primary goods : things any rational person is presumed to want whatever else they want — basic rights and liberties, freedom of movement and free choice of occupation, powers and prerogatives of office, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect. The order between the principles is lexical : the first must be satisfied before the second is applied, and fair equality of opportunity before the difference principle. Compare three distributions, with the figure for the least advantaged first: (100, 100); (120, 200); (90, 150). The difference principle prefers the second to the first, although it is less equal, because the worst off do better in it. It rejects the third in favour of the first. It never recommends the move from (120, 200) to (100, 100), because that move does not benefit the worst off. Why the objection is misaddressed The levelling-down objection has a definite home in the literature, and it is not Rawls's house. Derek Parfit set it out in 'Equality or Priority [3] ?' (1995) against what he called telic egalitarianism: the view that inequality is in itself bad, so that a state of affairs is worse in one respect for being unequal. Suppose half the population can see and half are blind, and no treatment exists. Telic egalitarianism implies that blinding the sighted would be, in one respect, an improvement — better in respect of equality, though worse in every other. Parfit's point is that this consequence is hard to accept even as a partial verdict, and that it pushes egalitarians towards his alternative, the Priority View: what matters is not that people be equal but that benefits count for more the worse off their recipient is. The difference principle is not telic egalitarianism, and Parfit says so. It does not rank states of affairs by how equal they are. It permits inequality without limit provided the worst off benefit, and it condemns a more equal distribution that leaves them lower. Levelling down is not a permissible implementation of it; it is a violation of it. Anyone writing an essay to defend Rawls from the charge is defending him against an accusation from no one. The interesting thing about this immunity is what it costs. The difference principle avoids Parfit's objection by not valuing equality. What it values is the position of the worst off. In Parfit's taxonomy Rawls's principle is far closer to prioritarianism than to egalitarianism — it is the limiting case of the Priority View, where priority to the worst off is absolute. The real ground: reciprocity, not maximin If equality is not the value, what justifies the principle? Two answers circulate, and only one is Rawls's. The first is decision-theoretic: parties behind the veil, unable to assign probabilities to being anyone in particular, would apply the maximin rule and choose the arrangement with the best worst outcome. John Harsanyi's well-known criticism is that maximin is not a generally rational rule of choice under uncertainty [4] , and that anyone who followed it consistently could not cross a road. Rawls's later work makes plain that this was never the whole argument. In Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001) he stresses that the maximin rule entered only in a specific comparison, under specific conditions — no reliable basis for probabilities, a guaranteed level that is already satisfactory, and worst outcomes that would be intolerable — and that the case for the difference principle in particular rests elsewhere. The second answer, which is Rawls's, is reciprocity . Society is a cooperative venture whose product no one makes alone, and the distribution of natural talents and favourable starting places is morally arbitrary: nobody deserves the family or the aptitudes they were born with. The question is on what terms the better-placed may benefit from advantages they did not earn, and the difference principle answers it: only on terms that also improve the position of those who did worse in the same lottery. This is why R