Rawls, Piketty, and the Critique of Welfare-State Capitalism

Bibliographic Data

ID10189698
AuthorsKevin Vallier (0000-0001-9407-6716, Bowling Green State University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume81
Issue1
Pages142-152
Publication date2018-10-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3816 • E-ISSN: 1468-2508
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/700108
OpenAlexW2897776591
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited17

Political philosophers have renewed their attempts to justify John Rawls’s preferred economic regime, property-owning democracy. They have followed Rawls in criticizing welfare-state capitalism because it permits unjustifiably large economic inequalities. Simultaneously, Thomas Piketty has argued that capitalism has an inherent tendency to create very high degrees of wealth and income inequality. I argue that introducing Piketty’s work into a Rawlsian framework strengthens Rawls’s critique of the welfare state and his case for property-owning democracy. Piketty’s work, if correct, shows that welfare-state capitalism not only permits unjust economic inequalities but causes and compounds them, despite the presence of various forms of redistribution. I then argue that Piketty’s solution to inequality, a global progressive tax on capital, can contribute to the aims of a property-owning democracy. This synthesis of Rawls and Piketty yields a potentially powerful left-wing yet nonsocialist critique of welfare-state capitalism

Capital (architecture · Capitalism · Democracy · Economic system · Economics · Inequality · Market economy · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Politics · Public good · Redistribution (election · Redistribution of income and wealth · State (computer science · Welfare · Welfare state · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Political Theory and Influence

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